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Sex Trafficking Drama ‘Sound of Freedom’ is a Heartbreaking and Hopeful Call to Action


BY: AARON GLEASON | JULY 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/07/sex-trafficking-drama-sound-of-freedom-is-a-heartbreaking-and-hopeful-call-to-action/

Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard in "Sound of Freedom"

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AARON GLEASON

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“Sound of Freedom” follows the true story of Special Agent Tim Ballard who specialized in catching

sex criminals, particularly in regard to the exploitation of children on the internet. But Tim is challenged early in the film by the seeming futility of catching criminals when real children’s lives are at stake. Years of looking at the darkest side of humanity has broken his heart to pieces, and the only way he can see to rebuild his humanity is by liberating the lost and forgotten victims of the sex trafficking network. He goes on a quest to South America to do just that.

Jim Caviezel plays Ballard. His classic no-frills acting approach is perfect for this role. Caviezel is best known for playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s controversial “The Passion of the Christ.” He brings the same level of intensity and compassion from this role to Ballard’s story. In fact, Ballard’s mission to seek and save lost children is a distinctly Christian value based on the theological principle that each child is uniquely beloved by God. 

When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me,” he was making a revolutionary claim. Children, the most vulnerable and dependent members of society, had a special place in his kingdom. They mattered to him in a way that no other religious founder has ever envisioned. The faith of a child was the type of faith Jesus wanted from his followers — one free from the pollution and cynicism of adulthood, one of total dependence on their Heavenly Father. 

These values aren’t universally understood and accepted. Ballard’s story is proof of that. According to the movie, the child sex industry brings in $150 billion dollars every year. This industry is powerful and is not nearly as niche as we would like to think it is. While its visible activists are milquetoast perverts we can easily jail, the invisible perpetrators are the ones who do the real damage — the cartels, drug lords, and even our own politicians enable the child sexual slavery that is more prominent now than ever before.

At the end of the film, Caviezel addresses the viewers and makes the point that this story isn’t about a movie production or even about Ballard. It’s about the children — lost, invisible children who suffer in the depths of hell every single day. While the rich and powerful try to indoctrinate us with critical race theory and other ideological moralisms, true victims suffer in literal cages and chains. 

The children are by far the best and worst part of this film. The two lead child actors are heart-wrenchingly perfect — a brother and sister who have been ripped apart by this evil industry. I’ve never seen such realistic and effective acting from children. Thankfully, the film only ever implies the atrocious things that are done to them, but in some ways that makes it even more disturbing. Our imaginations torture us, and they should torture us on this issue — more than visual depictions could.

And that is what makes the child acting simultaneously the worst thing about this film. All the children seem like genuine children. None of them look like actors — they are presented to us with complete realism. If you have anything even resembling a conscience, watching these children is an utter tragedy. It is painful to see their pain on full display. 

This film might not depict anything visually distasteful, but it is not for the weak-hearted and is difficult to watch. It is honest about what this world is and does. I heard crying throughout the entire theater audience — it is beyond moving. At the end of the film, I wanted to clap, but it felt inappropriate. It was similar to watching “Schindler’s List.” What exactly are we celebrating by clapping for films like this? The heroism I suppose, but it doesn’t feel right. Silent repose seemed to be the most appropriate response.

The film itself is magnificently produced. The direction by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde is fantastic and is tonally similar to the brilliant “Sicario.” However, the best part of the production is the score. It is full of the voices of children, which gives voice both to the lament of evil and the hope in the midst of it. And despite the pain, there is much hope in this film.

Children have been freed from chains due to the efforts of people like Ballard. That hope should inspire us all to action. We cannot act out of guilt or shame that we have not done more already. Instead, we must move forward in the hope that justice will be brought to this evil. It is possible to seek and save those who are lost. 

During his message in the credits, Caviezel explains that “Sound of Freedom” is supposed to call a sleeping nation to seek justice for the oppressed. The United States is actually one of the largest consumers of child sex trafficking — a large part of the responsibility is in our own backyard.

So what can we do about it? First and foremost make sure people see this film. Angel Productions has even provided free tickets online. This story can change people’s hearts and inspire them to do something about child slavery. It is a call to action.

Early on in the film, Caviezel looks at a pedophile he’s using to try to find some of the lost children, and he quotes Jesus: “If anyone causes these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them if a millstone were hung around their neck.”

The current culture war is all about children. Children are the most important thing in the world. We cannot allow our world to be dominated by child sexual abuse. We must help. To quote the film, “God’s children are not for sale.”

A.C. Gleason is a proud alumnus of Biola University and Talbot Seminary. He teaches philosophy full-time. His writing has appeared in numerous outlets including Hollywood in Toto, The Daily Wire, and The Imaginative Conservative.

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DOJ: Jack Smith Has Spent Over $9M on Trump Probe


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Friday, 07 July 2023 01:58 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/jack-smith-trump-investigation/2023/07/07/id/1126345/

Special counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor behind the indictment of former President Donald Trump and the investigation into sensitive national security documents being kept at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, has spent more than $9 million since taking on the assignment late last year, according to Department of Justice figures released Friday.

Smith has spent about $5.4 million on personnel, rent, and other costs from his own budget and brought about another $3.8 million in spending by other DOJ agencies in the four months after he was picked last November to lead the investigation and other probes involving alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, reports Politico.

The report only accounts for Smith’s spending through March and does not include the period leading up to Trump’s indictment in June or the increased activity in the election investigation, as the special counsel started the process for a second Florida grand jury.

Part of the $3.8 million includes the cost for Smith’s security detail in the high-profile investigations, the report said.

When Smith was brought on, the investigations involving Trump had already been underway. He kept most of the staff that was already involved but added more prosecutors in recent months.

The report doesn’t include how much the DOJ had already spent on the probes before bringing on Smith.

The special counsel, who had headed the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, left his job in Europe, where he was prosecuting war crimes, and returned to Washington to take over the investigations on Trump.

Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents spent $615,000 through March, with the DOJ incurring another $572,000 in expenses, according to another report.

John Durham, the special counsel appointed to examine the origins of the Russian conspiracy probe involving Trump’s first election campaign spent $1.11 million in the six months before March 31 while wrapping up his investigation of the FBI, with the DOJ adding in another $59,000.

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Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: Horowitz: Now that government COVID malfeasance is exposed, what will the GOP do about it?


Daniel Horowitz | July 06, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-now-that-government-covid-malfeasance-is-exposed-what-will-the-gop-do-about-it-2662235146.html/

We are now 2+ years into consuming reams of information showing the vaccines were devastating to humanity. What will Republicans do about it other than whine about censorship? Refusing to focus on vaccine injury and the perfidy of the government-vaccine complex is an act of self-censorship.

There is a bizarre dynamic unfolding as it relates to GOP sentiment toward the vaccine. All Republicans recognize and decry the growing evidence of the government’s collaboration with big tech to censor all information about vaccine injury. Yet they seem to be more upset about the censorship of the information than about the information itself. Why is there no push from Republicans to defund the vaccines and fix the regulatory and legal structures that allowed Operation Warp Speed to occur and that continue to gaslight the next iteration of rushed, dangerous vaccines?

In an extraordinary ruling on Independence Day itself, Louisiana federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a broad injunction against all government agencies on working with social media companies to censor politically unfavored speech. Citing “substantial evidence” of government’s “dystopian” violations of the First Amendment, Judge Doughty prohibited the federal government from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The injunction not only includes the HHS agencies censoring COVID information, but also the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, the DOJ, and the White House censoring all forms of protected speech.

This ruling comes a week after the House Judiciary committee produced a preliminary report showing DHS’ CISA was behind the censorship enterprise. It turns out that CISA funded a nonprofit group to work with social media on a process, known as “switchboarding,” which would “trigger content moderation” to “ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”

Republicans seem united in combating this censorship and plan to include provisions in the relevant appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024 to block funding for these surveillance and censorship programs. However, where is the same degree of outrage about the dangers of the vaccines themselves?

We now have over two years of information showing ubiquitous injury stemming from damage to all parts of the body, particularly cardiac and neurological. Whether it’s VAERS, European data, countless independent studies, epidemiological data, excess deaths and “died suddenly” mysteries correlating with the take-up of the vaccines, health insurance data, life insurance data, or disability data – we have enough evidence to convict this shot for murder if it were a human standing for trial. Yet not only have these vaccines not been defunded, the same framework that rushed their approval has already been used for countless other new vaccines.

The government’s new shell game is to concede the existence of these problems, but play semantics with the term “rare” when describing their risk. Science Insider published a piece acknowledging the “rare link between coronavirus vaccines and Long Covid–like illness,” including blood clotting, heart inflammation, and neurological disorders. Even Peter Marks, the man at the center of Operation Warp Speed, admitted, “We can’t rule out rare cases.”

“If a provider has somebody in front of them, they may want to take seriously the concept [of] a vaccine side effect,” admits the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, two years after emails show he ignored concerns of rushing the vaccine amidst a pileup of adverse event reporting.

However, what is rare? The CDC’s own pharmacovigilance program showed a 7.7% rate of clinical-level injury. Coupled with the underreporting rate in VAERS, there were likely millions of severe and long-term injuries, including several hundred thousand deaths in the U.S. So yes, we can suggest that 92% of people didn’t experience clinical levels of injury and 98%-99% didn’t experience long-term and deadly injuries. In that sense, I guess you can say it’s rare. But how many people are we talking about when 5.5 billion people were given at least one dose? Potentially, millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of injuries! Just consider the fact that 25% of injuries reported to VAERS and about a third reported by the European Medicines Agency are considered serious, well beyond the standard of 15%.

House Republicans can no longer ignore the problem with the vaccines. They must also stop ignoring the endless approvals of monkeypox and RSV shots based on dubious data and the same rushed framework. To that end, Speaker McCarthy should take the following actions.

  • Defund all COVID shots in the HHS, DOD, and FDA funding bills.
  • Create a commission of members of Congress to examine the rationale, safety, and efficacy data of all vaccines, beginning with the new ones recently approved and in the pipeline.
  • Refuse to sign off on the Senate version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act unless major reforms are enacted curtailing pandemic authorities.
  • Bar any involvement in a WHO pandemic treaty or expansion of the International Health Regulations.
  • Repeal immunity for vaccine manufacturers, including the provision in the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 that extends the immunity to vaccines offered to pregnant women.

To this day, we still can’t get Republicans to shake their support for the V-word even in red states. Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the consummate COVID fascist governor, used his line-item veto to strike a provision from the budget ending vaccine mandates in colleges. “University and college dormitories and student housing are congregate settings where such policy may be of great importance to ensure resident safety,” said DeWine of vaccine mandates in his veto message. It takes a new level of cognitive dissonance to support mandates on those who don’t want the shot out of fear of harming those who did supposedly get the protection that evidently fails to protect unless the other person gets it!

Republicans all agree that our government engaged in an unprecedented operation to cover up the truth about vaccines. How come their curiosity stops at the degree of exposing the cover-up with no interest in delving into what exactly they are trying to cover up? After all, this is the only product that automatically goes into every arm of every baby multiple times after birth with a set schedule mandated by schools. Certainly the COVID shots are proven to be poison, but is there no interest in uncovering the broader truth?

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to note that 5.5 billion, not 5.5 million, received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.

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4th of July chaos: Videos show ‘war zone’ erupt in Minneapolis as police, residents attacked with fireworks


By: PAUL SACCA | July 06, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/minneapolis-fireworks-crime-police-4th-of-july/

Twitter @RebsBrannon Video Screenshot

Independence Day celebrations in Minneapolis descended into chaos as police and residents were attacked with fireworks, videos reveal. Independent journalist Rebecca Brannon wrote on Twitter, “Insanely chaotic night across Minneapolis as I tracked 250-500 group of mostly juveniles across the city until 3 AM. State troopers as far as Stillwater joined MPD tonight but authorities were still overwhelmed; many officers seemed very frustrated.”

Brannon posted numerous videos of people intentionally launching fireworks at buildings, residents, cars, and police officers on the night of the 4th of July. Brannon noted that several of the people firing fireworks were dressed in all black and wearing masks.

Brannon said she was attacked: “Hundreds set off a war zone of fireworks shooting at people and vehicles – behind and all around me. One person even started shooting roman candles at me while I filmed.”

(WARNING: Graphic video)

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676541684962787328?s=20
https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676583068654551040?s=20
https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676569693065211909?s=20

A young man suffered a serious injury to his abdomen after a firework exploded in a crowd of people.

A WCCO-TV news team was feet away from a firework exploding while conducting an interview about the chaos in the neighborhood near Boom Island.

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676551090274181121?s=20

There was a confrontation between police officers and several individuals near Lake Calhoun. An officer orders the group to “go home” and accuses them of “terrorizing people.”

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676587575480397825?s=20

KMSP-TV reported that commercial-grade fireworks were being launched from a vehicle at Minnehaha Regional Park.

Erin Gormley, caretaker for her condominium near Bde Maka Ska, told KMSP-TV, “They were shooting explosives at me because I was protecting the property. They had no regard for anything, they were putting fireworks, like explosive ones, under the cars.”

Gormley added, “I felt afraid. I was not going to leave my front door.”

Despite the heavy police presence, including officers from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and a Minnesota State Patrol helicopter, the crowds seemed unwilling to disperse.

Local resident Erin Hewitt said, “There was just a complete disrespect for everybody. Once the police came, there was no leaving. They were just hanging out, they weren’t listening to the police whatsoever. It was pretty intense.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference, “The targeting of innocent people with fireworks is unlawful, dangerous, and wholly unacceptable.”

“But it was really I think after midnight, we had probably a couple of hundred young people gathered in the area of the lake around Bde Maka Ska,” O’Hara stated. “And that was where it became challenging just because there were so many kids gathered, onlookers to observe this activity, and they were parked deeply into some of the neighborhoods there. And it just took us time to clear everybody out. And just because of the volume of that, then it became, you know, trying to keep disrupting them wherever they were, then trying to go after them.”

Police said there were 16 people arrested, 11 of whom were juveniles.

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Top Republicans Demand Federal Investigation Into Retaliation Against IRS Whistleblowers


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JULY 06, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/06/top-republicans-demand-federal-investigation-into-retaliation-against-irs-whistleblowers/

Chuck Grassley

A coalition of top Republicans on Capitol Hill is demanding a federal investigation into allegations of retaliation against Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who revealed misconduct related to the Hunter Biden investigation.

In June, the House Ways and Means Committee published the transcripts of interviews with a pair of IRS whistleblowers detailing improper interference from the Justice Department surrounding the federal tax probe of the first family. According to the whistleblowers, federal prosecutors concealed critical documents from tax investigators while officials from the Justice Department sought to undermine IRS efforts altogether.

[READ: IRS Whistleblower Docs Show DOJ Obstructed Hunter Biden Probe To Protect President]

On Wednesday, Republican House and Senate lawmakers led by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel urging the agency to open a probe into retaliatory conduct against the IRS whistleblowers.

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reportedly engaged in unlawful whistleblower retaliation against veteran IRS employees,” lawmakers wrote. “Multiple news reports indicate that the whistleblower and investigative team were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation by the IRS at DOJ’s request as retaliation for making protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson signed the letter with Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee; Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who chairs the Oversight Committee; and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee.

“The importance of protecting whistleblowers from unlawful retaliation and informing whistleblowers about their rights under the law cannot be understated,” they wrote, without naming the whistleblowers. “After all, it is the law. Accordingly, we request that you immediately investigate all allegations of retaliation against these IRS whistleblowers…”

Transcripts of interviews between two IRS whistleblowers and Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee were made public last month after Hunter Biden struck a light plea deal with federal prosecutors. Hunter Biden pled guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and a felony firearm violation. The latter charge will be forgiven following two years of sobriety and a forfeiture of gun ownership.

The former chief of the DOJ’s tax division published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal recommending the judge presiding over the agreement reject the deal.

According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, a veteran agent with the IRS who served on the case, “the most substantive felony charges were left off the table.”

“We weren’t allowed to ask questions about ‘dad,’” Shapley said in an interview with Fox News. “We weren’t allowed to ask about ‘the big guy.’”

