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6 Takeaways from the Biden Admin’s Court Quest to Keep Censoring Americans Online


BY: JOY PULLMANN | AUGUST 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/14/6-takeaways-from-the-biden-admins-court-quest-to-keep-censoring-americans-online/

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On Thursday afternoon, three Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges heard Biden administration arguments to let government keep pressuring social media monopolies to ban ideas they don’t like from the internet. On July 4, a lower court had ordered the Biden administration to cease what it called “arguably … the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The Fifth Circuit paused that injunction on July 14 and heard oral arguments against it on Aug. 10 in Missouri v. Biden.

In this major case likely to hit the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is fighting to stop American citizens from sharing messages government officials don’t like. This case uncovered reams of White House and other high-level officials threatening internet monopolies with the end of their entire business model if they didn’t ban speech by Democrats’ political opponents.

“It’s far beyond the scope of what people realize,” says a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Zhonette Brown, of the public interest firm New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).

Internal documents Twitter divulged under new owner Elon Musk provided more proof that social media monopolies are silencing Americans from Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to millions of non-famous citizens at the behest of government pressure. Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s oral arguments and earlier revelations from this massive First Amendment case.

1. By the Government’s Own Definition, It’s Censoring

Key to Thursday’s arguments was the question of coercion: Did government demands of internet monopolies equal coercion, or were those merely officials advocating for their views?

“If the government was doing something like that in a coercive manner, then that could be the subject of a proper injunction,” Department of Justice lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny told the court in his opening remarks. “The problem is that what you would have to do is say, ‘Here is what the government is doing that’s coercive, and I’m enjoining that.’”

Judge Don Willett responded: “How do you define coercive?”

Tenny: “I don’t think there’s too much disagreement on this point. Coercive is where a reasonable person would construe it to be backed by a threat of government action against a party if it didn’t comply.”

That’s exactly what the government did, the voluminous documents already discovered in this case show. In just one of the examples, Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former high-ranking U.K. official, told his bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content” (emphasis original).

Clegg also characterized to colleagues an interaction with Andy Slavitt, a White House Covid adviser, this way: “[H]e was outraged – not too strong a word to describe his reaction – that we did not remove this post” of a meme about trial lawyers getting 10 years of vaccine-injured clients from government mandates.

2. Government Officials Treated Internet Monopolies Like Their Subordinates

The Fifth Circuit panel demonstrated familiarity with the numerous examples of this kind of government behavior, such as this email exchange between White House digital director Rob Flaherty and Facebook, in which Flaherty swears at Facebook engineers, “Are you guys f-cking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

“What appears to be in the record are these irate messages from time to time from high-ranking government officials that say, “You didn’t do this yet,’” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod told Tenny. “And that’s my toning down the language. … So it’s like, ‘Jump!’ and, ‘How high?’”

The judges also noted the White House publicly threatened the business model of all online communications monopolies through potentially revoking Section 230 and launching antitrust lawsuits. The lawsuit documentation shows leading Democrats making the same public threats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and multiple U.S. senators.

Joe Biden even threatened to hold Zuckerberg criminally liable for not running Facebook the way Biden wanted. In office, Biden also famously accused Facebook of “killing people” by not doing enough to spread the administration’s message and suppress opposing messages. FBI agent Elvis Chan‘s deposition in this case noted federal officials showed adverse legislation to social media monopolies’ leaders as examples of what the government would do to them if they didn’t ban Americans’ speech.

“It’s not like, ‘We think this would be a good public policy and we want to explain to you why that would be a good policy,” Elrod said. “There seems to be some very close relationship that they’re having these — ‘This isn’t being done fast enough’ you know, like it’s a supervisor complaining about a worker.”

3. Judges Likened Government Behavior to Mobsters

Tenny claimed there was no “or else” explaining what the government “would do” if the internet monopolies didn’t obey, so there was no government coercion present.

“This is an analogy, probably an inapt analogy, so if you’ll excuse me — like if somebody is in these movies we see with the mob or something. They don’t spell out things but they have these ongoing relationships and they never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence,’ but everybody just knows,” Elrod replied. “And I’m certainly not equating the federal government with anybody in illegal organized crime, but there are certain relationships that people know things without always saying the ‘Or else.’”

Willett followed that up by commenting the case documentation makes it look like the government is “relying on a fairly unsubtle kind of strong-arming and veiled or not so veiled threats. ‘That’s a really nice social media platform you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

4. Censorship Is Election Interference

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, John Sauer, initiated this case as Louisiana’s solicitor general. In representing state government interests to the judges, he noted that elected officials have to pay attention to what their constituents are saying online, or they won’t have a good read on what voters what them to do in office.

“We’ve gotta be able to craft messages and know what policies we’re adopting to be responsive to our citizens,” he summarized from statements submitted to the court from multiple state officials. “…Going back to 1863, as everyone knows, going back to the Federalist number 56 where [Bill of Rights author James] Madison said it, everyone knows state legislators have a sovereign interest in knowing what their constituents think and feel, and that’s directly impacted.”

When the federal government silences some Americans’ views online, Sauer said, it makes it harder for elected representatives to actually represent them. Two of the state injuries the plaintiffs assert against the federal government’s censorship are “Interference with our ability to hear our constituents’ voices on social media” and “interference with our ability to have a fair and unbiased process for our people to organize and petition the government for grievances.”

Court documents also revealed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency, set up a private entity to ban and throttle election-related online speech Democrats dislike. Much of the information choked by this algorithmic censorship operation is true, such as the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, investigations and members of Congress have noted.

“They invented a whole new word, ‘mal-information,’ to justify going after the censorship of true speech and ideas,” Sauer said last month in a public discussion of the case that YouTube banned.

5. Democrats Want Free Speech for Themselves While Banning It for Their Enemies

The oral arguments also got into the FBI’s 2020 election interference in telling online monopolies that The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was foreign disinformation. Tenny claimed the FBI refused to comment on the laptop because it was a pending investigation.

Yet the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies actually did comment on the laptop by calling it “foreign disinformation,” both privately to the internet monopolies and publicly. This was false, and the FBI knew it. The lower court ruled this deception constituted coercion because it caused people to act on false information.

As Ben Weingarten notes, these lies and FBI-demanded online content bans to protect them benefitted Joe Biden in the 2020 election:

According to Elvis Chan (pdf), an FBI official leading engagement with the social media platforms, while the bureau didn’t explicitly ask the companies to change their hacked material policies, it did frequently follow up to ask whether they had changed said policies, as the FBI wanted to know how they would treat such materials.

The judges almost broached an important question: If the First Amendment protects the FBI’s lies that Hunter Biden’s laptop was disinformation, for which not one federal employee has been disciplined, how can it allow for criminalizing the same behavior by average Americans by labeling their views “disinformation” and “mal-information”?

6. Today’s Internet Is Still Massively Rigged

Taibbi also noted that court documents show the Biden administration got mad enough to fire the F-bomb at social media companies when the algorithmic censorship they demand affected Biden’s Instagram account. Instagram instantly fixed the issue for the White House, but not for non-powerful Americans.

It’s clear from the case documents and other disclosures such as the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” that the algorithms controlling what Americans see online are now deeply, massively rigged. That rigging is multilayered. It includes all this government coercion of entities including Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok, and Twitter going back to at least 2017, as well as pressure operations from corporate media and internal employee groups.

Beyond algorithm changes, social media monopolies have also changed their terms of service in response to government demands, the NCLA attorneys noted last month. So government control of public discourse will continue even if the Fifth Circuit reinstates the injunction.

Tenny told the Fifth Circuit the Covid-era censorship that ignited this case is over because the government currently deems Covid not an emergency. In court, Sauer cited YouTube banning two weeks ago a video of attorneys discussing this case as more proof this massive censorship persists. He also cited court documents showing Americans still can’t post social media messages about censored topics.

“Attorneys present gave estimates ranging from a few weeks to two months for the panel to rule” on whether to reinstate an injunction against more of this government behavior, reported Taibbi, who attended the oral arguments in New Orleans, Louisiana. The previous injunction includes exceptions for crimes such as sex trafficking.

“The government wants to be doing something that it shouldn’t be doing, and they really, really want to be doing it,” said NCLA attorney John Vecchione in the discussion YouTube banned.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her latest ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her several books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

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‘Facebook Files’ Part 4 Show FBI’s Censorship Liaison May Have Perjured Himself


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | AUGUST 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/07/facebook-files-part-4-show-fbis-censorship-liaison-may-have-perjured-himself/

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Part four of the “Facebook Files” published by Rep. Jim Jordan on Monday shows a top FBI agent who was coordinating censorship strategy with Silicon Valley tech companies may have committed perjury in November testimony.

FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, who serves as the bureau’s “main conduit between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and Big Tech,” according to Jordan, was deposed last fall as a central player in the government censorship case Missouri v. Biden. Chan testified that he was only aware of one meeting between Facebook employees and the FBI about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, but internal Facebook documents show him participating in an additional “secret follow-up call.”

In his November deposition, Chan admitted to an Oct. 14, 2020 meeting with officials at Facebook related to the first Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post. The Post revealed emails from the laptop that indicated then-candidate Joe Biden had been lying when he claimed to have never spoken about Hunter’s business with him “or with anyone else.”

At the Oct. 14 meeting, Laura Dehmlow, the FBI’s section chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force, offered “no comment” when Facebook asked whether the laptop was real, Jordan explained. Facebook quickly announced it was “reducing” the “distribution” of the story until the platform completed a third-party fact check.

Dehmlow told House lawmakers in July that in a meeting with Twitter earlier on Oct. 14, someone from the FBI had acknowledged the laptop’s authenticity before other officials at the bureau switched their answer to “no comment.” That became the FBI’s official response when other companies such as Facebook asked whether the laptop was real, even though the agency had confirmed the laptop’s authenticity as early as November 2019, according to IRS whistleblowers.

In November, Chan recalled Dehmlow’s response at the Oct. 14 meeting where Dehmlow offered Facebook no comment on the legitimacy of the laptop. Chan told lawmakers that was his only meeting on the matter with the social media company. Internal records from the company made public by GOP House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, however, reveal another apparent meeting between Chan and Facebook employees.

One employee recalled having an Oct. 15 discussion with Chan as a “follow up” to the meeting with the Foreign Influence Task Force on Oct. 14. The employee asked Chan for any updates or changes on the legitimacy status of Hunter Biden’s laptop. While Chan testified in his deposition that he had “no internal knowledge” of the FBI’s investigation into the infamous laptop, records from Facebook reveal Chan told employees he “was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI.”

Previous installments of the “Facebook Files” exposed corporate-government collusion between Facebook and Biden White House officials collaborating to censor information about Covid-19, including content that was “true.” Records show the Biden administration pressured Facebook to take down “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe,” among other claims about side effects even if they were “true.”

[READ: ‘Facebook Files’ 2.0 Reveal White House Pressured Facebook To Censor ‘True’ Content]

In July, Chief Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana delivered a preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden, prohibiting administration officials from collaborating with tech titans to censor dissenting speech on social media platforms. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals later issued a stay on the injunction, with oral argument scheduled to take place Thursday, leaving federal officials free to continue working with tech companies to censor Americans online in the meantime.

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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Child-Trafficking Bust Proves the Left Was Wrong About ‘Sound of Freedom’


By: Tony Kinnett / @TheTonus / August 07, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/07/fbi-operation-proves-media-was-wrong-about-sound-freedom/

Left-wing media were shown to be wrong about “Sound of Freedom” last week when the FBI announced a major child-trafficking bust, less than a month after the film was released. Pictured: The FBI and Chattanooga, Tennessee, police work together on the effort to eradicate the scourge of child trafficking. (Photo: FBI)

While 126 more suspects in child trafficking and child sexual exploitation are eating prison food today, many legacy media outlets are eating crow.

Less than a month after liberal and left-wing media outlets slammed the child sex-trafficking docudrama “Sound of Freedom” for supposedly being a rallying point for “QAnon supporters,” conspiracy theorists, and “Dads with Brainworms,” the FBI announced the arrests of 126 suspects in a massive child-trafficking investigation.

The FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and state and local law enforcement agencies collaborated in “Operation Cross Country XIII,” resulting in the rescue of “59 actively missing children,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a prepared statement on Aug. 1.

Given the increased prominence of child sex trafficking and exploitation over the past two decades in the United States, a rational individual would think that NPR (which receives government funding and passes itself off as an “independent and unbiased” news source) would mention the 22 times it had covered child sex-trafficking arrests in the past decade, but that’s not the case. Instead, NPR featured the criticism of professors who claimed that a movie drawing attention to the evils of child trafficking would make victims “more invisible and more vulnerable to exploitation.”

Is “Sound of Freedom” remotely close to a political hit piece of conspiracy and wacky nonsense that outlets like Jezebel and The Guardian built it up to be? No—not even close. “Sound of Freedom” tells the story of Tim Ballard (portrayed by actor Jim Caviezel), a man who dedicated his life to fighting child sex trafficking—by starting the organization Operation Underground Railroad.

Does NPR at least give the same treatment to other movies it considers “political advocacy” films? No, it doesn’t. NPR recently described the pro-abortion movie “Happening” as “timely and urgent,” free of the bothersome quotes of critics who might take issue with the movie’s portrayal of pro-life and pro-choice cultures. 

When reporting on a subject, one might expect relevant data and statistics concerning the subject at hand to figure prominently. None of the outlets that were scathingly critical  of “Sound of Freedom” cared to mention the Department of Health and Human Services’ estimates that anywhere from 240,000 to 325,000 women and children are trafficked in the U.S. annually.

While NPR endeavored to find angry professors to quote in its piece, victims of sex trafficking are noticeably absent. Perhaps a victim of the ruthless practice might have a unique perspective on Angel Studios’ portrayal of the subject. 

“Fox and Friends” interviewed trafficking survivor Donna Hubbard from Woman at the Well Transition Center, who praised “Sound of Freedom” and called on lawmakers to act on the issue.

Emma Waters, a research associate with The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family told The Daily Signal that she isn’t surprised by the Left’s dismissive attitude.

The attempts by mainstream media and leftist outlets to discredit … ‘Sound of Freedom’ are less surprising when you consider four of the main areas that aggravate child sexual exploitation: the porous southern border, unaccountable social media platforms, child pornography, and broken families. 

What woke ideologues don’t want to admit is that when people mock the traditional family and encourage soft-on-crime policies, it’s children who suffer exploitation and abuse.

(The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

What should be a nonpartisan issue and an open space for praising the brave men and women who rescue children from the horrors of trafficking has become a pointlessly contentious issue because a Christian film studio produced a movie that resonates more with conservatives and independents than the latest “Indiana Jones” movie at the box office.

It took less than one month for “Sound of Freedom” to prove why it was worth making, why we need to be constantly alert, and why Americans continue to lose trust in the legacy media.

COMMENTARY BY Tony Kinnett@TheTonus

Tony Kinnett is an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal.

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Biden Family Scandals Are So Much Bigger Than Hunter’s Hookers And Burisma Bribery


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 26, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/26/biden-family-scandals-are-so-much-bigger-than-hunters-hookers-and-burisma-bribery/

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When the New York Post broke the news that documents recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, the corporate media — to the extent they didn’t frame the story as Russian disinformation — pretended the reporting solely concerned Hunter Biden’s personal life. The scandal, however, was never about Hunter’s sordid sex life and history of drug abuse. Rather, it concerned Joe Biden’s abuse of power as vice president for financial gain. But now it reaches much further — including 10 distinct scandals.

Saturated in Scandal

1. The Many (Uncharged) Crimes of Hunter Biden

While the current scandals swirling around the laptop are unrelated to Hunter Biden’s sex life or drug abuse, the president’s son features in the first scandal: Evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed numerous crimes, including felonies. Evidence suggests Hunter Biden acted as an unregistered foreign agent for, at a minimum, Ukraine and China in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting suggests Hunter also accepted bribes from Burisma or alternatively helped extort $10 million from the Ukrainian oil and gas company for himself and his father. 

IRS whistleblowers and federal prosecutors also believed the evidence supported multiple felony tax counts. Lying on a federal firearm application is a serious felony as well.

The evidence that the president’s son likely engaged in extensive criminal conduct for over a decade is a huge scandal, but it also bred a separate scandal: the DOJ and FBI’s efforts to protect him, No. 7 below. 

2. Joe Biden’s Business Lie

Hunter Biden’s laptop also exposed the reality that Joe Biden lied to the American public, dating back to September 2019. During a campaign stop, the then-Democrat presidential candidate snapped at Fox News’ Peter Doocy, claiming: “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”  

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1175486006348460032?s=20

More than two years later, after The Washington Post and New York Times belatedly confirmed the authenticity of the emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Doocy asked then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether “President Biden still maintains he never discussed overseas business deals with his son Hunter,” to which Psaki replied, “Yes.”

While Biden and his team stuck with that lie for two-plus years, his current press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is attempting to snuff out that scandal by reframing Biden’s denial. “I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same: The president was never in business with his son,” Jean-Pierre said on Monday.

Moving the goalposts won’t erase the lie. 

3. Joe Biden’s Corruption

The much more serious scandal, however, concerns extensive evidence of Joe Biden’s widespread corruption. Bank and corporate records, suspicious activity reports, emails and text messages recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop, travel records, reporting from a “highly credible” CHS, and testimony and expected testimony from Hunter Biden’s business partners indicate that Joe Biden, while vice president, exchanged political favors for payments to his family members — with a cut of the cash coming to the “Big Guy.” 

People and/or organizations from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and China, among others, all paid Biden-related business entities millions of dollars, with evidence indicating the now-president received a cut of the bribes. The evidence indicates that in exchange, the individuals received access to the then-vice president. In the case of Ukraine, Biden forced the firing of the prosecutor general who was investigating Burisma, the company where Hunter held a board seat and which allegedly paid Joe and Hunter Biden each $5 million in bribes.

The evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption is bad enough, but the scandal deepens when one considers the president has supplied Ukraine with cluster bombs and billions in American tax dollars.

Cover-Ups

While the first three scandals involve misconduct and likely criminality by Hunter and Joe Biden, there are at least twice as many distinct scandals that flow from cover-up efforts to protect the Bidens.

4. FBI’s Interference in the 2020 Election

By December 2019, the FBI had authenticated the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. Yet, knowing the laptop was real and contained spectacularly damaging details implicating Joe Biden in corruption, the FBI spent the months leading up to the November 2020 election grooming tech giants to believe a “hack-and-leak operation” was imminent. The FBI also pushed social media companies to change their terms of service to prohibit the posting of so-called hacked materials.

These combined efforts prompted social media companies to censor the New York Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 blockbuster article, “Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad.” After the story broke and after initially confirming its authenticity to Twitter, the FBI refused to comment on whether the material had been hacked or was Russian disinformation, leading to its continued widespread censorship. Not only did the FBI improperly protect Joe Biden and prompt the censorship of true political speech, it interfered in the 2020 election and likely handed Biden the White House. 

5. Intelligence Agencies’ Interference in the 2020 Election

Former and current members of intelligence agencies soon joined the FBI in interfering in the 2020 election. The House Intelligence and Weaponization Committees previously detailed evidence of that interference in their report titled, “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.” 

That report established that the infamous October 2020 letter, which was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and falsely framed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, was concocted by Biden-campaign officials, including now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. Then-candidate Joe Biden would cite that letter in his final debate with Donald Trump to lie to the American people (again), telling the country the laptop was Russian disinformation.

It is scandalous that scores of former intelligence officials would use their prior positions and reputations to deceive Americans in a way that likely affected the 2020 election. That any of those individuals retained security clearances adds to the scandal, as does the role of the Biden campaign and the involvement of at least one CIA employee in soliciting signatories for the statement. 

6. Intel Agencies’ Failure to Protect America Against Foreign Influence

Not only did intelligence agencies interfere in the 2020 election, but in their efforts to protect Joe Biden, they likely also failed to provide necessary defensive briefings, putting Americans at risk.

To protect our country, intelligence officials must have frank discussions with leaders (and candidates) about the risks of foreign malign influence. Given how hard the FBI and intelligence agencies tried to bury the news of the laptop, it seems likely they omitted any reference to the laptop and details contained on it in briefings to then-President Trump, then-candidate Biden, and the Biden campaign. 

To date, this scandal has been overlooked and merits further inquiry to determine whether the intelligence apparatus fulfilled its duty to the country or omitted inconvenient facts in briefings to protect Joe Biden. Of particular concern is whether intelligence agencies assessed and warned about the risk that the Russians had stolen a second Hunter Biden laptop that contain materials the Biden son believed rendered him susceptible to blackmail.

7. DOJ and FBI’s Handling of Biden Investigations

When it comes to how the DOJ and FBI handled investigations into Biden family corruption, the evidence of potential misconduct is overwhelming.

Broadly, this scandal includes conflicts of interest between Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys — including the Pennsylvania U.S. attorney handling an investigation into the Jim Biden-connected company Americorp, and the California and D.C. U.S. attorneys who reportedly refused to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden. Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s conflict of interest proves scandalous given the numerous efforts by the DOJ and FBI headquarters to interfere in the investigations.

Beyond conflicts of interest, the IRS whistleblowers and another whistleblower who’s provided information to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have revealed numerous instances of DOJ and FBI procedural violations, the burying of evidence such as the FD-1023, the false labeling of derogatory evidence as disinformation, and limits on the investigative steps agents could take. Consequently, the DOJ charged Hunter Biden only with misdemeanors and one firearm felony that could be dropped, and to date it appears no investigation has occurred into Joe Biden or his brother, Jim Biden, on allegations of bribery and money laundering.

While Democrats counter the growing evidence of corruption by wrongly claiming it has not been corroborated, that fact does not vindicate the Bidens: It implicates the DOJ and FBI in a separate scandal. 

Cover-Ups of the Cover-Ups

8. DOJ and FBI’s Cover-Up of Failure to Investigate Bidens

Once whistleblowers began exposing the Biden administration’s interference in the family’s pay-to-play investigation, the DOJ and FBI began to cover-up the cover-up. We saw this most clearly when Garland professed that there was no political interference in U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden. Garland stressed that, as a Trump holdover, Americans could trust Weiss’s independence.

Garland’s testimony cannot be squared with the extensive interference coming from FBI headquarters and the limitations the DOJ placed on investigative techniques. When Grassley pushed on the point, Garland maintained that Weiss had ultimate charging authority. According to an IRS whistleblower, however, Weiss said otherwise, claiming he wasn’t the ultimate decision-maker. 

Here, the cover-up of the cover-up began in earnest, with Garland and Weiss writing a series of letters and making public statements that attempted to obscure the ultimate question of whether Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden and whether DOJ or FBI headquarters interfered in the investigation. This scandal has yet to be unraveled. But on Monday, the DOJ sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee offering up Weiss to testify — indicating Biden’s Justice Department might be preparing to throw Weiss under the bus.

9. Democrats Lying to Protect Joe Biden 

Many Democrats are also wrapped up in lying to protect Joe Biden. Some of these lies predate the election when they spun the laptop as Russian disinformation. But more recently, we saw Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin lying to the American public about the FD-1023 form. Had former Attorney General William Barr not gone on the record to correct Raskin’s falsehood, the public would have been none the wiser.

