Christina Bohannan interned at Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection
Democrats lie effortlessly. I assume sociopathy is requisite for the role [US Patriot]
Democratic congressional candidate Christina Bohannan often boasts that she once worked as an environmental engineer. She always fails to mention it was an internship.
On Thursday, the Iowa state legislator, who is running to represent the state’s first district in Congress, told a Pella, Iowa, audience that she worked as an “environmental engineer with the Department of Environmental Protection in Florida doing water quality work.” Her résumé shows this was an internship Bohannan held for four years while studying at the University of Florida. No further experience in the field is listed, and she still holds just an engineering intern license in the state.
Bohannan did not return a request for comment.
As a swing-district Democrat facing off against incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R.), Bohannan has tried to cultivate the image of a pragmatic moderate, burnishing her apparent engineering credentials to speak to local concerns. In a 2020 letter to the Iowa City Press-Citizen, a Democratic official said Bohannan’s experience was of “critical importance for improving Iowa’s water quality issues.”
Bohannan’s campaign website also says she is a “former engineer.” One progressive group touted Bohannan’s “pro-science policies” and experience as an environmental engineer in its endorsement.
In October, a Wikipedia user who identified as Bohannan’s “State House campaign manager” edited the candidate’s page to add she was an “environmental” engineer, the site’s revision history shows.
Bohannan’s effort to appear moderate has also led her to disavow past policy positions. In August, she scrubbed her old campaign site of endorsements for taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgeries and opposition to voter ID laws. Around 70 percent of Iowans support voter ID, a 2017 Des Moines Register poll found.
In 2019, Bohannan contributed to a bail fund for illegal immigrants maintained by a group that wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and work toward a “world without police.” She has also opposed school choice as a lawmaker while sending her daughter to a private school.
Before her run for Congress, Bohannan served as a legislator in Iowa’s heavily Democratic 85th district. She has been a professor at the University of Iowa’s law school since 2000. Her résumé lists publications on antitrust and copyright law but nothing about environmental issues.
In July, an internal poll by Bohannan’s campaign revealed the Democrat trailing Miller-Meeks by 1 point, the Iowa-based Gazettereported. About 22 percent of the voters surveyed remain undecided.
New York governor Kathy Hochul has directed state to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D., N.Y.) has for weeks remained silent about pro-abortion activists firebombing a pro-life pregnancy center in her state. But when pro-life activists allegedly disrupted services at a Brooklyn Planned Parenthood, the Democrat condemned the “intimidation” from “anti-abortion extremists.”
“This is a shameful attempt to prevent New Yorkers from exercising their fundamental right to access reproductive care,” Hochul tweeted Thursday after New York attorney general Letitia James (D.) announced that pro-life activists harassed employees at a city Planned Parenthood clinic. “They won’t win.”
That reaction was a stark contrast with her muted response to a June incident in which pro-abortion activists firebombed a Buffalo, N.Y., pregnancy center that does not offer abortion services. The pregnancy center was also vandalized with graffiti that read “Jane was here,” a tagline for the extremist pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge, which has vowed to attack similar pregnancy centers across the country. The Democrat has yet to comment on the attack. The governor’s office, meanwhile, told a local news outlet that Hochul “condemns violence of any kind.”
Hochul’s statement comes as Democrats look to crack down on the pregnancy centers following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Just weeks after the Buffalo attack, Hochul signed a bill into law that directs state authorities to investigate pregnancy centers that do not perform abortions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has accused the facilities of “torturing” women and said the government should “shut them down all around the country.”
Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
New York Democrats have increased efforts to target pro-life activists in recent years. As attorney general, James filed a lawsuit against a Brooklyn pastor, as well as his followers, who protested outside of an abortion clinic in the city. Her office deployed private investigators and hidden cameras to spy on these pro-life activists but later dropped the lawsuit in November. James has a pending lawsuit against pro-life activists who protested at another Planned Parenthood in the state.
The pregnancy center bill Hochul signed directs the state’s commissioner of health to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers because they do not provide abortions, including a probe into whether these pregnancy centers provide a “comprehensive range of reproductive and sexual health care services.”
Hochul has received $9,750 from Planned Parenthood and its associated PACs between her 2014 campaign for lieutenant governor and her current gubernatorial reelection campaign.
The attack on CompassCare, the pregnancy center in Buffalo, is part of a larger trend of violence against pro-life institutions following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. There have been 93 attacks on pro-life groups since May, according to the Catholic News Agency. A majority of these attacks were against pregnancy centers.
Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare, said he has received no assistance from his state’s government after the attack on his clinic.
“It appears Governor Hochul and the N.Y. Legislature are only interested in protecting those who agree with them and bullying those who don’t,” Harden said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D., N.Y.) has for weeks remained silent about pro-abortion activists firebombing a pro-life pregnancy center in her state. But when pro-life activists allegedly disrupted services at a Brooklyn Planned Parenthood, the Democrat condemned the “intimidation” from “anti-abortion extremists.”
“This is a shameful attempt to prevent New Yorkers from exercising their fundamental right to access reproductive care,” Hochul tweeted Thursday after New York attorney general Letitia James (D.) announced that pro-life activists harassed employees at a city Planned Parenthood clinic. “They won’t win.”
That reaction was a stark contrast with her muted response to a June incident in which pro-abortion activists firebombed a Buffalo, N.Y., pregnancy center that does not offer abortion services. The pregnancy center was also vandalized with graffiti that read “Jane was here,” a tagline for the extremist pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge, which has vowed to attack similar pregnancy centers across the country. The Democrat has yet to comment on the attack. The governor’s office, meanwhile, told a local news outlet that Hochul “condemns violence of any kind.”
Hochul’s statement comes as Democrats look to crack down on the pregnancy centers following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Just weeks after the Buffalo attack, Hochul signed a bill into law that directs state authorities to investigate pregnancy centers that do not perform abortions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has accused the facilities of “torturing” women and said the government should “shut them down all around the country.”
Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
New York Democrats have increased efforts to target pro-life activists in recent years. As attorney general, James filed a lawsuit against a Brooklyn pastor, as well as his followers, who protested outside of an abortion clinic in the city. Her office deployed private investigators and hidden cameras to spy on these pro-life activists but later dropped the lawsuit in November. James has a pending lawsuit against pro-life activists who protested at another Planned Parenthood in the state.
The pregnancy center bill Hochul signed directs the state’s commissioner of health to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers because they do not provide abortions, including a probe into whether these pregnancy centers provide a “comprehensive range of reproductive and sexual health care services.”
Hochul has received $9,750 from Planned Parenthood and its associated PACs between her 2014 campaign for lieutenant governor and her current gubernatorial reelection campaign.
The attack on CompassCare, the pregnancy center in Buffalo, is part of a larger trend of violence against pro-life institutions following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. There have been 93 attacks on pro-life groups since May, according to the Catholic News Agency. A majority of these attacks were against pregnancy centers.
Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare, said he has received no assistance from his state’s government after the attack on his clinic.
“It appears Governor Hochul and the N.Y. Legislature are only interested in protecting those who agree with them and bullying those who don’t,” Harden said.
Sean Casten holds up to $500,000 in company that is expected to benefit from Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act
Illinois Democrat Sean Casten is very happy with his party’s “historic” green energy spending. His latest financial disclosure may show why: The congressman holds up to $500,000 in a green energy company that will likely benefit from the spending.
Casten has spent much of the last week touting Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is not expected to have “any measurable impact on inflation” but does funnel nearly $400 billion toward green energy initiatives. Casten in a statement last week called that spending “a historic win for American families and for the future of our planet.” It could also be a historic win for Casten’s investment portfolio.
That’s because Casten, according to a financial disclosure he filed last week, holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in Greenleaf Power, a Sacramento-based green energy company that sells “carbon-neutral electricity” to utility companies. The Casten-backed green energy bill contains specific provisions that are likely to benefit Greenleaf. The legislation, for example, allocates roughly $30 billion toward “grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities” that obtain “clean electricity” like that offered by Greenleaf. The bill also provides generous tax credits to property owners who install equipment to harness alternative energy sources such as biomass, in which Greenleaf specializes.
Still, none of Casten’s many statements touting the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy spending disclose the Democrat’s six-figure stake in Greenleaf, which brought Casten up to $50,000 in “partnership income” in 2021 alone. Casten’s decision to fixate on Democrats’ work to “fight climate change,” meanwhile, may prove to be shortsighted as the congressman faces a competitive reelection campaign against Republican Keith Pekau. Only 35 percent of U.S. adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change, down from 44 percent just three years ago, according to an Associated Press poll.
Power the Future founder and executive director Daniel Turner called it a “shame that the American people are going to be on the hook” for “provisions that enrich this member of Congress.” He also argued that the “green energy” Greenleaf produces from biomass is not truly “green”—the company generates electricity by burning wood, a far cry from the wind and solar energy Casten has touted in the past.
“It just shows you the political motives behind this piece of legislation,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “The fact that we consider biomass clean is really laughable, because biomass is really just burning trees. So why are we proud of that?”
Casten did not return a request for comment. The Democrat’s latest financial disclosure provides some clarity on his Greenleaf holding, as the congressman’s prior disclosure listed Greenleaf but claimed the asset had no value. Casten filed that 2020 disclosure as he urged Congress to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on “tax credits for clean energy.” In one case, Casten went as far as to attack fellow congressional Democrat Joe Manchin after the West Virginia senator expressed opposition toward the spending.
“We’re trying to drive a car into the future,” Casten said during an September 2021 MSNBC interview. “With all due respect to Mr. Manchin, until we’re lining up to take off the emergency brake this car ain’t driving very fast. It’s certainly not driving as fast as it needs to, and that’s the pressure we as Democrats have to keep focused on.” Casten’s past clean energy spending advocacy also excluded any mention of his Greenleaf investment.
Beyond the American public’s waning concern about climate change, it’s unclear if the Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will have a sizable impact on climate change. A climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package told the Associated Press the legislation will reduce global warming “not a lot.”
Data suggests ‘economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly’
America’s recessionary drumbeat just got louder as a key economic gauge from the Conference Board dropped for the fifth month in a row, weighed down by a slowing job market, weak manufacturing new orders, and deep consumer pessimism.
The Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States, which is a forward-looking gauge designed to predict business cycle shifts including recessions, fell by 0.4 percent in July, following a 0.7 percent drop in June, the Conference Board said on Aug. 18.
“The U.S. LEI declined for the fifth consecutive month in July, suggesting recession risks are rising in the near term,” Ataman Ozyildirim, senior director for economics at the Conference Board, said in a statement.
While the U.S. economy met the common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession when gross domestic product (GDP) printed negative for two quarters in a row earlier this year, recessions are formally called by a panel of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). They use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule, relying on a wide range of indicators, including the labor market, which has remained on a relatively solid footing.
The Biden administration has seized on the NBER’s criteria for declaring a downturn, insisting that the economy isn’t in a recession, with White House officials often citing labor market strength—though there are signs that it’s cooling.
Even though unemployment is at 3.5 percent and the latest non-farm payrolls report showed U.S. employers adding a forecast-beating 528,000 in July, a growing number of U.S. corporations have announced hiring freezes or layoffs, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance has been slowly trending up.
Mild or Severe Recession?
The slowing labor market was one of the factors singled out by Ozyildirim in his comments on the LEI’s fifth consecutive monthly slump.
“Consumer pessimism and equity market volatility as well as slowing labor markets, housing construction, and manufacturing new orders suggest that economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly throughout the US economy,” he said, adding that the Conference Board projects that the U.S. economy won’t grow in the third quarter and “could tip into a short but mild recession by the end of the year or early 2023.”
While the view that America’s recession will be short and mild has its advocates, economist Nouriel Roubini, who got the nickname “Dr. Doom” after correctly predicting the 2007–08 financial crisis, calls that view “delusional.”
Roubini said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV that he believes persistently high inflation will force the Fed to keep monetary settings tight, which will tip the U.S. economy into a “severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis” that will be long-lasting.
Similarly, former President Donald Trump recently warned that, unless the country changes course in key areas—including energy policy—he believes something worse than a recession is on the horizon.
“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona at the end of July. “We’ll have a depression.”
Since receiving Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, Bonnie Eisenberg experienced relapse of her breast cancer 8 years after being in remission.
The 73-year-old was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in 2012. After successful treatment, she had been in remission since 2014.
Ever since then, her doctor has measured tumor marker levels in her body to monitor for relapse.
Tumor markers are usually proteins that indicate possible tumor or cancer growth. High levels of tumor markers may indicate cancer but it is not definitive.
There are many markers that can be tested, but the one that her doctor particularly focused on was the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a tumor marker common to cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, prostate, ovary, lung, thyroid, and liver.
Since 2014, Eisenberg dutifully took monthly CEA tests along with others. The tests continuously returned with numbers in the normal range, which her doctor said was from 0 to 4.0 ng/mL.
Eisenberg’s average CEA results had been at 0.4 ng/mL, indicating her cancer was under control.
“Everything’s been going fine,” Eisenberg told The Epoch Times, “I was one of his best patients. He never worried about me.”
However, that changed after she got vaccinated. She received her first Moderna shot in January 2021 and experienced various common adverse effects including fever, shakes, “you name it, I had it,” she said.
Bonnie Eisenberg and her husband. (Courtesy of Eisenberg)
That month, her CEA test rose to 3.7 ng/mL.
However, since it was still within the normal range, both Eisenberg and her doctor were not concerned.
After all, tumor cells are not limited to cancer patients. It is a known fact that everyone can have cancerous cells; what matters is whether the immune system can keep the cancer in check.
Eisenberg took her second shot in February 2021 and again suffered the same adverse effects.
Her CEA numbers jumped to 5.2 ng/mL that month.
This took her out of the normal range. Yet because Eisenberg has been such a stable patient, and because her result was so close to the normal range, both she and her doctor dismissed the results.
“Maybe I should have been a little more on the doctor. Since I was so good. We weren’t really that concerned about it.”
Boosters became available in October 2021. Eisenberg was not happy to take it given her previous adverse reactions, but she and her husband took it anyway. She experienced the same terrible adverse reactions.
In October 2021 and December 2021, she had CEA tests taken.
On Dec. 13, 2021 at 8 o’clock in morning, she received a call from her doctor. He was very concerned.
“When you’re getting a phone call that early in the morning, something’s wrong. He says to me: ‘Bonnie, we have to scan you.’ What’s the matter? [I asked]. My mark was up to 17.6 [ng/mL]—I was in trouble.”
Eisenberg was immediately sent for a CAT scan, as well as MRI and PET scans.
On the PET scans, it showed that her previously dormant breast cancer has “metastasized,” meaning that it has spread to locations outside the breast.
“When he hit me with this, even now … it’s just a very hard thing to accept. It’s just something that should have never taken place.”
“[The cancer] went to all my bones … it didn’t go to any of my body organs, but it was over every bone you could think of. On the PET scan I lit up like a Christmas tree.”
A metastasizing breast cancer would automatically put her in stage 4, the worst stage for cancers.
Eisenberg is convinced that the vaccine is responsible for her cancer recurrence. The increase in CEA levels correlated well with her vaccine timeline, and she is adamant that she will not get any more vaccinations, fearing that she will really die from it.
In the same month (December 2021), Eisenberg started targeted therapy. The main medication she takes for her cancer costs about $14,000 a month “but I just have a little copayment coverage for it.”
She also has a hormone blocker as well as a monthly injection of denosumab ($3,000 each) to prevent bone fractures. Luckily, her insurance covers the cost of denosumab.
Eisenberg has responded very well to her drugs, and her cancer is back in remission now.
Since she started treatment again, her CEA numbers dropped from 4.7 in January 2022 to below 1 ng/mL in June 2022. Her numbers are just like how she was before vaccination.
The bright spots representing cancer cells are also gone on her new PET scans.
Nonetheless, things have not returned to normal; the drug side effects Eisenberg complains of are likely to accompany her for the rest of her life.
“I have to be on [medication] for the rest of my life. I can’t stop it … he [the doctor] can lower the milligrams and stuff like that … but you always have to be watched. What I have is not going away.”
Her breast cancer medication reduces white blood cell counts, significantly weakening her immune system and puts her at risk of infections. This new worry hangs on Eisenberg’s mind, and in crowded places, she feels compelled to put on a face mask.
The drug also causes her hair to thin, and as a “hair girl,” Eisenberg is bothered by the reality that she can no longer straighten her hair.
The denosumab injections can also cause loss of bone mass leading to eventual breakdown. Eisenberg is glad to have greater intervals introduced between each injection and possible reduced dosages for her medications.
Given her stage 4 relapse, Eisenberg is considered fortunate to be back in remission.
Eisenberg shared her experience with other women also in remission who have not been recommended to do monthly tests, or women who responded very poorly to potent breast cancer treatments.
She hopes that her story will be able to help others so that the same does not happen to them.
“Whatever erupted inside me from the shot, something happened because they don’t even know what it does to the immune system … [the doctors, people at Moderna] don’t even know; there’s no answers. Nobody has any answers. I don’t care who you talk to. You’re not gonna get an answer. They don’t know.”
“There’s possibly other girls like me now. They don’t even know what’s happening inside them because if they’re not tested properly, they’re not going to know.”
In the history of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a total of 93 breast cancer cases have been reported as an adverse effect of a vaccine, of which 77 of the cases are reported after COVID-19 vaccines.
What Current Research Shows Us
The current research suggests the COVID shots altered the innate immune system, which is likely to alter the adaptive immune system.
Within the body, we have the innate immune cells that are quick-acting, inflammatory, and target all foreign molecules the same way.
Some of these innate immune cells will eventually activate adaptive immune cells, called the T and B cells. These cells begin to work a few days after infection and require activation from innate immune cells to function properly. These T and B cells target infections and cancers through specific and varied pathways. They create an immune memory afterwards so that the immune system will be able to act faster the next time.
Innate Immune System Alterations: Interferons
Interferons (IFN) are antiviral proteins. There are three major types: type I, II, and III, categorized based on the receptors each IFN binds to.
One of the most important IFN is type 1 IFN; it acts globally, targeting many tissues and organs to protect from infections, autoimmune diseases, as well as cancers.
Studies show that they are particularly important in the early response to infection and cancer.
“Impaired type I IFN signaling is linked to many disease risks, most notably cancer, as type 1 IFN signaling suppresses proliferation of both viruses and cancer cells by arresting the cell cycle,” the authors, led by Dr. Stephanie Seneff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote.
Dr. Stephanie Seneff. (Courtesy of Stephanie Seneff)
IFN-alpha and IFN-beta are type 1 IFNs; these molecules alert other cells of a virus or cancer, and also stop infected and cancerous cells from proliferating, causing diseased cells to die.
However, research on spike protein and mRNA vaccines suggests that IFN-alpha action may be impaired when exposed to spike protein.
A study that exposed human cells to spike protein DNA to induce the cell to produce spike protein found that the cell shipped out the spike protein with two forms of microRNAs (miRNAs) that inhibited molecules that activated IFN-alpha/beta.
miRNA are short strands of RNA molecules that bind to the DNA in cells and can therefore regulate cell activity. These two miRNA inhibited an essential protein that activates the IFN-alpha/beta pathway. This implies that vaccinated individuals will have a reduced IFN-alpha/beta response and poorer immune clearance.
Seneff said that the reduced symptoms in the vaccinated are likely because of this reduced pathway, since the initial symptoms of COVID-19 are caused by actions of the interferon action. This is why many vaccinated individuals are getting infected with rebound symptoms.
“[The vaccinated] don’t get the symptoms … don’t feel as sick, but actually, you’re spreading the disease like crazy because you’re not fighting it off.”
This also means that the virus will stick around in vaccinated individuals for longer, and if the disease is not cleared after a long period of time, it can cause severe disease down the line.
This hypothesis also concordant with hospitalization and mortality rates in New South Wales, an Australian state where over 95 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, with many people receiving one or two boosters.
Hospitalitization rates and mortality rates are significantly higher in the boosted and fully vaccinated cohort, with lower rates in the unvaccinated and patients that have only received one dose.
Reduced T-Cell Response
T-cells and B-cells are adaptive immune cells, meaning that they engage in specific and targeted attacks rather than attacking all foreign invaders the same way, which is what innate immune cells do.
Both cell types are very powerful, but both need to be activated first through innate immune system pathways to develop strong, specified attacks.
Killer T-cells engage in close combat with diseased and cancerous cells by punching holes into them whereas B plasma cells work long-range, releasing antibodies into fluids in the body to surround and neutralize toxins, bacteria, and viruses. B-cells also play a role in cancer, though their function and importance are not well understood.
T-cells have been extensively studied for the important role they play in cancer by killing cancer cells directly. The activity of T-cells have often been used to predict disease outcomes in cancer patients.
However, recent studies have shown that innate immune function has been altered in those injected with the COVID shots. A preprint study found receptors that activate T-cell action, including TLR7/8 (toll like receptors 7 and 8), are reduced in vaccinated individuals.
Further, a Chinese study of people who have been vaccinated with the spike protein-inducing COVID-19 shots found that gene activity for what proteins and pathways are turned on and off have changed across most immune cells.
This raises questions about our traditional understanding of the innate immune cell to T-cell activation pathway and whether vaccinated individuals will have an immune system that responds similarly to how it was before vaccination.
The study found T-cell activity was reduced as well as an increased inflammatory response in the immediate weeks following vaccination, which, in the long-term, puts people at risk for cancer.
“These data suggested that after vaccination, at least by day 28, other than generation of neutralizing antibodies, people’s immune systems, including those of lymphocytes (T-cells, B-cells, natural killer cells) and monocytes (innate immune cells), were perhaps in a more vulnerable state,” the authors wrote.
These findings overlap with pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole’s observations at his medical laboratory, Cole Diagnostics.
Cole told Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders that after vaccinations started rolling out in the older population, he noticed the reappearance of Molluscum contagiosum, a parapoxvirus that most people get in childhood and is kept in check by the immune system from the teenage years onward.
Though the uptick is unusual, as Cole saw more cases he grew concerned that the vaccines may be driving a form of “immune dysregulation,” meaning a possible breakdown to established immune controls. Since these viruses are normally kept in check by T-cells, which also keep cancers in check, a loss of immune memory against viruses could be a sign of loss of control in cancers.
“About a month or two later, all of a sudden there are certain types of cancers that I commonly see in the laboratory, after 500,000 patients … I started seeing endometrial cancers go up and there’s certain type … Melanomas, I started seeing thicker and earlier as well.”
Since then he has shared his findings in other lectures and found that other doctors and nurses around the world have made similar observations of increased rates of cancer cases.
An analysis by The Expose on VAERS data also indicated an uptick of cancer after COVID-19 vaccines by 143,233 percent.
An undated photograph of Cheryl Rolf and her late husband John Rolf (Courtesy of Cheryl Rolf).
Developing Cancer After Vaccination
In addition to cancers relapsing, there are also cases of sudden cancer development in previously cancer-free people after vaccination.
Cheryl Rolf shared her late husband John Rolf’s experience with a sudden onset of esophageal cancer within a month or two after vaccination.
“He was vaccinated with the first vaccine March 1st of 2021, and then the second vaccine on March 29th,” Cheryl Rolf, his wife told The Epoch Times during a phone call.
A few days after his second vaccination, John, who had always been healthy, started to cough, and soon he would sporadically choke on his food, and “that gradually increased in frequency over time.”
In August, John’s doctor sent him for a scan, showing suspicious growth at the base of the esophagus, and by late August, John was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer.
“The oncologist said he marked [John] curative,” Rolf said. “He planned for him [John] to fully recover from this.”
Esophageal cancer is a rarer form of cancer that predominantly affects men aged 45 to 70. Smoking, long-term heavy consumption of alcohol, bile reflux, nerve problems in the esophagus, and obesity are all risks of esophageal cancer.
Considering John’s age of 68 years at the time, he was at risk. However, he had no medical or family history of cancer. He also did not have stomach reflux, nor did he smoke, and only drank alcohol occasionally. He was not obese.
In early September, John started his chemo and radiotherapy and it was a particularly tortuous experience for him.
John’s trouble with swallowing soon worsened, coupled with nausea and an altered sense of taste from chemo, he soon “seemed to have given up trying to eat or drink.”
“[John] was supposed to be taking more food and fluids in—he was getting some in—but he was also spitting up an awful lot of yellow phlegm … he couldn’t just drink things like you and I do. He gets to take a sip and try to get it down.”
Dehydration and weight loss meant that he also needed hydration once every three days.
John finished his treatment regimen in mid-October 2021 and doctors planned for him to make a physical recovery from the therapy, gain his strength back, and then remove his tumor through surgery.
However, on Oct. 25, three days after he received his last hydrofusion, John passed away in his sleep.
“I got up and he said ‘I want to sleep some more’ and he didn’t get up. I went and looked [later] and he had passed away.”
Rolf called 911 and moved John onto his back and gave compressions until the paramedics came, but John was gone.
“It was a horrific experience.”
Fourteen cases of esophageal cancers have been reported to VAERS in total for all vaccines, of which one included metastatic cancer (stage 4). Eleven esophageal cancer cases were reported as an adverse event of COVID-19 vaccine, including the single stage 4 cancer case.
Multiple Myeloma After mRNA Vaccination
Stanley Pruszynski also shared his wife’s sudden development of multiple myeloma after two doses of the COVID-19 Moderna vaccine.
Multiple myeloma is a “cancer in the blood … there’s no cure for it because you can’t cure blood cancer,” Pruszynski said.
It affects immune cells, making patients particularly at risk of dying from infections.
The majority of multiple myeloma patients in remission relapses in a few years, and most will later succumb to complications of the disease, particularly infections.
Pruszynski’s wife, Bonnie, then 69 years old, has been very healthy throughout her life. She was adopted into her family, therefore it is unknown if her family has a medical history of cancers, but she had no medical history of previous cancers.
Pruszynski said that Bonnie was very fit. The two would go on walks of five miles a day, and usually it would be him who would want to take a break.
However, two weeks after her second Moderna dose in February, Bonnie developed flu symptoms with constant coughing and night sweats and would get little sleep.
These symptoms persisted and medication did little to improve her condition. She began to feel weak and would ask for breaks on walks before Pruszynski did. She was often scared, she would fall and need to hold onto the walls when navigating their apartment.
In April, Bonnie fell and was taken to the emergency room.
On admission, her hemoglobin level was so low that she was given a blood transfusion.
“They [doctors] tried running some blood tests; the blood wasn’t separating properly to do the testing … well, it turns out that it was because of her hemoglobin levels,” Pruszynski said.
In June, Bonnie was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and started chemotherapy. She started stem cell therapy in December 2021 and spent Christmas in the hospital.
Stem cell therapy is a dangerous yet ambitious therapy to reset the immune system.
First, stem cells will be harvested from the body and stored. The other white blood cells in the body will then be wiped out, often using chemo and radiotherapy. Once the immune system is obliterated, the stem cells will be transferred back into the body to restart the immune system anew.
Bonnie’s fatigue improved and her cancer went into remission, but she still feels weak. The two now walk a quarter of a mile a day, compared to the five miles they used to.
Bonnie now works remotely with reduced hours. Pruszynski estimates that her salary is likely halved.
Pruszynski said that Bonnie has had high blood protein levels for many years. This condition can be a precursor to diseases and often comes with symptoms, though Bonnie was not affected.
Pruszynski therefore suspects that the vaccine, particularly the spike protein it generates, which is known to be toxic, may have triggered something in Bonnie’s immune system leading to blood cancer.
“They give her an estimate of maybe five to 10 years, maybe less. They don’t really know. They don’t have a clue but eventually it will kill her.”
There are a total of 89 multiple myeloma cases reported to VAERS, including plasma multiple myeloma, recurrent myeloma, and recurrent plasma multiple myeloma for all vaccines, and 65 of the cases were reported for COVID-19 vaccines.
Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, a key figure in a December 2020 White House meeting seeking to encourage then President Donald Trump to investigate allegations of election fraud, has filed a motion in the Department of Justice’s investigation of Trump, calling for the release of the key document justifying the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Agents on Aug. 8 seized more than two dozen boxes of records from Trump’s Florida resort, which contained 11 sets of documents with classified markings, according to an FBI property receipt made public on Aug. 12.
Trump has said that he had declassified all the confiscated records before leaving office and demanded the immediate release of unredacted affidavit behind the FBI warrant.
Byrne, who recently testified before the House Jan. 6 Committee, argued in his Aug. 18 motion that Trump had such powers to declassify as president, citing a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020 where he said the former president twice exercised the same presidential authority.
The affidavit should be unsealed along with other records shedding light on the raid to promote transparency and accountability in government, Byrne argued in the court filing.
“Trump’s position was that … if this was not just some police state raid but there was a good reason for this raid, then, let’s see it,” Byrne told The Epoch Times.
“If Trump was telling the truth” and he in fact declassified all the documents, and the FBI submitted an affidavit accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents, “that means they were lying to the court,” he said.
“Trump was only mishandling classified documents if those documents were in fact, classified, but if he declassified then he was not mishandling classified documents.”
Byrne during the closed door meeting at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, urged the former president to launch a probe into the election fraud allegations.
Frustrated with the suggestion of having former Trump attorney Sidney Powell appointed special counsel to spearhead a limited investigation into alleged fraud, then White House Counsel Pat Cipollone allegedly told Trump: “Hey if you want to do this you don’t need my permission. You don’t even need a pen or a piece of paper. You can just say, ‘I hire Sidney Powell as White House Special Counsel,’ and it’s done,” Byrne wrote in the filing.
Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is surrounded by private security as he arrives at the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. House Office Building to be interviewed by the House select committee investigating the events on January 6, on July 15, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Later, responding to questions about Powell’s lack of a security clearance, General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who was present at the meeting, allegedly told Trump that he could “ do the same thing with a clearance.”
“You can grant any clearance you want, on the spot, verbally,” according to a sworn affidavit by Byrne filed with the court.
According to him, Trump acted on the suggestions, verbally appointing Powell a White House special counsel and granting her top secret security clearance. He says after that the White House attorneys angrily left the room but didn’t dispute Trump’s actions.
Trump ultimately rescinded the decision upon the persuasion of his then-personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to Byrne.
“He doesn’t have to sign anything, if he gives an order, that makes it legally effective,” Byrne told the court, describing it as “the Trump White House standard operating procedure.”
Backing Trump’s Claims
Mike Davis, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, has also backed Trump’s claims.
Trump “has the constitutional authority to declassify anything he wants,” he told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times, in a recent interview. “And so, when he sent boxes out of the White House, he declassified them.”
Davis said the Justice Department should have released the affidavit but would likely try to “hide it as much as they can.”
A federal judge on Friday signaled a willingness to release a redacted version of the affidavit despite opposition from the government lawyers, who argued that doing so could undermine ongoing investigations and imperil the safety of witnesses involved.
Secret Service personnel in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8, 2022. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)
Byrne saw the judge’s move as a “judicious decision.”
“The FBI should not have to reveal whoever was their sources, they should protect their sources,” he said. “But beyond that, they shouldn’t be able to keep this affidavit a secret.
“I think the country needs to know what the FBI is saying that caused the attorney general to sign off on this extraordinary application. Unprecedented.”
Because of the raid and activities of the kind, the FBI has become “so delegitimized now in the eyes of so much of the public,” Byrne said. “It’s creating a terrible fear and oppression in the minds of the American public.”
“I talked to a lot of non-Republicans and they’re all starting to sound like Republicans. They see this as police state tactics.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray has come out in defense of his agency, saying agents have received “deplorable and dangerous” online threats in the wake of the raid.
“I like Christopher Wray,” said Byrne. “But I think he’s got a very narrow window to save his organization. And I hope he does.”
Dr. Robert Malone on Aug. 19 sued the Washington Post, alleging statements in an article about him were defamatory.
The Jan. 24 article says Malone offered “misinformation” when he said during a speech that the COVID-19 vaccines “are not working” against the Omicron virus variant.
As proof, the paper linked to studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January that found a booster shot on top of a primary series was protecting well against severe disease. The studies were published in the agency’s quasi-journal, which has a stated goal of being aligned with the agency’s messaging. The centers have repeatedly promoted COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic.
Later in the speech, Malone said that the vaccines “do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.” That quote was not included in the Post’s article.
“I said nothing about disease and death at that point in time,” Malone told The Epoch Times, accusing the Post of taking a “selective misquote” and using the CDC study to contest an assertion he never made.
The Post did not respond to a request for comment while an automatic message from the article’s author, Timothy Bella, said he’s on parental leave until December. Bella provided no evidence in the article that the vaccines were protecting against Omicron infection.
An interview request from Bella to Malone before the article was written, reviewed by The Epoch Times, shows Bella telling Malone that “I have respect for you and your body of work” and that he hoped to “shadow you” during Malone’s time in Washington, where the doctor delivered the speech at a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Ten Statements
Ten of the statements in the article were defamatory, including the statement that Malone’s claims have been “discredited;” that Malone during the speech “repeated the falsehoods that have garnered him legions of followers;” and that Malone’s claims are “not only wrong, but also dangerous,” according to the 19-page suit, filed in federal court in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“The qualities WaPo disparaged—Dr. Malone’s honesty, veracity, integrity, competence, judgment, morals and ethics as a licensed medical doctor and scientist—are peculiarly valuable to Dr. Malone and are absolutely necessary in the practice and profession of any medical doctor and scientist. WaPo ascribes to Dr. Malone conduct, characteristics and conditions, including fraud, disinformation, misinformation, deception and dishonesty, that would adversely affect his fitness to be a medical professional and to conduct the business of a medical doctor,” the suit states.
“Dr. Malone’s statements concerning COVID-19 and the purported ‘vaccines’ were 100% factually accurate. He has never committed fraud on [sic] engaged in any medical disinformation or misinformation. Further, the so-called ‘vaccines’ do not work, as is abundantly clear from both the scientific and anecdotal evidence to date,” it also says.
Malone previously served the Post with a written notice threatening legal action if it did not retract and/or correct the allegedly defamatory statements, but it refused to make any retractions or corrections, according to the filing.
Malone has also threatened to sue other media outlets, including the New York Times, but decided to start with the Post because the case “is really straightforward,” he said.
A document made public on Aug. 18 for the first time shows that an FBI agent authored the request for a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s resort in Florida.
The document, an application for a warrant (pdf), was made by an FBI special agent.
The document also shows that an agent, possibly the same one, authored the affidavit, or a sworn statement that outlined to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida why it should grant the application.
The identity of the agent who signed the application and the name of the agent who signed the affidavit are redacted.
The application was made on Aug. 5, and approved the same day by U.S. District Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the unsealing of the application on Aug. 18.
Agents executed the warrant on Aug. 8, taking boxes of items and documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
While opposing the release of the affidavit, government lawyers said in a recent filing that they did not object to making public other documents related to the raid, including the application, as long as minor redactions could be made “to protect government personnel.”
Releasing the affidavit, on the other hand, would harm an ongoing investigation into potential criminal conduct by Trump, the lawyers argued.
Reinhart on Friday ordered them to produce a redacted version of the affidavit to him by Aug. 25 at noon. He said he was leaning towards releasing a redacted copy, though a lawyer for media outlets calling for its release said the process will take weeks.
“I find that on the present record the Government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed,” Reinhart said in a written order after a hearing.
A slew of documents have been filed under seal in the case. Some, including the warrant itself, were unsealed by Reinhart with light redactions on Aug. 12.
Neither federal lawyers nor Trump’s counsel opposed the release of those documents, which indicated that the FBI’s Washington Field Office was running point on the raid. The warrant was predicated on the belief that Trump has likely violated laws governing the transmittal of defense information, concealment of records, and destruction of records. Trump has said he is innocent and being politically targeted.
U.S. lawyers filed the application with the court on Aug. 15. Until Friday, none of its details could be viewed by the public.
Other documents were also unsealed: a criminal cover sheet showing U.S. Attorney Juan Gonzalez or the Southern District of Florida stating the case did not originate from several pending matters, a motion to seal the warrant and related documents, and the approval of the motion to seal.
Correction: This article has been updated to clarify the government did not object to the release of some warrant materials, and to show the judge approved the unsealing of the application on Aug. 18. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.
A new report connects a case involving tapes made by former President Bill Clinton with the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
“Judge’s ruling over audio tapes hidden in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer could significantly impact Donald Trump’s effort to contest FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago,” journalist John Solomon tweeted Thursday.
Judge’s ruling over audio tapes hidden in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer could significantly impact Donald Trump’s effort to contest FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago | Just The News https://t.co/MBCisbJ1rg
The ruling involved audio tapes Clinton stashed in a sock drawer that he used for his autobiography and that were also mined by writer Taylor Branch in Branch’s book, “Wrestling History: The Bill Clinton Tapes,” about Clinton, according to CBS.
