Tag Archives: The New York Post

When Taking Bribes, Make Sure The Origin Of The Product Is Not Traceable

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When taking bribes, unmarked bills are a good idea, other things can be risky–gold bars, for instance, have serial numbers. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez really should have considered that.

On December 4th, The New York Post reported the following:

Four of the gold bars Sen. Bob Menendez stashed at his home were previously stolen from the businessman accused of bribing the New Jersey Democrat, according to a report. 

The serial numbers on some of the gold found by the FBI during a June 2022 raid on Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ, home match identifiers that Fred Daibes reported to police after a 2013 armed robbery, according to NBC News. 

Robbers made off with $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars from Daibes’ Edgewater, NJ, home during the 2013 heist, the outlet reports.

Police later nabbed four suspects and recovered the stolen gold. 

The matching serial numbers indicate that authorities have directly linked at least some of the gold found in Menendez’s home to Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.

Daibes has been accused of bribing the senator for a series of favors, including help in disrupting a federal prosecution against him. 

“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in 2014 when questioned about the stolen gold. “They’re all stamped … you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”

The article concludes:

Menendez has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has refused to resign from the Senate, despite numerous calls for him to do so, even from fellow Democrats. 

Menendez and his wife are accused of accepting bribes from Daibes in exchange for the senator’s help shielding him from criminal prosecution in a bank fraud case.

The New Jersey Democrat allegedly helped Daibes by recommending President Biden pick Philip Sellinger, who the senator believed would apply a light touch to the case, for the post of New Jersey US attorney. 

If convicted on all charges, Menendez faces up to 45 years in prison.

I guess if you are a Democrat, you just don’t plan on having your house searched or a swat team arrive at six o’clock in the morning.

A Question That Needs To Be Asked

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On Monday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?

The article reports:

Hamas used Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital as a base of terror operations. That’s the obvious conclusion following Sunday’s discovery of a large terror tunnel under the hospital along with videos of Hamas bringing Israeli hostages inside.

Now comes an important question for Congress: Which US-funded international organizations knew the truth about al-Shifa and helped Hamas conceal its war crimes?

The Israel Defense Forces this weekend discovered a tunnel beneath al-Shifa Hospital that extends 10 meters down and 55 meters across — leading to what might be a booby-trapped door. Special units that specialize in handling explosives have been summoned to break through to the next section.

Meanwhile, Israel also released security footage showing two hostages brought through al-Shifa by Hamas terrorists following the Oct. 7 massacre as hospital workers looked on — suggesting a widespread conspiracy to conceal both the presence of hostages at al-Shifa and Hamas’ terror infrastructure within the compound.

The article notes:

Within days of the Hamas massacre, Fabrizio Carboni, the Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, began spreading Hamas disinformation — telling international media that Gaza “hospitals risk turning into morgues.”

When Carboni said this, he may have already known that hospitals in Gaza were used as terror bases and hostages were being stashed under those hospitals.

…In its 2022 annual report, the ICRC says it received $689 million from the United States last year — roughly one-third of contributions received from all countries combined. That’s a lot of taxpayer money sent to an organization that may have betrayed its most fundamental duty to uphold the Geneva Conventions by covering up Hamas war crimes and abandoning Israeli hostages.

The article concludes:

The ICRC and WHO have strong lobbies in Washington that will fight to protect their flow of taxpayer money. If, as expected, the State Department does nothing to hold these groups accountable, Congress — which holds their purse strings — should intervene. The first step: Investigate. The next: Put a pause on US funding until leadership changes and reforms guarantee that complicity in terrorist war crimes will never happen again.

How much American taxpayer money paid for Hamas headquarters?

Hopefully This Results In Some Major Lawsuits

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On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about a group of people headed to the pro-Israel rally from Detriot.

The article reports:

Hundreds of Jewish people headed to Tuesday’s pro-Israel rally in DC were left stranded when bus drivers staged “a deliberate and malicious walk-off,’’ a major Jewish organization said.

The “anti-protest” left a charted flight from Detroit — about 300 people — on the Dulles Airport tarmac for about 11 hours before being sent back home, causing them to miss the entire March for Israel event.

“I thought it was nuts, I thought it was crazy that we’re blocked from getting to the rally,” Jonathan Kaufman told The Post, adding that there were “frantic” calls to find out what was happening as they were stranded for hours.

“Our right to assembly is a constitutional right — and this was straight up blocking that.”

Kaufman and 900 others hopped on three private planes out of Detroit chartered by the Jewish Federation of Detroit, which also booked several buses to transport the massive group to the march at DC’s National Mall.

A third of the passengers weren’t allowed to leave the tarmac, however, after several buses failed to show up on the tarmac upon their 10:30 a.m. landing, according to a federation spokesperson.

The article notes:

The drivers had organized a “mass sick out” day to prevent Jewish ralliers from attending the much-anticipated march, leaving just a handful available to meet their obligations.

“We have learned from the bus company that this was caused by a deliberate and malicious walk-off of drivers,” the spokesperson told The Post.

The bus company — which the federation repeatedly refused to name — told the Jewish Federation of Detroit that a “significant number” of drivers called out sick when they learned they would be taking hundreds of Jewish Americans to the pro-Israel rally, the organization’s David Kurzmann told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.

…They were also forced to wait several hours for their team members who did make it to the rally to finally return before the chartered flights could fly back to Michigan.

Throughout the day-long fumble, organizers from the Jewish Federation of Detroit were giving updates to the passengers about the supposed counter-protest through the speaker on the plane.

Kaufman — who spent hundreds of dollars to attend the march with his mother — called the walkout “a deliberate antisemitic act,” that “would have been called a hate crime” if it happened to any other ethnic group.

“This is a historical moment — and I would have loved to be part of it.”

This was a criminal act and needs to be treated as such.

