Category: Government Overreach

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Biden Cartel Censorship Government Overreach Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others.

IRS Launches Audit Into Conservative Org – Timing Is Oddly Suspicious

IRS going after Conservative org that exposed them.

IRS Launches Audit Into Conservative Org – Timing Is Oddly Suspicious

The IRS is demanding ‘[c]orrespondence files, emails and information posted on a website that relates to current public elected officials’ — clearly a sign that they are targeting our research and education activities.

Who said this wasn’t Obama’s third term? Same tactics as before.

The IRS is investigating the tax-exempt status of the American Accountability Foundation following its reporting on President Joe Biden’s nominees, several of whom withdrew their nominations, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The IRS is requesting AAF submit internal financial data, as well as communications, including meeting notes, publications and newsletters, according to the letter from the IRS to AAF obtained by the DCNF. The conservative nonprofit organization, which the IRS approved for tax-exempt status in August 2021, alleges the investigation is in retaliation for the AAF reporting on several recent Biden nominees who later withdrew their nominations.

 

“This sudden request by the IRS is not random,” AAF President Tom Jones said. “The IRS is demanding ‘[c]orrespondence files, emails and information posted on a website that relates to current public elected officials’ — clearly a sign that they are targeting our research and education activities. It’s a deliberate attempt to punish and suppress AAF’s activities. It is surely no coincidence that AAF — the very organization that exposed the weaponization of the IRS — is now the target of it.”

AAF has actively criticized several Biden nominees, calling on them to withdraw.

For instance, Biden’s FCC chair nominee Gigi Sohn donated to several Senate Commerce Democrats, including $550 to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, $100 to Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and $200 to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, according to The Washington Examiner. AAF sent a letter to Bennett, Cortez, Masto, Fetterman and Warnock, calling on the lawmakers that received contributions to recuse themselves from voting on Sohn’s nomination and calling for Sohn to withdraw.

The organization also repeatedly criticized Sohn over her assertion “that Fox News has had the most negative impact on our democracy” in 2020.

“It’s state-sponsored propaganda, with few if any opposing viewpoints,” Sohn added.

AAF spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboards and advertisements to persuade Americans that Sohn should not be FCC chair, the group said.

AAF also spent weeks in 2022 criticizing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration nominee Ann Carlson for her “radical” statements on energy and climate, including blaming Americans for loving “their cars and their cheap gas.” The White House withdrew her nomination after backlash.

The organization also takes credit for playing a role in the withdrawal of Biden’s Federal Aviation Administration nominee Phillip Washington, according to its website.

Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse attempted to influence the agency to open an investigation into conservative organization Turning Point USA, according to documents obtained by AAF in November 2022. This included calling for the IRS to look into revoking Turning Point USA’s tax-exempt status due to hosting a large event without masks and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitehouse also targeted AAF’s partner and supporter Conservative Partnership Institute’s tax-exempt status in letters to the IRS, according to his website.

The IRS audit is for the purpose of certifying that AAF “operates in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” according to the letter.

“We demand that this abuse is put to an end at once,” Jones asserted. “The Biden administration is acting as the gangster arm of the Left. Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence guarantee our God-given right to speak the truth about the powerful without being punished and harassed. We will do everything in our power to keep America free.”

Under former President Barack Obama, IRS officials under Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups when reviewing tax-exempt status. IRS officials under Lerner participated in choosing groups with the words “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names for audits.

“As the attorney for many conservative, tea party groups targeted and harassed by the Obama IRS a decade ago, this certainly smacks of the exact same tactics used by the IRS then … and apparently being used again now against AAF,” attorney Cleta Mitchell said in a statement.

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Biden Cartel Commentary Corruption Crime Elections Free Speech Government Overreach Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election.

Government Corruption.

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election.

New emails show officials at the Department of Homeland Security created a Stanford University “disinformation” group that censored Americans’ speech before the 2020 election, according to a House Judiciary Committee report exclusively obtained by The Post.

The House panel’s 103-page staff interim report says never-before-seen emails and internal communications were obtained from the group, known as the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), and show how it worked with DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to flag, suppress and remove online speech in coordination with big tech companies.

One of EIP’s founding partners — the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab — described CISA’s central role in the alleged censorship effort in a July 31, 2020, email.

“I know the Council has a number of efforts on broad policy around the elections, but we just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA and are in weekly comms to debrief about disinfo,” the lab’s senior director Graham Brookie wrote.

The staff report says, “[T]he federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions.