The tapes became controversial when the watchdog group Judicial Watch went to court to demand the tapes be given to the National Archives and Records Administration, so the American people could hear them.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected the suit in March 2012.
In a report for Just the News, Solomon pointed to a few paragraphs of the 27-page ruling as significant because they indicated a president had wide latitude concerning documents under the Presidential Records Act.
“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion,” Jackson wrote.
“Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” the judge wrote.
“Because the audiotapes are not physically in the government’s possession, defendant submits that it would be required to seize them directly from President Clinton in order to assume custody and control over them,” Jackson noted. “Defendant considers this to be an ‘extraordinary request’ that is ‘unfounded, contrary to the PRA’s express terms, and contrary to traditional principles of administrative law.’ The Court agrees.”
So how does that connect to Trump? As Solomon noted, the former president has said records that were seized were both declassified and personal.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said the connection between the cases is profound.
“The government, the lawyer for the Archives, said, ‘You know what? If documents are in the former President’s hands, where they’re presumptively personal, we just, you know, we presume they’re personal,’” Fitton said, Just the News reported.
“The Justice Department previously had told us in response to a question about Bill Clinton: ‘Tough luck, it’s his.’ But they changed their mind for Donald Trump?” he said. “The law and court decision suggests that Trump is right. And frankly, based on this analysis, Trump should get every single document they took from him back. It’s all personal records.”
As noted by Politico, Fitton felt differently at the time.
“We respectfully disagree with the Court,” he said then. “The idea that a president could spirit official recordings and documents out of the White House and that there is nothing that can be legally done about it is a misreading of the Presidential Records Act. It is ironic that a law passed in response to the Nixon tapes controversy would allow Bill Clinton to keep tapes of his official actions secret and unavailable to the American people.”
Kevin Brock, former assistant FBI director for intelligence, said the search warrant used by the FBI was faulty and over broad, according to Just the News.
“Specificity is important in order to protect Fourth Amendment rights from exuberant government overreach designed to find whatever they can,” he said.
The warrant “apparently makes a novel legal assertion that any presidential record kept by a former president is against the law,” Brock said.
“You have to wonder what the other living former presidents think about that. They have the right and, apparently, clear desire to remain silent.”
In a master-level stroke of inversion, former President Donald Trump has found a new use for his ability to all but ensure the success of Republican candidates.
On Wednesday via Truth Social, Trump unleashed his “endorsements” against three Democrats: Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who is campaigning for New York’s 10th Congressional District, Carolyn Maloney of New York and Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Both Maloney and Nadler are competing for a redrawn 12th Congressional District.
Based upon context, these “endorsements” from Trump can be considered to be either darkly disingenuous or delivered sarcastically with a proverbial wink to his supporters. Judge for yourself.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote first about Goldman, “Lawyer Dan Goldman is running for Congress, NY-10, and it is my great honor to Strongly Endorse him. I do this not because of the fact that he headed up the Impeachment Committee and lost, but because he was honorable, fair, and highly intelligent. While it was my honor to beat him, and beat him badly, Dan Goldman has a wonderful future ahead….”
“….He will be very compassionate and compromising to those within the Republican Party, and will do everything possible to make sure they have a fair chance at winning against the Radical Left Democrats, who he knows are destroying our Country. I would like to thank Dan for fighting so hard for America, and for working so tirelessly to stop “Trump.” He was not easy to beat, but winning against him made me realize just how very talented I am!” he continued.
Trump suggested that Goldman will be a moderate “very compassionate and compromising to those within the Republican Party” a damning descriptor in the uber-radicalized far-left of the 2022 Democrat party.
Minutes later, a similar “endorsement” for Maloney, with some kind words for her opponent Nadler appeared on Trump’s account.
“A vote for Carolyn Maloney in NY-12 is a vote for the future! She is a kind and wonderful person, who has always said terrific things about me, and will support me no matter what I do, just as I supported her very early on. She begged for a check with no quid pro quo, and I gave it to her. In fact, I gave her many….”
According to the Federal Elections Commission, Trump did in fact donate to Maloney’s campaign in 1993, 1994, 1998, 2006 and again in 2009 for a total of $4,000.
He continued and even took aim at Jerry Nadler. “….On the other hand, Jerry Nadler is likewise a hard driving man of the people, whose energy and attention to detail is unlike anyone else in Congress. He is high energy, sharp, quick-witted, and bright. You can’t go wrong with either, but Carolyn Maloney is the better man. She will lead our Country into a very GREEN and prosperous future. Carolyn has my Complete and Total Endorsement, she will never let our Conservative Movement down!”
The highlight of the snarky message is definitely the combined swipe at both Maloney and Nadler, “You can’t go wrong with either, but Carolyn Maloney is the better man.”
Naturally, Goldman and Maloney both vehemently rejected the “endorsement” from the 45th President. Goldman’s campaign attempted to turn the joke around on Trump in a statement reported by The Blaze.
Several establishment media giants have asked a court to unseal all of the documents related to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last week.
The move came after the Justice Department filed its own request for some of the materials to be released, CNN reported.
Lawyers representing major media outlets like CNN, The Washington Post and NBC News appeared on Thursday before Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the warrant for the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to The Epoch Times.
Reinhart said he was “inclined” to release some of the affidavit from the raid and instructed the DOJ to redact any parts of the document that would undermine its investigation, The Washington Post reported. The judge said he would make a decision after the department submits its proposed redactions next Thursday.
Trump himself has said that he wants the affidavit unsealed.
“In the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday.
The news outlets cited “the public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred in these circumstances” in their filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The DOJ itself set things in motion last week when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the department’s request for documents to be released. Garland said the DOJ wants the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago.
However, unlike the media companies, which asked for all the documents to be unsealed, the DOJ did not seek the release of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant.
In fact, federal prosecutors investigating Trump asked a judge on Monday not to release the affidavit for national security reasons, The Hill reported.
“There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed,” a filing from the prosecutors reads.
But the media companies argued in their request that “the tremendous public interest in these records in particular outweighs any purported interest in keeping them secret.”
For once, these outlets may be correct.
Though they wave the flag of “public interest” in requesting the unsealing of the documents, make no mistake — the media would simply make more money and be able to drag this story out longer if all the documents were revealed.
But though the media’s motivation may be selfish, it actually would benefit the American people to have access to the documents.
The raid is a very public issue, and since it concerns a former president, the citizenry should (at least in principle) have the information, particularly surrounding what led to the search warrant.
Some have suggested that federal prosecutors’ attempt to keep the affidavit sealed is actually just an attempt to cover up some sort of corruption in the process of the search.
The media outlets are even being reasonable in their request for the documents. If national security is at risk, the government has the right to redact parts of the documents. But that doesn’t mean they should be sealed altogether.
“Even when the government can demonstrate compelling interests, the court must examine ‘whether there are alternative means available’ to address them, such as redaction of a document rather than sealing it in its entirety,” the filing reads.
It doesn’t make sense any longer to keep all the documents sealed. The details of the raid, how it was conducted, the nature of the documents searched for and more have already been made very public. Trying to hide anything else at this point smells of corruption.
The media outlets are right. It’s time to unseal the documents.
“Transparency serves the public interest in understanding and accepting the results. That’s good for the government and for the court,” Charles Tobin, a lawyer representing the outlets, said in court on Thursday, according to The Washington Post.
Mike Franken also took money from disgraced former senator Al Franken
Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Mike Franken pledged to run for office “without taking one dime of corporate PAC money.” That promise didn’t preclude him from taking thousands from corporate-funded groups.
“I don’t take any corporate PAC money,” Franken said in June. “Not a penny.” But that same month, the Iowa Democrat received $5,000 from Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D., Va.) Common Ground PAC, which accepted donations from Pfizer, Capital One, and Amazon. Franken took $2,500 from Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D., Ariz.) Liftoff PAC, which is funded by the National Association of Realtors, and another $2,500 from Sen. Tina Smith’s (D., Minn.) Velvet Hammer PAC, which boasts contributions from Wells Fargo, Delta Air Lines, and Goldman Sachs.
The donations could spell trouble for the Senate candidate, who has decried “corporate greed” and accused incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) of being beholden to “corporate donors.”
The Senate candidate also took $2,500 from disgraced former Democratic senator Al Franken’s Midwest Values PAC. The ex-comedian resigned in 2018 following accusations of sexual harassment, but said last year he is open to running again for office. His PAC raised hundreds of thousands of dollars even after his departure.
A Franken campaign spokesman said the candidate “has never taken a dime from corporate PACs.” He did not comment on any other corporate donations.
Franken, a retired Navy vice admiral, came under fire in July when he said he “did not serve” to defend the rights of people who criticize Joe Biden. He is the third Iowa Democrat to skirt a self-imposed corporate PAC donation ban after Rep. Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer, whom Franken bested during the Senate primary.
Finkenauer lost by 15 points in June during the Democratic primary to Franken, who was defeated in 2020 by failed Democratic Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield. Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) beat Greenfield in the general election by 6 points, though the Democrat raised twice as much money for her campaign.
Franken raked in $1.7 million during the last fundraising period, outraising Grassley by more than two to one. The Republican still holds more cash in hand, and won his last election by a nearly 25-point margin.
Grassley campaign manager Matt Dailer told the Washington Free Beacon that Franken should either return the donations or “admit his pledge was nothing more than a hollow stunt.”
“Mike Franken hasn’t even been elected to office and he’s already breaking his word to Iowans,” Dailer said. “He can make up any excuse he wants, but Iowans see through his dishonest word games.”
Employees at Google’s parent company are urging the search engine to suppress results for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, according to a petition sent Monday by the company union to Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, more than 650 employees at Alphabet Inc. signed the petition, which demands that Google remove “results for fake abortion providers” and what the union considers “misleading information” about reproductive health care services. The petition also demands that Google stop collecting users’ data on abortion-related searches, saying that users’ data would be “used against them” in states that have banned or restricted abortion.
Abortion providers often vilify pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, which provide counseling, resources, and often medical services to pregnant women. Planned Parenthood calls such centers “fake clinics” that have the “shady, harmful agenda” of talking women out of getting abortions.
The petition, circulated by the Alphabet Workers Union, urges Google to institute data privacy controls for “health-related activity,” such as searches for “reproductive justice, gender-affirming care, and abortion access information.” These data, according to the petition, “must never be saved, handed over to law enforcement, or treated as a crime.”
Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google have faced political challenges on data disclosure since a draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was leaked in May. Twenty-one congressional Democrats in June urged Google in a letter to “limit the appearance” or add “user-friendly disclaimers” to search results for pro-life pregnancy centers.
Google states in its Privacy Policy that it must respond to a government subpoena, court order, or search warrant but pushes back on requests for information it deems too broad.
A Nebraska police department this month used legally acquired information from Facebook to prosecute 17-year-old Celeste Burgess for violating Nebraska’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks, the Nebraska Examinerreported.
Google stated in July it will automatically erase visits to abortion facilities from a user’s location history, the Wall Street Journalreported.
Alphabet executives have not yet responded to the petition.
Emails reveal how Hunter got Obama to officially recognize partnership
The Biden administration last month warned of a Chinese Communist Party front group that seeks to “co-opt” state leaders as part of Beijing’s sprawling foreign influence operation. Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show the first son and his business partners helped the organization gain a foothold in the United States while his father was vice president.
In 2015, Biden’s partners lobbied the State Department to publicly approve a partnership between the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a nonprofit group that hosts forums for state legislators and corporate leaders. Hunter’s team portrayed the initiative as a boon for U.S.-Chinese relations.
But emails show they hoped the U.S. government’s recognition of the partnership would help the foundation establish an office in Beijing. It is not clear why the partnership—or the Obama administration’s blessing of it—would have helped Hunter Biden’s business prospects. What is clear is that he and his colleagues believed it would: Biden associate James Bulger wrote in a July 17, 2015, email that the Beijing office would be “a great business driver” for a joint venture they sought with Harvest Fund Management, a Chinese investment firm led by Henry Zhao, a businessman and reported member of the Chinese Communist Party.
The lobbying campaign proved wildly successful on all fronts. After a September 2015 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, President Barack Obama endorsed the partnership between State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group. Months later, Hunter Biden’s company finalized its multimillion-dollar deal with Harvest Management.
Biden’s emails, which have not been previously reported, show how the younger Biden helped a Chinese Communist Party influence outfit that his father’s administration now views as a national security threat. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last month that the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries seeks “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”
On April 28, 2015, Bulger told Hunter Biden that State Legislative Leaders Foundation president Stephen Lakis wanted to meet to discuss a path forward to setting up a SLLF office in China and creating a partnership between his organization and the Chinese organization.
“Whatever you need on this just let me know and I’ll make it work,” Biden replied.
Between April and July 2015, Biden’s longtime friend and business partner Eric Schwerin arranged meetings between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and State Department officials to help advance the partnership with the Chinese group. Schwerin, who had dozens of White House meetings with members of then-vice president Joe Biden’s office, was “instrumental” in arranging the State Department sessions, according to an email from Bulger.
The Biden group’s primary goal was to have Obama reference the collaboration between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group in his upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping. On May 11, 2015, a foundation adviser wrote Evan Ryan, who then served as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, that a reference by Obama would help them gain “top level approval” from Chinese officials to set up a foundation office in Beijing.
Ryan, who now serves as White House cabinet secretary and is married to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appears to have played a major role in midwifing the partnership. Schwerin noted in an email to Biden that Ryan had “helped with” the effort to officially acknowledge the foundation’s work with the Chinese group. Other emails show Biden and Schwerin in frequent correspondence with Ryan on other matters.
The U.S. intelligence community has increasingly warned that Beijing uses American businessmen and nonprofit groups—often through “deceptive and coercive” means—to promote China’s political agenda in the West. Republicans have said Hunter Biden would have been a prime target for such an influence operation, given his extensive dealings in China and his access to policymakers in Washington. Biden, who is under federal investigation over his taxes and foreign business dealings, earned millions of dollars from a deal with CEFC China Energy, whose chairman was suspected of having ties to Chinese military intelligence. Biden also provided legal services to a CEFC executive whom he referred to as “the fucking spy chief of China” and who was convicted for trying to bribe African officials for oil rights.
The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation have hosted five “Cooperation Forums” in Honolulu, Las Vegas, Wuhan, and Shijiazhuang since 2015, providing the Chinese influence group access to dozens of state legislative leaders and American business executives. While the U.S. government has not publicly scrutinized the forums, the State Department in 2020 pulled out of a forum between the Chinese group and the National Governors Association due to the former’s efforts to “spread Beijing’s malign influence in the United States.”
Biden’s associates began lobbying the U.S. government as a ploy to land a lucrative investment from Harvest Fund Management, one of China’s largest asset managers. Biden allegedly touted his family’s political connections in seeking a $5 million investment from Harvest founder Henry Zhao, the Washington Free Beaconreported. Zhao is believed to be a Chinese Communist Party official, according to the New York Post.
The Biden team had worked with the State Legislative Leaders Foundation before. The foundation helped Biden and his associates at the private equity firm BHR Partners in 2015, when Hunter’s team helped the Aviation Industry Corporation of China purchase Michigan auto parts maker Henniges Automotive, the Free Beaconreported earlier this year.
The Biden emails provide a detailed roadmap of how the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, the Biden team, and Zhao sought to use an official blessing from the U.S. government to advance their business interests. In a September 2014 email, Lakis, the foundation president, told Zhao he was a “shareholder” in Bulger’s company. He urged Zhao to consider an investment in the Biden joint venture, saying he had “every confidence that such a partnership will be beneficial to all parties.”
Back in China, Zhao was “working with the Chinese Governments [sic] counterparts in Beijing” to have the foundation’s efforts mentioned during the Obama-Xi summit in September 2015, Bulger told Biden in a July 17, 2015, email. Having the initiative mentioned in an official document for the summit “would be a huge boost to [Zhao’s] effort in China.” That in turn “would be a great business driver for Burnham/Harvest,” referring to their joint venture, said Bulger. Bulger, a relative of mobster Whitey Bulger, also wrote that Zhao wanted Biden’s “help with this matter.”
The emails do not detail what steps Biden took to help the initiative, but he cheered the partnership between the foundation and the Chinese group in a November 2015 email to Zhao. Biden wrote he was “very happy to hear that the State Legislative Leaders Foundation matter was worked out and was highlighted during President Xi’s State Visit in September.”
Burnham and Harvest finalized the joint venture in March 2016, according to emails Biden sent to Zhao.
“This is an exciting milestone and I look forward to helping building [sic] a cross border institution that helps investors in our respective countries across the globe,” Biden wrote Zhao on March 18, 2016.
While Biden had high hopes for the partnership with Zhao—he said his company had “no greater partner” than the Chinese businessman—the joint venture went south in May 2016 after another Biden partner, Devon Archer, was indicted on fraud charges.
It is unclear whether Biden was aware of his son’s activities, though Hunter has kept his father in the loop on several of his other business ventures. Joe Biden met in 2017 with Michael Lin, a longtime Hunter business partner who advised the State Legislative Leaders Foundation on its first foray into China, the Free Beaconreported in May 2021.
None of Biden’s associates—Schwerin, Lakis, or Bulger—have registered with Congress as lobbyists, despite their outreach to the State Department. None returned requests for comment. Biden’s attorney and the White House also did not respond to requests for comment.
Since we learned of the unprecedented raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound last week, millions of Americans have questioned the political neutrality of the Department of Justice. Federal law enforcement is facing a legitimacy crisis—at least in the eyes of half the country—thanks to the fake and overhyped scandals it drummed up during the Trump years.
So MSNBC’s Morning Joe invited the former FBI official Peter Strzok to assure viewers the bureau was on the level. “Absolutely the American public should trust what the FBI is doing,” he said Monday.
You may remember Strzok from such FBI scandals as Russiagate, the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, or his affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. As the man in charge of investigations into the two candidates in the 2016 presidential election, he was constantly texting Page about his hatred for Trump. Asking this man to vouch for the integrity of the FBI is like putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Strzok’s commentary is a microcosm of the mainstream media’s approach to coverage of the Mar-a-Lago raid, about which we still know precious little— except, we are told, that the integrity of our law enforcement officials shall not be questioned!
“The FBI is not the enemy,” was the headline of the Washington Post’s lead editorial. The New York Times over the weekend labored to link a nutjob who shot up an FBI office in Ohio with, you know, the “bellicose, dehumanizing, and apocalyptic” language of people like us. It’s extraordinary to hear that sort of tut-tutting from the same crowd that insisted for most of Trump’s presidency that he was a fascist and a Kremlin agent.
Strzok would know something about that—in fact, he’s free to run his mouth on television because the FBI canned him after the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded his anti-Trump texts cast a cloud over the bureau’s investigation into Trump. Strzok personally interfered with the agent overseeing the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn to stop him from closing the file after the evidence against him didn’t pan out.
And his team pushed to include opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign in an application for a secret surveillance warrant on former Trump adviser Carter Page. That debacle led to the nullification of two of the four warrants and a scathing inspector general’s report that “identified multiple instances” in which the factual assertions the bureau made in the application for the Page warrants “were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”
Perhaps, when we know all the facts, we will find that the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home was justified. Until then, we reserve our right to question the integrity of the federal law enforcement officials who have demonstrated their willingness to behave like political hacks and abuse the power with which they are entrusted to punish their political opponents.
CRT is treason, and teacher’s unions are enemies of the state because they are pushing it and should be tried for treason. It only serves to weaken our country. [US Patriot]
To allow schools to be free of Critical Race Theory (CRT) parents must break the unions, parental rights activists say.
This school year, Moms for Liberty leaders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich have mounted a nationwide campaign to end union control of schools.
“Let’s start the new school year right—by ending the reign of the powerful teachers’ unions who care more about pushing woke ideology and rewriting forms to say ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mom’ or ‘dad,’ than they do about improving reading scores or closing the growing learning gaps in our country,” the group’s press release reads.
Teachers have pushed CRT into the classroom at a time when many students are failing to learn how to read, said Justice.
Tina Descovich, cofounder of Moms for Liberty, a pro-parental rights organization. (Courtesy of Moms for Liberty)
According to nationwide surveys, only about a third of 4th Grade students read proficiently at a 4th Grade reading level in 2019.
At the same time, reports of teachers giving children political instruction in CRT, transgenderism, and other left-wing ideologies have increased greatly.
This push comes from teachers’ unions, said Descovich.
Teachers’ unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have long been bastions of Democratic political power, she said.
Rather than ensuring teachers get good pay while giving children a good education, they have focused on making education ideological, said Justice.
“What we’ve seen over the past 40 years in education in America is a real shift away from giving children practicable skills to making them into social justice warriors,” she said.
Moms for Liberty encourages teachers to leave these unions to stop their promotion of left-wing education, Descovich said.
“It’s vital that teachers understand there [are] options out there, they do not have to be a member of the union,” she said.
For many parents, COVID-19 led to new discoveries about schools, Descovich said. During the pandemic, parents got to see the lessons their kids received. Often, they didn’t like what they saw.
“I think they’ve been shocked to see gender ideology being pushed in the classrooms, the division between race, the Critical Race Theory,” she said.
While the pandemic was a time for parents to learn, now is a time for them to act, Moms for Liberty leaders said.
“The start of the 2022-2023 school year is a perfect time to end the woke union bosses’ death grip on innovation, excellence, and freedom in public education,” the Moms for Liberty press release reads.
Union Busting
Moms for Liberty has a two-part strategy to break union power, according to its press release.
It will encourage teachers to leave unions in states where they can do so, and it will inform parents about school performance.
As unions like the NEA have spread across America, they have allied with school system administrators to protect a bloated bureaucracy, said Justice.
“We see more and more money being spent on public schools,” she said. “And yet, the teachers aren’t being compensated better.”
Although the Supreme Court has ruled that it’s illegal to force teachers to pay union dues if they don’t want to, sometimes unions do so anyway.
In many states, even non-union members have to pay unions for their role in collective bargaining. In other states, social pressure to remain in a union plays a major role, said Descovich.
“The unions will say, ‘If you get in trouble, if somebody accuses you of something, the only person that’s going to be there for you with us,” she said.
Money from union dues gives unions immense political power. The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers gave $29 million combined to Democrats and other liberal groups.
The unions also play a major role in encouraging a left-wing curriculum, Justice said.
Tiffany Justice, cofounder of Moms for Liberty, a pro-parental rights organization. (Courtesy of Moms for Liberty)
“The unions have become the foot soldiers for the Left in America, the very most progressive fringe Left,” she said.
Justice said she strongly believes American teachers are already breaking from the unions.
“I think that the education curtain has been pulled back, and all of America now recognizes that the union bargains for the people at the table, not for the teachers on the ground,” she said.
Parents can also pressure schools to change their curriculum, said Descovich. But often, schools have pushed back against parents.
In union strongholds, some Moms for Liberty supporters have lost their jobs due to union member harassment of their employers, she said.
One mother got the FBI called on her. It has been a struggle to get school boards to listen to parents.
“It’s been about as nasty as you can imagine where there are union strongholds,” said Descovich.
Moms for Liberty has more than 200 nationwide chapters, Descovich said. Despite these setbacks, many chapters have met with success in placing parental rights advocates on school boards.
“The unions need to understand that teachers in schools, their primary duty is to educate children,” said Justice.
Former President Donald Trump will likely not be arrested on charges stemming from the FBI’s raid last week, according to a former Harvard Law School professor.
“Yes, it’s possible [but] I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Alan Dershowitztold Newsmax on Tuesday about whether Trump would be arrested. People who believe that prosecution and an indictment would keep Trump away from the 2024 campaign are “dead wrong,” he remarked.
“He can run for president even if he’s indicted, convicted, and wearing striped shirts, prison garb,” he added to the channel. “The Constitution provides only four bases for disqualification for president, and being convicted of a crime is not one of them. Congress can’t change the criteria that are in the Constitution for the election of the president.”
Echoing statements made by Trump and some Republicans, Dershowitz said the affidavit used to justify the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago should be released.
“You can redact the names of agents, you can redact sources and methods, but what we want to know is what the basis of probable cause that they have,” he said.
A U.S. magistrate judge in the case, Bruce Reinhart, ordered the unsealing of a warrant and property receipt. The warrant shows Trump is under federal investigation for possibly several U.S. Code violations, while the receipt shows agents found allegedly classified and top secret material at Trump’s home.
Affidavit
Reinhart scheduled a Thursday hearing on whether the affidavit and other materials related to the case should be released.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice on Monday argued that releasing the affidavit would damage the agency’s investigation and argued that unsealing a version with redactions “would not serve any public interest.” Several media outlets, watchdogs, and other entities have filed motions to release the affidavit.
“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” the Justice Department wrote. “The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly.”
The former president on Monday said that FBI agents took three passports from him before a spokesperson confirmed that a Department of Justice official said they were returned. Hours later, he called for the Justice Department to release the affidavit, which would provide insight into why the Department of Justice believes it is justified in trying to obtain the search warrant.
“There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States … in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN. Also, the Judge on this case should recuse!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
WORKING AMERICANS ARE SUFFERING TREMENDOUSLY AT THIS TIME OF “ZERO INFLATION.”
Biden claimed on Wednesday, August 10 that, “today we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July – zero percent,” despite the fact that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure of inflation, was up 8.5 percent versus July 2021. While the CPI was down from its 9.1 percent June number, it is still extremely high, and certainly not zero.
The decrease in acceleration of the inflation rate was driven primarily by a decrease in gas prices. Per Bloomberg, “while a drop in gasoline prices is good news for Americans, their cost of living is still painfully high, forcing many to load up on credit cards and drain savings.” Per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of gasoline dropped 7.7 percent in July, but is still up 44 percent for the twelve months ending July 2022, with all energy commodities up 44.9 percent.
On the day the CPI numbers were released (August 10), the national average for a gallon of gas was $4.03, down from record highs of $5.02 per gallon, but significantly higher than the August 2019 average of $2.70 per gallon. That is nearly $80 more a month to fill-up a 15-gallon tank on a weekly basis, nearly $1,000 more per year.
The Biden administration has taken credit for the decrease in the price of gas – even though the stated reason for the original increase in the price of gas was the “Putin Price Hike.” The decrease in the price of gas is actually due to a reduction in demand, as Americans put off summer driving vacations, something many can no longer afford. In addition, the futures markets are worried about the US economy and a further decline in demand as the recession continues to take hold of the economy. The strong dollar has also helped to drive down demand as well.
So, if the price of gas is down, what is driving 8.5 percent inflation? The two primary drivers are the cost of food and the cost of housing.
The “food at home category, which tracks the cost of groceries, surged 13.1% over the last year, the most significant increase since March 1979.” This food inflation is hitting basic staples, not just champagne and caviar. Staples such as eggs are up 38 percent, chicken is up 16.6 percent, milk 15.6 percent, potatoes 13.3 percent, rice 12.7 percent, and fresh fruits and vegetables 8.2 percent.
The cost of shelter also continues to rise. “Shelter costs – which account for roughly one-third of the CPI…have climbed 5.7%” over the past year, the fastest since February 1991.
The impact on working-class Americans has been devastating, and the headlines are misleading. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “nonfarm payroll employment rose by 528,000 in July and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5%.” The corporate media tells us that this is a huge success for Biden. However, if you dig into the numbers, it is not all good news. There are two disturbing statistics contained in the BLS report:
“The labor force participation rate, at 62.1%, and the employment-population ratio, at 60.8%… remain below their February 2020 values.”
“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons increased by 303,000 to 3.9 million in July. The rise reflected the increase in the number of persons whose hours were cut due to slack work or business conditions.”
This means that fewer people are participating in the workforce, which drives the unemployment rate down. And 3.9 million Americans are working at least two jobs just to make ends meet. This is unacceptable in the United States.
The impact of the poorly performing economy is starting to show in the data.
“Midyear 2022 U.S. foreclosure filings hit 164,581,” an increase of 153 percent from the same time period a year ago. In addition, car repossessions are exploding. According to Barron’s, vehicle repossessions have doubled among “prime” borrows, which includes “borrowers with good credit scores.” According to the same article, “most of the loans on recently repossessed cars originated in 2020 and 2021,” showing that much of the COVID stimulus money was spent on cars people could not afford.
Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. “An estimated 34 million US consumers, or roughly 13%, spent more than they earned in the past six months, underscoring how Americans are having difficulty managing their finances amid decades-high inflation.”
According to the same article, 55.6 percent of Americans have less than $5,000 in savings.This also helps to explain the rapid growth in US consumer borrowing.
“US consumer borrowing surged in June, reflecting a jump in credit card balances and a record increase in non-revolving lending that includes auto and school loans.” The same report showed that “revolving credit outstanding, which includes credit cards, increased $14.8 billion. Non-revolving credit increases $25.4 billion.”
To summarize, we are in a situation where Americans are working multiple jobs, spending more than they earn, losing their homes and cars, eroding their savings, and borrowing more than ever. All of this at a time when, according to Biden, “we have zero inflation.”
It is likely to get even worse. The Federal Reserve is expected to “stick with hawkish rate hikes until data show further slowing in inflation,” with an increase of 50 or 75 basis points likely in September. This will make the exploding credit card debt more expensive to pay as interest rates rise and adjustable-rate mortgages more expensive, which will cause more foreclosures.
Working Americans are suffering tremendously at this time of “zero inflation.”
The Internal Revenue Service has spent tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars purchasing guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.
Reports of the agency’s massive spend on weapons and combat equipment appear to be at odds with its stated purpose of “providing America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities.” It also resurfaces as Joe Biden deploying 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents to audit Americans.
Prior to the minting of Biden’s nearly 100,000 new IRS agents, the agency already had a sizable budget, of which tens of millions of dollars had been spent on purchasing military-oriented gear.
Between the fiscal years 2006 and 2019, the agency spent $21.3 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, using the funds to stockpile 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition.
The government watchdog group Open The Books conducted a case study itemizing the items purchased by the IRS between fiscal years 2015 and 2019.
Of a total of $8.7 million spent, $4.5 million was directed towards guns and ammunition while $4.2 million was designated for combat equipment.
SOURCE: OPEN THE BOOKS.
“As of January 1, 2019, the IRS owned 4,600 guns and stockpiled 5 million rounds of ammunition. This included 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles, [and] 15 submachine guns,” explains Open The Books in its report, “The Militarization of The U.S. Executive Agencies.”
The weapons and ammunition are believed to be used by the agency’s roughly 2,200 Special Agents, who are “investigative forensic accountants utilizing specialized technology to uncover sophisticated schemes to defraud the government, as well as assist in counterterrorism and anti-narcotics efforts,” noted Open The Books.
In addition to handguns, items such as long guns, shotgun ammunition, night vision scopes, ballistic shields, and several forms of body armor were also purchased by the IRS with its taxpayer-provided millions.
It remains unclear whether or not Biden’s boost to the IRS budget mole results in the agency gaining more military style equipment or weapons.
Former Vice President Mike Pence broke with former President Donald Trump and other Republicans and said Wednesday they should stop criticizing the FBI following the bureau’s raid targeting the former president’s home.
“I also want to remind my fellow Republicans, we can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI,” said Pence during an event at St. Anselm College.
“The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” Pence stated, according to The Associated Press. “Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”
Pence also told a crowd he would give “due consideration” if he is asked to testify before the House Jan. 6 committee.
Trump and some Republicans say the FBI has unfairly targeted conservatives and has not done enough to curb left-wing extremists, including those who threatened pro-life groups and pregnancy centers this summer after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Some have also pointed to how some Jan. 6 detainees have been treated while under federal custody.
Two-Tiered System?
Former Trump administration official Kash Patel told The Epoch Times last week, that after the raid, the United States is descending toward the third world and that Americans are suffering under a two-tier system that treats Republicans and Trump less favorably than Democrats.
Examples he gave include the FBI’s apparent hesitance to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop and overseas business deals as well as the bureau illegally spying on Trump’s former aide, Carter Page.
With his comment on Wednesday, Pence appears to be strategically distancing himself from his former boss. Observers say Pence, with recent speeches and events, is trying to gear up for a 2024 presidential run.
Last month, Pence and Trump appeared at separate rallies in Arizona, with Pence backing GOP gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, who was ultimately defeated by Trump-backed Kari Lake.
Their paths diverged on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump criticized the former vice president for not objecting to or delaying the certification of the election. Earlier this year, in February, Pence again claimed that he had no power during the Jan. 6 certification process.
“If the Vice President [Mike Pence] had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans … are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?” Trump said in a statement in February after Pence’s comment.
Ignoring other causes of depression has left millions of Americans without truly effective treatment
“Lexapro appears to relieve the symptoms of depression and anxiety by increasing serotonin,” says an ad on the Bonkers Institute, a website that archives drug ads and also satirizes pharma claims and shaky science.
“Zoloft works to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain which may be related to symptoms of depression,” another ad says.
“Paxil CR blocks serotonin from being reabsorbed back into the sending nerve cell. This process increases the availability of serotonin to the receiving nerve cell and may help message [depression] transmission return to normal,” a third ad says.
As many Epoch Times readers may have heard, the serotonin “chemical imbalance” theory of depression was recently put to rest by a group of University College London (UCL) scientists in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. After reviewing decades of research, there’s no evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression, they wrote.In other words, the theory that was the basis for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants and their tremendously profitable franchise was false.
While the theory has been questioned by scientists for decades, the Molecular Psychiatry research seems to be the final nail in the coffin for the theory—a technical knockout.
“The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants,” said the article’s lead author, Joanna Moncrieff, a professor of psychiatry at UCL. “Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen dramatically since the 1990s.
“Thousands of people suffer from side effects of antidepressants, including the severe withdrawal effects that can occur when people try to stop them, yet prescription rates continue to rise.
“We believe this situation has been driven partly by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is high time to inform the public that this belief is not grounded in science.”
A Powerful Drug Franchise
It’s hard to overestimate the medical, financial, and sociological consequences of the chemical imbalance theory, which propelled the 1987 FDA approval of the SSRI antidepressant Prozac and which is still followed to this day. Several years ago, Harvard Health Publishing estimated that about 1 in 4 American women in their 40s and 50s were taking antidepressants.
Thanks to direct-to-consumer marketing (or “mongering,” as some say) about depression, people with life problems or occasional bad moods absorbed the chemical imbalance messaging, diagnosed themselves with depression, and presented themselves to doctors’ offices.
Family, job, health, money, or housing problems were no longer a reason for feeling down or defeated, suggested aggressive SSRI advertising campaigns; if you were depressed, you had a chemical imbalance—regardless of whatever else may have accounted for your depression (such as the loss of meaning and social connection often observed in modern society).
Whereas the antidepressants that preceded SSRIs, some called monoamine oxidase inhibitors, were connected to neurotransmitters in the brain such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, SSRIs reduced the chemistry to a simple problem-solution equation, which the public readily bought. Thanks to the new chemical imbalance of serotonin theory of depression, drugmakers had a formidable new franchise; doctors, a ready-made, patient-pleasing tool; the media, reliable new advertisers; and Wall Street, hot new stocks—all almost overnight. Worldwide sales of SSRIs have been estimated to soar as high as $18.29 billion by 2027.
Response From Mainstream Medicine
Psychiatrists and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which is highly funded by drugmakers—70 percent of authors of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition were drugmaker funded, as reported by ABC news—were among the first to push back against the Molecular Psychiatry article. Chief among protestations were “we never promoted the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory”—no, you let drug makers do that, cynics might say—and “no one really understands why or how antidepressants work.”
The “third rail” for drugmaker-funded practitioners is the suggestion that mental illness may not be from physical conditions at all. As Mark Horowitz, co-author of the Molecular Psychiatry article, put it, “One interesting aspect in the studies we examined was how strong an effect adverse life events played in depression, suggesting low mood is a response to people’s lives and cannot be boiled down to a simple chemical equation.”
If depression comes from stress, trauma, grief, loneliness, and social conditions such as poverty, as Horowitz suggests, it wouldn’t be amenable to medication treatment. Worse, if it weren’t a permanent chemical imbalance as the serotonin theory of depression implies, it wouldn’t turn into lifelong medication prescriptions, which drugmakers seek and treasure the most.
“Although viewing depression as a biological disorder may seem like it would reduce stigma, in fact, research has shown the opposite, and also that people who believe their own depression is due to a chemical imbalance are more pessimistic about their chances of recovery,” Moncrieff said.
Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who has been called the Conscience of Psychiatry, elaborated on this idea to The Epoch Times:
“Since the ancient Greeks, physicians have wanted to believe the mental and emotional distress must have biological origins. That allowed them to include ‘mental diseases’ within their specialty.
“With the development of massive drug company involvement in routine psychiatric practice during the advent of the antipsychotic drugs in 1954, drug companies also began pushing the biochemical and biological basis of human experiences such as anxiety, depression, manic-depression (now bipolar-disorder), and schizophrenia.