People Vote With Their Feet

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On Saturday, The New York Post reported that in the past four years, ten billionaires have changed their residences from New York to Florida.

The article reports:

New York has lost 10 billionaires in the last four years — three of whom fled to Florida — leaving tax coffers lighter by tens of millions of dollars annually.

This year 62 New York-based billionaires appeared on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, compared to 72 in 2019 and 65 last year. 

Investor and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, whose net worth was valued at $5.7 billion last year, has grown his fortune to $6.9 billion — but he packed his bags for Florida.

Other billionaires who have relocated from Gotham to the Sunshine State in the last four years include hedge funder Daniel Och — whose net worth now stands at $3.6 billion — and investor Carl Icahn, who’s worth $6.9 billion. 

“You have this incredibly high rate imposed on all of the income of the highest earners [in New York], and living just about anywhere else will substantially reduce your tax burden. Going to Florida will obviously eliminate your individual tax burden, and many of these billionaires clearly have that flexibility,” the National Tax Foundation’s vice president, Jared Walczak, explained.

The article notes:

New York relies on the top 1% of taxpayers to pay for 42% of its tax receipts, and billionaires’ incomes are taxed at the state’s highest rate — a staggering 14.8%, according to Walczak.

Although it’s impossible to quantify the exact loss in state taxes from billionaires’ fleeing without access to private income documents, “If you had someone who was earning $100 million [a year] in New York suddenly move to Florida, that’s something like a $11 million-a-year hit per year recurring to the state,” said Ken Girardin, the research director for the Albany-based think tank, Empire Center for Public Policy.

Even with the tax accountants and tax lawyers that billionaires can afford to hire, eventually they reach the point where it is not worth it to stay in a state that takes more money from them then the Medieval Lords took from the peasants. I just hope that when the leave New York, they leave their big spending government ideas behind.

Don’t Know Or Don’t Care?

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On Thursday, The New York Post posted an article about how some of the pro-Hamas protestors in England view recent and current events in the Middle East.

The article includes the following:

Two girls interviewed at one pro-Hamas protest in London were asked what their reaction was when they first learned that Hamas had attacked Israel on October 7.

“I don’t believe they did, did they,” said one.

“Honestly, I think I need to be a bit more clued up on everything that’s going on, so I feel I’m not really qualified to answer that too well,” said the other.

Well, she appeared to feel “qualified” enough to turn up at an anti-Israel demo.

Her friend, holding a banner, actually said, “I mean, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that shows that that’s actually happened.”

That is frightening.

The article continues:

These two ignoramuses should have come to Israel with me this week.

Specifically, they should have come to the site of the music festival massacre, and seen the remains of that “peace rave” where people their age, and very similar to them, were gunned down and raped just as the party was “coming up.”

Or perhaps they should have come with me to the small community of Nir Oz on the border of Gaza.

I have been to kibbutzim like this many times in the past. The citizens of these small towns and communities are often very left-wing. Often “peaceniks.” They have been accustomed to rockets for years.

Douglas Murray, the author of the article, walked through some of the areas that were attacked on October 7th. The article includes pictures of the destruction. We should not be concerned about the Israeli attack on the military strongholds in Gaza, we need to be concerned about the monsters that attacked innocent civilians and butchered them while celebrating their actions. The people who purposely killed women, young children and babies on October 7th need to be killed themselves. There is no chance of rehabilitation.

The Consequences Of Bad Government

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On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the number of people who are leaving New York State. I personally can attest to that–I currently have one relative planning to leave this year and two who left last year. New York State is becoming a place that is very expensive to live in addition to rising crime and expanding restrictions put on law-abiding citizens rather than criminals.

The article reports:

It’s an Empire State of decline.

Beset by high taxes and quality of life woes, 545,498 New Yorkers left for other states in 2022, according to US Census data.

Top destinations included Florida — the most popular choice — followed by New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania as well as more distant states like Texas and California.

The exodus was partly offset by more people moving to the Empire State in 2022 than any year over the last decade, with 301,000 new residents making the transition.

Despite that uptick, New York still suffered a net population loss of 244,000.

The departures have yet to impact New York City housing costs, with median rents continuing to hover near all-time post COVID-19 highs.

It’s interesting to see that many New Yorkers are choosing to remain in the same general area–New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, all of which are generally headed in the same direction as New York.

The article also notes:

The number of New Yorkers moving to Texas surpassed 30,000 for the first time in 2022 — up from 18,000 in 2019 for an increase of 67%, the data show.

North Carolina, Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia rounded out the top ten destinations.

The least popular choices were Wyoming, Montana, Iowa, Mississippi and South Dakota which all saw less than 500 people move from New York in 2022.

South Dakota was the least preferred, with just 52 people scampering to the Mount Rushmore State last year.

…A Post analysis of the census bureau’s state-to-state migration figures shows a steady decline from New York each year since 2012, with departures vastly outpacing inbound moves and roughly 4.6 million people waving goodbye to New York over the past decade

Roughly 2,700,000 people relocated to New York over that span — resulting in a net population loss of 1.9 million residents.

It will be interesting to see if the New Yorkers that move to states with more conservative values adapt or try to recreate what they left.

Pay Attention To The Country Making The Announcement

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Today, The New York Post posted the following headline:

Iran says Hamas ready to release hostages if Israel stops airstrikes as at least 199 now known taken

It is interesting that Iran is making that announcement–as if there were ever any doubt as to who is pulling the strings of the Hamas operation.

To understand what is going on here, you need to understand one of the basic principles of Islamic law.

According the Reliance of the Traveller (a contemporary volume on Islamic law), this is the definition of HUDNA:

Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers of material, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim. 

…Even in modern times, it remains common for Muslims to refer to a proposed peace treaty or peace talks a hudna.

The source for the above information is Stephen Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure, published in 2015.

