I know this happened a few months back, but with so many progressives now following my articles, I feel I must bring them up to speed. In April, U.S. banks flagged over 150 suspicious financial transactions from Hunter and James Biden, according to CBS News. The wire transfers included “large” amounts of money tripped for further review by American banks.
Wire transfers have been the tool of choice for money launderers. To mitigate the risks to the financial institutions, suspicious wire transfers over $10,000 are flagged for review. Wire transactions involving more than $10,000 are also to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
“The focus is on day one are those bank violations and those bank records,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News. “We are pretty confident in what we’re going to find in those. We have two bank violations. We have some bank statements in hand, and we believe that suspicious activity reports, which are bank violations when the bank notifies the federal government that we’re pretty confident that our client has committed a crime, Hunter Biden and Jim Biden have at least 150 of those. And I’ve said this before, and I come from a strong banking background, I don’t think there’s anyone in the history of the United States that’s had that many suspicious activity reports.”
CBS News has learned that more than 150 transactions involving either Hunter or James Biden’s global business affairs were flagged as concerning by U.S. banks for further review. CBS News spoke with Sen. Chuck Grassley who has been investigating these business dealings. pic.twitter.com/i7nkU2W42F
CBS: “More than 150 transactions involving either Hunter or James Biden's global business affairs were flagged as concerning by U.S. banks for further review.”
Meanwhile, the Biden White House has their heads in the sand: “We don't comment on the laptop.”pic.twitter.com/1rujiMhJGf
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
On October 4, 2020, this declaration was authored and signed in Great Barrington, United States, by:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
Medical and Public Health Scientists and Medical Practitioners
Dr. Alexander Walker, principal at World Health Information Science Consultants, former Chair of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA
Dr. Andrius Kavaliunas, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Dr. Angus Dalgleish, oncologist, infectious disease expert and professor, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, England
Dr. Anthony J Brookes, professor of genetics, University of Leicester, England
Dr. Annie Janvier, professor of pediatrics and clinical ethics, Université de Montréal and Sainte-Justine University Medical Centre, Canada
Dr. Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Boris Kotchoubey, Institute for Medical Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany
Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics, expert on vaccine development, efficacy, and safety. Tufts University School of Medicine, USA
Dr. David Katz, physician and president, True Health Initiative, and founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, USA
Dr. David Livermore, microbiologist, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor, University of East Anglia, England
Dr. Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology, head of the Self-Harm Research Group, University of Nottingham, England
Dr. Eyal Shahar, physician, epidemiologist and professor (emeritus) of public health, University of Arizona, USA
Dr. Florian Limbourg, physician and hypertension researcher, professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany
Dr. Gabriela Gomes, mathematician studying infectious disease epidemiology, professor, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
Dr. Gerhard Krönke, physician and professor of translational immunology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Dr. Gesine Weckmann, professor of health education and prevention, Europäische Fachhochschule, Rostock, Germany
Dr. Günter Kampf, associate professor, Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Greifswald University, Germany
Dr. Helen Colhoun, professor of medical informatics and epidemiology, and public health physician, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor at Karolinska Institute and senior physician at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden
Dr. Karol Sikora, physician, oncologist, and professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham, England
Dr. Laura Lazzeroni, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of biomedical data science, Stanford University Medical School, USA
Dr. Lisa White, professor of modelling and epidemiology, Oxford University, England
Dr. Mario Recker, malaria researcher and associate professor, University of Exeter, England
Dr. Matthew Ratcliffe, professor of philosophy, specializing in philosophy of mental health, University of York, England
Dr. Matthew Strauss, critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine, Queen’s University, Canada
Dr. Michael Jackson, research fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Dr. Michael Levitt, biophysicist and professor of structural biology, Stanford University, USA. Recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Dr. Mike Hulme, professor of human geography, University of Cambridge, England
Dr. Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Partha P. Majumder, professor and founder of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, India
Dr. Paul McKeigue, physician, disease modeler and professor of epidemiology and public health, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, physician, epidemiologist and public policy expert at the Veterans Administration, USA
Dr. Rodney Sturdivant, infectious disease scientist and associate professor of biostatistics, Baylor University, USA
Dr. Simon Thornley, epidemiologist and biostatistician, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Dr. Simon Wood, biostatistician and professor, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Dr. Stephen Bremner,professor of medical statistics, University of Sussex, England
Dr. Sylvia Fogel, autism provider and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA
Tom Nicholson, Associate in Research, Duke Center for International Development, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA
Dr. Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer, professor and expert in virology, immunology and cell biology, University of Würzburg, Germany
Dr. Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel
Dr. Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, professor of finance, director of the Behavioural Finance Working Group, Queen Mary University of London, England
When the pandemic hit, America needed someone to turn to for advice. The media and public naturally looked to Dr. Anthony Fauci—the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an esteemed laboratory immunologist and one of President Donald Trump‘s chosen COVID advisers. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him.