“Then, in the late 1980s, in anticipation of the approval of Prozac for depression by the FDA, Eli Lilly and Company conducted an international advertising campaign claiming that depression is caused by a biochemical imbalance in serotonin. It was apparent from the start that this was pure fantasy.
“In my books and scientific articles as far back as 1983, I pointed out the continuing truth that there are no known biochemical imbalances in the brains of mental patients until they are put there by the neurotoxic effects of all psychiatric drugs.
“Now, a review article by British psychiatrist Johanna Moncrieff has reconfirmed that research fails to show any connection between depression and abnormalities in serotonin metabolism in the brain. No so-called ‘mental illnesses’ are known to be genetic or biochemical in origin—it’s all medical and pharmaceutical company hype.”
Breggin and his wife, Ginger, wrote the new book “COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey.”
Don’t Stop SSRIs Abruptly, Warn Both Sides
Whether they believe SSRIs are specious and over-prescribed or valuable treatments, clinicians warn patients not to stop the drugs abruptly.
In 2018, The New York Times exposed that SSRI antidepressants can be difficult to quit and downright addictive (though drugmakers prefer to call the addiction effects a “discontinuation syndrome”). Some patients say they weren’t warned by their doctors that they may be indefinitely parked on the drugs because of the side effects such as dizziness, nausea, headache, and brain zaps that they experience when trying to stop the drugs, the newspaper reported.
Brian, a 29-year-old Chicagoan who asked not to give his last name, said that he has remained on an SSRI antidepressant for years despite his wish to quit.
“Every time I try to stop, I get something that feels like an electrical current in my head, and I can’t do it,” he said.
The NY Times article drew a huge backlash from psychiatrists. “By amplifying the social media echo chamber, the article creates the unfortunate impression that most patients are forced to continue antidepressants out of fear of withdrawal rather than out of prevention of recurrence,” read a letter to the editor signed by a group of 39 psychiatrists, who termed depression as “chronic” and “undertreated.” At least 35 of the letter signers were affiliated with Columbia Universityʼs College of Physicians and Surgeons, an institution that received a $250 million gift from former Merck CEO Roy Vagelos and his wife, Diana, in 2017.
Since their original marketing, SSRI antidepressants are also now known to increase bone loss and fracture risk, as well as the risk of the dreaded intestinal condition of Clostridium difficile.
Then, Why Do SSRIs Work?
It’s generally agreed that SSRI antidepressants sometimes work, though not impressively, and not for all patients. But why? According to a follow-up paper by Moncrieff and Horowitz, “Any drug that changes normal brain activity is likely to have some impact on mood, and … by virtue of changing brain chemistry, antidepressants also produce changes to normal mental activity and experiences.”
Antidepressants also cause numbing of the moods, the researchers say—“including not just sadness and anxiety but welcome emotions like happiness and joy”—which can reduce depression scores, making the drugs appear to be effective.
A paper in the Springer journal Inflammopharmacology suggests a possible SSRI mechanism could be decreasing “neuroinflammation [in the brain] through multiple mechanisms including the reduction of blood or tissue cytokines or regulating complex inflammatory pathways.”
Whatever the explanation, it remains true that other methods to treat depression, including exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy, have proven efficacy with additional benefits and no side effects.
A Final Irony
Even as the premise through which millions of Americans were put on psychoactive drugs has been demolished, raising questions about the interface between medical care and misleading drug marketing, some news outlets have sought to politicize the contretemps.
Many media outlets went on the attack after Fox News host Tucker Carlson said: “First, we were told that SSRIs would save lives. Now, we learn they don’t actually work as intended. In fact, the whole idea behind the drug was completely wrong. And yet—and here is the best part—people are ignoring this news, and the drugs are still being prescribed.”
Rolling Stone magazine published a hit piece portraying Moncrieff as a conspiracy nut with a history of criticizing the over-medication of mental conditions and attributing some mass shootings to psychoactive drugs. The article, “Who Is the Psychiatrist Behind the Antidepressant Study Taking Over Right-Wing Media?”, reveals the 180-degree turn that progressive outlets have taken toward drugmakers since COVID-19—forgiving and forgetting original distrust of corporatism, capitalism, monopolies, and the drugmaker-caused opioid scourge—in order to be able to demonize rivals.
Meanwhile, millions on SSRI antidepressants now face the prospect of quitting.
Former President Donald Trump suggested that the Jan. 6 committee should be dissolved, following the defeat of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in a GOP primary on Aug. 16, calling the vote a “referendum” and that “the people have spoken.”
“Congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her great and very decisive WIN in Wyoming. This is a wonderful result for America, and a complete rebuke of the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Aug. 16.
“Liz Cheney should be ashamed of herself, the way she acted, and her spiteful, sanctimonious words and actions towards others,” Trump continued. “Now she can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion where, I am sure, she will be much happier than she is right now.”
“Thank you WYOMING!” Trump added.
Wyoming Republican congressional candidate Harriet Hageman waves as she takes a picture with children during a primary election night party in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on Aug. 16, 2022. (Michael Smith/Getty Images)
Cheney was defeated by Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, a natural resources attorney from Fort Laramie. As of early Wednesday morning, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office reported (pdf) that Hageman garnered 113,025 votes, compared to Cheney’s 49,316.
The result was not unexpected, considering that nearly 70 percent of Wyoming residents voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Cheney is one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and serves as the co-chair of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
“I assume that with the very big Liz Cheney loss, far bigger than had ever been anticipated, the January 6th Committee of political Hacks and Thugs will quickly begin the beautiful process of DISSOLUTION?” Trump wrote in another Truth Social post on Tuesday.
“This was a referendum on the never ending Witch Hunt. The people have spoken!” Trump added.
During her concession speech on Tuesday, Cheney called out Trump directly.
“I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never anywhere near the Oval Office and I mean it. I love my country more,” she said. “This primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) speaks to supporters at a primary night event in Jackson, Wyoming, on Aug. 16, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said Cheney’s speech was “uninspiring.”
“Liz Cheney’s uninspiring concession speech, in front of a ‘tiny’ crowd in the Great State of Wyoming, focused on her belief that the 2020 Presidential Election was not, despite massive and conclusive evidence to the contrary, Rigged & Stolen,” Trump wrote. “It was, and that’s not even counting the fact that many election changes, in numerous States, were not approved by State Legislatures, an absolute must.”
Hageman will now face Democratic nominee Lynnette Grey Bull in the Nov. 8 general election, in the fight for Wyoming’s lone seat in the House of Representatives.
Several GOP lawmakers have welcomed Hageman’s victory on Tuesday.
“Congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her massive Republican primary victory in Wyoming over Nancy Pelosi’s puppet Liz Cheney. I was proud to join President Trump and Leader Kevin McCarthy in endorsing Harriet,” House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said in a statement.
“Harriet is a true America First patriot who will restore the people of Wyoming’s voice, which Liz Cheney had long forgotten,” Stefanik continued. “I cannot wait for Harriet to join Republicans in Congress so that we can stay laser-focused on our work to save America. ”
Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, echoed Trump’s comment about the Jan. 6 committee.
“Tonight was not just a defeat for Liz Cheney, but a massive rejection of the sham ‘Jan 6’ witch hunt Committee and the authoritarian politics of the DC establishment,” Miller wrote on Twitter. “Congrats to my friend Harriet Hageman, President Trump & the MAGA movement!”
Elon Musk has eked out a legal victory in his battle with Twitter, as a judge has ordered information about fake accounts to be handed over to Musk.
Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick handed Musk a defeat as well in ruling that 21 other people from whom Musk wanted data do not have to provide him with information, according to TechSpot.
Information from Twitter’s former head of consumer product, Kayvon Beykpour, must be released.
According to Reuters, Musk’s team of lawyers had identified Beykpour as “a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform.”
Beykpour was fired by current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in May.
“We look forward to reviewing Beykpour’s communications and will continue to seek information and witnesses until the full truth comes out,” said Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, according to Bloomberg.
The issue of fake accounts emerged as a major bone of contention in Musk’s proposed purchase of the social media platform. Twitter estimates that about 5 percent of its accounts are bots. Musk has said the figure is closer to 20 percent.
Musk said he decided not to go through with the $44 billion deal because he could not verify the number of fake accounts. Twitter then took Musk to court to force him to buy the company.
Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli tech company Cyabra, agrees that Twitter has lowballed its number of fake accounts, according to Reuters.
“They have underestimated that number,” he said, putting the share of fake accounts at 13.7 percent.
In a countersuit filed against Twitter, Musk argued that “misrepresentations or omissions” by the company have inflated Twitter’s actual value, The Washington Post reported.
The countersuit said Twitter has 65 million fewer monetizable daily active users — people who can be seeing ads — than the 238 million that Twitter says it has.
Twitter undercounted bots as part of a “scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects,” Musk’s countersuit alleged, according to The Guardian.
Lawyers for Musk and Twitter will meet in court in October to debate whether the deal must be completed, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Oregon Democrat warned that wealthy business owners could abuse the loan program. Financial disclosures suggest his wife did just that.
Oregon Democratic senator Ron Wyden warned early in the pandemic that wealthy business owners could abuse the Paycheck Protection Program. Financial disclosures suggest his wife did just that.
Nancy Bass Wyden, the multimillionaire owner of New York’s Strand bookstore, received $2.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans between 2020 and 2021 and nonetheless went on to lay off 180 employees. Small businesses were eligible for the federally forgiven loans on the condition that they used a majority of the funds to keep employees on the payroll. In October 2020, Bass Wyden told CBS News that the Strand would not rehire many of those employees and that the store would “have to give back part of the loan due to the forgiveness rules.”
But as of September of last year, the federal government had forgiven both loans, ProPublicareported. The Small Business Administration declined to comment and the Strand did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon’s requests for comments on the loans.
The Paycheck Protection Program came under fire in 2020 for shelling out millions to billionaire real estate investors. Other family members of Democrats also got in line for handouts, including the multimillionaire father of then-Senate candidate Jon Ossoff (D.) who scored as much as $1 million from the program. Businesses like the Strand were able to line their pockets and lay off dozens of workers without rehiring them as long as 60 percent of the money went to payroll expenses.
Wyden and a group of senators pushed then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Small Business Administrator Jovita Carranza in April 2020 “to develop strong supervisory mechanisms to identify instances of unjust enrichment” for the program.
“Every loan that provides a windfall for an applicant who does not truly need it results in one fewer loan made to a struggling small business owner whose employees could be truly helped by this funding,” the senators wrote in a letter.
Wyden’s wife refused to rehire many of the employees she fired even after the Strand received its PPP loans, leaving the bookstore “woefully understaffed,” according to the union that represents the workers. She pleaded with the public to purchase more books in late 2020, saying the store’s revenue had plummeted 70 percent and that loans and cash reserves were “depleted.” The Strand said it was “impossible” to rehire all staff even with the paycheck loan boost.
“The limited sales we make now plus the PPP loan are the only things keeping our staff paid,” a Strand spokesman toldVulture in March 2021. “So until in-store sales bounce back, this is the best we can do.”
Bass Wyden earned as much as $3 million in book sales during the layoffs, according to her husband’s annual financial disclosures. The Oregonianreported in 2011 the couple’s net worth is between $12 million and $56 million.
The couple purchased millions of dollars’ worth of stock in 2020 that appreciated substantially following lockdowns, including as much as $600,000 in shares of Amazon, a prime competitor with independent bookstores.
An inspector general’s report in May found many Americans took advantage of the PPP loans as the Small Business Administration had no plan to counter fraud. One former U.S. attorney dubbed the program “the biggest fraud in a generation.”
Bass Wyden inherited the Strand from her father Ben Bass. Her children are next in line to take control of the 90-year-old bookstore next, according to the Strand’s website.
A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower has said that the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will see the government target middle-income Americans with increased scrutiny and audits.
William Henck previously worked as a lawyer for the IRS for 20 years until 2017, when he was terminated for allegedly revealing sensitive information to the media about how the IRS had reportedly failed to identify a multi-billion-dollar corporate tax credit scheme involving a source of energy known as burning pulp byproducts, or black liquor.
Speaking to Fox Business, Henck disputed claims by the IRS and other officials who have said that increased funding for the agency under the IRA, which is set to be signed into law by Joe Biden this week, would only lead to more audits for wealthy millionaires and billionaires and large corporations.
“The idea that they’re going to open things up and go after these big billionaires and large corporations is quite frankly [expletive],” Henck said in the interview on Aug. 15. “It’s not going to happen. They’re going to give themselves bonuses and promotions and really nice conferences.”
“The big corporations and the billionaires are probably sitting back laughing right now,” he said, adding that it was “insane” to double the IRS budget.
Henck also said he believes that the agency will go after businesses that don’t have enough money to hire Washington lobbyists.
(L-R) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leave the Senate Chamber after final passage of the Inflation Reduction Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 7, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
‘Absolutely Not’ Being Used to Target Middle-Income Americans
The Democrat-controlled House passed the IRA in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12. It includes nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, including $45.6 billion for “enforcement.”
A Treasury Department report from May 2021 (pdf) estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031.
Amid mounting fears, the IRS has said it will “absolutely not” be using the extra money to increase audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig stated in a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 that the extra resources will instead serve to help the agency in “challenging” areas such as audits of large corporate and global high-net-worth taxpayers.
“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Rettig wrote in the letter. “As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre have also doubled down on their rhetoric regarding reports about the extra funding being utilized to target middle-income Americans, stating that there would be no new audits for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year.
Henck disagrees.
‘Unlimited Resources And No Accountability’
“There will be considerable incentive to basically to shake down taxpayers, and the advantage the IRS has is they have basically unlimited resources and no accountability, whereas a taxpayer has to weigh the cost of accountants, tax lawyers—fighting something in tax court,” he told Fox Business.
“If you own a roofing company, you better count on getting audited because that’s what they’re going to be doing,” he continued. “They’re going to be going after your car dealerships, roofing companies.”
Henck’s comments come after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that working-class Americans will end up paying billions of dollars in new taxes thanks to the IRA.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said on Aug. 12 that they had received the information from the CBO confirming that under the new legislation, lower- and middle-income Americans will pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade.
This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels,” GOP lawmakers said in a statement.
The Epoch Times has not received a response for comment from the CBO.
Moderna documents regarding their COVID vaccine trial on animals, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, showed that some of the offspring of rats that were injected with Moderna’s mRNA shot developed rib malformations.
The 700 pages contain a portion of the formal Biologics Licensing Application (BLA) package that a manufacturer is required to submit to the FDA for approval.
The documents have not yet been made public, but were analyzed by former pharma executive Alexandra Latypova and reviewed by The Epoch Times.
Included in the documents are test results that show that Moderna mRNA shots caused statistically significant skeletal malformations in the offspring of the rats that took the mRNA-1273 (Spikevax mRNA) doses.
“mRNA-1273-related variations in skeletal examination included statistically significant increases in the number of F1 rats with 1 or more wavy ribs and 1 or more rib nodules. Wavy ribs appeared in 6 fetuses and 4 litters with a fetal prevalence of 4.03% and a litter prevalence of 18.2%. Rib nodules appeared in 5 of those 6 fetuses,” according to Moderna’s internal documents.
F1 refers to the rat offspring and litter indicates a group-birth of rats.
“Maternal toxicity in the form of clinical observations was observed for 5 days following the last dose (Gestation Day 13), correlating with the most sensitive period for rib development in rats (Gestation Days 14 to 17)” the documents state.
A document package on biodistribution studies obtained by Judicial Watch. (Courtesy of Alexandra Latypova)
“Wavy ribs” refers to ribs not properly shaped.
In other words, 6 out of about 149 baby rats had wavy ribs and 5 of those also had rib nodules.
According to Latypova’s analysis, only female rats were studied (male rats were not treated with the Moderna vaccine).
The females got a human dose of 100mcg Spikevax mRNA, 28 and 14 days prior to mating and gestation days 1 and 13.
“1/2 rats euthanized before delivery to examine fetuses, the rest followed to 21 days after delivery,” Latypova stated, “No numbers are provided for the study size.”
In addition, there is no study report, but only Moderna’s own interpretation of the outcomes.
The results were part of reproductive toxicology tests done by Moderna, which is the only reproductive toxicology test for the product, according to Latypova.
It is not known how the dose translates from humans to rats.
“Neither Moderna nor Pfizer provided any dose calculations or justification information for dose selection in animal studies,” Latypova told The Epoch Times.
“Doses of drugs, or especially biologics do not necessarily have linear relationships with toxicity or efficacy. It is likely a much more complex relationship and unfortunately not known at all.”
“Reproductive toxicology is the study of adverse effects of medicinal products on reproduction. The FDA requires reproductive toxicity testing for any NME to be used in women of childbearing potential,” added Latypova, who has worked in more than 60 pharmaceutical companies, mainly focusing on creating and reviewing clinical trials, many of which were submitted to the FDA.
Despite the abovementioned lab results, the FDA issued a statement on Jan. 30 saying that there were no adverse effects on postnatal developments.
“No vaccine-related fetal malformations or variations and no adverse effect on postnatal development were observed in the study,” the FDA stated on the label for Moderna’s Spikevax vaccine.
“In a developmental toxicity study, 0.2 mL of a vaccine formulation containing nucleoside-modified mRNA (100 mcg) and other ingredients that are included in a 0.5-mL single human dose of SPIKEVAX was administered IM to female rats on four occasions: 28 and 14 days prior to mating, and on gestation days 1 and 13,” reads the FDA publication.
Pfizer Vaccine Also Caused Abnormal Ribs in Rats
In August of 2021, Elsevier published a peer-reviewed study (pdf) titled “Lack of effects on female fertility and prenatal and postnatal offspring development in rats with BNT162b2, a mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.”
BNT162b2 is the Pfizer jab.
All the authors of the publication were employed by Pfizer, BioNTech, or Charles River, a Pfizer contractor.
This publication suggests that there was a “lack of effects” in postnatal offspring development, but the study shows that there was a 295 percent increase (8.3 percent compared to 2.1 percent in the control group) in abnormal ribs in vaccinated rat offspring. A huge increase in what is described as the “supernumerary lumbar.”
‘This Was an Extremely Dangerous Warning’
“Skeletal abnormalities in the bony rib cages are absolutely important and were statistically increased in the rat offspring of the experimental group compared with the placebo group,” James Thorp, an MD board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as maternal-fetal medicine, told The Epoch Times after reviewing Latypova’s analysis of Moderna’s BLA package.
“In clinical obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine we see similar findings in skeletal abnormalities prior to birth that are extremely serious and often lethal. This was an extremely dangerous warning signal in reproductive toxicology studies and was never brought to the light of day to protect our global citizens. The CDC, Pfizer, Moderna, and the flagship medical journals of the medical industrial complex lied to the American public and should be held accountable,” Thorp said.
Thorp recently analyzed and verified the most recent Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data related to COVID-19 vaccines and compared them to the influenza vaccines, finding numerous abnormalities.
The CDC website recommends the COVID vaccines during pregnancy in order to “prevent severe illness and death in pregnant women.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also “strongly recommends that pregnant individuals be vaccinated against COVID-19,” adding that pregnant women’s complete vaccination should be a “priority.”
Moderna and the FDA did not respond to a request for comment.
The Epoch Times reached out to Pfizer and CDC for comment.
A NEW STUDY REVEALS JUST HOW DAMAGING THE POLICY WAS.
COVID-19 lockdowns could be responsible for claiming 20 times more lives than they were advertised to save, according to a new analysis published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
The paper, which bases its conclusions on a comprehensive review of other relevant, lockdown-focused literature, was authored by researchers at the Jerusalem College of Technology.
“In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth,” summarized the article, titled “Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?”
“The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past,” argue the researchers.
The team proceeds to quantify the estimated number of lives lost due to the COVID-19 mitigation measure, which drew strong support from Democrats and public health officials including Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Mike Pence:
The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save.
The paper also exposes how governments and international health organizations’ embrace of lockdowns was at odds with their stance on the public health policy prior to COVID-19.
“It should be mentioned that the same conclusions—no clear benefit of lockdowns in case of pandemic—were made by national and international bodies before COVID-19 emerged. Namely, several governments prepared detailed plans of response to influenza- like pandemics years ago—see the programs of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2007) and the Israeli Ministry of Health (2007),”
Researchers singled out the World Health Organization (WHO), which published a comprehensive 91-page preparedness plan in October of 2019 that explicitly mentioned that:
• social distancing measures “can be highly disruptive” and should be carefully weighted; • travel-related measures are “unlikely to be successful”; “border closures may be considered only by small island nations in severe pandemics”; • and contact tracing and quarantine of exposed individuals are not recommended in any circumstances.
The paper doesn’t argue that lockdowns were merely ineffective; however, adding that they actually claimed the lives of the people public health officials claimed to be protecting.
“The lockdown policies had a direct side effect of increasing mortality. Hospitals in Europe and USA were prepared to manage pretty small groups of highly contagious patients, while unprepared for a much more probable challenge—large-scale contagion. As a result, public health care facilities and nursing homes often became vehicles of contamination themselves—to a large extent because of the lockdown-based emergency policy implementation,” explained the paper, citing New York as an example.
“While our understanding of viral transmission mechanisms leads to the assumption that lockdowns may be an effective pandemic management tool, this assumption cannot be supported by the evidence-based analysis of the present COVID-19 pandemic, as well as of the 1918–1920 H1N1 influenza type-A pandemic (the Spanish Flu) and numerous less-severe pandemics in the past,” concludes the paper.
The findings follow the publication of other studies finding sizable drawbacks to lockdowns and other popular COVID-19 mitigation measures such as mask mandates.
As Democrats take a victory lap after passing a bill that spends nearly $400 billion on green energy initiatives, Americans say they are less concerned about climate change than they were three years ago.
Only 35 percent of adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change on them personally, according to a poll from the Associated Press. In 2019, 44 percent of respondents said the same.
Fewer than half of respondents, 45 percent, said individual people have a large responsibility to fight climate change. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they were not concerned about the impact of climate change, and 33 percent said they were only “moderately concerned.”
The results come as Democrats celebrate Joe Biden’s upcoming signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. Although severalstudies show the bill will do nothing to lower inflation, which is at a 40-year high, the bill does provide the largest ever single investment in green energy and climate change mitigation. Because reports show the bill will do little to curb inflation, mediaoutlets have begun referring to the Inflation Reduction Act as a climate and health bill. Yet that framing may not help Democrats sell its provisions to voters. Fewer Americans believe they have a direct impact on climate change than three years ago, the AP poll found. Roughly half said their actions have an effect on climate change, compared with the two-thirds who said the same in 2019.
The Inflation Reduction Act earlier this month passed both chambers of Congress, with every Democrat voting in favor. Biden is expected to sign the bill on Tuesday.
Many Democrats running in competitive races this November touted the bill’s provisions as evidence that the party is addressing voters’ concerns. But the AP poll found that Americans are far more concerned about rising consumer costs and economic issues than the environment. Fewer Americans cite the environment as a pressing issue than they did three years ago, the AP found.
In total, the Inflation Reduction Act earmarks $386 billion for green energy and climate change-related initiatives. One-hundred-sixty-one billion dollars of that money goes to clean electricity tax credits, while $36 billion goes to tax credits for electric cars.
Just 10 percent of respondents said they live in a household with solar panels or drive an electric car. Although nearly 75 percent of respondents said they are using energy-efficient appliances or reducing driving and air-conditioning use, the main reason was saving money rather than stopping climate change.
“I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does—period,” Biden said this month.
Other than climate-change-related spending, the Inflation Reduction Act allocates $80 billion to double the size of the IRS’s workforce. Should the IRS find enough staffers to join the agency, it will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.
Joe Biden’s administration on Aug. 15 urged a federal court to keep the affidavit that led to the approval of a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s resort shielded from the public.
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers said unsealing the affidavit would “irreparably harm the government’s ongoing criminal investigation.”
“Even when the public is already aware of the general nature of the investigation, revealing the specific contents of a search warrant affidavit could alter the investigation’s trajectory, reveal ongoing and future investigative efforts, and undermine agents’ ability to collect evidence or obtain truthful testimony,” they wrote in a 13-page filing to U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who is overseeing the case.
“In addition to the implications for the investigation, the release of this type of investigative material could have ‘devastating consequences’ for the reputations and rights of individuals whose actions and statements are described,” they added, citing a previous decision in a different case.
A slew of parties, including Judicial Watch, media outlets, and the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability, have lodged motions after the Aug. 8 raid of Mar-a-Lago, arguing it is in the public interest to unseal the affidavit and other related documents.
The government and Trump’s lawyers agreed on some of the documents, and Reinhart unsealed the search warrant and several attachments on Aug. 12, revealing that the government believes Trump violated multiple laws.
‘Different Set of Considerations’
“The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in prepared remarks three days after the raid.
Those documents were made public with few redactions.
“The affidavit supporting the search warrant presents a very different set of considerations. There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed,” DOJ lawyers said in the new filing.
Affidavits are documents filed in court that outline why certain actions are needed. In this case, a law enforcement official filed an affidavit attempting to convince Reinhart to approve the warrant. The affidavit was successful.
The government has considered whether the affidavit could be released with redactions but “the redactions necessary to mitigate harms to the integrity of the investigation would be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content, and the release of such a redacted version would not serve any public interest,” government lawyers said in a footnote in an Aug. 15 brief.
“Nevertheless, should the Court order partial unsealing of the affidavit, the government respectfully requests an opportunity to provide the Court with proposed redactions,” they said.
The filing was part of a flurry of activity in the case on Aug. 15, which included several other entries being sealed until further notice.
Fourteen FBI whistleblowers have come forward to provide information to Republican congressional investigations, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on Aug. 14, about a week after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.
“Fourteen FBI agents have come to our office as whistleblowers, and they are good people,” Jordan told Fox News. “There are lots of good people in the FBI. It’s the top that is the problem.”
“Some of these good agents are coming to us, telling us … what’s going on—the political nature now of the Justice Department … talking about the school board issue, about a whole host of issues,” he added.
Two months ago, Jordan said that six FBI whistleblowers approached the committee. Two came forward about a memo related to alleged violence and intimidation at school board meetings and four in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. In the Senate, meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in July that whistleblowers had come to his office to provide information, including disclosures relating to investigations into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.
“It’s becoming a well-worn trail of agents who say this has got to stop, and thank goodness for them and that American people recognize it, and I believe they’re going to make a big change on Nov. 8,” Jordan said, referring to the midterm elections.
In June, Jordan sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray warning that several former FBI officials were coming forward, while alleging the agency is “purging” employees who have conservative views.
“In one such example, the FBI targeted and suspended the security clearance of a retired war servicemember who had disclosed personal views that the FBI was not being entirely forthcoming about the events of January 6,” Jordan wrote in a statement. “The FBI questioned the whistleblower’s allegiance to the United States despite the fact that the whistleblower honorably served in the United States military for several years—including deployments in Kuwait and Iraq—valiantly earning multiple military commendation medals.”
It comes as Republicans stepped up calls on Aug. 14 for the release of an FBI affidavit showing the justification for its seizure of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
A search warrant released on Aug. 12 after the unprecedented raid on Aug. 8 showed that Trump allegedly had 11 sets of classified documents at his home. The Justice Department also claimed to have had probable cause to conduct the search based on possible Espionage Act and obstruction of justice violations.
Republicans are calling for the disclosure of more detailed information that persuaded a federal judge to issue the search warrant, which may show sources of information and details about the nature of the documents and other classified information.
Pfizer’s CEO has tested positive for COVID-19, he announced on Aug. 15.
“I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19,” CEO Albert Bourla wrote on Twitter.
Bourla 60, says he has received four doses of his company’s COVID-19 vaccine, which has proven increasingly ineffective against infection from the virus that causes COVID-19 and severe illness once a person contracts the virus.
Bourla reported experiencing mild symptoms. He did not identify any of the symptoms. He said he’s “feeling well.”
“We have come so far in our efforts to battle this disease that I am confident I will have a speedy recovery. I am incredibly grateful for the tireless efforts of my Pfizer colleagues who worked to make vaccines and treatments available for me and people around the world,” Bourla said.
The CEO is isolating and has begun taking a course of Paxlovid, Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill.
U.S. drug regulators granted emergency authorization for Paxlovid in December 2021 for people aged 12 and older who test positive for COVID-19 and are deemed high-risk for progression to a severe case.
Regulators have since curbed or revoked similar clearances for many other drugs, such as Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies, citing data that indicate the treatments aren’t as effective, or aren’t effective at all, against newer virus variants.
Paxlovid has become the most-distributed COVID-19 treatment in the nation, and was administered to President Joe Biden after the president recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Biden, who has also received four doses of Pfizer’s shot, experienced a rebound of symptoms after testing negative, which is common for Paxlovid recipients.
Previously Promoted 100 Percent Efficacy
Bourla is among the officials who have previously promoted the COVID-19 vaccines as being 100 percent effective against infection.
In April 2021, for instance, he shared the results from a study that was said to show Pfizer’s vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 cases in South Africa.
All COVID-19 vaccines, though, have been shown to be less effective against both infection and severe illness as newer virus variants have emerged.
Against Omicron, which became dominant in the United States and many other countries in late 2021, the vaccines provide little shielding against infection, and decreased protection against severe cases.
Emerging data indicate that Omicron subvariants are even better at evading vaccine-based protection.
Pfizer and Moderna are among the companies working on Omicron-specific booster shots. Those could be rolled out in the United States as soon as September.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s campaign has raked in donations from billionaires and Hollywood celebrities despite the fundraising off her Trump-endorsed opponent’s ties to “special interests,” according to state records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Michigan Democrat’s campaign has received over $1 million from billionaires and almost $48,000 from Hollywood celebrities since 2021, state campaign finance disclosures show. At the same time, the governor’s re-election campaign has criticized Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon for her ties to “special interests” and former Education Secretary and billionaire Betsy DeVos.
“Special interests are continuing to line up behind Tudor Dixon, including former Gov. John Engler and billionaire Betsy DeVos,” Whitmer’s campaign wrote in a July 8 email to voters. “Party insiders and special interests are going full steam ahead with Tudor Dixon, their newly handpicked candidate who has proposed a radical agenda that would take Michigan backwards.”
Billionaires who shelled out $250,000 for Whitmer’s campaign in 2021 include Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, oil company heiress Stacy H. Schusterman and siblings Patricia Stryker and Ronda Stryker — the grandchildren of inventor Homer Stryker. Some other billionaires who have donated to Whitmer’s campaign include former Enron executive John Arnold, who gave $7,150 in April 2022, and Open Society Foundations Founder George Soros, who gave $25,000 in 2021.
Jonathan Soros, the investment banker and son of George Soros, has donated $12,150 to Whitmer’s campaign since 2018. His wife Jennifer Allan Soros has donated $14,300 since 2018.
“Jaws” Director Stephen Spielberg donated $7,150 in March to Whitmer’s campaign, and “Princess Bride” Director Rob Reiner donated $2,500 that month. Actress Kate Capshaw, known for her role in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” donated $7,150 in March.
Tom Ford, the fashion designer and filmmaker, donated $7,500 to Whitmer’s campaign in February 2022. Tom Rothman, the CEO of entertainment conglomerate Sony Pictures, gave the governor’s campaign $5,000 back in 2021.
“I kind of think hypocrisy is a misdemeanor these days in politics,” Fred Wszolek, a Republican strategist in Michigan, told the DCNF. “This is the opening act of Whitmer for president. That’s what all this demagoguery is about. To build a fundraising list for president.”
Whitmer, who assumed office in 2019 and ran unopposed in 2022, has faced notable backlash from Republicans for her state’s strict COVID-19 restrictions, which she repeatedly failed to abide by. Dixon, who worked for Michigan steel companies and was a radio host, won the Republican primary in August after receiving former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
“With over $15 million in attack ads out against us, we have to be ready to fight back against whatever Tudor Dixon and her special interest backers throw at us,” Whitmer’s campaign also wrote to voters in a Tuesday email. “That’s why we’re coming to you today.”
By “special interests,” Whitmer’s campaign is alluding to Dixon’s campaign contributions from DeVos and her family, Home Depot Co-Founder and billionaire Bernard Marcus, ULINE Corporation CEO and billionaire Richard Uihlein — as well as two pro-Dixon super PACs called Michigan Families United and Michigan Strong — according to a Republican operative familiar with the situation.
The DeVos family has donated $71,500 to Dixon’s campaign since May 2022. The DeVos family also gave $875,000 since June to Michigan Families United, which Uihlein gave $250,000 to in July. In May 2022, Marcus gave $100,000 to Michigan Strong, which along with Michigan Families United has spent $2.24 million supporting Dixon through ad buys, video production and media consulting, Bridge Michigan reported in July.
Whitmer has faced scrutiny from Republicans for her campaign taking individual contributions from wealthy left-wing donors allegedly above the $7,150 limit. Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative nonprofit, filed a campaign finance complaint in September 2021 against ten of Whitmer’s campaign donors, including Pritzker, the Strykers and Schusterman.
Whitmer’s campaign sent $3.5 million to the Michigan Democratic Party in January after raising $2.5 million more than allowed under the legal limit, the Detroit News reported.
“Gretchen Whitmer literally took millions in illegal contributions over the campaign finance limits in Michigan and she is literally funded by anti-American, pro-communism Billionaires like George Soros,” Dixon told the DCNF. “Gretchen Whitmer a dishonest career politician who is always guilty of everything she accuses other people of.”
Michigan’s gubernatorial election will take place in November.
Whitmer’s campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of the DCNF’s original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
A former Democratic senator who made headlines in a 2017 sexual harassment scandal that forced his resignation has sparked ridicule after endorsing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming in her upcoming Republican primary.
Wyoming Republicans go to the polls Tuesday to decide between Cheney, who has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, and challenger Harriet Hageman, who has Trump’s support.
Former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, who stepped down from the Senate in early 2018, tweeted his endorsement on Saturday.
“I’ve decided to endorse @RepLizCheney for the Republican nomination for the House seat In Wyoming it’s my first time endorsing in a GOP primary. But I think Al Franken’s support will carry a lot of weight with WY Republicans,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm.
Sarcastic or not, in a Republican primary in a state as conservative as Wyoming, where Trump won almost 70 percent of the votes in 2020, the endorsement could be an anchor dragging Cheney even further down.
Twitter came alive with negative responses, with one noting the endorsement would be a “weight around Liz’s neck.”
Maybe she can hit the road with you on your comedy tour when she gets voted out, because she sure as hell isn’t getting re-elected.
Cheney was among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion and has continued to attack Trump as a member of the House select committee investigating the event.
Wyoming Republican Darin Smith said Cheney’s hatred of Trump is “a vendetta,” according to the U.K. Guardian.
Trump publicly criticizes the foreign policy of former President George W. Bush’s administration, in which Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, served as vice president.
“She’s mad at Trump because Trump pointed out the truth of the Cheney foreign policy. Her dad is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide and trillions of dollars in spending from the US government,” said Smith, who was outside the Capitol on the day of the incursion, according to The Guardian.
“She’s pissed about it and she’s a narcissist and she saw her opportunity to go for Trump’s throat and she did,” he said.
“But it’s bigger than that. She wants to be the first woman president. We all know that. We’re not stupid. She’s going to ‘educate’ us in the Constitution and how ‘we’re wrong and she’s right.’ Well, she’s got news and she’s got something coming for her on Tuesday of next week. She’s gonna find out if she educated us or not,” he said.
Laura Harnish, 53, a Wyoming resident interviewed by The Guardian, was blunt: “I wouldn’t vote for Liz Cheney if she was the last person on the ballot.”
“The Jan. 6 committee was very badly done. She wasn’t representing Wyoming at that point. I vote for you. That’s who you represent: Wyoming. If you’re not going to do that then you don’t need to be in office. You need to find something else to do,” she said.
“I do think it’s debatable whether she should have gone out and blown herself up this way, because it’s obviously going to cost her her seat and her platform, but she chose a different path. And I think everybody’s got to make their own decisions in life,” said Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist and ex-special assistant to former President George W. Bush, said, according to The Hill.
The Hill article was headlined: “Cheney looks to cling on in Wyoming despite polls.”
Top House Democrats asked intelligence officials to review alleged national security damage from former President Donald Trump’s mishandling of government documents, a day after the release of the search warrant used by the FBI on its Mar-a-Lago raid.
The federal agents executed a search warrant of Trump’s Florida estate last Monday, before an inventory accompanying the search warrant was made public on Aug. 12. A property receipt obtained by The Epoch Times shows the FBI removed approximately 20 boxes, including one set of materials labeled as “various classified/TS/SCI documents,” referencing top secret or sensitive compartmented information.