Israel has shut off the water to the Gaza Strip and cut off imports of food, etc. Just for the record, the purpose of “hudna” is to regroup and rearm for a future Islamic victory.

The New York Post article reports:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed Monday that Hamas was ready to release its hostages if Israel ceases its airstrikes along the Gaza Strip — as the number known to have been taken by the terrorist group rose to at least 199.

Hamas officials are “ready” to release hostages, but doing so would be “impossible” under Israeli airstrikes in the region, Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani relayed at a news conference in Tehran.

The terror group “stated that they are ready to take necessary measures to release the citizens and civilians held by resistant groups, but their point was that such measures require preparations that are impossible under daily bombardment by the Zionists against various parts of Gaza,” Kanaani said.

In the past, Israel has had a policy of never negotiating with terrorists. We saw the positive results of that in 1976 when Israel mounted a daring raid on the airport at Entebbe rather than negotiate with terrorists. Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed in that raid. Prime Minister Netanyahu totally understands what is at stake.

Anyone with a knowledge of Islamic terrorism will tell you that if the bombing stops and the hostages are released, it will only be a matter of time before more hostages are taken. The only way to end this cycle of violence is to end the lives of those who are perpetrating it.

Maturity Is Obviously Not Required to Join Congress

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about Rep. Jamaal Bowman‘s pulling the fire alarm while the U.S. House of Representatives was voting on a bill to prevent a government shutdown.

The article reports:

He (Representative Bowman) posted on X Friday: “Republican math is causing a catastrophic shutdown that will force millions of working people to go without pay or lifesaving benefits and calling it ‘fiscal responsibility.’”

He condemned Republicans for being “so unserious.”

The next day, Bowman got serious by seeking to sabotage budget negotiations by pulling the fire alarm in a House office building.

Bowman’s disruption occurred just as Democratic congressional leaders were stalling for time.

Instead of the old question of “Why did the chicken cross the road?” the new mystery is: “Why did the boneheaded congressman pull the fire alarm?”

Bowman’s chief of staff Sarah Iddrissu claimed he “did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote.”

This Representative was a school principal and he doesn’t know what a fire alarm looks like?

The article also notes:

Theoretically, Bowman could face the same harsh penalty as Jan. 6 protesters — who have been sent to prison for years for obstructing an official proceeding.

After the incident, Bowman spoke with Capitol Police. Was Bowman’s statement videotaped? If so, can we lowly private citizens view the “progressive highlights of 2023” tape?

It will be interesting to see exactly what the penalty Representative Bowman will face for his actions. It is also interesting that a Democrat did not want to see the bill passed that would avoid a government shutdown. That is an indication to me that the Democrats see a shutdown as something that will benefit them politically (they can blame it on the Republicans). However, most Americans are concerned about the amount of money the government is spending and the amount of money the government is sending overseas. The debate next month when the current deal expires is going to be very interesting.

General Milley Is Retiring

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On Friday, Breitbart reported that General Mark Milley is retiring. There are a few things I remember about General Milley. None of them are very good.

In September 2021, The New York Post reported:

According to a new book by Washington Post scribes Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley conducted at least two secret phone calls with top Chinese military officials while Donald Trump was still serving as president, one in October 2020, one in January 2021. Reportedly, Milley reassured the Chinese that Trump, the only US president in two decades not to start a foreign war, wasn’t on the cusp of invading. He even went so far as to vow to tip off Beijing in the case of an impending US attack.

This was not all. Woodward and Costa also report that on Jan. 8, 2021, Milley called a secret meeting at the Pentagon during which he instructed senior military officials not to take orders from their Trump unless he (Milley) approved them.

An article from The Blaze in September 2023 has a few more examples of why I am glad to see this man retire:

In April 2023, Milley claimed that he was “unaware” of any “Drag Queen Story Hours” happening on military installations.

“‘Joint Base Langley-Eustis holds drag show at kid-friendly festival.’ And the next is ‘U.S. military defends drag show at largest training center as quote, ‘essential to morale,'” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told General Milley at a hearing.

The Republican was then photographed handing the general a folder of news clippings detailing other woke events that Milley said he was not privy to.

In June 2021, Milley defended the reading of critical race theory texts by the military, the Daily Wire reported, saying it was akin to reading communist or Marxist doctrine for educational purposes.

“I’ve read Mao Tse-Tung; I’ve read Karl Marx; I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.”

Milley said that he found it “offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, non-commissioned officers, of being ‘woke’ because we’re studying some theories that are out there.”

Milley also said that he believed it was “important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read” regarding “white rage.”

“The United States Military Academy is a university, and it is important that we train and we understand, and I want to understand white rage and I’m white,” he stated.

Between being ‘woke’ and calling the leaders of China behind the President’s back, the fact that this man was allowed to retire rather than being removed from his position is amazing.

Getting Around The Illegal And Dangerous Border Crossing

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On September 21st, The Daily Signal reported that 221,456 illegal aliens have flown directly into America from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua thanks to a program set up by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA, Bensman (Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies) says, he learned of the federal government’s “CBP One” mobile application parole program, which “permits inadmissible aliens to make an appointment to fly directly to airports in the interior of the United States, bypassing the border altogether.”  

The Biden administration introduced the CBP One mobile app to illegal aliens as a way to schedule an appointment at a port of entry and be paroled into the interior of the United States. (The acronym CBP refers to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.)

President Joe Biden said the program was part of an effort to form “lawful pathways” for illegal aliens to enter the country and seek asylum. Illegal border crossings between ports of entry at the southern border appeared to decline in June as more illegal aliens presented themselves at a port of entry.  

But, according to Bensman’s findings, migrants also are presenting themselves at ports within the interior of the country.