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

A report from the House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), says new emails show officials at the Department of Homeland Security created a Stanford University “disinformation” group that censored Americans’ speech before the 2020 election.Getty Images

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, described a federal agency’s central role in the alleged censorship effort in a July 31, 2020, email.Atlantic Council

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Here is a related email from Atlantic Council DFR Lab Senior Director Graham Brookie.NY Post

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

The online posts labeled “misinformation” were made by public officials such as former President Donald Trump.Getty Images

“This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefitted one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

The “misinformation” posts were made by public officials such as former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), media outlets such as Newsmax and The Babylon Bee and many conservative commentators.

The Judiciary report also found that while under the purview of CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force, the central focus of the feds’ effort was to “censor Americans engaged in core political speech in the lead up to the 2020 election.”

DHS acknowledged that it could not “openly endorse” a centralized portal to flag information in a May 2020 email released in the staff report, which cleared the way for Stanford’s EIP to take up the effort in July of that year.

The task force used a tactic known as “switchboarding” to refer to removal requests from state and local officials to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, which CISA-CFITF Director Brian Scully confirmed in testimony in the bombshell case Missouri v. Biden.

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Brian Scully, a figure in the controversy, gave testimony in the bombshell case Missouri v. Biden.New Civil Liberties Alliance / Youtube

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Emails in the interim staff report show Scully informing members of the Office of the Colorado Secretary of State that he had flagged parody accounts to Twitter.NY Post

Emails in the interim staff report show Scully informing members of the Office of the Colorado Secretary of State that he had flagged parody accounts to Twitter and advised Facebook to take down a post about the election that was deemed misinformation.

The exchanges show that CISA recognized it was on shaky legal grounds by participating in the effort and chose to add a disclaimer beneath many emails that its requests were “voluntary” and the agency “neither has nor seeks the ability to remove what information is made available on social media platforms.”

However, those emails also included a line that the “information may also be shared with law enforcement or intelligence agencies,” implying those agencies could take action if the posts weren’t removed.

Former CISA Director Chris Krebs, who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election, testified to the subcommittee that “switchboarding” was done before his agency was created as well.

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Exchanges show that group recognized it was on shaky legal ground by participating in the effort and chose to add a disclaimer beneath many emails that its requests were “voluntary.”NY Post

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Former CISA Director Chris Krebs, who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election, testified to the subcommittee.Jim LoScalzo / Greg Nash / Pool via CNP / SplashNews.com

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified in a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July that the agency no longer participates in the practice.

The Judiciary staff report also discloses that Stanford students were working at both CISA and EIP simultaneously.

“Not only were there a number of university students involved with the EIP, at least four of the students were employed by CISA during the operation of EIP, using their government email accounts to communicate with CISA officials and other ‘external stakeholders’ involved with the EIP,” it states.

In a statement given to The Post on Monday, CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales said the agency “does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship.

“Every day, the men and women of CISA execute the agency’s mission of reducing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” Wales said.

“In response to concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure, CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election literacy and election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation.”

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election

New emails show DHS created Stanford ‘disinfo’ group that censored speech before 2020 election© Provided by New York Post

Alex Stamos, who previously served as chief security officer at Facebook, said the idea was to create a “one-stop shop for local election officials, DHS, and voter protection organizations” to coordinate with social media platforms in the censorship effort.REUTERS

The “disinfo” organization was led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and founded with the help of other academics who communicated directly with Homeland Security officials and members of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), the report said.

SIO was conceived as a “one-stop shop for local election officials, DHS, and voter protection organizations” to coordinate with social media platforms in the censorship effort, according to its director Alex Stamos, who previously served as chief security officer at Facebook.

In June, Stamos testified to the House subcommittee that CISA’s coordination with the FBI came across as a threat.

“[D]ealing with a law enforcement agency that has coercive powers is just a risky thing to do if you’re part of some big organization and some other — there might be some investigation involving the organization that you don’t even know about,” he said.

“I think all executives of all public companies understand that there’s lots of parts of the government that can punish you for activity that you thought was appropriate.”

Stamos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump established CISA in 2018 to improve federal cybersecurity programs and protect government software from hackers.

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Fresh revelations contradict Joe Biden’s sweeping denials on Hunter.

Crime does pay.

Fresh revelations contradict Joe Biden’s sweeping denials on Hunter.

 

Of the many disputes that followed the leaking of Hunter Biden’s laptop contents, one of the thorniest has been the case of the April 2015 dinner at Cafe Milano.

Emails from the cache suggested that Hunter Biden hosted a dinner in a private room at the tony Washington restaurant that included both his father and an executive from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which had appointed Hunter Biden to its board. An email from the executive, dated immediately following the dinner, thanked Hunter Biden for the chance to meet his father.

As the media litigated the controversy, the White House insisted, in increasingly forceful terms, that no meeting between Biden and the executive had occurred.