Hunter Biden did not pay taxes on $1.2 million between 2017 and 2018, Shapley told Bret Baier.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Unilever Loses $2.5B Over Calls to Boycott Ben & Jerry’s


By Lee Barney    |   Thursday, 06 July 2023 12:02 PM EDT

Rad more at https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/ben-andjerrys-unilever-boycott/2023/07/06/id/1126184/

Unilever Loses $2.5B Over Calls to Boycott Ben & Jerry's
Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont (Jakub Porzycki/AP)

Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever (UL) has lost $2.5 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the ice cream maker for its anti-American July 4 message, the New York Post reports.

The stock of the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate fell to $51 after closing $52.28 Monday, just ahead of Ben & Jerry’s July 4 entreaty for the U.S. to return “stolen Indigenous land,” starting with Mount Rushmore.

“The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights,” Ben & Jerry’s said.

Unilever’s market capitalization has lost $2.5 billion, falling from $133.5 billion on Monday to $131 billion Wednesday.

“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s said in a tweet and on its website.

The Burlington, Vermont-based company also issued a press release asking for Americans to work together to return the land on which they have lived for the past 247 years. While Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, it permitted its board to remain independent on political and social issues.

Twitter users immediately reacted to Ben & Jerry’s unpatriotic and untimely denunciation, comparing it to Bud Light’s transgender marketing fiasco and urging customers to boycott its goods.

“Make @benandjerrys Bud Light again,” one Twitter user wrote.

“Just when you think @benand jerrys couldn’t go any lower—they pull this stunt. Boycott Ben and Jerry’s,” wrote another.

A group called the Moral Rating Agency called out Unilever on Wednesday for continuing to sell its Cornetto ice cream and other products in Russia, whereas hundreds of Western companies immediately exited the nation in protest of its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The United States, Europe and Japan also imposed economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs.

Unilever has defended remaining in Russia, saying leaving is “not straightforward.” The multinational firm argues that its 3,000 employees and brands that remain in Russia “would be appropriated—and then operated—by the Russian state.”

“We do not think it is right to abandon our people in Russia,” Unilever said in a statement.

Neither Unilever or Ben & Jerry’s responded to a request for comment from the Post.

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Former Prosecutors Say Judge Should Toss Hunter Plea Deal


By Solange Reyner    |   Thursday, 06 July 2023 11:56 AM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/hunter-biden-prosecutors-doj/2023/07/06/id/1126179/

A pair of former prosecutors say the judge presiding over the case against Hunter Biden should toss his plea deal. Eileen O’Connor, a Washington lawyer who headed the Justice Department’s tax division from 2001-07 last week in an editorial for the The Wall Street Journal titled, “Throw Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal in the Trash,” said judges can reject plea agreements, which “would be an appropriate disposition here.”

“And Congress, in fulfillment of its oversight obligation, must learn and share with the American public what evidence the IRS gathered, what evidence its agents weren’t permitted to obtain, and what charges might have been brought if they had,” she added.

Brett Tolman, the former U.S. attorney for the district of Utah, in a tweet on June 20 suggested Hunter Biden was getting off easy.

“If DOJ treated Hunter Biden like the thousands of no-names who get prosecuted he would be looking at decades in federal prison. Yes, I said decades,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee supported in her 2017 nomination process by Democrat senators, was assigned to Biden’s case in late June after the president’s son agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and enter into a pretrial diversion agreement. He was not expected to face jail time in his guilty plea.

The news sparked accusations of favorable treatment from conservatives whose accusations of influence-peddling in Ukraine and China prompted the investigation that led to the charges.

The younger Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant to foreign companies, investment banker and artist, and has publicly detailed his struggles with substance abuse.

A hearing is slated on July 26 at the federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tightrope

A.F. BRANCO | on July 6, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tightrope/

DOJ protects Hunter and the Biden Crime Family from the IRS and other Scandals.

DOJ Protecting the Bidens
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Here’s How America’s ‘Rainbow’ Military Commemorated This 4th Of July Weekend


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JULY 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/05/heres-how-americas-rainbow-military-commemorated-this-4th-of-july-weekend/

Maj. Rachel Jones posing with pride flags

The U.S. military issued a series of social media posts commemorating LGBT-themed “diversity” on the same weekend millions of Americans came together to celebrate the nation’s founding.

The first of such incidents occurred on Sunday when the Defense Department’s official Twitter account posted a June 22 article detailing the “coming out journey” of U.S. Army Maj. Rachel Jones, a man who identifies as a “transgender female.” In a tweet accompanying the first post, the agency claimed that Jones “faced deep-rooted challenges on her path to self-acceptance” and that his “resilience shines as a hope for others facing similar struggles.”

You do not become a Major overnight. This confused individual has been in Army leadership for some time. Think that through. How many more of these “confused” people do we haev in our military?

You know our enemies are laughing themselves silly with this knowledge that America has sexually confused, obsessed, leaders in its forces. Does that sound prepared for war to you?

In the attached article — which was published on the Army’s official website — Jones described his process of “accept[ing] and lov[ing]” himself and further claimed it “was very risky to [his] career to be seen in public as a transwoman” during the Trump administration when transgender-identifying individuals were not permitted to openly serve in the military. Upon taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing the policy, which allowed Jones to “come out publicly as transgender” to his colleagues.

“People here have been amazing. I know how lucky I am to work in an organization with such acceptance and everyone here has been really supportive,” Jones said. “I was initially a bit fearful of coming out as my true self and how I would be perceived, but I had nothing to worry about.”

To commemorate “pride month,” Jones also recorded a video claiming that for him, “pride” is about “celebrating that diversity is our strength, as a nation and as an Army.”

A similar incident exemplifying the military’s increased focus on so-called “diversity” occurred on Friday and Sunday, when the U.S. Navy posted two separate Instagram clips highlighting the importance of removing alleged “barriers” for LGBT service members’ “total inclusion” in the fleet.

“It’s a necessary effort to make sure that the chief of naval operation and our operational commanders are getting the very best from the 6 to 8 to 10 percent of our force that identifies as LGBTQ+,” said Rear Admiral Mike Brown in the Friday clip.

I am a Combat Marine Veteran. There is no possible way for me to trust anyone like this into combat. As adults they are confused about the way they “feel”, makes every other aspect of their lives questionable.

When asked in the second video what it means to have a “diverse force,” Brown further claimed it’s important for the Navy to be “inclusive of all parts of the American population.”

“Inclusion means recognizing that we have a diverse force and getting the most of every part of our force, every individual sailor,” Brown said. ”We will not be able to compete and win if we don’t continue to pull from the amazing talent that resides in every corner of the United States, harness that talent, respect it, and use it.”

It’s worth mentioning that both the Army and Navy are expected to miss their recruiting goals for the 2023 fiscal year.

Since Biden’s inauguration, the Defense Department has seemingly ramped up its push for military leadership to adopt discriminatory “DEI” ideology. DEI — which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion — is a divisive and poisonous ideology that dismisses merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual preferences. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet the preferred identitarian standards.

[READ: Legal Group Demands Navy Investigate Active-Duty Drag Queen For Allegedly Violating Military Protocol]

Last month, for instance, the Air Force went all out to celebrate “pride month” by authorizing the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to cover the travel costs for service members seeking to attend the branch’s June “pride” events. Several Air Force bases also held LGBT-related events on their respective grounds last month.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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IRS Whistleblower Knocks Out Hunter Biden’s Lawyers and the Washington Post with One Blow


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/05/irs-whistleblower-knocks-out-hunter-bidens-lawyers-and-the-washington-post-with-one-blow/

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley
Hunter Biden’s lawyers tried to turn him into a victim by smearing Gary Shapley — but Shapley fired back.

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Hunter Biden’s high-priced attorneys again tried to turn the president’s son into a victim by portraying IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley as a partisan leaker and a criminal — but on Monday, Shapley responded. Shapley’s counter was a devasting blow to Hunter Biden’s legal strategy and also represented a shot across the bow of the Biden-friendly Washington Post. 

On Friday, Winston and Strawn attorney Abbe David Lowell dispatched a 10-page missive to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, regarding what Lowell called the Republican House’s “obsession with attacking the Biden family.” While the letter complained of the House’s supposed abandonment of congressional protocol and rules of conduct, Hunter Biden’s attorneys’ real focus was Shapley, whom they painted as a partisan hack, not a whistleblower — and a criminal to boot. 

The June 30 letter from Hunter’s attorneys strongly implied Shapley was responsible for leaking information to The Washington Post that served as the basis for an Oct. 6, 2022 article authored by Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein. The article claimed that “federal agents investigating President Biden’s son Hunter have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase…” Biden’s lawyers then challenged the House to ask the whistleblowers if they had leaked information to the Post.

Shapley didn’t wait for the House to ask, instead submitting an affidavit to the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday in which he unequivocally swore he “was not the source for the October 6, 2022, Washington Post article.” Shapley further attested that he had never “had any contact with Barrett or Stein,” the authors of the article. He also stated under oath that he “never leaked confidential taxpayer information.”

The whistleblower then expressly authorized “the Washington Post and/or journalists Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, or any other Washington Post reporter to release any communications directly or indirectly to or from me,” agreeing “to waive any purported journalistic privilege and/or confidentiality that would have arisen had I been a source for the Washington Post.”

At the same time, Shapley’s lawyers wrote to Washington Post authors Barrett and Stein, noting that “Biden family attorneys have falsely accused SSA Shapley of illegally leaking to you for your story, ‘Federal agents see chargeable tax, gun-purchase case against Hunter Biden.’”

“As you know, SSA Shapley was not a source for you on that story, or any other story for that matter,” the letter continued. “SSA Shapley has never communicated with either of you, either on or off the record.” 

Then, after stressing that Shapley had waived any confidentiality that would have arisen, the whistleblower’s lawyers asked them “to correct Mr. Biden’s attorneys and clear SSA Shapley’s good name of these false and retaliatory charges.” 

The Federalist asked both Barrett and Stein whether Shapley was a source for their article, but the reporters did not respond to the inquiries. Whether they will respond to Shapley’s entreat remains to be seen.

What is clear, however, is that Hunter Biden’s attorneys don’t care whether Shapley was the source. They are being paid to defend Hunter Biden, and beyond cutting a sweetheart deal with Joe Biden’s DOJ, that means attacking everyone else. With Shapley and his testimony representing the most serious threat to the Biden family, the attacks on the IRS whistleblower are likely to continue.

While there is little that can be done to stop Hunter Biden’s lawyers from smearing Shapley, congressional oversight committees should ensure the Biden administration’s DOJ isn’t providing an assist. A recent New York Times article suggests Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to inveigle the DOJ in the attack on Shapley.

“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that Mr. Shapley has broken federal laws that keep grand jury material secret,” The New York Times reported last week. In his Monday affidavit, Shapley also refuted this point, saying he never knowingly released grand jury material. But that might not matter to a Justice Department that answers to Hunter’s father.

Thankfully, Shapley and the other whistleblowers have a strong advocate in Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who seems two steps ahead of everything the DOJ and other Biden apologists pull. It is unfortunate, though, that the left-wing press that once championed whistleblowers seems intent now to serve as scribes for Hunter Biden’s attorneys. If the Post reporters remain silent, we’ll know they intend to keep things that way.

This article has been updated since publication.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Holiday Weekend News Dump Implodes Merrick Garland’s Biden-Investigation Testimony


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/05/holiday-weekend-news-dump-implodes-merrick-garlands-biden-investigation-testimony/

Merrick Garland
Over the long weekend, Weiss gave away the deceptive word game he has been playing with Congress — and Garland has been playing with America.

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A new letter sent by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to the House Judiciary Committee suggests Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress when he testified that Weiss “has full authority” to charge Hunter Biden in “other jurisdictions.” Whether Garland committed perjury will all come down to the meaning of the word “has.” 

Late Friday, just as Americans unplugged for the long Independence Day weekend, Weiss confirmed he didn’t really have “ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden criminal investigation. In his letter, Weiss gave away the deceptive word game he has been playing with Congress — and Garland has been playing with America. More significantly, the letter suggests Biden’s attorney general lied to Congress and that everything the IRS whistleblower has said is true.

What the Whistleblower Said

Weiss’s letter followed the House Ways and Means Committee’s release of IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s testimony and related exhibits concerning the Hunter Biden investigation headed out of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office. The transcript of Shapley’s May 26, 2023, closed-door testimony revealed the IRS agent had told the House committee that during an Oct. 7, 2022 meeting between Weiss and senior-level managers, Weiss allegedly said, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” 

According to Shapley’s testimony, Weiss then explained that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, refused to allow Weiss to charge Hunter Biden in the D.C. district — the necessary venue for certain charges based on Hunter Biden’s residency during the relevant time. Shapley noted, “Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority.” “Instead,” Shapley recounted, Weiss “was told to follow the process,” which sent Weiss through another Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, for other potential criminal charges based in California.  

Without the cooperation of Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys, Shapley told the House committee, Weiss was unable to bring charges outside his Delaware district. And Weiss’s lack of authority led to the statute of limitations expiring on felony tax charges against the president’s son for the 2014 and 2015 tax years.

To corroborate his testimony, Shapley provided the House Ways and Means Committee with an email he had sent a colleague soon after the meeting summarizing the key points. That Oct. 7 email recounted the details to which Shapley had testified and, significantly, Shapley copied the special agent in charge of criminal investigations of the IRS D.C. field office, Darrell J. Waldon, who had also attended the Oct. 7 meeting. Waldon would then reply to Shapley’s email summary, “Thanks Gary. You covered it all,” indicating Shapley had accurately recounted Weiss’s representation that he is “not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

The release of Shapley’s testimony and the collaborating email was huge because it indicated both Weiss and Garland had deceived Congress. Weiss for his part had sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023, stating: 

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

Weiss’s Friday letter was in response to questions House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan posed to the Delaware U.S. attorney about his claim “to have been granted ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden investigation. 

In his pre-Fourth of July weekend epistle, the Delaware U.S. attorney said he stood by what he wrote in the June 7, 2023 letter. He added, however, that he wished to expand on what he meant. Weiss then acknowledged that as the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, his charging authority is geographically limited to his home district.

“If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” the letter noted. “If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515.” Weiss concluded by stressing that he had “been assured that, if necessary after the above process,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

There was no reason Weiss could not have provided this explanation earlier — or at least no good reason: The Delaware U.S. attorney clearly intended to convey to Congress the false impression that he had “ultimate authority” to charge Hunter Biden, which would in turn suggest the IRS whistleblower’s claims to the contrary were false. 

But Weiss’s clarification confirms he lacked “ultimate authority,” which is entirely consistent with Shapley’s testimony. In fact, had Shapley falsely summarized the statements Weiss made during the Oct. 7, 2022 meeting, Weiss could have easily said so. That he didn’t speaks volumes.

Lies, Lies, Lies

While Weiss’s clarification from late last week is technically consistent with what he told Congress in his June 7, 2022 letter, the same cannot be said for Garland’s earlier testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

On March 1, 2023, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Garland whether Weiss had “independent charging authority over certain criminal allegations against the President’s son outside the District of Delaware.” After responding that Weiss “would have to bring the case in another district,” Garland added that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary” (emphasis added). 

But according to Weiss’s latest letter, he didn’t have “full authority” and still doesn’t. Rather he had been assured, “if necessary,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

Given Shapley’s testimony, there is a huge difference between Weiss having “full authority” to bring charges in other districts and being promised a grant of such authority. If Weiss had “full authority,” as Garland told Congress, that would mean that either the whistleblower lied to Congress or Weiss lied to his senior team handling the Hunter Biden investigation. It would also clear Garland, the DOJ, and FBI headquarters of interfering in the investigation — a second allegation the whistleblower leveled in his testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee.

With both Weiss and Garland playing word games with Congress, it seems likely Weiss also sought to mislead the House when he stressed that he “had been assured” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.” That language suggests Weiss always had that assurance, but from the whistleblower’s testimony, it appears Weiss had previously requested such authority and been denied it. (The whistleblower and Waldon likely confused Weiss’s reference to special attorney status with special counsel status.)