Here are six key issues:
1. Natural immunity
By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity. In a study from Israel, the vaccinated were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated who had recovered from a prior infection.
We have known about natural immunity from disease at least since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Pilots, truckers and longshoremen know about it, and nurses know it better than anyone. Under Fauci’s mandates, hospitals are firing heroic nurses who recovered from COVID they contracted while caring for patients. With their superior immunity, they can safely care for the oldest and frailest patients with even lower transmission risk than the vaccinated.
2. Protecting the elderly
While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and the young. After more than 700,000 reported COVID deaths in America, we now know that lockdowns failed to protect high-risk older people. When confronted with the idea of focused protection of the vulnerable, Dr. Fauci admitted he had no idea how to accomplish it, arguing that it would be impossible. That may be understandable for a lab scientist, but public health scientists have presented many concrete suggestions that would have helped, had Fauci and other officials not ignored them.
What can we do now to minimize COVID mortality? Current vaccination efforts should focus on reaching people over 60 who are neither COVID-recovered nor vaccinated, including hard-to-reach, less-affluent people in rural areas and inner cities. Instead, Dr. Fauci has pushed vaccine mandates for children, students and working-age adults who are already immune—all low-risk populations—causing tremendous disruption to labor markets and hampering the operation of many hospitals.
3. School closures
Schools are major transmission points for influenza, but not for COVID. While children do get infected, their risk for COVID death is minuscule, lower than their already low risk of dying from the flu. Throughout the 2020 spring wave, Sweden kept daycare and schools open for all its 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, with no masks, testing or social distancing. The result? Zero COVID deaths among children and a COVID risk to teachers lower than the average of other professions. In fall 2020, most European countries followed suit, with similar results. Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci’s advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career.
4. Masks
The gold standard of medical research is randomized trials, and there have now been two on COVID masks for adults. For children, there is no solid scientific evidence that masks work. A Danish study found no statistically significant difference between masking and not masking when it came to coronavirus infection. In a study in Bangladesh, the 95 percent confidence interval showed that masks reduced transmission between 0 percent and 18 percent. Hence, masks are either of zero or limited benefit. There are many more critical pandemic measures that Dr. Fauci could have emphasized, such as better ventilation in schools and hiring nursing home staff with natural immunity.
5. Contact tracing
For some infectious diseases, such as Ebola and syphilis, contact tracing is critically important. For a commonly circulating viral infection such as COVID, it was a hopeless waste of valuable public health resources that did not stop the disease.
In private conversations, most of our scientific colleagues agree with us on these points. Whilea fewhave spoken up, why are not more doing so? Well, some tried but failed. Others kept silent when they saw colleagues slandered and smeared in the media or censoredbyBigTech.
Some are government employees who are barred from contradicting official policy. Many are afraid of losing positions or research grants, aware that Dr. Fauci sits on top of the largest pile of infectious disease research money in the world. Most scientists are not experts on infectious disease outbreaks. Were we, say, oncologists, physicists or botanists, we would probably also have trusted Dr. Fauci.
The evidence is in. Governors, journalists, scientists, university presidents, hospital administrators and business leaders can continue to follow Dr. Anthony Fauci or open their eyes. After 700,000-plus COVID deaths and the devastating effects of lockdowns, it is time to return to basic principles of public health.