In October 2021, a year after the dinner became a matter of national controversy, a POLITICO article mentioning it prompted an email response from a White House spokesperson reiterating and extending denials that Biden had met the Ukrainian executive, Vadym Pozharskyi.

While some statements from Biden representatives could be construed as only ruling out that a formal meeting took place between Biden and the executive, the White House maintained its denial was more sweeping.

“Does this rule out any informal encounter with Pozharskyi in April 2015?” POLITICO asked.

“Yes,” the White House spokesman wrote back.

Then, this July, a former Hunter Biden business partner who was present at the dinner testified before the House Oversight Committee. Under penalty of perjury, Devon Archer said that the Ukrainian executive did dine with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and several others at Cafe Milano in April 2015.

Asked to reconcile this discrepancy, the White House did not address the question of whether Biden and the executive met at the dinner. Instead, a second spokesperson responded, “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son or anyone else in the family, and House Republicans’ own witnesses, including Devon Archer, have testified that the President never even discussed business with his son.”

The explicit White House denial of even an informal encounter, reported here for the first time, was not the only time that statements made by Biden and his camp about Hunter Biden’s dealings have been contradicted by others.

Joe Biden and his representatives have repeatedly defended him from criticism related to his relatives, his son in particular, by issuing blanket denials of misconduct and disclaiming contact with their business affairs.

But, in recent months, as congressional Republicans have opened an impeachment inquiry and controversies related to Hunter Biden continue to be litigated in the courts and in the public square, a steady trickle of revelations have contradicted the president’s denials.

A POLITICO review of recent congressional testimony and exhibits, along with court filings and media reports, casts doubt on several statements made by Biden and his representatives.

They include the president’s claim that he has never discussed his relatives’ business dealings with anyone and his suggestion that the appearance of emails apparently belonging to his son was the result of a Russian plot, as well as Biden’s denials that his son made money from China and that his relatives have profited off of the Biden name.

Republicans, meanwhile, have turned up no proof for the claims of Biden’s most zealous detractors: that he took official actions on account of his relatives’ business dealings. And as for the Cafe Milano dinner, there is no indication that Joe Biden discussed business or offered favors to the energy executive that night.

But, as with so much else related to the Hunter Biden affair, the president’s reliance on sweeping denials that end up being called into question by others has allowed the controversy to fester for years.

A Russian plot

Questions about the Cafe Milano dinner have persisted in part because of the doubt Joe Biden cast over the authenticity of emails describing the event.

In October 2020, the New York Post began publishing emails provided by Donald Trump’s ally and sometimes-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that were purportedly taken from devices Hunter Biden had left at a computer repair shop in Delaware. In the wake of their publication, Joe Biden endorsed an alternative theory about the documents: “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant” or “Russian plan” (his intended wording is unclear, and news organizations have quoted it both ways), he said at the final presidential debate that month.

The letter cited by Biden stated that “the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter … has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” while asserting that the signers had no direct knowledge of Russian involvement.

Since then, the nature of the files has been a matter of ongoing controversy.

U.S. intelligence had indeed warned earlier in the campaign that Moscow was seeking to harm Biden’s candidacy by pushing unsubstantiated corruption claims related to the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. But subsequent reporting has steadily accumulated to support the authenticity of the files, which a Delaware repair shop owner named John Paul Mac Isaac presented to Giuliani and which Giuliani passed on to the Post.

Mac Isaac sued POLITICO, CNN, Hunter Biden, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the Biden presidential campaign committee for defamation and civil conspiracy in 2022. The case remains pending in Sussex County, Del.

In September 2021, a book by a POLITICO reporter authenticated several emails from the laptop, including two at the center of the original New York Post articles, based in part on interviews with people with independent knowledge of the correspondence.

In March of last year, The New York Times reported that a combination of people involved in the federal investigation of Hunter Biden and people familiar with his business dealings had authenticated an unspecified number of emails from the cache. Later that month, The Washington Post reported that two forensic experts it commissioned had verified thousands more emails.

During the initial firestorm over the release of the files, Mac Isaac told news outlets that he had handed them over to the FBI a year earlier in late 2019.

Last November, CBS News reported that a forensic analysis it commissioned of a copy of the material turned over to the FBI “shows no evidence of tampering or fabrication.”

In March, Hunter Biden sued Mac Isaac for invasion of privacy, stating that “at least some of” the electronic files obtained by Mac Isaac belonged to Hunter Biden. A footnote in that filing specifies that Hunter Biden was not conceding Mac Isaac’s account of how he came into possession of those files.

But in June, House Republicans published interviews with two IRS agents who alleged mishandling of the Hunter Biden case. One of the whistleblowers, Gary Shapley, furnished notes of an October 2020, meeting he held with FBI agents to discuss the devices provided to the Bureau by Mac Isaac.