A belated promise by Garland to give Weiss special attorney authority under § 515 means nothing, as the statute of limitations has already run out for the felony tax charges. So the question remains: Was Weiss denied such authority, as the whistleblower claims Weiss told him? And when did Garland assure Weiss he would have § 515 authority? For that matter, why wouldn’t Garland have immediately conferred such authority on Weiss?

It seems unlikely Congress or the American public will learn the answers to these questions any time soon. Weiss appears to be coordinating his communications with Garland, as demonstrated by his reference in Friday’s letter to the DOJ’s Department of Legislative Affairs — further proof that Weiss is no more independent from the Biden administration than the rest of the Department of Justice.

This article has been updated since publication.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Judge praised for ‘stunning’ July 4 rebuke of Biden admin on Big Tech censorship: ‘Finally’


Federal judge says White House likely violated First Amendment during COVID-19 pandemic

Madeline Coggins

By Madeline Coggins | Fox News | Published July 5, 2023 2:02pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/media/judge-praised-stunning-july-4-rebuke-biden-admin-big-tech-censorship-finally

A federal judge is being applauded for a surprise July 4 ruling stating the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment during the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty ordered an injunction on Independence Day to prevent White House officials and federal agencies from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship, arguing past actions likely violated the Constitution.

“I think that language reflects that this was a stunning rebuke, but also an appropriate one,” former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday.

The holiday injunction was in response to recent lawsuits from Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general. The suits allege that the White House coerced or “significantly encourage[d]” tech companies to suppress free speech during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BIDEN LIKELY VIOLATED FIRST AMENDMENT DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, FEDERAL JUDGE SAYS

Former WH press secretary Jen Psaki was named by a judge in a ruling on the Biden administration and efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation.  ((Left:REUTERS/Leah Millis, Right:REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo))

Several federal officials and agencies – including some of Biden’s Cabinet members and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre – have been barred from contacting social media companies in efforts to suppress speech. The injunction, which was obtained by Fox News, states that the government’s actions “likely violate the Free Speech Clause” and that the court “is not persuaded by Defendants’ arguments,” dealing a significant blow to the White House. 

“I read this opinion yesterday, I couldn’t stop saying thank you. Finally,” OutKick founder Travis said on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday. “This is going to be incredibly difficult for the Biden administration to overturn.”

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“It’s unbelievable the amount of information, and the discovery that we were able to obtain through this particular case should concern all Americans, irrespective of their political ideology, their party affiliation,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry remarked earlier on the show.

“The judge basically spells it out. He does it in this great 120-page opinion. He takes things step by step. He says, look, the government went out there and censored America’s speech on COVID-19, on vaccine policies, on mask mandates, on election questions, in the Hunter Biden laptop.”

“This is a completely direct violation of the First Amendment.”

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“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Doughty wrote.

“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” the injunction adds. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

The injunction also claims that “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech,” but that issues the case raises are “beyond party lines.”

“Viewpoint discrimination is an especially egregious form of content discrimination,” Doughty argued. “The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”

Video

The cases could mean that interactions between tech companies and government officials may be significantly limited in the future. Exceptions might include national security threats or criminal matters on social media.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Google, Meta and Twitter for statements, but has not heard back. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Some critics have challenged the ruling, with a Washington Post article warning the judge’s decision could “upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.”

Ratcliffe agreed with the sentiment but argued the judge is not the one to blame.

“The problem is in this case that the years of good work have been upended by social media executives and government officials who have abused that and the examples that we’ve just talked about. It’s ironic because The Washington Post is actually a coconspirator in that. It was the mainstream media, ironically, that was complicit in this abuse of the First Amendment and suppressing Americans’ free speech. So they did it to themselves that that’s the problem.”

“My take is that this is going to hold up on appeal, because everything that the plaintiffs in this case allege has been proven largely to be true,” Ratcliffe argued. “When you think about, with respect to COVID-19, everything from the origins of the lab leak, the efficacy of certain treatments, the transmissibility. You just heard President Biden talking about pandemic of the unvaccinated. All of that was frankly, wrong, and yet Americans ability to engage in honest debate about it was suppressed. And so you have these agencies with social media working to suppress the truth and amplify lies.”

“As the judge says, I truly do believe this is the greatest infringement on our First Amendment rights that any of us have seen occur in any of our lives. It cannot be allowed. And we’re finally getting judges pushing back,” Travis said.

Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.

Madeline Coggins is a Digital Production Assistant on the Fox News flash team with Fox News Digital.

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Cocaine Was in WH Visitor Cubby; Secret Service Reviewing Logs, Cameras


NEWSMAX | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:50 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/cocaine/2023/07/05/id/1126068/

Cocaine discovered in the White House on Sunday was found in a cubby hole in a West Wing entry area where visitors place electronics and other belongings before taking tours, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter, the White House said. “They’re checking visitor logs and … looking at cameras. Those are the next steps. Cross-checking,” said the source.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “Where this was discovered is a heavily traveled area where many … West Wing visitors come through.”

Asked whether anyone had undergone drug testing as part of the investigation, Jean-Pierre said: “We will take any action … that is appropriate and warranted, pending the outcome of Secret Service.”

The West Wing is attached to the executive mansion where President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden live. It includes the Oval Office, cabinet room and workspace for presidential staff. Hundreds of people pass through the West Wing on a regular basis, including political staff, their guests and members of the press.

Jean-Pierre said West Wing tours took place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The substance was found during a routine Secret Service sweep on Sunday evening. A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. The agency has not said how much cocaine was found. The discovery led to a brief closure of the White House complex on Sunday. Biden and his family were not at the White House then.

Biden did not answer questions that reporters shouted at him about the cocaine on Wednesday. The president thinks it’s “incredibly important” to get to the bottom of it, Jean-Pierre said.

Administration officials are able to offer tours of parts of the West Wing to friends and family members. People who are not members of staff must leave electronics and other belongings in the storage cubicles before taking a tour.

“It was in one of the cubbies,” the source said about the cocaine.

Biden and his family returned to the White House early on Tuesday after spending the holiday weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. Family members who visit the Bidens traditionally enter and exit through the East Wing, the source said.

© 2023 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

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Dick Morris to Newsmax: Biden Social Media Ruling ‘Most Important’


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:11 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/dick-morris-joe-biden-social-media/2023/07/05/id/1126058/

A federal judge’s order for an injunction barring President Joe Biden’s administration from contacting social media companies and requesting censorship of some users may be “the most important decision of this year,” political strategist Dick Morris told Newsmax Wednesday.

“Certainly [it is] more important than even affirmative action,” Morris, the host of Newsmax’s “Dick Morris Democracy,” said on “John Bachman Now.”

Morris explained that the administration was using rules under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which former President Donald Trump set up in 2018 to protect the United States grid against cyber attacks.

“Biden has completely changed it and made it an instrument for domestic surveillance,” said Morris. “CISA monitors all social media posts in the country and the world, and calls social media vendors to account and says on your platform, ‘You’re now running a statement that says that the COVID vaccine doesn’t work,’ or … what they’ll say is ‘You’re running something factually wrong that we want to change, that is not the administration line.'”

As a result, CISA has become a “muscle arm for social media censorship,” as have the CDC, the FBI, and the DOJ, said Morris.

Morris also responded to news that former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia has been working with Hunter Biden’s legal team while helping it with data analysis.

“Obviously he’ll assemble a legal team and obviously he has to say something,” said Morris. “The tax deal that he did was absolutely absurd … it completely misrepresents what Biden did.”

He also raised questions about the income the president and first lady reported in 2017 and 2018, when they reported income of $15 million and another $8 million from the sale of Biden’s book about his son who died.

“To do that, he would have had to sell 15 million books, and they sold 300,000,” said Morris. “Now there’s $10 million of income rattling around Biden’s tax return that nobody knows where it’s from. He claims it’s from the book, but it couldn’t be. And it’s not from his pension. It’s not from his vice presidential salary. It’s from unnamed sources. And that $10 million very possibly was the money that he got from Ukraine and from China that he dressed up as income from his book.”

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Judge: Psaki Pushed Social Media to Censor COVID Info


By Solange Reyner    |   Wednesday, 05 July 2023 02:54 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/us/jen-psaki-white-house-censorship/2023/07/05/id/1126057/

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed social-media platforms to censor COVID-19 information coming from conservative voices starting in May 2021, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, the Daily Caller reported. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted an injunction barring President Joe Biden’s administration from contacting tech companies to request the censorship of some users.

The ruling came in response to a 2022 lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. Their lawsuit alleged the federal government overstepped in its efforts to convince social media companies to address postings that could result in vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or affect elections.

“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” the injunction read. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

Doughty cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.'”

The Justice Department is reviewing the injunction “and will evaluate its options in this case,” said a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“This administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” the official said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people but make independent choices about the information they present.”

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Executive Odor

A.F. BRANCO | on July 5, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-execurive-odor/

Biden and his minions are bragging about his economy that is wreaking havoc on everyday Americans.

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Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Prof. Jonathan Turley Op-ed: Biden’s unhinged ideas of Supreme Court and our Constitution


President distorts history to attack Supreme Court as ‘not normal’

Jonathan Turley

 By Jonathan Turley | Fox News | Published July 3, 2023 4:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bidens-unhinged-ideas-supreme-court-constitution

The decision of the Supreme Court to end the use of race in college admissions was not unexpected. Yet, President Joe Biden expressed outrage and actually claimed that the court gutted the constitutional guarantee that “all men and women are created equal.”  

In declaring that this court was not “normal,” Biden further insisted that these admissions decisions and the Dobbs abortion decision reversed the gains that “we fought a war over in 1860” to secure. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” President Biden accused the court of ignoring what “the Constitution says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator.” That is actually a reference to the Declaration of Independence, but it was the substance of the point that was so baffling. 

LIBERALS LAMENT STRING OF SUPREME COURT VERDICTS: ‘THIS TRULY SUCKS’

In barring the use of race in admissions, the court believed that it was protecting that very “self-evident” guarantee. It erased what the court viewed as a glaring anomaly in its cases in the treatment of racial discrimination in education as opposed to employment.  

Biden tugs at collar
President Biden accused the Supreme Court of ignoring what “the Constitution says.” (Getty Images)

It was the capstone opinion for Chief Justice John Roberts, who, in 2017, declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In 2006, Roberts also said: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” 

The court thought it was doing the work started (but not fulfilled) with the Declaration in treating that all men and women are created equal in both education and employment. 

The president is not alone in such hyperbole. Figures like ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg actually asked whether the decision will be “leading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows.” 

We actually do know. An opinion rejecting the use of racial classification to determine who goes to college could not be read by anyone as endorsing the exclusion of other groups. 

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The truly baffling statement was Biden’s claims over the Civil War. By leaving questions like abortion to the states, Biden claims that the court was reversing what was gained in that war. The criticism came in response to an opinion insisting that there is no place for racial discrimination in higher education. That would hardly seem an argument that would be embraced by the Confederacy. 

Biden has long taken liberties with our constitutional history. Many of us have repeatedly objected to claims that he has made in areas like the Second Amendment. One of his most repeated lines is that the Second Amendment was passed with the understanding that certain guns would be banned and adding, “You couldn’t buy a cannon when, in fact, the Second Amendment passed.” 

That happens to be utterly false. Yet, even after the Washington Post declared Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false, he has continued to make the same false assertion over and over again. 

Now Biden has moved on to the Civil War and his revisionism is about as subtle as Sherman’s scorched “March to the Sea.” 

photo of Whoopi Goldberg
ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg ridiculously asked whether the court’s decision will lead “to no women in colleges soon?” (ABC/”The View”/Screenshot)

The Civil War did not end federalism or states rights. It denied the right of the states to secede and ultimately fulfilled the pledge to equality first made in the Declaration of Independence. 

One can have good-faith disagreements on whether to use racial criteria in admissions. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims. 

In his interview, the president also insisted that one has to “look at how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50-60 years sometimes. And that’s what I meant by not normal.” 

In reality, the court’s decisions on affirmative action in education have been muddled and conflicted for decades. In 1977, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court barred affirmative action in higher education. However, it allowed some consideration of race as part of a holistic admissions process. 

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In the decades that followed, the court remained sharply divided. By 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor supplied the fifth vote to uphold the use of race by the University of Michigan.  

Yet, O’Connor wrote that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 20 years ago. 

It is also ironic to hear the president bewailing the reversal of precedent since the greatest advance in racial equality was the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of “separate but equal.” That was the governing precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few denounced the Supreme Court for reversing that precedent to eliminate separate or different treatment on the basis for race. 

The president also asserted that “the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs ruling, but that is not the case on the affirmative action ruling. 

One can have good-faith disagreements on whether the use of racial criteria in admission. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims. 

Polls have consistently shown (including this week) that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states like California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions. 

We should have a robust and passionate debate over these issues. Yet, a president should be seeking to facilitate that dialogue rather than distorting and weaponizing our shared history. It is a continuation of his prior declarations that members of Congress opposing his election reforms to block state laws are voting with “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy.  

Despite the laws in states like Georgia being upheld as constitutional, Biden declared them a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted accounts of those laws. The claim was again historically and legally ridiculous even if one opposed these state laws. 

We should not allow the president’s constitutional and historical distortions to become, to use his description of the court, “normal.” We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in our country. That struggle is continuing, but we cannot address those problems in the future by distorting our past. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE JONATHAN TURLEY

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Rep. Tim Burchett to Newsmax: ‘Classic Misdirection’ in Hunter Biden Case


By Fran Beyer    |   Monday, 03 July 2023 02:33 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/hunter-biden-justice-cover-up/2023/07/03/id/1125800/

House Oversight Committee member Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on Monday charged that Hunter Biden’s lawyers engaged in “classic misdirection” in an effort to exonerate the president’s son of alleged shady business dealings. The alleged misconduct “goes really deep,” Burchett told Newsmax‘s “John Bachman Now.”

“There [are] two forms of justice in this country,” he said, “the Bidens and the rest of us.”

“The Justice Department in their infinite wisdom after this so-called five-year investigation gives [Hunter Biden] a slap on the wrist,” Burchett lamented. “In Tennessee, I’ve seen people do more time and more punishment for traffic violations … than what Hunter Biden got.”

Hunter Biden is set to appear before a judge July 26 to formally strike a plea agreement with prosecutors on tax and gun charges that will likely spare President Joe Biden’s son time behind bars. A plea agreement calls for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes; he also must commit to court-imposed conditions that will spare him full prosecution on a felony gun charge.

“You’ve got over 20 intelligence professionals who said that the [Hunter Biden] laptop was a Russian hoax, and now we know it isn’t,” Burchett said. “And yet none of those so-called intelligence people are being called on the carpet for it or being denied their security clearances. So this goes really deep.”

According to Burchett, allegations from Hunter Biden’s lawyer that included assertions a whistleblower in the case was “disgruntled” is “classic misdirection. You know, ‘don’t look at this.'”

“That’s exactly what the attorney’s doing – what he’s paid to do,” Burchett said

But Americans “cannot disregard” the “over $10 million that flowed through Hunter Biden for no other reason than he was the vice president’s son and to gain access to the vice president who is now the president,” he added.

Hunter Biden “got his hand caught in the cookie jar — both hands and both feet,” Burchett asserted. “And this thing is going to go deep, and there’s more and more to it.”

Burchett lamented the “five-year investigation” being unable to find what the House Oversight Committee found.

“I’m no accountant by any stretch,” he said, “or an attorney, but I could read. I could follow the trail of the money, the laundering.”

Hunter Biden clients do not pay “tens of thousands or millions of dollars,” and “you don’t set up 21 bank accounts in LLCs that don’t do anything,” according to Burchett.

“You have to do something,” he said. “That’s why the mob used to invest in flower shops and things like that. Because you know it shows a cash flow.

“You can run it through some kind of business.”

But when it comes to the Bidens, he alleged, “They just stuck it in their pocket.”

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Today’s TWO politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Shots Fired

A.F. BRANCO | on July 2, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-shots-fired/

Fireworks are made illegal in Minneapolis while gunfire continues nearly unstopped.

Fireworks in Minneapolis
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Life in the Swamp

A.F. BRANCO | on July 3, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-life-in-the-swamp/

The powerful political wheeler and dealers in the swamp, are destroying America.