Seeking to protect Joe Biden from damning bribery claims, Raskin falsely claimed that Trump appointees Barr and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had reviewed the CHS’s reporting contained in a June 2020 FD-1023 form and closed out the investigation. Raskin also portrayed the CHS’s reporting as connected to Rudy Giuliani.

But as The Federalist first reported, Barr unequivocally said that Raskin’s claim was “not true.” The investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.” “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.” Likewise, Barr explained the CHS’s reporting was unrelated to Giuliani.

10. Press Acting as Biden-Run Media

When the Post broke the laptop story, the legacy media either silenced it or framed it as Russian disinformation. Even two years later, after belatedly authenticating the material recovered from Hunter Biden’s computer, the corporate media refused to cover the implications — that the emails, documents, and texts indicated Joe Biden was involved in a massive corruption scandal. The corrupt press still refuses to cover the news fairly, opting instead to brand the evidence as a conspiracy theory. 

The media’s refusal to seek and report the truth proves the most dire of all the scandals because without a free press checking government corruption, the corruption will only grow.

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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Mounting Evidence Doesn’t Matter, Corporate Media Will Never Cover the Biden Corruption Scandal


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 25, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/25/mounting-evidence-doesnt-matter-corporate-media-will-never-cover-the-biden-corruption-scandal/

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As evidence mounts that President Joe Biden took millions in bribe money from Ukrainian oligarchs when he was vice president as part of an elaborate influence-peddling scheme headed up by his son, Hunter Biden, let’s check in on how the corporate press is handling what looks like the biggest political scandal in American history.

Nothing to see here, apparently. The New York Times has carried no coverage of the shocking allegations contained in an unclassified FBI document Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released last week. The document, called an FD-1023, details the reporting of a highly credible FBI informant who says the top executive of Ukrainian oil and gas firm Burisma told him he paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each to protect the company from a corruption investigation (that’s in addition to the millions it paid Hunter to sit on its board).

Instead, the “paper of record” ran an article attacking a group called Empower Oversight for helping a pair of IRS whistleblowers at the heart of the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation who say the FBI and Justice Department hid the informant’s reporting from them, as well as relevant material on Hunter’s laptop. The Times wasn’t interested in the substance of what these whistleblowers had to say, but rather focused on the fact that Empower Oversight helped them follow the proper procedures and whistleblower statutes for bringing their claims to Congress. 

Over at The Washington Post, there was likewise zero coverage of the FBI informant’s reporting, even after portions of it were corroborated this week as reported by Margot Cleveland in these pages. Nor was there any mention of Tuesday’s news that Hunter’s former business partner and fellow Burisma board member, Devon Archer, will testify before Congress that Hunter would regularly call his father and put him on speakerphone with overseas business associates when Joe Biden was vice president.

 None of that seems to interest the editors at the Post. The only mention of any of this comes from media columnist Philip Bump, who devoted an entire column Monday to a tortured explanation of why we should ignore it all. Just because a trusted FBI informant is credible, writes Bump, doesn’t mean that what the informant was told is true: “I trust my wife, but if she tells me that our 6-year-old claims to have seen a dragon on the roof, I don’t suddenly believe that there was a dragon on the roof.”

Indeed not. But what Bump seems to be suggesting is that if his wife ran up to him terrified that there’s a dragon on the roof because his 6-year-old claims to have seen one, he would just shrug it off until further evidence emerged. And maybe he actually would. After all, this is the same guy who once seemed terribly confused about where babies come from. 

But of course Bump, like the rest of the corporate press, is faking it. A normal person, confronted by his hysterical wife claiming the boy saw a dragon on the roof, would take a second to step outside and look at the roof. Bump and his colleagues refuse to do even this, insisting rather that this is all just political theater, the GOP desperately grasping at straws to damage Biden.

In a healthy society with a functioning free press, the Biden corruption scandal — and the rank obstruction of the DOJ and FBI on Biden’s behalf — would dominate the headlines. Instead of merely reporting that the Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy yesterday floated the prospect of impeachment proceedings against Biden, the press would be reporting on the mounting evidence underlying the drive for impeachment.

But no. Instead, the corporate media are twisting themselves into pretzels to explain away every new development in this story. As David Marcus noted on Twitter, “We are precipitously close to, ‘Maybe Joe Biden did take money from Burisma, but here’s why that’s actually a good thing.’”

Or as one Twitter account put it:

We can see the goalposts shifting in real time. Asked Monday about the corruption allegations and the claims that Hunter put his father on speakerphone with foreign business associates when Biden was vice president, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden “was never in business with his son.”

That’s a far cry from Biden’s past statements that he has “never spoken” to Hunter about his overseas business dealings. (Never mind the hundreds of meetings Biden has reportedly had with Hunter’s business partners.) But at this rate the laughable White House line will become the media’s fallback position: Biden wasn’t in business with his son! He was just collecting “dividends,” not bribe money! 

The upshot of all this is simple: no matter what evidence emerges, no matter how damning, the corporate media will not cover it. To the extent they mention the story at all, it will be in the context of bashing Republican lawmakers for trying to “dig up dirt” on Biden. If the GOP-controlled House opens an impeachment proceeding, which is the only way we’re ever going to get to the bottom of the Biden corruption scheme, the coverage will be about how Republican lawmakers are conducting a “witch hunt” to get back at Democrats for impeaching Trump.

Everywhere, we’ll hear the same line that CBS’s “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan tossed to Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie recently, in reference to the outrageous plea deal offered to Hunter Biden for a couple of tax charges: “I wonder after this plea happens if you would advise your party to move on?”

Of course, the whole point of the plea deal was to give the corporate media this line in hopes that the American people would “move on” and forget about the scandal. But no one, it seems, is “moving on” except Democrats and their courtesans in the press. The rest of us are going to take a second to step outside and see if there’s really a dragon on the roof. We’ll make sure to let Philip Bump know.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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FBI Told Delaware U.S. Attorney It Had Already Partially Corroborated Biden Bribery Claims, Source Says


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/24/fbi-told-delaware-u-s-attorney-it-had-already-partially-corroborated-biden-bribery-claims-source-says/

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When the Pittsburgh FBI office briefed the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, the agents also told the Delaware team they had already corroborated several aspects of the confidential human source’s claims, an individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. 

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the FD-1023 summary of a confidential human source’s reporting that the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes so the then-Vice President would “protect” Burisma “from all kinds of problems.” Those bribes were in addition to the more than $4 million in total paid to Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer for sitting on Burisma’s board of directors. 

The Federalist has now learned that the Pittsburgh FBI office had corroborated several details contained in the FD-1023 as part of the intake process that former Attorney General William Barr established before the election under the leadership of the Western District of Pennsylvania’s then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady. Significantly, in briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney on the results of their office’s screening of evidence related to Ukraine, the Pittsburgh FBI agents told the Delaware office they had corroborated multiple facts included in the FD-1023, an individual with knowledge of the briefing told The Federalist.

Following the late June 2020 interview with the CHS, the Pittsburgh FBI office obtained travel records for the CHS, and those records confirmed the CHS had traveled to the locales detailed in the FD-1023 during the relevant time period. The trips included a late 2015 or early 2016 visit to Kiev, Ukraine; a trip a couple of months later to Vienna, Austria; and travel to London in 2019. 

As The Federalist previously reported, during their briefing of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, the Pittsburgh FBI agents said the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and that it merited further investigation. The person familiar with that briefing now confirms the agents also informed the Delaware office that the Pittsburgh FBI had corroborated the CHS’s presence in the various cities at the times claimed.

The Federalist has also learned that the CHS’s handler corroborated the CHS’s claim that he had met with Oleksandr Ostapenko. According to the source with knowledge of the matter, the CHS’s handler told Pittsburgh’s FBI agents that the CHS told his handler he had an upcoming meeting with Ostapenko. The CHS’s contemporaneous claim of the planned rendezvous with Ostapenko tracked the timing of one of the visits the CHS claimed in the FD-1023 to have had with Ostapenko. Significantly, the Pittsburgh office briefed the Delaware office on that piece of corroborating evidence that came from the CHS’s handler.

Open-source reporting of Burisma’s purchase of an interest in a North American oil and gas company likewise lined up with the discussions the CHS relayed to the FBI, as summarized in the FD-1023, the individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. That the Pittsburgh FBI office not only provided the Delaware office with a summary of the damning FD-1023 and its conclusion that it bore indicia of credibility but also identified several pieces of corroborating evidence is huge because, to date, it appears the Delaware office did nothing to investigate the allegations contained in the FD-1023. 

As Barr previously made clear, the role of the Pittsburgh office was limited to providing a “clearing-house function” for information related to Ukraine to weed out “any potential disinformation.” The purpose of the intake process, Barr stressed, was to “check[] out the source and credibility of evidence before assigning it to one of the ongoing investigations already pending in the Department,” such as the Delaware investigation into Hunter Biden. As such, the Pittsburgh office lacked the authority to subpoena witnesses or records or to use grand jury proceedings to further corroborate the FD-1023. That responsibility fell with the Delaware office.

But not only did the Delaware office apparently ignore the allegations contained in the FD-1023, as well as the corroborating evidence already allegedly accumulated by the Pittsburgh FBI office, but U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s office allegedly secreted the very existence of the FD-1023 from the whistleblowers. Both IRS whistleblowers testified last week that they did not even learn of the existence of the FD-1023 until Barr publicly confirmed he had sent the information to Delaware for further investigation. 

Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf also excluded the IRS agents working the Hunter Biden investigation from the meeting at which the Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the office on the FD-1023 and the corroborating evidence they had already uncovered. The IRS whistleblowers further testified that portions of Hunter Biden’s laptop were withheld from them and they were explicitly prohibited from taking any investigative steps connected to Joe Biden — or questioning anyone by using Joe Biden’s name, “Dad,” or “the Big Guy.”

Under these circumstances, even if the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office comes forward now to say it did investigate the FD-1023, its belated claim would be meaningless because the individuals with the knowledge and skill necessary to investigate a complex, international money laundering, bribery, and tax fraud scheme were cut out of the process and barred from interviewing the necessary witnesses. 

The Delaware office remains mum, however, not even pretending to have investigated the FD-1023’s allegations. That failure is even more scandalous now that we know Pittsburgh had already corroborated several aspects of the CHS’s reporting and briefed Weiss’s office on the corroborating evidence. 

Yet the Biden White House continues to falsely claim the FD-1023 charges “have been debunked for years.” On the contrary, the only thing debunked to date has been the lies of Biden’s Democrat apologists, such as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Jamie Raskin, who doubled down on his claim that Barr had found the FD-1023 not credible and not meriting further investigation.

Americans now know not only that Raskin and his Democrat colleagues lied, but that President Joe Biden lied — both when he said he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures and in claiming now that the FD-1023 has been debunked.

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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6 Ridiculous Narratives Democrats Tried In Response To IRS Whistleblowers’ Damning Biden Testimony


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/20/6-ridiculous-narratives-democrats-tried-in-response-to-irs-whistleblowers-damning-biden-testimony/

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IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler’s testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee about the political interference in the Biden investigation proved so unimpeachable that Democrats resorted to a shotgun attack on everything except the facts. Here are the top six themes the left hammered during the hearing. 

1. Orange Man — and His Family And Associates — Bad

Wednesday’s hearing began promptly at 1:00 with opening statements by Republican Chair James Comer and Democrat Ranking Member Jamie Raskin. From the get-go Raskin set one theme Democrats would continue to peddle over the course of the next six hours: Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad man. 

Trump was impeached and is under indictment. His daughter was under investigation, and her husband sold out to the Saudis. Trump’s cronies — Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and Cohen — committed crimes, and Trump pardoned them. On and on they went, pointing to Trump to turn the focus from the whistleblowers’ testimony: that the evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed felonies and now-President Joe Biden may have been complicit in the illegality. Democrats likewise used this misdirection to avoid confronting the overwhelming evidence that the DOJ and FBI interfered in the investigation and protected the Biden family.

2. How Dare Republicans Say ‘Two-Tier Justice System’

A second prevalent tactic on display during Wednesday’s hearing was Democrats feigning outrage over Republicans’ complaints of a “two-tier justice system.” 

According to Democrats on the committee, that phrase belongs to the civil rights movement and may only be invoked to condemn systemic racism. Some representatives ran so hard with this theme that they spent their allocated time highlighting decades-old hate crimes rather than asking the IRS whistleblowers questions concerning their testimony. 

One representative even quizzed Shapley on his knowledge of the racial disparity seen in the prosecution of tax cases. Shapley said he was unaware of the statistic. The Democrat lawmaker then cited the relative percentages for the IRS agent, while remaining oblivious to the fact that Shapley was complaining of favoritism bestowed on the white, privileged Hunter Biden. 

3. Never Mind the Whistleblowers, Let’s Talk About Rudy and the Arms Dealer

Democrats also sought to distract from the whistleblowers’ testimony by framing the evidence detailed by the two experienced and well-credentialed IRS agents as flowing from Rudy Giuliani. But as Ziegler testified, he launched the investigation into Hunter Biden after evidence implicating him was discovered pursuant to a separate criminal investigation. None of the evidence Ziegler and Shapley developed came from Giuliani. 

Nor did the allegations that Joe and Hunter Biden each received $5 million in bribes from Burisma, as reported by an FBI confidential human source and summarized in the FD-1023, come from Giuliani. The IRS agents never saw the FD-1023 in any event. 

House Democrats likewise attempted to minimize the whistleblowers’ testimony by pretending that, beside Giuliani, the only evidence of misconduct came from a witness charged with being an arms dealer, namely Gal Luft. Whether Luft has credible evidence of Biden-family corruption, however, has nothing to do with Ziegler and Shapley’s claims.

4. Merely a Misunderstanding

In their less hysterical moments, the Democrats offered a gentler spin, framing the House’s hearing as much ado about a misunderstanding. It also came down to the whistleblowers not grasping the difference between a special counsel and a special attorney, several Biden apologists suggested. 

But as Shapley made clear, he had documented U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s statement — that the DOJ had denied Weiss special counsel authority — soon after Weiss made that representation, and thus while Shapley’s memory was clear. In any event, according to Shapley, Weiss had also said during that meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, that he was not the final decision maker on whether to bring charges against Hunter Biden. That fact makes the distinction between a special counsel and a special attorney irrelevant.

Raskin also suggested Shapley was confused about Weiss’s authority, claiming the Delaware U.S. Attorney made clear in his letters to Congress he had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden. 

Both whistleblowers decimated that line of argument by highlighting what Weiss actually said, which was that he lacked charging authority outside of Delaware. In fact, if anything, Raskin hurt his cause by highlighting the contradictions between Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statements, establishing the necessity for both DOJ bigwigs to testify before Congress to resolve the inconsistencies.

5. Just a Difference of Opinion 

A related theme Democrats peddled during Wednesday’s hearing centered on prosecutorial discretion. The left side of the aisle painted the whistleblowers’ testimony as merely a professional disagreement between the IRS agents and Weiss. 

But there was no disagreement in opinion, Shapley and Ziegler stressed: Both the IRS and Weiss agreed that Hunter Biden should be charged with multiple felony counts. Weiss, however, lacked the ability to bring charges in D.C., and it was the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney there, as well as in California, that kept the Delaware U.S. attorney from filing criminal felony charges against the president’s son.

Further, that the D.C. and California U.S. attorneys thwarted efforts to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden proved especially rich given the Democrats continued references throughout the hearing to Weiss being Trump’s “hand-picked U.S. attorney.” Beyond the obvious point that being a Trump appointee establishes nothing, under the Democrats’ standard, the involvement of the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys removes this case from the “difference of opinion” scenario. 

6. There’s No Evidence, I Tell You, No Evidence

A sixth narrative Democrats pushed during the Oversight hearing was that there’s no evidence of misconduct or favoritism. But to paraphrase Shapley’s line, just repeating the same lie multiple times doesn’t make it true. And to say there’s no evidence of misconduct or favoritism is a whopper of a lie. 

The evidence of misconduct by the Bidens exists in the form of texts, emails, chat messages, bank records, suspicious activity reports, the FD-1023 report, and statements made by former business partners such as Tony Bobulinski. The public record is also replete with evidence of DOJ and FBI favoritism, including the extensive testimony of these two whistleblowers, parts of which a third whistleblower has already corroborated.

The Democrats may not like the evidence or want to talk about it, but to say none exists is about as believable as the Secret Service’s claim that they cannot determine whose cocaine was recovered in the White House. 

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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Explosive FD-1023 Exposes More Biden Bribery Dirt — And Teases Damning Evidence to Come


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/20/explosive-fd-1023-exposes-more-biden-bribery-dirt-and-teases-damning-evidence-to-come/

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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, just released a minimally redacted copy of the FBI’s FD-1023 detailing a confidential human source’s reporting of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian business Burisma. According to the FD-1023 summary, Burisma’s owner specifically referenced the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin — the same man Biden bragged about Ukraine firing after his threat to withhold aid from the country while he was vice president.

After months of pushing the Justice Department and FBI to explain what investigative procedures they had undertaken in response to evidence implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme, Grassley released the unclassified copy of the FD-1023, which documented claims made by the “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS). Grassley had acquired the FD-1023 via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.

While some of the information included in the FD-1023 has already been revealed by members of the House who previously reviewed the summary of the CHS’s reporting, the public release provides new explosive details related to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin. 

Among the CHS’s conversations with Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky, one took place shortly after Joe Biden made his first public statement about Shokin “being corrupt.” At the time, according to the CHS, Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.” 

Then, following Trump’s election in 2016, the CHS spoke again with Zlochevsky, who expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory but noted that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on…” Zlochevsky’s statement proves significant because Joe Biden had long claimed he pushed for Shokin’s firing because Shokin was not investigating Burisma — which is the exact opposite of the details summarized in the FD-1023.

Beyond putting the already known details in black-and-white for the public to read, such as Zlochevsky’s representation that he had 17 recordings of the Bidens and had never paid the “Big Guy” directly, the release of the FD-1023 is significant for another reason: The American public now knows the many details the FBI could have and should have investigated.

For instance, did Burisma or any other related entity purchase a Texas-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million during the relevant time period? Were the CHS and his business partner in Kiev in the 2015 and 2016 time period? Did the CHS’s U.S. business partner confirm the details of the meeting? Was the CHS in London during the relevant time in 2019? And did the FBI ever ask the CHS to record his conversations with Zlochevsky or attempt to turn Zlochevsky into an asset? 

According to the FD-1023 report, in 2019, the CHS had offered to assist Zlochevsky if he wanted to speak to the U.S. government about the Bidens and what Zlochevsky claimed was their coercion of Burisma to pay the bribes. Did anyone ever ask the CHS to contact Zlochevsky? If not, why not?

The public release of the FD-1023 is significant now for a third reason: It comes on the heels of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee that suggested the CHS’s reporting corroborates other evidence. 

During Wednesday’s hours-long hearing, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler both told lawmakers they had never seen the FD-1023. Significantly, Ziegler then stated: “There’s things that are contained on that document that could further corroborate other information that we might be having an issue corroborating because it could be regarding a foreign official. So, if we have information regarding that in a document or a witness, we can further corroborate later evidence.”

But because federal law prohibits the discussion of confidential taxpayers’ information, other than through specific procedures, Ziegler did not detail what, if any, information they may have discovered during their investigation into Hunter Biden. Instead, Ziegler said, “if that’s something that we have, we can turn that over to the House Ways and Means Committee.”

This testimony suggests that the IRS’s investigation likely uncovered evidence the FD-1023 corroborated. With that form now public, both Ziegler and Shapley can study it and assess what documentary material, such as wire transfer reports, they uncovered that is now corroborated. However, that evidence will have to go to the House Ways and Means Committee before it is made public.

So much for Democrats’ claim that there is no evidence of Joe Biden’s complicity and corruption.

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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7 Things the House Oversight Committee Should Ask IRS Whistleblowers


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 18, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/18/7-things-the-house-oversight-committee-should-ask-irs-whistleblowers/

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The IRS whistleblowers who exposed the Department of Justice and FBI’s interference in the investigation into Biden family corruption will publicly testify on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

The duo, Gary Shapley and a man known now only as Whistleblower X, had previously sat for transcribed interviews with the House Ways and Means Committee. And while some details from that closed-door testimony should be reiterated during the on-camera congressional hearing, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer should corral Republicans before Wednesday to coordinate the questioning of the whistleblowers so the country learns the depth of the scandal.

Here’s what they should ask Shapley and the soon-to-be-named second whistleblower and how they should do it.

1. Let the Whistleblowers Do the Talking

Because the legacy press will be poised to present Wednesday’s hearing as a Republican witch hunt and their supposed continued hounding of Hunter Biden, the representatives on the right side of the aisle should save the grandstanding for another time and let the agents speak for themselves.

As experienced agents, both Shapley and Whistleblower X know how to testify in a clear and understandable way. They also know how to respond to a hostile cross-examination, which unfortunately will be what they face from Democrats. Republicans should ask the agents open-ended questions that call for narrative responses and allow the whistleblowers’ words to convey to America the protect-Biden scandal they witnessed.

2. Start with Preliminaries, Not the Most Salacious Details

While it is understandable that the House Oversight Committee will want to strike hard and fast with the most devastating testimony, Republicans must remember the media blackout over this scandal means most Americans remain ignorant of many of the basics of the Hunter Biden investigation and how it connects to now-President Biden. Many Americans likely also know little about the two witnesses and may even believe the Democrats’ defamatory branding of the whistleblowers as “bought and paid for” by extreme MAGA Republicans.

For these reasons, before delving into the details, Republicans should ensure the country learns of the whistleblowers’ extensive and impressive professional background. Comer should also ensure the whistleblowers come clean about any political leanings they have, which appears to be none or, if any, leaning more to the left than the right. The whistleblowers’ opening statements will likely cover these preliminaries to some extent, but providing another minute for each witness to briefly remind Americans of your experience with the criminal investigation division of the IRS and explain to the country where you stand politically would be wise.

3. Begin Big-Picture Before Hitting the Details

The committee should then move to the origins of the investigation and the big picture of the scandal. More detailed questions will follow, but could you first broadly explain why and when the investigation began? Can you summarize the staffing of the investigative team and how the FBI field offices, FBI headquarters, the IRS criminal division, and the U.S. attorneys’ offices interacted at the beginning of the investigation, and then later throughout the investigation? 

Again, let the whistleblowers tell their story, using follow-up questions to draw out more details, if necessary, but from a big-picture perspective. And once the whistleblowers explain how the investigation proceeded, broadly speaking, ask: Was that staffing and interaction, especially with the DOJ and FBI, the norm?

4. Evidence and Interference

With the above backdrop established, the committee should focus next on two main lines of questioning: the evidence uncovered of potential criminal conduct and the interference the agents faced when investigating the case. 

The most effective and efficient way to present this testimony will be by requesting the whistleblowers walk the committee through the chronology of the investigation, identifying at each stage what evidence was uncovered and how, and whether there was any interference in the investigation. 

Follow-up questions for each leg in the investigative journey should inquire of any witnesses or evidence they know of to corroborate their testimony and what steps they normally would have taken absent the interference. 

Because the committee has the transcript of the whistleblowers’ previous closed-door testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, the staffers should be able to easily sequence the questioning to ensure it is accessible to ordinary Americans.