The notes show that the FBI found further support for the claim that Hunter Biden had left the devices at the repair shop: They include financial records showing that Hunter Biden shopped at a nearby cigar shop around the time the devices were dropped off and phone records showing calls between Hunter Biden and the repair shop.

The White House did not respond to questions about the computer files.

The Cafe Milano dinner

The question of whether Joe Biden met a Burisma executive at a dinner at Cafe Milano has been a subject of controversy since his son’s emails leaked three years ago.

Emails in the cache show that Hunter Biden and Archer, his then-business partner, arranged for a dinner with roughly a dozen other people at Cafe Milano on April 16, 2015. A tentative guest list Hunter Biden sent to Archer included a “Vadym” at the time the pair was working closely with Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi.

Other email traffic shows Hunter Biden informing an attendee “Dad will be there but keep that between us for now.” And an email from Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden from the morning after the event says, “thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together.”

That email and the guest list email were among a set from the cache that were authenticated for POLITICO by two digital forensics experts granted anonymity to share their findings. One expert cited a fear of retaliation for weighing in on a political controversy, and the other said contractual obligations limited the matters about which he could speak publicly.

In addition to being verified by forensics experts, the thank you email’s authenticity was further attested to in an affidavit produced by an IRS investigator on the case, which was released by House Republicans in September.

“This email was received by the investigative team via an Electronic Search Warrant served on Google related to [Hunter Biden’s] Google email account,” the IRS agent, Joseph Zeigler, wrote.

At the time of the dinner, Joe Biden was heading U.S. anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine. They included efforts by the State Department to recover assets allegedly obtained corruptly by Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who had granted the company lucrative resource licenses while serving as the country’s ecology minister. Zlochevsky has denied wrongdoing.

While attendees of the Cafe Milano dinner agree that Joe Biden was present, his representatives issued repeated denials of any meeting between the then-vice president and Pozharskyi.

And some attendees of the dinner had made public statements that bolstered the notion that, despite the emails suggesting a Biden-Pozharskyi encounter, the two men had never met.

One attendee, Rick Leach, who served as president of the non-profit World Food Program USA at the time of the dinner, told POLITICO he did not believe Pozharskyi had been present. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t remember that name. I don’t remember that person at all.”

In October 2021, a White House spokesperson emailed POLITICO to request that an article be updated to reflect that the president’s representatives denied not only a formal meeting, but any meeting whatsoever. The official cited a statement from campaign spokesman Andrew Bates to USA Today that Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi “never had a meeting.”

While a previous Biden camp denial made reference to “official schedules” — language that potentially left open the possibility of an off-the-books encounter at a dinner — the White House spokesperson assured POLITICO that Biden had not even had an informal encounter with Pozharskyi.

But in July, Archer, who pursued a range of ventures with Hunter Biden during the Obama era, testified to the House Oversight Committee about their dealings. Archer, who was convicted in 2018 of defrauding a Native American tribe as part of a scheme in which Hunter Biden was not implicated, had attended the Cafe Milano dinner.

Archer testified that both Pozharskyi and Joe Biden also attended the dinner, an account that is consistent with Hunter Biden’s leaked emails.

Archer’s testimony specifically contradicted claims relayed in a Washington Post fact-check that Biden had not even sat down at the dinner and had only spoken to one other attendee: Alex Karloutsos, a Greek Orthodox cleric.

“That’s not correct reporting,” Archer testified.

Archer said the then-vice president ate dinner along with the group. “I remember just a regular dinner where there was a table of conversation,” he told House investigators.

Biden’s alleged contact with a Burisma executive is a sensitive matter in part because of claims, promoted by Trump’s allies during the last presidential campaign, that Joe Biden demanded the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been investigating Burisma on account of his son’s position with the company.

But subsequent investigations failed to bear out that claim: Officials familiar with U.S. policy on Ukraine testified to Congress that the firing of the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was consistent with that policy, and Senate Republicans found no clear evidence that Hunter Biden’s board position led to changes in U.S. policy.

Questions about Biden’s alleged contacts with Pozharskyi have resurfaced, though, with the publication of an unverified allegation made by an unnamed FBI informant that echoed the initial claims of Trump’s allies.

The informant claimed that Burisma’s owner said privately that he was pressured by Joe and Hunter Biden into bribing them for help resolving Burisma’s legal issues, including Shokin’s firing. The informant first mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma in a 2017 conversation with the FBI, according to an agency form recording his allegations, which was obtained by congressional Republicans and made public in July. The bureau re-interviewed the informant, whose identity remains secret, in 2020, after the Trump Justice Department began scrutinizing claims about Shokin’s ouster.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who served under Trump, told Fox News that Justice Department investigators concluded that the tip did not appear to be disinformation and forwarded it to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware in 2020. It is unclear what came of the allegation from there.