Life in the Swamp[
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF JUNE 30, 2023


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Elderly woman NYC Mayor Adams compared to plantation owner escaped Nazi regime with family: report


‘I didn’t have a microphone,’ she said. ‘I had to speak loudly so that everyone could hear what I was saying’.

Houston Keene

By Houston Keene | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 3:40pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elderly-woman-nyc-mayor-adams-compared-plantation-owner-escaped-nazi-regime-family-report

New York Mayor Eric Adams engaged in a tense back-and-forth with a woman who he accused of treating him like he was “on a plantation” during a community town hall Wednesday. The elderly woman whom New York City Mayor Eric Adams compared to a plantation owner was born as her family fled the Holocaust.

A Thursday New York Times report revealed that housing activist Jeanie Dubnau, who was berated by Adams in a racial attack for questioning him about the Big Apple’s back-to-back rent increases, fled during the Holocaust to New York City with her family. Dubnau, a molecular biologist, told reporters of her family’s journey fleeing Nazi Germany just before she was born and accused Adams of deflecting from her question because he did not have an answer.

Eric Adams attends state of the state address
The elderly woman whom New York City Mayor Eric Adams compared to a plantation owner fled the Nazi regime in Germany with her family. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

“It was a complete deflection from what I was saying, because he has no answer,” she told the Times.

Dubnau said she was not trying to be disrespectful to Adams and that she had to shout her question because there was no microphone at the event.

“I didn’t have a microphone,” she said. “I had to speak loudly so that everyone could hear what I was saying.”

Fox News Digital asked Adams’ office for comment on the Times’ report and whether the mayor believed it was appropriate to make racial attacks on people asking questions about his policies. Adams’ spokesperson Fabian Levy told Fox News Digital that the “community conversations were created as a space where we could discuss different issues.”

“That’s why the mayor asked this individual to stand up, so she could speak her mind,” Levy said. “To be clear, anyone who believes this mayor isn’t fighting for tenants hasn’t been paying attention.”

Jeanie Dubnau
Jeanie Dubnau, a molecular biologist, revealed to reporters her family’s journey fleeing the Nazis and blasted Adams as deflecting from her question because he did not have an answer. (Daniel William McKnight)

“This administration has invested more money for housing than any in New York City history. We’re advancing comprehensive plans to build more homes, faster, and across the city, which is the only way to truly solve the affordability crisis,” he continued. “And we’ve invested in efforts to protect tenants from eviction and expanded rental assistance.”

“The Rent Guidelines Board is tasked with making difficult decisions based on hard data, and balancing the need to protect tenants with the need to provide small property owners — who have seen expenses go up by the most in two decades — with the revenue they need to make repairs and protect our housing stock,” Levy added.

Adams’ attack on Dubnau came after the housing activist interjected during his comments at a community conversation town hall in Manhattan. Dubnau had interrupted his remarks and accused the mayor of raising New York City rent and supporting increases.

“If you are going to ask a question, don’t point at me and don’t be disrespectful to me,” Adams told the woman. “I’m the mayor of the city. Treat me with the respect I deserve to be treated. I’m speaking to you as an adult. Don’t stand in front like you treating someone that’s on the plantation that you own. Give me the respect I deserve and engage in the conversation up here in Washington Heights.” 

“Treat me with the same level of respect I treat you,” Adams continued. “So, don’t be pointing at me, don’t be disrespectful to me. Speak with me as an adult because I’m a grown man. I walked into this room as a grown man, and I’ll walk out of this room as a grown man. I answered your question.”

Following his response to the woman, audience members and city officials briefly applauded Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams
Adams’ attack on Dubnau came after the housing activist interjected during his comments at a community conversation town hall in Manhattan. Dubnau had interrupted his remarks and accused the mayor of raising New York City rent and supporting increases. ((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))

The mayor’s fierce comments came moments after his initial response to the woman. He noted that he owns a three-family home in Brooklyn but has never increased the rent on his tenants. Adams also sidestepped blame for rent increases, saying the New York City Rent Guidelines Board makes those decisions.

“I think it was a three percent recommendation,” he said. “I don’t control the board. I make appointments. They made the decision.”

On June 21, the Rent Guidelines Board announced recommendations paving the way for landlords to increase rents by 3% this year. The move impacts more than a million rent-stabilized apartments in the city. Following the announcement, Adams commended the board’s decision.

“Finding the right balance is never easy, but I believe the board has done so this year — as evidenced by affirmative votes from both tenant and public representatives,” he said in a statement.

Fox News Digital’s Thomas Catenacci contributed reporting.

Houston Keene is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.  Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene 

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Alfredo Ortiz , Elaine Parker Op-ed: What happens now that Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan handout scheme


Alfredo Ortiz

 By Alfredo Ortiz , Elaine Parker | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 10:42am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/what-happens-supreme-court-struck-down-biden-student-loan-handout-scheme

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s $400 billion student loan bailout in response to a legal challenge by Job Creators Network Foundation. This ruling sets the stage for long-overdue bipartisan action to address the underlying reason for this debt crisis: unaccountable colleges that have raised tuition by more than double the inflation rate over the last generation.    

The court ruled that the cancelation program was a clear act of executive overreach, a position that both President Biden and Nancy Pelosi have taken in the past. Congress neither authorized broad student loan forgiveness nor indicated intent to do so. In fact, Congress has repeatedly rejected student loan cancelation bills in recent years. The president is not a king and cannot usurp lawmakers’ authority.   

With this ruling, the Supreme Court has protected hardworking Americans who have paid back their student loans or never went to college from having to unfairly cover the college debt of others.    

The Supreme Court building
The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

A student debt jubilee would have let colleges off the hook for their role in this crisis and given them a blank check to keep on raising costs, secure in the knowledge that the federal government will step in when debts get out of hand. Lawmakers can now begin to address the problem’s root.   

The average annual tuition at private, nonprofit universities has grown to $50,000. As a result, American colleges are sitting on $700 billion in endowments. They are taking advantage of their “nonprofit” status and favorable opinion from Democrats and the media to price gouge ordinary Americans.    

A lot of fat can be cut from colleges and returned to students through lower tuition. For instance, colleges have hired an army of high-paid administrators that provide little to no educational value. Some colleges now have around the same number of administrators as students, and most have more administrators than faculty. 

College sports coaches can make more than $10 million per year, and college presidents can make over $1 million.   

President Joe Biden talking to crowd
President Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for qualifying individuals was struck down by the Supreme Court. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

This begs the question: Have colleges become glorified jobs programs funded by students and taxpayers?   

Colleges have launched dozens of expensive humanities degree programs that don’t provide students with marketable skills. These sociology-adjacent majors generally teach postmodernism, identity politics and a victim mentality that leave students unprepared to succeed in today’s competitive economy. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to end such low-value degrees in his country.    

Colleges have also engaged in a decades-long building boom that has added expensive resort-style amenities to campuses. Features like state-of-the-art dorm rooms, lecture halls and sports facilities don’t improve learning but cost a lot of money for students and taxpayers. These aren’t the college campuses you remember attending.   

Student loan debt protesters
The Supreme Court took action Thursday, striking down President Biden’s student loan bailout plan. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

Under the status quo, where the federal government backs all student loans, there’s little check on such college profligacy. Yet smart reforms can reverse runaway college tuition and spending.  

Recent legislation introduced by Senate Republicans helps get to the root of the problem by imposing student loan transparency and eliminating inflationary Graduate PLUS loans, but more needs to be done.  

Broader reforms such as requiring colleges to take over some responsibility for making student loans will incentivize them to ensure students don’t take on too much debt and graduate with skills to succeed. Talk about a win-win.    

Democrats have long stood against price gouging, institutional greed and preying on vulnerable folks. They can do so again by joining with Republicans to take on the college cartel. Many top Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have railed against corporate excess, and they should stay consistent by also calling out colleges.    

Thanks to the court’s decision, lawmakers can now come together to finally reduce escalating college costs burdening so many. Everyone agrees student loans are a crisis. It’s time we all identify colleges as the true culprit and pursue bipartisan reform to hold them accountable. 

Elaine Parker is president of the Job Creators Network Foundation.

Alfredo Ortiz is President and CEO of the Job Creators Network, a non-partisan organization founded by entrepreneurs.

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Matthew Whitaker to Newsmax: House GOP’s Key Step in Hunter Probe


By Michael Katz    |   Friday, 30 June 2023 04:09 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/matthew-whitaker-house-gop/2023/06/30/id/1125583/

Matthew Whitaker, former acting attorney general in the Trump administration, told Newsmax on Friday that House Republicans’ request that the investigation into Hunter Biden be made available for transcribed interviews is a crucial next step in getting to the bottom of whether the president’s son received favorable treatment.

The chairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (James Comer, R-Ky.), Judiciary Committee (Jim Jordan, R-Ohio), and Ways and Means Committee (Jason Smith, R-Mo.), sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, and Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, requesting individuals be made available by 5 p.m. July 13. The inquiries, according to the letters, are based on testimony from two IRS whistleblowers that raise “serious questions about the federal government’s commitment to evenhanded justice and the veracity of assertions made to Congress” regarding “allegations of politicization and misconduct with respect to the investigation of Hunter Biden.”

“This is an important development, and only the Republicans in the House can get these answers,” Whitaker told “John Bachman Now.” “These are people that have been identified by the whistleblower under oath. And remember, these whistleblowers are very experienced IRS special agents that investigate serious crimes, felonies. And so these individuals had various roles.”

Two of the people requested are Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the central district of California, and Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified declined requests by David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware overseeing the case, to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden.

“Others were in this critical meeting where U.S. Attorney Weiss said he did not have the authority to bring certain types of cases and had, you know, expressed his frustration,” Whitaker said. “I think there are also people at main justice — political appointees of Joe Biden that serve under Merrick Garland — that also need to be brought in, because all of them have a piece and a part into how this investigation was frustrated and how Hunter Biden is going to get away with two misdemeanors and a don’t-do-it-again letter.”

In a plea agreement with the Department of Justice, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and admitted to illegally possessing a weapon after his 2018 purchase of a handgun. As part of that admission, he would enter a diversion program; and if he meets the conditions of the program, the gun charge would be removed from his record.

“There are more questions than answers right now,” Whitaker said. “And at the end of the day, House Republicans are the only people that can get to the bottom of this.”
 

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Happy Depends Day

A.F. BRANCO| on June 30, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-happy-depends-day/

Biden like’s everything made in China to the detriment of his own country. Can you say “bribery?

Biden’s 4th of July
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump

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DeSantis supports abolishing the IRS, Department of Education, and more — but he also has a backup plan


By: ALEX NITZBERG | June 28, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/desantis-supports-abolishing-the-irs-department-of-education-and-more-but-he-also-has-a-backup-plan-2662011767.html/

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is currently running for president, has indicated that he would support abolishing the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Commerce. He named the four government entities after Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum asked him if he would support nixing any agencies.

DeSantis, who previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives, indicated that he would support eliminating those four government entities if Congress would work with him to do so. But he also said if the legislature will not support such a move, he would utilize the agencies to counter “woke ideology” and “leftism,” such as by using the Department of Education to “reverse all the transgender sports stuff.”

DeSantis said that either route would mark a “win for conservatives.”

In the Republican presidential contest, the Florida governor, who just won re-election last year, has been polling in second place, far behind former President Donald Trump. But while DeSantis is trailing Trump, he has been polling higher than the rest of the GOP presidential primary field.

The first Republican presidential primary debate will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 23.

Earlier this week, during remarks in Texas, DeSantis said that he would support rules of engagment that allow for using deadly force against drug cartel operatives who cut through America’s border wall. “If somebody were breaking into your house to do something bad, you would respond with force. Yet why don’t we do that at the southern border?” he said. DeSantis also said he would designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations or transnational criminal organizations.

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Yes, Trans Exhibitionists Showing Their Junk to Kids Is Directly Downstream of Redefining Marriage


BY: NATHANAEL BLAKE | JUNE 29, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/29/yes-trans-exhibitionists-showing-their-junk-to-kids-is-directly-downstream-of-redefining-marriage/

woman officiates gay wedding
Indulging and endorsing falsehoods about the nature of marriage and sex only leads to more lies and more injuries.

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Of course the slope was slippery.

As naked men parade in front of kids and pride marchers chant “we’re coming for your children,” a few LGBT activists are beginning to worry that things have gone too far. For example, Andrew Sullivan, an early and ardent advocate for same-sex marriage, is unhappy about reaping what he has sown. And he should be — from sterilizing and mutilating children via “gender-affirming care” to flashing children at pride festivities, the LGBT movement is proving social conservatives right.

Sullivan is repulsed and worried about a backlash, but he still denies any responsibility for the fruits of his labor. He argues his ideas needn’t lead to the illiberalism and radicalism his side is indulging. He is adamant that we could have, however uneasily, agreed to live and let live if the LGBT movement had taken his advice and closed up shop after its legal victories. He insists, “There is no slope in the case I made. There is a clear line: formal legal equality alongside cultural and social freedom on all sides.”

He is wrong. Same-sex marriage was always a radical project with implications for all of society, which is why there is a direct line from Sullivan’s case for it to the extremism he now deplores. Same-sex marriage reduces the differences between men and women to a matter of personal sexual preference, rather than a fundamental ontological one upon which civilization is based. If the sex binary doesn’t matter in marriage, it doesn’t matter anywhere.

Instead of a lifelong covenant that unites the two halves of the human race in a relationship that provides for the future of the human race, marriage was redefined as the mere legal recognition of an indefinite and androgynous pairing. The collapse of the older understanding of marriage began before the LGBT movement, but the triumph of same-sex marriage sealed it.

As Pastor Hans Fiene has put it, expecting that same-sex marriage would have no significant social effects is like blowing up the Hoover Dam and expecting Lake Mead to move only a few inches. And so, less than a decade after the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, men think they can be women, women think they can be men, doctors are amputating the healthy breasts from increasing numbers of troubled adolescent girls — and our leaders from President Joe Biden on down are cheering them on.

The Lie of Being ‘Born This Way’

Evils such as this were baked into the arguments used to establish same-sex marriage. In particular, the claim that people are “born this way” — that LGBT identities are intrinsic and immutable — ensured that dissenters would be persecuted and children would be groomed into rainbow identities. However, though the mantra of “born this way” was a public relations triumph, it was false. The search for a “gay gene” quietly ended in failure a few years ago. The experiences of same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria are often fluid and felt with varying intensity. The causes are diverse and complex; that these feelings and desires may be unchosen does not mean they are determined at birth, or that environmental and psychological factors play no role.

Nonetheless, the lie of “born this way” enabled the hijacking of civil rights law to serve the LGBT agenda, which ensured that opponents of the LGBT movement were not only defamed as the equivalent of racists but that the enormous state power used to break segregation would be deployed against them. And so every wedding cake artist and photographer must bow before the state-enforced metaphysical doctrine that sex is irrelevant to the meaning of marriage. And the dogmas of gender identity demand that women and even little girls must get comfortable with males ogling and flashing them in what used to be female-only spaces.

Worse still, the false doctrine of “born this way” demands the grooming of other people’s children into rainbow identities. After all, if we are born with our sexual orientation and gender identity already fixed for life, then some children are necessarily born into the rainbow elect. Affirming these identities is seen as essential to their flourishing, for the sexual self is seen as the authentic self. Therefore, in order for the children born into the LGBT elect to live as their true selves, they must learn who they really are. And because we do not know which children are born with a rainbow identity until they tell us, then all children must be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity as young as possible, and encouraged to explore any hints of rainbow identity.

Of course, because “born this way” is a lie, the result has been a surge in children and young adults claiming to be LGBT. Consequently, we are now debating whether public schools should encourage children to transition and then hide it from their parents, and whether the government should take children away from parents who don’t affirm a child’s transgender identity. Somehow, “love wins” has become a mandate to seize children from their parents and mutilate them.

Social Conservatives Vindicated

These evils show that though social conservatives have been defeated, we have been vindicated. And there is more than the logic of social and legal revolution at work here. What religious conservatives understood — and what almost everyone else overlooked — is that sin stays hungry. Indulging and endorsing falsehoods about the nature of marriage, sex, and what it means to be embodied as a man or a woman only leads to more lies and more injuries.