5. Weiss’s Weasel Words and Garland’s False Ones

While the whistleblowers’ prior testimony revealed scores of ways in which the DOJ and FBI interfered in the investigation, equally concerning is U.S. Attorney David Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s attempts to cover up that interference. 

For instance, Shapley testified about the D.C. and California U.S. attorneys’ refusal to file charges against Hunter Biden, and Weiss’s inability to indict the president’s son in those venues without permission from the Department of Justice — permission Weiss allegedly claims had been denied him. According to Shapley, Weiss made that statement during an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting and said he was “not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

Neither Weiss nor Garland has expressly denied Shapley’s claims, but both made statements that cannot be reconciled with Shapley’s testimony. Garland, for his part, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Weiss “has full authority” to bring cases in another jurisdiction if he deemed it necessary. Weiss similarly claimed in a letter to Congress that “he had been granted the ultimate authority” over the Biden investigation, but the Delaware U.S. attorney quickly clarified in a second letter that he didn’t have that authority yet but had been assured he would be granted it if necessary. 

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee should ask Shapley to retell the events of the Oct. 7 meeting because the IRS agents’ testimony implicates Weiss and Garland in a cover-up. Republicans should also ask Shapley whether it is possible Weiss said during that meeting that he had been denied a request to be appointed a special attorney as opposed to a special counsel, as some Democrats are suggesting Shapley misunderstood Weiss. A quick follow-up here, however, will also make clear that no matter which “special” appointment Weiss said he was denied, the U.S. attorney clearly said he wasn’t the decisionmaker.

6. Evidence Seen or Not Seen

The DOJ and FBI also interfered in the investigation by withholding evidence from Shapley and his investigative team. For instance, both Shapley and Whistleblower X stated they were not aware of the FD-1023 form that summarized a confidential human source’s claims that Joe and Hunter Biden each received $5 million in bribes from Burisma. Shapley also testified that he was prevented from seeing all the evidence on the Hunter Biden laptop, even after the FBI had removed documents potentially protected by attorney-client privilege. The committee should elicit testimony from Shapley and Whistleblower X concerning this withheld evidence.

Republicans should then attempt to learn what other evidence may have been secreted from the investigative team. The committee should read off a litany of the evidence it has and ask the whistleblowers if they were familiar with that evidence. Similarly, the committee should provide a list of witnesses with likely knowledge of the pay-to-play scandal and ask whether the whistleblowers knew of those individuals’ potential involvement and whether they were questioned. 

This line of questioning may reveal new areas of inquiry — something the whistleblowers may not have known of previously. But in that case, the whistleblowers may not be able to respond to the questions because only the House Ways and Means Committee has the authority to receive protected tax information. The right questions, though, will give the whistleblowers the opportunity to convey that they have not seen the particular evidence referenced and therefore cannot respond to the query in this setting, but would be happy to provide the Ways and Means Committee a supplemental affidavit. 

7. Anything More That Could Be Done

The whistleblowers have already made clear the statute of limitations ran out on potential felony tax charges against Hunter Biden because the Delaware U.S. attorney lacked the authority to indict the president’s son in another state. But what about the allegations contained in the FD-1023 or the other banking records recovered by the various House committees? Does that evidence indicate additional crimes have been committed for which the statute of limitations has not yet expired? 

The whistleblowers should be asked: What potential crimes? What investigative techniques would you recommend? Given the international scope of these potential crimes, does the Baltimore FBI field office have the expertise to investigate adequately? Do you and your team have the ability to investigate this evidence and determine if there is a there, there?

Ending the hearing thusly will send a message that Weiss may have called off the investigation, but that doesn’t mean the case of corruption against the Biden family is dead.

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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EXCLUSIVE: Ethics Complaint Filed Against Congressman Who Slurred Whistleblowers


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/14/exclusive-ethics-complaint-filed-against-congressman-who-slurred-whistleblowers/

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House Democrats are on a crusade to destroy the reputation of whistleblowers to save President Joe Biden and to run cover for those in the Justice Department and FBI who obstructed the investigation into the Bidens’ business dealings. But Republicans are starting to fight back. Kash Patel, who served as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense under President Trump and as the senior counsel for the House Intelligence Committee under then-Rep. Devin Nunes, launched the counteroffensive on Wednesday when his attorney filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and simultaneously sent a referral to the Department of Justice.

Patel’s complaint to the House Ethics Committee charged that soon after hearing the sworn testimony of FBI whistleblowers Garret O’Boyle, Steve Friend, and Marcus Allen during the Subcommittee on Weaponization’s hearing on May 18, 2023, Goldman used his official Twitter account to falsely claim the whistleblowers were “bought and paid for” by Patel. 

“The clear implication” of Goldman’s Tweet, the Patel complaint argued, was “that the witnesses lied under oath in exchange for payment by Mr. Patel.” In the same tweet, which was viewed by more than 4 million users, Goldman asserted Patel was “under investigation by the DOJ for leaking classified information.” 

By publishing lies about a private citizen on his official Twitter account, Goldman violated Rule XXIII of the House of Representatives rules, which provides that a member “shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House,” the ethics complaint asserted.

The ethics complaint further suggested Goldman’s lies may have constituted crimes. Here, Patel’s complaint points to Section 1519 of the federal criminal code and suggests that “by making false statements on his official U.S. Government Twitter account, Rep. Goldman has arguably made a false entry on the record with the intent to impede or influence the investigation of the Select Subcommittee.” The complaint also suggests, “Rep. Goldman’s dishonest tweet is a corrupt attempt to obstruct, influence, or impede the investigation of the Select Subcommittee,” which Patel notes is an arguable violation of Section 1512(C)(2) of the criminal code. 

While the ethics complaint notes that he “is not under investigation by the DOJ for anything—much less leaking classified information,” Patel adds that if there were such an investigation underway, someone would have illegally leaked that fact to Goldman. 

The Federalist contacted Goldman’s office to inquire whether the congressman stood by his claim that Patel was under investigation. A Goldman representative responded that Patel was reportedly under investigation and shared two articles with The Federalist, one being an April 2021 Washington Post article authored by David Ignatius, and the second being an article citing Ignatius’ piece.

When reached for comment by The Federalist, Patel called Goldman’s office’s reference to the Washington Post article a “congressional cop out,” and “more lies through back peddling.” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has taught America you “can find any lie in the media,” Patel added, a likely reference to the many lies the then-ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee peddled about Nunes’ memorandum on FISA abuse — something that transpired during Patel’s time as senior counsel for the committee.

FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who was one of the three whistleblowers Goldman accused of being “bought and paid for” by Patel, told The Federalist the Democrat’s accusations were absurd. Friend explained that Patel’s charitable organization contacted him in November of 2022 after he had been indefinitely suspended without pay for two months. “The organization generously furnished me a $5,000 donation so I could provide for my family during the Christmas holiday,” Friend said, stressing they told him “they did not want any public recognition.”

“Any insinuation that I sacrificed my career for a $5,000 payoff is patently ridiculous and defamatory,” Friend countered, adding that his family is grateful “to live in a country where men like Kash Patel can establish charitable organizations to assist those in need.”

Goldman’s office disagreed that there was an implication of an illicit payout for the whistleblowers’ testimony, telling The Federalist the New York congressman’s “bought and paid for” Tweet merely referred to the whistleblowers’ testimony from the linked video. 

Referral to DOJ

In addition to the ethics complaint filed in the House, Patel’s lawyer also sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It seems unlikely the Department of Justice will enter the fray. However, given the growing number of unjust attacks on whistleblowers, the House Ethics Committee may well reprimand Goldman for his tweet.

The increased targeting of whistleblowers was on full display on Wednesday when House Democrats wage a similar attack against whistleblowers during FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. Goldman’s fellow New York Democrat, Rep. Jerry Nadler, carried the defamation baton into that hearing, falsely accusing whistleblower Marcus Allen of receiving a $250,000 payout. Nadler’s representation was false and “far from profiting, he’s had to deplete his family’s retirement savings to survive,” Marcus’ attorney Jason Foster countered.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, would later attempt to discredit the whistleblowers with the same tripe, although she couldn’t keep her villains straight, confusing money raised for the whistleblowers through a GoFundMe account organized by former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin and the donations made by the charitable foundation established by Patel. 

“They can’t even keep their smears straight,” Foster scoffed in an interview with The Federalist.

Patel put it more bluntly, saying those attacking the brave whistleblowers who are exposing FBI corruption are “masquerading behind a baseless personal attack, knowing the media will carry their disinformation campaign.”

The legacy press is doing just that and will likely continue to do so, handing politicians free rein to defame the whistleblowers. The question, then, is whether the House Ethics Committee will curb Goldman to send a message that whistleblowers aren’t political pawns.

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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Top 10 Takeaways From FBI Director Christopher Wray’s House Judiciary Testimony


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 13, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/13/top-10-takeaways-from-fbi-director-christopher-wrays-house-judiciary-testimony/

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Here’s everything you need to know from the hearing.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray sat for nearly four hours of questioning on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are the top takeaways from the hearing.

1. Wray Indicates Foreign Intel Agencies Worked with Big Tech to Silence Speech

The FBI director faced fierce questioning from Republican committee members on the FBI’s efforts to induce Big Tech to censor American speech. Several representatives specifically challenged Wray to justify the FBI passing along requests from the Ukrainian intelligence agency, SBU, to social media companies. The FBI’s role as a conduit for SBU was just revealed on Monday in a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

That report revealed that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the SBU enlisted the FBI to forward to American social media companies lists of accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI obliged, sending a flurry of requests for accounts to be removed, including many American accounts, to multiple social media platforms. In fact, the House report highlighted the inclusion of the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department. The House Judiciary Committee queried Wray on how this could happen, while also inquiring why the FBI would assist the SBU in this endeavor, especially in light of Russia’s known infiltration of SBU.

In explaining the FBI’s involvement, Wray stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had cut off Ukraine’s communications, causing SBU to ask the FBI to contact U.S. companies on their behalf with the list of accounts supposedly spreading Russian disinformation. But as Republicans on the committee highlighted, the account lists in question included American accounts. Thus, the FBI’s involvement triggered the same First Amendment problems as those litigated in Missouri v. Biden.

This testimony also raised a second area of concern, namely the apparent coordination between U.S. social media companies and foreign governments. Wray said he served as an intermediary because Ukraine’s communications system was down. But in that case, it appears SBU would have contacted the American companies on its own behalf, seeking the silencing of Americans’ speech. 

So the question for American social media companies is this: Do they accept requests to remove accounts or posts from foreign countries? And do they censor Americans’ speech based on foreign claims of disinformation? 

2. Private Corporations Present a Bigger Concern Than Wray 

Social media companies are not the only ones who have some explaining to do following Wray’s testimony. Americans should also demand answers from private businesses with access to consumer information, especially those in the financial sector. 

This concern flows from Wray’s response to questioning about Bank of America handing the FBI financial records of customers who had purchased firearms within the six months before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Wray defended the FBI’s receipt of this information by noting that “a number of business community partners, all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity.” Such activity is entirely lawful, the FBI director maintained, although he added that the FBI opted not to use the Bank of America data to avoid concerns over the bureau obtaining that data.

That the FBI decided not to use the data, however, provides no comfort because Bank of America obviously had no qualms about sharing the information. Further, Wray framed Bank of America’s data sharing as consistent with “business partners” who “all the time” share information about possible criminal activity.

But financial data showing a customer had previously purchased a gun does not represent evidence of “possible criminal activity.” Yet that didn’t stop Bank of America from giving the information to the FBI. So what other financial information is Bank of America providing? And what about other “business partners”?

3. Wray Needs to Read the Court’s Opinion in Missouri v. Biden

The partnership that took main billing during Wednesday’s hearing was that forged between the FBI and social media companies, and Republicans drilled Wray on the coordinated efforts to censor American speech. Throughout the entire hearing, though, Wray unwaveringly maintained the bureau was not responsible for the censorship because the FBI was merely making suggestions that posts involving foreign malign influence be removed.

No one who read the district court’s opinion in Missouri v. Biden could reasonably reach that conclusion. And since the FBI played such a heavy role in the censorship enterprise summarized in that case, the FBI director owes it to the public to actually study that opinion. 

DOJ lawyers may be telling Wray the FBI is in the clear, but a federal judge disagreed,

and since the court has ordered the FBI to abandon its unconstitutional conduct, Wray needs to understand precisely what that means. Reading the court’s unfiltered opinion is the only way to see the many ways the FBI violated the First Amendment.

4. So Much Ignorance, So Little Time

Wray was not only ignorant of the facts underlying Missouri v. Biden, but he also revealed several other blind spots. For instance, during the hearing, Wray acknowledged he had previously testified that the FBI had not used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications of foreign individuals, in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That ended up not being accurate, however, but Wray was “blissfully ignorant” of that fact when he testified to the contrary to Congress.

Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell also put on a display of ignorance Wednesday, although in his case it was a feigned ignorance, with the California congressman framing the Hunter Biden laptop as concerning the nudes of a private citizen. While Swalwell may still be fixated on the nudes on the laptop, Republicans’ concern has always been of the evidence of a pay-to-play scandal implicating now-President Biden.

Then there’s Rep. Zoe Lofgren who claimed the GOP majority was engaging in “conspiracy theories” to discredit “one of the premier law enforcement agencies in the United States,” and “without any evidence” trying to “make the case that the FBI is somehow opposed to conservative views.” These 20 examples tell a different story.

5. Why Was Auten Anywhere Near Biden Evidence?

Wray and the Democrats weren’t the only ignorant ones, however. Republicans were clueless when it came to understanding why FBI analyst Brian Auten was anywhere near evidence implicating Hunter Biden.  After all, Auten had been under internal investigation since 2019 for his role in Crossfire Hurricane. Given the partisan witch hunt that investigation proved to be, why would the bureau allow Auten to play a part in the highly political investigation of Hunter Biden? 

Yet it apparently did. A whistleblower has told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 and that assessment provided other FBI agents the ability to falsely brand derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation. 

Wednesday’s testimony by the FBI director shed no light on the question of Auten’s involvement.

6. AG Garland’s the Real Hack Targeting Parents

While Wray was unable to explain Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, he made clear that when it came to the parents-are-terrorists memorandum, that was all Attorney General Merrick Garland’s doing. That testimony proved enlightening by showing that for all of the FBI’s deficiencies, even its director sees the attorney general as more of a hack for targeting parents at school board meetings.

7. Orange Man Bad, FBI Good

Also enlightening were the Democrats’ main lines of questioning. Here, there were two. The leftist lawmakers spent most of their time rehabilitating the FBI, reciting the many important bureau missions, showcasing hero agents, highlighting horrible attacks on FBI offices, and rejoicing in the FBI’s family days. Then the far-left faction merely attacked Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.

Together these lines of questioning exposed the Democrats as unconcerned by the many abuses Americans have witnessed over the last half-dozen years. And what was unserious appeared downright absurd when Democrat Pramila Jayapal used her allotted time to challenge the FBI director over the bureau’s purchase of citizens’ data, including location data, from various data brokers. Pre-Trump, every Democrat would have been drilling Wray on such abuses of civil liberties, but this week it was only Jayapal.

8. The Speech or Debate Clause Does Some Heavy Lifting

In addition to the Democrats’ two main lines of questioning, a sub-theme of many of the comments concerned the whistleblowers, with Democrats attempting to discredit their testimony. One way they sought to do that was by presenting the whistleblowers as hired tongues. But beginning with Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and continuing through Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, they made this point by slandering the whistleblowers, falsely stating they had been paid for their testimony.

Of course, the speech or debate clause prevents the whistleblowers from suing the committee members who lied about them, which is precisely why they had no qualms about doing so.

REMEMBER WHAT THE DEMS WERE SAYING ABOUT THE SO-CALLED WHISTLEBLOWER THAT CAME OUT ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP? I guess it’s the accused that makes their speech different.

9. Schiff Can’t Stop Lying

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is proof of this point because he can’t stop lying. He lied about the Carter Page FISA warrants. And on Wednesday, he lied again about President Donald Trump’s telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state following the November 2020 election. 

Unfortunately, “as I’ve been forced to detail time and again because the corrupt media continue to lie about the conversation, the transcript of the call established that Trump did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’” As I wrote in February, “It never happened.” Instead, during that “telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the secretary of state’s office, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that ‘the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.’” Thus the legal team wanted the secretary of state’s office to investigate the violations of Georgia election law because the court refused to do its duty.

Schiff knows this, but he also knows there are no consequences for lying. On the contrary, he might just convince Californians to send him to the Senate so he can follow in Harry “He Didn’t Win, Did He?” Reid’s footsteps.

10. A Mixed Bag on the Pro-Life Question

The final takeaway topic from Wray’s testimony concerned the pro-life question, and Wray presented a mixed bag. On the one hand, he outrageously refused to condemn the FBI agents who decided to use a SWAT-like display of force to arrest a pro-life sidewalk counselor at his family home when the man’s attorney had agreed to arrange for his client to voluntarily appear to face the charges — of which he was later acquitted.

On the other hand, when Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., attempted to frame abortionists and abortion facilities as being increasingly targeted in the wake of Dobbs, Wray corrected the narrative, noting that the uptick in violence has been to pro-life centers, with 70 percent of the cases involving such organizations.

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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FBI is ‘absolutely not’ protecting the Bidens, Wray testifies in heated House Judiciary hearing


Wray would not confirm or deny whether President Biden is under investigation for allegations of a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national.

Brooke Singman

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published July 12, 2023 12:43pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-absolutely-not-protecting-bidens-wray-testifies-heated-house-hearing

FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted Wednesday that the bureau is “absolutely not” protecting the Biden family, amid allegations that the Hunter Biden probe was influenced by politics.

But Wray also refused to answer questions from House Judiciary Committee lawmakers on whether President Biden is under federal investigation for an alleged criminal bribery scheme.

Wray told the committee about the good work of the FBI, denied any alleged politicization within the bureau, and blasted claims that he is biased against conservatives as “somewhat insane.” Despite those denials, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, maintained his commitment to stopping the “weaponization of the government against the American people,” and slammed the “double standard that exists now in our justice system.”

FBI DIRECTOR WRAY TO TESTIFY BEFORE HOUSE JUDICIARY PANEL AMID ALLEGATIONS OF POLITICIZATION WITHIN BUREAU

FBI Director Chris Wray is sworn into the House Judiciary Committee hearing

Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is sworn in during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The sentiment of a “double standard” of justice was prominent throughout the hearing, as GOP members pointed to the FBI’s handling of investigations related to the Bidens compared to the probe into former President Donald Trump.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., pointed to allegations leveled against the Justice Department by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who said steps were taken throughout the years-long Hunter Biden probe to protect him and limit any questioning related to President Biden.

Gaetz referred to a specific WhatsApp message to a Chinese energy executive in which Hunter Biden seems to indicate he is “sitting here with” his father, Joe Biden, threatening the executive that he and his father would “forever hold a grudge” if a deal was not complete, and warning that the executive would “regret not following” his “direction.”

“You seem deeply uncurious about it, don’t you?” Gaetz said. “Almost suspiciously uncurious. Are you protecting the Bidens?”

“Absolutely not,” Wray replied. “The FBI has no interest.”

HOUSE GOP DEMAND TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS FROM HUNTER BIDEN PROSECUTOR, DOJ, IRS, SECRET SERVICE OFFICIALS

Jim Jordan questions FBI Director Wray

Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

IRS whistleblowers have alleged that federal prosecutors blocked lines of questioning related to President Biden, despite having evidence that could point to the president’s knowledge or involvement in his son’s business dealings.

Whistleblowers said the FBI had the laptop in its possession in December 2019 and knew ahead of the 2020 presidential election that it contained “credible” evidence as part of the Hunter Biden probe. Despite that, the FBI still allegedly worked with social media companies to suppress stories about the laptop.

Lawmakers have also been demanding answers from the FBI on what it did with information contained in a key FD-1023 form, alleging a criminal bribery scheme between then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national.

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the FBI to turn over the document for Congress to review, but the FBI did not comply. Instead, the FBI made accommodations to bring a redacted version of the document to a secure setting on Capitol Hill for lawmakers on that committee to review. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress for not complying with the subpoena.

The document in question details allegations made by a top executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings to a “highly-credible” FBI confidential human source. The executive alleged that he paid $5 million to Joe Biden and $5 million to Hunter Biden in exchange for influence over policy decisions.

FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS SAY PRO-LIFE GROUPS, CATHOLICS WERE ‘TARGET OF THE GOVERNMENT’: JORDAN

Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden

Hunter Biden arrives at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Federal prosecutors and agents on the team investigating Hunter Biden were briefed on that FBI form, but lawmakers in both the House and Senate are questioning if the FBI ever investigated the claims. Wray was pressed on the allegations contained in that form during Wednesday’s hearing by Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisc. — specifically whether the president took any payments from foreign nationals or companies while serving as vice president.

Wray pointed to the “ongoing investigation” led by U.S. attorney for Delaware David Weiss, and referred all questions related to the matter to his office.

“So the president is under investigation?” Tiffany asked.

“I’m not going to confirm or speak to who is or isn’t under investigation for what,” Wray replied.

“So he’s not under investigation?” Tiffany asked.

“I didn’t say that either,” Wray said.

JORDAN SAYS FBI SHOULD BE KICKED OUT OF PROBES INTO US CITIZENS FLAGGED IN FISA INVESTIGATIONS

Pointing to FBI and Justice Department practice, Wray said he is “not going to be confirming or denying” if President Biden “is or isn’t under investigation.” 

Ahead of Wray’s testimony, an FBI official told Fox News Digital that lawmakers on the committee are taking issue with “prosecutorial decisions,” but stressed that those decisions are “not made by the FBI, but, rather, the Department of Justice.” That official stressed that the FBI is focused on gathering facts, and not involved in charging decisions.

President Joe Biden

President Biden leaves following services at St. Edmond Catholic Church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on April 15, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

The Justice Department last month announced that the president’s son had entered a plea agreement that will likely keep him out of jail. Hunter Biden is set to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax, and to one charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Whistleblowers and those familiar with the investigation say more charges were warranted. Hunter Biden is set to make his first court appearance on July 26.

HERE ARE THE WHISTLEBLOWERS SCORCHING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ON HUNTER PROBE, IRS, FBI

Meanwhile, Jordan has called on key FBI and DOJ officials involved in the Hunter Biden investigation to appear before the committee for transcribed interviews related to that probe. Those interviews have yet to be scheduled.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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Wray: FBI ‘Absolutely Not’ Protecting Hunter Biden, Family


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Wednesday, 12 July 2023 01:44 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/wray-judiciary-hunter-biden/2023/07/12/id/1126858/

FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that he is “absolutely not” working to protect President Joe Biden’s family, including his son Hunter, and said the agency has not been politicized by the current administration to go after former President Donald Trump and other conservatives, both public and private. His denials came during a grilling by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who displayed a text message that had been allegedly sent by Hunter Biden to a Chinese Communist Party official, in which he demanded money and said his father was sitting by his side when the message was being sent.

“You seem deeply uncurious about it — almost suspiciously uncurious,” Gaetz told Wray. “Are you protecting the Bidens?”

“Absolutely not,” Wray responded.

In other testimony, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., pointed out that a federal judge in his state “found the FBI engaged in a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech,” including threatening “adverse consequences to social media companies” to suppress stories, resulting in “millions of citizens” not being able to hear about the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election, along with other news items, including about COVID 19.