A version of this article originally appeared in Newsweek
Martin Kulldorff, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is an epidemiologist and biostatistician. He is Professor of Medicine at Harvard University (on leave) and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on infectious disease outbreaks and the monitoring of vaccine and drug safety, for which he has developed the free SaTScan, TreeScan, and RSequential software. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Jay Bhattacharya, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician, epidemiologist and health economist. He is Professor at Stanford Medical School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Member at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.
An MSNBC contributor was taught a valuable lesson. Her two children said enough with the boosters, we refuse anymore jabs.
Katty Kay.
“But I had a strange conversation with my 22-year-old and my 16-year-old last night, and I said, ‘Okay, I booked you in for COVID updates, you’re both back for holidays, you’re going to get your boosters,’ and both of them said, ‘No, we don’t want to. We’ve had enough vaccines, and we don’t think we need them,’” Kay said. “I was sort of shocked and appalled.”
This does my heart good to see that there are states who are willing to protect the border. Governor Abbott has so far lived up to his promise to keep us safe and secure.
Migrant crossings have plummeted in a mile-long stretch of Downtown El Paso where the Texas Army National Guard has set up concertina wire and portable fencing along the Rio Grande.
The guard began setting up the barrier last week at a gap in the border wall west of the Paso del Norte port of entry. In the space of eight days, the barbed wire has nearly reached a second port of entry and chain-link fence anchored by sandbags extends even farther. The result is that asylum seekers can no longer walk across ankle-deep water in the Rio Grande and turn themselves in to waiting Border Patrol agents in that area.
“The difference is vast,” said 1st Sgt. Suzanne Ringle. “The 19th, the 20th and the 21st we had large groups of families and individuals who were wanting to come across. Now, it’s almost a ghost town out there.”
She attributed that to the “visual deterrent” of the barbwire, parked Humvees and soldiers patrolling the area with their semi-automatic rifles. As of Tuesday, 600 guard members were in El Paso on border security duty associated with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
We have this from the Governor.
Migrant crossings “plummet” in El Paso as Texas National Guard expands barbwire fence.
We will continue to deploy the National Guard, razor wire, large container boxes and building the wall to do all we can to deter illegal immigration caused by Biden.
Building barriers to keep the undocumented out. Yes Texas is doing the federal governments job. Keeping the undesirables out. The Texas National Guard has built two miles of razor wire fencing around El Paso. At the other end of the Texas border with Mexico, National Guard soldiers placed addition razor-wire border fending in strategic areas, Breitbart Texas reported.
In other locations along the border, the state expanded its use of shipping containers to extend border barriers. Maybe they can get the additional shipping containers from Arizona.
This morning, service members deployed to El Paso, Texas constructed a triple-strand concertina barrier near the border to secure the area from illegal crossings. pic.twitter.com/X6JUkr9iQV
Major General Ronald “Win” Burkett described the 72-hour mission for the Guardsmen.
“They’re focused on deterrence, they’re focused on sending a message that unlawful crossings is not an option,” General Burkett stated. “You’ve got to go to the POE (Port of Entry).”
The general described the logistics of the operation with the Texas Air National Guard airlifting 400 soldiers and equipment to El Paso in four C-130 aircraft on Saturday morning.
The soldiers went to work at 4 a.m. to string the triple-level wire along the riverbank in El Paso. By Tuesday morning, the soldiers erected more than two miles of the barrier, CNN reported. Texas Military Department officials told the news outlet they will build more in the coming days.
During the past week, Border Patrol officials released nearly 6,000 migrants to NGO’s in El Paso or onto the city’s streets, according to the city’s Migrant Situational Awareness Dashboard. More than 10,000 were released the week before.
At the other end of the Texas border with Mexico, National Guard soldiers placed addition razor-wire border fending in strategic areas, Breitbart Texas reported.
How to combat early voting and mail in ballots In states like Georgia, Michigan, New York, Illinois, etc. I’m not a fan of mail in or early voting. Voting should be one day and mail in should be only for those with a valid excuse to use absentee.
But since the left weaponized voting, we must play their game. No more October surprise. Georgia for example. From day one the scandal where poor were being evicted from Housing should have been out there not in October. In early voting states more Republicans need to get out.