One of the “least noticed, mysterious, and potentially the most controversial of the new rechanneling programs that use the CBP One app allows migrants to take commercial passenger flights from foreign countries straight to their American cities of choice, flying right over the border—and even over Mexico,” Bensman writes in the Center for Immigration Studies report titled “New Records: Biden DHS Has Approved Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants for Secretive Foreign Flights Directly Into U.S. Airports.”  

According to Worldometers, the United States 2023 population is estimated at 339,996,563 people at mid year.

Keep in mind that the number of people flown in by airplane is only a fraction of the number coming over the border every day. According to The New York Post, 820,500 illegal aliens had crossed our southern border in 2023. Even if they were here legally, that is a tremendous number of people to assimilate. How many of those people will have to be supported by American taxpayers who are already struggling because of inflation?

This Might Be Part Of The ‘Wealth Gap’ Problem

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On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article about students in Baltimore, Maryland, schools and their mathematics test scores.

The article reports:

Something doesn’t add up.

None of the students at 40% of Baltimore’s public high schools tested proficient on the state math exam given this past spring — with a staggering three-quarters earning the lowest possible score, an alarming report revealed this week.

At 13 of the school district’s 32 public high schools, 1,295 students of the 1,736 who took the exams scored a 1 out of 4, meaning they were nowhere close to proficiency, Fox 45 reported.

“This is educational homicide,” Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of the Baltimore-based nonprofit People Empowered by the Struggle, told the outlet.

The results were shockingly low even at the city’s top high schools, where just 92 students, or 11.4% of the 809 students who took the exam, tested proficient, the outlet later found.

This is obviously an education problem, but is it also a cultural problem? Have we stopped teaching children that they need certain skills to prosper in life? How many of these students assume that they will be supported by social programs all of their lives and really don’t need an education or need to get a job? How many of these students are growing up in families that encourage them to do well in school and support those efforts?

We know from the story of Ben Carson that growing up poor in a one-parent family does not mean a life of little accomplishment and lots of poverty. Most of us have heard the story of Ben Carson’s illiterate mother requiring Ben and his brother to read a book every week and give her a book report. They had no idea that she couldn’t read the reports.

Our schools need to do better, but so do our parents and our culture. Doing well in school shouldn’t be a negative thing in any culture, and we need to make sure that it is not. The parents and the community can turn this around if they choose to.

Why Your Child Can’t Read

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about Columbia University closing down its Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.

The article reports:

Just before the Labor Day weekend, Columbia announced that it’s “dissolving” the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and sending its creator, Lucy Calkins, off on indefinite sabbatical.

For decades, Calkins and her colleagues pushed “literacy” programs based on ideology, not science, programs that failed the children who most needed help.

Her “balanced literacy” approach gave short shrift to phonics — by teaching children to look at pictures and guess words, for example, instead of sounding them out — and failed to foster the building of knowledge and vocabulary vital to learning the love of reading.

Phonics may be old-fashioned, but it is the only way a child can read an unfamiliar word. When my children were little, we watched Sesame Street together. I loved the sections they did on phonics.

Phonics matters. I have three children. Two of them learned to read in Massachusetts, and one learned to read in Rhode Island. Massachusetts taught phonics (they used blow-up ‘letter people’ which were wonderful–Mr. O was obstreperous), and Rhode Island taught ‘see and say’ or sight words. It wasn’t until college that the child who had not been taught phonics caught up with the other two on learning to read well and to love reading.

The article notes:

Columbia’s decision comes months after Chancellor David Banks pulled the plug on the Calkins-friendly approach once used by nearly half of NYC public schools.

Indeed, the drive toward “evidence-based” instruction has seen districts across the nation reject the Teachers College approach.

So Columbia’s move is essentially just recognizing reality.

Definitely a step in the right direction.

The Cover-Up Continues

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On Friday, The New York Post posted an article about FBI Special Agent Thomas Sobocinski’s closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. It seems that the Justice Department is working very hard to control what Congress finds out regarding their shielding the Biden family from any consequences regarding the incredible amount of money they received from overseas sources.

The article reports:

A transcript of FBI Special Agent Thomas Sobocinski’s closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, reviewed by The Post, reveals that the Justice Department detailed what Sobocinski could and couldn’t talk about with lawmakers a day before his Sept. 7 interview.

“Specifically, the Department has authorized [Sobocinski] to discuss U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss’ authority, as well as the October 7th, 2022, meeting, subject to some constraints around the ongoing investigation issue,” Sara Zdeb, a deputy assistant attorney general, informed congressional investigators before questioning began, referencing a letter to Sobocinski signed by Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who supervised the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation for more than three years, claimed in bombshell congressional testimony earlier this year that during the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting between senior-level managers from the IRS, the FBI and the Delaware US Attorney’s Office, Weiss declared that he was not the “deciding official on whether charges are filed” against Hunter and revealed that US Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge Hunter for tax fraud in DC and said he asked for and was denied special counsel authority from the DOJ. 

The article concludes:

House Judiciary Committee spokesman Russell Dye told The Post that Shapley and fellow IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler “have been wholly consistent throughout their disclosures to Congress, and the only people who haven’t are people like David Weiss, Merrick Garland, and their liberal cronies.”

Attorneys for Shapley said Sobocinski’s testimony was less credible than Shapley’s own contemporaneously documented notes.

“The ‘minutia’ of tax law and the impending expiration of the 2014/2015 charges are the reason the October 7, 2022 meeting was scheduled to begin with, so sounds like SAC Sobociski wasn’t paying attention—while SSA Shapley was taking notes,” tweeted Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, which represents Shapley.

Jason Foster, chairman of the pro-whistleblowing group, wrote, “The only question is how close to perjury others are willing to dance to tow the Garland/Weiss company line—while DOJ-minders watch them testify. ‘Don’t recall’ feels safe when folks are trying to keep their jobs.”

Shapley’s testimony about other aspects of an alleged cover-up in the case has been partially corroborated by Ziegler and by recently retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joe Gordon.