“The FBI is not in the business of moderating content or causing any social media company to suppress or censor,” Wray said.

Wray also defended the FBI against claims that have been made by whistleblowers who have testified before Congress concerning actions the FBI has taken in various investigations, including on the Biden family.

“Why would the FBI offer Christopher Steele $1 million to verify a dossier about Trump and Russian collusion and then the same FBI offer $3 million to Twitter to squash a story on Hunter’s laptop?” he said.

“The dossier story and I know that wasn’t under your watch, but also the Hunter Biden laptop story, that to me, looks political to the American people,” said Moore. “It looks political, and I’m just an everyday guy … that is why you’re having trouble keeping the FBI’s reputation afloat.”

Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, laid out in his opening statement the bureau’s efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story; target conservatives; and more. Jordan said he is determined to fight back against the “weaponization of the government against the American people,” and slammed the “double standard that exists now in our justice system.” Jordan also accused the FBI of supporting the suppression of conservatives on social media, retaliation against whistleblowers, and tracking parents angry with their school boards.

“I haven’t even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president’s home,” Jordan said. “Maybe what’s more frightening is what happens if you come forward and tell Congress you’re a whistleblower. Come tell the Congress what’s going on? Look out. You will be retaliated against.”

Also on Wednesday, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., told Wray that the American people are “outraged” about the actions that have “damaged the FBI’s reputation and undermined the good work of the vast majority of the men and women within your agency,” including on the Biden family investigations but also with an anti-Catholic memo that went out from the agency’s Richmond field office, and other controversial investigations that have taken place.

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FBI Colluded with Russian-Infiltrated Agency in Ukraine to Censor Americans


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JULY 11, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/fbi-colluded-with-russian-infiltrated-agency-in-ukraine-to-censor-americans-2662261376.html/

Meta Headquarters

The FBI colluded with a Russian-infiltrated intelligence agency in Ukraine to censor American speech, according to a new document out Monday. In an interim report published by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, House investigators exposed the FBI’s cooperation with foreign agents to orchestrate online censorship.

“The Committee’s analysis of these ‘disinformation’ registries revealed that the FBI, at the request of the [Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)], flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists,” the report reads. “At times, the FBI would even follow up with the relevant platform to ensure that ‘these accounts were taken down.’”

The SBU was notoriously infiltrated by the Kremlin’s Federal Security Service (FSB), whose agents were instrumental in President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In March last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the head of the SBU’s Crimean branch, who is accused of being a double agent. Ivan Bakanov, who ran the entire SBU, was let go in July last year over the service’s status as a compromised agency.

The FBI, lawmakers added, “had no legal justification for facilitating the censorship of Americans’ protected speech on social media.”

House investigators compiled the report based on subpoenas to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, which oversees Google and YouTube.

“The inclusion of American accounts on the SBU’s lists indicates that the FBI either did not properly vet the SBU’s requests or was aware of their domestic nature, and nonetheless carried them out,” lawmakers concluded.

At the heart of the operation was FBI Agent Elvis Chan in the San Francisco field office, who served as the “primary liaison” between the FBI and Silicon Valley. Chan also coordinated meetings between the FBI and social media companies during both the 2020 and 2022 elections. House investigators reported the SBU wasn’t purged of Russian agents until months after the Ukrainian security service began colluding with the FBI to censor U.S. citizens.

The FBI and SBU reportedly sent “massive spreadsheets” that contained “thousands of accounts” for censorship to Meta. The FBI also “facilitated” the SBU’s requests for censorship on Alphabet platforms. Posts flagged for removal were often supportive of Ukraine and critical of Putin.

One episode of censorship on Instagram included the suspension of a verified account run by the State Department with the username “@usaporusski.”

“Neither the FBI nor the SBU provides an explanation as to how the U.S. State Department account was ‘involved in disinformation,’” lawmakers noted.

One censorship request also included an American journalist whose name has been redacted.

The government coordination with Silicon Valley ran so deep that Meta even proposed a “24/7 channel” with foreign agents to facilitate censorship. The operation continued at least into May, even after Twitter’s Yoel Roth warned U.S. officials about the SBU’s targeting of American accounts.

“The full extent of the FBI’s collaboration with the SBU to censor American speech is unknown,” investigators wrote, but added, “To be clear, the FBI’s participation in the SBU’s censorship enterprise was a willing and intentional choice by the FBI, involving no fewer than seven agents across the Bureau.”

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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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/

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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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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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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/

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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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interfered with Hunter Biden probe, according to whistleblower testimony released by GOP


By Brianna Herlihy , Brooke Singman , Jon Street | Fox News | Published June 22, 2023 1:39pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-fbi-irs-interfered-hunter-biden-probe-according-whistleblower-testimony

The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the investigation of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden. According to Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., that testimony “outlines misconduct and government abuse at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation of Hunter Biden.”

“The allegations point to a steady campaign of: unequal treatment of enforcing tax law; Department of Justice interference in the form of delays, divulgences, and denials, into the investigation of tax crimes that may have been committed by the President’s son; and finally, retaliation against IRS employees who blew the whistle on the misconduct,” the committee said Thursday.

“Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging, and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes,” Smith said.

HUNTER BIDEN CRIMINAL TAX CASE ASSIGNED TO TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGE IN DELAWARE

Hunter Biden at the White House
Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, arrives with wife Melissa Cohen Biden prior to President Biden awarding the Presidential Medals of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 7, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

According to testimony released by the committee, one whistleblower, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., said decisions in the case seemed to be “influenced by politics.”

“Whatever the motivations, at every stage decisions were made that had the effect of benefiting the subject of the investigation,” Shapley said.

“These decisions included slow-walking investigative steps, now allowing enforcement actions to be executed, limiting investigators’ line of questioning for witnesses, misleading investigators on charging authority, delaying any and all actions months before elections to ensure the investigation did not go overt well before policy memorandum mandated the pause. These are just only a few examples,” he added.

HUNTER BIDEN SCHEDULED TO MAKE FIRST COURT APPEARANCE ON FEDERAL TAX CHARGES IN JULY

Jason Smith
Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Shapley, who oversaw the IRS probe into the president’s son, said the IRS obtained a WhatsApp message dated July 30th, 2017, from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, who the New York Post previously reported is a Chinese Communist Party official and CEO of Harvest Fund Management.

“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” Biden wrote. “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. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Shapley testified that communications like that message “made it clear we needed to search the guest house at the Bidens’ Delaware residence where Hunter Biden stayed for a time.”

However, Shapley testified that Assistant United States Attorney in Delaware, Lesley Wolf, told him “optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant.”

KODAK BLACK’S LAWYER SLAMS HUNTER BIDEN PLEA DEAL AFTER RAPPER SENTENCED TO 3+ YEARS FOR SAME CRIME

Hunter Biden gets off plane with president
President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.  (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

“She said a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden, but said there is no way we will get that approved,” Shapley testified. 

The news comes days after the Justice Department announced that Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax, as part of a deal that is expected to keep him out of prison. The younger Biden also agreed to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement regarding a separate charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

In response to the committee’s release, the Justice Department said in a statement on Biden’s case:

“As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so. Questions about his investigation should be directed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Delaware.”

This is a breaking news report, check back for updates.

Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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Sen. Blackburn to Newsmax: Americans See ‘Two Tiers of Justice’


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Thursday, 22 June 2023 11:03 AM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/marsha-blackburn-fbi-doj/2023/06/22/id/1124532/

People want everyone to have “equal access, equal opportunity, and equal justice under the law,” but that isn’t happening with federal agencies showing one approach to “the elites” and another to conservatives, Sen. Marsha Blackburn said Thursday on Newsmax.

“Two tiers of justice, that is what Tennesseans are saying,” the Tennessee Republican said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “I’m hearing it every single day, whether it’s the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS, the EPA, OSHA, or any of the other agencies, they feel as if there is one approach that is shown to the elites to the Bidens, the Clintons, and their cronies.” 

Blackburn added: “There is another that is shown to conservatives and other individuals who are not part of the privileged or the elite, and people are really frustrated with this. … They want our country to be a nation known for abiding by the rule of law.”

Blackburn said the way President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and their family are being treated is “of tremendous frustration because they see the way President [Donald] Trump is treated. They see the way people who are not part of the elite are treated, and they know it is not equal.”

Meanwhile, Biden defended his son in a recent MSNBC interview, and Blackburn said on Newsmax that “everybody knows that Hunter Biden has been treated differently,” including with his plea deal to tax charges. 

“The FBI has slow-walked this investigation,” Blackburn said. “We’re hearing that they just never even looked at the laptop. And isn’t it interesting that even with the IRS charges, the tax charges that are there, there is no question about where this money came from? How did you end up with this money that you did not pay taxes on? It’s very interesting how they have approached this.” 

Blackburn said she’s being asked how President Biden couldn’t be aware of what his son or his brother were doing, and “how they are influence-peddling or trading on his name.”

“How could he not have been aware of that?” asked Blackburn. “These individuals came to his office. He is shown in pictures with them. But yet you have a DOJ that is chosen not to investigate this.”

Blackburn also discussed special counsel John Durham’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, including his comments about the political weaponization of the FBI and the DOJ, saying she agrees that there are “good men and women” who work in the federal law enforcement community.

“They desperately want to see the political cabal inside the DOJ and the FBI dealt with,” said Blackburn. “They want to see this defunded and, hopefully, we’ll see some changes.”

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More on the Hunter Biden Cover-up Deal


Sen. Ron Johnson to Newsmax: Hunter Plea Deal Attempt to Keep Truth From Public

By Brian Freeman    |   Tuesday, 20 June 2023 02:46 PM EDT

The Hunter Biden plea deal for failing to pay federal income tax and illegally possessing a weapon is highly suspicious and appears to be an attempt to keep the truth from the American public, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Newsmax on Tuesday.

“The timing is more than interesting — just as we find out about a credible source claiming a $5 million to $10 million bribery scheme and [Hunter’s business associate] Devon Archer poised to testify before the House committee,” Johnson told “National Report.”

“Is this the Justice Department’s attempt to try and seal this all up and keep the truth from the American public? This is what I fear.”……………..

For the rest of the article go to https://www.newsmax.com/us/donald-trump-classified-documents-trial-date/2023/06/20/id/1124171/

Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal Is A Coverup Disguised As Justice

BY: CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD | JUNE 20, 2023

Hunter Biden

To hear President Joe Biden’s supporters tell it, Hunter Biden was finally held accountable Tuesday, and the long national nightmare of him facing any scrutiny at all can finally end.

This accountability for the president’s son, however, was little more than a chiding for offenses that have virtually nothing to do with the serious allegations the Department of Justice should actually be pursuing — like giving a speeding ticket to “the getaway driver after a bank robbery,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley remarked.

Over the past two weeks alone, congressional Republicans have revealed a paid, “highly credible” FBI informant’s report that $10 million was paid in bribes to Hunter and his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, by Ukrainian oligarch and Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky.

Zlochevsky called the then-vice president “the big guy,” a nickname also used in the Biden family’s allegedly corrupt China dealings. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed the existence of two audio recordings Zlochevsky reportedly made of Joe Biden (and another 15 he made of Hunter) discussing their dealings, which Zlochevsky reportedly kept as a sort of “insurance policy” that he’d get what he was paying for.

What was he paying for? Emails from the chairman of Burisma (revealed three years ago) show “the ultimate purpose” of “the deliverables” was “to close down for any cases/pursuits against [Burisma’s president] in Ukraine.” That case was indeed closed down, when Vice President Biden pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor pursuing Burisma.

Congressional investigators also revealed that Hunter helped Burisma executives open an account for their transactions at Satabank,……….

For the rest of the article go to https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/20/hunter-bidens-plea-deal-is-a-coverup-disguised-as-justice/

Hunter Biden’s Wrist Slap On Gun, Tax Crimes Is A Complete Smokescreen

BY: JORDAN BOYD | JUNE 20, 2023

Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden at inauguration in 2021

President Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice is so desperate to distract from Republicans’ exposé of the Biden family bribery scandal that it finally brought a handful of weak charges against Hunter Biden for his tax and gun crimes.

Under the guise of serving equal justice, the DOJ announced on Tuesday that it would charge the president’s youngest son with two federal misdemeanor counts for failing to pay his taxes and one federal felony charge for possessing a gun while being an illegal drug user and addict.

Hunter’s lawyers are scrambling to declare “the five-year investigation” into their client as “resolved.” Corporate media like NBC News, similarly, claimed the DOJ’s “resolution suggests that prosecutors did not find cause to file charges related to Hunter Biden’s dealings with foreign entities or other wrongdoing.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Just like when it strategically timed its political arrest of a Republican congressman to coincide with a GOP press conference detailing evidence of Biden corruption, the DOJ is working overtime to ensure that Hunter serves as a distraction from the bigger Biden problem.

Since at least 2021 when Politico exposed records and receipts, the public has known that Hunter, who has an extensive and public history of illicit drug use, appeared to lie about this drug use on the Firearms Transaction Record he filled out during a revolver purchase in 2018.

Government officials such as local police, the Secret Service, FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, likely knew about the lie earlier than 2021 since the .38 revolver soon became the center of a missing gun investigation, in which the Secret Service reportedly tried to interfere on behalf of the Biden family.

Similarly, most of the preliminary federal investigation into Hunter’s 2017 and 2018 financial wrongdoings was completed by 2020.

Yet, U.S. Attorney David Weiss delayed bringing charges against Hunter because, as Politico described, “the investigation would become a months-long campaign issue” that would hurt Biden’s presidential chances. It wasn’t until Republicans’ increasingly evidenced probe into the Biden bribery scheme, which the Biden administration continues to hamper, that Weiss finally decided to target the president’s son.

That timing is not a coincidence………….

For the rest of the article go to https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/20/hunter-bidens-wrist-slap-on-gun-tax-crimes-is-a-complete-smokescreen/

Hunter Biden’s Charges Are Nothing But A Diversion

BY: BRETT TOLMAN | JUNE 20, 2023

Hunter Biden

What a breathtaking and damaging act of misdirection. After five years of investigation into a host of criminal acts by Hunter Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) finally brought charges against the president’s wayward son. But while the DOJ hopes the public focuses on words like “charges” and “guilty” to form an image of accountability for all, it’s letting Hunter walk away with the kind of slap on the wrist most defendants can only dream about from inside a prison cell.

In the same breath in which DOJ announced it was filing charges against Hunter Biden, it also stated that the case had already been resolved. Hunter will plead guilty to and serve probation for two tax fraud misdemeanors while a felony firearm possession charge will disappear after he completes pretrial diversion. It’s a resolution that if the defendant’s last name weren’t Biden would sound almost too good to be true.

The feds are notoriously tough on firearms. Nationally, for example, 94.2 percent of federal firearms convictions in 2022 involved some prison time, and the median sentence was 39 months.

Of course, Hunter won’t even have to end up with a conviction. This is an even rarer event. In 2021, fewer than 1 percent of cases filed by U.S. attorneys in federal court resulted in the kind of pretrial diversion offered to Hunter.

It’s that disparity between Hunter’s case and everybody else’s that’s the true problem, not necessarily the sentence itself. After all, the law in question, which prohibits individuals suffering from an illegal drug addiction from possessing a firearm, likely violates the Second Amendment. Plus, diversion programs across the country have improved public safety at lower cost to taxpayers than prison alternatives. 

But that’s clearly not how things are shaking out in practice at DOJ, and President Biden has expressed an ongoing willingness to harshly punish firearms offenses. His DOJ is defending this law in court, and he signed a law in 2021 to increase maximum penalties from 10 years to 15 years in prison. Apparently, President Biden does not believe offenders should be treated with kid gloves — at least when it’s not his kid.

Indeed, if Hunter’s were a typical case, ………….

For the rest of the article go to https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/20/hunter-bidens-charges-are-nothing-but-a-diversion/

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Everything We Know About The Biden Bribery Scheme From The FBI Document


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JUNE 16, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/16/everything-we-know-about-the-biden-bribery-scheme-from-the-fbi-document/

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Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky dropped a bombshell subpoena last month demanding the FBI hand over a document alleging a bribery scheme between President Joe Biden and a “foreign national.”

On May 3, the pair of GOP lawmakers requested congressional access to an unclassified FD-1023 form, a document used by the bureau to catalog information from a confidential human source. The FBI record suggests President Biden took a foreign bribe during his time in the Obama administration.

After more than a month-long back-and-forth between agency leadership and Capitol Hill wherein House Republicans even prepared contempt proceedings for FBI Director Christopher Wray, members of Congress were finally able to review the document Thursday. Here’s everything we know about the record in question.

Confidential Human Source Is ‘Highly Credible’

The confidential human source (CHS) behind the FD-1023 is reportedly a “highly credible” informant with an agency tenure stretching back more than a decade. According to Fox News, the whistleblower informant has collaborated “in multiple investigative matters” with the FBI since the Obama administration, with consistent reviews for credibility.

“The confidential human source who provided information about then Vice President Biden being involved in a criminal bribery scheme is a trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over 10 years and has been paid over six figures,” Chairman Comer told reporters last week.

Contrary to MSNBC’s claim that “All roads lead to [Rudy] Giuliani” in the sourcing for the document, individuals familiar with the investigation told The Federalist the FD-1023 document came independent of information provided by the former New York City mayor.

Allegations Date Back to 2017

In addition to researching the cache of incriminating intelligence on the Biden family Giuliani sent to the FBI, agents searched the FBI’s databases and discovered a related FD-1023 from 2017. That prompted agents to re-interview the CHS and uncover details about the Burisma bribery scandal, resulting in the FD-1023 dated June 30, 2020.

Bidens Allegedly Took $10 Million From Burisma Executive

Grassley spoke in a Monday floor speech about the “foreign national” who allegedly bribed the Biden family, and who has since been identified by people familiar with the matter as Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma. The Ukrainian energy firm showered Hunter Biden in excess compensation on its corporate board while his father served as the “public face” of White House policy towards Ukraine.

The CHS summarized earlier meetings with Zlochevsky in the FD-1023, claiming the Bidens “coerced” the foreign businessman to pay the multimillion-dollar bribes. Zlochevsky had been trying to shut down government investigations into his Ukrainian energy firm. The energy tycoon allegedly paid $5 million to then-Vice President Joe Biden, referred to as the “Big Guy” by Zlochevsky in the FD-1023, and $5 million to Hunter.

According to a report from Grassley and Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in September 2020, Zlochevsky had separately paid a $7 million bribe to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to shut down another probe.

In 2018, Biden bragged about his lead role in the termination of Ukraine’s top prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.

Grassley: There Are Tapes

While the DOJ appeared to try to drown out coverage of the Biden bribery scheme with the unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump, Grassley reinjected the White House scandal into the news by disclosing the existence of audio recordings on Monday.

“According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden,” Grassley said. Another two recordings are reportedly calls between Zlochevsky and then-Vice President Biden, for 17 recordings in “total.”

Grassley said Zlochevsky kept the tapes “as a sort of insurance policy,” and noted that the form also suggested “then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden.”

House Republicans who reviewed the document also say Hunter Biden pressed Burisma to purchase an American oil company. In 2016, the Ukrainian firm ultimately took over a Canadian firm’s shares to buy into a joint venture with the American company Cub Energy.

AG Barr Referred Investigation To Delaware

Shortly after FBI Director Wray allowed members of the House Oversight Committee access to the FD-1023, Democrat Ranking Member Jamie Raskin sought to dismiss Republican allegations of corruption with a statement. An investigation into Biden bribery, Raskin said, had previously been shut down under Attorney General Bill Barr during the Trump administration.

“In August 2020, Attorney General Barr and his hand-picked U.S. Attorney signed off on closing the assessment,” Raskin said.

In an exclusive interview with The Federalist, however, the former attorney general debunked Raskin’s assertion.

“On the contrary,” Barr said, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

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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The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes, Says Credible FBI Source


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/15/the-bidens-coerced-burisma-to-pay-10-million-in-bribes-says-credible-fbi-source/

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The Bidens allegedly “coerced” a foreign national to pay them $10 million in bribes, according to individuals familiar with the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the FD-1023 confidential human source report. What, if anything, agents did to investigate these explosive claims remains unknown, however, with sources telling The Federalist the FBI continues to stonewall.

On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed a foreign national — identified by individuals with knowledge of the matter as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky — allegedly possessed 17 recordings implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal. While 15 of the audio recordings consisted of phone calls between Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden, two were of calls the Ukrainian had with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the FD-1023.

The Federalist has now learned the FD-1023 reported the CHS saying the Bidens “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay the bribes. Sources familiar with the investigation also explained the context of Zlochevsky’s statements, and that context further bolsters the CHS’s reporting.

In the FD-1023 from June 30, 2020, the confidential human source summarized earlier meetings he had with Zlochevsky. According to the CHS, in the 2015-2016 timeframe, the CHS, who was providing advice to Zlochevsky, told the Burisma owner to stay away from the Bidens. Then, after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest, the CHS asked Zlochevsky if he was upset Trump won. 

Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family, which included a $5 million payment to Hunter Biden and a $5 million payment to Joe Biden. According to the CHS, the Burisma executive bemoaned the situation, claiming the Bidens had “coerced” him into paying the bribes. 

The CHS responded that he hoped Zlochevsky had taken precautions to protect himself. Zlochevsky then allegedly detailed the steps he had taken to avoid detection, stressing he had never paid the “Big Guy” directly and that it would take some 10 years to unravel the various money trails. It was only then that Zlochevsky mentioned the audio recordings he had made of the conversations he had with Hunter and Joe Biden, according to the CHS.

The broader context of this conversation adds to the plausibility of Zlochevsky’s claims that he possessed recordings implicating the Bidens. And we already know from Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer that the FBI considered the CHS, who relayed Zlochevsky’s claims to the FBI, a “highly credible” source.

Further, according to individuals familiar with the investigation, the FBI admitted the CHS’s intel was unrelated to the information Rudy Giuliani had provided the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney’s office — the office then-Attorney General William Barr had tasked with reviewing any new information related to Ukraine. 

Sources told The Federalist that investigators out of the Pittsburgh office, in addition to reviewing Giuliani’s information, searched internal FBI databases and came across an earlier FD-1023 related to the CHS. That earlier FD-1023 then led to agents questioning the CHS on June 30, 2020, uncovering the details concerning Burisma’s alleged bribery of the Bidens. 

What the FBI did to investigate the allegations is unknown, with sources telling The Federalist the bureau refused to either confirm or deny that the DOJ under Barr sent the FD-1023 to Delaware for further investigation. On the contrary, the FBI allowed Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, to falsely represent to Americans that Barr and Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had closed the investigation. Raskin’s deceit, tolerated by the FBI, forced Barr to publicly correct the record. 

The FBI is also refusing to provide any information on what, if any, steps it took to investigate the detailed claims contained in the FD-1023. But sources familiar with investigative procedures maintain there was insufficient time between the June 30, 2020, interview of the CHS and the FBI headquarters’ closing of an assessment related to the FD-1023 in August 2020 to properly probe the matter. “They couldn’t have done much,” one source said.

There is also no independent confirmation from Delaware indicating any investigative steps were taken regarding the FD-1023. Agents in Delaware “could have sat on it,” according to one individual familiar with the investigation. 