Where harvest balloting is legal, use it. And finally where the law is being broken? File the abuse the next day or two.
OutKick founder Clay Travis discusses the autopsy results that uncovered U.S. journalist Grant Wahl's cause of death and Gov. Ron DeSantis' pushback against alleged COVID vaccine fraud in his state.
A story close to my heart. It’s been five years that I had open heart surgery where a valve was replaced and I had a aortic aneurysm. Luckily mine was repaired. Arnold Schwarzenegger had the same issue. Sad that this gentlemen didn’t do anything when he had chest pains.
High blood pressure is not the only ‘silent killer’ to worry about
OutKick founder Clay Travis discusses the autopsy results that uncovered U.S. journalist Grant Wahl’s cause of death.
Well-respected sports journalist Grant Wahl died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm at age 49 on Dec. 10 while reporting on the World Cup in Qatar, his wife, Dr. Céline Gounder, wrote in a note on Substack just a few days ago.
“An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office,” wrote Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, on the online platform.
“Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium.”
Hemopericardium is when blood accumulates in the sac surrounding the heart, which can lead the heart to stop beating.
During the World Cup quarterfinal match between Argentina and the Netherlands in overtime, Wahl went into distress, according to multiple reports.
Grant Wahl, 48, in two different images. He was in Qatar covering the World Cup when he passed away suddenly.
The paramedics were called immediately but could not revive him before he was transferred to Hamad General Hospital by ambulance, per multiple news outlets.
He had previously complained in the days before of chest pressure, according to multiple reports.
“We had no idea Grant carried this inside his body.”
His family is trying to raise more awareness about the condition.
“Tall, lanky guys with long arm-spans & long, narrow fingers, &/or if you have/had pectus excavatum: please get a heart-specific health check-up,” his brother Eric Wahl recently wrote on Twitter.
“We had no idea Grant carried this inside his body.”
He added, “Get checked for Marfan syndrome as well.”
What is an aortic aneurysm?
“Aneurysms refer to an outpouching or bulging of a blood vessel, where it has enlarged and its walls have weakened, making it more prone to rupture, or burst,” Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City, told Fox News Digital.
He was not involved in the care of Grant Wahl.
A thoracic aortic aneurysm occurs in the chest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (iStock)
So he discussed aortic aneurysms in general terms and not regarding a specific case or care.
“If this happens in a major blood vessel such as the aorta — the main blood vessel exiting the heart and supplying blood to the rest of the body — it is most often a fatal event,” added Bhatt, who’s also a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai.
Thoracic aortic aneurysm
The aorta is the main artery that leaves the left side of the heart that travels through the chest and abdomen to give blood to the rest of the body, according to Cleveland Clinic.
A thoracic aortic aneurysm occurs in the chest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Typical symptoms are sudden chest pain or back pain, or trouble breathing.
Thoracic aortic aneurysms are usually caused by high blood pressure or a sudden injury.
The condition becomes more common as people get older.
Typical symptoms are sudden chest pain or back pain, or trouble breathing.
“For people having severe chest discomfort, this is one of the reasons to call 911 and get evaluated in an emergency room,” said one physician. (iStock)
“For people having severe chest discomfort, this is one of the reasons to call 911 and get evaluated in an emergency room,” Bhatt added.
Abdominal aortic aneurysm
An abdominal aortic aneurysm occurs below the diaphragm, which is the more common type, according to the CDC.
These types are more common in men, in people who are older than 65 and among White people compared to Black people.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms are usually caused by hardened arteries, but infection or injury can also cause them.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms are usually caused by hardened arteries, but infection or injury can also cause them, per the CDC.
Most patients don’t have any symptoms with this condition, though some will complain of severe back pain, deep pain on the side or pain in the buttocks, groin or legs.
Dissection versus rupture
An aortic aneurysm can be thought of as a “bubble or balloon” in the aortic wall that can develop into a dissection or rupture.
A dissection occurs when the force of blood splits the layers of the artery wall, causing blood to leak between them, the CDC added.
“While heart attacks are a more common cause of death, ruptured aneurysms are also an important cause of death from cardiovascular causes, albeit much less frequent.” (iStock)
When an aortic aneurysm bursts, this is called a rupture.