“Former President Trump’s conduct has potentially put our national security at grave risk. This issue demands a full review, in addition to the ongoing law enforcement inquiry,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wrote on Aug. 13 to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines.
Despite Trump declaring the documents taken by federal agents were “all declassified,” the three-page letter (pdf) seeks a classified briefing on the review “as soon as possible.” The two lawmakers specifically asked for the DNI’s office to initiate a damage assessment, in a bid to evaluate any damage to national security related to Trump’s handling of official records.
The latest action is the first major move by House committees following the Aug. 8 raid of Trump’s Florida resort.
The Saturday letter also cited previous reports by legacy media claiming that FBI agents were searching for highly classified documents on “nuclear weapons” at Mar-a-Lago, a claim that has been slammed by the former commander-in-chief, who called it a “hoax.”
The Democrat-led House Oversight Committee stepped up in February an investigation into Trump’s alleged violation of federal records laws by removing White House records—something Trump denied.
While federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, Trump could argue that as president, he was the ultimate declassification authority.
Prior to Trump, his lawyers have said that the former president used his authority as president to declassify the material before he departed office in early 2021.
“They didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything,” the former president said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “They could have had [the documents] at anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago.”
NO ONE IN THE BIG PHARMA-SPONSORED MEDIA SEEMS TO HAVE PICKED UP ON THIS. STRANGE, HUH?
Former White House coronavirus task force spokesman Ambassador Deborah Birx has effectively laid blame for thousands of deaths at the door of big pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna, claiming their refusal to pursue a “compassionate use authorization” for the COVID-19 vaccines led to a delay which directly impacted nursing home residents, The National Pulse can reveal.
The details come in the final parts of Birx’s little read book – Silent Invasion – wherein she details how she used “subterfuge” to get around the will of the Trump administration, as well as naming Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence as her “go to” people in the government.
In Chapter 19, entitled “Winter Is Here,” Birx turns her guns on the same pharmaceutical companies she and her colleague Anthony Fauci promoted and protected during the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, she points out the corporates who were shielded by government from liability failed to get vital doses of their vaccines into the arms of those who needed it earliest: the elderly:
“Getting as many people inoculated as quickly and equitably as possible remained one of my priorities. In addition to “emergency use authorization,” or EUA, the FDA also has the authority to allow the use of therapeutics and vaccines (and the use of experimental drugs to people outside clinical trials) under what’s called “compassionate use authorization,” or CUA. Lacking the holy grail of emergency use authorization (which was pending), I continued to try to find a way to get the highest-risk group immunized as quickly as possible. In early November, I asked Tony and Steve to approach Moderna and Pfizer and urge them to apply for CUA while their vaccines’ efficacy was still being determined but safety was fairly clear. With a CUA in hand, we could inoculate any nursing home residents who wished to be. Whether they volunteered for the jabs or not, at least they’d have the option.”
But as many continued to die, her wishes were not carried through, she explains:
“We had a narrow window, and it was closing. Fifteen hundred nursing home residents died in the first week of October. The vaccine manufacturers, I learned, had already stockpiled three million doses. If we could draw from that supply through CUA, thousands of lives could be saved.
“This didn’t happen. Pfizer and Moderna declined to pursue compassionate use authorization. They believed the process would be a distraction. Their eyes were fixed on the EUA, another complicated process; taking on both simply wasn’t possible.
“I believed it was—it just wasn’t part of the plan these manufacturers had envisioned.”
Birx then goes on to detail the number of people that were affected by the major corporations’ refusal to pursue a faster route to market. At the time, many suspected they were refusing to do so because such speed would give President Trump an ostensible boost right before the U.S. presidential election.
“Take a moment to imagine that they did apply for compassionate use. And imagine that 1.5 million of the 3 million stockpiled doses went to nursing homes in November, and another 1.5 million at the end of November, for a second dose. If this had happened, the nursing home residents would have been fully protected in December, at the start of the surge, and not, as it turned out, as late as February, after the surge. An additional six-thousand-plus nursing home residents died in mid-December. They all could have been fully immunized and protected before this happened and we could have saved thousands of lives. If this had been done, literally thousands of lives could have been saved. Great good could have been done, and at low risk to these vulnerable people. In a pandemic, you need to innovate on the fly in response to the reality of the moment and not be locked into a rigid plan.”
Birx’s theory rests on the efficacy of the vaccines, however. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines were altered this past week to remove the distinctions between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Regardless of the “science” today, the United States continues to restrict foreign travelers into the country who are not vaccinated, unless they come in illegally through America’s porous southern border.
The protocols require ‘mind-blowing cognitive dissonance’
Nurses who witnessed “brutal” hospital COVID-19 treatment protocols kill patients paint a bleak picture of what is taking place in state and federally funded health care systems.
“They’re horrific, and they’re all in lockstep,” Staci Kay, a nurse practitioner with the North Carolina Physicians for Freedom who left the hospital system to start her own early treatment private practice, told The Epoch Times. “They will not consider protocols outside of what’s given to them by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the NIH (National Institute of Health). And nobody is asking why.”
Fueled by cognitive dissonance amid an array of red flags, Kay said hospital staff is ignoring blatantly problematic treatments that performed poorly in clinical trials, such as remdesivir, and protocols such as keeping the patient isolated, just to adhere to the federal canon.
“I’ve seen people die with their family watching via iPad on Facetime,” Kay said. “It was brutal.”
As a former nurse in intensive care, Kay said she had seen her share of tragedy, but how she saw COVID patients being treated “had me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with chest pains.”
“I hated my job,” Kay said. “I hated going to work. I was stressed in a way I’ve never been before in my entire life.”
Keeping families isolated was especially difficult, she said, because people couldn’t come to say goodbye to their loved ones.
‘We Can Do Better’
Kay was looking for other options when she found an inpatient protocol designed Dr. Paul Marik, founding member of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which purported to have a 94 percent success rate.
However, after Kay pitched it to the head of the pulmonary critical care department, she was dismissed, and the physician boasted that the hospital had a 66 percent survival rate at the time.
“I told him, ‘I feel like we can do better,’ but I was very quickly shut down,” Kay said. “I became very angry because I’m watching people die and I knew we could have been doing better.”
It was as if formerly smart people had become brainwashed, “and then just dumb,” Kay said, lacking the mental wherewithal to discern true from false.
This led Kay to begin treating patients in the outpatient setting to prevent their admission into the hospital system, which is now her full-time job after being fired for not submitting to what she described as illogical testing requirements for those who weren’t vaccinated.
At her telemedicine business, Kay said she’s seeing multiple cases of people suffering from COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
“I saw things on the inpatient side, too, that I suspected were vaccine injuries that went unacknowledged by our physicians,” Kay said. “I saw brain bleeds, seizures out of nowhere, cancer that just spread like wildfire, ischemic strokes, and I saw one person die horrifically from myocarditis.”
On the outpatient side, she said she’s seen conditions resulting from the COVID-19 vaccine such as brain fog, cognitive decline, joint pain, gastrointestinal dysfunctions, and neuropathy, which is numbness and tingling in hands, feet, and extremities.
‘The Old School Becomes The New School’
Kay’s business, Sophelina Counseling, provides telemedicine, mobile urgent care, and mobile IV therapies. It’s independent of corporate, federal, and state control, which she said is a solution to a health care system paralyzed with oppressive requirements.
“As long as there’s corporate control over medicine, whether it’s Medicare or private insurance companies, you’re always going to have providers who are forced, pressured, and coerced to do things that they wouldn’t normally do,” she said. “Physicians don’t have the treatment they used to have.”
Because of this corporate control, Kay said the list of boxes they must check takes time away from the actual patient.
“Getting away from this corporate structure is going to be a game changer,” she said.
Kay advocated for returning to the “old school” way, which is the direct, primary care model, in which the patient pays a monthly or annual fee to have access to the provider without the interference of a traditional insurance company that requires “too many hoops to jump through, headaches, and checkboxes.”
Kay points to a health care model called GoldCare, designed by Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors.
Gold, who was sentenced to two months in prison for her alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, created GoldCare as a private membership association (PMA).
Because much of what insurance companies do revolves around potential lawsuits, to be a member of the PMA, one must sign a clause, agreeing that they won’t sue.
“What that does for us is we don’t have to order unnecessary testing or consults just to cover our back end because that’s most of what corporate medicine does,” she said.
As a result, Kay said, both the patient and the physician are happier because the treatment process hasn’t been weighted down with bloated insurance requirements.
For Kay, this model—an evocation of a simpler time in medical care when doctors were more connected with their patients—is key.
“The old school is going to have to become the new school,” Kay said.
NIH and the CDC did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on COVID-19 treatment protocols.
Boycotting the System
Having taken salmon, eggs, and honey for payment, a nurse in Washington state who wished to remain anonymous shares Kay’s more traditional vision for the future of health care.
She told The Epoch Times that people “need to boycott their health insurance.”
“I think people who don’t need surgery to save their life should not go to the hospital,” the nurse said. “I think people need to find doctors who are private pay and pay for only what they need to be done.”
The federal government must be removed from the health care equation, she added.
“I especially don’t think any children should be going to these practitioners who are accepting state funding or Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements,” the nurse said
The nurse requested anonymity because—in addition to being unvaccinated—in Washington and Oregon state, she said the government has made it possible for the public to submit anonymous complaints, “devoid of evidence,” against health care workers who promote treatments that deviate from the official protocols.
After the nurse was fired for not complying with the vaccine mandate, she started her own private care business that offers monoclonal antibodies, L-lysine and vitamin C infusions, infrared red light therapy, and nebulizer machines as treatments as needed and when indicated.
‘Widespread Data Suppression’
With her newly launched business, she performed the early interventions that she said hospitals should be doing, “but refuse to do because they say there’s no evidence for it.”
The nurse works with a growing network of physicians and providers that function as a “total parallel society” existing in the shadows beside the “crooked” health care system, she said.
In the aftermath of the public vaccine campaign in her community, the nurse said she saw an increase in strokes and embolization procedures as doctors engaged in “widespread data suppression,” such as not reporting to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System what she saw as vaccine injuries and deaths and recording non-COVID deaths to be caused by COVID.
Even before the CDC had modified its definition of the unvaccinated, the hospital system was reclassifying patients who had only received one vaccine as unvaccinated, she said.
“The worst part of it was when the pulmonologists decided that unvaccinated patients would get seven days on the ventilator, then they would tell the families that nothing more could be done,” she said. “They would then terminally extubate these patients even when more could have been done.”
The nurse personally witnessed this, she said, with a 33-year-old mother of two children.
“She had been on ivermectin at home and was viewed as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist,” the nurse said.
Before the mother was terminally extubated and her status changed to “comfort care,” the nurse said she argued with hospital administrators for 12 hours.
She had asked the pulmonologist to consider running more tests, she said.
“It had been over a week since the last D-dimer, and this would have indicated whether fibrin in the bloodstream was increasing or decreasing,” the nurse explained. “The usual process with a known pulmonary embolism was to check every three days. There were more anticoagulant drugs and routes of administration that could have been utilized. Intravenous heparin is reversible. If they were willing to withdraw life support, why were they not willing to try something that could clear a circulatory impairment?”
In the end, the hospital won, she said.
“The mother died gasping for air while my hand was on her back,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I went to my manager and asked for an audit to be done on our coagulation times and pulmonary embolism treatment protocols. That got me booted from the ICU until I was fired.”
The nurse said she observed administrators repeatedly promoting the safety of the vaccine, though these claims weren’t reflecting what they were seeing with the growing cases of vaccine injuries.
Though there was some staff who saw the truth but ignored it to keep their jobs, there were many whom she observed—just as Kay reported—who exhibited “mind-blowing cognitive dissonance.”
“They received the vaccines themselves, and if they were to ever confront the possibility that they willingly became the hands of a truly evil agenda, I don’t think they could live with themselves,” the nurse said. “I used to consider my co-workers as people with whom I’d trust my life, but after they got that second dose of the vaccine, it was like they had a hive mind bent on hatred. It’s very eerie to say that out loud.”
Former White House official Kash Patel on Sunday revealed former President Donald Trump has been involved in a battle with the federal government to declassify documents before last week’s FBI raid.
Patel, who was a top official in the Department of Defense, said Trump declassified numerous documents.
“President Trump made me his representative a month ago, and we’ve been in a bureaucratic battle,” he told Fox News on Sunday morning. “We found whole sets of documents we got out to the American public … about 60 percent.”
Patel, who hosts “Kash’s Corner” for Epoch TV, added that Trump “made it his mission to declassify and be transparent.”
“In October 2020, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every single Russiagate document and every single [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton document,” Patel said, adding that “whole sets of documents” were declassified under his watch.
“And this is a key fact … President Trump, as a sitting president, is a unilateral authority for declassification,” he continued. “He can literally stand over a set of documents and say ‘these are now declassified,’ and that is done with definitive action immediately.”
Patel further noted that due to the Department of Justice’s latest actions and the FBI’s ongoing investigation, Americans “will never be allowed to see the Russiagate docs or any other docs that President Trump lawfully declassified, and they will hide it from the public.”
Other Details
Late last week, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered the release of the FBI warrant and property record used to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The documents showed the FBI seized alleged classified documents and said the former president may be under investigation for possibly violating the 1917 Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, although neither the Justice Department nor FBI have released the affidavit in the case.
In late 2020, Trump issued a declassification memo that referred to materials connected to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which has been the subject of intense controversy and scrutiny. Republicans and Trump have long asserted the investigation used fabricated information and anonymous leaks to the press to denigrate the former president.
“I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy,” then-President Trump wrote on Dec. 30, 2020, or just three weeks before Joe Biden was sworn in as president.
After the warrant and property receipt were unsealed, Trump posted to his Truth Social page that the materials the FBI allegedly took were “all declassified.”
“They didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request,” he wrote on the website on Aug. 12.
On Sunday, the former president wrote that among other items that were taken by agents, attorney-client material and executive privileged material were removed from Mar-a-Lago.
“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!” Trump wrote.
Democrats have one priority, and it’s not the United States, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) says. Instead, Democrats want to destroy former President Donald Trump, and they’ll do “everything they can” to accomplish that goal.
Nehls, along with the Republican Study Committee, spent three hours with Trump after the raid and said the former president not only firmly grasps the situation but also fully understands that Democrats are out to “get him.”
“They’ve been out to get him with one impeachment, two impeachments, the Russia hoax. … Democrats will do everything they can to keep him off the ballot in 2024,” Nehls told The Epoch Times and NTD as part of a special EpochTV report on the raid.
Nehls, who has a law enforcement background and was a sheriff for several years, said that to obtain a search warrant, you first have to obtain a “probable cause” affidavit. Once you have a signed affidavit, you can get a search warrant to look for specific items in a person’s home.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) speaks during a press conference at the Capitol Triangle in Washington, on July 21, 2022. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Unfortunately, according to Nehls, probable cause affidavits can be “very, very weak,” but if you find a “friendly judge” to sign it, it doesn’t matter; you can search a person’s home for whatever is on the warrant.
Furthermore, Nehls said everyone in law enforcement knows a judge who will rubber stamp affidavits and search warrants and said that’s what happened to Trump and the “raid” on Mar-a-Lago.
“They found the friendly judge there, with Reinhardt in the Southern District. … These guys are big Obama supporters, … and they got the judge to sign the warrant.”
Garland Approves Unsealing of Warrant
Concerning Attorney General Merrick Garland stating he approves unsealing the warrant, Nehls said that’s only part of what needs to be released.
Specifically, Nehls said he wants to know if the person who tipped off the Department of Justice (DOJ) is an FBI informant.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
“Who is the individual that said … the former president has a bunch of these documents inside … the basement of Mar-a-Lago and … they’re classified or not classified, and we need to do something?”
Nehls said seeing the affidavit and the warrant would let people know what the FBI was “really looking for.”
Indeed, Nehls is skeptical about the FBI’s stated reason for raiding Trump. Instead, he thinks it’s likely that the FBI is creating a false pretext to destroy Trump.
Nehls pointed out that Democrats, the DOJ, and the FBI have targeted Trump and his family for the past few years, claiming they colluded with Russia. In the end, however, the evidence exonerated the past president.
Now, the DOJ and Democrats are up to the same old tricks. But instead of “Russia Collusion,” it’s “Jan. 6.”
Nehls argued that the FBI has lowered its standards and is now going after political adversaries at the behest of former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Nehls concluded that he expects Biden and his lackeys to go after Trump “until they can find a way to destroy him.”
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee say they have received information from the non-partisan scorekeeper at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) challenging the Biden administration’s narrative that Americans making less than $400,000 a year won’t see higher IRS audit rates.
The remarks came in an Aug. 12 statement that was published as the Democrat-controlled House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $46 billion in additional funding for IRS enforcement of the $80 billion or so total funding boost to the tax agency.
Committee Republicans said that the CBO statement they were provided with confirms that, under the new legislation, lower and middle-income Americans will be squeezed harder by the tax man to the tune of at least $20 billion.
‘Supercharged IRS’ Coming For Middle-Income Americans
This figure was arrived at by calculating how much less tax revenue would flow into government coffers if legislators had accepted amendment 5404 (pdf) proposed by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that explicitly called for none of the funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act to be used to audit taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year.
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that had this amendment passed and lower- and middle-income taxpayers been protected, revenue in Democrats’ bill would have been reduced by at least $20 billion,” Committee Republicans said.
This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the CBO with a request for confirmation of the scorekeeper’s assessment and comment, with no response received by publication.
‘Absolutely Not’ Increasing Audit Scrutiny?
Republicans said the CBO statement proves that members of the Biden administration are misleading the public by claiming that lower and middle-income Americans won’t face additional tax audits.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted Republican claims that tax auditors will target lower and middle-income Americans at higher rates are false and politically motivated.
“I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Yellen said in an Aug. 10 letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
“This means that, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” she added.
The IRS chief, too, has insisted that the tax agency would “absolutely not” be increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans relative to “recent years,” according to a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 (pdf).
More Audits ‘Almost Certain’
A previous CBO analysis indicated that, under basically the same funding plan as is featured in the Inflation Reduction Act, audit rates would be restored to levels around 10 years ago and that audit rates would rise “for all taxpayers,” though ones with higher incomes would face the biggest increase.
IRS audit rates have fallen sharply over the past decade, with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying in a report that rates in 2019 were about one third of those in 2010 for all income groups, dropping from 0.9 percent down to 0.25 percent.
A CBO estimate (pdf) shows that that the additional $80 billion in funding will bring in around $204 billion in new revenues, including from enforcement.
Despite Yellen’s and Rettig’s insistence that audit rates wouldn’t jump for those making under $400,000, Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at the Grover M. Hermann Center, wrote in an op-ed for the Heritage Foundation that this is likely not the case.
“Despite the Biden administration’s claims, it’s almost certain that households making less than $400,000 a year would face increased audits under Democrats’ bill,” Greszler wrote.
“And despite estimates from official congressional scorekeepers that the Schumer-Manchin-Biden tax increase indeed would raise taxes on those Americans, the administration has doubled down on the claim,” she added.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on the House floor that the way Democrats can manage to raise $200 billion in new tax revenues is “with thousands of new agents targeting what I would call Walmart shoppers.”
“They’re real hard working American families. They are my constituents, they are my neighbors in my district. They’re living paycheck to paycheck, struggling with inflation and high gas prices,” Brady said.
“They will be hit with over 700,000 new audits thanks to a skyrocketing surge in IRS agents,” he added.
“Higher taxes, harassing IRS audits on our Walmart shoppers, no relief from inflation—all as America battles a recession,” Brady said.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12, with the bill next heading to Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.
A former director of national intelligence said Aug. 12 that it is “virtually impossible” to prosecute people for mishandling classified documents, and asserted that former President Donald Trump has the “ultimately declassification authority” in terms of such documents.
“The president does have ultimate declassification authority. He can literally declassify—and President Trump had that authority, and could declassify anything you want while he was president,” John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman before Trump appointed him to be director of national intelligence, said on Fox News.
According to documents unsealed earlier Friday, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by FBI agents on Aug. 8 because of potential violations of several laws, including the Espionage Act, which some legal experts say relates to possessing classified defense information.
An inventory showed that agents seized what they listed as classified, secret, and top secret documents.
Ratcliffe said on Fox that before the search warrant materials were made public, he didn’t believe the raid was about classified materials.
“It has to be more than that because the Department of Justice and the FBI have already set a standard that makes it virtually impossible to prosecute a case like that,” he said, pointing to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s possession of classified documents was handled by the FBI, including then-Director James Comey.
“As people talk about Espionage Act and classified documents and all of that, the standard was set in 2016. Remember the Department of Justice and the FBI took the official position that Hillary Clinton, who was in possession of classified documents … that [being] in possession of that, that wasn’t enough, and that being grossly negligent and being careless, Jim Comey told us, that’s not enough under the Espionage Act. You have to know you’re violating the law,” Ratcliffe said.
“Even if you assume the worst case scenario for President Trump, that there were classified documents in his possession at Mar-a-Lago, that only puts him where Hillary Clinton was. And what the FBI and the Department of Justice would have to show is that he knew the documents were there and he didn’t think they were declassified,” he added.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that all the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were declassified.
“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” a Trump spokesperson told Just the News. “The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.”
Others weren’t sure.
“He can’t just wave a wand and say it’s declassified,” Immerman said. “There has to be a formal process. That’s the only way the system can work,” Richard Immerman, an assistant deputy director of national intelligence during the Obama administration, told NBC News. “I’ve seen thousands of declassified documents. They’re all marked ‘declassified’ with the date they were declassified.”
Retired Major General Paul Vallely reacted to the recent FBI raid on former president Donald Trump’s residence, claiming that there is a socialist-communist coalition involved with the act.
He believes that there is a “socialist coalition” that aspires to “overthrow” the U.S. constitutional republic and transform it into a totalitarian communist state.
“The American Republic founded in 1776 is under attack by a Socialist-Communist Coalition and an out-of-control Federal Government,” Vallely said in a statement he sent to The Epoch Times.
The retired major general thinks the raid violates the Fourth Amendment, a right given to the U.S. citizenry granting protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
“This cabal has illegitimately exercised their power in attacking the private residence of President Donald J. Trump and his personal residence in Mar a Lago, Florida,” Vallely said.
Secret Service personnel are seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. on Aug. 8, 2022. The FBI raided the home reportedly to retrieve classified White House documents. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)
On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland vocalized the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) first public statement about the FBI raid that targeted Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this week.
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter … the Department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said.
Garland further said that his agency filed a motion to unseal the court-approved search warrant.
“The weaponization of government power has become clear,” Vallely noted. “The abuse of such powers to interfere with future elections cannot be ruled out as this action suggests there are no limits to their abuse of authority to retain power.”
U.S. Army Major General Paul E. Vallely (Ret.) (Courtesy of Paul E. Vallely)
On Wednesday, Trump suggested that the FBI could have planted evidence during the raid at his residence since members of his team were blocked from watching the agents’ actions.
“History is repeating itself as we see the tactics of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) used by a few dystopian tyrants who have methodically and comprehensively infiltrated and assumed leadership of the Democratic Party,” Vallely said.
In addition, Vallely, who has been calling out “wokeism” in the military academies, thinks that Trump’s political rivals are trying to take him out with “selective enforcement of provisions that are normally overseen in a civil, not criminal manner.”
“Where have we seen that before? None of this is a coincidence, and none of it is justified. Even if Trump was in possession of some documents that needed to be archived, that is the kind of thing that has historically been dealt with in court, not with an FBI raid, and the former president was fully cooperating to this point,” Vallely stated.
Upon request for comment, the FBI referred to The Epoch Times to the following statement by the bureau’s director Christopher Wray: “Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others. Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans. Every day I see the men and women of the FBI doing their jobs professionally and with rigor, objectivity, and a fierce commitment to our mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. I am proud to serve alongside them.”
Trump lawyer refutes claims of an informant, says ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’
Former White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said that someone close to President Donald Trump may have tipped off the FBI before its raid Monday.
When asked by a CNN reporter Thursday about whether a person in “Trump’s orbit” tipped off the FBI and knew where documents at Mar-a-Lago were, Mulvaney said that person would have been “really close” to the former president.
“I didn’t even know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago, and I was the chief of staff for 15 months. This would be someone who was handling things on day to day, who knew where documents were, so it would be somebody very close to the president,” he claimed.
“My guess is there is probably six or eight people who had that kind of information. I don’t know the people on the inside circle these days, so I can’t give any names of folks who come to mind, but your instinct, I think, is a good one. If you know where the safe is, and you know the documents are in 10 boxes in the basement, you’re pretty close to the president.”
No Confirmation of Informant
The Epoch Times has contacted several Trump spokespeople for comment. Neither Trump, his lawyers, nor members of his family have publicly commented on whether they believe an FBI informant tipped off the raid.
A lawyer for Trump, Christina Bobb, told Fox News on Thursday that left-wing legacy media outlets are trying to “sow division” with the former president’s camp about an informant. Bobb said that regarding an informant, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
After serving as Trump’s chief of staff, Mulvaney was appointed to a position as special envoy to Northern Ireland after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Mulvaney resigned from that position on Jan. 6 and has often criticized Trump.
In early 2022, Mulvaney was hired by CBS News as a political pundit and has been increasingly critical of the former president. Mulvaney in late June told the outlet to “count me among one of the Republicans who hopes [Trump is] not the nominee at this point.”
The former president confirmed the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid on Monday evening, accusing the Biden administration and Department of Justice of being politically motivated.
Since then, the FBI and Justice Department have issued no public comments on the search until Attorney General Merrick Garland’s press conference on Thursday afternoon. The attorney general confirmed that he “personally approved” the FBI raid and said his agency is filing a motion to unseal a warrant that was used to search the former president’s property.
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter … the Department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was “unbelievable” and “unprecedented,” while demanding that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray face Congress so they can be grilled about the raid.
“This makes absolutely no sense,” Jordan said of the raid in Friday remarks to Fox News, while calling on Garland and Wray to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, on which Jordan serves as ranking member.
“Why not come talk to us and answer the questions that the American people have about this unprecedented event that took place on Monday night?” the Republican lawmaker said.
Jordan made a similar demand during an earlier appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, where he called on the pair to testify before the Judiciary Committee “so we can ask them the questions that the American people deserve answers to.”
“This is unbelievable,” Jordan said. “We deserve answers now.”
With his demand for Garland’s and Wray’s testimony, Jordan joins other Republicans who have expressed outrage at what they say is score-settling by Trump’s political foes.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks at a news conference in Washington, on July 21, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
‘Assault’ and ‘Surprise Attack’?
The Justice Department and FBI have remained mostly quiet about the aim and probable cause behind the Mar-a-Lago raid and have declined to publicly comment to The Epoch Times and other news outlets.
Garland did tell reporters on Aug. 11, however, that he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter” and that the Justice Department “does not take such a decision lightly.”
Wray said a day earlier that he wouldn’t discuss any details of the FBI search of Trump’s property, saying it’s “not something I can talk about, and I’d refer you to the department.”
It was Trump who on Aug. 8 revealed the FBI had executed a search warrant at his Palm Beach home, with the former president portraying the raid as an act of political retribution.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
In a later statement, Trump called the search a “surprise attack, POLITICS, and all the while our Country is going to HELL!”
Former President Donald Trump prepares to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas on Aug. 6, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
‘Illegally Possessed’ Documents and Records?
The raid appears to have been part of a probe into whether Trump unlawfully removed White House records as he left office, some of which investigators suspect were classified, according to the FBI search warrant made public on Aug. 12.
The warrant was issued in relation to a possible violation of federal laws, including the Espionage Act, with the warrant authorizing the seizure of documents and records at Mar-a-Lago that may have been “illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 793, 2071, and 1519.”
One of the statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 793, is part of the Espionage Act of 1917, which prohibits a series of actions regarding sensitive government records, including gathering, transmitting, or losing information related to national defense.
Another, 18 U.S.C. § 2071, prohibits concealing, removing, mutilating, obliterating, or destroying government records.
Finally, 18 U.S.C. § 1519 prohibits altering or destroying records with the intent to obstruct or influence federal investigations.
The most serious of these carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, though the listing of the statutes in the warrant is not equivalent to a formal charge.
Trump has not been accused of any crimes in connection with the raid.
Local law enforcement officers in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Obvious Damage Control’
An inventory list attached to the unsealed warrant says FBI agents seized around 20 boxes from Trump’s residence, including materials marked classified, secret, and top secret.
Lawyers representing Trump have argued that he used his presidential authority to declassify the materials before he left office in 2021.
“The Biden administration is in obvious damage control after their botched raid where they seized the President’s picture books, a ‘hand-written note,’ and declassified documents,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told Fox News on Friday.
“This raid of President Trump’s home was not just unprecedented, but unnecessary—and they are leaking lies and innuendos to try to explain away the weaponization of government against their dominant political opponent. This is outrageous,” Budowich added.
Trump on Friday said the documents the FBI seized were “all declassified” and denounced as a “hoax” anonymously sourced reporting from The Washington Post claiming some of the documents related to nuclear weapons.
Jack Phillips and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Credit card giant will spend $3 billion on ‘BIPOC businesses in Canada’ and ‘Latinx’ events
American Express in an “Environmental, Social, and Governance” report released August 4 pledged to devote billions of dollars to left-wing social causes.
The credit card giant announced in its report that it would allocate $3 billion to a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan,” in addition to the billion dollars the company already earmarked in October 2020. So far, American Express has spent funds on social justice nonprofits, “BIPOC businesses in Canada,” events that refer to Hispanic Americans as “Latinx,” and LGBT sites in New York City. The report also touts the company’s launch of “ByBlack,” a platform that checks whether a business is majority-owned by black people.
American Express has faced scrutiny for allegedly discriminating against white employees. Nick Williams, a former employee, alleges he was fired so that management could fill his position with a non-white worker. Williams has since filed a civil rights suit against American Express.
“Investors and customers should be wary of a company that spends billions on woke initiatives … and is willing to drop trusted vendors and employees based on race,” said a spokesman for Color Us United, a group that opposes “woke” policies at corporations.
The report comes as Republican attorneys general are pushing back against other financial giants’ spending on left-wing causes. Arizona’s Mark Brnovich and 18 other Republican attorneys general are putting pressure on BlackRock in response to its Environmental, Social, and Governance policies. According to a letter from the group, BlackRock’s spending on left-wing causes could represent a breach of its responsibility to stakeholders.
American Express in its report includes a chart that says “inclusion and diversity” is of more “importance to business” than data privacy and security, business ethics, financial resiliency, employee health and safety, stopping bribery, responsible investing, responsible tax practices, public policy, and customer satisfaction, among other things.
American Express beneficiaries include left-wing nonprofits such as the Hispanic Federation and the First Nations Development Institute. Aside from grant funding, the credit conglomerate will also consider race and sexual orientation when deciding suppliers.
The company also announced in the report that it will set aside $500 million for building “more resilient and equitable communities.”
In addition to its spending policies, American Express maintains internal diversity and equity policies. The company’s ESG report boasts that it has maintained “100 percent pay equity across genders” for two straight years. The report also says, however, that female employees’ median pay is 106.7 percent of male employees’ median pay. The company also promotes, hires, and retains women at higher rates than men.
American Express did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon‘s request for comment.
Salman Rushdie, the award-winning author whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a fatwa from Iran, was attacked on stage Friday just before beginning a lecture in New York.
Rushdie was apparently stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as the author took the podium at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York, the Associated Press reports. The man stabbed Rushdie 10 to 15 times before he was detained. Rushdie fell to the ground and was airlifted to a hospital, where his condition is uknown.
The attack comes more than 30 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on “all brave Muslims of the world” to kill Rushdie, as well as his authors and publishers, “without delay.” Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, slammed The Satanic Verses as “against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qu’ran,” and noted that Rushdie’s assassination was necessary to ensure “no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth.”
Khomeini’s fatwa claims “whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr.” Rushdie’s head also carries a $3 million bounty in Iran.
The Satanic Verses is a sprawling work that consists in part of a fictionalized narrative of the founding of Islam by the Prophet Mohammad. In the book, Rushdie refers to Mohammad as “Mahound,” reportedly a derogatory term for the prophet used by Medieval Christians. The book’s title comes from a scene in which Mahound rejects his earlier revelation permitting polytheistic worship as the work of the Devil.
Some Muslims objected to The Satanic Verses before Khomeini’s fatwa. Several countries banned the book, and critics held book burnings around the world.
Rushdie was defiant when asked about the backlash to The Satanic Verses in a 1989 television interview.
“Frankly I wish I had written a more critical book,” the author said, adding that “religious leaders who are able to behave like this, and then say this is a religion which must be above any kind of whisper of criticism, that doesn’t add up.”
Khomeini’s February 1989 fatwa led to a barrage of death threats and drove Rushdie into hiding under British government protection. The author reentered public life nine years later, and went on to marry model and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.
More than a third of Americans have drawn on their savings accounts to handle rising prices, taking out hundreds of dollars on average, according to a recent survey by New York Life Insurance Company.
Since January, 36 percent of Americans have drawn an average of $617 from their savings to pay their bills, the company found. Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed expressed anxiety that a recession is approaching, and roughly a third reported being “uncertain” or “anxious” about their personal finances. Respondents cited monthly bills, health care costs, grocery prices, and gas prices as their areas of greatest financial concern.
Voters overwhelmingly blame Joe Biden for the state of the economy. Sixty-four percent of Americans, including 53 percent of Democrats, believe the president’s policy decisions are to blame for soaring costs. While White House officials boasted this week about slowing inflation, prices are still up 8.5 percent from last year, with that number even higher in several key swing states.
Americans are not replenishing their savings accounts as they drain them. The personal savings rate, or the proportion of income people don’t spend or lose to taxes, more than halved between July 2021 and June 2022, falling from 10.5 percent to 5.1 percent.
To make up for tightening purse strings, Americans are increasingly turning to debt. Americans’ collective credit card debt jumped to $890 billion last quarter, marking the largest yearly increase in two decades. The number of credit cards also hit an all-time high in the second quarter, with more than 500 million in circulation.
Disgraced CNN journalist throws in the towel after 20 years
Jeffrey Toobin, the disgraced legal analyst who lost his job at the New Yorker (but kept his post at CNN) for masturbating in front of colleagues during a Zoom call, is leaving the network after 20 years. Toobin announced his departure on Twitter, noting that he would not return to CNN following his “vacation” and implying the decision was his alone.
“Was great to spend my last day on air with pals Wolf [Blitzer], Anderson [Cooper] and Don [Lemon],” Toobin wrote. “Love all my former colleagues. Watch for my next book, about the Oklahoma City bombing, coming in 2023 from @simonandschuster.”
The New Yorker gave Toobin the pink slip in November 2020 following the masturbation incident. The publication said its decision was based on a desire to foster “an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct.” CNN felt otherwise, allowing the legal analyst to take “time off while he deals with a personal issue.” The network welcomed him back on the air in June 2021. “I didn’t think other people could see [the masturbating],” he explained.
Apart from the outrageous episode of indecent exposure, Toobin is best known for attempting to bribe his much younger mistress — who was also his co-worker’s daughter — to get an abortion in 2008. The journalist reportedly told the woman, Casey Greenfield, that he was “going leave his wife for her.” Upon learning she was pregnant, however, Toobin “questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test, and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn’t sure was his.”
A Congressional Budget Office report found that the Internal Revenue Service will collect billions of dollars from auditing low- and middle-income Americans under the White House-backed “Inflation Reduction Act,” contradicting Biden administration claims, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Fox News confirmed the report, finding the CBO informed congressional Republicans that, under the act, audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will account for about $20 billion in additional revenue.
The news comes after high-ranking Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, assured Americans that the IRS would not increase audits of people earning under $400,000. The Inflation Reduction Act, which on Sunday passed the Senate, allows the IRS to hire up to 87,000 new agents, making it larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Control combined. Democrats shut down an amendment that would have prevented agents from increasing audits on middle- and low-income Americans.
The bill is expected to pass the House on Friday.
News of the CBO report also comes as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business found the bill will have an “impact on inflation [that] is statistically indistinguishable from zero” even as it raises taxes on Americans and decreases GDP for the next decade.
Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the bill, with Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) saying that “only the Democrats would call a bill that doubles the size of the IRS, raises taxes, and spends billions on a green energy slush fund the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.'”
WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.
The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.
One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)
In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!
Banks, federal agencies, and ESG investors handicap the expansion of America’s energy supply
The oil and gas industry is looking to the future with caution, and plans for expanding production of fossil fuels appear to be limited.
At the Enercom Energy Investment conference in Denver this week, the oft-repeated mantra among CEOs was that they will use the bulk of their profits to pay down debt and return money to investors through stock buybacks and dividend payments, with significantly less emphasis on major new capital investments. In addition, executives highlighted their commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for producing cleaner energy and addressing social justice issues.