If the cause of same-sex marriage had been righteous, we might have seen a result like that Sullivan imagines. That matters have instead gone so wrong, so quickly, should prompt us to look for where we went astray.

This reevaluation will often be uncomfortable, for the premises of the LGBT movement are derived from the sexual revolution as a whole, and that implicates almost all of us. Same-sex marriage was not the top of the slippery slope, it was just a point where it got steeper. The slide began with the effort to separate sex and its pleasures from obligation and commitment — the lie that we could and should separate sex from marriage, and marriage from the natural family of mother, father, and children. This is, of course, a perennial temptation, but the wealth and technological prowess of our age made it seem less harmful than it did in less prosperous times that lacked the pill and penicillin. But money and technology are poor substitutes for virtue and justice, so we have kept sliding down the slope.

Same-sex marriage accelerated this, building on past lies and adding new ones. And it also prevents recovery, insofar as it institutionalizes lies about sex, marriage, and family. Truth must be the foundation of any effort to rebuild a healthy sexual and family culture. And that will require rejecting government dogmas declaring that men and women are sexually and relationally interchangeable, subject only to the sovereign whim of adult preference.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Electric Cars Are An Expensive Scam


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JUNE 29, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/29/electric-cars-are-an-expensive-scam/

Gustave Trouvé's personal electric vehicle (1881)

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The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.

Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.  

Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.

And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.

In March, Joe Biden signed an executive order to “set a target” for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be zero-emission. California claims it is banning combustion engines in all new cars in about 10 years. So carmakers adopt business models to deal with these distorted incentives and contrived theoretical markets of the future.

In today’s real-world economy, though, Ford announced this week that it was firing at least 1,000 employees — many of them white-collar workers on the EV side. Ford projects it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that next time we need to bail out Detroit.

Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford — again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells — another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.

Ford says these up-front losses are part of a “start-up mentality.” We’re still pretending EVs are a new idea rather than an inferior one. But scaremongering about climate and a misplaced romanticizing of “manufacturing” jobs have softened up the public for this kind of waste. In the statist’s utopian vision, highly paid union members will be grabbing their lunchpails and biking over to the local solar panel factory or EV production line and toiling there for the common good.

In the real world, there is Lordstown. In 2019, after GM — which also loses money on every EV sold — shut down a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, then-President Donald Trump made a big deal of publicly pressuring the auto giant to rectify the situation. So CEO Mary Barra lent Lordstown Motors, a new EV outfit, $40 million to retrofit the plant. Ohio also gave the company another $60 million.

You may remember the widespread glowing coverage of Lordstown. After Joe Biden signed his “Buy American” executive order, promising to replace the entire U.S. federal fleet with EVs, Lordstown’s stock shot up. By the start of this year, Lordstown had manufactured 31 vehicles total. Six had been sold to actual consumers. (But to be fair, five would be recalled — following a recall of 19.) The stock was trading at barely a dollar. Tech-funding giant Foxconn was pulling its $170 million. And this week the company filed for bankruptcy.

Without massive state help, EVs are a niche market for rich virtue signalers. And, come to think of it, that’s sort of what they are now, even with the help. A recent University of California at Berkeley study found that 90 percent of tax credits for electric cars go to people in the top income strata. Most EVs are brought by high earners who like the look and feel of a Tesla. And that’s fine. I don’t want to stop anyone from owning the car they prefer. I just don’t want to help pay for it.

Really, why would a middle-class family shun a perfectly good gas-powered car that can be fueled (most of the time) cheaply and driven virtually any distance, in any environment, and any time of the year? We don’t need lithium. We have the most efficient, affordable, portable, and useful form of energy. We have centuries’ worth of it waiting in the ground.

Climate alarmists might believe EVs are necessary to save the planet. That’s fine. Using their standard, however, a bike is an innovation. Because even on their terms, the usefulness of EVs is highly debatable. Most of the energy that powers them is derived from fossil fuels. The manufacturing of an EV has a negligible positive benefit for the environment, if any.

And the fact is that if EVs were more efficient and saved us money, as enviros and politicians claim, consumers wouldn’t have to be compelled into using them and companies wouldn’t have to be bribed into producing them.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Business, Political

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Lara Trump to Newsmax: ‘No Doubt Hunter Biden Received Special Treatment’


By Peter Malbin    |   Wednesday, 28 June 2023 02:50 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/lara-trump-hunter-biden-whistleblower/2023/06/28/id/1125273/

Responding to the news that Attorney General Merrick Garland will be called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Sept. 20, as two IRS whistleblowers are alleging that the Department of Justice interfered in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, Lara Trump told Newsmax on Wednesday that there’s no question that President Joe Biden’s son received special treatment.

“There’s no doubt that Hunter Biden received special treatment,” she said while appearing on “John Bachman Now.” “Anyone in America can very clearly see that, and you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would that happen here?’ I mean, think about the fact that Merrick Garland almost became a Supreme Court justice. Imagine him making decisions on the Supreme Court bench. That would be terrifying.”

Lara Trump, a senior adviser for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and the host of “The Right View Podcast,” said that Americans need the truth, and need clarity about the Hunter Biden probe.

“We need equal application of the law,” she said. “I sure hope that we get a lot of answers to a lot of questions that I think we all still have. Think about what it takes to come forward as a whistleblower. Think about what these people are putting on the line, especially Gary Shapley by putting his name out there.”

Shapley, the IRS supervisory agent who helped oversee the investigation of Hunter Biden, told CBS News earlier this week that, dating back to the Trump administration, he was repeatedly prevented from taking steps he would have considered routine in other cases. Shapley said the five-year investigation uncovered conduct that he says could have resulted in additional charges.

“Based on my experience, if this was a small business owner or any other non-connected individual, they would have been charged with felony counts,” Shapley said.

Shapley told CBS News that Hunter Biden wrote off as business expenses the money he paid for “prostitutes, sex club memberships, travel for the prostitutes, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers, no show employees.”

Shapley also said his efforts to explore money trails that involved “dad” or “the big guy” were blocked by a senior prosecutor working for David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware (who was appointed by President Trump).

“I would say that they limited certain investigative leads that could have potentially provided information on the president of the United States,” Shapley said.

Speaking about the whistleblowers, Lara Trump said: “These are people who are saying, ‘We love this country enough to see that this sort of thing does not happen. This is not how our country is supposed to function.’ So when you have all of these folks saying, ‘Here’s what we saw, and here’s our testimony to back it up,’ and we gain nothing from coming forward to talk about this, I think it raises a lot of red flags. I think that’s why a lot of people have really started to pay attention to this. As they should, and as we all should, as American citizens.”

The conversation turned to CNN and the audio recording of a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where former President Trump purportedly discusses holding secret documents he allegedly did not declassify.

“Well, look, none of this is surprising. I think we all know where these leaks are coming from,” Lara Trump said. “It seems to be on purpose to distract from a very obvious problem that the Biden family has right now. All the information that is coming out about Hunter Biden, about Joe Biden, about their connections to money they received from, you know, entities all around the world from Ukraine, from China. These are very problematic for the Democrat Party, for the Biden family, and for our entire government, and so they want to distract people.”

Trump continued: “The goal is clear: to damage Donald Trump and prevent people from wanting to vote for him in 2024. I think people see this, and they say, ‘Really, this is where you want us to obsess and focus, when we have real national security implications happening right now with the Biden family that you guys don’t want us to talk about?'”

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Supreme Court Backs Christian Mail Carrier Who Wanted Sundays Off


NEWSMAX | Thursday, 29 June 2023 12:54 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/supreme-court-mail-carrier-post-office/2023/06/29/id/1125415/

Supreme Court Backs Christian Mail Carrier Who Wanted Sundays Off
(AP)

The Supreme Court on Thursday used the case of a Christian mailman who didn’t want to work Sundays to solidify protections for workers who ask for religious accommodations. In a unanimous decision the justices made clear that workers who ask for accommodations, such as taking the Sabbath off, should get them unless their employers show doing so would result in “substantial increased costs” to the business. The court made clear that businesses must cite more than minor costs — so-called “de minimis” costs — to reject requests for religious accommodations at work. Unlike most cases before the court, both sides in the case had agreed businesses needed to show more.

The case before the court involved a mail carrier in rural Pennsylvania. The man was told that as part of his job he’d need to start delivering Amazon packages on Sundays. He declined, saying his Sundays are for church and family. U.S. Postal Service officials initially tried to get substitutes for the man’s shifts, but they couldn’t always accommodate him. When he didn’t show, that meant more work for others. Ultimately, the man quit and sued for religious discrimination.

The case is the latest religious confrontation the high court has been asked to referee. In recent years, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been particularly sensitive to the concerns of religious plaintiffs. Last year, the court split along ideological lines in ruling for public high school football coach who wanted to pray on the field after games. Other recent religious cases have drawn wide agreement among the justices, such as upholding a cross-shaped monument on public grounds and ruling that Boston had violated the free speech rights of a conservative activist when it refused his request to fly a Christian flag on a City Hall flagpole.

In the latest case, a federal law — Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. But a 1977 Supreme Court case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, says in part that employers can deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business.

During arguments in the case in April the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was representing the Post Office, told the justices that the Hardison case as a whole actually requires an employer who wants to deny an accommodation to show more. But Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion for the court that while some lower courts have understood Hardison the way the Biden administration suggested, other courts incorrectly latched on to the “de minimis” language “as the governing standard.”

“In this case, both parties agree that the ‘de minimis’ test is not right, but they differ slightly in the alternative language they prefer. … We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” Alito wrote.

The Biden administration has said that requests for religious accommodation come up most often when employees seek schedule changes like the Sabbath off or midday prayer breaks or exemptions from a company’s dress code or grooming policies. They also come up when an employee wants to display a religious symbol in the workplace.

As for the particular dispute in front of them, the justices sent the case back to a lower court for another look in light of their decision. The case involves Gerald Groff, a former employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country. For years, Groff was a fill-in mail carrier who worked on days when other mail carriers were off. But when an Amazon.com contract with the Postal Service required carriers to start delivering packages on Sundays, Groff balked. Initially, to avoid the shifts, Groff transferred to a more rural post office not yet doing Sunday deliveries, but eventually that post office was required to do them, too.

Whenever Groff was scheduled on a Sunday, another carrier had to work, or his spot went unfilled. Officials said Groff’s absences created a tense environment and contributed to morale problems. It also meant other carriers had to deliver more Sunday mail than they otherwise would.

Groff resigned in 2019 rather than wait to be fired. He sued the Postal service for failing to accommodate his religious practice. Lower courts ruled against him previously. As a result of the court’s ruling, his case will get another look.

Groff said in a statement after the ruling that he was grateful the court heard his case. “I hope this decision allows others to be able to maintain their convictions without living in fear of losing their jobs because of what they believe,” he said.

The case is Groff v. DeJoy, 22-174.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Law, Political, Religion

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Forcing Behaviors

A.F. BRANCO | on June 29, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-forcing-behaviors/

Blackrock and Wall Street are trying to force woke behavior but have run into harsh boycotts by We The People.

BlackRock Forcing Behaviors
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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New York becomes sanctuary state for transgender children, will not arrest anyone who performs child sex-change surgeries


By: ANDREW CHAPADOS | June 27, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/ny-sanctuary-child-gender-surgery/

Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed legislation into law that has made the state a sanctuary for those who have illegally given children sex-change drugs, hormones, or surgeries. Hochul finalized the legislation ahead of her appearance at the New York City Pride parade according to TimCast, which was co-sponsored by four New York state senators.

Authorities in the state are henceforth prohibited from cooperating with investigations from other states into individuals who have broken related laws in their jurisdiction. The state will not provide information about or arrest individuals who have been involved with what is colloquially known as “gender-affirming care” by those who support sex changes for children. The changes also affect family law in New York; the state will not remove a child from their guardian if that person was attempting to illegally provide their child with a sex change.

New York Senate Bill S2475B “prohibits consideration of a law of another state that authorizes a child to be removed from their parent or guardian based on the parent or guardian allowing their child to receive gender-affirming care in custody cases,” the law reads.

Law enforcement agencies are barred from “cooperating with or providing information to any individual or out-of-state agency or department regarding the provision of lawful gender-affirming care performed in this state,” as well.

“I stand together with champions of this movement who have joined us today to say no more,” Hochul said, according to the Gothamist. “We will give you the template, rest of the country. We will show you what you need to do.”

The state now “prohibits the issuance of a subpoena in connection with certain out-of-state proceedings relating to seeking health or related information about people who come to New York to receive gender-affirming care,” and “prohibits the arrest of a person for performing or aiding in the lawful performance of gender-affirming care within this state.”

New York has become a state where children can unequivocally be given sex changes without punishment from the government as the bill plainly stated such a person cannot be arrested:

“A police officer may not arrest any person for performing or aiding in the performance of gender-affirming care within this state, or in procuring or aiding in the procurement of gender-affirming care in this state, if the gender-affirming care is performed in accordance with the provisions of any other applicable law of this state.”

TimCast also reported that Governor Hochul signed an amendment that required New York State employees to use “preferred pronouns” as well.

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LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

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DOJ Rot Goes So Much Deeper Than Merrick Garland


BY: ELLE PURNELL | JUNE 28, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/28/doj-rot-goes-so-much-deeper-than-merrick-garland/

Aberrated DOJ seal

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Following the sensational whistleblower testimony that dropped Thursday, revealing how the Department of Justice systematically blocked an IRS investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter and diverted agents from examining the incriminating evidence against his presidential father, House Republicans are threatening the overdue impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland — except most of the pro-Biden interference in the DOJ happened before Garland was installed, while President Donald Trump was still in office.

Does Garland still deserve impeachment for his assortment of abuses, such as sitting on his hands to avoid real accountability for the younger Biden (and his pop), while weaponizing the country’s top law enforcement agency to try to send Biden’s top presidential challenger to federal prison? Absolutely. Is it smart politically for Kevin McCarthy to use the current momentum to hold Garland to account? Probably. Is the alleged involvement in a foreign bribery scheme enough to merit Biden’s own impeachment? Most definitely.

But if the blame — and punishment — for the DOJ corruption revealed by whistleblowers stops with Merrick Garland or even Joe Biden, it will happen again. That’s because the Justice Department’s pattern of shielding the Biden family from the law wasn’t masterminded by either man. It happened because of career officials and bureaucrats, whose names most Americans don’t know, and whom Americans will never have the chance to vote out. They didn’t have to be told what to do.

According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, it was in late 2019, a year before Joe Biden was elected, that the FBI acquired and authenticated the infamous laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer repair shop. The IRS began an investigation into likely tax crimes almost immediately.

Between April and June 2020, when IRS agents were preparing to execute interviews and search warrants, it was “career DOJ officials,” Shapley said, who “purposely slow-walk[ed] investigative actions.” After IRS agents discovered a WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden purportedly threatened a Chinese business associate that “I am sitting here with my father” and that the Bidens could “hold a grudge” if a “commitment made” to them was not “fulfilled,” federal prosecutors rejected IRS efforts to look into the messages. That was around August 2020, when Trump had nearly half a year left in the White House.

In October 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf acknowledged “probable cause had been achieved” for executing a search warrant on Hunter Biden but still refused to allow a search. In the meantime, the DOJ continued to block IRS investigators from accessing the laptop and openly cited the investigation’s potential to hurt Biden’s electoral chances as their reason for slow-walking it.

Wolf would also order IRS investigators not to ask about “dad” or about an email stating there would be “Ten held by H for the big guy.” That happened in December, more than a month before Biden’s inauguration. That same month, IRS and FBI investigators planned to seek a consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence and interviews with Hunter and his associates, since the search warrant had been rejected. “FBI headquarters,” Shapley said, apparently notified the transition team of the plan, a move which “tipped off” the Bidens’ inner circle. Of the 12 interviews investigators sought, they got one.

All of that happened under Trump and his attorney general, William Barr. That’s not to make the absurd suggestion that it happened at Trump or Barr’s direction. Rather, it shows how monstrous the triple-letter leviathan and its grip on our political process are. The regime, the deep state, the bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it: Shapley’s testimony shows their ability to manipulate political outcomes is so entrenched that their own elected overseers are powerless to stop it.