The Biden White House has dismissed the allegations, citing a lack of corroboration.

The White House spokesperson told POLITICO: “Years of investigations by Congressional Republicans have turned up no wrongdoing by Joe Biden because the truth is the President did nothing wrong.”

‘Never discussed’

The White House’s Pozharskyi denial is just one of several that has been contradicted by others.

After the issue of Biden relatives’ business dealings first came up in 2019, Joe Biden issued a sweeping denial that distanced himself from his family’s commercial pursuits: “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period,” he told reporters in Spartanburg, South Carolina, that August.

In October 2020, a former Hunter Biden business partner, Tony Bobulinski, said that he discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business ventures with Joe Biden.

“That is false,” Bobulinski said, in a prepared statement, of Biden’s claim to have never discussed business with Hunter.

Bobulinski — who had previously given federal campaign contributions predominantly to Democrats and was working with Trump-aligned Republicans to publicize his allegations — said that Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, who is the president’s younger brother, introduced him to Joe Biden in Los Angeles in early May 2017.

“At my approximately hour-long meeting with Joe that night, we discussed the Bidens’ history, the Bidens’ family business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar, at least at a high level,” Bobulinski said in the statement.

In a 2020 interview on Fox News with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, Bobulinski said that James and Hunter Biden also participated in the meeting. “We didn’t go into too much detail on the business,” Bobulinski said, but he said it was “crystal clear” that Hunter Biden had discussed the deal with his father.

In September, House Republicans released an FBI summary of an interview agents conducted with Bobulinski in the fall of 2020, showing that Bobulinski told investigators the same basic story: that he had discussed the China venture with Joe Biden. The summary gives extra heft to Boublinski’s public claims because lying to the FBI in order to influence an investigation can lead to criminal charges.

Bobulinski has said he did not discuss the business in any great depth with Joe Biden. Archer has said that Joe Biden was familiar with his son’s business dealings and that he has seen the president exchange pleasantries with his son’s business partners over the phone, but that he has not seen him engage in the details of his son’s business.

In an article published in September, the former president of a hedge fund that was operated by James and Hunter Biden a decade-and-a-half ago told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden, then a senator, sometimes participated in business calls with his relatives. Former Paradigm Global Advisors executive Charles Provini said most of Joe Biden’s participation amounted to “just pleasantries,” but that topics like Provini’s job duties and litigation related to the fund were also discussed on these calls. Provini went on to sue Paradigm, and the case was dismissed.

Asked in July by a reporter whether the White House stood by claims that Biden had never discussed his business dealings with his son, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre responded with a more limited claim: “The president was never in business with his son,” she said.

In response to a question about the phone conversations detailed by Archer, the president said in August, “I never talked business with anybody,” a statement consistent with Archer’s testimony.

Asked whether the president stands by his broad denial of ever discussing his relatives’ business dealings with anyone, the White House cited the testimony of House witnesses who said they did not observe any such interactions.

No money from China

Joe Biden has also faced questions about Hunter Biden’s dealings outside of Ukraine.

At the October 2020, debate, Joe Biden was asked about the appropriateness of Hunter’s work in China and for Burisma during his vice presidency.

“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had … the only guy who made money from China is this guy,” he said, referring to Trump. “Nobody else has made money from China.”

The moderator’s question referred to Hunter Biden’s work in China during Biden’s vice presidency. Hunter Biden entered into a venture with Chinese asset managers, Bohai Harvest RST, during his father’s vice presidency. The extent to which Hunter Biden profited from his involvement in the venture remains unclear. A Hunter Biden representative has said his work on an advisory board related to the venture during the Obama years was unpaid.

But the more general claim that Hunter Biden did not make money from China is false. In court this July, Hunter Biden acknowledged hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a Chinese energy firm, CEFC, and people associated with it, after his father’s vice presidency.

Entities controlled by James and Hunter Biden ended up receiving nearly $5 million in legal and consulting fees from the Chinese energy company and its executives when his father was out of office, according to a Washington Post analysis published last year. At a plea deal hearing this July, Hunter Biden acknowledged receiving income from CEFC.

No profiting from Biden name

Biden has also offered general assurance that his relatives have not profited off of their association with a powerful public official.

In an October 2020, interview, Milwaukee-area television reporter Adrienne Pedersen quoted to then-candidate Biden a statement from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson alleging that “Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name.”

“Is there any legitimacy to Sen. Johnson’s claims?” Pedersen asked.

“None whatsoever,” Biden said, adding, “Ron should be ashamed of himself.”