As Democrats in Congress prepare to allocate $369 billion via the Inflation Reduction Act to subsidize electric cars and wind and solar energy, America’s oil and gas producers face an uphill battle. A shrinking supply of capital, a hostile regulatory environment, and shortages of materials and labor are creating significant hurdles against new drilling.
“I don’t want subsidies for our industry; we don’t need subsidies in our industry,” Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, told The Epoch Times. “We just don’t want barriers standing in the way of us providing the energy that people in the world want and need.”
Wall Street Steps Back from Fossil Fuel Financing
Among those barriers are banks and investors cutting back financing for new fossil fuel projects, due to both economic and political factors. In line with the ESG movement, 114 banks, collectively representing 38 percent of global banking assets, signed the Commitment Statement of the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, in which they pledged to “transition” their lending portfolios to reduce greenhouse-gas (GNG) emissions and reach net-zero GNG emissions by 2050 or sooner. American banks that signed this pledge include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
Another global money club, Climate Action 100+, is “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.” It has 700 investment companies as members, representing $68 trillion in assets, and includes asset managers such as BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, Invesco, Fisher, and PIMCO; insurers such as Aegon, Allianz, and AXA; state pension funds like CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York State Common Retirement Fund, New York City Pension Funds, and Maryland State Retirement and Pension System; and university endowment funds from Harvard, MIT, and University of Rochester, among others.
In response, West Virginia and Texas recently barred banks that discriminate against fossil fuel companies from getting municipal banking contracts in their respective states. On July 28, for example, West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore announced that JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo would be placed on a Restricted Financial Institution List because they “are engaged in boycotts of fossil fuel companies, according to new state law, and are no longer eligible to enter into state banking contracts.”
“Each financial institution placed on the Restricted Financial Institution List today has published written environmental or social policies categorically limiting commercial relations with energy companies engaged in certain coal mining, extraction or utilization activities, rather than considering the financial or risk profile for each company,” Moore said in an official statement. “While the ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ or ‘ESG’ movement might be politically popular in California or New York, financial institutions need to understand their practices are hurting people across West Virginia.”
Last week, 19 state attorneys general sent letters to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declaring that his efforts to impose the ESG agenda on companies whose shares it owns run counter to its fiduciary obligations to pensioners, intentionally harm America’s energy companies, and, to the extent that financial companies collude in this effort, raise anti-trust concerns. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with approximately $10 trillion in assets under management.
In a letter to Fink, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote, “BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote. BlackRock’s past public commitments indicate that it has used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States.”
Global ESG Clubs Leave Oil and Gas Industry ‘Starved for Capital’
Oil and gas executives say the push to divest from fossil fuels by global organizations like Climate Action 100+, the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is having its intended effect.
“Our industry is being starved for capital,” Anthony Gallegos, CEO of Independence Contract Drilling, told The Epoch Times, noting that banks are increasingly unwilling to provide revolving lines of credit or asset-based lending facilities [ABLFs] to the oil and gas industry. “There’s probably a third as many banks today that are willing to provide revolvers and ABLFs to [oil and gas] service companies compared to what there would have been six years ago,” he said. “There are investors, there are endowments, there are limited partnerships, some of which have historically invested in energy, that today have a mandate that they cannot make investments in fossil fuel industries.”
“The concern that the State of West Virginia, the State of Texas, and other states have had about financial institutions trying to dissuade investment I think is very real,” Wright said. “What that impacts most is the smaller or rising players that count on bank debt financing and reserve-based lending [RBL]. There is massively less RBL capital today than a few years ago; there’s a number of big European banks that were players in this space that have pulled out; there are American banks that want to show a decline in the percent of their portfolio that’s in oil and gas; there is less private equity capital because university endowments and CalPERS, CalSTRS, and other state pension funds, are divesting from oil and gas.”
Curtailing credit to smaller, private oil and gas companies is particularly harmful, Wright said, because they are currently the most active in developing new production. By contrast to the larger, public oil and gas companies, which are cautiously investing in new growth, “The private companies are investing relatively aggressively. Sixty percent of the drilling and fracking activity right now in the United States is private oil and gas companies,” Wright said.
In response to state actions, several U.S. banks recently denied they are doing anything to reduce financing for fossil fuels. Goldman Sachs stated in a July letter to West Virginia’s treasurer that it provided more than $118 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies. JPMorgan wrote that it had more than $42 billion in credit exposure to oil and gas companies.
In an apparent reversal of BlackRock’s position in 2020 that “we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” BlackRock announced in May that it will likely support fewer climate-related corporate votes in 2022 than it did in 2021.
Investors Are Risk-Averse After Oil Price Volatility, Bankruptcies
In addition to the ESG movement, the oil and gas industry is also emerging from a period of over-investment in new fracking projects a decade ago, which together with increased output in the Middle East caused oil and gas prices to fall sharply in 2016 and then collapse in 2020 during pandemic lockdowns, forcing many oil and gas companies into bankruptcy. This has caused many investors to take a more cautious approach, particularly now that the economy is slowing and oil and gas prices have fallen from their peaks in the spring.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to see capital flow into this industry the way it did in 2012 through 2014,” Gallegos said. “Investors have made it clear: ‘We’re not here to fund your growth just for growth’s sake; if we’re going to give you money, you’re going to have to demonstrate a pathway toward generating returns where we’re seeing something back as investors.’”
Accordingly, CEOs are now more focused on returning cash to their equity and debt investors.
Fitch Ratings Director Neil Stirrat said that oil and gas companies were “exercising capital discipline” and using profits to repay debt and repurchase equity, with only a “marginal” increase in capital expenditures. This increase, about 15 percent on average across the industry, was approximately equal to the increase in companies’ costs due to inflation.
Fitch noted that industry credit ratings were generally going in a positive direction, as oil and gas companies reduced leverage, extended loan maturities, and improved their financial health. Whereas in 2020, Fitch downgraded the debt of 20 oil and gas companies, while upgrading four; in 2021, 13 companies were upgraded and only two downgraded. Year to date in 2022, Fitch upgraded the debt ratings of 10 oil and gas companies, with no downgrades. The average debt ratio for North American oil and gas companies, calculated as debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), came down from 4-to-1 in 2016 to 1-to-1 today.
A Hostile Regulatory Environment for Fossil Fuels
In addition to less generous investors, America’s fossil fuel companies faced a hostile regulatory environment. A June 28 report from the Heritage Foundation, for example, noted a rush by oil and gas companies in the final months of 2020 to secure drilling permits before the Biden administration took control.
“To date, Biden is the only president in modern history not to have held a single oil and gas lease sale on federal lands despite clear direction from Congress to do so quarterly,” the report stated. “While the Department of Interior is being forced by court order to hold a lease sale this quarter, it increased fees by 50 percent and decreased the amount of available acreage for drilling by 80 percent—even as it cut fees and red tape for renewable ‘green’ energy production.”
In addition, Biden has not completed any offshore lease sales. By contrast, the Trump administration sold eight offshore leases, and the Obama administration sold 29. However, in 2021, the Biden administration issued more permits to drill on federal lands than the Trump administration did in its first year in office, though issuance of drilling permits has declined sharply in 2022.
Biden has also used other agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to discourage investment in new oil and gas projects. The SEC issued a mandate in March that all listed companies must produce audited reports detailing their fossil fuel emissions, as well as those of suppliers and customers, together with their plans to reduce them. The SEC claimed that it was compelled to issue this mandate because “investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures.”
Government Spends Hundreds of Billions to Support Wind and Solar
Besides government policies and global money-club boycotts, the hundreds of billions in subsidies for renewable energy further undermine oil, gas, and coal companies’ ability to compete. This includes the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the invocation by Biden of the Defense Production Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, currently being debated in the House of Representatives after being passed by the Senate.
In return for voting for green subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) reportedly negotiated a “side deal” that Congress would later approve a lessening of the regulatory burden for fossil fuels, including more congressional action to attempt to force the Biden administration to sell more oil and gas leases and issue new drilling permits. However, many doubt that Manchin will ever receive his part of the bargain, given that Democrats were virtually unanimous in rejecting a GOP-backed bill to streamline permit approvals last week.
The version of the Inflation Reduction Act that Manchin approved even granted the EPA the right to regulate carbon emissions. This was a critical issue because the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in West Virginia v. EPA stated that the EPA’s decree that electric utilities must transition to renewable energy and away from coal and other fossil fuels was not legal because Congress never gave the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act would have given the EPA this authority, invalidating the Supreme Court’s decision, which had ruled in favor of Manchin’s home state.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) offered an amendment, which all Democrats, including Manchin, voted against, to remove from the bill the provision that granted sweeping new powers to the EPA. When that effort failed, Capito then challenged the provision’s compliance with budget reconciliation rules, which allow the Senate to bypass the filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with Capito, and the language granting the EPA new authority was removed from the bill.
“You could make the argument, and I’m sure Manchin would make it, that we’re getting some of those barriers out of the way for hydrocarbon development, and that would on the margin be positive,” Wright said. “But I balance that with the certainty that we’re going to spend $300 billion subsidizing unreliable, more expensive, grid-destabilizing energy, and if you subsidize it heavily enough, you’re going to get it no matter how destructive it is to our grid. No matter how negative it is, the subsidies are big enough that it is in the economic interests of those parties to build it, and we’re going to pay the price.”
Former President Donald Trump on Friday said that the allegedly classified materials the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sought in the agency’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort were “all declassified.”
“Number one, it was all declassified,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday, shortly before the court unsealed the search warrant the FBI used for its Aug. 8 raid of his Florida resort.
Trump’s comments directly contradict legacy media news reports following the raid that the documents were top-secret, with The Washington Post citing anonymous sources who claimed that the documents contained information about nuclear weapons. Trump panned the claim, calling it a “Hoax.”
“Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning.
The nature of the document is important, for it determines whether the FBI’s raid is justified by a cause heavy enough to outweigh the political ramifications of such an action conducted in the home of a former U.S. president.
The Search Warrant
Trump’s comments came shortly before Bruce Reinhard, the magistrate judge who approved the search warrant, unsealed the search warrant following requests from both the Department of Justice and Trump.
While the warrant did not pinpoint what probable cause the FBI established to conduct the raid, it showed the items that federal agents took from the former president’s resort, which included “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” binders of photos, a “Grant of Clemency” to Roger Stone, a “Confidential Document,” “Miscellaneous Secret Documents,” and “Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents.”
The question becomes whether Trump, by simply possessing any of these documents, would have violated any federal codes listed in the search warrant, which the federal agents pursued:
18 USC 2071: Concealment, removal, or mutilation (of public records)
18 USC 793: Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information
18 USC 1519: Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy
Presidential Declassification Powers
According to Mike Davis, President of the Article III Project and a former law clerk under Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, the president of the United States can declassify records by simply leaving the White House with them.
“The President of the United States has both the constitutional (and statutory) power to declassify anything he wants,” Davis wrote on Twitter on Aug. 11. “If President Trump left the White House with classified records, they are declassified by his actions.”
“As discussed, the Office of Former President Trump—like every other former president’s federal office—is equipped and secure enough to handle these declassified records,” Davis added. “This is a routine dispute with bureaucrats at the National Archives whether these are presidential records.”
Davis cited Department of Navy v. Egan (ruling), a 1988 Supreme Court decision that Davis says shows the president possesses the constitutional power to “classify and declassify” records “regardless of any statute passed by Congress.”
“The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,’” The Supreme Court ruled at the time. “His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security and to determine whether an individual is sufficiently trustworthy to occupy a position in the Executive Branch that will give that person access to such information flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.”
“When President Trump had the records sent to Mar-a-Lago, they were declassified,” Davis explained. “Former presidents don’t have this power. But Trump did this as the president.”
Trump: It’s a Political ‘Witch Hunt’
Trump and his allies have characterized the raid as a “witch hunt” driven by political motives, especially considering no former presidents had been prosecuted for the reason that the FBI allegedly told sources close to Trump that motivated the raid; namely, Trump was nominally required by the Presidential Records Act to return the materials to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) upon the conclusion of his term, but allegedly didn’t.
“NARA’s singling out of President Trump’s handling of official records stands starkly in contrast to the way NARA has treated far clearer violations committed by politicians and officials who are not Republicans,” 20 Republicans, including numerous Committee ranking members, wrote in an Aug. 10 letter addressed to U.S. Acting Archivist Debra Wall, first published by Politico. The lawmakers cited reports that point to recent U.S. administrations’ violations of the Presidential Records Act, listing Bill Clinton as an example.
“The seeming weaponization of the federal government against [Joe] Biden’s political rivals cannot go unchecked, and if NARA is working to further these efforts, it will be only the latest agency to lose its credibility in the eyes of the American people under the Biden Administration,” the Republican lawmakers wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump revealed earlier this week that the FBI had recently been given a tour of where the records were stored, with the FBI only suggesting that Trump further secure the storage space.
“In early June, the DOJ and FBI asked my legal representatives to put an extra lock on the door leading to the place where boxes were stored in Mar-a-Lago – We agreed,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Aug. 10.
“They were shown the secured area, and the boxes themselves,” Trump added. “Then on Monday, without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago, went to the same storage area, and ripped open the lock that they had asked to be installed. A surprise attack, POLITICS, and all the while our Country is going to HELL!”
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk posted an ironic message on Twitter mocking Democrats’ efforts to give the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) an $80 billion cash injection amid swirling fears the money might be used to hire legions of tax auditors that would target middle-income Americans with audits.
“When the country that revolted over taxes hires 87,000 new IRS agents,” reads the message in Musk’s meme, which was placed above a photo of a laughing British Army officer from a movie.
“Fate 🖤 Irony,” reads Musk’s caption, with the message apparently rooted in the idea that boosting funding for tax authorities—part of which will be used for enforcement—runs afoul of principles that underpinned America’s founding, like freedom from government intrusion.
Despite repeated insistence by Biden administration officials that the Inflation Reduction Act’s funding boost for the IRS would not be used to increase audit rates among American households making under $400,000 per year, critics of the bill have warned that exactly that might happen.
Tax Crackdown on Middle America?
Republicans have speculated that the money would be used to hire tens of thousands of IRS agents while arguing that their enforcement efforts would target ordinary Americans.
“Democrats in Washington plan to hire an army of 87,000 IRS agents so they can audit more Americans like you. That’s more than the entire population of Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton,” House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 11 statement, which comes as Democrats in the House get ready to give their final seal of approval to the big spending measure, with an estimated price tag of roughly $700 billion.
While the bill itself makes no mention of specific hiring targets, a Treasury Department report from May 2021 (pdf) estimated that an investment roughly the size of the one in the Inflation Reduction Act would enable the IRS to hire around 87,000 employees across a range of positions by 2031.
The 87,000 figure was also cited by Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform, in a recent interview on Fox News.
“They want to take $80 billion from taxpayers, $80 billion and hire 87,000 more bureaucrats in the IRS. They’re going after small businesses. The IRS itself says they’re going to dramatically increase how they go after independent contractors and small businesses, not General Motors, smaller businesses. That’s where they think they’re going to make their money,” he told the outlet.
No Targeting of Middle-Income Americans, Democrats Say
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insists Republican claims that tax auditors will target middle-income Americans are false and politically motivated.
She said in an Aug. 10 letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig that the “much-needed” funding would be used to modernize outdated technological infrastructure, improve taxpayer service, and enforce tax laws against high-earners and big corporations that don’t pay what they owe in taxes.
Yellen vowed that audit rates wouldn’t increase for households making less than $400,000 per year.
“Specifically, I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Yellen said.
“This means that, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” she added. (Then why did my friend with a 30K annual salary have to file a W9 because he sold just over $600 of gifts on eBay to make ends meet? How many people making over $400K a year would even bother to sell anything on eBay? Give me a break!! [US Patriot])
The IRS chief, too, has insisted that the tax agency would “absolutely not” be increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans (Too late. See above [US Patriot]), according to a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 (pdf).
Democrats have argued that the funding is needed to crack down on wealthy tax dodgers.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the funding boost to the IRS is expected to bring in $203.7 billion in revenue from 2022 to 2031.
Judicial Watch is suing the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court to release records ordered declassified and released by President Trump the day before he left office.
Despite Trump’s order, Justice Department officials are not releasing the records.
The ordered-declassified records relate to “Crossfire Hurricane,” a Justice Department operation against President Trump, his 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates that falsely accused the Trump campaign of “colluding” with Russian government agents to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election. (RELATED: Leading Republicans Reveal What Durham’s Up Against)
“The Obama-Biden Administration and Deep State spying on Trump and his associates is the worst government corruption scandal in American history,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And to make matters worse, the Biden DOJ simply refuses to release smoking gun documents about this corruption that the American people have an absolute right to see!”
JW notes a “Just the News report details that the documents include ‘transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.’”
The lawsuit was filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a February 17, 2022, FOIA request for:
All records regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation that were provided to the White House by the Department of Justice on or about December 30, 2020. For purposes of clarification, the records sought are those described in a January 19, 2021 Presidential Memorandum (see https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-declassification-certain-materials-related-fbis-crossfire-hurricane-investigation/ ).
All records of communication between any official or employee of the Department of Justice and any official or employee of any other branch, department, agency, or office of the federal government regarding the declassification and release of the records described in part one of this request.
Trump’s memo authorized the declassification and release of the records:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct the following:
Section 1. Declassification and Release. At my request, on December 30, 2020, the Department of Justice provided the White House with a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public. I requested the documents so that a declassification review could be performed and so I could determine to what extent materials in the binder should be released in unclassified form.
I determined that the materials in that binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible. In response, and as part of the iterative process of the declassification review, under a cover letter dated January 17, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation noted its continuing objection to any further declassification of the materials in the binder and also, on the basis of a review that included Intelligence Community equities, identified the passages that it believed it was most crucial to keep from public disclosure. I have determined to accept the redactions proposed for continued classification by the FBI in that January 17 submission.
I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy.
My decision to declassify materials within the binder is subject to the limits identified above and does not extend to materials that must be protected from disclosure pursuant to orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and does not require the disclosure of certain personally identifiable information or any other materials that must be protected from disclosure under applicable law. Accordingly, at my direction, the Attorney General has conducted an appropriate review to ensure that materials provided in the binder may be disclosed by the White House in accordance with applicable law.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Law professors warned that proposal would encourage illegal race discrimination
The American Bar Association on Monday axed a proposal to require law schools to “diversify” their student bodies after more than a year of warnings from law professors that the plan would force schools to violate federal law.
The proposal, first released in May 2021, would have required law schools to submit annual progress reports on minority enrollment to the American Bar Association. Law schools that failed to boost the enrollment of “underrepresented groups” would have been at risk of losing their accreditation.
The proposal underwent three rounds of revisions before finally being withdrawn by the association’s house of delegates, which did not rule out revisiting the proposal at a later date. An early draft had warned that U.S. anti-discrimination laws were “not a justification” for “non-compliance” with the diversity standard, a line that drew criticism from many in the legal community, including from elite universities.
Ten Yale Law School professors said in a public comment filed in June 2021 that the proposal “instructs schools to risk violating state or federal law in order to retain certification.” As late as February 2022, law professors were raising “legal concerns” about the “use of racial balancing or quotas,” according to a memo from the bar association summarizing the feedback it received.
The decision to withdraw the proposal comes as the Supreme Court is gearing up for oral arguments in a landmark affirmative action case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, that could outlaw racial preferences throughout higher education. It also comes as something of a surprise given the association’s relentless focus on diversity.
The association, which accredits almost every law school in the United States, has made noise about eliminating the LSAT, a test some say disadvantages minority applicants. And in February, it voted to require law schools to educate students “on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” over the objections from law professors who said the requirement would threaten academic freedom.
The curricular mandate was nonetheless popular among law school administrators, with 150 deans calling on the American Bar Association to implement it. There has been much less administrative agitation for rules about minority enrollment, which law schools have long struggled to boost.
There has also been little consensus on what sort of diversity the American Bar Association should prioritize. Some comments on the now-scrapped proposal said it gave “priority to racial and ethnic diversity at the expense of LGBTQ+ and disability diversity,” according to the February memo, creating a “two-tiered DEI system.” Others attacked “the phrase ‘underrepresented groups,’” which “may exclude individuals of groups that have been limited by a history of discrimination.”
The American Bar Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
John Grande says Connecticut union retaliated against him for refusing to join labor group
A Connecticut gym teacher says his school threatened to fire him after he criticized its mandatory diversity training on “exploring privilege.” But when he filed a grievance against the school, the local teachers’ union dismissed the complaint without explanation.
John Grande filed the grievance against Hartford Public Schools for what he called targeted discipline—including threats of termination and further “Sensitivity Awareness” training—but the American Federation of Teachers Local 1018, which has jurisdiction over this arbitration process for teachers, rejected his plea, his attorney told the Washington Free Beacon. Grande, who has been a gym teacher for 30 years, said the union retaliated against him for refusing to join the labor group.
“Our employee handbook explicitly states that no employee of the Hartford public school system will be disciplined for exercising their right to free speech,” Grande told the Free Beacon. “When asked for my reaction to the training, I expressed my disagreement and was punished for doing so.”
Neither AFT Local 1018 nor the Hartford Board of Education responded to requests for comment.
Grande’s complaint comes as national teachers’ unions embrace race-based lesson plans and training. AFT president Randi Weingarten said last year that K-12 schools do not teach critical race theory but also said her union supports teachers who face backlash for race-based lessons. The National Education Association, meanwhile, pledged its support for schools that teach critical race theory but later removed the statement from its website following backlash.
The school district’s mandatory presentation on privilege, obtained by the Free Beacon, states that “it is critical for everyone to reflect on privilege in this way in order to use our individual and collective privilege(s) for equity and social justice.” The training included an activity for teachers to split into groups and discuss their privilege in eight categories: class, ability, race, gender/sex, sexuality, nationality/citizenship, religion, and “other.”
“If a police car pulls me over, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race,” one example of privilege read.
“I do not fear increased mortality from COVID-19 or standard medical procedures such as giving birth,” another stated.
Grande said he expressed criticism about the training when the school district asked for feedback. Two of Grande’s coworkers reported the gym teacher to the school district after he stated his frustrations about the training seminar.
Frank Ricci, a labor fellow at the Yankee Institute and a former union president of the New Haven Fire Department, said it appears the teachers’ union and school district coordinated to target Grande for his beliefs.
“The Hartford School System, aided and abetted by the teachers’ union, has failed our kids,” Ricci told the Free Beacon. “Instead of focusing on their dismal test scores or bridging the achievement gap, they are focusing on ‘privilege,’ which is nothing more than a distraction for their failed education policies.”
Grande in July filed a complaint at the Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations against AFT Local 1018 over its refusal to take up his grievance against the school. The union has complete control over arbitration of grievances and can reject specific cases. The Fairness Center, a nonprofit law firm that represents Grande at the state labor board, argued the union must represent all teachers equally.
“Officials are refusing to represent him simply because he isn’t a member,” Nathan McGrath, president of the Fairness Center, told the Free Beacon. “John is just asking the union to do its job so he can continue doing his.”
AFT and its PAC have spent a combined$13 million on the 2022 midterm election—all of which went to liberal causes and Democratic candidates.
Chris Deluzio didn’t pay his property taxes. He backs a proposal that would increase IRS scrutiny on Americans.
Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio, who is running in a competitive House race, was hit with penalties for delinquent property taxes last year, according to real estate records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
Deluzio, a voting rights attorney, neglected to pay $2,976 in property taxes in 2021, for the historic Georgian colonial in Pittsburgh that he purchased two years ago. He was fined a little over $100 in penalties and interest, which he paid in March 2022, according to county records.
News of Deluzio’s late tax could become a campaign issue, and comes as he and Democratic Party leaders are advocating for the Inflation Reduction Act, which would steer billions of dollars into increased tax enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service. It also comes as other Democrats, including Rep. Matthew Cartwright and Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, have faced scrutiny for their history of late property tax payments. Cartwright also endorsed the Inflation Reduction Act.
Deluzio, who is worth between $1.9 million and $5.5 million, according to his financial disclosure report, endorsed the Biden administration-backed Inflation Reduction Act earlier this month. The bill, which raises corporate taxes, would allocate $80 billion to the IRS, including $46.6 billion for tax enforcement and audit activities.
“There are a lot great policies for #PA17 in The Inflation Reduction Act. It’s a bill that would ramp up clean energy and lower the cost of medicine, save people $ and help tackle inflation – all paid for by the ultra-rich and corporations,” said Deluzio in an Aug. 3 post on Twitter.
Deluzio’s campaign responded to a request for comment after publication. His spokesman, Matt Koos, said the late payment was a banking error.
“Chris’s bank made a mistake and did not pay the reassessed property taxes on time from escrow,” said Koos. “When Chris realized this, he made the payment.”
Republicans and some independent economic analysts say the bill will end up raising taxes for low-income and middle-class earners. According to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan congressional committee, the proposal would function as a tax increase for Americans across all income brackets over the next decade.
The Senate passed the bill on a party-line vote last week, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote for Democrats. The House will vote on the package on Friday.
Deluzio is facing off against Republican and Pennsylvania businessman Jeremy Shaffer in the race, which is considered a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report. The candidates are vying to replace Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb, who ran for U.S. Senate instead of seeking reelection and lost in the primary.
Update 11:27 a.m.: This piece has been updated to include comment from the Deluzio campaign.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Aug. 11 said he personally approved the FBI’s raid earlier this week of the personal Mar-a-Lago residence of former President Donald Trump.
The FBI usually seeks approval from the top before conducting a raid on a political target. Garland’s confirmation was the first public statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI on the unprecedented search.
Garland told reporters that his agency filed a motion on Aug. 11 to unseal the court-approved search warrant that was executed at a home “belonging to the former president,” after Trump confirmed the raid, “as is his right.”
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter. … The Department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said.
He said copies of the warrant were provided to Trump’s lawyers on Aug. 8 by FBI agents.
The attorney general claimed that FBI agents are “patriotic” and “dedicated” public servants who protect Americans against violent crime and terrorism. “I am honored to work alongside them,” he said.
So far, the Justice Department and FBI have remained mostly quiet about the purpose and probable cause behind the raid and have repeatedly declined to publicly comment to The Epoch Times and other news outlets. Only alleged anonymous sources within the FBI and Justice Department have sporadically provided details about the incident to legacy media since Aug. 8.
A day before Garland’s statement, FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to speak about the FBI search, saying that it is “not something I can talk about, and I’d refer you to the department.”
The White House, meanwhile, said it wasn’t aware of the FBI raid. On Aug. 9, when asked by reporters about what Garland told him, President Joe Biden didn’t answer.
The judge who reportedly signed off on the warrant in the case, Bruce Reinhart, ordered the Justice Department on Aug. 10 to file a response before Aug. 15 after Judicial Watch and others asked the court to unseal the warrant.
Republicans in Congress have repeatedly called on the Justice Department to release documents and other information about the raid, with some arguing that it appears to be politically motivated. Even some Democrats, including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, asserted that the agencies need to provide answers about the raid.
Because of the extraordinary targeting of a former U.S. president, many have speculated that officials at the highest levels of the Biden administration, including Garland and Wray, would have signed off on it. Meanwhile, news of the incident has triggered a political firestorm with just 90 days to go before the 2022 midterms and a possible announcement that Trump might run for president in 2024.
What Comes Next
It was Trump on Aug. 8 who confirmed the FBI raid at his Palm Beach home. The former president reportedly wasn’t there when it happened, and his lawyers said they weren’t able to observe the agents.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
Members of Trump’s family and his lawyers said in multiple media interviews that agents went into several rooms in Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s bedroom and office. The agents, his son Eric Trump said, didn’t provide lawyers with a copy of the warrant before the search and wouldn’t answer questions.
When speaking on Fox News about the search, Eric Trump said it was done because the “National Archives wanted to … corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession.” Trump was referring to the National Archives having confirmed in February that classified documents were allegedly among several boxes that Trump took to his Florida residence last year.
As for Garland, some Republican lawmakers warned that he could be investigated or even impeached over the Aug. 8 raid if the GOP takes the House in 2022. The party of the president tends to lose seats in midterm elections, and Democrats currently hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”
In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested that if it’s found that Garland engaged in anything improper, he could face impeachment.
“Now, this is really something that’s going to require an investigation,” Paul said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation leads to abuse of power that this could even lead to an impeachment of the attorney general.”
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.—An Indiana congresswoman who grew up under communism said the raid on former President Donald Trump’s home was similar to “KGB-style tactics.”
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) who grew up in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union, was one of about a dozen House Republicans who met with Trump on the evening of Aug. 9. She said the raid outraged her.
“As a US Congresswoman who grew up in the USSR, the FBI raid of President Trump’s home is alarming. It is reminiscent of KGB-style tactics,” Spartz said in an email to the Epoch Times.
Spartz called for equal treatment under the law, “not spectacles to destroy potential political opponents.”
“I don’t remember Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden’s homes being raided in this embarrassing way,” Spartz said.
Spartz joined Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and members of the House Republican Study Committee in a three-hour meeting with the former president. Banks told Fox News that Trump was “upbeat” and has made his decision about whether to run for president in 2024.
Ukrainian-American U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) speaks at a news conference on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the U.S. Capitol on March 2, 2022 in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Spartz counseled facts before feelings in the wake of the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, home.
“Regardless of people’s feelings about President Trump, this should not be acceptable in a democratic society,” Spartz said.
“If the federal government can raid the home of a former president, all Americans should ask: what can 87,000 new IRS agents do to me?” the lawmaker added, referring to a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that gives the Internal Revenue Service $45.6 billion in funding for tax enforcement activities, which is enough to hire up to 87,000 new agents. The bill was passed by the Senate and is expected to be approved by the House on Aug. 12.
Trump was in New York City while his Florida home was raided. Unconfirmed reports citing anonymous sources have said that the raid was related to a Department of Justice probe into whether Trump held on to records when he left the White House. Both the FBI and Justice Department have declined to comment on the raid.
All presidential correspondence and documentation have to be handed over to the National Archives when a president leaves office, according to a 1978 law.
The justification for the FBI search remains under seal. Trump’s legal team plans on asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the search warrant affidavit, which would outline why authorities asked for the warrant.
“It breaks my heart to see what is happening in our country and around the world, but I have full faith in the American people to defeat the rise of socialism and communism once again with the right leaders,” Spartz said.
Banks said the lawmakers’ conversation with Trump involved Republicans winning back the congressional majority, and what they might do with that majority.
“I was honored to spend time with President Trump this week with my Republican colleagues and show our support,” Spartz said. “We need to have more people like President Trump who aren’t afraid to challenge the DC machine.”
Oversight GOP figures are requesting the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provide information on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid of former president Donald Trump’s resort in Mar-a-Lago.
“NARA’s singling out of President Trump’s handling of official records stands starkly in contrast to the way NARA has treated far clearer violations committed by politicians and officials who are not Republicans,” 20 Republicans, including numerous Committee ranking members, wrote in an Aug. 10 letter addressed to U.S. Acting Archivist Debra Wall, first published by Politico.
“To better understand the circumstances and NARA’s role, if any, in the FBI raid, Oversight Republicans request an immediate briefing on this matter,” the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers’ move marks the first of the GOP’s promised effort in investigating the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for any underlying political motivation.
It follows shortly after the GOP in unison cast doubt over the nature of the raid—House Republicans first, and Senate ones followed—with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promising to “leave no stone unturned” in an investigation of the Department of Justice that he says has “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
The Republican lawmakers who wrote the letter allege that “political motivation” underlies the actions of the FBI and the National Archives, as the agencies’ treatment of Trump was “so contrary” to that of other former government officials—such as former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—whom the Republicans say also had “some Presidential Records Act violations.”
What Republicans Are Requesting
The GOP members of Congress are requesting that the NARA provide a “Member-level briefing” on the following no later than Aug. 17:
Any evidence of coordination between NARA and the FBI, or between NARA and the DOJ, on raiding the former president’s property
Any documents NARA produced and submitted to a U.S. federal court
Any documents that show NARA’s process in collecting presidential records after a presidential transition
In addition, the Republicans ask in their letter that NARA preserves records related to the warrant executed by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (which has, for now, yet to be unsealed), as well as any other NARA records related to Trump’s papers following Trump’s presidential term.
“The seeming weaponization of the federal government against Biden’s political rivals cannot go unchecked, and if NARA is working to further these efforts, it will be only the latest agency to lose its credibility in the eyes of the American people under the Biden Administration,” the Republican lawmakers say in their letter.
Trump’s Presidential Records
While the FBI’s search warrant for the raid remains under seal, multiple sources close to Trump have stated that the raid was conducted, at least in name, to look for presidential records that someone is alleging Trump himself has decided to keep in Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.
Trump’s lawyer, Christina Bobb, told The Epoch Times on Tuesday that FBI agents were looking for “what they deemed to be presidential records” and seized documents from Trump’s property.
“We had been very cooperative with them before. And it’s unclear to me why they went to such drastic measures to do this. But they did. And as far as the probable cause goes, they wouldn’t give that to us,” she added.
Bobb’s comments are consistent with what NARA said in statements earlier this year about how Trump’s representatives have been cooperating in transferring presidential records, including handing over 15 boxes containing presidential records. On Tuesday, the magistrate judge who reportedly approved the search warrant ordered the Department of Justice to file a response to a motion asking for the DOJ to unseal the warrant no later than Aug. 15.
George Gascón recall up in the air after campaign reveals outdated signature-verification process
Los Angeles County officials are rejecting more than one out of every five petition signatures in the campaign to recall radical prosecutor George Gascón (D.), according to a random sample of signatures provided to the anti-Gascón campaign, which says the “shockingly” high rate is because officials are using outdated signature standards.
In July, the Los Angeles County registrar notified the Recall DA George Gascón campaign that a random sampling of signatures revealed a 22 percent rejection rate, 60 times more than the rejection rate for mail-in-ballots during the 2020 presidential election. In response, the recall campaign pushed the registrar to explain what they believed was a “shockingly large rejection rate.”
The campaign obtained public records that show the registrar’s office was training staff to review votes using outdated signature standards, which allow the disqualification of any signature for minor variations compared with the one provided on a person’s voter registration form. In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, lawyers for the campaign expressed concerns that these outdated standards were leading to an improperly high rejection rate.
Registrar Dean Logan on Monday said concerns over the signature rejections were “selective outrage” and “a fictitious narrative to misinform and cast doubt.” But Marian Thompson, the attorney who wrote the letter, told the Washington Free Beacon the county clerk has not been forthcoming about the reasons for the rejection rate and refuses to share the precise number of invalid signatures.
“If they didn’t follow the law and apply the same legal standards used for signature verification for vote-by-mail ballots, then we have a legal team assembled to resolve this matter in a court of law,” Thompson said.
Gascón has been mired in controversy since taking office in November 2020. Like many progressive prosecutors backed by the left-wing billionaire George Soros, Gascón moved immediately to end cash bail, lighten sentencing guidelines, and reduce incarceration. His deputy district attorneys sued him weeks later for the drastic changes, saying his prosecutorial approach would violate their oath of office. Soros’s Justice and Public Safety PAC contributed $4.7 million to Gascón’s campaign.
The movement to recall Gascón began gathering steam as crime spiked in the city. In Los Angeles last year, auto thefts, robberies, and homicides were all up, with the city’s murder rate nearing a 15-year high. In December, former Los Angeles prosecutors began circulating a petition to recall Gascón and gathered more than 715,000 signatures by July. If around 579,000 of those signatures are from registered voters in Los Angeles County, a recall election will be held in November. The signature count is due next week.
In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) codified pandemic-era changes to the state’s voting regulations, which reduced mail-in rejection rates by more than 80 percent in the 2020 presidential election. The current standards presume that a signature appearing on a ballot is legitimate. Prior to that change, votes could be rejected if signatures differed even slightly from a voter’s registration.
Los Angeles County is in the process of verifying signatures after a random sampling in July determined there were not enough valid signatures to trigger a recall. The Washington Examinerreported the county has denied the Gascón recall campaign observation rights for the election’s signature count, further obfuscating the verification process. A spokesman for the county registrar said the recall campaign is entitled to review the count when it is over, and that their office’s “focus is on completing the verification within the legal timelines with integrity and appropriate quality review.”
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Free Beacon the registrar’s handling of the count “fuels skepticism.”
“Public officials should embrace transparency,” Snead said. “When they don’t it fuels doubt in the integrity of our electoral system.”
A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink prioritizes left-wing political initiatives over shareholder returns and is jeopardizing the retirement of middle class workers with pensions.
Fink’s embrace of environmental, social, and governance investment policies, known as ESG, potentially runs afoul of several laws, the AGs charge in a letter sent to Fink. Instead of managing state pension funds and finding the best returns on investment, the AGs write, BlackRock uses “citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements” such as various climate initiatives.