While the FBI’s efforts to unwind the pay-to-play scheme seem to have been nonexistent, banking records released in May by the House Oversight Committee show congressional investigators are unraveling the complex web behind the Biden family business. Those records provide concrete evidence of a pattern of public corruption involving foreign nationals, with Joe Biden at the helm. There are still more banking records to review, along with the many details recently discovered when the whistleblower came forward with the FD-1023. 

Apparently, Zlochevsky wasn’t far from the mark when he said it would take 10 years to unravel the complex payment path that led to Joe Biden.

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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WashPost: Trump Told Lawyers No to Making Deal on Docs


By Eric Mack    |   Thursday, 15 June 2023 12:01 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/politics/donald-trump-fbi-indictment/2023/06/15/id/1123684/

Former President Donald Trump was unwilling to negotiate with Justice Department investigators last fall, firm in his belief his documents were protected under the Presidential Records Act (PRA), according to The Washington Post. Christopher Kise, one of Trump’s new attorneys, reportedly sought to approach the investigators before special counsel Jack Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, seeking to “take the temperature down” and make a deal that would avoid a federal indictment. But Trump reportedly rejected that route, preferring to take a legal stance that was ruled on in the “Clinton socks case” against Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton.

Trump has been taking advice from Fitton — at times against the advice of his own hired legal counsel — about the Clinton socks case, the PRA precedent, and his legal right to retain items he did not want to surrender to the National Archives, according to the Post. Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, declined to comment to The Washington Post.

“President Trump has consistently been in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which is the only law that applies to Presidents and their records,” a Trump spokesman wrote in a statement to Newsmax. 

“In the course of negotiations over the return of the documents, President Trump told the lead DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know.’ Sadly, the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and conducted an unnecessary and unconstitutional raid on the President’s home in order to inflict maximum political damage on the leading presidential candidate. 

“The Biden regime’s despicable efforts are failing. President Trump maintains a commanding lead in the polls and is poised to reclaim the White House for the American people and make our country great again.”

The National Archives has long rejected Trump’s claims.

“The PRA requires that all records created by presidents (and vice presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations,” it wrote in a June 9 statement as Smith unsealed the 37-count indictment against Trump.

“The PRA treats the records of the president and those of the vice president in almost the same manner such that, in most cases below, president and vice president can be used interchangeably.”

Instead of using the PRA as the basis for the indictment, Smith’s charges reference the Espionage Act of 1917.

Fitton has made the case that the charges against Trump allege no crime and “won’t survive scrutiny.”

“I testified before the grand jury for four hours, and there were a few questions, I guess, they needed to check off in terms of potential criminal activity related to classified information and such, but most of the time was spent arguing with obviously partisan lawyers about policy debates,” Fitton said on Newsmax’s “Eric Bolling The Balance” on Monday before Trump’s arrest and arraignment. “And after four hours, I thought, ‘Why am I being questioned on this First Amendment activity?’

“I saw firsthand that this was a politicized process.

“They set it up so they could concoct and manufacture obstruction when, in fact, there was no obstruction. They left out the fact that [Trump] cooperated and told the senior Justice Department official in his home, ‘You can have whatever you want.’ And he directed his attorneys, right in front of him, ‘Give them anything they want.’ That didn’t make it into the indictment. This indictment is evidence of corruption by the Justice Department.”

Fitton told the Post that he dined with Trump on Monday, telling the paper he was giving Trump advice but declined to elaborate.

“I think what is lacking is the lawyers saying, ‘I took this to be obstruction,'” Fitton told the Post. “Where is the conspiracy? I don’t understand any of it. I think this is a trap. They had no business asking for the records … and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that. There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”

Smith’s grand jury heard from a number of witnesses who were asked about Fitton’s role in advising Trump, according to the Post. Fitton has been publicly active in seeking to get Biden’s Senate records made public, which could include documents related to Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual misconduct when Biden was a senator.

Reade, fearing for her life, fled to Russia seeking asylum. Reade, who worked as a staff assistant in 1992-1993 for then-Sen. Biden, D-Del., has alleged Biden sexually assaulted her and had filed a Senate personnel complaint, which alleged Biden actively withheld from being released from the University of Delaware.

The Clinton socks case Trump has repeatedly mentioned as precedent for the retention of records was originally related to Fitton’s Judicial Watch in 2012, which former President Barack Obama-appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled NARA could not force former President Bill Clinton to turn over audio tapes he kept in his sock drawer. Jackson has been frequently used by the Justice Department against Trump-related officials, lending credence to House Republican arguments there is a weaponization of justice and the government against Trump and conservatives.

Fitton told the Post he remains convinced Trump lawyers “should have been more aggressive in fighting the subpoenas and fighting for Trump.”

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Sens. Cruz, Blackburn Press FBI Deputy on Biden Document


By Brian Freeman    |   Tuesday, 13 June 2023 03:27 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ted-cruz-marsha-blackburn-press-fbi/2023/06/13/id/1123446/

Republican senators had heated exchanges with FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday over the existence of an FBI document with allegations that President Joe Biden and his family took $5 million in bribes during his time as vice president, The Columbia Bugle reported. When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked if it is true that the FBI has a report making those allegations, Abbate responded that “I’m not going to comment on that, Senator.”

When pressed further on the matter about why he won’t answer the question, Abbate insisted that “this is an area that I’m not going to get into with you.”

Cruz responded by stating that “I understand you don’t want to, and that’s why people are mad at the FBI. Because you are stonewalling and covering up serious allegations of evidence of corruption from the president.”

The frustrated senator said, “You’re not going to say whether you did your job” when Abbate refused to answer if the FBI investigated in any way the allegations against the Bidens.

After the FBI deputy director replied that “we do our job to the very best of our ability,” Cruz answered, “Well not here! You’re not answering a single question to the American people. And you may think this is esoteric, I promise you millions of Americans are concerned.’

“You know who isn’t concerned? Not a single Senate Democrat. We’re going to go through this whole hearing, not one Democrat will ask a question about this. You know who else isn’t concerned? The corporate media who is joining with the Democrats in covering up the evidence.”

When Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn grilled Abbate over reported recordings of Joe and Hunter Biden with a Ukrainian executive who allegedly paid $5 million in bribes, the FBI deputy director said that “we often redact documents to protect sources and methods … the document was redacted.”

Blackburn said that “there is only one conclusion that any serious person could draw: There is a two-tiered system of justice under this administration. The American people know that, if they aren’t loyal to Washington’s liberal political elite or if their last name doesn’t happen to be Biden or Clinton, they are at risk of being targeted.”

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tear Down This Wall

A.F. BRANCO | on June 9, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tear-down-this-wall/

The DOJ and FBI are protecting the Biden crime family from the GOP investigators exposing the Truth.

FBI Protecting Biden
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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Russiagate Redux: Grassley Calls Out FBI For Leaking False Narratives To Obstruct Biden Investigation


BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | JUNE 08, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/08/russiagate-redux-grassley-calls-out-fbi-for-leaking-false-narratives-to-obstruct-biden-investigation/

Chuck Grassley

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Stop leaking to the media, peddling false narratives, and obstructing congressional oversight into the FBI’s handling of allegations that President Joe Biden was part of a criminal bribery scheme, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told FBI Director Christopher Wray in a floor speech Tuesday.

“Quit playing games,” Grassley said. “The Justice Department and FBI no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt,” he added, pointing to the FBI and Department of Justice’s track record of deception from the Russia-collusion hoax to the present.

Wray “made one excuse after another to not produce” the document detailing the bribery allegation against Biden, Grassley said, even refusing to admit it existed until Grassley revealed to him that he’d already seen a copy. The existence of the explosive allegation, which reportedly describes a Ukrainian energy concern seeking to pay then-Vice President Biden $5 million in return for a policy decision during his time as Ukrainian point man for the Obama administration, was revealed to Grassley by multiple FBI whistleblowers.

The continued practice of leaking false narratives to friendly media outlets instead of complying with constitutional oversight requests particularly bothered Grassley, he said. Everyone knows the “FBI has a penchant for leaking classified information to the media and producing documents to the media,” Grassley said.

Instead of complying with congressional requests, including a subpoena for the document, the FBI and its associates began leaking to Democrat media, in some cases to the exact same media figures they had worked with to spread the false Russia-collusion narrative. Grassley mentioned a May 18 article in The New York Times, likely the one by Adam Goldman, in which the noted Russia-collusion hoaxer wrote a glowing profile of Timothy Thibault that appeared to be sourced to Thibault and the FBI. The profile attempted to discredit decorated FBI agents who opposed his political handling of sensitive investigations.

Thibault was one of the FBI agents who reportedly shut down legitimate investigations into the Biden family business and spoke openly of his animus toward President Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr. He was reportedly forced out of the bureau last year after questions about his conduct became public. Brian Auten is another FBI official under scrutiny, reportedly for pushing Trump-Russia collusion and inappropriately discrediting Hunter Biden stories.

Other examples of FBI leaks abound. CNN’s Evan Perez was used to push the FBI’s spin on the document Grassley seeks. He famously joined with Jake Tapper and Jim Sciutto to launder the Steele dossier to the American public on Jan. 12, 2017.

To mislead investigators, anonymous sources peddled to Perez the idea that the document was related to allegations supplied by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Republican operative.

“The document has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020, people briefed on the matter said,” Perez asserted without evidence. It turns out it’s not true. Not only is the document, which details information from a longtime trusted confidential human source, unrelated to the information Giuliani brought to the FBI, it includes information from a previous interview of the source in 2017, three years before the Giuliani inquiry.

Jamie Raskin Is the New Adam Schiff

Still, the unsubstantiated story was enough for Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to spread the falsehood even further. Raskin is the ranking Democrat on the House’s Oversight Committee, which is investigating FBI mishandling of investigations into the Biden family business. He serves a similar role to the one Adam Schiff played when Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was attempting to unravel the FBI’s Russia-collusion hoax. Schiff’s office was known for misleading leaks to CNN and other Democrat media outfits. He also falsely claimed for years to have evidence of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is the House member overseeing the attempt to get information from Wray’s FBI. After threatening to hold Wray in contempt, the FBI director had a staffer brief Raskin and Comer on the document.

FBI briefings, leaks to friendly media outlets, and official statements include a frustrating mixture of unsubstantiated insinuations that the documented allegation was legitimately “closed,” contrary to whistleblower claims, were coupled with a refusal to answer questions about the documented allegation or its closing because it is part of an ongoing, “open” investigation. Grassley referenced the Kafka-esque situation in his jeremiad against Wray’s game-playing.

In any case, following his briefing, Raskin came out and claimed his FBI briefing showed him, “[i]n August 2020, Attorney General Barr and his hand-picked U.S. Attorney signed off on closing the assessment, having found no evidence to corroborate Mr. Giuliani’s allegations.”

First off, that’s not true in any way. Not only were these allegations not Giuliani’s, but Barr himself has also stated on the record to The Federalist that the investigation of the allegation was not closed and was in fact sent to the Delaware U.S. attorney for further investigation.

But the lie from Raskin was credulously reported by the Post for further dissemination to left-wing audiences.

Washington Post Joins the FBI Info Op

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for its role in pushing the information operation the FBI and other malign actors orchestrated against President Donald Trump, in which he was falsely accused of being a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. The widespread information operation was so effective that it led to the appointment of a damaging special counsel, the derailing of the Trump administration’s effectiveness, and a large majority of Democrats still believing the falsehood even years after it has been soundly and repeatedly debunked. One of the reporters who shared in the prize was Devlin Barrett, who reportedly spent time with Wray last week.

Along with Perry Stein and Jacqueline Alemany, Barrett helped the FBI and other Democrat operatives attempt a cover-up of the dispute with Congress. They claimed the FBI and Department of Justice, under the guidance of Barr, “reviewed allegations from a confidential informant about Joe Biden and his family, and they determined there were no grounds for further investigative steps,” according to Raskin and “other people familiar with the investigation.”

We already know Raskin’s claims are false. Whether the “other people” mentioned include Wray or other anonymous FBI officials is unclear. What is clear is that the spin is deceptive.

The media and other Democrats ignored the claim that a documented allegation existed. Once Wray finally admitted the document did, in fact, exist, the spin machine worked to say it had been investigated and found lacking. The issue is that Grassley and Comer are not as willing to believe the FBI’s unsubstantiated claims as The Washington “Democracy Dies In Darkness” Post’s operatives are.

Not only do they have whistleblowers telling them in detail that the investigation was not handled properly, but journalistic common sense says the same.

We know that the document, which has repeatedly been described by those who have seen it as “detailed,” was dated June 30, 2020. We also are told that Auten closed the investigation in early August 2020. To believe that the details of a complicated criminal enterprise allegation were fully and legitimately investigated and closed by the FBI in four weeks is almost impossible. It’s particularly difficult to believe given that the FBI is apparently leaking false narratives and refusing to substantiate the implausible claim with anything other than a request that they be trusted to tell the truth.

For comparison, the completely idiotic claim that Carter Page was a Russian spy was investigated for years, including securing four invasive warrants to spy on the individual, using extensive electronic surveillance, deploying human sources against Page, and more. Literally no one believes that the detailed claim from a highly trusted confidential human source who had specifics that matched up with verified Biden shell companies was fully investigated and put to bed in a matter of four weeks. Not even Devlin Barrett believes that, even if he pretends to.

No More FBI Lies

The Russia-collusion hoax perpetrated against the American people by the FBI, Democrats, and the media was remarkably effective. But because it was evil and false, the FBI, Democrats, and the media will have a much more difficult time running the operation with the same level of effectiveness again.

Still, Republicans on the Hill must be much savvier this time around, refusing to go along with the FBI’s misleading leaks for even a moment before they demand full compliance with congressional oversight. The good news is that any patience that Grassley and Comer seemed to have for Wray’s game-playing has already run out.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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EXCLUSIVE: Bill Barr Confirms Rep. Jamie Raskin Lied About Biden Family Corruption Investigation


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/07/exclusive-bill-barr-confirms-rep-jamie-raskin-lied-about-biden-family-corruption-investigation/

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“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” William Barr told The Federalist on Tuesday in response to Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin’s claim that the former attorney general and his “handpicked prosecutor” had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe. “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

Former Attorney General Barr went on the record with The Federalist following statements Raskin made to the press Monday afternoon. Soon after attending a closed-door meeting with House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and the FBI — at which lawmakers reviewed the FD-1023 form summarizing a CHS’s detailed allegations that then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions — Raskin spoke to the media. 

“What I learned,” Raskin claimed, “was that Attorney General Barr named Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, to head up a group of prosecutors who would look into all the allegations related to Ukraine.”

“After Rudy Giuliani surfaced these allegations,” Raskin continued, Brady’s team looked into the FD-1023 and “in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation,” and so “they called an end to the investigation.” 

The Maryland Democrat then reiterated his claim that this was “under Attorney General William Barr and his handpicked prosecutor Mr. Brady, who was a Trump appointee.” “They were the ones who decided” there were no further grounds for investigation, Raskin’s claimed, adding: “If there is a complaint, it is with Attorney General William Barr, the Trump Justice Department, and the team that the Trump administration appointed to look into it.” 

Raskin would then double down on his claim that it was Barr and Brady who closed down the investigation, issuing a press release saying that in August 2020, Barr and his “hand-picked U.S. Attorney” signed off on closing an assessment into the FD-1023 form that memorialized the CHS’s claims. 

But that’s just not true, according to the former attorney general. Instead, the confidential human source’s claims detailed in the FD-1023 were sent to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office for further investigation, according to Barr. That, however, was just one of Raskin’s deceptions: The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee also falsely suggested the CHS’s allegations were related to the investigation of information Rudy Giuliani had unearthed of the Biden family corruption in Ukraine. 

Not so, according to an individual familiar with the investigation who told The Federalist that the CHS and the FD-1023 summary of his statement were both “unrelated to Rudy Giuliani” and “not derived” from any information Giuliani provided. This corroborates the House Oversight Committee’s representation that the June 30, 2020, FD-1023 “stands on its own” and was not part of the documents Giuliani provided the FBI in January 2020. 

In fact, according to the House Oversight Committee, the FD-1023 in question “contains information from the FBI’s confidential human source dating back to another FD-1023 generated in 2017,” which completely removes Giuliani from the mix.

Raskin’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Two Huge Scandals

These new revelations prove significant for two reasons. First, there’s the underlying scandal of the FBI’s alleged failure to investigate the FD-1023 and FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten’s opening of an assessment in August 2020 to discredit that information, which “caused investigative activity to cease.” 

Knowing that the FD-1023 originated in Brady’s Western District of Pennsylvania proves explosive because Grassley’s whistleblower alleged that in September 2020, FBI headquarters placed the information contained in Auten’s assessment in a restricted-access sub-file that only the particular agents who uncovered the CHS’s info could access. How then could the FBI agents in Delaware further investigate the allegations? 

And those allegations, further detailed by Comer on Tuesday, are shocking. “A trusted confidential human source obtained information from a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden,” Comer told The Federalist. So, the CHS didn’t just pass on information from some random third party: He spoke directly with the individual who claimed to have bribed Biden. FBI headquarters branding that information as “disinformation” without undertaking an appropriate investigation is outrageous — especially since the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office was directed to further investigate the FD-1023.

The way all this is unfolding sounds more and more like something you would expect to come out of communist Russia, Cuba or China. Such cover-ups are totalitarian in origan, and practiced by the same.

The second scandal is equally as large because it reaches the top of the FBI: Director Christopher Wray. 

Wray may well have been in the dark about FBI headquarters falsely labeling the FD-1023 as misinformation and secreting it away from other agents. But framing the intel from the “highly credible” longtime FBI CHS as coming from Giuliani reeks of a cover-up. And suggesting that Barr and Brady closed down an investigation into the FD-1023 when it was instead sent to Delaware for further investigation is a cover-up.

“The more the FBI leak and coverup machine spins for President Biden, the worse the bureau looks,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told The Federalist upon learning of Barr’s statement. “Enough is enough. It’s past time for the FBI to come clean and show their work if they have any hope of salvaging their own credibility.”

Comer went further, telling The Federalist, “The FBI is attempting a coverup, and Democrats are doing their bidding by lying to the American people.”

“The FBI must produce this record to the House Oversight Committee’s custody,” Comer continued, and “if not, we will take action on Thursday to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress.”

Given Barr’s statement, that should be the least of Wray’s concerns.

Mollie Hemingway contributed to this report.

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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 Nicole Parker Op-ed: I was an FBI agent when two top agents were murdered. Bureau was focused on social justice


Nicole Parker

 Nicole Parker | Fox News | Published June 6, 2023 2:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/fbi-agent-when-two-top-agents-were-murdered-bureau-focused-social-justice

Every law enforcement officer’s family’s worst nightmare is losing their loved one to an act of violence in the line of duty. That nightmare came true the morning of February 2, 2021. FBI special agents Laura Schwartzenberger and Daniel Alfin were shot and killed by a child pornography suspect while executing a search warrant in Sunrise, Florida. Laura was not only my colleague, she was a close friend. In addition to the two veteran agents murdered, four agents were wounded. That was horrible enough. What made things even worse is when it appeared to many agents that the FBI prioritized politically motivated cases and social justice movements over addressing issues surrounding the deadly shootout.  

After serving with honor as an FBI special agent for over a dozen years, I recently walked away because of the change in the FBI’s trajectory. The FBI’s handling of Laura and Dan’s deaths was the tipping point in my decision to leave as it was emblematic of the shift in the FBI’s priorities.  

Americans are appalled with the current state of affairs at the FBI. Countless current and retired FBI employees and I share in the frustration. It’s heartbreaking that our legacies have been tarnished by those who inappropriately use their law enforcement authority to push their political agendas over fidelity to the law.  

OVERSIGHT CHAIR COMER TO HOLD FBI DIRECTOR WRAY IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS OVER BIDEN DOC ALLEGING CRIME SCHEME

But trust me, you would’ve loved Laura. She was the antithesis of all the recent FBI scandals. Her integrity was impenetrable. Laura did not mince her words as she saw the FBI changing; we explicitly discussed how we would have no part in any politicization. 

FBI special agent Laura Schwartzenberger was killed February 2, 2021.
FBI special agent Laura Schwartzenberger was killed February 2, 2021. She joined the FBI in 2005 and worked tirelessly in bringing criminals to justice. 

She was highly decorated; she won multiple awards over her career, but she was never about the accolades or fanfare. She humbly did the heaviest lifting in the FBI protecting children from predators and sexual violence. She personified Super Woman as she successfully juggled being a wife, mother, sister, friend, devout Catholic, youth Sunday school teacher, top-performing FBI Agent, artist, scuba diver and CrossFit enthusiast.  

Laura’s two young sons were her pride and joy. Although they inherited her fiercely competitive nature, as seen when they take the field for lacrosse, her top priority was to raise them to be good citizens and followers of God.  

Laura was tough as nails but tender-hearted. She had a beautiful aura and light about her countenance. Her laughter was contagious, beloved by all. Rarely in law enforcement do we discuss the evil we combat but Laura and I confided in one another as we processed dark things we witnessed. As fellow women of faith, we regularly spoke about how God would carry us through.  

The evening of Sunday, January 31, just 36 hours before Laura was murdered, she and I spoke on the phone regarding a variety of topics. As a former member of FBI Albuquerque’s SWAT team, she questioned the FBI’s recent use of SWAT nationwide for some operations she perceived to be a display of force to intimidate for political reasons. Yet, sadly, a day and a half after sharing her perspective, SWAT was not present for her and squad mates executing a search warrant on one of the most heinous, a child pornographer. 

FBI special agent Laura Schwartzenberger was killed February 2, 2021.
FBI special agent Laura Schwartzenberger also taught youth in schools regarding cyber security, social media and internet safety. 

Experienced law enforcement officers know those committing crimes against children can be extremely dangerous and violent – regardless of their prior criminal history. These subjects are desperate and know when caught, they will be in prison for a long time, so they have nothing to lose.  

In August 2004, a Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) Deputy was shot and killed in the line of duty while executing a warrant in a child pornography raid – the same crime and same county where Laura and Dan were killed. As a result, BSO learned lessons and enacted the “Todd Fatta Protocol” utilizing SWAT to varying degrees for operations.  

Hindsight is always 20/20 but I wish SWAT or a swarm of agents had been sent out the morning that Laura and Dan were murdered like the FBI deployed for the arrests of Roger Stone, Mark Houck, etc. If they had, would we be left picking up the pieces of shattered lives and families? 

When I commented recently about how people within the FBI were very concerned about speaking out due to potential retribution, the Bureau defended itself in a statement that said in part, “The FBI has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures.” 

Laura was a talented artist. This was the last painting she completed before she was killed. It depicts a lighthouse. She frequently spoke to me about the battle between light vs dark and good vs evil. She worked tirelessly on the beam of light as she wanted it to be perfect.
Laura was a talented artist. This was the last painting she completed before she was killed. It depicts a lighthouse. She frequently spoke to the author about the battle between light vs dark and good vs evil. She worked tirelessly on the beam of light as she wanted it to be perfect. 

That doesn’t address other problems at the Bureau. When I left the FBI, almost two years after their murders, The FBI director had not presented an after-action review regarding what happened. Agents in Miami and across the country wanted answers to understand what went wrong. We were left to unofficial chatter and speculation. It was difficult for agents to mitigate future risks when we didn’t even know what transpired. There was no closure.  