Johnson’s original comment was made in the context of a 2020 report issued by Senate Republicans that scrutinized the foreign dealings of Biden relatives. The report detailed alleged payments made by CEFC and people affiliated with it to accounts associated with Hunter Biden, James Biden and James’s wife Sara Biden.

And there are fresh indications that their association with Joe Biden helped pave the way for those payments.

That includes the summary of the Bobulinski FBI interview released in September by the House Ways and Means Committee. Bobulinski told agents that James and Hunter Biden helped open doors for CEFC around the world during Joe Biden’s vice presidency without being compensated, but that they wanted payment for that help after he left office, according to the summary.

Bobulinski said that James and Hunter Biden “believed CEFC owed them money for the benefits that accrued to CEFC through its use of the Biden family name to advance their business dealings,” according to the FBI’s summary of the interview.

Records from another FBI interview, conducted with former Hunter Biden business partner Rob Walker and released by House Republicans in June, also casts doubt on the president’s claim. Walker told investigators that Hunter Biden arranged for his father to stop by a lunch with their Chinese business partners at the Four Seasons in Washington. Walker agreed with an agent’s suggestion that Hunter Biden arranged the drop-in, which occurred when Joe Biden was out of office, to help him close a deal with CEFC executives.

The 2020 report by congressional Republicans also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s Burisma work. In his congressional interview in July, Archer said that “a large part of the value” Hunter Biden brought to Burisma was the Biden family “brand” — and that Joe Biden “brought the most value to the brand.”

Outside of the dealings covered by that report, there are other signs that Biden’s relatives have profited from the Biden name over the years. They include allegations made by former business contacts of Hunter and James Biden in lawsuits. In one case dating to the first term of the Obama administration, when Joe Biden was vice president, a former business partner at a hedge fund alleged that — in the course of a dispute about a legal bill — James and Hunter Biden, “refused to pay the bill, repeatedly citing their political connections and family status as a basis for disclaiming the obligation.” James and Hunter Biden denied the allegation.

Former business contacts of James Biden alleged in a lawsuit in 2019 that he promised that Joe Biden would incorporate their business model in his presidential campaign in order to entice them into a partnership. “All the promises were on the Biden name,” one of the executives involved in the suit told the Knoxville News Sentinel at the time. James Biden has denied the allegations.

Joe Biden’s youngest brother, Frank Biden, has also invoked the family name in the course of his business dealings. During the Obama administration, Frank Biden served as a lobbyist for, and the president of, a charter school company, Mavericks in Education, at a time when the expansion of for-profit schools was politically contentious.

In the course of seeking approvals for one of the company’s schools, Frank pledged to the Palm Beach County School Board in February of 2011, “I give you my word of honor on my family name that this system is sustainable.”

The company put out press releases describing Frank as “Brother of the Vice President of the United States and President and Director of Mavericks Education” and “brother of Vice President Joe Biden.”

In a 2011 interview with the Washington Post, Frank Biden said he did not trade on the Biden name but that he did benefit from it. “It’s a tremendous asset,” he said of the name. “I enjoy automatic acceptance or at least listening to what I have to say.”

In a leaked October 2011 email, Hunter Biden wrote of his appeal to a Chinese business partner, “It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my last name.” That email was also authenticated by both forensics experts.

Fresh revelations contradict Joe Biden’s sweeping denials on Hunter – POLITICO

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Jonathan Turley Weighs in on Freeze on Trump Gag Order.

Trump have his day in court?

 

Jonathan Turley Weighs in on Freeze on Trump Gag Order. He thinks that it’s significant because the judges could have passed on it but didn’t. His reasoning is that it’s unconstitutional.

The part that bothers me is that the judge allows Smith to attack and witnesses like Barr to make derogatory statements. But when Trump defends himself, the judge says no. This from Turley.

“I said that when it was first issued. It’s a very odd concept of an order because the court here insisted on having this trial before the election, sort of shoehorned it in before Super Tuesday,” Turley added. “And everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases, except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

Turley continued, “He can’t criticize the prosecutors, he can’t criticize witnesses, and special counsel Jack Smith just asked for this order to be expanded in an equally unconstitutional way and that has drawn the criticism even of the ACLU, which is a staunch critic of Donald Trump, but the ACLU has said look, this is flagrantly unconstitutional.”

Jonathan Turley Reacts To Stay On Trump D.C. Gag Order (tampafp.com)

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Trump White House aide points finger at Jan. 6 National Guard call-up in 14th Amendment trial.

Telling the truth.

Trump White House aide points finger at Jan. 6 National Guard call-up in 14th Amendment trial.