Unsurprisingly, as Shapley noted, “This same sort of unprecedented behavior continued through” Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. When IRS agents finally sent their recommended charges against Hunter Biden to the DOJ, the agency — by then under Attorney General Merrick Garland — opposed the recommendation. Based on the deal offered to Hunter Biden last week, we know the DOJ dropped most of the charges. Shapley also testified that he has been subject to retaliation from the DOJ since speaking out.

Before the investigation into Hunter Biden was even opened, the Russia-collusion hoax orchestrated against then-candidate Trump in 2016 offered more evidence of rank-and-file DOJ corruption, such as Peter Strzok and Lisa Page‘s conversation about their plan to “stop” Trump from becoming president. While that op occurred under a Democrat president, it relied on individual hacks in Justice Department cubicles, not just on Obama-appointed political operatives like then-FBI Director James Comey.

The problem of a bureaucracy so bloated that the people’s elected servants in Congress and the White House can’t keep track of, let alone shut down, its mischief is not unique to the DOJ. But the Justice Department’s role as arbiter of how — or to whom — the law applies makes its rule-by-pencil-pusher especially dangerous.

Electing the right president or appointing the right attorney general will only help with that insofar as he can root out the career rot in the 115,000-employee DOJ. As the Gary Shapleys get pushed out, the integrity they bring to agencies like the DOJ and IRS will go with them.

And while corruption in the vastly left-leaning bureaucracy almost always benefits Democrats, the problem goes beyond partisan politics. If government agencies are so powerful that their work to protect political allies and topple their challengers continues unabated by the electoral process, then elections are no real transfer of power and we are not a functioning republic.

That’s not just having a bad apple for an attorney general. That is a crisis of governance.

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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corruption, Political

Op-ed: The trans-sport two-step dishonors female athlete pioneers like my mom


 By John Ullyot | Fox News | Published June 28, 2023 2:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trans-sport-two-step-dishonors-female-athlete-pioneers-like-my-mom

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing entitled, “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,” where former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Riley Gaines gave emotional testimony about her experience losing an NCAA championship to a male transgender swimmer, and having to change in a locker room with the 6’4″ 22-year-old biological man exposing his male genitalia in front of her and other female swimmers.

Senate Democrats, led by Dick Durbin of Illinois, downplayed the elite woman swimmer’s powerful message and delivered general bromides about transgender discrimination and its “divisive and hateful rhetoric” putting “children in danger.” He noted, “LGBTQ+ Americans are asking for no more—and no less—than the full freedom to live as who they are.”

Actually, on this score, transgender activists are indeed asking for a lot more, and their demands discriminate against women athletes who train hard for the right to compete and win on a level playing field with other women. Such efforts also dishonor real advocates of gay rights, as well as the pioneers of women’s sports who worked so hard to let females enjoy and compete in sports previously restricted to men.

Rights for gay Americans like me have made incredible strides in a few short decades, when we faced true discrimination in the areas of military service, marriage, employment, and – in many quarters – general social acceptance. In my own case more than 30 years ago, I had to mask my sexuality to serve my country in the Marine Corps, before the advent of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and long before gay Americans were accepted fully in the military. That was real discrimination, and thankfully it was resolved fully across the uniformed services a decade ago. Now, thanks to the efforts of so many trailblazers over the past 60 years, gays enjoy full equality in the military, as well as in each of these other important societal realms.

RILEY GAINES: REWRITE OF TITLE IX IS AN ABOMINATION

Video

The same is true for women’s sports, where decades ago women were not allowed to compete in many athletic events open to men because they were not considered physically up for the stress of participating, and it took true pioneers to change that for the benefit of society.

My late mother was a world-class marathon runner, and a member of the U.S. women’s national team in the mid-1970’s – a time when women were not allowed to compete in that event in the Olympics or in other marquee long-distance events. In fact, another top woman runner of that era, Katherine Switzer, was attacked and nearly pushed to the ground by a race official when she was discovered running covertly in the 1967 Boston Marathon, when women were barred from that storied event. Surrounded by a few burly male friends, she continued the race and made it across the finish line. Her story spread nationally and led to the event admitting women five years later.

Several years after that, my mother and other top female and male long-distance runners formed the International Runners’ Committee that worked hard to break down barriers for women in long distance running competitions. Thanks to their efforts and those in other countries, the Olympic Games added a women’s marathon event in 1984, which American Joan Benoit won that year, along with a 3,000-meter race. Over the next decade-plus, the Olympics added the three remaining long-distance events, bringing women to full parity with men in track-and-field racing worldwide.

Video

In 1984, the women’s record in the marathon stood at 2 hours 24 minutes, and the men’s record was a full 16 minutes below that at 2 hours 8 minutes. How would Joan Benoit, my mother, and other pioneers like Katherine Switzer feel when they achieved their hard-fought goal of allowing women to compete in the Olympic marathon, only to have several biological male second-stringers limber up at the starting line with the best women runners in the world, intending to run ten-plus minutes faster than the rest of the field simply by declaring themselves to be women and taking a few hormone treatments? It would be absurd on its face, and true pioneers of women’s equality in sports like my mother would oppose it 100 percent.

The transparent unfairness of this trans-sport two-step is not hard for Americans to grasp – no matter their gender or sexual identity. Asking transgender biological male athletes to stick to competing in men’s sports instead of women’s sports, and to shower in men’s locker rooms, not women’s, does not represent discrimination.

Transgender advocates who say otherwise dishonor those who have made monumental strides in recent decades both on true gay rights and on forging a level playing field for women in competitive sports.

John Ullyot served for seven years as a senior staff member in the U.S. Senate and is a former deputy assistant to the president. 

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Futures of Thomas, Alito Raise Stakes in 2024


By Solange Reyner    |   Wednesday, 28 June 2023 12:58 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/2024-supreme-court-election/2023/06/28/id/1125255/

Lawmakers say speculation that Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are considering retirement make the 2024 presidential election outcome more crucial, The Hill reported.

The Court is made up of nine justices, with a 6-3 conservative majority, after former President Donald Trump filled three vacancies: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. They helped form the majority to overrule Roe v. Wade in June 2022, allowing states to outlaw abortion.

“It’s critical. President Biden, who I feel confident will be reelected, needs to be able to put more judges on the bench, federal judges, including Supreme Court. It is absolutely critical that the Senate remain in Democratic hands,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who will retire at the end of next year, told the Hill.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told the Hill that the next president will likely “have a chance to appoint another member of the court. … I expect that you’d see, over the course between now and the end of the next [presidential] term, probably another retirement or two.”  

Neither Alito or Thomas has said he is mulling retirement. Thomas, who has served on the Court for nearly 32 years, is the oldest justice on the Court at 75. Alito, who has served since 2006, is 73.

“I do think that the 2024 election is important,” said Brian Fallon, co-founder and executive director of left-wing judicial advocacy group Demand Justice. “I do think Alito and Thomas will be getting up there in age, and there’s quite a real possibility that replacements for them could be in order in the next four-year presidential window.‘

“It’s hugely important to win the upcoming election, and I think the court will be more salient of an issue than ever. It’s important to win the next election because if there is going be an opportunity to replace a Thomas or Alito, you don’t want to miss it by not winning a Senate race here or there and preventing us from filling a seat.‘

“But we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that the court’s balance is going to be shifted anytime soon just by winning a few elections.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – King of the Hill

A.F. BRANCO | on June 28, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-king-of-the-hill/

Jack Smith, MS Media, and the deep state are interfering in the 2024 election under the guise of prosecuting Trump.

Biden Election Interference
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Biden Admin Grew Censorship Complex To Silence True But Inconvenient ‘Malinformation,’ House Committee Shows


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JUNE 27, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/27/biden-admin-grew-censorship-complex-to-silence-true-but-inconvenient-malinformation-weaponization-committee-shows/

Jim Jordan

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The Biden administration’s war on so-called disinformation included a federal initiative to censor “malinformation,” information that is true but inconvenient to the Democrat ruling regime.

On Monday, lawmakers on the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government published an interim report on the Department of Homeland Security’s “disinformation” programs within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). According to the report, CISA “metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media,” and has steadily expanded the scope of its censorship since 2018.

“In 2022 and 2023, in response to growing public and private criticism of CISA’s unconstitutional behavior, CISA attempted to camouflage its activities, duplicitously claiming it serves a purely ‘informational’ role,” the report reads.

CISA ultimately outsourced its dystopian censorship regime to third-party nonprofits and colluded with Big Tech companies to suppress information deemed incorrect or harmful to regime narratives. CISA, lawmakers wrote, “exploited its connections with Big Tech and government-funded non-profits to censor, by proxy, in order to circumvent the First Amendment’s prohibition against government-induced censorship.”

“This included the creation of reporting ‘portals’ which funneled ‘misinformation’ reports directly to social media platforms,” the report says.

The government’s disinformation efforts extended to the censorship of “malinformation,” defined by CISA as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

“In other words, malinformation is factual information that is objectionable not because it is false or untruthful, but because it is provided without adequate ‘context’ — context as determined by the government,” lawmakers explained.

According to their report, CISA tried to “disguise the true nature” of the agency’s work by “removing references to surveillance and censorship” from its website. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice also interfered with CISA public records requests to stonewall congressional oversight. The select subcommittee is still waiting on CISA’s compliance with subpoenas.

The select subcommittee held a hearing on the federal government’s disinformation efforts in March featuring two journalists behind the “Twitter Files,” Substack reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.

“American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy,” Shellenberger told lawmakers. “The censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. military during the global war on terror with highly sophisticated tools from computer science.”

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DoD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA,” Taibbi added. “A focus of this fast-growing network … is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for ‘true but inconvenient.’”

MALINFORMATION = Information that’s TRUE, but INCOVENIENT.

Lawmakers made clear in their report Monday that the committee “will continue to investigate CISA’s and other Executive Branch agencies’ entanglement with social media platforms.”

The Department of Homeland Security isn’t the only agency in the Biden administration engaged in the censorship industry. The Biden State Department funded a “Disinformation Index” that blacklisted conservative websites from major advertisers.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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What the Hell Did Kamala Harris Just Say?


By: Matt Vespa | June 27, 2023 11:35 AM

Read more at https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/06/27/and-with-that-statement-you-can-see-why-kamala-harris-poll-numbers-are-abysmal-n2625014

AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

The anniversary of the Dobbs decision is here, and it has the left wing fired up. The landmark decision rightfully overturned Roe v. Wade and sent this contentious issue back to the legislature to be decided through the political process. Some people don’t know we were heading toward a consensus on the subject before the 1973 decision blew that up. To commemorate the occasion, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended a campaign event organized by the top pro-abortion groups in the country, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY’s List, on June 23. 

And yes, she was an incoherent mess again, providing another soundbite in the annals of ‘what the hell did Kamala just say.’ What she said is somewhat different from the prepared remarks on the White House website: 

And let’s take a moment to really reflect on the historic progress that we’ve made thus far.  You know, so many of us are always in the process of fighting to achieve full equality, full freedom, the rights that people are fully entitled to.  But let’s always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So, we have achieved a lot, and I know that in particular when the Dobbs decision came down, a lot of us — it — it hit us very hard.

 Here’s what she actually said:

Okay, let’s play devil’s advocate here: did the teleprompter malfunction? It happens. Or was this another time when Kamala thought she could wing it and go off-script? Because she can’t do that—she doesn’t have the ability. Never did. There is a stream of stories about how the VP doesn’t read memos or notes from her staff to ensure she doesn’t look like an idiot in public. That tendency has led to many fleeing for other job opportunities and allegations that Harris fosters a toxic work environment. That narrative has been around since her failed 2020 campaign. From COVID to the Highland Park shooting and the war in Ukraine—it’s well-established that Kamala Harris can’t walk and chew gum simultaneously. Her penchant for spewing nonsense is pervasive, and I don’t think this was an exception.

And she’s overall just not likable.

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Here’s Why New Jersey Is Suing Several School Districts


By: Madeline Leesman | June 27, 2023 2:30 PM

Read more at https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/06/27/new-jersey-suing-school-districts-over-parental-rights-policies-n2625039

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration has sued three school districts in the state over policies that require staff to inform parents if their children show signs of changing their “gender identity.” The lawsuits against the school districts were reportedly filed on Wednesday by Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat. In the lawsuit, he alleged that the Manalapan-Englishtown, Marlboro and Middletown school districts violated the state’s law against discrimination (via Politico): 

“‘Outing’ these students against their will poses serious mental health risks; threatens physical harm to students, including risking increased suicides; decreases the likelihood students will seek support; and shirks the District’s obligation to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all,” reads the Marlboro lawsuit. “Indeed, LGBTQ+ students in New Jersey and elsewhere have died by suicide after being outed.”

The lawsuits, which seek to stop the districts enforcing the policies, come as some of the most intense battles of the culture wars, nationally and in New Jersey, play out in suburban and rural school districts. Middletown is also where Murphy resides.

Last month, New Jersey filed a similar lawsuit against the Hanover Board of Education. The two sides are currently at an impasse over how to amend the Morris County district’s parental notification policy.

Guidance from the state says schools “shall ensure” students be addressed by their preferred names and pronouns, be allowed to dress “in accordance with their gender identity” and that “parental consent is not required” for the district to accept the student’s “asserted gender identity.”

“School policies that single out or target LGBTQ+ youth fly in the face of our State’s longstanding commitment to equality,” Sundeep Iyer, director of the Attorney General’s Division on Civil Rights, said in a statement. “Our laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression, plain and simple, and we will not waver in our commitment to enforcing those protections.”

Marc Zitomer, an attorney for Marlboro’s school board, told Politico in a statement that “we vehemently disagree with Attorney General’s argument that it is somehow discriminatory or improper to notify a parent that their minor child is changing their gender identity or expression.”

“It is our position that keeping parents in the dark about important issues involving their children is counterintuitive and contrary to well established U.S. Supreme Court case law that says that parents have a constitutional right to direct and control the upbringing of their children,” Zitomer added.

Reportedly, each school district makes exceptions to the parental notification policy if there is reason to believe that doing so would put the student in harm’s way. 

Townhall has covered several instances of school districts across the country attempting to keep parents out of the loop when it comes to their child’s gender identity, including in Colorado, Virginia, Kansas, Ohio and California. Last year, Republican Sen. Tim Scott (SC), who is running for the White House in 2024, introduced legislation that would prevent schools from hiding information about a student’s gender identity from their parents.

“The law in the United States has long recognized the importance of parental rights. A parent’s right to oversee the care education of their child is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bill said. “Parents have a fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to raise and educate their children in the way they choose.”

“Public schools across the country are violating these fundamental parental and familial rights by deliberately hiding information about gender transitioning from their parents,” it continued. “These schools are sabotaging the parent-child relationship and encouraging children to keep secrets from the adults who are charged with protecting and defending them – their parents.”

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The White House’s New Excuse for Biden’s Economic Failures Is Something Else


By: Spencer Brown | June 27, 2023 3:10 PM

    Read more at https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/06/27/wh-briefing-1pm-n2625043

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

It’s no secret, now more than two years into President Joe Biden’s term, that Americans are less than thrilled with his economic policies and their ability to deliver on the 2020 campaign promise to “build back better.” According to the latest polling averages from Real Clear Politics, Biden’s overall job approval remains more than ten points underwater with more than 53 percent of Americans saying they disapprove of his performance. On his handling of the economy, Americans have an even worse opinion of Biden. RCP’s average shows just 39.2 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy — what the White House is trying to label “Bidenomics” this week — while 56.3 percent disapprove of Biden’s economic policies.

So, as the White House embarks on a week-long push aimed at highlighting Biden’s economic policy with the hope — which is feeble at this point — of turning Biden’s economic and overall job approval in the right direction, what’s the White House’s excuse for why supposedly wonderful “Bidenomics” hasn’t won over the American people?

“We’re just starting to feel the impact of the president’s economic agenda,” argued Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton in Tuesday’s White House briefing:

In that one response, the White House again attempted to avoid any responsibility for the consequences of Biden’s economic policies and inability to deliver a better economy for the American people. You see, it’s not that Biden’s spending binge triggered inflation and his war on fossil fuels sent gas prices to all-time highs making Americans grow exceedingly disenchanted with Biden’s handling of the economy, it’s that “Bidenomics” just hasn’t kicked in yet. 