It leads to bleeding inside the body, the agency noted.
The two main treatments for aortic aneurysms are medication and surgery, depending on the location of the tear and the other organs affected.
Most people die from aortic aneurysms due either to a dissection or rupture, the CDC noted on its website.
“Rupture of an aortic aneurysm is most often associated with severe chest discomfort,” Bhatt added.
Grant Wahl “died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium,” his wife shared online. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Budweiser)
“While heart attacks are a more common cause of death, ruptured aneurysms are also an important cause of death from cardiovascular causes, albeit much less frequent.”
Aortic aneurysm facts
Aortic aneurysms or dissections were the cause of almost 10,000 deaths in 2019, with 59% of these occurring in men, according to the CDC.
Smoking is the main risk factor for this disease, with 75% of those with abdominal aortic aneurysms having a history of smoking, per the CDC.
“The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that men 65 to 75 years old who have ever smoked should get an ultrasound screening for abdominal aortic aneurysms, even if they have no symptoms,” the CDC added on its website.
Treatment for aortic aneurysm
The two main treatments for aortic aneurysms are medication and surgery, depending on the location of the tear and the other organs affected, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Blood pressure medications are often used to decrease the blood pressure, while surgery repairs or replaces the area of aorta that is damaged, per the CDC.
Fidelity - to whom? Bravery - Where? Integrity - Not in years
If only the Federal Bureau of Instigation could find these MOST WANTED in itself
The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.
“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement.“As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau’s “engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.”
Future disclosures will no doubt reveal similar FBI subcontracting with other social media concerns of Silicon Valley to stifle free expression and news deemed problematic to the FBI’s agenda.
The FBI did not wish to help Twitter “to protect themselves,” given the bureau’s Twitter liaisons were often surprised at the FBI’s bold requests to suppress the expression of those who had not violated Twitter’s own admittedly biased “terms of service” and “community standards.”
The FBI and its helpers on the Left now reboot the same boilerplate about “conspiracy theorists” and “misinformation” smears used against anyone who rejected the FBI-fed Russian collusion hoax and the bureau’s peddling of the “Russian disinformation” lie to suppress accurate pre-election news about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI is now, tragically, in a freefall. The public is at the point, first, of asking what improper or illegal behavior will the bureau not pursue, and what, if anything, must be done to reform or save a once great but now discredited agency.
Consider the last four directors, the public faces of the FBI for the last 22 years. Ex-director Robert Mueller testified before Congress that he simply would not or could not talk about the fraudulent Steele dossier. He claimed that it was not the catalyst for his special counsel investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged ties with the Russians when, of course, it was.
Mueller also testified that he was “not familiar” with Fusion GPS, although Glenn Simpson’s opposition research firm subsidized the dossier through various cutouts that led back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the skullduggery in the FBI-subsidized dossier helped force the appointment of Mueller himself.
While under congressional oath, Mueller’s successor James Comey on some 245 occasions claimed that he “could not remember, could not recall,” or “did not know” when asked simple questions fundamental to his own involvement with the Russian collusion hoax.
Comey, remember, memorialized a confidential conversation with President Trump on an FBI device and then used a third party to leak it to the New York Times. In his own words, the purpose was to force a special counsel appointment. The gambit worked, and his friend and predecessor Robert Mueller got the job. Twenty months and $40 million later, Mueller’s investigation tore the country apart but could find no evidence that Trump, as Steele alleged, colluded with the Russians to throw the 2016 election.
Comey also seems to have reassured the president that he was not the target of an ongoing FBI investigation, when in fact, Trump was.
Comey was never indicted for either misleading or lying to a congressional committee or leaking a document variously considered either confidential or classified.
While under oath, his interim successor, Andrew McCabe, on a number of occasions flat-out lied to federal investigators. Or as the office of the inspector general put it:
As detailed in this report, the OIG found that then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the WSJ, and that this conduct violated FBI Offense Codes 2.5 and 2.6. The OIG also concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.