Former Trump administration aide Kash Patel on Wednesday denied claims that President Trump chose not to call up the National Guard during the Jan. 6 attacks or delayed efforts to approve their deployments in testimony he provided in the former president’s 14th Amendment case in Colorado.

Patel, who was the chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller during the Jan. 6 attacks, argued that it was instead D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser who delayed calls for the National Guard in the days before the riot.

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National Archives releases 82,000 pages of Emails Joe Biden Sent or Received on Three Private Pseudonym Accounts.

Joe's ALL SHOOK UP.

National Archives releases 82,000 pages of Emails Joe Biden Sent or Received on Three Private Pseudonym Accounts. It going to be interesting to see what’s in those e-mails.

To date, there is no indication from the National Archives in the court case that any of Biden’s email contain classified information. However, the president is under criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Hur for taking classified documents from his time as vice president and as a senator and storing them improperly in insecure locations in the garage of his Delaware home and a think tank office he kept in Washington D.C.

https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2023-10/SELF-NARA-BidenPseudonymEmails.pdf

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Federal Judge Bitch slaps Biden Administration on Texas Wall/Fence.

Heavy machinery was caught on video dismantling the razor wire at the Texas/Mexico border, prompting a lawsuit. (PHOTO: Lawsuit Case 2.23 cv-0055-AM)

Federal Judge Bitch slaps Biden Administration on Texas Wall/Fence.

A federal judge has issued an emergency temporary restraining order against the federal government from taking down razor wire barriers at the border.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who took to social media to tout the decision, had asked the judge to take quick action against the “disassembling, degrading, and tampering with” the concertina wire barriers after video came out that U.S. Border Patrol agents were using forklifts and heavy machinery to cut pieces of the razor wire along the Texas/Mexico border.

The razor wire, along with the controversial buoys in the Rio Grande, were installed as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation: Lone Star, which was launched in March 2021 as a border security initiative to help battle the rising border crossings that Gov. Abbott blames on the Biden Administration’s lax immigration policies.

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How sick is this? CBS Reporter ordered by court to reveal her source.

Don't give in.

How sick is this? CBS Reporter ordered by court to reveal her source.

Catherine Herridge, now a reporter for CBS News, was ordered in August to disclose the identity and motive of the source, who provided information about an FBI investigation into a Chinese scientist.

Judge Cooper, an Obama appointee, disagreed and tried to force Herridge to unmask her source.

“The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge,” Cooper wrote in the ruling in August. “But applying the binding case law of this Circuit, the Court concludes that Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case.”

Herridge refused to disclose her source during the deposition and now she faces contempt charges and potential jail time.

Catherine Herridge Faces Contempt Charge for Not Revealing Source (cf.org)

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Federal Judge Delivers Blow to Democrats.

Federal Judge Delivers Blow to Democrats © Provided by America Insider

Federal Judge Delivers Blow to Democrats. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has ruled that a gun ban in New York City is unconstitutional, dealing a blow to Democrats pushing for stricter gun control.

The case involved a Brooklyn resident, Joseph Srour, whose applications to possess firearms in his home were denied based on city regulations.

The judge determined that the regulations granting broad discretion to licensing officials were not in line with historical traditions of firearm regulation and violated the Second Amendment.

“The reasons cited for the denial were Sections 3-03 and 5-10 of Title 38 of the Rules of the City of New York (RCNY),” the report found.

“The License Division’s Appeals Unit pointed to Srour’s prior arrests, his driving history, and allegations of false statements on his applications as the primary reasons for the denial.”

Judge John P. Cronan, who presided over the case, said the Second Amendment explicitly safeguards “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”

“The court took umbrage with the provisions that permitted the denial of a firearm permit based on a City official’s subjective determination of the applicant’s ‘good moral character’ or if the official found ‘other good cause,’” the report added.

“These standards, as per the court’s findings, were overly broad and lacked restraint, with no historical foundation in the country to support them.”

The ruling has broader implications for gun rights and regulations.

The post Federal Judge Delivers Blow to Democrats appeared first on America Insider.

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Newsguard Case Highlights the Pentagon’s Censorship End-Around.

Government working with a hate group.

Newsguard Case Highlights the Pentagon’s Censorship End-Around.

The Consortium News lawsuit against a private news rating system lays out how the government can suppress speech by proxy.

By MATT TAIBBI

Monday, the independent website Consortium News filed suit against the United States of America and Newsguard Technologies. The complaint targeting both the government and a private media ratings service is an important one, putting the censorship-by-proxy system on trial.