Republicans are increasingly targeting asset managers such as BlackRock over their pro-ESG policies. They allege that these asset managers are transforming into backdoor channels for liberals to implement policies outside of the legislative process and leaving aside their principle, legal duty: maximizing returns for shareholders.
Critics of ESG say the policies are often arbitrary and can hurt a company’s bottom line. Moreover, ESG metrics can be gamed. Many companies, such as Tesla, receive a high ESG score under one metric while they rank poorly on another.
“Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field,” the AGs write. “As a firm, Blackrock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management.”
BlackRock manages an estimated $10 trillion in assets, a number larger than many first-world economies. Billions of those dollars come from U.S. pension funds. That extraordinary amount of money also gives billionaire Fink, a large donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes, tremendous influence over companies BlackRock invests in. Should Blackrock pull investments from a company over its climate or racial policies, two categories often included in ESG metrics, the company’s stock price would plummet.
The AGs assert that when BlackRock engages with companies over climate practices, it violates the states’ law about maximizing financial returns. For example, if BlackRock representatives pressure a company CEO to adopt a more expensive way to source energy in order to meet climate goals, that company may post lower profits. That drop in profits may translate to a lower stock price and harm pension funds invested in that company.
BlackRock has emerged as an explicit leader in the push “to retire fossil fuels,” the AGs allege. Part of that may be purely ideological or because of a desire to “attract investment from European or left-wing pension funds,” the AGs add. Regardless of motivation, BlackRock is obligated per law to only seek the best financial return on their investments.
Pressure from asset managers such as BlackRock appears effective. Sixty percent of respondents to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey last year said “investor pressure” was the number one reason that oil companies such as Exxon are not expanding operations.
The Biden administration recently picked BlackRock Investment Institute chairman Thomas Donilon to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. During his time at the BlackRock Investment Institute, Donilon called on Americans to triple their investments in China, the world’s largest polluter.
West Virginia announced last month that it would no longer do business with Wall Street firms that boycott the fossil fuel industry. One of those firms included BlackRock. The ban will cost the firms $18 billion a year, according to the state’s treasury office.
Andrea Mitchell says community is ‘historic’ because homes were built by slaves
Yet another NBC journalist is fighting to prevent the unwashed masses from befouling the sanctity of their ritzy Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Longtime host Andrea Mitchell is among the wealthy homeowners on Chain Bridge Road NW—described as “one of Washington’s most exclusive and prestigious streets”—who are aggressively opposing measures to allow greater access to unsavory drivers and pedestrians.
Washington City Paperreports that the “quintessentially D.C. dispute” dates back to at least 2009, when residents of the wealthy neighborhood successfully pushed back against city plans to build sidewalks for pedestrians in the interest of public safety. Opponents complained that doing so would make the posh neighborhood feel more “urban,” a racist euphemism for “not white.”
In recent weeks the D.C. Department of Transportation has taken steps to close the road to through traffic, a move some critics view as a blatant example of government officials protecting the interests of wealthy homeowners to the detriment of the greater public.
Mitchell got involved in 2021 when the local neighborhood commissioners once again raised the issue of building sidewalks. The journalist was horrified at the thought. “These are homes that were originally built during the Civil War. Mine was built in 1865, as was my next-door neighbor’s, as farm houses by freed slaves,” she said at a meeting last September. “This is a historic community.”
Wealthy liberals across the country frequently tout the “historic” character of their neighborhoods to scuttle plans that would make them more accessible and affordable for people of color. Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California-Berkeley, used similar language while attempting to block a proposal to build low-income housing units in his fancy neighborhood.
“If historic preservation means anything, it means maintaining enough of the character of an older neighborhood to remind people of its history and provide continuity with the present,” Reich wrote in 2020. “Development for the sake of development makes no sense when it imposes social costs like this.”
Mitchell is merely the most recent NBC journalist to publicly oppose efforts to make her neighborhood more accommodating to average folks. Former wunderkind host Luke Russert, who retired at age 30, made a fuss last year after a Georgetown science professor placed two large statues of iconic Transformers characters outside his home, which neighbors Russert’s $4 million pad. Children loved them, but Russert denounced them as a safety hazard that could attract unsavory visitors who might park illegally to take photos of their kids posing with the statues.
At one point during a neighborhood commission meeting, Russert suggested that failing to remove the statues was akin to endorsing Soviet communism in America. “What’s to stop someone from putting up a statue of Joseph Stalin and saying, ‘Well, this is provocative, it’s art, it speaks to me,'” Russert said. “They are a nuisance, they are an eyesore, and they detract from the spirit of the neighborhood.”
New DCCC ad pans to menu that lists prices in euros as narrator touts support for local entrepreneurs
A new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad aimed at wooing Latinos says Democrats “strengthened Arizona by investing in small businesses.” The business to which the ad subsequently cuts is almost certainly not in Arizona, or even America—its prices are listed in euros.
The DCCC released the ad Monday as part of a “six-figure digital advertising campaign to reach Latino voters,” the group said in a press release. During the spot, a narrator says Democrats supported Arizona entrepreneurs by investing in local businesses. But the restaurant to which the ad cuts is by no means local—its menu lists an array of overpriced options in euros. A goat cheese platter, for example, will set customers back 11 euros, while an avocado option costs 10.50 euros. Should an Arizonan want to visit the eatery, however, the cost would be much higher. The cheapest flight from Phoenix to the European Union is $750, according to online travel agency Kayak.
The DCCC’s intercontinental Arizona ad—which the group said would appeal to Latinos as they are uniquely concerned about “protecting small businesses” and “creating good-paying jobs”—marks Democrats’ latest botched attempt to appeal to Hispanics.
Just weeks ago, in July, first lady Jill Biden compared the Latino community to breakfast tacos. Days later, the DCCC released a radio ad targeting Texas Hispanics, which argued that even though Democrats “seem so out of touch,” they aren’t as bad as “these Republican extremists.” The ad was routinely mocked by liberal Latinos in the Lone Star State—Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha called it “the worst ad I’ve ever heard,” while a Texas Young Democrats member said the spot was “so cringe.”
The DCCC did not return a request for comment. Its ad comes as Democrats hemorrhage Hispanic voters, particularly in South Texas. In June, Republicans flipped a Rio Grande Valley House seat for the first time in more than a century, a result that made Mayra Flores the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress. Flores even defeated her Democratic opponent in deep-blue Cameron County, which is 90 percent Hispanic and less than two years ago backed Joe Biden by double digits.
Democratic lawmakers and liberal media outlets alike have responded to the Republican Party’s gains with Latino voters by attacking Hispanic Republicans. Flores’s opponent in November, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas), argued in June that he is more qualified than Flores because he “wasn’t born in Mexico.” Weeks later, Arizona representative Rubén Gallego (D.) said a female Hispanic Republican running for Congress in the state was not sufficiently Latina because she took her husband’s last name.
The New York Times, meanwhile, said Flores’s win marked the “Rise of the Far-Right Latina,” citing the Republican’s support for religiosity, strong borders, and traditional values. A Texas political blog that has received campaign funds from Gonzalez also attacked Flores last month, referring to the congresswoman as “Miss Frijoles,” “Miss Enchiladas,” and a “cotton pickin’ liar.”
“Who does this Mayra Flores think she is? Somebody said she was crowned Miss Frijoles 2022 in San Benito,” Texas political blogger Jerry McHale, who has received $1,200 from Gonzalez’s campaign, wrote on July 2. “She isn’t in congressman Vicente Gonzalez’s league. She isn’t even in the bush leagues unless she doesn’t shave her p**sy.”
The DCCC is no stranger to bungled political ads. In addition to the European menu included in its Arizona spot, the group’s latest ad in New Mexico shows a person taking pills from a bottle labeled “FOR ANIMAL USE ONLY.” It’s unclear if the person in the ad is taking an animal version of the drug Ivermectin, which CNN labeled a “livestock drug” and a “horse dewormer” after popular podcaster Joe Rogan said he took it to treat COVID-19. Rogan was prescribed a human version of the drug.
Matt Cartwright, who has a history of tax delinquency, endorses bill that more than doubles agency’s size
Congressman Matt Cartwright has a history of tax delinquency. That isn’t stopping the Pennsylvania Democrat from backing a plan that would sic an army of nearly 90,000 new IRS agents on the American people.
Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest that stemmed from late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo, the Washington Free Beaconreported last week. The incident was not his first tax-related mishap—from 2013 to 2018, the Democrat racked up thousands of dollars in penalties and interest related to his tax delinquencies. Still, Cartwright on Monday announced his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ $430 billion spending bill that does little to fight inflation and gives the IRS $80 billion to hire up to 87,000 additional employees.
Cartwright’s history of tax delinquency and subsequent support for the bill could haunt the congressman as he faces a difficult reelection bid against GOP challenger Jim Bognet. Cartwright trails the Republican by 1 point with 9 percent of voters undecided, internal polling obtained by the Free Beacon shows.
Cartwright will also have to overcome Joe Biden’s historic unpopularity, which has even extended to the president’s hometown of Scranton. In Cartwright’s eighth district, which includes Scranton, just 38 percent of voters approve of Biden, compared with 60 percent who disapprove, the Free Beaconrevealed Wednesday. Despite Biden’s hometown woes, Cartwright is standing by the president—unlike some of his House Democratic colleagues, the congressman has publicly backed Biden to run for reelection in 2024. Cartwright was also a staunch Biden supporter during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, having said in 2019 that he was “honored” to endorse his “friend, northeastern PA hometown boy, Joe Biden for president.”
Cartwright did not return a request for comment. His Monday statement voicing support for Democrats’ latest spending bill did not include a comment on its IRS-related provisions. Should that bill pass the House, the IRS will receive $80 billion to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The hiring spree would more than double the size of the agency’s workforce, making the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined, the Free Beaconreported. Bognet has railed against the proposal, arguing that the Inflation Reduction Act should instead be called the “Audit America Act.”
“With that many new IRS agents, every small business can expect to be audited,” Bognet said Monday. “We must stop this spending spree, and we must stop this auditing spree.”
Beyond the Cartwright-backed bill’s proposed IRS expansion, even liberal economists don’t believe the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, whom Biden himself routinely cites, said in a new report that the legislation will cause no change in inflation until the third quarter of 2023, when Americans can expect to enjoy a .01 percent decrease.
Cartwright is nevertheless touting the bill as a win for Democrats. In his Monday statement, he called the bill “landmark legislation” that “the American people have been waiting for.”
Cartwright’s race against Bognet is not his first. The Democrat narrowly defeated Bognet by roughly 3 points in 2020, a result that marked the tightest reelection bid of his career. Bognet has thus far raised $1.2 million to Cartwright’s $3.5 million.
SO WHEN ARE REPUBLICANS GOING TO GET OFF THEIR BUTTS AND CODIFY THIS TREND?
A majority of American voters support states requiring audits “immediately after elections” to protect election integrity, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports sponsored by The National Pulse.
Asked, “Should every state require that ballots be available immediately after elections for bipartisan voter reviews to enhance election confidence and transparency?” 56 percent of likely voters supported the idea while just 23 percent of likely voters opposed it.
The Rasmussen data showed that 68 percent of Republicans – considerably more than just 45 percent of their Democrat-voting counterparts – supported the push for election integrity. 57 percent of Independents were also in support.
When divided into the three ideologies of “Conservative,” “Moderate,” and “Liberal,” the data showed a similar trend: 73 percent of Conservatives responded “yes,” 52 percent of Moderates responded “yes,” and just 34 percent of Liberals responded “yes.”
The news follows Democrats attempting to universalize vote-by-mail in America’s forthcoming elections while Republican officials have sought to halt these efforts with election integrity measures. It also comes as the 2020 election results continue to be subject to scrutiny due to the nefarious influence of private foundations funding ballot harvesting efforts and unmanned ballot “drop boxes.”
The Rasmussen poll also inquires with voters “How important will the issue of election integrity be in this year’s congressional elections?”.
80 percent of likely voters felt the issue would be important, with 59 percent of individuals polled believing election integrity would be “very important.”
The feelings appeared to be nonpartisan, as 87 percent of Republicans, 78 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of Independents believed election integrity would be important in the upcoming midterms.
The poll comes amidst ongoing investigations into several late-night ballot dumps during the 2020 election, all of which supported Joe Biden, and far-left activist groups linked to George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg using hundreds of millions of dollars to boost voter turnout rates for the Democratic Party.
Mainstream media outlets, social media platforms, and Democratic officials have set out to censor individuals discussing voter fraud, despite pushing similar claims about Russian election influence throughout 2016 and the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency. Under Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has also targeted officials and activists fighting for election integrity by threatening criminal prosecution.
The Justice Department has to respond to motions to unseal a warrant that triggered the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to a magistrate judge who reportedly approved the search.
“On or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 15, 2022, the Government shall file a Response to the Motion to Unseal,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Wednesday afternoon, referring to the Department of Justice.
“The response may be filed ex parte and under seal as necessary to avoid disclosing matters already under seal. In that event, the Government shall file a redacted Response in the public record. If it chooses, the Government may file a consolidated Response to all Motions to Seal,” he wrote.
Neither the FBI nor Justice Department has issued public comments about the raid, which was first confirmed by Trump on Monday evening.
The FBI declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times, and the Justice Department has not responded to several requests for comment.
As for the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was not aware of the raid before Trump’s announcement. Her claim was refuted by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“What I can tell you definitively and for sure, he was not aware of this,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden. “Nobody at the White House was. Nobody was given a heads up and we did not know about what happened yesterday.”
Requests
On Wednesday, the Times Union’s managing editor, Brendan J. Lyons, wrote to Reinhart to ask for the warrant to be unsealed.
“Given that the search warrant(s) have been executed, and the target of that search has full knowledge of what occurred, there is no impediment to any ongoing investigation from the disclosure of the search warrant order or the returns. As such, these records should be unsealed,” the letter to the Florida judge reads.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Judicial Watch asked for the warrant as part of an investigation into “the potential politicization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice and whether the FBI and the Justice Department are abusing their law enforcement powers to harass a likely future political opponent of President [Joe] Biden.”
“If the Court were to unseal the materials, Judicial Watch would obtain the materials, analyze them, and make them available to the public,” the letter said. “Unsealing the records therefore would further Judicial Watch’s mission of educating the public.”
It comes as Eric Trump, a son of the former president, told the Daily Mail that a Trump attorney at Mar-a-Lago, Christina Bobb, asked FBI agents Monday about seeing a warrant.
“They would not give her the search warrant,” he told the outlet, referring to Bobb. “So they showed it to her from about 10 feet away. They would not give her a copy of the search warrant.”
Top Republicans, meanwhile, demanded an investigation into the raid and argued that it was politically motivated to wound the GOP ahead of the 2022 midterms. Some have said the Justice Department immediately needs to release documents pertaining to the raid.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said there needs be a “thorough and immediate explanation” of how the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was approved. Legal historians have said that such a raid against a former president is unprecedented.
“Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately,” McConnel added.
Trump on Monday said that federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago despite him having cooperated with federal officials for months to return documents that he allegedly took from the White House after leaving office last year.
Reinhart came under fire Tuesday amid reports from several news outlets that found he had a connection to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Reinhart left his job as an assistant United States in early 2008 before he began representing some of Epstein’s workers.
According to a 2018 Miami Herald report, two of Epstein’s accusers alleged Reinhart left his prosecutor job to give Epstein inside information. Reinhart denied those allegations.
As his connection to the Epstein case went viral on Tuesday, it appeared the U.S. Southern District of Florida removed the judge’s page from its website, according to archived versions of the website.
“Access denied,” Reinhart’s page reads. “You are not authorized to access this page.”
China and Russia are the clear winners of the the carbon-reducing provisions in the Democrats’ latest spending bill that aim to cut fossil fuel emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to former President Donald Trump’s erstwhile economic adviser.
Stephen Moore, a Trump-era adviser and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD in a recent interview that the climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—now en route to final House approval—would hamstring American energy production and benefit adversaries.
“The two big winners from this bill clearly are Russia and China,” Moore said, adding that he thinks the bill is not just bad for the U.S. economy but it’s “really bad for national security to give up our energy dominance.”
Moore pointed out that China—which is responsible for around five times more carbon emissions than the United States—is now building dozens of massive coal plants and “obviously, they don’t care about climate change.”
As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Russia also stands to gain from efforts to accelerate curbs on U.S. carbon emissions as that would keep crude prices elevated and bolster Russia’s revenue stream, Moore said.
The economist argued that the Biden administration has “basically declared a war on our fossil fuels,” while pointing to Germany’s “experiment” of going all-in on clean energy a decade or so ago that he said “basically led to a complete economic collapse.”
“Let’s not follow in their footsteps,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 7, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Markets or Government Subsidies?
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate and energy provisions, with measures like tax credits for buying electric vehicles, making homes more energy efficient, and installing residential solar panels and battery systems.
The measure also reinstates the superfund tax on crude and imported oil, which could lead to higher energy bills for households, and it includes a fee of up to $1,500 per ton for methane emissions.
“More simply, it means that roughly 40 percent of the country’s electricity will come from wind, solar, and energy storage by 2030,” ACP said in the analysis, which projects that the Inflation Reduction Act will, overall, deliver an estimated 525 to 550 gigawatts of new non-fossil fuel power by the end of the decade, up from the current 211 gigawatts.
The bill is also expected to generate over $900 billion in economic activity via the construction of clean energy projects between now and 2030, according to the association.
Moore said that he doesn’t object to renewable sources of energy but argued that market forces rather than government subsidies should be their key driver.
“We didn’t have the government subsidize Henry Ford when he invented cars,” Moore said. “We didn’t have the the federal government subsidize Standard Oil when it started making … gas plentiful and cheap for everyone. So why do we need to have the government throw hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in this industry?”
Moore also argued that, contrary to what its name implies, the bill won’t reduce inflation.
Alliant Energy’s coal plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan, on July 4, 2022. (Timothy Gardner/Reuters)
Inflation Reduction?
The Inflation Reduction Act “will increase inflation,” Moore said, adding that, “the reason we have 9 percent inflation today is because of the massive Biden spending spree.”
“There’s two things you don’t want to do when you have massive inflation. You don’t want to spend more government money. And when you’re in a recession, you don’t want to raise taxes. This bill makes both those mistakes,” he said.
Some disagree with Moore about the bill’s impact on inflation.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in an Aug. 9 interview in The Harvard Gazette that “the tendency of this bill will be to reduce inflation because over time it reduces demand by bringing down budget deficits.”
Summers also argued that it would bolster the supply of key commodities in the energy sector, helping push down prices.
Other backers of the bill, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), say the government subsidies for clean energy will have a knock-on effect and boost private investment in the sector and so accelerate cutting carbon emissions.
“This is going to be more massive than people realize,” Khanna told Politico in a recent interview.
“If the government invests $300 billion in solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps, that has the potential to unlock trillions of dollars in private sector investment in climate,” he added.
Moore argued that the bill is less about the environment and more about money.
“This is a massive, now trillion-dollar, industry. This is about money, folks, this doesn’t have anything to do about cleaning up the environment or keeping our environment safe,” he said.
“This is massive numbers of huge companies and huge investors. They’re going to get very, very rich off of these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies,” Moore added.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), a fossil fuels industry group, identified six problematic provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that it argued would undermine the industry’s ability to promote energy security for American consumers.
Besides the superfund tax and methane emission fees, the API also noted additional costs imposed on energy companies with the bill’s minimum book tax provisions and increased rental fees on onshore leases.
The group also panned the bill’s omitting of comprehensive permitting reform, which API believes is key for bolstering domestic energy production, lowering costs for consumers, and helping the country meet its emission objectives.
“Glaringly absent in the bill is permitting reform, which is required for America’s infrastructure needs and to bolster critical oil, natural gas, and renewable supplies to meet our current and future energy demand,” said Mike Sommers, API president and CEO, in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump revealed that FBI agents wouldn’t hand over the search warrant during their Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago and removed an attorney from the property.
“There’s 30 agents there,” he told the Daily Mail on Aug. 10 of the FBI raid. ‘They told our lawyer … you have to leave the property right now. Turn off all security cameras.
“They would not give her the search warrant. So they showed it to her from about 10 feet away. They would not give her a copy of the search warrant.”
Attorney Christina Bobb was confused as to why the FBI couldn’t present the search warrant, according to Eric Trump.
“It’s all a coordinated attack with the FBI,” he said. “Do you think that the FBI director is going to raid the former president’s house, especially a house as you know, kind of world-renowned as Mar-a-Lago … without getting the approval of President [Biden]?”
The younger Trump said security cameras weren’t turned off. FBI agents accessed areas of the property where they “shouldn’t have been,” he claimed.
The former president confirmed the FBI raid on his property on the evening of Aug. 8. Both the FBI and Department of Justice haven’t issued public comments about the matter; The Epoch Times has contacted both agencies for comment.
Unconfirmed reports and anonymous sources say the raid pertained to a Department of Justice probe into whether Donald Trump held onto government documents after he left the White House last year.
All presidential correspondence and documentation have to be handed over to the National Archives when a president leaves office, according to a 1978 law.
(L-R) Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner arrive for the funeral services of Ivana Trump in New York on July 20, 2022. (Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images)
“[The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)] had ongoing communications with the representatives of former President Trump throughout 2021, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes to NARA in January 2022,” David Ferriero, who served as NARA director from November 2009 until April 2022, wrote to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in February.
Ferriero said NARA requested that Trump representatives “continue to search for any additional Presidential records that have not been transferred to NARA, as required by the Presidential Records Act.”
But Bobb told Real America’s Voice that the raid over the documents is a “completely unnecessary power flex” and a “weird flex.”
“It’s quite honestly sad to see what they have done to our country,” she said.
Top Republicans demanded an investigation into the raid and argued that it was politically motivated to wound the Republican Party ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 10 statement. “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of their department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”
Over two years of pandemic oversight, Johnson said he’s witnessed money being put before public health
From the early days of the pandemic, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been trying to hold U.S. public health agencies accountable on many issues, including why the agencies censored early treatment options for COVID-19, pushed vaccine mandates, and demonstrated a lack of integrity and transparency involving the vaccine data and reporting.
After conducting two years of oversight, Johnson said that the U.S. medical system has been compromised by money from Big Pharma.
“We have a corrupt medical system in this country,” Johnson said in a recent interview for NTD’s “Capitol Report” program. “From the pharmaceutical companies down to the federal health agencies through to the research centers and medical journals. It should concern every American.”
Play Video
Agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have not freely provided the public with accurate data about the vaccine’s origin, efficacy, and adverse effects, said Johnson, and he and others conducting oversight have had to rely heavily on other countries’ data.
“We’ve had to look to either Israel or Public Health England, Public Health Scotland. Now they’re shutting down their information streams as well,” he said. “One of my biggest concerns is our federal health agencies have not been honest. They’ve not been transparent.”
He called what the CDC is doing “willful ignorance.”
Public Health Agencies Contradicting Themselves
Johnson sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in late July, demanding answers as to why there have been conflicting statements about the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, who heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from VAERS since February 2021. The CDC, however, told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method was outside of the agency’s purview.
“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson said in the letter.
“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” the letter states (pdf).
“It’s all BS,” Johnson said in the interview. “As soon as the safety signals started screaming at them through the VAER system, what do they do? They denigrated the VAER system.”
The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the NTD interview, Johnson said he believes the health agencies don’t want to provide truthful information.
“I think, among many disappointments, one of the biggest disappointments in terms of the federal health agencies is they’re just not giving us the information, and I don’t think they really want to,” he said.
From the get-go, the vaccine mandates were “pointless, completely idiotic, and totally destructive,” Johnson said, adding that the agencies’ own data has long confirmed that vaccines do not prevent transmission or reoccurring infection.
Johnson implied that Big Pharma has had a role in pushing the vaccine mandates out of its own self-interest.
“I’ve always been supportive of the pharmaceutical industry,” because the drug companies need billions of dollars to develop new drugs that are important for improving lives, said Johnson. “But now I’ve just witnessed the capture of U.S. regulatory agencies by Big Pharma.”
Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”
“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”
Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.
In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.
“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”
Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”
‘Weaponization of the Justice System’
“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.
Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”
A member of the Secret Service in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.
“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.
“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”
America ‘No Longer Respected’
In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”
Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”
“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.
U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load people being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force via AP)
“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.
“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.
“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”
‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’
Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”
“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.
“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.
“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.
“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.
The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”
On Tuesday, only one day after the FBI’s controversial raid of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, federal agents seized the cellphone of Republican Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Perry revealed as much via a statement Tuesday.
The congressman had been traveling with his family at the time. Then, federal agents approached him, issued a warrant and requested he turn over his phone.
“This morning, while traveling with my family, three FBI agents visited me and seized my cellphone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” Perry said via his statement, according to Fox News.
“I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress.”
“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”
Perry went on to connect his encounter with the FBI to Trump’s on Monday.
“As with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen — especially considering the decision before Congress this week to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to further persecute law-abiding Citizens,” Perry said.
Although it remains unclear if the seizure is at all connected to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Fox News noted that both Trump and Perry have both been targetted by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 House select committee.
The Department of Justice has yet to release a statement regarding either the seizure of Perry’s phone or the raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Regarding the raid, it is believed that FBI agents were looking for classified documents that Trump had taken with him after leaving the White House.
After news of the raid broke, conservatives and Republicans took to social media to voice their outrage.
Some supporters even went to Mar-a-Lago to support the former president.
Trump released a statement on Monday responding to the raid.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump wrote in a statement on Monday.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”
Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out a common pattern the Justice Department has followed in dealing with those associated with former President Donald Trump.
The Fox News host argued on Tuesday’s “Outnumbered” that the DOJ now appears to be employing the same tactic against Trump himself in light of the FBI’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, the previous day.
“This is very personal for somebody the FBI was, you could argue, looking at for six years,” McEnany said.
“We know about the [Steele] dossier. We know the way it was peddled. We know that there was an insurance policy, if you read Peter Strzok’s texts. So all the things President Trump was saying, this just pours fuel on that fire,” she recounted.
In August 2016, then FBI agent Strzok texted his lover then-FBI attorney Lisa Page that the bureau needed to have an “insurance policy” in case Trump got elected.
“I will say I think you can’t look at this in isolation,” McEnany said of the raid on Trump’s home, reportedly to obtain classified documents he allegedly has not turned over to the National Archives.
“I think you have to look at this in light of other Trump-related prosecutions. What I mean by that is in this case it’s the Presidential Records Act,” she argued.
McEnany cited George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley to point out the Presidential Records Act of 1978 has rarely been used for criminal prosecution.
GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley: Biden FBI’s raid was “heavy-handed” and “unprecedented” pic.twitter.com/44eBN2xUpI
“You look at Paul Manafort who was the [2016] campaign manager for Donald Trump. It was a [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violation they pursued. FARA has been used seven times in 50 years, but it’s brought out against Paul Manafort, this despite there being rampant FARA violations: 62 percent of people admitting they report late,” McEnany, a Harvard Law School graduate, said.
The DOJ Office of Inspector General released a report in September 2016 finding that “62 percent of initial registrations were untimely.”
“And then the Logan Act, used against Michael Flynn,” McEnany said. “This is a 1799 statute that has never in the history of this country been used to successfully prosecute anyone, but it’s used as a pretext to go in and look at Michael Flynn.”
“Why are never before used statutes or rarely used statutes in those contexts being used in this manner?” she asked.
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz argued in a Tuesday opinion piece in The Hill that if the DOJ wanted documents from Trump, prosecutors should have made the case to a grand jury to obtain a subpoena specifying the materials to be seized.
“Instead, the FBI apparently seized everything in view and will sort the documents and other material without a court’s deciding which ones are appropriately subject to Justice Department seizure,” Dershowitz wrote.
.@alandersh: “I don’t think you use search warrants and prosecutions to go after political enemies”
“Defenders of the raid argue that the search warrant was issued by a judge,” he added. “Yet every criminal defense lawyer knows that search warrants are issued routinely and less critically than candy is distributed on Halloween; judges rarely exercise real discretion or real supervision. It may be different when a president’s home is the object of the search, but only time will tell whether that was the case here.”
Dershowitz pointed out no such raids were conducted on Hillary Clinton’s or former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger’s homes, when they were accused of mishandling classified documents.
“It is true that a president or former president is not above the law — but neither should he or she be below the law. Precedents established in relation to Democrats must be equally applied to Republicans. On the face of it, this standard has not been met here,” he wrote.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News Tuesday, “In my view, this is a raid that will go down in infamy. The Biden administration has crossed the Rubicon in terms of attacking President Trump and their political opponents by misusing law enforcement.”
“I tell you the FBI and the Justice Department can’t be trusted and should be thoroughly reformed, and frankly, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think they’re redeemable at this point.”
House members will be able to vote by proxy until the end of September, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) announced today, citing the COVID-19 pandemic even as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to trend downward.
Proxy voting, which means that one member of the House can cast a vote on behalf on an absent member, started in May 2020, and Pelosi has extended it multiple times, citing “the public health emergency due to the novel coronavirus.” The proxy-voting period would have ended Aug. 12 had Pelosi not extended it to Sept. 26.
The pandemic did not stop Democratic users of the proxy-voting system from racking up travel expenses for their reelection campaigns. Pelosi’s fellow California Democrat, Rep. Eric Swalwell, last year voted by proxy 141 times while spending $45,000 at luxury hotels. Hawaii Democratic representative Kai Kahele voted in-person only 5 times between January and April, proxy-voting 120 times. Kansas Democratic representative Sharice Davids cited “the ongoing public health emergency” to justify skipping in-person voting as she stayed in $1,000-per-night hotels for fundraisers.
The Senate has required in-person voting throughout the pandemic. Senate Democrats last week threw out COVID safety protocols to ensure the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has promised to end proxy voting if Republicans win control of the House in November. McCarthy said in a statement last year that proxy voting is unconstitutional.
“Although the Constitution allows Congress to write its own rules, those rules cannot violate the Constitution itself, including the requirement to actually assemble in person,” McCarthy said.
Mandela Barnes’s record to be tested as Republicans home in on anti-police rhetoric, personal issues
Mandela Barnes, a far-left Wisconsin Senate candidate bankrolled by anti-police groups, easily clinched the state’s Democratic nomination on Tuesday, after a friendly primary that effectively ended two weeks ago when his main competitor dropped out and endorsed him.
But the smooth sailing is about to end as he enters the general election against incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson, and the Republican Party homes in on Barnes’s history as a progressive firebrand.
During the primary, Barnes’s opponents avoided attacks on his political record, including his criticism of law enforcement, far-left economic policies, and personal issues such as his tax delinquency. He also attempted to distance himself from some of the more radical policies on the left, telling the Washington Free Beacon that he doesn’t support the “defund the police” movement—even as he raked in his largest donations from Lead the Way 2022, the Working Families Party, and other anti-law-enforcement organizations.
But Johnson will almost certainly highlight Barnes’s controversial policy positions during the general election, according to Republican strategists.
“There weren’t many elbows thrown in that primary,” said Mark Graul, a Wisconsin Republican strategist. “[These issues are] going to come out over the next few months.”
Keith Gilkes, a Wisconsin Republican political consultant, predicted that Barnes will have a “very difficult time appealing statewide coming from that Democratic progressive liberal viewpoint with the voters around the state of Wisconsin outside of Dane and Milwaukee county,” the bluest areas in the state.
Barnes, who was born in Milwaukee in 1986, worked as a community organizer for Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope before entering politics in 2012. He spearheaded a campaign that railed against “mass incarceration” in Wisconsin, and sought to reduce the state’s prison population by half through early release and treatment programs.
Later that year, Barnes was elected to the state assembly in a deep-blue district in Milwaukee, after ousting Democratic incumbent Jason Fields in the primary. Barnes, with backing from the state teachers’ union, argued that Fields was too conservative and campaigned against the incumbent’s support for school vouchers.
As a state legislator, Barnes backed criminal justice reform policies and sponsored a 2016 bill to abolish cash bail in the state, a position his campaign says he still supports. The bill would require Wisconsin judges to “release a defendant before trial” rather than setting monetary bail, unless the court found clear evidence that the individual would “cause serious bodily harm to a member of the community.” Prosecutors would also be prohibited from using “the nature, number, and gravity” of the charges to argue against release.
Bail reform has been a contentious issue in Wisconsin, where six people were killed and dozens injured last year at a Christmas parade in Waukesha by a repeat felon who had been released on low bail shortly before the attack.
Barnes has also taken far-left stances on economic and environmental issues. As lieutenant governor, he led a commission on climate change that proposed divesting state pension funds from fossil fuels, instituting a carbon tax, and requiring schools to teach a racially focused climate justice curriculum.
“He’s much further left than most Wisconsinites are … and I think people are going to learn that over the course of the next three months,” said Graul.
Barnes’s personal record could also be an obstacle. He has been delinquent on property taxes, and blew up at a reporter who asked about the late payments in 2019, claiming that the “check is in the mail.” He was barred from registering his car due to outstanding parking tickets in 2018, and relied on state police to chauffeur him around.
He also misrepresented his college background, claiming he received a journalism degree from Alabama A&M University in 2008. After journalists questioned this claim in 2019, he admitted that he did not graduate due to “a small technical thing” involving his failure to turn in completed coursework.
Republicans are likely to highlight Barnes’s history of controversial statements as well. He once described the U.S. founding as “awful,” citing the legacy of slavery, and was photographed holding a t-shirt reading “Abolish ICE”—a reference to the radical movement to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Barnes’s viability as a general election candidate is also largely untested. His only competitive race has been a 2016 Democratic primary bid for state senate against incumbent Democrat Lena Taylor. Barnes ran to Taylor’s left, and she ended up winning the race in a blowout.
Barnes’s election as lieutenant governor was on a joint ticket with Democratic governor Tony Evers, where statewide general election voters generally pay less attention to the running mate, according to political operatives. Evers beat incumbent Republican Scott Walker in the race by one point.
“The bottom line is [Barnes has] never stood for statewide general election,” said Gilkes. “He ran in a Democratic statewide primary [for lieutenant governor in 2018], but ultimately he was under Tony Evers, which is what everybody was voting for.”
There’s reason to suspect that the FBI search of the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump was improperly intrusive, according to several lawyers. The raid prompted a rebuke from Trump and Republicans more broadly and further escalated political tensions in the nation.
About two dozen FBI agents entered Trump’s Palm Beach resort of Mar-a-Lago at about 9 a.m. on Aug. 8 and left about 10 hours later with “a handful of boxes of documents,” one of Trump’s attorneys on the scene, Christina Bobb, told Insight.
“I didn’t actually get to oversee the search, they wouldn’t let anybody see what they were doing,” she said.
It isn’t clear what legal basis the FBI had for the raid. The agents had a search warrant signed by a judge. However, the affidavit explaining the basis—its probable cause—was filed under seal, and Trump’s lawyers weren’t allowed to examine it, Bobb said.
In general, the agents were looking for “what they deemed to be presidential records,” she said.
“I don’t think there was anything of substance.”
Trump’s legal team will take steps to obtain the affidavit, according to Bobb.
There has been a dispute between the National Archives and Trump about whether he has documents that should be stored at the archives under the U.S. Presidential Records Act.
Trump has been cooperative on that front and had previously invited the FBI to Mar-a-Lago to examine the White House records he had in storage at the time, Bobb said.
“Nothing had been hidden, and nothing had been kept secret from them, which makes this all the more ridiculous,” she said.
Potentially Illegal
“I’m stunned and dismayed,” Marc Ruskin, a 27-year FBI veteran and former federal prosecutor, told Insight. “The disregard for traditional norms and apparent lack of concern with the appearance of impropriety is indicative of an abandonment of even a veneer of independence and objectivity.”
Former federal prosecutor Mike Davis went even further, saying the raid may have been illegally invasive.
“Under the case law, you can’t do a home raid if you can secure the documents through less intrusive means,” he told “Bannon’s War Room” on Aug. 9.
The FBI had to first determine that requests for the documents or even subpoenas wouldn’t be sufficient, said Davis, who formerly advised Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on judicial nominations and now heads The Article III Project.
“There’s zero evidence” that Trump wouldn’t have cooperated, he said.
“There was no allegation or evidence that he [Trump] was destroying any of this evidence or putting it into the wrong hands. This is banana republic-level tactics from the Biden Justice Department.”
Even if Trump took classified documents, he took possession of them when he was still chief executive and had the authority to declassify them, according to Davis.
Bobb suggested that the invocation of classified documents was a disingenuous attempt of “shrouding this in a national security blanket.”
“They don’t want to disclose what they’re doing, because what they’re doing is wrong. And so they want to hide it behind the premise of ‘Oh, it’s a matter of national security and classified documents, so we can’t disclose to you what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. But just trust us. We’re not lying to you,’” she said. “Well, no, the American people aren’t going to stand for that anymore.”