Yet on a weekly basis, our FBI email inboxes were flooded with messages regarding various diversity matters. But not one correspondence advising lessons learned from Laura and Dan’s tragedy.  

Agents often commented that they did not sign up to be social justice warriors or political pawns. They joined the FBI to protect and serve Americans and wanted assurance from leadership at the top that coming home alive was of preeminent importance.  

I was contacted by retired, highly decorated, 28-year veteran special agent Michael Anderson. He supports my recent commentary regarding the FBI. His father, FBI special agent Terry Ray Anderson, was shot and killed May 17, 1966, in pursuit of a kidnapping suspect. He said both his and his father’s legacies had been “destroyed” by the Bureau’s current leadership. The FBI is no longer respected like it once was, he added.  

Nicole Parker had the honor to visit the Wall of Honor during National Police Week 2023 to pay tribute to fallen heroes Laura Schwartzenberger and Daniel Alfin.
Nicole Parker had the honor to visit the Wall of Honor during National Police Week 2023 to pay tribute to fallen heroes Laura Schwartzenberger and Daniel Alfin.

Laura and Dan were murdered seeking justice for innocent children who had been victimized. In that effort, they left behind their own children. Despite the current state of the FBI, they made the ultimate sacrifice and deserve our admiration, honor and respect. 

For the FBI to be an effective law enforcement agency, the Bureau must regain the trust of the American people. Frankly, this will require drastic changes. I am hopeful and pray the FBI will return to its original roots as a law enforcement agency and make all our fallen heroes proud. 

Nicole Parker was a Special Agent with the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2010 through October 2022. In this role, Parker was responsible for investigating violations of Title 18 of the United States Code of Laws and other federal criminal statutes. Add her on Instagram: @nicoleparkerusa.

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‘Highly Credible’ Source Reveals Scandal Bigger Than Biden Bribery: FBI Election Interference


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/05/highly-credible-source-reveals-scandal-bigger-than-biden-bribery-fbi-election-interference/

FBI Director Christopher Wray

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The confidential human source (CHS) behind the detailed allegations that then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions was reportedly “highly credible” and used by the FBI in multiple criminal investigations dating back to the Obama administration. Friday’s exclusive by Fox News provides further insight into Sen. Chuck Grassley’s focus on the FBI — as opposed to the Biden family — as the primary scandal in play.

“We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against [then]-Vice President Biden are accurate,” Grassley said during an interview last week discussing FBI Director Christopher Wray’s refusal to comply with the congressional subpoena issued for the FD-1023 form. That form, dated June 30, 2020, included detailed information from a CHS to the FBI regarding an agreement by now-President Biden to deliver preferred foreign policy positions for a $5 million payment.

After Grassley revealed he had already seen the FD-1023, Fox News’ Bill Hemmer queried: “How damning is this document to the sitting U.S. president?” 

“I don’t know,” responded Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He stressed that while “there’s accusations” in the FBI report, the congressional oversight committees’ concern is whether “the FBI does its job.” “That’s what we want to know,” he continued.

Friday’s revelation that the CHS was “highly credible” and had served as a source in multiple prior criminal investigations — including ones run under the Obama-Biden administration — proves Grassley is properly focused on the FBI.

Yes, the CHS’s allegations offer more evidence of a Biden family pay-to-play scandal, and unraveling any criminal conduct by the Biden family remains important. But more significant to the future of our country is uncovering government actors responsible for violating the rule of law: America can survive select injustices, but it cannot withstand a corrupt bureaucracy that obstructs justice and interferes in elections. 

Yet that is precisely what occurred, according to the whistleblower. He claimed that “in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters’ team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” The whistleblower further alleged that the FBI HQ team that handled the Auten assessment, after concluding the reporting was disinformation, placed the information in a restricted access sub-file that only the particular agents who uncovered the CHS’s information could access. 

Now knowing the CHS behind the FD-1023 was not just “trusted,” as Grassley had previously indicated, but “highly credible,” and relied upon in multiple criminal cases dating back to the last time Biden worked for the executive branch, makes the whistleblower’s accusations even more damning because those additional facts mean the agents had reason to believe the buried accusations were true.

Not only does this evidence suggest FBI headquarters obstructed justice, but the date of the CHS’s report indicates those responsible for misbranding the intel as disinformation sought to interfere in the 2020 election. 

As Grassley’s colleague in the House, James Comer, revealed, the CHS report was dated June 30, 2020, and while the allegations against candidate Biden came from a “highly credible” CHS, the FBI closed them. According to the whistleblower, FBI headquarters closed out the source even though some of the allegations had already been verified and other details could have been verified. 

In contrast, when the bureau received a vague tip from an Australian diplomat of unknown veracity that a low-level Trump volunteer had claimed the Russians possessed dirt on Hillary Clinton, within days FBI headquarters opened an investigation into the Trump campaign.

John Durham’s special counsel report recently lay bare the impropriety of the FBI’s targeting of the Trump campaign based on unverified gossip from an unvetted source. Grassley is now highlighting the converse: the FBI’s improper branding of evidence from a “highly credible” CHS as disinformation to protect the Democrat candidate for president. 

This evidence of continuing political bias at the FBI is Grassley’s primary concern, prompting him to call for a “change in the culture.” That change will be a long time coming, however, given that Wray resisted the subpoena and appears poised to fight Grassley and congressional oversight committees every step of the way.

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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James Comer Announces Contempt Hearings For FBI Director Christopher Wray


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JUNE 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/05/james-comer-announces-contempt-hearings-for-fbi-director-christopher-wray/

Christopher Wray

Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer announced Monday that lawmakers will convene contempt hearings for FBI Director Christopher Wray later this week.

Speaking to reporters in a Capitol Hill press conference, the Kentucky representative charged the FBI with violating a congressional subpoena over an unclassified document. The FBI record purportedly implicates President Joe Biden in a $5 million-dollar bribery scheme with a “foreign national” from Biden’s time in the Obama administration.

“Anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena,” Comer warned last week.

The House Oversight chairman viewed the document in a secure SCIF at the Capitol on Monday after agency officials initially refused and demanded lawmakers travel to the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“FBI officials confirmed that the unclassified FBI generated record has not been disproven and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation,” Comer said Monday. “At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee, and we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday.”

Comer noted the document “appears” to be used in an ongoing FBI probe “which I assume is in Delaware” and promised Congress’ own investigation is only in the “beginning” stages. Agency claims that the document can’t be released, however, are likely to be met with skepticism considering the FBI hired Igor Danchenko as an undercover informant to keep the lies around the Trump-Russia investigation quiet.

Republicans have threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress for weeks over the FBI chief’s refusal to hand over the requested record. Comer submitted a subpoena for the document with Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a primary watchdog of the Justice Department in the upper chamber.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley wrote in May. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”

[RELATED: Chuck Grassley Demands DOJ Cough Up Document Over Criminal Scheme Involving Joe Biden]

While the FBI director faces contempt charges over the document implicating the president in a bribery scheme, the agency continues to stonewall congressional requests on a pair of pipe bombs found at the DNC and RNC headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio has demanded an FBI briefing on the pipe bomb investigation multiple times. According to Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, the agency previously tracked down the suspect’s car but has not identified the culprit. The FBI also found both bombs to be inoperable.

[READ: The FBI Knows What Car Was Used In J6 DNC Pipe Bomb, But Refuses To Identify Prime Suspect]

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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FBI will bring document alleging Biden ‘criminal bribery scheme’ to Capitol Hill — but a major question remains


By: CHRIS ENLOE | June 02, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/fbi-brings-biden-document-capitol-hill/

MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

FBI Director Christopher Wray will allow congressional investigators to view a document related to alleged criminal activity involving President Joe Biden.

Last month, the House Oversight Committee demanded that Wray turn over a copy of an FBI document that allegedly shows evidence that Biden, as vice president, was engaged in a “criminal bribery scheme” that involves “an exchange of money for policy decisions.”

According to Fox News, the FBI will bring the document in question to Capitol Hill on Monday. Only House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the committee, will be allowed to view the document. The document will be kept in a SCIF, a secured environment for viewing sensitive — most often, highly classified — information.

News of the planned document viewing comes after Wray offered to bring the document to Capitol Hill in a phone call with Comer on Wednesday. The FBI had previously refused to give Congress any access to the document. Bureau officials said the decision was necessary to protect confidential human sources. Still, it’s not clear whether Wray is complying with the subpoena, technically speaking.

On Wednesday, Comer said:

We have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena. If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.

A spokesman for the Republican lawmaker reaffirmed that sentiment on Thursday, suggesting the current plan may not spring Wray from contempt proceedings.

“Chairman Comer has been clear that anything short of producing the FD-1023 form to the House Oversight Committee is not compliance with his subpoena,” the spokesperson said. “This unclassified record contains pages of details that need to be investigated further by the House Oversight Committee.”

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Leading GOP Election Officials: Feds’ ‘Treasonous’ Interference Is A ‘Direct Attack’ On U.S. Elections


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JUNE 02, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/02/leading-gop-election-officials-feds-treasonous-interference-is-a-direct-attack-on-u-s-elections/

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Several leading Republican election officials are sounding the alarm about the federal government’s persistent interference in U.S. elections.

Jay Ashcroft and Mac Warner, the secretaries of state of Missouri and West Virginia, respectively, recently told The Federalist they are increasingly worried about the mounting evidence documenting federal agencies’ interference in prior elections to the benefit of the Democrat Party.

Ashcroft pointed to the long-awaited report from U.S. Attorney John Durham that confirmed what The Federalist has been reporting for years: The FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election. The political investigation — which was “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” — would continue throughout the 2016 election and well into Trump’s presidency.

This type of behavior from government agencies “is what you expect out of a banana republic,” Ashcroft said. “It is a direct attack on a foundational aspect of our country, that being fair, free elections.” As it turns out, he noted, “the largest purveyor of misinformation and disinformation with regard to elections [over the course of] the last several years has been the federal government.”

Warner echoed similar sentiments, calling the report’s findings “extraordinary” and adding that he can’t recall an instance in U.S. history where “our own federal agencies have gotten involved in an election to the point of lying to the American people to sway the outcome … for one candidate and one party.”

The 2016 election wasn’t the only one in which U.S. intel agencies decided to intervene to boost Democrats’ electoral prospects. Last month, a report released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated the CIA “both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot.” The letter — which was signed by more than 50 former intel officials — was used as a pretext by Big Tech companies and legacy media to censor and ignore the New York Post’s reporting on the Bidens’ shady business dealings ahead of the 2020 election.

During his Oct. 2020 debate with Trump, Biden even cited the letter to dismiss Trump’s mention of the Post report, accusing the then-Republican president of partaking in a “Russian plan.” It’s also worth noting that during an August interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted Facebook algorithmically suppressed stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election after being primed to do so by the FBI. According to Zuckerberg, the FBI warned Facebook about forthcoming “Russian propaganda” just before reports of the laptop dropped.

Polls taken since the 2020 election have shown that the coordinated efforts between U.S. intelligence agencies, America’s regime media, and social media companies to censor and ignore the Post’s reporting may have tipped the election to Biden. As Federalist CEO Sean Davis reported, a 2022 poll by TIPP Insights “found that 47 percent of those polled, including 45 percent of independents, said knowing the laptop contents were real and not Russian disinformation likely would have changed their votes in the 2020 election.”

In his remarks to The Federalist, Warner took specific aim at then-Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who, according to testimony from ex-CIA official Michael Morell, played a role in the creation of the debunked letter. During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Morell said Blinken reached out to him to discuss the laptop story several days after it dropped and that the call “absolutely” pushed him to write the infamous letter. Morell additionally confirmed one of the main reasons he released the letter was because he “wanted [Biden] to win the election.”

“Using the word treason is not out of context. It’s treasonous when you betray your own, and this [was] a betrayal by our own people,” Warner said. “These agencies are supposed to protect us, and [yet] they are the ones who are perpetrating this fraud on the American people. You just can’t get any more insidious or dangerous than that.”

Warner has been among several Republican elected officials to call for Blinken’s resignation.

While discussing the integrity of future elections, Ashcroft and Warner both emphasized that failure to hold America’s intel agencies accountable for their previous shenanigans will only result in continued interference in future elections.

“Unless there is real punishment for the people involved, it will continue in future elections,” Ashcroft said. “They are violating federal law by being involved in elections in a political way that they are not allowed to be and they are using that to change the outcome. They are using … not just their office, but their clearance and their job titles, and using that to change the outcome of our elections. I don’t know what’s more severe than that.”

It’s worth mentioning that Missouri and West Virginia have implemented several election integrity reforms in recent years. Last year, Missouri passed legislation requiring voters to “provide a form of personal photo identification that is consistent” with state law in order to vote. Meanwhile, West Virginia, according to Warner, has successfully removed more than 400,000 ineligible voters from its voter registration lists since 2016. Both states were also among those to withdraw from ERIC — a leftist-controlled voter-roll management group — earlier this year.

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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Person alleging Biden criminal bribery scheme is a ‘highly credible’ FBI source used since Obama admin: Source


Brooke Singman

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published June 2, 2023 2:59pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/person-alleging-biden-criminal-bribery-scheme-is-a-highly-credible-fbi-source-used-since-obama-admin-source

EXCLUSIVE: The individual behind the information that then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national is a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source who has been used by the bureau in multiple investigative matters dating back to the Obama administration, Fox News Digital has learned.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley were approached by a whistleblower alleging that the FBI was in possession of a document—an FD-1023 form, dated June 30, 2020—which explicitly detailed information provided by a confidential human source alleging Biden, while serving as vice president, was involved in a $5 million criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national in exchange for influence over policy decisions.

WHISTLEBLOWER ALLEGES FBI, DOJ HAVE DOCUMENT REVEALING CRIMINAL SCHEME INVOLVING BIDEN, FOREIGN NATIONAL

A source familiar told Fox News Digital on Friday that the confidential human source who provided the Biden information to the FBI was a “pre-existing” FBI source who has been used in multiple investigative matters separate from the Biden information.

President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden speaks at the University of Tampa on Feb. 9, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The source told Fox News Digital that the confidential human source was used by the FBI for “at least several years” before the generation of the June 2020 FD-1023 form detailing the Biden allegations. 

The source also told Fox News Digital that the confidential human source has been “consistently reviewed by the FBI” and has been “found to be highly credible.”

FBI TO BRING BIDEN DOCUMENT TO CAPITOL HILL MONDAY, AFTER THREATS TO HOLD WRAY IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS

The source said the individual participated in investigative matters during the Obama administration. The FBI did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed the FBI’s FD-1023 document last month, but the bureau did not comply because it said it was trying to protect sources and methods. Comer threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress if the bureau did not turn over the physical document to the committee. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray
FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a news conference on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Nebraska. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

WHITE HOUSE INSISTS NO ‘POLITICAL INTERFERENCE’ IN HUNTER BIDEN PROBE AFTER IRS WHISTLEBLOWER COMES FORWARD

The information in the FD-1023 form, according to the whistleblower, reveals “a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose” and details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions. 

Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

An FD-1023 form is used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources. The form is used to document information as told to an FBI agent, but recording that information does not validate or weigh it against other information known by the FBI.

SIX ADDITIONAL BIDEN FAMILY MEMBERS ‘MAY HAVE BENEFITED’ FROM HUNTER BUSINESS DEALINGS

The FBI offered to allow Comer and Grassley to review the document at FBI headquarters and later agreed to bring the physical document to Capitol Hill Monday for lawmakers to review in a secure SCIF. The FBI is also expected to deliver a briefing to the lawmakers in that same setting on the Biden document and allegations on Monday. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley speaks into mircrophone during hearing
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IO).  (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The White House has maintained that President Biden is not involved in any foreign business dealings and said that he has never spoken to his son, Hunter Biden, about them. Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2018 for his “tax affairs” linked to suspicious foreign transactions. 

Biden administration officials maintain the president has never discussed investigations into members of his family with the Justice Department.

When asked for comment, the White House pointed Fox News Digital to a previous statement made last month, saying “Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically-motivated attacks against the President and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.” 

“That’s because they prefer floating anonymous innuendo, amplified by the megaphone of their allies in rightwing media, to get attention and try to distract and deflect from their own unpopular ideas and lack of solutions to the issues the American people actually care about,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said in May. “When it comes to President Biden’s personal finances, anybody can take a look: he has offered an unprecedented level of transparency, releasing a total of 25 years of tax returns to the American public.”

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Breadcrumbs From a Buried FBI Source May Lead to a Bigger Biden Scandal


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 31, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/31/breadcrumbs-from-a-buried-fbi-source-may-lead-to-a-bigger-biden-scandal/

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ALL EMPHASIS ARE BY ME – Jerry Broussard WDYS

After a confidential human source claimed then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions, FBI agents used what’s called an FD-1023 form to record the allegation. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is defying a May 3 congressional subpoena to provide this form. On Tuesday, in response to Wray’s refusal to hand over the documents, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer announced the House will move to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress. 

It isn’t that announcement — or even the other explosive ones released over the past year by Comer’s Senate colleague, Chuck Grassley — that prove the most telling, however. Rather, it is the combination of all the details, big and small, that suggests the scandal set to unfold over the coming weeks will be bigger than anyone imagined.

The Dirt Is in the Details

Take recent big news from whistleblower disclosures revealing that the Justice Department and the FBI have the unclassified FD-1023 form spelling out Biden’s alleged criminal behavior. Then combine that with other known information to discover the bigger picture.

For instance, in response to Wray’s failure to comply with the subpoena, Grassley, who had previously noted the FD-1023 form was five or six pages long, indicated that the confidential human source (CHS) was “an apparent trusted FBI source.” This is huge because Grassley wouldn’t make that claim unless the whistleblower had. That means the source is not some random guy walking in off the street, but rather an existing “trusted” CHS, which is why the FBI used the FD-1023 form.

In response to Wray’s stonewalling, Comer likewise revealed some significant details, clarifying late last week that the CHS reporting document was dated June 30, 2020, and referenced “the amount of money the foreign national allegedly paid to receive the desired policy outcome” as “five million.” These details could only have come from a whistleblower with deep knowledge of the investigation, meaning the whistleblower’s characterization of the CHS as “trusted” carries more weight. Likewise, the whistleblower’s claim that the FD-1023 “includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” is more credible given the whistleblower’s knowledge of other details.

Comer’s reference to “five million” is also intriguing. In a letter to Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, Grassley had previously revealed a promise by a Chinese communist government-connected enterprise to funnel $5 million to “Hunter and James Biden to compensate them for work done while Joe Biden was vice president.” Records released by Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., also confirmed a $5 million payment to James and Hunter Biden from another Chinese-connected business. 

The date of the FD-1023 form, June 30, 2020, also proves significant when read in conjunction with Grassley’s letter to Wray in July 2022. In that letter, Grassley said the whistleblower had claimed that “the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity,” but “that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters (‘FBI HQ’) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” 

The whistleblower further alleged that in September 2020, the FBI HQ team that handled the Auten assessment, after concluding the reporting was disinformation, placed the information in a restricted access sub-file that only the particular agents who uncovered the CHS’s information could access. 

Several points merit mention here: First, Auten is the same agent responsible for some of the shenanigans in Crossfire Hurricane. Second, Grassley’s letter indicates Auten did not open the “assessment” on Hunter Biden or other members of the Biden family. The senator’s correspondence actually suggests the assessment may have been opened on the CHS.

Here’s the relevant language:

The basis for how the FBI HQ team selected the specific information for inclusion in Auten’s assessment is unknown, but in more than one instance the focus of the FBI HQ team’s attention involved derogatory information about Hunter Biden.

The whistleblower also reportedly told Grassley that FBI HQ later closed sources after branding their info as disinformation. Given the timing of the assessment (August 2020) and the date of the CHS report (June 2020), it seems likely the FBI used the CHS report as part of the “assessment” and that the “assessment” was of the CHS.

This leads to the next significant point: According to the whistleblower, Auten’s assessment led to the “improper discrediting” of the verified and verifiable derogatory information about Hunter Biden. Worse, based on several hints dropped by Grassley over the last year, FBI headquarters conducted little to no investigation on the CHS and other derogatory info before labeling it “disinformation.”

The timing of the CHS report in June 2020 also proves conveniently coincidental to the decision by Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mark Warner, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Adam Schiff to send a letter just two weeks later, on July 13, 2020, to the FBI claiming Congress was being subjected to a foreign disinformation campaign. On July 16, 2020, the then-ranking members of two congressional committees asked the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force — the same one that handled the “assessment” that branded the Hunter Biden intel as disinformation — to give the committees a defensive briefing. News of that “Russian disinformation” briefing soon leaked to the press. 

What About a Recording?

Grassley’s correspondence and statements over the last year hint at one more possibility: The FBI had at least one recording that implicated members of the Biden family in a criminal enterprise and buried that evidence. Specifically, in one letter to the bureau, Grassley said other FBI records “shed light on Hunter Biden’s business and financial relationship with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky,” and those “documents include specific details about conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden.” Grassley had previously requested interview summary forms that referenced Zlochevsky, and in seeking FBI records, the senator’s letter made clear that “records” included “recorded or graphic material,” including “recordings of verbal communications.” This possibility fits with the whistleblower’s description of “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” that FBI HQ shut down in October 2020 “in furtherance of Mr. Auten’s assessment,” even though, according to the whistleblower, the intel could have been verified by use of search warrants. 

A follow-up question Grassley asked Wray further suggests the possibility of recorded conversations implicating the Bidens: “Does the Justice Department have a specific policy regarding the use of materials and information related to U.S. citizens who reside in the United States provided by foreign governments, including the fruits of surveillance carried out by a foreign state’s intelligence service?”

Whether these possibilities pan out remains to be seen, but what should be clear to all now is that the whistleblower knows where the evidence is buried — and Grassley and Comer have brought their shovels.

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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Comer Not Satisfied With Wray’s Subpoena Response, Contempt Charge Looms


By Eric Mack    |   Wednesday, 31 May 2023 04:36 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/us/james-comer-oversight-fbi/2023/05/31/id/1121882/

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., held a call with FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday on a refusal to hand over an FBI whistleblower document to Congress, potentially setting the stage for a historic contempt of Congress charge.

“On my call with FBI Director Wray, the FBI finally confirmed the existence of the FD-1023 form alleging then-VP Joe Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme,” Comer tweeted Wednesday after the call. “Anything short of producing these documents to @GOPoversight is not in compliance with my subpoena.”

Comer’s statement detailed the call with Wray, including the first time confirmation of FD-1023 form alleging Biden’s “criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national.” 

“However, Director Wray did not commit to producing the documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee,” Comer’s statement continued. “While Director Wray – after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed – has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena.

“If the FBI fails to hand over the FD-1023 form as required by the subpoena, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.”

A source told Newsmax congressional correspondent Kilmeny Duchardt on  Newsmax‘s “American Agenda,” the call did not go well and will ultimately force Comer and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to call for a vote on holding Wray in contempt of Congress.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime whistleblower advocate working with Comer, condemned the FBI for treating Congress like “second-class citizens” while leaking other information to the media.