On September 7, 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense gave an award of $749,387 to Newsguard Technologies, a private service that scores media outlets on “reliability” and “trust.” According to the suit, roughly 40,000 subscribers buy Newsguard subscriptions, getting in return a system of “Nutrition Labels” supposedly emphasizing “safe” content. Importantly, Newsguard’s customers include universities and libraries, whose users are presented with labels warning you that CBS is great and Tucker Carlson is dangerous:

Consortium News was labeled a purveyor of “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “false content,” and, worst of all, “anti-U.S.” This is despite the fact that, according to the suit, Newsguard only flagged six articles out of the tens of thousands Consortium News has published since the late award-winning reporter Robert Parry founded it in 1995. As Consortium News points out, Newsguard downgrades its entire 20,000+ library of available online articles with these flags based on the handful of edge cases, all of which involve criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

A particular irony is that Parry, a decorated AP and Newsweek reporter, founded Consortium News specifically to address topics suppressed by mainstream editors. Now Parry’s old site is being downgraded for dissenting reports on subjects like the 2014 Ukrainian coup and neo-Nazism in Ukraine, coincidentally topics that are “the subject of NewsGuard’s ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ project that is under contract with the Cyber Command,” as the suit reads.

Newsguard denies it’s influenced by the government. In fact, its denials are part of the reason for the suit. When Michael Shellenberger and I testified before Congress in March, we mentioned Newsguard as a “government-funded” ratings service. I was quickly contacted by email by co-CEO Gordon Crovitz, who hastened to correct me: Newsguard isn’t government-funded, but merely an organization that receives government funds. He wrote:

As is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the US and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China.

Our analysts alert officials in the US and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.

Crovitz added that “contrary to claims made in the hearings, we oppose any government involvement in rating news sources,” saying Newsguard “is entirely independent and free of any outside influence, including from the U.S. or any other government.”

The letter, CC’ed to co-CEO and editor Stephen Brill, was subject lined “Inaccuracies relating to NewsGuard.” I immediately wrote back:

Crovitz didn’t answer at the time, but Newsguard did simultaneously release the letter to the UK-based Press-Gazette. When I reached out for comment again after the filing of this litigation this week, asking once again how “government-funded” could be inaccurate, Crovitz finally answered, writing:

“We are ‘government funded’ in the same way that Verizon is ‘government funded: We have licensed data to the government for a fee, just as Verizon has provided telco services for a fee.”

He added:

The government pays us both for our commercial offerings. Our Pentagon contract is a single-digit percent of our revenues.

So, they are government-funded, just not wholly government-funded. These are the people rating others on accuracy, remember.

The conceit about funding isn’t complicated, but it works. Because Newsguard has other customers, it can claim to be an “independent” news service that just happens to downgrade news reports that contradict and/or criticize the policy of its major client, the Department of Defense. It’s censorship, but through a silencer. As the Consortium News suit reads:

NewsGuard and the United States in violation of the First Amendment are carrying out a governmental program under the “Misinformation Fingerprints” contract to publicly label, target and stigmatize news organizations as disfavored, unreliable, as journalistically not responsible… where said organizations differ or dissent from U.S. policy.

The suit also details what I think is the more insidious part of the system. In the guise of an independent news service, Newsguard contacts outlets and interrogates them about disputed content, not-so-subtly pressing for retractions. Again, from the suit:

In the course of the government contract, NewsGuard and the United States have acted to retaliate against those news entities and media organizations that refuse to retract or correct their articles; such retaliation consists of the “false content” warnings, the red flag and associated content described in this Amended Complaint…

Racket received one of these irritating queries this year. Call it what you want, but it comes down to Pentagon Cyber Command giving a big check to “analysts” who happen to slap red revenue-sapping warning tags on outlets that report on controversial topics like war or government censorship.

As I wrote to Newsguard when they contacted me, “media outlets should gain and lose trust based on how they are evaluated by audiences, not paid services.” This system allows institutions like the Department of Defense that have no legal remit to meddle in the domestic news landscape to pressure private media outlets.

That’s over and above the DoD’s already hugest-on-earth-by-far public relations budget. Think of the scale of petty determination one must have to spend over $500 million a year on messaging and be so dissatisfied with the results that you feel the need to spend more on private services that downgrade independent news critics. It’s particularly grating that your tax dollars are spent hiring private services that label news outlets using terms like “anti-US.” State-sponsored impugning of patriotism is a bold stroke, even by the low moral standards of the anti-disinformation era.

“When media groups are condemned by the government as ‘anti-U.S.’,” said Bruce Afran, attorney for Consortium News, “the result is self-censorship and a destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment.”

I was remiss in not getting this story up before but will have more as the case goes on.

Consortium News is seeking “a permanent injunction… barring the government and NewsGuard from continuing such practices” and “more than $13 million in damages for defamation and civil rights violations.”  You can read their coverage here.