Even if the DOJ tried to charge Trump with withholding documents, it wouldn’t hold up because the statute in question requires a “willful” violation, and Trump would have had to have “some malicious intent” to take specific documents, according to Bobb.
“They would have to lay the foundation that Donald Trump actually packed up his own office” or ordered somebody what specifically to take, she said.
History of Missing Documents
If Trump had documents that should go to the archives, it would add him to a lineup of former government officials.
Former FBI Director James Comey took his handwritten notes when he was fired by Trump in 2017. His home wasn’t raided. He handed the notes to FBI agents who came to interview him.
The Obama administration didn’t just fail to hand over documents, tens of thousands of its documents went missing or were destroyed. No homes were raided.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to hand over tens of thousands of emails and documents from her server, claiming that they were of a personal nature. The FBI was able to retrieve some of the documents, revealing that many were work-related. Moreover, the documents were under congressional subpoena at the time when a Clinton aide deleted them.
Immediate Skepticism
The raid prompted an immediate wave of skepticism, particularly because the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have a history of breaking protocol, misrepresentations, and even forging evidence in their case against Trump and members of his campaign.
“After six years of unfounded, absurd investigations of President Trump, the presumption is that any investigation of President Trump is politically motivated, and the burden of proof is on FBI/DOJ to prove otherwise,” Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Internet Accountability Project, wrote in an Aug. 9 Twitter post.
In 2017, the FBI and DOJ obtained two extensions of a spying warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page even though the warrant was based on false or unsubstantiated allegations. The FBI later acknowledged that spying based on the extensions was illegal.
The FBI also has a history of harsh treatment of people associated with Trump. His aides have been arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed, and “perp-walked,” and their homes and offices have been raided in pursuit of trivial or nonviolent offenses, even when the targets were cooperating with the government.
Shoe on the Other Foot
The Trump raid increased the already polarized political playing field, as Republicans can now argue that home raids of former presidents are acceptable.
“They’re setting a very dangerous precedent where you can do a home raid of a former president of the United States,” Davis said, noting that such a thing has never happened “in our 250 years as a republic.”
Already, Republican lawmakers are promising to subject the DOJ and the FBI to intense scrutiny, with the expectation of reclaiming the majority in the House after the November midterms.
“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 8 statement. “Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Judge’s Epstein Connection
The search warrant was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in the Southern District of Florida. Reinhart was a senior prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida when the office reached a nonprosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, who was later indicted for sex trafficking children and died by apparent suicide in a New York jail.
Upon leaving office, Reinhart went into private practice and represented multiple Epstein associates and employees in civil cases against Epstein by his alleged victims.
Reinhart was appointed a magistrate judge in 2018 by the district judges in the Southern District of Florida.
The warrant was issued on Aug. 5, the day after FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee and was questioned about multiple whistleblower reports alleging the politicization of the bureau. Wray cut the questioning short because he said he had to urgently travel. Flight records indicate he flew in the FBI private jet to his vacation retreat in the Adirondacks, according to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the time around which the search of Donald Trump’s residence started. The raid started at about 9 a.m. Insight regrets the error.
Update: The article has been updated with a comment from Marc Ruskin.
Judge Bruce Reinhart – who is reportedly the most likely judge behind the warrant authorizing a raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar A Lago estate – is a former attorney who represented employees of convicted sex offender and notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, The National Pulse can reveal.
The National Pulse can also reveal that Judge Reinhart has donated to the campaigns of former President Barack Obama and to the establishment opponents of Donald J. Trump during the 2016 election, including Jeb Bush.
Politico – the news outlet closest linked to the establishment in Washington, D.C. – named Reinhart in their morning playbook e-mail on Tuesday, 9th August 2022:
POLITICO FINGERS REINHART
As reported by the Miami Herald, Judge Reinhart began representing Epstein’s employees on January 2nd, 2008, just one day after departing the U.S. Attorney’s Office where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney closely involved on the convicted pedophile’s case.
Accused of leveraging “inside information about Epstein’s investigation to curry favor with Epstein,” in 2011, he was named as a prosecutor who allegedly violated the rights of an underage girl whom Epstein solicited sex from in the Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit.
Reinhart appears to have exploited his role in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to launch a private criminal defense practice, according to the Miami Herald:
“On Oct 23, 2007, as federal prosecutors in South Florida were in the midst of tense negotiations to finalize a plea deal with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a senior prosecutor in their office was quietly laying out plans to leave the U.S. attorney’s office after 11 years. “On that date, as emails were flying between Epstein’s lawyers and federal prosecutors, Bruce E. Reinhart, now a federal magistrate, opened a limited liability company in Florida that established what would become his new criminal defense practice.”
Reinhart insisted that he never represented Epstein himself — “only Epstein’s pilots; his scheduler, Sarah Kellen; and Nadia Marcinkova, described by some victims as Epstein’s sex slave.”
Reinhart has also participated in Newsmax interviews, appearing to defend Epstein by downplaying allegations of the financier and his associates soliciting underage prostitutes.
Reinhart donated twice to Obama’s campaign in 2008 totaling $2,000. Reinhart, who was appointed U.S. magistrate in March 2018, also donated to the campaign of Trump rival Jeb Bush in 2015.
FEC RECORDS.
The unearthed links come as Reinhart is believed to have signed off on a warrant responsible for the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach estate. A “source said FBI agents obtained a search warrant from a federal magistrate judge in West Palm Beach,” reports the Miami Herald.
Politico explained that of the three magistrate judges in that office, two recent warrant applications, both of which were assigned to Reinhart, were entered into the system on Monday. The subject of the warrants, however, remains sealed.
It would be difficult to find mainland U.S. Congressional districts much further away from each other than Washington’s 3rd District, in the far Southwest Corner of the state and Florida’s 7th District, which hugs Florida’s East Central Coast. But the swamp reaches everywhere in America, and these two districts are now inextricably linked by the shady tactics of the GOP establishment, working to defeat conservative candidates on behalf of Kevin McCarthy, alongside pro-impeachment forces and a compliant herd of RINOs they control.
McCarthy – a failed leader and an expert at talking out of both sides of his mouth – claims to be outraged about the deep state’s war against Trump and the conservative grassroots while he simultaneously works in the shadows to direct millions of dollars to anti-Trump, establishment candidates like those opposing Green Beret Joe Kent and Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini.
Grassroots favorite Kent – Gold Star husband and recipient of six bronze stars who was endorsed by Trump in Washington’s 3rd Congressional district – thrilled grassroots Republicans by narrowly toppling pro-impeachment Republican incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler in a huge comeback, after trailing badly on election night.
Kent triumphed despite millions of dollars of establishment money being spent to defeat him. The night he took the lead for good in the GOP primary, Kent appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, renewing his call for a fundamental reining in of the deep state and intelligence agencies that had just conspired to raid Mar a Lago, the curbing of which he had made a centerpiece of his congressional campaign.
Even as the vote was still being counted, Kent sounded the alarm on Twitter about the same cast of characters that spent more than $4 million in dark money attempting to defeat him now targeting Sabatini, another grassroots conservative favorite who is currently leading the race in Florida’s open seat 7th Congressional district (August 23rd primary).
“The left uses dark money to seize the levers of power,” he tweeted in response to the news that a mysterious dark money firm, with the same financial backers and structure that had targeted him, was going after his friend and political ally. “Look at Soros Zuck etc. The right uses dark money against candidates who want to fight back against the left. Send @anthonysabatini whatever support you can. They are coming for him because he’s fighting for us.”
The left uses dark money to seize levers of power, look at Soros, Zuck etc, the right uses dark money against candidates who want to fight back against the left.
Kent’s victory was indeed remarkable. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, widely considered the nation’s leading guru on redistricting and elections, described Herrera-Beutler early in the campaign as a lock to make it to the general election. Thanks to Trump and a grassroots push, she failed.
But the swamp plays for keeps , and nothing enrages them like a loss. They thought they had won in Washington State on election night, where Herrera Beutler had a large lead against Kent, only to watch it wither away over the following days as Pro-Trump election day votes were counted. The establishment had spent more than $4 million in late, dirty, DC money to attempt rescue Herrera Beutler, one third of which went directly to boost her, one third of which went to attack Kent and one third of which went to split the grassroots vote by boosting a fake alternative to Herrera Beutler who reneged on a pledge to exit the race.
Sabatini, the latest target of the establishment’s ire, is a strongly pro-Trump and pro-DeSantis America First candidate and military veteran who, like Kent, has crusaded against the nation-building wars that the GOP establishment and Democrats combine on to fleece American taxpayers. He’s been the strongest and most outspoken voice in the Florida legislature on everything from critical race theory (CRT) to immigration and has been described as the most pro-Trump member of the Florida legislature.
Sabatini has led in the public polling in the race, and the money (more than $600,000 so far, with doubtless more to come) has been timed, as it was with Kent, so that the donors do not need to disclose their names until after the primary election. Sabatini is hoping that the grassroots energy that has powered his campaign will provide him with sufficient funding to hold on against the onslaught.
In a brief interview, Sabatini encouraged patriotic conservatives to “raise the volume” of their protests against the establishment, claiming that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and to make sure they let their friends in Florida’s 7th district know the national importance of the race.
“The war within the Republican party now determines what the GOP will do in the future, and the establishment is hiding in the shadows and playing every dirty trick in the book. The real fight is in the primary.”
Sabatini is cautiously optimistic for a late Trump endorsement (it helps that he leads in the polls and counts Trump stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz in his corner). Florida political operatives are confident this would put him over the top—but Trump’s attention has to this point been focused on going after explicitly pro-impeachment representatives and other major Trump critics, while Sabatini’s top opponents are ciphers with no record to stand on.
“The Republican establishment wants 22 to be a referendum against America 1st. They want controlled, weak Republicans who vote as they are told.” said Joe Kent in a tweet thread late in the primary campaign.
The Republican establishment wants 22’ to be a referendum against America 1st, they want controlled weak republicans who vote as they are told.
In the last week 2.5 million has been spent against me b/c I’m leading in the polls & Beutler might not make the top 2.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other GOP leaders have responded to an FBI search of the 45th President’s Florida Mar-a-Lago home after former president Donald Trump said it was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied” on Aug. 8.
Decrying the alleged raid in a post on his social media app, Truth Social, Trump said, “these are dark times for our Nation.”
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” he said.
Taking to Twitter following Trump’s post, Republican leaders condemned the alleged raid, with several warning that such a move could set a dangerous precedent, while others accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department for political purposes.
Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Trump, said that executing a warrant against a former president of the United States was a “dangerous” precedent to set.
“The apparent political weaponization of DOJ/FBI is shameful. AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended with this raid,” Pompeo wrote. “I served on Benghazi Com where we proved Hilliary (sic) possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”
A car passes in front of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 11, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The raid is mostly likely connected to an investigation regarding Trump’s handling of official papers. His lawyer, Christina Bobb, confirmed with CNN on Monday night that the FBI had seized documents during their search at his Mar-a-Lago home.
The FBI is directed by Christopher Wray who was appointed by Trump.
‘Banana Republic’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the raid of Trump’s home represents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents,” while noting that people like Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden “get treated with kid gloves.”
Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation for alleged tax fraud, lobbying crimes, and money laundering in a probe dating back to as early as 2018.
“Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic,” DeSantis said.
Elsewhere, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted on Twitter that the midterm elections aren’t far off. Trump has hinted that he will run for president again in 2024, and teased last week that he could make an official announcement soon, either before or after the November elections.
“Time will tell regarding this most recent investigation. However, launching such an investigation of a former President this close to an election is beyond problematic,” Graham wrote.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) questioned why the FBI had declined to raid the homes of previous administrations, including the Clintons and Obama.
“Bill and Hillary Clinton took $28,000 worth of furnishings from the White House. Obama violated the Presidential Records Act. Why did the FBI not raid their houses? This is a political witch hunt to take down President Trump,” the GOP lawmaker said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump address guests at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Jan. 20, 2021. (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House, said in a statement that the justice department had reached “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and vowed that, when Republicans take back the House, they will “conduct immediate oversight of the department, follow the facts and leave no stone unturned.”
“Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he added.
‘Start With Hunter Biden’s Laptop’
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) also said on Twitter that the FBI raid on Trump’s home was “unprecedented and highly concerning,” and that “if the FBI is looking for classified info or incriminating evidence, they should start with Hunter Biden’s laptop.” He added the hashtag “#Demdoublestandard.”
Meanwhile, Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse.”
“Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans. This raid is outrageous. This abuse of power must stop and the only way to do that is to elect Republicans in November,” McDaniel added.
The FBI has declined to comment to The Epoch Times on the alleged raid.
While GOP lawmakers condemned the move, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC, alleged in a statement that the raid is a “positive sign that Donald Trump may be brought to justice for the myriad of criminal offenses committed by him and his family while President.”
“Never before has a former President’s home been raided in a criminal probe. While this search warrant is seemingly for the mishandling of classified material, it is a serious crime that must be fully investigated,” the group said, adding that the raid is the “first step for law enforcement, or Congress, of holding Donald Trump accountable for the orchestration of a conspiracy to remain in power that resulted in the January 6th attack on our nation’s capital.”
Trump expressed anger at the move, alleging in his Monday statement that it was part of the “political persecution” that has been targeting him now for years “with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!” he wrote.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” Trump added. “Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
A Democratic senator was overcome with emotion on Sunday as the Senate prepared to pass legislation that would dramatically expand the IRS and permanently solve so-called climate change, the Washington Postreports:
Even before the vote was final, Democratic lawmakers on the chamber floor rejoiced and cheered, shaking hands and hugging, as their Republican counterparts cast their votes and headed for the exits for a month-long summer break. Manchin made a beeline for Schumer’s desk, as the two men leaned their heads together and clasped their hands. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a proponent of climate change provisions, broke into tears.
Schatz praised the passage of what some are calling the “IRS Expansion” bill as a “historic victory for the United States and the planet.” The legislation, which is expected to pass the House later this week, solves climate change by giving Americans earning $300,000 a year tax credits to buy an $80,000 electric SUV for just $72,500. It also allocates $10 million to combat “racial equity issues” within the Department of Agriculture.
Cryin’ Brian is best known for supporting colonialism and exploiting indigenous land; he claims to “represent” Hawaii despite being a white man born in Michigan to a Canadian doctor.
Dem donor Lauri Strauss is behind debate that will allow Dem candidate to debate empty podium
A Joe Biden donor is the organizer behind a U.S. Senate debate in Georgia that will allow Democratic senator Raphael Warnock to symbolically debate an empty podium after Republican challenger Herschel Walker turned down the invitation.
Atlanta Press Club director Lauri Strauss, who is organizing the debate, and at least three other members of the group’s board have donated thousands to Democrats, including Biden, Georgia Democratic senator Jon Ossoff—and Warnock himself.
Strauss in 2020 donated $173 to Biden and $35 to Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), according to campaign finance records. Strauss is the organizer of the press club debate and personally extended the group’s invitation to Walker, according to an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“Mr. Walker’s opponent has confirmed his participation in our debate, and we hope to have your confirmation as well,” wrote Strauss in a June 21 email to Walker’s campaign. “I look forward to hearing back from you.”
News of the donations comes after Walker declined to attend the debate, citing political bias at the Atlanta Press Club. The contributions could fuel criticism of the organization, which has said it will allow Warnock at the Oct. 16 event to debate with an empty podium symbolizing Walker’s absence. If one candidate does not show up, having the other candidate debate an empty podium is a long-standing policy for the APC.
Walker’s campaign has agreed to participate in a different debate hosted by Nexstar Media Group on Oct. 14, which Warnock declined.
“We’re not going to be bullied by their thinly veiled threat of an empty podium—because it’s not a podium, it’s a campaign prop. So we’re leaving the elite media behind and rejecting the partisan Press Club debate,” said Scott Paradise, Walker’s campaign manager, in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.
Other members of the Atlanta Press Club’s board also appear to be Democratic donors, according to campaign finance records. Keith Pepper in 2020 donated over $2,500 to Warnock and over $500 to Ossoff. Rene Alegria donated $500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, $250 to Biden, and $60 to Ossoff. Deisha Barnett donated $500 to Warnock.
The Atlanta Press Club did not respond to a request for comment.
Strauss told the Free Beacon that she “made donations to Joe Biden and Mark Kelly in 2020, both of whom are longtime family friends.” But she said she has not contributed to any Georgia candidates and added that the other board members “do not have anything to do with our debates.”
She also said the Atlanta Press Club is “proud of our reputation [for] holding balanced and fair debates for all candidates” for the past 30 years and said the debate series was funded by an endowment from the late Charlie Loudermilk, a Republican philanthropist who passed away last week.
Former Georgia congressman and House speaker Newt Gingrich, a surrogate for Walker, told the Free Beacon the donations are an indication of the group’s political slant.
“Herschel Walker is exactly right to reject the Atlanta Press Club debate proposal as many of its leadership donated to Democrats, including radical-left Senator Warnock,” said Gingrich. “They are a one-sided, biased organization. Walker should continue to insist on open fair debates in front of Georgians. Let Warnock hide behind his liberal media supporters.”
Florida Democrat Charlie Crist hired Jack Cocchiarella after college Dems chapter ousted young activist over troubling allegations
Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s (R.) top Democratic opponent paid thousands of dollars to a young liberal activist who is facing “campus-wide allegations of sexual assault” at his former Ivy League school.
On July 8, Democrat Charlie Crist’s gubernatorial campaign paid $2,250 to Politically Correct Strategies—a consulting company registered to Gen Z liberal activist and former Dartmouth student Jack Cocchiarella—for “digital consulting.” Just weeks later, on July 28, the prestigious school’s College Democrats chapter revealed it ousted Cocchiarella from the club “in late October 2021, following campus-wide allegations of sexual assault.” Those allegations emerged publicly in a string of December 2021 Redditposts, which accused Cocchiarella of using “his Twitter notoriety and left-wing credentials to position himself as an ally. Then, once people let their guards down, he rapes them.”
Crist, who did not return repeated requests for comment, has remained silent on the accusations facing his campaign aide. By his own logic, that silence means he endorses Cocchiarella’s alleged behavior—in a June 29 tweet, Crist pressed DeSantis to condemn the January 6 riots, writing, “Is it just me, or do you agree that his silence = endorsement?”
Crist is not the only prominent Democrat to hire Cocchiarella following the troubling allegations. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R., Ga.) Democratic opponent, Marcus Flowers, has paid Cocchiarella’s firm more than $40,000 since October 2021, when the activist announced his “new role” as Flowers’s digital director.
Flowers has his own alleged issues with women. In July 2016, the Democrat attempted to dump his ex-wife—Russian national Svetlana Chudinova—at a local homeless shelter, court documents reported by the New Republic show. Flowers did not dispute the incident and instead defended his attempt to offload Chudinova, saying he “felt she had a personality disorder that was not previously disclosed.” In turn, Chudinova accused Flowers of threatening to strike her.
Flowers’s campaign did not return multiple requests for comment.
Cocchiarella, whose Twitter account boasts more than 250,000 followers and includes a photo of the activist smiling alongside Joe Biden, enrolled as a Dartmouth freshman during the 2021-22 school year. While it’s unclear what specific “digital consulting” services he provided Crist, Cocchiarella publicly endorsed the former governor over fellow DeSantis challenger Nikki Fried (D.) just days after Crist’s campaign paid him.
Flowers, meanwhile, routinely replies to Cocchiarella’s tweets to solicit campaign contributions. In October 2021, he called the young activist “an outstanding young man.” In addition to his work with Crist and Flowers, Cocchiarella has collaborated with the Lincoln Project, an anti-Republican super PAC founded by disgraced sexual predator John Weaver.
Cocchiarella reduced his public presence as allegations against him swirled. A notoriously avid Twitter user, Cocchiarella did not send an original tweet for more than a week after Dartmouth College Democrats confirmed the “campus-wide allegations,” instead opting to populate his feed by sharing posts from liberal politicians and journalists. The activist has also blocked users who raised the allegations in his replies.
Cocchiarella during an Aug. 1 podcast appearance did, however, confirm his decision to transfer from Dartmouth to fellow Ivy League school Columbia. The activist did not discuss why he opted to leave Dartmouth after just one year at the college and is yet to publicly address the allegations leveled against him.
Cocchiarella, Dartmouth College Democrats, and Dartmouth’s Title IX office did not return requests for comment.
‘I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,’ Rep. Cori Bush (D.) told reporters
Joe Biden, whose average approval rating sits at just 39.6 percent, insists Democratic voters want him to seek reelection in 2024. Several members of Biden’s own party, however, are refusing to back the 79-year-old president.
“I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,” Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) told reporters last month when asked whether she would back Biden in the next presidential election.
Multimillionaire Michael Bennet is working to cast himself as an outdoorsman. It may be a hard sell.
Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D., Colo.) latest reelection ad depicts him clad in outdoor gear, casting a fly fishing line into the Arkansas River. But the multimillionaire businessman isn’t exactly a regular fisherman, local records suggest. The campaign obtained a one-day fishing license in order to shoot the ad, according to Axios.
The new ad is the second in the last month featuring Bennet enjoying Colorado’s outdoors and a clear attempt to shake the image that the two-term lawmaker is a wealthy, D.C. insider.
“The worst sin any candidate can do is come across as insincere and phony and I think Bennet comes close to doing that,” said Colorado Republican strategist Dick Wadhams. “He’s going to have to answer for that on the campaign.”
Bennet’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Bennet, who has seen his net worth increase by the millions during his time in the Senate, is running for reelection against former carpenter and construction CEO Joe O’Dea. Republicans are optimistic that Biden’s historically low approval rating has made Bennet’s seat competitive. According to FiveThirtyEight, Bennet votes with Biden 98 percent of the time.
O’Dea’s campaign is working to characterize Bennet as a lawmaker who left his home state to profit off his position as a senator. As average Coloradans struggle to pay for groceries, O’Dea’s campaign said in a recent Tweet, Bennet is checking “his stock portfolio.”
Bennet’s net worth is valued up to $31 million, his financial disclosure forms show. A considerable amount of that money is located in Cayman Islands hedge funds, those same forms state, making a detailed accounting difficult. Bennet has also set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment funds for his children.
The fly fishing guide featured with Bennet in the ad is not exactly a regular small businessman. Rather, he is Chaffee County commissioner Greg Felt, whom Colorado governor Jared Polis (D.) appointed in 2020 to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Felt’s claim in the ad that he is “not a Democrat” is not entirely true, given that he voted as a Democrat in several election cycles starting in 2002, according to a review of Colorado’s voting records.
Bennet’s ad will air for two weeks across Colorado as part of a $1.2 million ad campaign launched in mid-July. None of his ads contain any references to Joe Biden or some of the landmark bills Bennet voted for, such as the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which many economists say contributed to skyrocketing inflation.
The Free Beaconreported earlier this month that Bennet’s first ad misled voters on who funds his campaign. Bennet claims he does not accept campaign contributions from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists, despite his campaign finance records showing otherwise.
Bennet was appointed to his seat in 2009 after his predecessor, Ken Salazar, became secretary of the interior. He dropped out of the 2020 presidential race after receiving just 164 votes in the Iowa caucuses and fewer than 1,000 in the New Hampshire primary.
In June, Toyota warned buyers of its bZ4X electric SUV not to drive their vehicles for fear the wheels could fall off. Toyota said at the time the cause was a mystery, but it would look into the glitch.
Toyota has not yet found a solution to the problem and is offering to buy back the SUV from its owners, according to CNN.
“We know that our customers have many choices when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. We appreciate their loyalty and are supporting them through this recall,” Toyota said in a statement, according to The Verge. “However, if a customer does not want to proceed with the provided options, we will offer to repurchase their bZ4X.”
Plan B for owners who want to keep a vehicle they may never be able to drive is to have free use of another Toyota vehicle until such time as Toyota figures out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Toyota offers to buy back recalled bZ4X fully electric SUV from customers | A headline writer’s dream. Toyota’s first full #EV recalled and a buyback offer literally because the wheels keep falling off! How can a car maker get something so basic, so wrong? https://t.co/lDJo4u43Zrpic.twitter.com/n9lcYPTgIo
As part of that deal, Toyota will pay $5,000 toward an owner’s car payments or as a partial refund. Toyota also said that it will extend the factory warranty on the bZ4X by whatever length of time it becomes before an owner gets her or his vehicle back, according to CNN.
The offer for those who do not sell their vehicle back also includes free EV charging once the owners get the vehicle back and the cost of gasoline for their loaner, according to Autoweek.
It was unclear in the announcement how owners of the vehicle, whose price starts at $43,215, would handle dealer markups, according to Car and Driver.
In June, the company announced that all 2,700 of its new electric bZ4X SUVs were a danger to their drivers, with only 260 to date having been delivered in the United States.
“After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” Toyota said in a June 23 statement on its website.
“If a wheel detaches from the vehicle while driving, it could result in a loss of vehicle control, increasing the risk of a crash,” the company said. “The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation. No one should drive these vehicles until the remedy is performed,” Toyota said.
“No remedy is available at this time,” Toyota said in its June release.
Toyota’s somehow gone from “The best built cars in the world” to “The hub bolts loosen which may cause a wheel to fall off, & almost two months later we don’t know how to fix it”https://t.co/wOJjNc44pW
In a column for Bloomberg, Anjani Trivedi, who covers industrial companies in Asia, wrote, “If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase their scrutiny.”
The bZ4X debuted in Japan in June, according to CNBC.
The company’s president, Akio Toyoda, said in December that Toyota planned “to roll out 30 BEV models by 2030.”
“Toyota has been under pressure to up its game in EVs, so will be very disappointed that a recall has been necessary on its first mass-market electric cars,” David Leggett, automotive editor at GlobalData, told CNBC.
Former President Donald Trump said his Florida Mar-a-Lago home is “under siege” and “occupied by a group of FBI agents” in a statement late Aug. 8.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said.
The FBI declined to comment on a press inquiry from The Epoch Times. Its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb confirmed with CNN on Monday night that the FBI seized documents from Mar-a-Lago.
“President Trump and his legal team have been cooperative with FBI and DOJ officials every step of the way. The FBI did conduct an unannounced raid and seized paper,” Bobb said.
The alleged raid by the FBI came two days after Trump’s latest hint at a 2024 run, in which he stopped short of giving an official announcement.
“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said when responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday.
“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”
“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said during the event, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history,” and the border crisis.
A police car outside former President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Lawmakers React
‘Weaponized’ Justice System
The 45th president said during his speech that he may be the “most persecuted” person in the history of America.
“A friend of mine recently said that I was the most persecuted person in the history of our country,” Trump said during his speech at CPAC. “And then I thought about it, because I didn’t have time to think much because I’m always being persecuted, and I felt he may very well be right.”
Trump called the raid “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want [him] to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls,” adding that Democrats “will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump said.
During an America First Policy Institute event in July, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), who was part of Trump’s legal defense team during the Democrats’ 2019 attempted impeachment of Trump, told The Epoch Times in an interview that the Biden administration has completely “weaponized” the Department of Justice (DOJ).
By design, the American justice system “is a bulwark against tyranny,” Johnson said. “But if the Department of Justice, for example, is weaponized for political purposes—which is what we’re seeing right now in the Biden ministration—that jeopardizes that foundational pillar itself.”
“Today’s raid on the former President’s home in the middle of an election season looks like another egregious & unprecedented abuse of power,” Johnson said in a statement on Monday.
“We will restore order & accountability as soon as we regain the gavels for a Republican majority in November. It can’t happen soon enough!” Johnson added.
‘Third-World Marxist Dictatorship’
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” Trump said in his Monday statement. “Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) echoed Trump’s comment.
“Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships,” Rubio said in a statement on Twitter late Monday. “But never before in America.
“After today[‘]s raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?
“The FBI isn’t doing anything about the groups vandalizing Catholic Churches, firebombing Pro-Life groups or threatening Supreme Court justices. But they find time to raid Mar A Lago,” Rubio said.
Outcry from Republicans
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in a statement on Monday: “The FBI raid on President Trump’s home is an unprecedented political weaponization of the Justice Department. They’ve been after President Trump as a candidate, as President, and now as a former President. Using the criminal justice system in this manner is un-American.”
“The DOJ & FBI are being weaponized like never before to target political opponents. This Admin has thrown the rule of law and faith in our democratic institutions out the door,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) in a Monday Twitter post. “Joe Biden and Merrick Garland must answer immediately for today’s raid against an American president.”
“The inconsistent and partisan application of the law by the FBI has gone too far,” Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said on Monday. “The Democrats, for too long, have used our government agencies from the FBI to the IRS to target their political opponents. This inconceivable raid is an attack on our Republic.”
“This action, a raid on a former President and political rival, is something we would expect from Putin on his rivals… not here, not in the USA,” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) said.
“The weaponization and politicalization of federal agencies is egregious and scary. These are Gestapo-like tactics. If the FBI can do this to President Trump, what do you think 87,000 new IRS agents will do to the American people?” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said. “Did Biden sign off on this raid? The American people deserve answers.”
“I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it,” Trump said in his Monday statement.
“Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped,” Trump said.
“I will continue to fight for the Great American People!”
Dark Brandon’ is the Biden White House’s cringetastic effort to win back the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme that haunted the perennially COVID-hit President through late 2021 and early 2022. The efforts, shared by taxpayer-funded White House staff, combines an almost year-late rebuttal to the Brandon memes with the Byronic aethestic of the well established “Dark MAGA” movement.
One more problem: it’s extremely ‘Third Reich‘ in nature.
But there’s more to this story than the White House using the Reichsadler or Parteiadler in its memes.
THE REICH EAGLE SUPERIMPOSED BEHIND BIDEN IN HIS WHITE HOUSE STAFFER’S MEME.
The first thing to note is that this “Dark Brandon” stuff is actually being promoted by corporate media outlets. Check out Slate’s take, which concludes: “If he can muster a smidge of momentum from the al-Zawahiri assassination by pulling up the cowl of Dark Brandon, then that is surely better than whatever he’s got going right now. After all, Joe Biden’s approval rating is already cresting back toward 40 percent. Dark Brandon strikes again!”
Sycophantic though Slate may be, the author isn’t wrong. Rasmussen polling has consistently noted that when Biden is away in his basement, hiding from COVID-19, his approval numbers go up. No wonder the White House would rather use cartoon images of him on social media. The left’s pro-Nazi memes are literally more popular than the real Joe Biden.
Mel Magazine – which appears to be some kind of soy-sponsored blog site for, uh, funboys – offers, “Okay, I pledge my soul to Dark Brandon. What’s the worst that could happen? Not like Regular Brandon was doing such a bang-up job. Trust the process. We’re finally winning.”
But there’s one more part of the Dark Brandon saga. The cherry on the cake. And that is the aesthetic origin of the entire thing.
“You have this very exaggerated image of a very ‘evil Biden,’ but also, his ability to mobilize these public intellectual zombies in an image is also kind of funny because it has long been China’s accusation of the U.S. government, that the U.S. is using folks like public intellectuals and scholars within China to carry out ‘peaceful evolution,’” Victor Shih, associate professor at UC San Diego, told POLITICO.
That’s right – it comes from China. Specifically, by an artist named Yang Quan, who sought to portray Biden in a negative light in early 2022.
Yes, the pro-Biden memes being disseminated from the hallowed halls of the White House are both Third Reich in nature, and hail from the Chinese Communist Party’s fellow travelers.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has criticized Democrats for pushing their so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he warns is a “terrible bill.”
The bill will double the size of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But IRS agents are not designed to go after “billionaires and big corporations,” Cruz said in an interview with Fox News. “They’re designed to come after small businesses and working families across this country … The Democrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined … This is a massive power grab.”
Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7 with a 51 to 50 vote, with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris casting her tie-breaking vote in favor of her party. The estimated $740 billion package now heads to the House for vote.
Over $300 billion will go to climate change and energy, which is the largest clean energy investment made by a federal government in American history. It also includes tax credits for electric vehicles. The bill institutes a 15 percent minimum tax for corporations making over $1 billion a year.
Cruz warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will “drive up gas prices” and “kill manufacturing jobs.” The bill has “billions in new taxes” charged against U.S. gas and oil production, a decision that will raise gas prices at the pump, he said.
According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bill will “reduce” the U.S. budget deficit.
But a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CRO) shows that even though the budget deficit will be lowered by $101.5 billion over a 10-year period, the deficit will actually increase by $24.6 billion in the first six years between 2022 and 2027.
Widespread Criticism
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, former president Donald Trump warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will worsen inflation, which is already at a four-decade high.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will pay a political price for backing the spending bill, he predicted.
In an Aug. 8 Twitter post, Sen. Masha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) called the $80 billion set aside to double the number of IRS agents as practically giving “every American a personalized tax auditor.”
Instead of increasing taxes, the government should be focusing on reducing them, she insisted. The Democrats’ “socialist agenda” will make the life of Tennesseans “more difficult and expensive.”
“It’s a special kind of stupid to raise taxes during both a recession and inflation—that’s called stagflation, which is what we have right now as a result of Biden’s policies,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Twitter.
There are also worries about the 15 percent book minimum tax affecting small and mid-sized businesses that make below $1 billion a year.
An analysis of the tax rules by Americans for Tax Reform states that the minimum tax will be applicable to any company that has private equity in its capital structure, since the firm will be considered a subsidiary of the private equity firm for tax purposes.
The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week voted to add a November 2022 ballot measure that would allow the county to secede from California.
The measure, which was voted on 4–0 by the supervisors Wednesday, would ask San Bernardino residents: “Do the citizens of San Bernardino County want the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession?”
“Now, that last line is the most controversial,” said Supervisor Curt Hagman during Wednesday’s meeting about the proposal. “It’s a question we’re going to put to our residents. Do they want to include all options to go after [the] fight for their fair share of taxpayer dollars?” he asked.
Over the years, some California counties have evaluated the possibility of seceding from the Golden State due to monetary, cultural, and other differences. In 2016, a failed ballot measure would have split California into six states, while a 2018 proposition that also failed would have created three new states.
But San Bernardino County is the largest county in California and United States, spanning more than 20,000 square miles and home to well over 2 million people. Cities like Fontana, San Bernardino, Victorville, Hesperia, and other municipalities are within its borders, which stretch from Los Angeles County to the California-Nevada and California-Arizona state lines.
Reasons
Supervisor Joe Baca Jr. said he doesn’t want the county to split from California but is interesting in studying whether its residents should receive more state and federal funds.
“I do think we have to look at anything we can do to enhance services for our residents,” Baca said, reported The Herald Sun newspaper. “I’m not in favor of seceding. I’m proud to be from California. I love California.”
Hagman concurred with Baca’s assertion and noted that it would be acceptable “if the worst thing that comes out of this is a study that will be ammunition for our state representatives to fight for more money for us.”
2%40msn.com
“San Bernardino is a large county in both terms of size and population, with many pieces of critical infrastructure,” Barbara Rodriguez, an accountant who assists in state and local fund tax breakdowns, told the California Globe Thursday. “And the people there are feeling like they are being gipped. Like most counties, they are looking for more money coming in, and seeing their county be so low on the list has really incensed them.”
Supervisor Janie Rutherford, meanwhile, said she doesn’t “believe it’s feasible politically or financially to secede from California,” adding, “I absolutely joined with my constituents who have a growing palpable anger about everything.”
Many Californias are dealing with daily problems, including heavy taxes, the nation’s highest gas prices, and widespread homelessness, added Rutherford.
California, she said, has an “ineffective justice system, broken schools, [and] the state’s overreaching counterproductive regulatory schemes, housing and affordability to the ineptness of the state’s preparation for this drought.”
“People pay high taxes, and they do not believe those taxes are coming back to their neighborhoods to address the problems they’re most concerned about,” Rutherford said. “That’s what we heard from our public last week, and there is nothing crazy at all about being angry about those things.”
Outraged parents launched a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Virginia for teaching inappropriate, sexualized material to children, and other violations of state constitutional rights protecting parents and children.
America First Legal on July 21 served discovery requests seeking answers from LCPS, School District Superintendent Scott Ziegler, and several other school board officials on behalf of 11 parents pressing charges.
LCPS was given three weeks to respond. They did not reply, except in “saying that they’re not going to respond,” said the lawsuit’s main plaintiff, Clint Thomas, to The Epoch Times.
On the first day of the school year, two of Thomas’s daughters were forced to declare their gender pronouns publicly in class. All five of his children have gone through LCPS.
The lawsuit takes aim at LCPS’s Policy 8040 and Regulation 8040, which Thomas says “is trying to stifle [parents] from even knowing if the children are expressing different genders in school.”