Until the swamp in Washington is drained, influence peddling, money laundering, and insider trading will continue.

Some Important Information On The Covid Booster

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On Thursday, Dr. Marty Makary and Tracy Beth Hoeg wrote an article for The New York Post about the new Covid booster. Dr. Makary is a health care expert at Johns Hopkins University.

The article reports:

Pfizer’s version, approved this week as well, also has zero efficacy data and has not been tested on humans at all. We only have data about antibody production from 10 mice.

The FDA, or Moderna (frankly, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes), should disclose what happened to the patient who took the new vaccine and had a complication that required medical attention.

The public has a right to know.

The last time the Biden administration approved and recommended a novel COVID bivalent booster, last fall, with no human-outcomes data, it was an epic fail.

Only 17% of Americans took it (and some of those were forced to do so by their employer or school).

Not foreseeing such weak public support for the booster last year, the Biden administration had prepaid pharma $4.9 billion for 171 million doses — many of which were tossed in the wastebasket.

Now it is making the same mistake.

Two weeks ago, the Biden administration upped its orders for the pediatric version of the new COVID vaccines from 14.5 million doses at $1.3 billion to 20 million doses for $1.7 billion, which is more than four times as many pediatric doses as were used last year.

There clearly seems to be a special push this time to give it to children — the same group European regulators are not supporting.

In fact, the original Moderna vaccine was banned in parts of Europe for people under age 30.

European doctors are not alone.

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine-mandate supporter and FDA adviser from the University of Pennsylvania, told The Atlantic this week that he’s not going to take the new COVID vaccine.

He didn’t take the bivalent booster last fall either, despite being 72 years old.

While he disagreed with Jha on the booster, he recently confessed, “Yes, he was wrong, but you know you can’t say that exactly.”

Yes, you can.

The article also notes:

Unlike influenza, COVID-19 is constantly circulating, so there is ample opportunity to run a trial; indeed, Moderna already ran a randomized trial.

Its trial of just 50 people began four months ago and oddly only reported 14-day side effects.

Why didn’t it enroll more people in its trial? Why didn’t it report three-month effectiveness and do a proper trial?

Conducting a placebo-controlled trial in people during this time would not only yield useful information; it would enable further study of those subjects three and six months from now, when a winter surge may occur.

Let’s be honest: Follow-up studies of COVID vaccines in general have revealed a disappointing truth — mild efficacy against infection is transient, lasting just a few months.

Perhaps Pfizer and Moderna knew the FDA regulatory process was greased for them and they didn’t have to.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Our government is not doing us any favors by encouraging Covid booster shots.

Somehow This Doesn’t Make Sense

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On Thursday, The New York Post reported the following:

Hunter Biden testified recently that he was embarrassed by “offensive” content published from his laptop after he dropped it off for repair at The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 12, 2019 — but still denies that the laptop or its contents are his.

The first son provided confusing and often contradictory testimony under oath on June 29 during a six-hour deposition related to a defamation action brought by John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the now-defunct computer repair shop, who accuses Hunter of falsely insisting the laptop was not his, or was stolen, or that his information was hacked.

Hunter is countersuing Mac Isaac, accusing him of illegally distributing his personal data and invading his privacy.

Portions of Hunter’s deposition are revealed for the first time in the opening brief of a motion filed by Mac Isaac, in Delaware Superior Court late Thursday, to dismiss the countersuit with prejudice.

If it wasn’t his laptop, how come all of his pictures and emails were on it?

The article also notes:

Hunter refused to admit in his deposition that he visited The Mac Shop twice in April 2019, despite Mac Isaac presenting evidence that Hunter signed a work order and provided his contact information.

Have we reached the point where Democrats routinely lie and just assume that they will never be held accountable?

The article concludes:

Hunter abandoned his laptop at Mac Isaac’s store in April 2019 and never returned to pick it up or pay his bill, despite multiple attempts by Mac Isaac to contact him by phone and email.

“After obtaining the rights to the laptop pursuant to the contract signed by Biden, Mac Isaac grew uneasy with the seemingly illegal activities cataloged in the laptop.

“As he was taught to do at the Apple Store and in accordance with his own convictions, he made contact with the FBI. Soon thereafter, on December 9, 2019, Mac Isaac gave the laptop, the original hard drive, and the original work order to the FBI.”

The FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter’s abandoned laptop in November 2019 “by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID,” IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley testified to Congress in June.

An FBI computer expert assessed that the laptop “was not manipulated in any way” and could be used as evidence, Shapley said.

The IRS investigation of Hunter also accessed financial records showing he was at a cigar shop near Mac Isaac’s store in Wilmington, Del., the day the laptop was dropped off.

The only real question here is why the IRS, FBI, and DOJ have taken six years to get this far on the case.

Privacy, Anyone?

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On Thursday, The New York Post reported the following:

Mayor Eric Adams on Friday claimed the public’s fantasies about “sci-fi” are to blame for any fears involving NYPD drones flying over Labor Day weekend celebrations.

“We have to push back on the sci-fi aspects of drones — nobody’s going to be monitored,” Adams insisted at a press conference Friday alongside NYPD Commissioner Eddie Caban — after some civil-rights activists and Big Apple residents trashed the cops’ use of the gadgets as Big Brother-esque.

“So what we’re doing over this weekend, there are a number of calls of loud music disruptive behavior,” Adams said. “Instead of the police having to respond and look at those, they’re going to utilize drones from a safe distance up, not down flying in someone’s backyard to see what they have on a grill.

“[NYPD are] going to utilize the drones to determine [if they] should they send crisis management teams there right away to help mitigate the problem. We don’t want police to be the only response.”