McCabe purportedly believed Trump was working with the Russians as a veritable spy—a false accusation based entirely on the FBI’s paid, incoherent prevaricator Christopher Steele. And so, McCabe discussed with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein methods to have the president’s conversations wiretapped via a Rosenstein-worn stealthy recording device, presumably without a warrant.
Note the FBI ruined the lives of General Michael Flynn and Carter Page with false allegations of criminal conduct or untruthful testimonies. Under current director Christopher Wray, the FBI has surveilled parents at school boards meetings—on the prompt of the National School Boards Association, whose president wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland alleging that bothersome parents upset over critical race indoctrination groups were supposedly violence-prone and veritable terrorists.
Under Wray, the FBI staged the psychodramatic Mar-a-Lago raid on an ex-president’s home. The FBI likely leaked the post facto myths that the seized documents contained “nuclear codes” or “nuclear secrets.”
Under Wray, the FBI perfected the performance-art, humiliating public arrests of former White House officials or Biden Administration opponents, whether it was the nocturnal rousting of Project Veritas muckraker James O’Keefe in his underwear or the arrest—with leg restraints=—of former White House advisor Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport for misdemeanor contempt of Congress charge or the detention of Trump election lawyer John Eastman at a restaurant with his family and the confiscation of his phone. Neither O’Keefe nor Eastman has yet been charged with any serious crimes.
The FBI arguably interfered in two presidential elections, and a presidential transition, and possibly determinatively so. In 2016, James Comey announced that his investigation had found that Hillary Clinton had improperly if not illegally used her private email server to conduct official State Department business, some of it confidential and classified, and likely intercepted by foreign governments. All that was a clear violation of federal statutes. Comey next, quite improperly as a combined FBI investigator and a de facto federal prosecutor, deduced that such violations did not merit prosecution.
Around the same time, the FBI had hired as a source the foreign national and political opposition hitman Christopher Steele. It helped Steele to spread among the media his fraudulent dossier and used its unverified and false contents to win FISA warrants against U.S. citizens on the bogus charges of colluding with the Russians to throw the election to Donald Trump. By the FBI’s own admission, it would not have obtained warrants to surveil Trump campaign associates without the use of Steele’s dossier, which it also admittedly either knew was a fraud or could not corroborate.
Again, such allegations in the dossier were false and, apparently, the FBI soon knew they were bogus since one of its own lawyers—the now-convicted felon Kevin Clinesmith—found it necessary also to alter a court-submitted document to feign incriminatory information.
The FBI, on the prompt of lame-duck members of the Obama Justice Department, during a presidential transition, set up an entrapment ambush of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It was an effort to lure Flynn into admitting to a violation of the Logan Act, a 223-year-old-law that has led to only two indictments and zero convictions.
During the 2020 election, the FBI suppressed knowledge of its possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Early on, the bureau knew that the computer and its contents were authentic and yet kept its contents suppressed.
Moreover, the FBI sought to contract out Twitter (at roughly $3.5 million) as a veritable subsidiarity to suppress social media traffic about the laptop and speech the bureau deemed improper.
Again, although the FBI knew the laptop in its possession was likely genuine, it still sought to use Twitter employees to suppress pre-election mention of that reality. At the same time, bureau officials remained mum when 51 former “intelligence officials” misled the country by claiming that the laptop had all the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.” Polls later revealed that had the public known the truth about the laptop, a significant number likely would have voted differently—perhaps enough to change the outcome of the election.
The media, Twitter, Facebook, and former intelligence operatives were all following the FBI’s own preliminary warning bulletin that “Foreign Actors and Cybercriminals Likely to Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results”—even as the bureau knew the laptop in its possession was most certainly not Russian disinformation. And, of course, the FBI had helped spread the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.
In addition, the FBI-issued phones of agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, along with members of Robert Mueller’s special counsel “dream team”—all under subpoena—had their data mysteriously wiped clean, purportedly “by accident.”
Apparently, the paramours Strzok and Page, in particular, had much more to hide, given how earlier they had frequently expressed their venom toward candidate Donald Trump. Strzok boasted to Page that the FBI in general, and Andrew McCabe in particular, had an “insurance policy” means of denying Trump the presidency:
I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.