Well, that doesn’t pass the smell test. Biden took swift actions on day one that drove energy costs soaring. He signed a handful of bills — including the American Rescue Plan and the falsely named “Inflation Reduction Act” — that the White House has touted endlessly. Now that Americans have buyer’s remorse, the White House spin is: well, nothing we’ve done over the last 30 months has kicked in yet. It’s bogus. 

But Dalton also argued in Tuesday’s briefing that Americans should just “look at where we were when [Biden] came into office…after four years of Donald Trump” in order to see the impacts of “Bidenomics” that she, contradictorily, said had not yet been fully felt.

If the White House really wants Americans to consider where the economy was when Biden took office “after four years of Donald Trump” to inform their opinion of “Bidenomics,” why not. 

In January 2021, the Consumer Price index pegged the annual growth of inflation at 1.4 percent. In May 2023, the annual rate of inflation was 4.0 percent. That is, “after four years of Donald Trump,” inflation was below the Federal Reserve’s target of two percent inflation. Under Biden, inflation spiked to 8.9 percent before falling to its current rate of 4.0 percent — twice the Fed’s goal. 

Americans — by a significant margin — know that they’ve not been better off economically since Biden took office and implemented his “build back better” or “Bidenomics” or whatever he wants to call his disastrous policies. The White House is not willing, however, to admit what Biden’s policies have done or that reversing them is the only quick way to address Americans’ disapproval. 

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IRS Whistleblower Emails Suggest David Weiss Misled Congress In Letter Claiming Charging Authority


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 26, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/26/irs-whistleblower-emails-suggest-david-weiss-misled-congress-in-letter-claiming-charging-authority/

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Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss told the House Judiciary Committee he had “been granted ultimate authority” over prosecutorial decisions related to the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden in a June 7, 2023, letter obtained by The Federalist. However, Weiss’s letter to Congress — and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s earlier testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Weiss had “full authority” to charge Hunter Biden — directly conflicts with statements Weiss made to senior members of the team investigating the Biden son. 

So, either Weiss lied to his top investigators, or Weiss and Garland deceived Congress. There’s no other way around it.

Something Doesn’t Add Up

The House Ways and Means Committee’s release of IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s testimony and related exhibits last week created a serious conflict.

Shapley, the IRS whistleblower who came forward earlier this year with claims of political bias and breaches of protocols in a high-profile investigation, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee during a closed-door session on May 26, 2023. The House’s release of the transcript of Shapley’s testimony provided the first official confirmation that Hunter Biden was the subject of the investigation.

During his hours-long testimony, Shapley told congressional investigators that a meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, with Weiss and senior-level managers from the IRS, FBI, and U.S. attorney’s office, was his “red-line” meeting. According to the whistleblower, Weiss was present for the meeting and surprised the team by stating, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” 

Shapley said Weiss further explained that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, would not allow Weiss to charge Hunter Biden in the D.C. district, where certain of the alleged crimes needed to be filed based on Hunter Biden’s residency during the relevant time. Shapley noted, “Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority.” “Instead,” Shapley recounted, Weiss “was told to follow the process, which was known to send U.S. Attorney Weiss through another President Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney,” that one in California, the second locale relevant to the proposed criminal charges. 

Without the cooperation of Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys, Shapley explained, Weiss made clear he could not bring charges outside the Delaware district. Consequently, the statute of limitations on felony tax charges against the president’s son for the 2014 and 2015 tax years expired. 

The IRS whistleblower then shared with the House committee an email thread Shapley initiated following the meeting with Weiss. In his email on Oct. 7, 2022, Shapley summarized the substance of the meeting: “Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” (bold in original). Shapley then commented that he “believe[s] this to be a huge problem—inconsistent with DOJ public position and Merrick Garland testimony.” 

The email then recounted that Weiss said he had gone to the U.S. attorney in D.C. “in early summer to request charge there,” but the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney “said they could not charge in his district.” Weiss then said he “requested Special counsel authority when it was sent to D.C.,” but “Main DOJ” denied the request. 

The special agent in charge of the FBI D.C. field office, Darrell J. Waldon, who had been present during the Oct. 7 meeting, responded to the email summary, stating: “Thanks Gary. You covered it all.”

Merrick Garland’s Denial

During a Friday press conference, Garland contradicted Shapley’s testimony, stating: “As I said at the outset, Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Trump as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration and would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

This statement tracks with Garland’s earlier unequivocal testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 1, 2023, when Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley asked for clarification on whether Weiss had authority to bring charges outside the Delaware district.

“The U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary,” the attorney general replied, stressing that he would ensure Weiss would be able to do that. 

Garland reiterated that point when Grassley inquired whether Weiss had “independent charging authority over certain criminal allegations against the President’s son outside the district of Delaware.” 

“He would have to bring the case in another district,” Garland replied, but added, “But as I said, I promised to ensure that he is able to carry out his investigation and that he be able to run it and if he needs to bring it in another jurisdiction, he will have full authority to do that.”

Garland’s March 1 testimony directly conflicted with what Weiss had told investigators during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022. And as the email Shapley sent after that meeting indicates, Shapley believed Weiss’s statement that he lacked the authority to file charges against Hunter Biden in another district also conflicted with what Garland had previously told Congress.

Before Grassley quizzed the attorney general on Weiss’s authority, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty had asked Garland during an April 26, 2022, Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science hearing whether Garland had been briefed on the Hunter Biden investigation. In response, the attorney general stated, “Hunter Biden’s investigation … is being run by and supervised by the United States attorney for the District of Delaware.” 

“He is supervising the investigation,” and “he is in charge of that investigation,” Garland continued, stressing “there will not be interference of any political or improper kind.”

Shapley’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee counters Garland’s claims that there would be no political or improper interference. But more significantly, the whistleblower’s testimony and the email he provided the House cannot be reconciled with Garland’s clarifying testimony to Grassley on March 1, 2023. During that hearing, Garland expressly stated that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.”

The Weiss Letter

However, it is not merely the veracity of Garland’s Senate testimony that is in question now. On June 7, 2023, Weiss wrote to the House Judiciary Committee to corroborate Garland’s testimony. In that letter, obtained by The Federalist, Weiss stated:

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

In signing that letter and dispatching it to the House Judiciary Committee, Weiss has entangled himself in what appears to be Garland’s lie to Congress — that is, unless Weiss had instead deceived the senior-level officials responsible for the Hunter Biden investigation when he told them last Oct. 7 that he was not the “deciding person” on whether charges are filed.

But why would Weiss mislead the senior leadership responsible for the Hunter Biden investigation? 

On this point, Shapley has “no insight,” his lawyers noted on Friday, adding: “That Mr. Weiss made these statements is easily corroborated.” Then the whistleblower’s attorneys listed the names of three individuals who, in addition to Shapley and Weiss, had attended the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022: Baltimore FBI Special Agent in Charge Tom Sobocinski and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ryeshia Holley and IRS Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon.

If these individuals confirm the whistleblower’s account — as seems likely given Waldon had previously said, “you covered it all,” in response to Shapley’s email summary of the meeting — Weiss will have some explaining to do. He’ll have to explain his statements during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, and the genesis of the June 7, 2023, letter Weiss sent the House Judiciary Committee.

Sources familiar with the letter have suggested it reads as if drafted by someone connected to the Department of Justice’s Office of Legislative Affairs, telling The Federalist a U.S. attorney would be unlikely to know about the so-called Linder letter referenced in a footnote. That possibility raises the further question of whether the DOJ and Garland induced or pressured Weiss to sign the letter. 

It is important to remember that Weiss dispatched the letter to the House Judiciary Committee before the Ways and Means Committee released the whistleblower’s testimony, meaning the DOJ and the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office would not have known Shapley had the Oct. 7, 2022, email to corroborate his oral testimony. 

The House Judiciary Committee seems similarly concerned about the possibility the Department of Justice and/or Garland pushed Weiss to help mislead Congress, writing to the Delaware U.S. attorney last Thursday about the “unusual nature” of Weiss’s June 7 letter. That letter, which The Federalist has reviewed, asks the Delaware U.S. attorney to provide “a list of individuals who drafted or assisted in drafting” the June 7 letter. The oversight committee also asked Weiss “who instructed you to sign and send your June 7 letter to the Committee,” and for details on any conversations Weiss had with Garland or others at the DOJ.

These details suggest we have passed the cover-up stage of the Hunter Biden scandal and have now entered the cover-up of the cover-up phase. But unlike the typical case, it cannot be said that the cover-up is worse than the crime — because selling your country out to the Chinese communists with your vice president father is about as bad as it gets. 

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Florida’s largest police union endorses DeSantis after supporting Trump in 2020: ‘Choice could not be clearer’


By Andrew Mark Miller | Fox News | Published June 26, 2023 1:15pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/floridas-largest-police-union-endorses-desantis-after-supporting-trump-in-2020-choice-could-not-be-clearer

FIRST ON FOX: The largest police union in the state of Florida announced Monday that it is backing Gov. Ron DeSantis for president after previously supporting former President Trump. In a press release announcing the presidential endorsement, Florida Police Benevolent Association President John Kazanjian called DeSantis the “most effective governor in the nation” who will “make public safety a top priority in the White House.“

“In major cities and communities across America, many Americans are grappling with increased crime rates that not only jeopardize public safety, but also threaten the quality of life in their communities,” Kazanjian said. “The ideological experiment of defunding the police and scapegoating law enforcement for America’s social problems has failed.”

Kazanjian called DeSantis the “one candidate for president who has a proven track record in enhancing public safety and investing in the essential men and women who help maintain public safety every day.

“For the over 30,000 men and women in the Florida Police Benevolent Association, the choice for us could not be clearer,” he said.

PRO-DESANTIS SUPER PAC RAILS AGAINST ‘WOKE’ IDEOLOGY IN NEW AD: ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO OUR SOCIETY’

Ron DeSantis
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

“Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration have made Florida a law-and-order state, by investing in and supporting the thousands of law enforcement officers, who serve on the front lines in keeping our communities safe and secure.”

The press release outlined several actions taken by DeSantis to strengthen law enforcement in Florida, including investing over $100 million to increase salaries of officers and investing $20 million to support the fight against fentanyl overdoses.

“Governor DeSantis has made Florida a destination for all Americans to live safely and freely,” the release states. “He is one of the most effective Governors in the nation and he will take his proven track record to the White House, where he will continue to have the backs of law enforcement officers and make public safety a top priority.”

DESANTIS ENDORSED BY 15 SOUTH CAROLINA LAWMAKERS

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Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
Former President Trump, left, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Getty Images)

The police union endorsed Trump in 2020.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

DeSantis was on the campaign trail in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday outlining his immigration plan and blasting the Biden administration for not doing more to address the crisis.

Former President Donald Trump
Former President Trump speaks to guests at the 2023 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum on April 14, 2023 in Indianapolis. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“On Jan. 20, 2025, we will be on a mission to stop the invasion at our southern border to fight the drug cartels that are poisoning our citizenry, to build the border wall, and to reestablish the sovereignty of this nation,” DeSantis said during the announcement. “We are done with promises. We are done with slogans. Now is the time for action. No excuses. We will get the job done.”

Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

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DeSantis: ‘Turn the Screws’ on Sanctuary Jurisdictions


By Eric Mack    |   Monday, 26 June 2023 11:18 AM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ron-desantis-sanctuary-immigration/2023/06/26/id/1124929/

Unveiling his 2024 presidential campaign border policy Monday in Eagle Pass, Texas, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to “turn the screws on sanctuary jurisdictions” and “kneecap the cartels.”

“We’re gonna turn the screws on sanctuary jurisdictions,” DeSantis said at a campaign event, which aired live on Newsmax. “They get a lot of money. All these localities and states get a lot of money from the feds. They get grants. They get all that.

“You know, we’ll make sure to turn the screws so that it pays to follow the law, and it doesn’t pay to violate the law.”

It is not just about money with the Democrat-run cities and states that are “virtue signaling” with their open immigration policies in violation of U.S. law — and in defiance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — it is also about public safety, according to DeSantis.

“What will happen is you’ll have somebody who’s in the country illegally, they’ll commit a serious crime, they’ll serve a prison sentence; when they’re done with their prison sentence, a state or a locality, that sanctuary will not notify ICE that they’re getting out of prison, because if they do ICE can take them and send them back,” DeSantis lamented.

“Instead they release them back into the community. How is that something that’s acceptable? It’s not.”

President Joe Biden has taken the “virtue signaling” that started by anti-Trump forces during the Trump administration to whole new depths and the open borders must be closed, DeSantis vowed.

“Joe Biden’s dereliction of duty has made our southern border a disaster zone,” DeSantis said. “The Biden administration is the critical link in an illegal transnational human smuggling syndicate.

“For decades, leaders from both parties have produced empty promises on border security, and now it is time to act to stop the invasion once and for all.

“As president, I will declare a national emergency on day one and will not rest until we build the wall, shut down illegal entry, and win the war against the drug cartels. No excuses. We will get it done.”

A key piece of DeSantis’ plan is declaring the Mexico drug and human trafficking cartels Transnational Criminal Organizations in a federal order-led effort to “kneecap the cartels.”

“We’re going to be leaning in against these drug cartels,” DeSantis said. “I think that they are killing a lot of Americans. They are effectively in control of this border to begin with, and part of the reason it’s gotten this way is they don’t get any pushback.

“They’re able to just do this with impunity, and so we will designate them either Transnational Criminal organization or foreign terrorist organization. Chip and I are talking about that.

“The bottom line is we’re going to give them a designation so that we can unleash more federal power to be able to kneecap the cartels.”

Chip refers to his early endorser Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who once helped run the presidential campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and is currently active among the House conservatives pushing back against Biden’s open border policies.

“Washington’s status quo approach to border security is one of the biggest failures of our generation,” Roy, speaking before DeSantis, said. “This crisis has decimated ranchers, killed Americans with dangerous narcotics, placed migrants in horrific situations from sex trafficking to death, and placed American national security at risk to China and cartels.

“Texans and our courageous DPS Troopers deserve credit for standing in the breach created by Joe Biden. We need a president in the White House who is not afraid to use the full weight of his office to build the wall, stop the flow, and force Congress to send a bill to sign to fix the laws once and for all.

“Ron DeSantis not only has a strong plan to secure the border — in line with our Texas plan — he has the courage to finally deliver results.”

Notably, DeSantis has been one of the leading men in America in forcing sanctuary cities and states to take on the border crisis in their own backyards, having sent migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and California.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Right On Target

A.F. BRANCO | on June 25, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-right-on-target/

AG Kieth Ellison of Minnesota is working to force Target to stock LGBT apparel it removed.

AG Ellison and Target
Cartoon by A. F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Dog Eat Dog

A.F. BRANCO | on June 26, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-dog-eat-dog-2/

The left always blames the Right for the evil they are doing, for example, the Russia hoax.

Deep State Wolf
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF JUNE 23, 2023


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‘America’s medical establishment has beclowned itself’: Tucker Carlson drops new episode on Twitter


By: ALEX NITZBERG | June 22, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/tucker-carlson-blasts-medical-establishment/

Screenshot taken from video on the @TuckerCarlson Twitter account

During a new episode of his show, Tucker Carlson declared that the nation’s “medical establishment has beclowned itself for all time.”

“Ep. 6 Bobby Kennedy is winning,” the tweet containing Carlson’s new episode reads. Carlson opened the program by claiming that there has never been a presidential candidate the media loathed more than Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Carlson said that “Trump got a gentle scalp massage by comparison when he announced.”

Carlson described an imaginary scenario in which an airplane cabin is filling with smoke but nobody is talking about it. When someone mentions the smoke to a flight attendant, she replies, “Shut up racist!” adding, “That’s a dangerous Russian conspiracy theory. Stop spreading misinformation or I’ll call TSA and have you arrested when we land.” After laying out that scenario, Carlson suggested that it serves as a parallel to modern American society. He said that while people can sense that there is “something very bad going on,” leaders will not acknowledge it and insist that nothing is amiss.