In the past when a noise complaint took place, two police officers would knock on the door and ask the residents to turn the music down. If the residents complied, there was no reason to continue the matter. My fear with the use of drones is that first of all, it eliminates initial human interaction (which is where I feel most arguments happen). I also fear that those at private parties will decide to create a new party game called, “Shoot down the drones.”

Even if the law is not bad in itself, the precedent it sets for the government being able to look into your private affairs is not good.

For The Greater Good?

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The political left is always talking about the great divide between those who have done well and those who live in or close to poverty. However, it’s unusual to see any liberal offering up a room in his house or showing personal charity rather than relying on the government to provide charity. A recent example of this phenomena is an incident in New York City that has recently caught the eyes of the press.

On Sunday, The New York Post reported the following:

The ultra-progressive New School university is facing a projected $85.5 million budget deficit — and things are so bad that even asked students and faculty have been asked to submit budget-cutting suggestions.

In no surprise for a school that’s produced Marxists and progressives such as Jacques Derrida and Erich Fromm, the ideas include chopping executive salaries and even selling off the school-owned Greenwich Village townhouse currently occupied by former Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala, now serving as New School’s interim president.

The New School woke up to a harsh reality during the pandemic: operating a private university in lower Manhattan is quite expensive.

After enrollment tumbled by 15%, the college dipped into its endowment to offset a $130 million revenue shortfall.

According to their website, The New School was founded in 1919.

I guess it’s expensive to operate a school in New York City. Here are their tuition costs:

The article concludes:

Professor and chair of economics Sanjay Reddy has suggested alternative cost-cutting measures, like emergency fundraising and further salary cuts to the highest-paid employees.

As he points out, the New School president’s salary is higher in proportion to its endowment than Harvard’s president’s, and the presidential townhouse is worth an estimated $15 million

The New School told The Post that a first wave of community suggestions are being implemented — including optimizing the school’s real-estate portfolio, leasing out venues, managing its trademark and reimagining the campus bookstore. Another round pertaining to academic changes is forthcoming.

Professor and chair of economics Sanjay Reddy has suggested alternative cost-cutting measures, like emergency fundraising and further salary cuts to the highest-paid employees.

As he points out, the New School president’s salary is higher in proportion to its endowment than Harvard’s president’s, and the presidential townhouse is worth an estimated $15 million

The New School told The Post that a first wave of community suggestions are being implemented — including optimizing the school’s real-estate portfolio, leasing out venues, managing its trademark and reimagining the campus bookstore. Another round pertaining to academic changes is forthcoming.

Maybe you should try operating the school along the lines of basic capitalistic principles. That has a better track record than either communism or socialism.

Working Together To Interfere In The Next Election

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On  Saturday, The New York Post posted the following:

The White House counsel’s office met with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he brought charges against former President Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents — raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts aimed at President Biden’s likely opponent in 2024.

Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show.

They were joined in the 10 a.m. meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office.

Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office on June 8, 2023.

Bratt, 63, also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump was mired in negotiations with the National Archives, who were demanding the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate before a formal investigation had not yet been opened.

The article notes:

Bratt, a Harvard-educated attorney, is a longtime Department of Justice hand and has served as chief of its counterintelligence and export control section in the national security division since October 2018. The section focuses on investigating and prosecuting cases affecting the national security and foreign relations of the United States.

The article concludes:

In this capacity, Bratt visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022 to inspect storage facilities at the property and personally interacted with Trump.

He later became a leading advocate for the unannounced FBI raid of the property in August of that year, the Washington Post reported.

Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta — who has also been charged by the special counsel’s office — accused Bratt in June of trying to coerce his client’s cooperation by floating Woodward’s past application to be a judge.

In a sealed filing obtained by The Guardian, Woodward alleged that Bratt floated his past judicial application to suggest it might be looked at more favorably if his client were to cooperate with the government against Trump.

The activities of the Biden administration and the deep state in their interference with the 2024 election is frightening. This alone should wake Americans up to what is happening. We truly are in danger of losing our republic if the weaponization of the Justice Department is allowed to continue.

Welding The Gates Open

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On Monday, The New York Post reported that 114 massive gates along the Arizona border have been welded open by the Biden administration. Officials have stated that the reason for welding the gates open is to allow water to flow freely during the annual monsoon season and for the migration of an endangered species of antelope. If you believe that, I have a bridge in New York I would like to sell you. You can collect the toll revenue. Obviously, welding the gates open allows illegal immigrants to flow freely into America.

I have an idea. Let’s go to all the gated communities that our politicians live in and weld those gates open. Let’s see how long it is before those gates are magically closed again.

The article reports:

Smugglers are capitalizing on the floodgate blunder, driving migrants by the busload to the border and dropping them off as if they were casual tourists. Once across, they turn themselves in to border agents and say they are seeking asylum.

Border Patrol agents call them “give-ups.”

Last month, 42,561 migrants were encountered at the Tuscon border post, a huge jump over the June number of 27,294. Tuscon now tops traditionally busier border spots at El Paso and Laredo in Texas, where 24,352 and 26,627 border crossings, respectively, were reported in July.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council, said the way in which the open gates were so quickly exploited is a sure sign of cartel influence.

He told The Post: “Anytime you leave a spillway or a gate opened, the vast majority of people are not going to know it’s open and they’re not going to have the means to get there really, really quickly. Because the cartels are constantly surveilling what we do, the moment something gets left open, it gets exploited.

“In this particular case, it exploded almost immediately, which shows you how adept the criminal cartels are at exploiting any weakness at any time that we show them.

“The cartels know that all you have to do is cross the border illegally, claim asylum. If you’re with a family unit, if you’re from certain specific countries, if you meet those loopholes that go outside what Secretary Mayorkas has announced, then you’re going to get released and that’s what we’re seeing right now.”

“Every one of us [Border Patrol agents], we’re all left scratching our head on why an administration would allow this to happen.