“While the FBI has apparently leaked classified information to the news media in recent weeks, jeopardizing its own human sources, it continues to treat Congress like second-class citizens by refusing to provide a specific unclassified record,” Grassley wrote in a statement. “Director Wray confirmed what my whistleblowers have told me pursuant to legally protected disclosures: the FBI-generated document is real, but the bureau has yet to provide it to Congress in defiance of a legitimate congressional subpoena. This failure comes with consequences.”

Comer said Tuesday he was moving forward with holding Wray in contempt of Congress because the FBI missed the deadline to turn over the FBI record on Biden and his family’s foreign business dealings.

“The FBI’s decision to stiff-arm Congress and hide this information from the American people is obstructionist and unacceptable,” Comer wrote in a statement.

In response, the FBI said in a Tuesday statement it remained committed to cooperating with lawmakers in “good faith,” and “any discussion of escalation under these circumstances is unnecessary.” The FBI said it offered to give the Oversight committee “access to information responsive to the committee’s subpoena in a format and setting that maintains confidentiality and protects important security interests and the integrity of FBI investigations.”

The bureau called that offer “an extraordinary accommodation.”

The offer was reportedly repeated to Comer on Wednesday, but House GOP members believe it has oversight authority that should force the FBI to turn that document over the Congress without a secure viewing alternative.

Calls to move forward with contempt were elevated by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier Tuesday, who said he had personally called Wray to urge the release of the document to Congress.

“If he does not act, he’s not above the law,” McCarthy said. “He’s not above Congress. And we will hold him in contempt. Now I want to be very clear about that.”

Comer subpoenaed Wray earlier this month seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. These reports are routine, contain uncorroborated and unvetted information and do not on their own establish any wrongdoing.

In a May 3 letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Comer said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

Comer and Grassley said those “disclosures” demand further investigation, and they want to know whether the FBI investigated and, if so, what agents found. The subpoena seeks all so-called FD-1023 forms and accompanying attachments and documents.

Democrats on the Oversight committee called Comer’s narrative of the FBI obstructing “a radical distortion of the situation.” And they accused the chairman of stonewalling them from the call with Wray on Wednesday.

“This subpoenaed document, by definition, reveals nothing more than an unverified and unsubstantiated tip made to Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which presumably led to no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement late Tuesday.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

The White House has called the subpoena effort further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Biden family “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

A contempt of Congress charge would require a full committee vote before going to the House floor. If the House were to approve a contempt resolution against Wray, the decision about whether to prosecute him would fall to prosecutors in the Justice Department, where Wray works.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Here’s What the IRS Whistleblower Will Tell Lawmakers About the Hunter Biden Probe Behind Closed Doors


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 26, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/26/heres-what-the-irs-whistleblower-will-tell-lawmakers-about-the-hunter-biden-probe-behind-closed-doors/

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IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley will appear before the House Ways and Means Committee later Friday morning to submit to questioning from both Democrats and Republicans.

Missing, however, will be any members of the Senate Finance Committee, which refused to conduct a joint interview with the House oversight committee. While Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, held the power to authorize Senate representatives to attend the transcribed interview of the whistleblower.

Smith inexplicably ignored Shapley’s statement that he “would welcome” the participation of designated Senate staffers in the House hearing. Thus, the House hearing will proceed, but not on a bicameral basis. 

According to a person familiar with the proceedings, the House Ways and Means Committee will convene at 9:30 a.m., with Shapley appearing for questioning with his two lawyers, Mark Lytle from Nixon Peabody and Tristan Leavitt of Empower Oversight. The closed-door questioning is expected to last all day.

While the Ways and Means Committee will question Shapley in a closed session, the public can guess the content of much of his testimony given the high-profile nature of the case against Hunter Biden. In fact, neither Shapley nor his attorneys have ever publicly confirmed that Hunter Biden is the target of the Internal Revenue Service investigation, yet it is uniformly agreed that the whistleblower’s testimony concerns the handling of the tax probe into the president’s son.

Shapley, a 14-year veteran at the IRS, provided some insight into his likely testimony when he sat for an exclusive interview with CBS News on Wednesday. During that interview, Shapley explained that he was first assigned to the investigation in January 2020. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process,” Shapley told CBS News. “It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past,” the whistleblower stressed.

Shapley further claimed during the interview that “there were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice.” That statement coincides with the information contained in an earlier letter sent by the whistleblower’s lawyers to the oversight committees. That letter maintained that the whistleblower has detailed “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” 

“People directly familiar with the case” provided more particulars to Shapley’s claims, asserting that “specific DOJ employees placed strictures on questions, witnesses and tactics investigators may be allowed to pursue that could impact President Biden.” The unnamed sources also stressed that the improper politicization of the case came from the Justice Department and FBI headquarters. 

When read together, these details raise a huge red flag because they mean the interference from the DOJ and FBI headquarters began under the Trump administration. So, who in the Trump administration was responsible for slow-walking the Hunter Biden investigation? What investigative steps were not taken? 

In a letter from Shapley’s legal team to the congressional oversight committees, he spoke of irregularities beginning in the summer of 2020 in both the DOJ Tax Division and an unnamed U.S. attorney’s office, which CNN would later report is the office of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018. 

Another detail from Shapley’s CBS News interview that foreshadows the content of his Friday testimony concerns his explanation of the “red line” meeting that convinced the IRS supervisory special agent his oath of office required him to come forward. According to Shapley, while he had been noticing deviations in the investigative process for a couple of years, he just couldn’t “fathom that DOJ might be acting unethically.” Then came an October 2022 meeting he had with federal prosecutors, after which Shapley told CBS News, “It just got to that point where that switch was turned on, and I just couldn’t silence my conscience anymore.”

While the CBS News interview did not air further details about the meeting, a letter from Shapley’s legal team described a “charged meetings on October 7, 2022,” during which the U.S. attorney — reportedly Weiss — “became aware that both the IRS and the FBI had longstanding concerns about the handling of the case” and that those concerns had been communicated up the chain of command. Then, after an Oct. 17, 2022, meeting at which Shapley continued to raise concerns, he and his investigative team were excluded from future meetings on the case.

Shapley seems poised to name names on Friday, and his attorney has told Just the News that “he’ll be able to talk about these meetings that he attended, that were with both agents and prosecutors.” Shapley summarized those meetings and distributed his notes to the IRS and other agents, his lawyer explained, and along with his emails, these documents will corroborate his story. 

The whistleblower can also identify other IRS agents who participated in the meetings and can confirm his testimony. The DOJ’s decision earlier this month to remove Shapley’s entire investigative team from the Hunter Biden investigation may backfire, serving as a catalyst to loosen the other agents’ lips.

But in the meantime, it will be Shapley doing the talking. And while Americans won’t know at once what the IRS supervisory special agent has to say, the House Ways and Means Committee has the authority to submit the information obtained from Sharpley to both the Senate and the House of Representatives, thereby making the testimony public. 

Democrats used that statutory carveout to release Trump’s tax information publicly, and Republicans should follow their lead — and soon.

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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Rep. Cline to Newsmax: Committee Will Hear From Durham on FBI


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Thursday, 25 May 2023 12:41 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ben-cline-john-durham-fbi/2023/05/25/id/1121197/

Special counsel John Durham will speak with members of the House Judiciary Committee in coming weeks, and members will hear “exactly how the FBI lied to the American people” with its investigative actions during former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, speaking at a time when Americans need to know “just how deep the rot in our intelligence agencies has gone,” Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., said Thursday. 

“He’s going to be able to tell us exactly how the FBI lied to the American people, how they used the Steele dossier when they knew it was false and based on false premises, and how it was pushed to use the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrants to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016,” Cline said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.”

The deceptions continued, Cline said, with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2018, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in 2020, and the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. 

“We would just like to have an election season without interference from our intelligence agencies,” said Cline. “Is that so much to ask?”

Meanwhile, there are several ways the House can prevent the Department of Justice, under Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray from continuing such behavior, said Cline. 

“We have several options ot our disposal in Congress,” he said. “We have the power of the purse, and right now the appropriations bills for the FBI. They want a new office building, a giant new office building [to be] built. These kinds of things are being looked at very skeptically by appropriators.”

Cline said there also is legislation that can be brought into play, including reauthorizing the FISA process, which expires at the end of this year.

“If they want that tool, we might have to take that tool away,” he said. 

Another legislative tool was put in place when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took office and agreed to restore line-item revisions of individual bureaucrats’ salaries in appropriations bills “so we can go in and line item, whether it’s Anthony Fauci or Christopher Wray, those will be subject to debate and vote in the House of Representatives.”

Cline also on Thursday discussed the impasse between House Republicans and President Joe Biden’s administration on debt ceiling talks, saying it was Biden “from the very beginning” who has been the problem. 

“It was the president from the very beginning, stomping [his] feet and crossing [his] arms and saying, My way or the highway, pass a clean debt ceiling with no reforms,” said Cline. “That’s not acceptable, and that’s what he was doing for several months while the speaker was saying, ‘Come to the table, let’s start negotiating. Let’s talk.'”

The House passed its debt ceiling bill with a GOP majority vote, Cline added. 

“We’re the only body to have passed legislation that actually raised the debt ceiling with a number of conditions that are popular among 80% of the people, with work requirements for welfare, energy independence,” Cline said. “The president should be at the table negotiating and should agree to cut spending.”

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Here’s A Big Tell Democrats Believe The FBI Works For Them


BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/24/heres-a-big-tell-democrats-believe-the-fbi-works-for-them/

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Democrats are communicating loud and clear that they support law enforcement so long as it abuses police power to serve their political goals. They want to defund police who enforce the law and expand police forces that use law as a political weapon on Democrats’ behalf.

One proof is that in last week’s hearing on FBI weaponization, support for the FBI was split exactly by political party. Democrats uniformly supported the FBI in face of evidence of gross and systemic abuse of power, while Republicans uniformly criticized it. This is a clear tell that Democrats consider the FBI to be working for them — a shocking and dangerous situation.

“Every single Republican on the Judiciary Committee is committed to fundamental change in how that [FBI secret warrant] process works,” Rep. Jim Jordan told Maria Bartiromo Sunday in a post-hearing interview. “…the FISA and the appropriations process is how you rein in this agency that targeted good men, like Garret O’Boyle, Stephen Friend, and Marcus Allen, who had the courage to come forward and testify this week and tell the American people what’s going on with their tax dollars in the Justice Department.”

The last week has surfaced numerous new facts about serious ongoing and systemic FBI abuses of law enforcement powers. Special Counsel John Durham’s report showed that the FBI acted in a clearly partisan manner in multiple situations, including protecting the Hillary Clinton campaign while placing informants and electronic wiretaps on the Trump campaign based on fabricated evidence their agents didn’t check.

In Thursday’s hearing, the three whistleblowers detailed the FBI’s cruel retaliation against themselves and their families when they filed legally protected ethics complaints about: the FBI surveilling parents who complained about Democrats’ education policies at school board meetings; the FBI pursuing a SWAT-style raid against a cooperative man who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally; and the FBI inflating “domestic terrorism” cases to bolster Democrats’ false and horrifying claim that their political opponents are terrorists.

Allen told the committee it appears the FBI is conducting a “purge” of conservatives. Michael Shellenberger and Madeleine Rowley reported, “No mainstream media journalist interviewed the FBI whistleblowers before demonizing them.”

During that hearing, it was also revealed that the Bank of America gave the FBI private banking information about any American who used BOA credit cards near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, without any warrant, and regardless of whether those people committed any crimes or even were on the Capitol grounds that day.

“FBI leadership pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to create the perception that DVE is organically rising around the country,” says a congressional staff report released May 18.

Saturday reporting on a secret court filing showed the FBI broke the law by spying on Americans 278,000 times, without any warrants, in 2021 alone. “For each American the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the bureau illicitly surveilled almost 1,000 additional Americans,” reported the New York Post on Sunday. The whistleblowers noted that the FBI rewards agents for opening more warrantless surveillance and searches of Americans’ communications.

Then on Sunday a poll came out showing the majority of Americans believe the FBI covers up Democrats’ crimes — specifically those of the Biden family. It also showed that 70 percent of Americans are concerned the FBI and other intelligence agencies interfere with elections, and believe the agencies need “wide-ranging reform.”

Don’t forget, either, that the only former president’s home the FBI has ever raided was a Republican’s, while FBI officials bent over backward to avoid touching even convincing evidence of criminal behavior related to Clinton, according to Durham’s documentation. The FBI’s recent record is clearly partisan, and that’s why its support is also now partisan.

This partisanship is not just typical politics. It’s over fundamental issues, not differing ways to get to the same goal. It’s also very dangerous to our country.

When federal law enforcement becomes the shock troops of only one political party, you don’t have the rule of law anymore. Law is only legitimate if it is equally applied to all. When members of one party or set of political beliefs are above the law and use the law not for justice but as a weapon against their political enemies, that’s what we call a police state.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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FBI Whistleblower to Newsmax: Agency’s Upper Echelon Must Go


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Tuesday, 23 May 2023 03:07 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/fbi-whistleblower-oboyle/2023/05/23/id/1120920/

FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle, whose testimony last week before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government detailed the retribution he faced after speaking out against the agency’s practices, told Newsmax on Tuesday that he thinks the “lion’s share of the upper echelons of management in the FBI” need to go. O’Boyle also said on Newsmax’s “John Bachman Now” that he’s been hearing from FBI personnel on all levels who agree with him and that they “see the same things.”

“Since my testimony, I’ve heard from several other agents and FBI employees from all over the nation, different field offices and they all are telling me, ‘We are with you.’ … That’s even up to the GS14 and GS15 level, which is your first-line supervisor and mid-level management,” O’Boyle said.

But he added that it’s the “senior-executive staff level and up through the assistant director, up to the director himself, need to clean house. I think it’s the only way that the FBI hopefully someday can become a respected institution again. But it certainly isn’t that right now.”

O’Boyle’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, who appeared with his client on Newsmax, said it angers him that the media has “absolutely no interest” in getting to the heart “of the misconduct that’s been going on in the highest levels of our government, both at the FBI and the Department of Justice.”

Binnall added that the media are more concerned about stopping former President Donald Trump than going after the FBI and DOJ, which will “stop at nothing to cover up people like Hillary Clinton, who have very seriously abused our system, and they’re never going to talk about people like Garret, who have courageously stood up for accountability.”

O’Boyle also said that he thinks the nation is at a “sad point” as it has a “two-tiered system” of justice.

“It’s very clear to anyone who’s paying attention,” he said. “The government will come for anybody they want, but if you’re in those upper echelons like Hillary Clinton, you can walk free and no one’s going to bat an eye.”

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Merrick Garland’s J6 Juries Prove Durham’s Point: Conservatives Can’t Get A Fair Trial In D.C.


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 22, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/22/merrick-garlands-j6-juries-prove-durhams-point-conservatives-cant-get-a-fair-trial-in-d-c/

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Special Counsel John Durham breached neither ethics nor etiquette when he highlighted the difficulty of obtaining a conviction in a politically charged case when the jury holds opposing partisan views. He merely stated the reality on the ground in D.C.-area federal courts. And by his own actions prosecuting the J6 defendants solely in the nation’s capital, Attorney General Merrick Garland has confirmed that assessment by proving the corollary: Criminal cases against individuals viewed by the local populace as political pariahs make for easy convictions. 

“Did the Durham Report’s Criticism of Juries Go Too Far?” The Washington Post’s headline from last week asked rhetorically. It was quite an ironic concern coming from the legacy outlet serially guilty of publishing fake news to propagate the Russia-collusion hoax. A better question for the “democracy dies in darkness” rag would be: Did Clinton and Democrats’ Dirty Politics Go Too Far?

But no, instead of focusing on the substantive content contained in the 300-plus pages of Durham’s report detailing malfeasance by the Department of Justice and FBI and the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for the scandal, The Washington Post focused on Durham’s introductory remarks explaining the “special care” the special counsel’s office used in making criminal charging decisions — decisions Durham stressed were “based solely on the facts and evidence developed in the investigation and without fear of, or favor to, any person.”

After noting the high burden the Constitution places on the government in criminal cases, Durham explained why, in numerous instances, he did not seek criminal charges even though the conduct deserved “censure or disciplinary action.” 

“In examining politically-charged and high-profile issues such as these, the Office must exercise — and has exercised — special care,” Durham explained. “First, juries can bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters,” Durham continued, “and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction, separate and apart from the strength of the actual evidence and despite a court’s best efforts to empanel a fair and impartial jury.”

Those taking umbrage at Durham’s remarks, claiming they erode faith in our justice system, seem to have missed that the Justice Department’s manual, “The Principles of Federal Prosecution,” quoted in the special counsel report, makes the same point. Sometimes while “the law and the facts create a sound, prosecutable case,” the manual explained, there is still “the likelihood of an acquittal due to unpopularity of some aspect of the prosecution or because of the overwhelming popularity of the defendant or his/her cause…” It continues:

For example, in a civil rights case or a case involving an extremely popular political figure, it might be clear that the evidence of guilt viewed objectively by an unbiased factfinder would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction, yet the prosecutor might reasonably doubt, based on the circumstances, that the jury would convict.

Prosecutors in such cases, the manual explained, might assess a guilty verdict unlikely “based on factors extraneous to an objective view of the law and the facts.”

In other words, biased juries and politics, rather than an “objective view of the law and the facts,” may dictate whether a defendant is convicted or acquitted. These are not merely the sentiments of Durham or Republicans, but the Department of Justice. So it isn’t Durham’s words that erode trust in the legal system, but rather insular juries.

It also isn’t merely the unsuccessful cases Durham brought against Michael Sussmann in the D.C. federal court and Igor Danchenko in the nearby federal court in Virginia that foster Americans’ distrust of the justice system. It is also the DOJ’s insistence that the scores of J6 prosecutions remain in the nation’s capital.

D.C. Jury Pool Is Biased

Following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, the Department of Justice has charged hundreds with federal crimes. Because the alleged offenses occurred in D.C., federal law provides that “venue,” meaning the physical location for the criminal proceedings, is proper in the federal D.C. district court. 

Congress, however, has provided two bases to change venue. First, a federal court must transfer the criminal proceedings if the defendant requests a change of venue and “so great a prejudice against the defendant exists … that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial there.” 

While many J6 defendants have moved for a change of venue based on such prejudice, the DOJ has uniformly opposed the transfers. And because the “so great prejudice” standard is nearly insurmountable, the federal D.C. district court has denied the change of venue requests, even against evidence that 90 percent of D.C. voters cast their ballots against Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Furthermore, while almost everyone in D.C. knows about the indictments, polls show more than 70 percent of them — which is 15 percent higher than the national average — have formed an opinion about guilt or innocence.

Nor have the D.C. federal courts granted a change of venue “for convenience” — a second statutory basis Congress provided — which would allow the J6 defendants to be tried in their home states for their convenience, the convenience of witnesses, and “in the interest of justice.” Given that the DOJ farmed out the J6 cases to field offices throughout the United States, tasking local agents with surveilling and arresting the defendants, and that there are U.S. attorney offices in every state, trying the defendants across the country is also no inconvenience to the federal government. 

So even if the prejudice is not “so great” that it is mandatory to change the venue of the case, why does the DOJ oppose the discretionary transfer for convenience? 

Because Garland — like Durham — knows D.C. juries “bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction.” In fact, so great is the concern of a pro-DOJ bias that several defendants have made the nearly unheard-of decision in a criminal case to waive their right to a jury trial and have the judge decide their fate.

Americans likewise recognize the effect biased juries have on case outcomes. The attorney general ignoring the public perception of Lady Justice peaking from behind her blindfold will further erode respect for the judicial system and likely prompt future jurors to convert the trial process to a payback system — convicting the innocent or acquitting the guilty in a misguided attempt to right the scales of justice.

What Courts and Congress Should Do

The courts and Congress can and should respond. When faced with discretionary venue changes for “convenience,” courts should weigh more the “convenience” of the defendants and “the interest of justice.” When a question of mandatory transfers based on “great prejudice” arises, the courts should stop pretending our partisan divide is passable based on jurors’ promises.

Congress has several options too. While it has authorized the Supreme Court to promulgate rules governing federal criminal procedures, it retains the power to enact its own rules. At a minimum, in high-profile criminal cases, Congress should grant both the prosecution and the defense more “peremptory challenges” — challenges to members of the jury pool that can be used for any reason (except invidious discrimination). This will eliminate some of the most concerning situations. 

For instance, in Durham’s trial against Hillary Clinton’s former lawyer, Sussmann, the federal judge rejected several of Durham’s “for-cause” challenges against jurors who had contributed to the Clinton campaign. When for-cause challenges fail, attorneys must rely on a limited number of peremptory challenges, six for the special counsel’s legal team and 10 for Sussmann. Expanding the number of peremptory challenges would allow for the removal of more potentially prejudiced jurors, and without a venue change, this represents the best mechanism for ensuring an unbiased jury.

More significantly, though, Congress should amend the venue rules to give defendants a better opportunity to relocate highly politicized cases to less partisan locales. While the courts already have that power, they have proved themselves too parsimonious to date. 

But what about when partisanship prejudices the prosecution? Here, the Sixth Amendment places limits on venue, providing that in “all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law…”

In other words, while a defendant may consent to a change of venue, he can also demand a trial in “the State and district wherein the crime” was committed. 

However, the Constitution also gives Congress the authority to “ascertain” the districts. To counter the overwhelmingly parochial D.C. populace, redrawing the borders of the district to limit venue there to the physical Capitol buildings, and then have the rest of D.C. subsumed by the surrounding districts in Virginia and Maryland, would ensure a broader jury pool.

Only so much can be done, however, to ensure juries don’t supplant the rule of law with their political passions, acquitting the guilty because they prefer the defendant’s politics to the prosecutor’s. But that’s the reality that comes from a constitutional system that protects individual rights against government abuse and believes “that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

That’s a good thing, especially as the current DOJ frames pro-lifers and parents as domestic terrorists. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to remind Americans that juries may not convict because of strongly held political passions rather than actual innocence. Nor is it a bad thing to push Congress to ensure the venue statutes counter bias to the largest extent possible.

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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FBI Office Handling the Hunter Biden Investigation Failed the Russia-Hoax Test


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 19, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/19/fbi-office-handling-the-hunter-biden-investigation-failed-the-russia-hoax-test/

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The same FBI field office covering the Hunter Biden investigation lost Russian Igor Danchenko “in plain sight,” John Durham’s special counsel report revealed. Yet when Danchenko’s FBI handler pulled details of that prior espionage investigation mere days after Danchenko was opened as a confidential human source (CHS), the agent failed to document Danchenko’s suspicious history or alert the Crossfire Hurricane team to the fact that Danchenko could be a Russian spy. These facts and more add to the already outrageous details disclosed during Durham’s failed prosecution of Danchenko — such as that the FBI paid Danchenko hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fraud he helped perpetrate on the country.

While Durham failed to convict Danchenko of lying to the FBI, the October 2022 trial of the man who served as Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source exposed extensive malfeasance by both the Crossfire Hurricane team and later Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff. Among other things, the evidence and court filings revealed that agents opened Danchenko as a CHS even though the FBI had previously launched an espionage investigation into the Russian. However, the special counsel’s report added more details, greatly expanding the scandal.

For instance, after noting the previously reported fact that Danchenko had been the subject of an FBI counterespionage investigation from 2009 to 2011, Durham detailed the basis for the launch of that probe. As Durham explained, a researcher from the Brookings Institution — the D.C. think tank at which Danchenko worked at the time — informed a government contact that Danchenko had commented he “had access to people who would be willing to pay money for classified information.” 