When some of their embarrassing texts emerged, both were dismissed by the special counsel. But Mueller carefully did so by staggering Strozk and Pages’ departures and not immediately releasing the reasons for their firings or reassignments.
To this day, the public has no idea what the FBI was doing on January 6, how many FBI informants and agents were among the rioters, and to what degree they knew in advance of the protests. The New York Times reporter most acquainted with the January 6 riot, Matthew Rosenberg, dismissed the buffoonish violence as “no big deal” and scoffed, “They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
“There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol,” Rosenberg noted. We have never been told anything about that “ton”—a topic of zero interest to the January 6 select committee.
What are the people to do about a federal law enforcement agency whose directors either repeatedly lie under oath, or mislead, or do not cooperate with congressional overseers?
What should we do with a bureau that alters court documents, deceives the court with information the FBI had good reason to know was false and leaks records of confidential presidential conversations to the media to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor?
What should be done with a government agency that pays social media corporations to warp the dissemination of the news and suppress free expression and communications? Or an agency that hires a foreign national to gather dirt on a presidential candidate and plots to ensure that there is “no way” a presidential candidate “gets elected” and destroys subpoenaed evidence?
What, if anything, should the people do about a once-respected law enforcement agency that repeatedly smears its critics, most recently as “conspiracy theorists?”
The current FBI leadership under Christopher Wray, in the tradition of recent FBI directors, has stonewalled congressional overseers about FBI activity during the Trump and Biden Administrations. In “Après moi, le déluge” fashion, the bureau acts as if it assumes the next Republican administration in office will remove the current hierarchy. And thus, it assumes for now, not cooperating with Republican investigations while Democrats hold control of the Senate and White House for a brief while longer ensures exemption.
Wray, most recently, cut short his Senate testimony on the pretext of an unspecified engagement, which turned out to be flying out on the FBI Gulfstream jet to his vacation home.
Yet the bureau’s lack of candor, contrition, and cooperation has only further alienated the public, especially traditional and conservative America, characteristically the chief source of support for the FBI.
There have been all sorts of remedies proposed for the bureau.
The three reforms most commonly suggested include: 1) simply dissolve the FBI in the belief that its concentration of power in Washington has become uncontrollable and is increasingly put to partisan service, including but not limited to the warping of U.S. presidential elections; 2) move the FBI headquarters out of the Washington D.C. nexus, preferably in the age of Zoom to a more convenient and central location in the United States, perhaps an urban site such as Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, or Oklahoma City; or 3) break-up and decentralize the FBI and redistribute its various divisions to different departments to ensure that the power of its $11 billion budget and 35,000 employees are no longer aggregated and put in service of particular political agendas.
The next two years are dangerous times for the FBI—and the country. The House will soon likely begin investigations of the agency’s improper behavior. Yet, simultaneously, the Biden Justice Department will escalate its use of the bureau as a partisan investigative service for political purposes.
The FBI’s former embattled, high-ranking administrators who have been fired or forced to leave the agency—Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Lisa Page, and others—will continue to appear on the cable news stations and social media to inveigh against critics of the FBI, despite being all deeply involved in the Russia-collusion hoax.
Merrick Garland will continue to order the FBI to hound perceived enemies through surveillance and performance art arrests. And the people will only grow more convinced the bureau has become Stasi-like and cannot be reformed but must be broken up—even as in extremis a defiant and unapologetic FBI will, as its latest communique shows, attack its critics. ✪
Are the Reagan Democrats back? The Rise of the DeSantis Democrats. It’s been a while since Democrats have really rallied around a Republican movement. But the DeSantis movement looks real. Sure Trump brought in more Blacks and Latinos, but when Biden upped the freebies, many may have run back. But this Florida election was something.
It’s unclear how many DeSantis Democrats there are: DeSantis’ vote count jumped from roughly 4 million in 2018 to 4.6 million in 2022. Lots of those voters are presumably independents or Republicans who didn’t vote last time.
Some are disaffected Democrats alienated from the party they once belonged to. That’s evident from the longtime Democratic strongholds that DeSantis flipped, including Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, where DeSantis skyrocketed from a 21-point loss in 2018 to an 11-point win in 2022—a net gain of more than 30 percentage points.
The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.