Kennedy will not stop asking questions, Carlson said, claiming that because of this, the Democratic figure is hated. Carlson claimed that while Kennedy’s views on vaccines may be correct, partially correct, or completely incorrect, it is certain the country’s “medical establishment has beclowned itself for all time. Its official positions on vaccines, psychiatric drugs, puberty blockers, reassignment surgeries … have no connection whatsoever to legitimate science. It’s all effectively witchcraft,” Carlson declared.

The tweet containing Carlson’s video has amassed more than 2 million views so far.

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New FBI Whistleblower Says Deputy Director Threatened Agents Uncomfortable with J6 Investigations


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JUNE 23, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/23/new-fbi-whistleblower-says-deputy-director-threatened-agents-uncomfortable-with-j6-investigations/

FBI

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An independent nonprofit government watchdog that specializes in whistleblower protection sent letters to Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) this week with more evidence of misconduct by FBI leadership.

On Thursday, Empower Oversight submitted an affidavit of a new FBI whistleblower who came forward with allegations of improper intimidation by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. The whistleblower claimed that shortly after Abbate’s appointment in February 2021, Abbate threatened agency employees concerned about the bureau’s overblown response to the Jan. 6 Capitol demonstrations that same year. During a secure video conference, said the unnamed employee, Abbate called on agency staff with concerns about the bureau’s approach to the Jan. 6 riot to meet with the deputy director personally so he could, in the whistleblower’s words, “set them straight.”

“I have witnessed hundreds of Director [Secure Video Teleconference]s and have never seen a direct threat like that any other time,” the whistleblower said in the affidavit. “It was chilling and personal, communicating clearly that there would be consequences for anyone that questioned his direction.”

In May, House lawmakers on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government heard from several other FBI whistleblowers who made similar claims about the conduct of agency leadership. Former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, who filed for whistleblower protection in August, told the committee he raised concerns over the FBI’s reaction to the Capitol riot, which he thought “could have undermined potentially righteous prosecutions and may have been part of an effort to inflate the FBI’s statistics on domestic extremism.”

“I also voiced concerns that the FBI’s use of SWAT and large-scale arrest operations to apprehend suspects who were accused of nonviolent crimes and misdemeanors, represented by counsel, and who pledged to cooperate with the federal authorities in the event of criminal charges created an unnecessary risk to FBI personnel and public safety,” Friend said. “At each level of my chain of command, leadership cautioned that despite my exemplary work performance, whistleblowing placed my otherwise bright future with the FBI at risk.”

Garret O’Boyle, another former FBI special agent who filed for whistleblower protection, told lawmakers how he moved his family “halfway across the country” before the FBI suspended him for speaking out.

“They allowed us to sell my family’s home. They ordered me to report to the new unit when our youngest daughter was only two weeks old. Then, on my first day on the new assignment, they suspended me; rendering my family homeless and refused to release our household goods, including our clothes, for weeks,” O’Boyle said.

House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, have sought testimony from at least 16 FBI employees to probe agency misconduct related to whistleblower retaliation.

Empower Oversight made clear in a Thursday press release that “while the affiant doesn’t know and isn’t associated with Empower Oversight’s other FBI clients, the affidavit is relevant to FBI whistleblower cases that are currently under inspector general review.” According to the affidavit, Abbate’s threat goes against the bureau’s training for new employees who are taken for a tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to learn about the lessons for law enforcement.

“The message was this: when orders or policies are wrong, when we are told to do things that violate core values and principles, we must have the courage to ask difficult questions and raise objections. We should be able to do that without fear of being crushed,” the whistleblower said. “The Deputy Director’s threats sent the opposite message: Dissent will not be tolerated. If you question my response to January 6, I don’t want you in my FBI.”

“Abbate’s threat to employees was witnessed by numerous other FBI employees and constitutes evidence of intent to retaliate against any dissent,” said Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt. “This evidence can be independently corroborated by dozens, if not hundreds, of other FBI employees if congressional committees and the Justice Department Inspector General would investigate and document the results.”

The FBI has spent years stonewalling congressional oversight into agency conduct surrounding the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. In May, Jordan re-upped demands for an FBI briefing over the two pipe bombs planted at the RNC and DNC. The FBI, according to former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin in an interview with The Washington Times, knows what car the suspect used but hasn’t pursued the individual in question.

[READ: Think The FBI Deserves The Benefit Of The Doubt? This Laundry List Of Corruption Should Make You Think Again]

The pipe bombs, Seraphin added, were found inoperable.

The FBI has also refused to answer Republican lawmakers’ questions about the extent of the agency’s involvement at the Capitol on the day of the riot. Three months after The New York Times ran the headline, “No, there is no evidence that the F.B.I. organized the Jan. 6 Capitol riot,” the paper followed up with another in September 2021: “Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Hunter Biden’s attorney slams IRS whistleblower’s ‘illegal’ release of WhatsApp message to Chinese businessman


Adam Sabes

By Adam Sabes , Jacqui Heinrich | Fox News | Published June 23, 2023 3:54pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-bidens-attorney-slams-irs-whistleblowers-illegal-release-whatsapp-message-chinese-businessman

Hunter Biden’s attorney is responding to testimony from an IRS whistleblower who claims that the agency obtained a WhatsApp message in which the president’s son invoked his father’s name.

IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., who oversaw the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden, claims the agency obtained a message from WhatsApp dated July 30, 2017, from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, CEO of Harvest Fund Management, where the president’s son claimed that he was with his father in an attempt to pressure Zhao to fulfill a commitment.

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote. 

Christopher Clark, an attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the claims are very misleading.

HUNTER BIDEN USED HIS FATHER’S NAME TO EXTORT CHINESE BUSINESS PARTNER: IRS WHISTLEBLOWER

Hunter Biden gets off plane with president
President Biden has snapped at reporters who have asked him about alleged corruption involving him and his son, Hunter Biden.  (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

“Biased and politically-motivated, selective leaks have plagued this matter for years. They are not only irresponsible, they are illegal. A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be. It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document,” Clark said. “The DOJ investigation covered a period which was a time of turmoil and addiction for my client.” 

FBI BIDEN BRIBERY DOC NEVER MADE IT TO IRS INVESTIGATORS, WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIMS: ‘INFLUENCED BY POLITICS’

Clark also said that “[a]ny verifiable words or actions of my client in the midst of a horrible addiction are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”

Hunter Biden at White House
Hunter Biden appears at a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted by President Biden and first lady Jill Biden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“An extensive, five-year long investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded this week, which resulted in my client taking responsibility for two instances of misdemeanor failure to file tax payments, as well as a firearm charge, which will be subject to a pretrial diversion agreement. As his attorney through this entire matter, I can say that any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible,” he added.

“And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction,” the alleged WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden said. 

“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” he said.

DOJ, FBI, IRS INTERFERED WITH HUNTER BIDEN PROBE, ACCORDING TO WHISTLEBLOWER TESTIMONY RELEASED BY GOP

Hunter Biden appears at a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted by President Biden and first lady Jill Biden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Mark Lytle, an attorney for Shapley, told Fox News on Friday that his client “wanted to just bring this out to the public as a whistleblower in a protective fashion so that everybody could judge it.” Lytle also noted that according to Shapley, the WhatsApp messages were obtained through a search warrant.

“It’s important to note that this WhatsApp message did not come from the laptop or any nefarious source. Gary Shapley testified that they did a search warrant. They got a hold of Hunter Biden’s iCloud account and they did a search warrant to Apple, to the Apple Cloud, where they accessed Hunter Biden’s WhatsApp messages, Imessages and other information. And so this is credible. This comes from a credible source, and it’s information that’s very relevant to the dealings with the Chinese energy company and the income that Hunter Biden received,” Lytle said.

In response to the whistleblower allegations, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, told Fox News that the president wasn’t involved with his son in business.

President Biden smiling with Hunter Biden
World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden, left, and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden attend the World Food Program USA’s Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 2016. (Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

“As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son. As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved. As the President has said, he loves his son and is proud of him accepting responsibility for his actions and is proud of what he is doing to rebuild his life,” Sams said.

Fox News’ Brianna Herlihy and Jon Street contributed to this report.

Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.

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To0day’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Cone of Shame

A.F. BRANCO | on June 23, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-cone-of-shame/

Adam Schiff lied for years that he had evidence of Trump- Russia collusion and has been censured by Congress.

Adam Schiff
Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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A Closer Look at Black Lives Matter’s ‘Bankruptcy’ Shows Radical Leftists Still Have Millions in Their Coffers


BY: JOHN COHEN | JUNE 22, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/22/a-closer-look-at-black-lives-matters-bankruptcy-shows-radical-leftists-still-have-millions-in-their-coffers/

crowd standing in front of giant Black Lives Matter banner

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A number of headlines have been making the rounds declaring that Black Lives Matter is going bankrupt. These are misleading, not only because they conflate the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM GN) and the BLM movement, but also because BLM GN is not, in fact, on the verge of bankruptcy. To a certain extent, the confusion is understandable. BLM GN is the most visible and well-known of the various BLM organizations, the one founded by movement figureheads Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal “Ayo” Tometi. When the general public hears “BLM,” this is who they think of. The BLM movement is not known for its transparency, and it’s easy to confuse its various members and their alphabet soup of acronyms.

While BLM GN fancies itself as the head of the BLM movement, the reality is that BLM is a many-headed hydra. BLM GN ostensibly was once the parent organization of a multitude of grassroots BLM chapters, but disputes over funding and priorities have led many of them to part ways with the organization, some becoming entirely independent entities and others banding together to form new collectives (for example, the “BLM 10+”). Most of the BLM movement’s heavy lifting is done by these grassroots chapters.

Then there is the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a shadowy collective of more than 150 activist organizations that is even more radical than BLM GN. M4BL provides funding and administrative support to its members and is currently a fiscally sponsored project of the Common Counsel Foundation (in 2020, it was fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice [AfGJ], a Marxist revolutionary front with ties to the Sandinistas).

The group refuses to disclose the bulk of its members, but among those that it does disclose are Southerners on New Ground, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, UndocuBlack Network, Black Feminist Future, Organization for Black Struggle, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, BlackOUT Collective, Highlander Research and Education Center, and the Black Movement Law Project. It received more than $30 million in donations in 2020, and that figure doesn’t include contributions made directly to its members. Why the group hasn’t received more media attention is a mystery.

Lastly, there is the BLM movement’s vast NGO archipelago, a menagerie of subversive organizations working tirelessly to advance the movement’s revolutionary agenda. These organizations include BLM GN’s official partners such as the NAACP and wholly independent outfits such as BLM At School, which with the help of the National Education Association (NEA) reaches children in thousands of schools across the country.

Even if BLM GN were to go bankrupt, these other organizations — the heart of the BLM movement — would live on. But reports that BLM GN is insolvent or going bankrupt are false. A cursory examination of BLM GN’s Form 990s shows that in 2020-2021, it raked in nearly $80 million in grants and donations, but the following year, that number fell to just over $9 million. Meanwhile, the nonprofit spent a little over $17 million and saw its investments drop by nearly $1 million. This meant it ended the year $8.5 million in the red.

That is where many journalists stopped reading. But a closer look reveals that BLM GN retains more than $40 million in its coffers from its record 2020 haul. Because it is a grantmaking organization helmed by a skeleton crew, it can easily pare back its spending over the coming year to balance its books.

That’s not to say that BLM GN has acted in a fiscally responsible manner. Its penchant for luxury real estate is well known, as is its proclivity for self-dealing. The nonprofit spent $6 million on a sprawling mansion in Los Angeles and granted M4BJ, a subgroup of BLM Canada, $8 million which was subsequently spent on a 10,000-square-foot Toronto mansion formerly owned by the Canadian Communist Party. Patrisse Cullors and her spouse, BLM Canada and M4BJ co-founder Janaya Khan, have purchased at least four high-end houses for $3.2 million in the U.S. alone. Interestingly, BLM Canada is one of the few regional BLM chapters to have actually received funding from BLM GN.

Meanwhile, BLM GN continued to hire relatives of Cullors and its board members. According to the organization’s tax filings, Paul Cullors, the brother of Patrisse Cullors, founded two private security companies which were paid $1.6 million in 2022. He was also paid a $126,000 salary as “head of security” despite being a graffiti artist with no experience in security. The previous year, BLM GN paid $970,000 to a company owned by Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’ child.

That same year, Shalomyah Bowers, who replaced Patrisse Cullors at the helm of BLM GN after her resignation, paid his own consulting firm $1.7 million. And $1.1 million was paid to New Impact Partners, a firm owned by Danielle Edwards, the sister of former BLM GN board member Raymond Howard. BLM GN also agreed to pay $600,000 to an unidentified former board member’s consulting firm in connection with a “contract dispute.”

Given the amount of money remaining in BLM GN’s coffers, it’s likely that the nonprofit will continue to behave in accordance with its current modus operandi. But again, this reprehensible organization is just one member of the greater BLM movement, which features a host of more serious actors that don’t squander their resources. BLM’s opponents would be wise to remain vigilant and refrain from declaring victory prematurely.

John Cohen is an Investigative Fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. He holds a B.A. in Molecular Biology and Public Health from Hampshire College and a M.A in Security Studies from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

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DOJ And Ed Department Silent After Teachers Use Taxpayer Money To Criminally Push Gender Ideology On Students


BY: EVITA DUFFY-ALFONSO | JUNE 22, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/22/doj-and-education-department-silent-after-teachers-use-federal-funds-to-promote-criminal-activity-and-subversively-transition-minors-without-parental-consent/

DOJ ED pride flag

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (ED) are silent after dozens of teachers used an ED-funded online workshop last week to “trade tips” on how to break state laws protecting children from radical gender ideology and help transgender-identifying students transition at school without their parents knowing.

According to the Daily Mail, event host Angel Nathan started the session by telling the teachers they would study new state laws in order to “remedy the marginalizing effects and disrupt problematic policies.”

“Some teachers said they followed the rules, but others discussed being ‘subversive,’” wrote the Daily Mail. One unnamed teacher reportedly stated that his or her own “code of ethics” was above the law and discussed “how to ‘hide’ a trans student’s new name and gender from their parents.”

“The stakes are very high for trans youth,” said Shea Martin, an Ohio-based trans-identifying educator who writes a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist blog called “Radical Teacher.” Martin said, “I think that requires working subversively and quietly sometimes to make sure that trans kids have what they need.”

Kimberly Martin, the DEI coordinator of a Michigan school district, said, “We’re working with our record-keeping system so that certain screens can’t be seen by the parents … if there’s a nickname in there we’re trying to hide.”

The online session was organized by the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), an organization funded by the Department of Education under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Last November, MAP was given $8.5 million in federal funding.

The Federalist reached out to the education department and asked if there would be an investigation launched into both MAP and the teachers who are using federal funds to spread information on how to break state laws. The department was also asked if, given that MAP is encouraging illegal activity, there are plans to defund MAP and revoke the more than $8 million in grant money already awarded to the organization. At the time of publication, a response has not been given.

The Federalist also reached out to the DOJ and asked whether, given that the criminal organizing and activity spans across state lines, it will be launching an investigation into MAP. The DOJ did not respond.

Lastly, The Federalist asked both agencies if, as a policy, they support efforts to give minors medical treatments without the knowledge or consent of their parents or legal guardians. Neither department has returned a request for comment.

To recap, a number of public school teachers have admitted to breaking state laws and are using federal funds to teach their colleagues how to violate laws protecting children. The Department of Education appears content in funding criminal activity, and the DOJ is too busy prosecuting Trump, covering up the Biden bribery scandal, targeting peaceful pro-lifers, and investigating “terrorist” parents at school board meetings to care.

The Daily Mail also exposed the radical views held by educators regarding sex and gender ideology, which, while not illegal, greatly impacts the worldview of the students they teach for eight hours a day. Martin discussed how to present “sexuality” to elementary students between the ages of five and 10, arguing that teachers should be careful about treating ‘reinforced heterosexuality as the norm’ when discussing romantic relationships with their students.

“At no point in the session did any teacher say parents might know what’s best for their own kids,” reported the Daily Mail, “nor question whether affirmation-on-demand was the only way to help a trans-identified student.”

Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.

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