“We’re seeing more and more that this President doesn’t care about what’s best for the country. He cares about what’s best for his re-election.”

I’m not sure this works in favor of the President’s re-election unless the illegal aliens vote. That remains to be seen.

 

Avoiding Protecting Our Southern Border

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The stream of illegal immigrants coming into America has created numerous problems both for the immigrants and Americans in our cities and states. Our southern border is wide open while we are sending millions of dollars overseas to protect the Ukrainian border. But that’s only part of the story.

On Saturday, The New York Post reported the following:

The Biden administration is quietly auctioning off millions of dollars’ worth of unused parts from former President Trump’s border wall for peanuts – in an apparent end-run around pending legislation in Congress.

Since April, GovPlanet, an online auction house specializing in military surplus, has sold 81 lots of steel “square structural tubes” — intended for use as vertical bollards in the border barrier’s 30-foot-tall panels — hauling in about $2 million.

On Tuesday, GovPlanet netted $154,200 for 729 of the 28-foot-tall hollow beams, sold in five separate lots for an average $212 apiece.

Thirteen more lots are set to be auctioned on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.

But just last month, as part of its annual defense appropriations package, the Democrat-led Senate passed a Republican-sponsored bill aimed at forcing Biden to stem the worsening migrant crisis at the US-Mexico border by extending the wall.

Up to $300 million worth of taxpayer-funded wall components have been left to rust since Biden came to office, Republicans have said.

The Finish It Act will make the feds use those materials on new wall construction — or hand the remaining stock over to states like Texas for use in their own border defense projects.

Now, the Biden administration is rushing to get rid of the wall leftovers before the GOP-led House can pass a matching version of the bill and make it law, critics told The Post.

The article concludes:

US Customs and Border Protection recorded around 1.7 million migrant encounters on the southern border in fiscal year 2021 and 2.4 million in 2022, an all-time record.

Nearly 1.8 million migrant encounters have already occurred in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, according to the agency — on track to break 2022’s shocking total.

An estimated 2.6 million asylum seekers and “gotaways” have actually made it into the United States during Biden’s presidency — swamping cities like New York, where more than 10,000 migrants continue to arrive each month to demand shelter, meals and social services, shredding the municipal budget.

“President Biden has no regard for taxpayer dollars — or how his open border is bankrupting communities across the country that are footing the bill for his failures,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-SI/Brooklyn), who is battling to bar migrant shelters from the city’s parks and military sites.

A lot of the blame for the mess at our southern border rests on President Biden, but we also need to realize that Congress is also guilty. Both political parties have controlled Congress at various times in recent years. Neither party has been willing to close the southern border and fix the broken immigration process.

Where You Lost Your Keys

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There is an old joke about a man who lost his car keys and was looking for them under a lamppost. A friend came to help and asked where the man had dropped them. The man replied that he had dropped his keys on the other side of the street, but he was looking on this side of the street because the light is better. That situation describes some of what is going on with our current government.

On Wednesday, The New York Post reported:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema slammed Democratic Party leaders again Wednesday for celebrating more than $100 million in federal funds to help shelter migrants in New York while her own border state of Arizona was given a fraction of that.

The senator, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent, doubled down on criticism she made earlier this month of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) after the two boasted in June of securing Gotham $104.6 million of an $800 million grant from the Biden administration.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded just $23,890,395 in the same month to organizations in Arizona through its Shelter and Services Program, according to its webpage.

In an interview with Politico published Wednesday, Sinema said the reason for the discrepancy was “fairly obvious.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but the announcement about that $104 million came out first, in a joint press release from Schumer and Jeffries — not from the White House or from FEMA,” she told the outlet. “The first news of it broke by their press release. Now, how did that happen?”

Last time I checked, New York was not a border state, although New York City has declared itself a sanctuary city. They are perfectly free to declare themselves a sanctuary city, but the rest of the country should not have to pay for their decision. Arizona did not choose to be a border state, and they are being forced to pay for the failed immigration policies of the Biden administration. Let’s put the money where it is needed. Actually, let’s just use the money to seal the southern border. The last time I saw a picture of the illegal immigrants coming into our country, they were mostly men between the ages of 18 and 30. That alone could create serious problems for our country in the future. What happens when these men can’t find work? Will they create the same level of violence that they fled?

 

This Is What Desperation Looks Like

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On Sunday, The New York Post reported that the Department of Justice is attempting to arrest Devon Archer before he has a chance to appear before Congress.

The article reports:

Manhattan federal prosecutors on Saturday filed a letter requesting a judge set a date for Archer, 58, to start his one-year sentence in a fraud case unrelated to the first son’s various scandals.

The request came after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Archer’s 2018 conviction last Tuesday on two felony charges for his role in a conspiracy to defraud a Native American tribe.

Archer — who is set to deliver closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Monday about Biden — had been challenging the conviction.

In light of the appeals court ruling, the DOJ “respectfully requests that the defendant be ordered to surrender, at a date and time determined by the Court, to a facility designated by the Bureau of Prisons to commence his term of imprisonment,” reads the letter to Judge Ronnie Abrams.

The article also notes:

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who has been the point-person on the GOP inquiries of the first family, has repeatedly shrugged off the Biden administration’s various defensives.

Comer subpoenaed Archer in June and called the timing of the jail request letter “odd.”

“I don’t want to put words in Devon Archer’s mouth,” Comer said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” “but I’ll say this: He has an opportunity to come tomorrow to the House Oversight Committee and tell the truth.”

Other Republicans also seized on the DOJ letter.

“The DOJ is now actively committing the crime of obstructing a congressional investigation,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz charged in a tweet.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shared Gaetz’s tweet, adding: “This is getting to be Banana Republic territory. They are moving from indicting their opponents to throwing witnesses in jail on the eve of Congressional testimony.”