Clint Thomas, his wife, and one of his daughters speak to reporters outside the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Jan. 25, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“There’s just an overarching theme trying to gain information about private matters in our home, survey after survey being issued, inappropriate surveys being issued asking students about their sex lives.”
Parents have observed “overtly pedophilic, highly sexualized books” in school libraries, and class assignments with “highly sexualized” and “misogynistic” content, Thomas added.
“It’s all basically about race theory, gender theory. … They’ve been forced to sit through homeroom especially during Pride Month and basically watch videos of people who are trying to change their biological sex.”
The parents accuse LCPS of “knowingly, systematically, and willfully violating the Plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to care for, nurture, and direct the education, moral instruction, and upbringing of their children.”
Public education should be about academic instruction, said Thomas. Values and moral instruction are for the parents to determine.
A parent speaks out against board actions during a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) board meeting in Ashburn, Va., on Oct. 12, 2021. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)Parents speak out at a rally outside the Loudoun County Public School administration building on June 22, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
For the past year and a half, Loudoun County has been the main battleground for parents and school boards contending over matters of woke content, CRT, mask mandates, sexualized content, and the forcing of young children to use bathrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex.
During COVID lockdowns in 2021, thousands of parents took notice of what their kids were learning in class, said Thomas. Since then, it’s “just been one thing after another,” prompting parents into action.
Parent protests were galvanized in May 2021 by the sexual assault of a female student by a 15-year-old male in a girl’s bathroom in Louden County’s Stone Bridge High School.
This was exacerbated when State Prosecutor Buta Biberaj tried to jail parent Scott Smith, the girl’s father, for protesting the bathroom policy that led to her getting raped.
The lawsuit between the parents and LCPS is still in the early stages, the father of five said.
He speculates what aim lies at the heart of the woke education agenda fundamentally.
“The liberal agenda is no longer about providing a level playing field,” said Thomas. “It’s really about tearing down everything traditional. I think that’s the ultimate sinister reality of the equity agenda. It’s not about equality … it’s really tearing down America.”
Republicans say a Democrat-backed bill worth $740 billion includes funding to hire 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents, which they say will target Americans.
The bill, known as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” was approved in a 51–50 vote as Vice President Kamala Harris served as a tie-breaker for Democrats. A provision includes the hiring of 87,000 agents, a move that was defended by Democrats, who said that the funding would target people who cheat on their taxes.
“Millions of Americans aren’t going to be impacted by that other than getting better service from the IRS having their telephone answer getting the questions they need in order to comply with our tax laws,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told Fox News on Sunday. “The auditing is going to be focused on those of high income, the large corporations, etc.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have pointed to a May report from the Government Accountability Office showing that IRS audits have dropped over the past decade, including audits for the wealthy.
In a recent letter to Congress, IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said that if an additional $80 billion is given to the agency via the legislation, it would not increase audits for households that earn less than $400,000 per year.
“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Retting wrote in the letter. “As we have been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”
Warning
But Republicans warned that the IRS will target middle-class Americans with the tens of thousands of extra agents.
“Seriously, how out of touch do you have to be to brag about forcing a purely partisan bill through the Senate that raises taxes on the middle class, makes inflation worse, lowers after-tax income for Americans at every income level, decreases economic growth during a recession, and sends an army of IRS enforcers after grandma?” Republican National Committee spokesman Tommy Pigott asked, according to the Washington Examiner.
And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that those agents will “target Americans with 1.2 million new audits, more than half of which would be for people making less than $75,000 a year.”
“This bill is a give-away to the Democrats’ radical leftist base at the expense of middle-class Americans. It’s a betrayal of Biden’s promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. Make no mistake—this bill will hurt America and hardworking Americans at a time when we can least afford it,” Cruz wrote.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, disputed Democrat claims that the new funding will be used to target tax cheats and millionaires.
“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” he said in a statement Sunday.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that GOP claims about more IRS audits or changes to the U.S. tax code are false.
“This is just the latest example, again, of those who do nothing to protect tax welfare for the rich at the expense of everything else,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday on Air Force One. “They’re blatant lies.”
Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.
Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.
“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.
Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)
Soaring Inflation, Recession
During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.
Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.
In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.
“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”
Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.
Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.
A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.
Joe Biden gives remarks during a meeting on the economy with CEOs and members of his Cabinet in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on July 28, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Worse Than Recession
In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.
“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.
“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”
During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.
“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.
Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.
During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.
“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.
Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.
Tax Hikes
According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.
This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.
In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.
Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.
“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.
“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.
‘We Have to Win’
During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.
“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.
“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.
“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.
The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.
Jennette McCurdy was a mainstay for years as character Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon’s “iCarly.” But in a new memoir, she alleged her time at the network was far from the happy, free-spirited character she portrayed on the screen.
Vanity Fair published an excerpt Friday of McCurdy’s new memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” In it, McCurdy detailed the treatment she was allegedly subject to while working on the show.
At the beginning of the excerpt, McCurdy described a dinner she had with “The Creator,” an anonymous character in the memoir.
McCurdy wrote that “The Creator” pressured her to consume alcohol, which she initially refused.
“I’ve never had alcohol before,” McCurdy said in the excerpt. “And I’m only eighteen. Couldn’t I get in trouble?”
“The Creator” told her the stars of “Victorious,” another popular show on Nickelodeon, got “drunk together all the time,” McCurdy wrote.
“The iCarly kids are so wholesome,” he said, according to the excerpt. “We need to give you guys a little edge.”
McCurdy wrote that she eventually took a sip of alcohol, and she told “The Creator” she enjoyed it. After he pressured her further, she admitted she did not like the taste of the drink.
“The Creator laughs,” McCurdy wrote. “I’ve done well. I’ve pleased him. Mission accomplished. It’s the same mission I have every time I get dinner with him, which has gotten more and more frequent lately as my new contract for the spin-off he promised me is being worked out.
“The Creator is doing the thing that I’ve heard from my co-stars he does with every new star of a show that he’s making — he takes you under his wing. You’re his favorite. For now. I like being his favorite for now. I feel like I’m doing something right.”
McCurdy said this uncomfortable dinner was just one of many questionable interactions she had with “The Creator,” interactions that crossed from ugly into creepy, into abusive.
In another scene she described, “The Creator” put his hand on her knee at dinner, then said he thought she was cold.
He draped his jacket around her, then patted her shoulders, then began to massage her.
“My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out,” McCurdy wrote. “I want to say something, to tell him to stop, but I’m so scared of offending him.”
Eventually, she wrote, Nickelodeon offered her $300,000 when it canceled “Sam & Cat,” if she would promise not to talk about her experiences at Nickelodeon.
“What the f***?” McCurdy wrote, describing her thoughts at the time. (She didn’t use asterisks.) “Nickelodeon is offering me three hundred thousand dollars in hush money to not talk publicly about my experience on the show?
“My personal experience of The Creator’s abuse? This is a network with shows made for children. Shouldn’t they have some sort of moral compass? Shouldn’t they at least try to report to some sort of ethical standard?”
McCurdy wrote that she ultimately decided not to take the money, but that did not erase her experiences.
While “The Creator” is never named in the book, Yahoo! Entertainment reported that producer Dan Schneider was the creator of “iCarly.” ViacomCBS launched an investigation into his behavior before he left the network in 2018, according to a July report in Deadline.
She also described an incident from the show “Sam & Cat,” the “iCarly” spinoff show featuring her “iCarly” character and actress/singer Ariana Grande as the Cat Valentine character from “Victorious,” Yahoo! Entertainment reported.
McCurdy alleged Grande was allowed to pursue other career opportunities during the show, but she was not.
“What finally undid me was when Ariana came whistle-toning in with excitement because she had spent the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house,” McCurdy wrote. “That was the moment I broke.”
On top of her issues at the network, McCurdy wrote that her home life was incredibly challenging.
According to Yahoo! Entertainment, she described to her mother that she was embarrassed of being pictured in a bikini during a wardrobe fitting.
Her mother reportedly told her to ignore her issues at the network because “everyone wants what you have.”
The Senate approved the Democrats’ sweeping health care and climate bill on Aug. 7 in a 51–50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.
The estimated $740 billion package next goes to the House for consideration.
“It’s been a long, tough and winding road, but at last, at last we have arrived,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “The Senate is making history. I am confident the Inflation Reduction Act will endure as one of the defining legislative measures of the 21st century.”
Senators engaged in a round-the-clock marathon of voting that began on Aug. 6 and stretched into the afternoon of Aug. 7. Democrats voted against some three dozen Republican amendments to the legislation.
The bill ran into trouble midday over objections to a 15 percent corporate minimum tax that was disliked by private equity firms and other industries, forcing last-minute changes.
“It will close tax loopholes and it will reduce and reduce the deficit,” Schumer said. “It will help every citizen in this country and make America a much better place.”
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a U.S. advocacy group, stated that the measure will increase taxes on thousands of mid-sized small businesses across the United States.
“Any business that has [private equity] in its capital structure is now considered a subsidiary of that firm and thus subject to 15 percent book tax,” John Kartch, a spokesman for ATR, wrote on Twitter.
“As written, the provision now appears restructured to define any company with private equity in its capital structure to be considered a subsidiary of that private equity firm for purposes of the tax,” the group said in a statement. “This means that these companies would now be swept up in the new 15 percent tax on book income. This provision would greatly expand the reach of the book minimum tax to apply to small and midsize companies that require capital investment to grow their business.”
Concerns over objections to the corporate minimum tax on private equity firms and other industries threatened to slow the progress.
Republicans said the measure would undermine an economy that policymakers are struggling to keep from plummeting into recession. They said the bill’s business taxes would hurt job creation and force prices skyward, making it harder for people to cope with the nation’s worst inflation since the 1980s.
“Democrats have already robbed American families once through inflation, and now their solution is to rob American families a second time,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the floor.
Spending and tax increases in the legislation would eliminate jobs while having an insignificant impact on inflation and climate change, the Kentucky Republican said.
Starting late on Aug. 6, the Senate began its so-called “vote-a-rama” that comes before the final passage in the Senate’s budget reconciliation process. Democrats used the process to pass the bill along party lines so as to avoid the 60-vote filibuster, and Harris served as a tiebreaker on several amendments in the 50–50 Senate.
More Details
The bill came to the floor about a week after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced he came to an agreement with Schumer in what is believed to be an attempt to boost Democrats’ and Biden’s chances during the 2022 midterms amid months of negative polling. Biden’s original climate and social measure collapsed after it was opposed by Manchin, who said it was too costly and would fuel inflation.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is the product of years of bipartisan conversations about the most impactful ways to produce more energy domestically, bring down energy and healthcare costs and pay down our debt. The IRA achieves this without raising taxes,” Manchin wrote on Twitter.
Around the same time, the West Virginia Democrat said he would vote down GOP amendments.
“Despite this, my [Republican] friends have made clear they’re completely unwilling to support this bill under any condition. None of their amendments would change that,” Manchin said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered amendments to further expand the legislation’s health benefits, and those efforts were defeated. Most votes were forced by Republicans and many were designed to make Democrats look soft on issues such as U.S.–Mexico border security, gasoline and energy costs, and like bullies for wanting to strengthen IRS tax law enforcement.
Late on Aug. 6, Sanders said the measure won’t reduce inflation and said it also doesn’t go far enough with its climate-related measures.
“I want to take a moment to say a few words about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act’ that we are debating this evening,” he said from the Senate floor. “And I say so-called, by the way, because according to the [Congressional Budget Office], and other economic organizations that study this bill, it will, in fact, have a minimal impact on inflation.
“At a time when the drug companies are enjoying huge profits, the pharmaceutical industry will still be allowed to charge the American people by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to include Sen. Joe Manchin’s full title.
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers and experts highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) history of violence and bloodshed, while recognizing a new milestone reached by a global movement calling for people to relinquish their ties to the world’s largest communist regime.
The number of Chinese who have severed their ties to Chinese communist organizations reached over 400 million on Aug. 3, according to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP, an organization dedicated to processing and tracking online declarations denouncing CCP memberships. The global movement is known as “tuidang,” which means “quit the Party” in English.
“The Chinese Communist Party has the blood of tens of millions of Chinese on its hands, so it is no wonder that over 400 million Chinese civilians have left the CCP over the past two decades,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) in an emailed statement.
“Mao’s Great Famine, Tiananmen Square, the persecution of the Falun Gong, and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims are all proof that the CCP only cares about its grip on power,” continued Burchett, who sits on the Asia subcommittee of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs.
“Chinese people would be better served by an open and truly representative government, so I hope the tuidang movement picks up steam.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) (L) shakes hands with Defence Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, after a hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images)
A ‘Self-Healing’ Movement
In the past decades, more and more Chinese have been questioning the CCP’s representation of the people, according to Ryan, one of the authors of “Nine Commentaries of Communist Party,” a 2004 book first published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that inspired the global movement. Ryan is an alias used to protect his identity and family in China.
Ryan described the tuidang as a “self-healing” and “self-redemption” movement. According to him, Nine Commentaries helped the Chinese people unwind decades of CCP propaganda that instilled the idea that the Party equates to China, and the Chinese civilization. People were finally able to separate the CCP from the people, and the nation.
Before the book systematically illustrated the Party’s history of deceit and use of mass struggle to solidify its power over society, the CCP had controlled the Chinese people and dictated their mentality without the people’s knowledge, said Ryan. While he himself grew up in this environment, Ryan credited his belief in Falun Gong for helping him to transcend the communist regime’s indoctrination.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings underpinned by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Putting these principles into practice helped Ryan to extricate himself from the CCP’s hold on people’s psyche. This is because the Party has been able to manipulate and control the populace by appealing to the ignoble parts of human nature: greed, fear, and jealousy, he said. Such a tactic is most clearly shown in the CCP’s continual efforts in its 100-year history to pitch one group of society against another for no other reason than to consolidate its own grip on power, and eliminate threats to its control.
Falun Gong, itself, became singled as a target of the CCP’s wrath in 1999, after the Party deemed the spiritual disciplines’ huge popularity—with up to 100 million people practicing—a threat to its hold on power. The CCP has sought to wipe out the spiritual discipline with an all-society-wide campaign of arrest, torture, and vilification for the past 23 years and counting.
“Whether Chinese people have read the ‘Nine Commentaries’ or not, they have begun to discuss social issues with the verbiage and logic presented in the book,” Ryan said about the book’s impact. “Their mentality change is as important as the action of quitting the Party.”
Chinese people have quit the Party or its affiliate organizations by submitting online statements to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP. Most use an alias to do so.
“Chinese as a group are rediscovering their identity, one that is separate from the CCP,” Ryan added.
Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, in Washington on Feb. 3, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times)
‘An Exemplar’
Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group, highlighted the tuidang movement as a model for peaceful resistance against communist oppression.
“Congratulations to the Tuidang movement for reaching a new milestone. Tuidang is an exemplar of a peaceful, civil society movement where activists reach the conscience of their fellow citizens and persuade them to renounce communist ideology and control,” he said in an emailed statement.
“The efforts of the movement to end communist domination are admirable, and the free world must stand with the people of China in such brave acts of resistance against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party,” Bremberg continued.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) on the House Energy and Commerce Committee welcomed the latest progress of the tuidang movement in an emailed statement: “This week’s milestone is a clear signal to the CCP that their oppressive ways will not stand forever, and personal freedom will eventually carry the day, even in their own country. This is progress for those who stand against communism and the harm its policies have across the globe.”
Ryan said he has also seen the knock-on effects of the movement in the United States. It’s now the norm for U.S. officials to clarify that they don’t target the Chinese people or China the nation when they criticize the CCP.
Communist Insider Decouples from the CCP
Cai Xia, a former professor at the CCP’s elite Central Party School in Beijing, was a Party insider.
Now based in Washington, Cai, in a January interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, described her journey of how she walked away from the CCP.
The first time Cai thought of quitting the Party was in 2016. She had retired from teaching then and was living in Beijing. The impetus for her change in thinking was statements made by Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken real estate tycoon in China, who questioned whether the government was the same as the Party and criticized the CCP for “taking the taxpayers’ money but not working for them.” That was his response to the CCP general secretary Xi Jinping’s statement that “the media’s last name is ‘dang’”—a term referring to the CCP.
Chinese real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang poses for photos in his office in Beijing on Dec. 3, 2012. (Color China Photo via AP)
Known as “Ren the canon” for being vocal in criticizing the Party, the real estate mogul is a “red princeling”, a term for descendants of former CCP senior officials. Thus many thought Ren would get into trouble but wouldn’t have to pay a hefty price. However, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in September 2020 for alleged graft after criticizing the CCP for its mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, which led to the global pandemic.
Cai told NTD that the Party school reprimanded her in 2016 for publishing an article supporting Ren. “I didn’t have a voice because the Party discipline bound me, and I was considered a CCP member first and foremost,” said Cai. “I would rather have abandoned my CCP member identity to keep my right to speak up.”
Cai had written a formal application to quit the CCP then. But her friends persuaded her not to submit it because of the expected financial retaliation, including losing her pension. When Ren was sentenced to 18 years in 2020, Cai again wanted to quit the Party. At that time, she was in the United States. Once again, her friends in the United States persuaded her not to leave the Party so that she could keep her pension income.
But the decision was ultimately made for her. The Party expelled her on Aug. 17, 2020.
Cai said she felt “completely relieved” upon receiving the news.
“I completely decoupled with the Party. From then on, I would have no relationship, economic or interest involvement, with the Party anymore,” she said.
Cai’s transition from a CCP insider to a member of ordinary Chinese citizens brought her sense of happiness mixed with relief. She acknowledged that she had to deal with some financial difficulties due to the loss of her pension, but it was something that she could overcome.
“Once you have joined the Party, you don’t have the freedom to quit it. They strictly forbid members from quitting the Party,” Cai told NTD, adding that this was equivalent to making people accomplices to the CCP’s criminal activities.
She urged people to have the courage to break this bind. Such an act doesn’t only amount to the liberation of a person’s mind and spirit, Cai said.
It will also “offer a person an added layer of protection when China goes through a transition in the future,” she said.
“The Party is evil; it doesn’t mean the 90 million members are all like that.”
Hundred of people march in a parade in downtown Toronto on Aug. 6, 2022, to celebrate 400 million Chinese people quitting the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations. (Evan Ning/The Epoch Times)
Renouncing Their Pledge
Many Chinese who quit the communist organizations state their reason as wanting to rid themselves of the CCP’s control and avoid being considered an affiliate if or when the CCP is held accountable in or outside China.
These people also include those who were once members of the CCP’s junior organizations: the Young Pioneers for elementary- and middle-school-aged children, and the Communist Youth League for those who are middle- and high-school-aged.
Although memberships in these organizations are not mandatory on paper, they are in practice. Students who haven’t joined these two groups by a certain age face increasing pressure and even discrimination in being eligible to receive education benefits.
With each progressive level from the Young Pioneers up until fully-fledged Party member, the initiates’ pledge evolves from “contributing to” to “fighting for,” and eventually, “ready to sacrifice everything for” the CCP.
Even though the membership in the Young Pioneers supposedly ends at 14 and the Youth League at 28, members don’t go through a formal process to rescind their pledge to the CCP. Therefore anyone who has ever been a member of these youth organizations is encouraged to submit a statement withdrawing their affiliation at the Global Center for Quitting the CCP platform.
This explains why the 400 million figure who have quit the CCP organizations vastly outstrips the official number of CCP members, which is 90 million.
The movement was also welcomed by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: “We spent decades fighting the Cold War to stop the spread of communism because we knew back then that it is evil and capable of great atrocities.
“The Chinese Communist Party is not only a great threat to democracy and freedom but also our national security. We must stop its growing influence around the world and here at home.”
Twitter has permanently banned author James Lindsay for calling a transgender attorney a “child sexualization specialist” on the social media platform.
Lindsay said he made the comment after Alejandro Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic who previously worked as staff attorney for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, accused him of being racist and sexist.
Caraballo celebrated and took credit for Lindsay’s suspension, saying, “Tell James, I want him to know it was me” in a post on Twitter.
Over the last two weeks, Lindsay said, trans activists have banded together, targeted him, and claimed responsibility for a “mass reporting” campaign—which is against Twitter rules.
“They not only launched a massive reporting [campaign], but they bragged that they did it,” he told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, the day he was banned. “Twitter has a terms of service agreement that you can’t mass report or induce mass reporting. It’s considered targeted harassment, and it’s against the terms of service to do it, but nobody ever enforces it—ever.”
The Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on April 26, 2022. (Amy Osborne/AFP via Getty Images)
He was previously twice locked out of his @conceptualjames Twitter account, once on July 21 for responding “ok groomer” to Ari Drennen, an LGBTQ program director at Media Matters, and again on July 26 for using the word “groomer” in old Twitter posts that trans activists publicized.
Drennen, who took credit for getting Lindsay locked out of his account on July 21, wrote an article published online July 22 suggesting Twitter suspend users “slandering LGBTQ people as ‘groomers’” and calling Lindsay a “right-wing CRT alarmist.”
To get back into his Twitter account in that case, Lindsay said he was “forced to confess” the “ok groomer” comment violated Twitter rules because “it’s the only way to get your account back unless you want to get locked into appeal limbo.”
Lindsay has since appealed the permanent ban. When prompted to “describe the problem” to Twitter, he wrote: “The problem is that you arbitrarily changed the rules and suspended my account after repeatedly forcing me to lie to admissions of guilt for ‘violations’ that aren’t real. You should un-suspend my account and correct your biased and arbitrary policy enforcement.”
Ironically, Lindsay said that he felt like he was “let out of prison” after the ban.
“I don’t know why I want to go back. It’s so strange how immediate it is that I just feel relief that I’m not on there anymore,” Lindsay said. “The only reason I want it back as a matter of practicality, because it drives something like 80-something percent of my traffic to my website.”
He accused Twitter of using tactics similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes.
A small group of Beijing residents walk in February 1967 in downtown Beijing, past a huge poster showing Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, during the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” (Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images)
“That is a tactic of Maoism—a communist tactic to force people to confess to crimes to be able to get leniency. That’s literally how Mao ran his prisons in CCP-controlled China in the ’50s,” he said.
The term “groomer” has several meanings, and although it can refer to pedophilia, it can also mean a recruiter who “grooms” someone into a cult, club, or organization, or a person who “grooms” another for a job or position, he said.
Lindsay contends he used the term “groomer” to describe someone involved in what he views the “cult indoctrination” of others into the trans activism or and gender ideology movement and was not accusing anyone of pedophilia.
“I would not accuse anybody of that without substantive evidence. It’s a horrific accusation,” he said.
He has admitted publicly that he openly criticizes those involved “defending and engaging in cult grooming into a gender ideology rooted in queer Marxist theory.”
People protest a school board’s pro-transgender policy outside of a middle school in Falls Church, Va., on June 16, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“It’s weird because the cult indoctrination is sex, gender, and sexuality, and so they’re indoctrinating people with concepts of sexuality which sexualizes children, but that’s not the same thing specifically as pedophilia, which is also the sexualization of children. There is this weird double meaning, or two meanings to the word,” he said.
Lindsay has produced a series of podcasts called “Groomer Schools” for his website, New Discourses, which has been very popular, he said.
“So, I’ve been calling these people ‘groomers’ for months. I started doing it back in October,” he said. “[It wasn’t] ambiguous in terms of what it means until 10 minutes ago.”
Twitter did not respond to an inquiry about Lindsay’s allegations that activists had launched a mass reporting campaign against him, but told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Aug. 5 that his account was “permanently suspended” for “hateful conduct” according to Twitter policies.
While Lindsay opposes “cancel culture” on social media, especially for expressing an opinion on an issue, he said people who abuse their positions or power to impose an ideology on school children “should be fired.”
Students walk outside Hewes Middle School in Tustin, Calif., on Aug. 12, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
As the author of several books, including “Race Marxism” and “Social (In)Justice,” that delve deep into today’s culture wars, Lindsay is no stranger to controversy, but he has never been banned from Twitter for his opinions on critical race theory, for example.
“It’s not the broader constellation of things I’m calling out; it is specifically that they want to protect the transsexual ideological grooming of children, and it is huge and it is coordinated,” he said. “There is a vested interest in protecting this specific thing, and I don’t know why that is.”
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of national parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, was recently locked out of the group’s Twitter account for a week over a post condemning controversial proposed legislation that would make California a transgender sanctuary state, and for also challenging gender ideology.
She wrote on Twitter July 25, “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”
After Justice deleted the post, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was unlocked.
Media Matters has also accused Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell, and others of slandering people with the term groomer.
Last week, Twitter also locked the Gays Against Groomers account. The group had posted: “Damaged people damage people. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, especially when you have radical alphabet activists openly grooming them. Protect your children from these people at all costs.”
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, is scheduled to meet on Aug. 9 with the House’s Jan. 6 committee. While it was to be a voluntary interview, the committee is now demanding a compelled deposition.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, following his win in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, gives a victory speech at his election night party at The Orchards in Chambersburg, Pa., on May 17, 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“Your committee is not legally able to conduct compelled depositions, which is why all of my clients have all offered to participate in voluntary interviews,” Mastriano’s attorney, Timothy C. Parlatore, wrote in an Aug. 5 letter to the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach.
“Although Senator Mastriano is happy to cooperate with your committee, as he has nothing to hide, I do have concerns that are particular to him, given the conduct of the committee up to this point.”
Parlatore believes the Jan. 6 committee may try to influence Pennsylvania’s election.
“Given the committee’s demonstrated propensity for releasing edited clips of interviews without the requisite context to support a false partisan narrative,” Parlatore wrote, “I am concerned that there is a risk that your committee will do the same to Senator Mastriano.
“Members of your party like Sean Patrick Maloney, Democratic Campaign Chair, have openly admitted that the goal of the hearings you are conducting is intended to paint the Republican party as irresponsible and power hungry ahead of the midterms.
“For this reason, my client has legitimate concerns that your committee may attempt to influence the outcome of the Pennsylvania state elections through the dissemination of disinformation.”
A spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Parlatore’s letter indicates that he’s willing to allow the meeting if he can make his own recording of the interview, which could be released if the committee releases edited recordings of Mastriano that need more context.
“I was informed by your staffer that you rejected this proposal and refused to make any counterproposals because you wish to retain sole dominion over the public narrative,” the letter says.
“Obviously, your refusal to even discuss this is concerning, as there is no downside to me holding a second recording of the interview, unless the committee does, in fact, intend to engage in disinformation with Senator Mastriano’s interview and is afraid of any accountability for that disinformation.”
The lack of a truly bipartisan committee infringes on the rights of the witnesses and serves no legitimate investigative purpose, Parlatore said.
“My client has significant concerns that he is being set up for sanctions due to the Committee’s refusal to respect the bounds of privilege and lack of any opposing viewpoints to act as a counterbalance,” the letter states.
Parlatore said Mastriano would appear for a deposition if the committee gets a ranking minority member designation from the Republican steering committee.
But before Mastriano would testify in that scenario, Parlatore said he would review the Regulations for Use of Deposition Authority to determine if all provisions had been met. If not, he and Mastriano would leave the session and return only in the event that all provisions in the rules are met the by committee, a judge rules that the committee doesn’t need to comply with the rules, or they agree to a voluntary interview.
Mastriano attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington with numerous other people. He has cooperated with the committee so far, providing documents that have been requested.
The Senate’s rules expert has approved provisions in a major bill Senate Democrats want to pass soon called the Inflation Reduction Act, according to top Democrats in the body.
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that tax incentives for renewable energy and other related provisions can stand, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
“I’m especially pleased that our prevailing wage provisions were approved,” Wyden said in a statement. “These provisions guarantee wage rates for clean energy projects. Clean energy jobs will be good-paying jobs.”
Another piece that would enable Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies was also cleared, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“This is a major victory for the American people,” Schumer said.
Medicare is a health insurance program run by the federal government that primarily covers people aged 65 and older. About 64 million people are covered by the program.
Private insurers are already allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies.
MacDonough did strike down another portion of the bill, which would have essentially forced companies not to raise prices higher than inflation.
“While there was one unfortunate ruling … in that the inflation rebate is more limited in scope, the overall program remains intact and we are one step closer to finally taking on Big Pharma and lowering Rx drug prices for millions of Americans,” Schumer said.
Additional portions have not yet been fully vetted.
All Democrats Support Bill
The mammoth $433 billion bill has the backing of all 50 Democrats in Congress after swing Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) threw their support behind the legislation.
“We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate’s budget reconciliation legislation,” Sinema, the last Democrat to announce her support, said in a statement this week. “Subject to the Parliamentarian’s review, I’ll move forward.”
Joe Biden and other Democrats have said the bill will help Americans save money, but experts are divided on the potential impact.
The bill is aimed at reducing energy costs, transitioning to “cleaner production” by incentivizing solar and other alternative forms of production, lowering health care premiums, increasing taxes on the rich, and reducing the deficit to “fight inflation,” according to Democrats.
Most Republicans appear opposed to the bill.
“Congressional Democrats are pushing a massive tax-and-spend proposal that will crush Americans already struggling under record-high inflation. Cutting wasteful spending would ease inflation. Spending more money will only make it worse,” Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) said in a statement.
“If a truth-in-advertising law were applied to the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ Democrats would be guilty. Their proposal would do nothing to tame inflation,” added Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).
Democrats hold a majority in the upper chamber because the party controls the White House. That means, in the event of a 50–50 tie, Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tiebreaking vote.
Schumer has said the Senate will vote on Aug. 6 to advance the bill, triggering hours of debate. A final vote can happen as soon as Sunday.
Joe Biden, 79, remains on Death Watch™ with COVID-19
Democratic lawmakers spent the better part of two years assailing their Republican colleagues for not taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough for their liking. Nevertheless, these same Democrats are flagrantly disregarding COVID safety protocols to ensure the timely passage of a massive tax-hike and spending bill before Congress adjourns for the summer recess.
“Senate Democrats, some of whom have decried their G.O.P. colleagues’ lenient attitude toward masking, have adopted an unofficial ‘Don’t Test, Don’t Tell,’ protocol of late, particularly as they endeavor to pass the historic Inflation Reduction Act this weekend,” Tara Palmeri of Puckreports.
(Note: It is not clear what the word “historic” means in this context. There is no evidence to support this claim.)
A senior Senate aide told Puck the upper chamber would not delay a vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in the event that a senator tests positive for COVID. Some members have even said they plan to stop testing themselves for the virus. “It’s not an official mandate but we all know we’re not letting COVID get in the way,” the aide said. “The deal is happening. Less testing, just wear masks and get it done.”
(Note: We are literally shaking right now.)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has said there is no “plan B” when it comes to passing the controversial spending package, insisting that Democrats are “going to stay healthy.” Another source told Puck that senators who contract COVID, which has killed more than 620,000 Americans on Joe Biden’s watch, could “bring [their] ventilator and still vote.”
(Note: This is reckless behavior and should not be condoned. People are going to die.)
Speaking of Biden, the 79-year-old president remains on Washington Free Beacon Death Watch™ as he continues to test positive for COVID-19, a virus that is most likely to be fatal for individuals over the age of 65. Biden, who will turn 80 in November, has already outlived the average life expectancy for American men (75.1 years).
Sen. Maggie Hassan plays up her appeal to independents. NH voters say she’s a reliable vote for the Biden admin.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Maggie Hassan’s reelection campaign ads tout that the Granite State Democrat is the “most bipartisan” lawmaker in the Senate. But state residents across the political spectrum say they consider Hassan a reliable vote for the Biden administration.
Sean Chambers, a 43-year-old construction worker and registered independent, said Hassan’s time in the Senate has been “nothing but broken promises.” He said he has yet to decide on whether he will vote Republican in November but refuses to back Hassan.
“She says she’s for the worker but hasn’t done anything,” Chambers told the Washington Free Beacon. “I don’t buy the bipartisan talk. There’s a big divide and nothing is getting done.”
Hassan won her seat in 2016 by just about 1,000 votes in a $120 million campaign battle largely focused on her appeal to independents, who make up roughly 40 percent of the state’s registered voters. Her reelection campaign is set to be equally competitive as residents grow frustrated with the Biden administration’s handling of the economy—only one-fifth of state residents want Joe Biden to seek reelection in 2024, according to a University of New Hampshire poll released last month.
Hassan has attempted to distance herself from the Democratic Party establishment, but New Hampshire voters who spoke to the Free Beacon, including Republicans, Democrats, and independents,share the view that the Democratic senator is a reliable supporter of the White House’s agenda.
Al Macaloan, a retired project manager and an independent who voted for Biden in 2020, said he will vote for the New Hampshire Democrat, who has voted with the president 96 percent of the time, for just this reason.
“In the present environment I don’t think you can be bipartisan,” Macaloan told the Free Beacon. “I would like to see it, but it’s not possible.”
Democrats and their allies are prepared to make the race a top spending target: Hassan has raised $26 million, including $3.2 million in individual contributions between April and June alone—88 percent of which came from out of state. These funds helped her launch a series of campaign ads in recent weeks that tout her “bipartisan” record on issues such as small businesses and federal budgets. Hassan declared in one campaign ad that “fiscal responsibility is the New Hampshire way.”
The ad comes after the senator voted to pass Biden’s American Rescue Plan and infrastructure bill, which total more than $3 trillion in spending. She also backed the $739 billion climate spending bill that gained traction with Democrats in recent weeks. Many economists point to these price tags as sources of the four-decade-high inflation rate—an issue that led two-thirds of voters in the state to disapprove of Biden’s economic policies.
Hassan said in another ad that she is “taking on members of my own party to push a gas tax holiday” and “pushing Joe Biden to release more of our oil reserves.”
But as governor, Hassan signed a gas tax increase in 2014 and proposed a budget in 2015 to increase taxes and fees by $100 million, the New Hampshire Journalreported. As a senator, she voted against former president Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017, which saved an average of $1,400 for New Hampshire residents.
The Hassan campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
T.J. Duffy, a 26-year-old U.S. Postal Service driver, plans to vote for Republicans up and down the ballot in November. Hassan’s campaign message, he said, is a desperate reversal to appeal to blue-collar workers in the state.
“If you’re going to vote one way for the majority, it’s pretty unfair to say you’re bipartisan,” Duffy told the Free Beacon. “The people who don’t see gas prices as an issue don’t drive to work every single day.”
Hassan’s campaign message relies in part on her award from the Lugar Center, which in May crowned her the “most bipartisan” senator in 2021. The organization noted that Hassan rallied a Republican cosponsor on all 48 bills she introduced last year. Only two of these bills passed, though, both of them directing the Department of Health and Human Services to bolster public health programs.
Danielle Ovellette, a 32-year-old waitress, wore a “fuck Trump” bracelet as she served several Trump supporters last week at Ryan’s Place, a veteran-themed diner in Epping, N.H. Ovellette supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in the 2020 presidential primary and refused to vote for Biden in the general election. She said she plans to vote for Hassan because of her support for a progressive agenda.
“You vote for what’s best for you,” Ovellette told the Free Beacon.
Polling data show Hassan has a narrow lead against her potential Republican challengers. Hassan ran a series of campaign ads that criticize the Republican candidates’ pro-life records after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June. The New Hampshire primary is not until Sept. 13—a little more than a month before the election.
Paul Lessard, a 58-year-old former New Hampshire Department of Transportation employee born and raised in Manchester, N.H., said Hassan’s bipartisan message will fall flat come Election Day.
“She’s full of shit,” Lessard, a registered Republican, told the Free Beacon. “She only sides with Democrats.”
Manchin-backed Inflation Reduction Act would more than double agency’s size
If Democrats have their way, one of the most detested federal agencies—the Internal Revenue Service—will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661 full-time staffers, according to federal data.
The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”
That would make the IRS one of the largest federal agencies. The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents.
The money allocated to the IRS would increase the agency’s budget by more than 600 percent. In 2021, the IRS received $12.6 billion.
Although Democrats say the hiring of additional IRS agents will help root out tax cheats and other criminals, federal tax revenues have steadily risen over the past several decades. Federal tax receipts are projected to hit $5.7 trillion in 2027, up from just over $4 trillion last year without additional IRS agents.
But the roughly $450 billion in new spending proposed by Democrats requires new funding mechanisms. Some of the new spending includes $161 billion for clean electricity tax credits and $64 billion in new Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.
Senate Republicans argue that the roughly $45 billion the bill puts towards hiring IRS agents could be better spent on other priorities, such as helping students rebound from the learning loss suffered during COVID school closures. A proposal by Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) would amend the spending bill to put the IRS money towards education tax credits.
“When faced with the decision to spend $45 billion on America’s largest revenue collection agency, or give it back to parents to help them get their kids the help they need, the Senate needs to choose the latter option every single time,” Scott told the Free Beacon.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that, despite White House claims to the contrary, the Inflation Reduction Act does little to combat inflation. A report from Moody’s Analytics found the Democratic bill will shave just .33 percent from the Consumer Price Index over the next decade.