Unfortunately we have been in Banana Republic territory for a while.

UPDATE:

On Sunday the DOJ backtracked on the timing of Devon Archer’s arrest. Townhall posted the story.

First They Came For Our Shower Heads…

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On Sunday, The New York Post reported that the Biden administration is now targeting gas generators and gas water heaters.

The article reports:

Water heaters could soon be subject to much more stringent efficiency requirements if a recent Department of Energy proposal that has been criticized by Republican lawmakers goes into effect.

In a draft rule unveiled Friday, the Biden administration is seeking to compel most electric water heaters to deploy heat pump technology and gas-fired ones to use condensing technology.

It comes months after the Biden administration ignited a firestorm over feared stove top regulations, after Albany lawmakers enacted a controversial first-in-the-nation gas stove ban in New York.

“Today’s actions—together with our industry partners and stakeholders—improve outdated efficiency standards for common household appliances, which is essential to slashing utility bills for American families and cutting harmful carbon emissions,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. 

Water heaters that have tanks are not as efficient as tankless gas water heaters. Heat pump technology is not efficient below about 40 degrees. The idea of getting everyone off of gas is not about ecology–it’s about control–it’s easy to shut off electricity or limit it if someone says the wrong thing or supports the wrong cause.

The article illustrates some of the reaction to this move:

“First they came for your gas stoves. Then they came for your dishwashers. Next they came for your water heaters and air conditioners. Now the Biden apparatchiks are coming for your portable gas generators,” Forbes contributor David Blackmon tweeted.

“From the people who want showers and faucets without enough water pressure, dishwashers that don’t fully clean, washers and dryers that fully wash or dry, etc. they now want water heaters that don’t fully and quickly heat. All in the name of ‘environmentalism’ or ‘climate change,’” Ken Gardner tweeted.

“Leave us alone. These products already exist in the free market. Consumers should decide whether the upfront cost of a heat-pump water heater is worth the possible long term savings. In many cases, the monthly savings never make up for the upfront cost of the equipment,” Rep. Thomas Massive (R-Ky.) tweeted.

Somehow I don’t think this is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they established our government. I wonder if the White House and the Capitol Building are planning on changing their water heaters.

The Most Ridiculous Excuse Yet

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On Sunday, Miranda Devine posted an article at The New York Post about the investigation into the cocaine found in the White House.

The article reported:

Of all the excuses offered by the Secret Service to explain why it shut down the White House cocaine investigation last week after just 11 days, one jumped out as particularly ridiculous. 

It couldn’t conduct interviews of potential cokeheads known to be in the vicinity of where the bag of drugs was found because it didn’t want to infringe on their civil rights, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC. 

“We have no evidence to approach them,” he said of 500 possible suspects identified in the area on the holiday weekend before July 4. 

Hah! Tell that to the hundreds of people rounded up by the FBI for just being in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

The article also notes:

Even more astonishing is that, in a complex bristling with security cameras, the Secret Service said no surveillance video footage exists because the baggie was located in a “blind spot.” 

“I don’t care if it was a six-foot blind spot,” says Kerik (former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik). “I can tell you who walked into it and who walked out of it. The whole blind spot argument is bogus.” 

He claims the Secret Service knows exactly whose cocaine it is.

“They don’t miss anything. They know their job. They are very systematic, very organized, very thorough,” he said, adding, “The whole thing is preposterous. It’s really an insult to the men and women in the Secret Service and the FBI for them to say they can’t identify where the cocaine came from.”

As the mystery dragged on into its second week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to rule out that the cocaine belonged to a member of the Biden family and slammed the question as “incredibly irresponsible.”

It’s time to replace any law enforcement personnel in Washington with people who can actually do their job.

 

 

Who Is Gal Luft?

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One of the witnesses against the Biden corruption family is a man named Gal Luft. On Monday, The New York Post posted an article about him and his claims.

This is a video of Gal Luft proclaiming his innocence. I have embedded it in case YouTube takes it down. It is long, but worth watching.

The New York Post reports:

Dr. Gal Luft, a key figure in House Republicans’ investigation of the Biden family’s international influence-peddling, faces federal charges of arms trafficking, operating as an unregistered lobbyist for China, and conspiring to flout US sanctions on Iran, according to a Manhattan indictment unsealed Monday.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say Luft, 57, a dual US-Israeli citizen who was arrested in Cyprus this past February and went on the run after being released on bail prior to his extradition, agreed in 2015 to let former Hong Kong official Patrick Ho send $350,000 each year to Luft’s think tank, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

In return, the indictment said, Luft agreed to “recruit and ‘educate’” a former high-ranking US official to “make public statements … which were in the interest of China.”

The official is not named in the indictment, but details about his work correspond to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who briefly worked for former President Donald Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election.

Ho similarly is not named in the indictment, but details in the court document match up to incidents in Ho’s life — most notably his arrest by US officials in November 2017 on bribery and money-laundering charges.

The article also notes:

Luft is further charged with lying about both those activities during the Brussels meeting with federal investigators.

“I was asked by a bona fide arms dealer, an Israeli friend, to inquire with a company I knew if they had an item and what would be the price of an item,” Luft told The Post last week. “This is where the conspiracy ended. No follow-up, no money, no brokering activity.”

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who was preparing to interview Luft when he disappeared, has said the Israeli remains a “potential witness” in the panel’s investigation despite his fugitive status.

“We definitely want to hear more about his allegations and we want to see the notes from the [Brussels] meeting,” Comer told Fox News Monday night. “They sent six FBI [and DOJ officials], according to Gal Luft, to Brussels to interview him. Obviously they were concerned about something he had to say. There’s some level of credibility here.”

Because the Department of Justice has been so totally compromised in recent years, I have no idea who to believe. However, it does seem strange that an important witness to the Biden family corruption is suddenly charged with serious crimes.