The FBI later interviewed the Brookings Institution researcher who repeated Danchenko’s apparent espionage outreach. Durham also revealed that a second Brookings employee stated he had harbored suspicions that Danchenko was connected to Russian intelligence because, notwithstanding the fact that Danchenko held multiple advanced degrees, he stayed at Brookings in a low-level research assistance position. 

“The implicit assumption,” Durham concluded, was “that Brookings unwittingly provided Danchenko access to information of high value to the Russians.” 

The information provided by the Brookings employees led the FBI’s Baltimore field office to launch a preliminary espionage investigation into Danchenko, with agents later converting the probe into a full investigation. While Durham did not stress the point here, the FBI’s decision to originally launch only a preliminary investigation against Danchenko furthers the special counsel’s conclusion that the immediate opening of a full investigation into the Trump campaign was unjustified and contrary to how the FBI handled other investigations.

The special counsel did, however, highlight several more aspects of the initial investigation into Danchenko, such as that agents interviewed several people at Georgetown University who knew Danchenko. One individual questioned by the FBI explained she had recently interned at an intelligence agency and that afterward, Danchenko quizzed her on her “knowledge of a specific Russian military matter.” The former intelligence agency intern also revealed that Danchenko claimed his Russian passport listed him as GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence service. 

These additional details make the decision by the Crossfire Hurricane team to hire Danchenko as a CHS even more troubling. 

Durham’s report also found disquieting what Danchenko’s handler, FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson, told investigators. According to Durham, the special counsel’s office determined that Helson became aware of the investigation into Danchenko shortly after he opened Danchenko as a source. Yet Helson failed to update the CHS paperwork. Here, Durham noted that data showed Helson had conducted a “Sentinel” search, querying the counterespionage case file on Danchenko. But when confronted with that fact in an interview by the special counsel’s team, Helson claimed he had no recollection as to why he had searched Danchenko’s case file. 

Durham dinged Helson on several other facts related to Danchenko, suggesting the special counsel didn’t believe Helson’s version of events. But either way, Durham explained, “Helson and the Counterintelligence Division missed another opportunity to make any needed course corrections to Crossfire Hurricane and the use of Danchenko as a CHS.”

Besides his scathing summary of the FBI’s use of Danchenko as a CHS, Durham also revealed several new aspects of the initial botched investigation of Danchenko that was headed out of the FBI’s Baltimore field office. While Durham had revealed during Danchenko’s trial that the FBI had mistakenly closed out its investigation against Danchenko, wrongly believing he had left the country, Monday’s report showed how bush league that mistake was: All it took was for the special counsel’s office to review the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Person Encounter List for Igor Danchenko to determine he had not departed the U.S. on a one-way ticket to London, as the Baltimore field office believed.

But that was not the only mistake. According to Durham, in 2012, after the FBI had closed out the investigation into Danchenko, another FBI agent informed the Baltimore field office that Danchenko may not have left the United States as had been believed. Yet the investigation into Danchenko was never reopened. And when interviewed by Durham, the Baltimore field office agent admitted that “certainly a lot more investigation” of Danchenko should have occurred.

Given that the FBI’s Baltimore field office covers the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office — the office conducting the investigation into Hunter Biden — one can’t help but wonder what investigative steps were botched by agents in that case.

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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Jason Chaffetz Op-ed: Durham report revealed corruption that could mean this stunner for Trump in 2024


Jason Chaffetz

By Jason Chaffetz | Fox News | Published May 19, 2023 4:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/durham-report-revealed-corruption-could-mean-stunner-trump-2024

Who is going to trust the Department of Justice now? In the wake of Special Counsel John Durham’s long-awaited report, Americans now know there was widespread political collusion and deliberate deception from the very top of the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign, the corporate media and the Department of Justice (DOJ), all in favor of the Democrats.  Not only did they abuse their power and lie to the public, they seem to be proud of it. 

With these facts now added to the long list of formerly crazy conspiracy theories come true, former president Donald Trump is essentially inoculated from any future prosecution by virtue of the public mistrust in an obviously weaponized federal government. Even if prosecutors somehow manage to get a partisan jury to convict, the public will see it as a political witch hunt predicated primarily on partisan politics.  

The more they try to “get ’m” the stronger they make him. 

John Durham
Special Counsel John Durham has created a firestorm of controversy with his just-released report on government collusion that targeted Donald Trump. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

For this reason, both Democrats and Republicans should fear what could come next if they don’t clip the wings of this rogue federal agency and institute serious systemic changes. If they can do it to Trump, and they did, then they can do it again to anyone. 

One thing has become crystal clear: the Justice Department cannot and will not police itself. DOJ is unwilling and unprepared to discipline let alone prosecute its own. That’s one reason the work of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is so vital. 

To restore its position as a coequal branch of government, Congress must lose its reluctance to wield the heavy tools available in the law and the Constitution. It can and must develop an independent means of enforcing congressional subpoenas.  

The threat of impeachment of Senate-confirmed bureaucrats must become more feared. The House of Representatives must unite to implement what is perhaps the most powerful tool – the power of the purse. And Congress should reconsider and expand the role of independent offices of inspectors general (OIG) to ensure the Justice Department can no longer ride above the law.  

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Republicans have been bafflingly reluctant to wield impeachment power. Getting support to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in 2015 was a heavy lift. It shouldn’t be. If Congress doesn’t hold administration officials accountable, who will? Under the advice-and-consent clause of the Constitution, the Senate was given a co-equal voice to confirm a bureaucrat and remove them, but they do not. 

Likewise, Congress has failed to secure its own subpoena power. For too long, the body has been content to rely on the DOJ to enforce congressional subpoenas. But now that we clearly see the DOJ applying a political litmus test to such requests, the American people need a new solution. For Democrats, subpoenas are enforced in record time with guns drawn. For Republicans, the DOJ will only enforce “legitimate” subpoenas based on their own whims after months of review. 

Congress can also leverage the power of the purse to play hardball by denying agency funding until the government produces requested documents and witnesses. But they don’t. 

While all of those options are on the table, perhaps the most effective solution could come from empowering the government’s independent inspectors general. Most everyone in government is currently subject to review by an office of Inspector General (OIG).  

One thing has become crystal clear: the Justice Department cannot and will not police itself. DOJ is unwilling and unprepared to discipline let alone prosecute its own. That’s one reason the work of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is so vital. 

The ability of these investigators to subpoena documents, interview witnesses and expose wrongdoing has yielded important evidence and numerous criminal referrals. But they don’t have authority to make any prosecutorial decisions – and they probably should. 

To the shock of most people, the IGs are prohibited from investigating wrongdoing by attorneys at the DOJ. Nor can they compel testimony once someone leaves federal service, and both of these need to change. 

Before the Durham report, there were two IG reports on the Russia collusion hoax that combined for more than 1,000 pages. They included discipline and criminal referrals that DOJ ignored. Consequences for wrongdoing by federal law enforcement have been minimal.  

Even ex-FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to making a false statement after altering a document in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, received only probation and community service for his crime. He forged documents to effect an election and he didn’t even lose his law license! 

Sadly, the American people have lost trust in some of the most important institutions, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice. And this may very well propel Trump back into the White House. 

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Jason Chaffetz is a FOX News (FNC) contributor and the host of the Jason In The House podcast on FOX News Radio. He joined the network in 2017.

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Whistleblowers Expose FBI’s Corruption And Ongoing Persecution Of Political Opponents In Damning New Testimony


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD| MAY 18, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/18/whistleblowers-expose-fbis-corruption-and-ongoing-persecution-of-political-opponents-in-damning-new-testimony/

FBI Whistleblower Friend testifying before the House Judiciary Committee

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In an explosive House committee hearing on Thursday, several whistleblowers accused the FBI of engaging in a bevy of highly corrupt and partisan activity, including manipulation of statistics, targeting political opponents, and retaliating against whistleblowers seeking to expose the agency’s corruption. The revelations come days after a report from U.S. Attorney John Durham revealed the FBI had no evidence then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with the Russians when it launched its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the former president’s 2016 campaign.

While speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, former FBI special agent Steve Friend said he filed protected whistleblower disclosures in August 2022 over concerns he had regarding investigations assigned to his office over the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. More specifically, Friend was concerned the conduction of these inquiries represented a departure from proper “case management rules established in the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide” and that such actions “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.”

Despite purportedly following proper whistleblower protocol, Friend said the FBI quickly retaliated against him by weaponizing the security clearance process to remove him from active duty “within one month” of filing his disclosures. According to Friend, the agency then orchestrated a “campaign of humiliation and intimidation” designed to “punish and pressure [him] to resign,” which included leaking his private medical information to The New York Times, refusing to “furnish [his] training records for several months,” and imposing an “illegal gag order” to prevent him from “communicating with [his] family and attorneys.”

In addition to retaliation, Friend went on to accuse the FBI of weaponizing process crimes and reinterpreting laws in order to “initiate pretextual prosecutions and persecute its political enemies.” He also asserted the agency actively colludes with Big Tech platforms to censor political speech the regime disagrees with, gather intelligence on Americans, and “target citizens for malicious prosecution.”

During his testimony, Garret O’Boyle, a U.S. Army combat veteran and former FBI special agent, chronicled his own experience with the FBI’s disdain for whistleblowers. At some point after filing a whistleblower disclosure over concerns the agency was being used to go after the regime’s political opponents, O’Boyle sought another position within the country, which the FBI approved of. According to O’Boyle, it was only after he had sold his home and moved his family “halfway across the country” did the FBI then suspend him.

“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.

[READ: The Durham Report Leaves No Doubt: The FBI Is A Mortal Threat To Democracy]

Marcus Allen, a former Marine and FBI staff operations specialist, also testified about his experience with the FBI’s politicization, particularly its attempts to destroy the lives and careers of those within its ranks with dissenting views. As part of his position, Allen was tasked with providing situational awareness and information regarding the Jan. 6 riot. After submitting information to his superiors and others that questioned “the narrative” of Jan. 6, however, Allen was accused of pushing “conspiratorial views” and “unreliable information.” The FBI subsequently suspended Allen in January 2022 and questioned his allegiance to the United States.

According to Allen, it wasn’t until five months later, after a congressional member “made statements indicating the FBI was conducting a purge of employees with conservative viewpoints,” did the FBI reach out seeking an interview. Much like Friend, Allen claims his security clearance was revoked after he filed his whistleblower complaint.

“It has been more than a year since the FBI took my paycheck from me. My family and I have been surviving on early withdrawals from our retirement accounts while the FBI has ignored my request for approval to obtain outside employment during the review of my security clearance,” Allen said. “We have lost our federal health insurance coverage. There is apparently no end in sight.”

Predictably, House Democrats used Thursday’s hearing to slander the whistleblowers to cover for the FBI’s authoritarianism. In one instance, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., attempted to equate Friend’s calls to “defund the FBI” due to its weaponized behavior with support for defunding law enforcement. The Florida Democrat also accused Friend of using Thursday’s hearing to promote his upcoming book — which Friend never mentioned — and attacked the former agent for his concerns over the FBI’s use of excessive force during certain arrests.

In his prior testimony, Friend detailed a case where the FBI planned to use a SWAT team to carry out an arrest warrant on a Jan. 6 “subject.” According to Friend, he was concerned over the use of such tactics because “the subject of the arrest warrant had been in communication with the FBI at that point and had expressed a willingness to cooperate.”

“[I]n my experience in dealing with subjects of crimes and bringing them into custody, the FBI tends to use the least amount of force necessary to do that safely, and I felt that the use of SWAT … was an unnecessary tool to use for that particular individual,” Friend said. Of course, Wasserman Schultz misconstrued Friend’s testimony to make it sound as if he sympathized with the Jan. 6 subject and other suspected criminals upon whom arrest warrants are issued.

A House Judiciary Committee report containing the whistleblowers’ aforementioned allegations and prior testimony can be found here.

If you did not know these were FBI agents, and only heard their testimony, you might conclude this was testimony of people in communist nations, or Hitler’s Germany. I don’t know about you folks, this is frightenly madding. we’ve got to vote these socialists out as soon as possible.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves 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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Whistleblower Warns: ‘The FBI Will Crush You’


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Thursday, 18 May 2023 01:41 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/fbi-investigations-weaponization/2023/05/18/id/1120293/

FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle, one of three testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Thursday, had a warning for any of his former colleagues who may be thinking about testifying against the agency: Don’t do it.

“The FBI will crush you,” O’Boyle warned, when committee member Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., asked him what he’d advise. “This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing are wrong, and we are all examples of that.”

O’Boyle said he would tell colleagues that he would take their complaints to Congress for them or put them in touch with Congress, “but I would advise them not to do it.” He admitted that not testifying would not solve the issues the FBI has, or shine light on corruption, but based on his experience, he’d still urge them to turn away.

O’Boyle’s words came at the end of a lengthy, often-heated hearing in which he joined two other FBI whistleblowers, Stephen Friend, and Marcus Allen, to testify about the retribution they experienced for coming forward with statements on several issues. This included the investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol, the investigations of parents speaking out at school board meetings, and other instances that the Republicans on the committee say show the weaponization of the government against the American people. 

In O’Boyle’s case, he told the committee that he was forced to rely on charity after the FBI moved him and his family from Kansas to Virginia, but soon ended his assignment. He claimed the bureau blocked him for six weeks from getting his family’s personal property back.

Chairman Jim Jordan asked all three men for their reactions to the FBI’s activities against them, and all insisted they followed the oaths they had taken when they went to work with the agency. They agreed with Jordan that they felt the “full weight of the federal government” come down on them, particularly when the FBI sent a letter to members of the committee to inform them that the agents’ security clearances had been revoked. 

“Of course, they timed it perfectly,” said Jordan. “It’s in the letter to us yesterday. We knew they would. We knew it was going to happen that way.”

They also testified that their former colleagues have not reached out to them to support them after they found themselves put out. 

“I know for a fact that my former supervisor had a meeting with my squad shortly after I was suspended, and he told them that I was going to be arrested, fired, and charged. So if that’s not chilling, I don’t know what it is,” said O’Boyle.

Friend agreed, commenting that those who have reached out to him “have used encrypted ways to do it because they fear retribution.”

Allen added that he’s been “ghosted by everybody.” 

Earlier in the hearing, Allen testified that he was targeted based on “unsubstantiated accusations that I hold ‘conspiratorial views’ regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and that I allegedly sympathize with criminal conduct. I do not.”

O’Boyle said the actions against him came after his testimony in another proceeding that the FBI prioritized investigations of anti-abortion activiy after the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision on legal abortion. 

He said Thursday that he was forced to accept a new position in another state and that the FBI ordered him to report when his family’s youngest child was only two weeks old. 

Friend, meanwhile, said he has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel saying he was suspended after he raised concerns about the FBI’s manipulation of crime statistics, the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants, and the agency’s use of SWAT teams. 

“The FBI weaponized the security clearance processes to facilitate my removal from active duty within one month of my disclosures,” he said, also alleging the agency “initiated a campaign of humiliation and intimidation to punish and pressure me to resign” and refused his request for records so he could get another job “in an obvious attempt to deprive me of the ability to support my family.”

He also accused the FBI’s Inspection Division of having “imposed an illegal gag order in an attempt to prevent me from communicating with my family and attorneys.”

The hearing was organized by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and comes after the release publication of Special Counsel John Durham’s report that revealed the FBI lacked evidence to open its investigation on former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The hearing also comes after the Judiciary Committee’s Republicans released a 1,000-page report with the allegations of the politicization of the FBI and Justice Department politicization. 

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6 Freshly Documented Instances Of Systemic Pro-Democrat FBI Corruption


BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/17/6-freshly-documented-instances-of-systemic-pro-democrat-fbi-corruption/

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Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann and others lied to the nation about the special counsel report released Monday that deeply documents years of systemic FBI corruption in favor of the Democratic Party. That report reveals and adds detail to multiple instances in which FBI employees used high-level intelligence and law-enforcement positions to promote misinformation that affected at least two presidential elections, always on behalf of Democrats.

Special Counsel John Durham’s report lists and compares multiple such instances to illustrate “Systemic Problems” that are “difficult to explain.” Many more have been uncovered in the past few years. This information key to Americans’ oversight of their government through free and fair elections has been blacked out on corporate media airwaves and censored online by private grantees and social media companies obeying funding conditions and threats from federal officials.

1. Weaponizing Democrat Party Misinformation Developed With Probable Foreign Spies

It just so happens that the false information the FBI used to immediately open a spy operation on Democrats’ opposition was developed by the Democrat presidential campaign, in conjunction with at least two potential or allegedly former foreign spies.

According to the Durham report, top FBI, DOJ, and CIA officials, as well as President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, were told “within days of its receipt” that the Hillary Clinton campaign had developed a “plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”

CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama, Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Attorney General Eric Holder on this intelligence on Aug. 3, 2016, a few days after Clinton’s campaign developed the plan. The CIA reportedly got this info about Clinton’s smear plan from its surveillance of Russian intelligence.

This means that, in the summer of 2016, the FBI and DOJ, and the head of the Democrat Party, knew that the Steele dossier, Alfa Bank allegations, and other claims of Donald Trump being a traitorous Russian stooge “were part of a political effort to smear a political opponent and to use the resources of the federal government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support of a political objective.”

This should have gotten the FBI to question its Crossfire Hurricane operation, Durham’s report says. Instead, however, the FBI raced ahead, with FBI headquarters demanding faster pursuit of Trump under what they knew were false pretenses.

The FBI’s actions indicated a clear double standard for Republicans and Democrats, the report shows. “Unlike the FBI’s opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information,” notes the Durham report.

The report says if the Clinton campaign knowingly supplied this false information to the government, that’s a criminal offense. Durham claims his team was unable to establish this criminal intent, but it’s obvious it existed even if it can’t be established with emails and voice recordings.

So, again, months before the press started stampeding false claims of Russian collusion into three impeachment attempts that strangled Trump’s ability to wield the power voters had given him, the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, the sitting president and head of the Democratic Party, and Democrats’ next president were aware it was a political disinformation operation with no basis in fact. The head of that same FBI that ran a multi-year spy operation against Trump based on this claim knew it was politically motivated disinformation before the lie even got its boots on.

This goes far beyond agency “bias.” It is the complete corruption of half of the nation’s political party system and its federal law enforcement. It is the systematic disenfranchisement of Americans who don’t agree with the national security blob — or wouldn’t, if that blob allowed them to learn true facts about its evil machinations.

It is the systematic weaponization of the U.S. national security apparatus against constitutional self-government. It is the end of government of the people, by the people, and for the people in the United States of America. That’s what Durham’s report shows. Anyone who doesn’t treat this as a five-alarm fire set by saboteurs is helping fan the flames.

2. Protecting Democrats’ POTUS Pick While Slandering Republicans’ POTUS Pick

Several times, the Durham report notes that FBI and Department of Justice officials treated the Clinton and Trump campaigns completely differently. Another notable way was in regard to potential contacts with agents from foreign governments.

When the feds learned of a foreign influence operation seeking to target Hillary Clinton, they gave her campaign what is called a “defensive briefing.” That means they warned the campaign about the potential for undue foreign influence.

When the feds learned that a foreign influence operation might be seeking to target Trump, they warned almost everyone except the Trump campaign. The FBI, DOJ, and CIA not only gave Trump’s campaign no defensive briefings on such potential threats, the report says, these agencies used the threats as an excuse to surveil Trump’s campaign and boost Clinton’s disinformation operation linking Trump to Russia in the press.

“The speed with which surveillance of a U.S. person associated with Trump’s campaign was authorized … are difficult to explain compared to the FBI’s and the [Justice] Department’s actions nearly two years earlier when confronted with corroborated allegations of attempted foreign influence involving Clinton, who at the time was still an undeclared candidate for the presidency,” says the report on pages 73 and 74.

3. Dismissing Foreign Funds Transfers for Clinton, Not for Trump

In contrast to the bureau’s full-scale rush to use its powers to smear Republicans with known falsehoods, the report shows that when the FBI knew the Democrat presidential campaign might be violating federal law, the FBI stood down. When an informant told the FBI the Clinton campaign was likely accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, the FBI told the informant to drop it and did nothing further.

“Once again, the investigative actions taken by FBI Headquarters in the [Clinton] Foundation matters contrast with those taken in Crossfire Hurricane,” says Durham’s report. “As an initial matter, the NYFO [FBI New York Field Office] and WFO [Washington Field Office] investigations appear to have been opened as preliminary investigations due to the political sensitivity and their reliance on unvetted hearsay information (the Clinton Cash book) and CHS reporting. By contrast, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was immediately opened as a full investigation despite the fact that it was similarly predicated on unvetted hearsay information.”

Another double standard was revealed in this contrasting FBI treatment of different political parties: “Furthermore, while the Department appears to have had legitimate concerns about the Foundation investigation occurring so close to a presidential election, it does not appear that similar concerns were expressed by the [Justice] Department or FBI regarding the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

4. Putting Powerful Democrats Above the Law

We already knew from the years The Federalist has spent unraveling Spygate that former FBI Counterintelligence Division Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and his mistress, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s staff lawyer Lisa Page, weaponized their government positions to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. These are the two who infamously texted that they’d “stop” Trump from becoming president.

Durham’s report shows multiple instances of McCabe, Strzok, Page, and their superiors wielding federal law enforcement positions as weapons against Republicans. The Durham report contains more evidence that high-level federal intelligence officials see it as routine to put powerful Democrats above the law.

Besides the disparate treatment outlined above and many other such instances, Durham’s report includes a telling text exchange between Strzok and Page. It shows them deciding not to apply the law to Hillary Clinton because of her powerful position. It seems that the powerful are indeed above the law in the United States — provided they’re affiliated with the Democratic Party.

5. Refusing Interviews with the Special Counsel

Key FBI figures refused interviews with Durham’s team, including Comey, Strzok, the Clinton campaign’s Marc Elias, McCabe, Page, and Glenn Simpson of the opposition research firm that cooked up the Steele dossier for Clinton’s campaign.

Add that to the many instances of “former” FBI and CIA figures being employed in social media companies to assist with government censorship demands, and going on TV to fuel the Russiagate hoax and other lies to Americans about crucial public issues. It adds up to yet another indication of an intelligence state using its vast — and unconstitutional — powers on behalf of the Democrat Party.

6. Refusing to Obey Congressional Subpoenas About Records on Biden Corruption

Durham’s report indicates that the FBI repeatedly sat on evidence the Clinton campaign was accepting bribes — payments in exchange for policy preferences. The FBI is still doing that with Joe Biden. According to several high-level members of Congress, the FBI has been refusing to release to them subpoenaed, non-classified information about how it handled documentation alleging that Biden also traded political favors for campaign donations.

“We know the FBI relied on unverified claims to relentlessly target a Republican president. What did the FBI do to investigate claims involving a Democrat President?” asked Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Numerous private and congressional watchdogs have documented that the Biden family has received millions of dollars from foreign individuals and companies connected to hostile governments including communist China.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said in a press release earlier this month. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further.”

Congressional subpoenas have the force of law. Federal agencies operate at the discretion and funding of Congress, according to the Constitution. The FBI’s leadership doesn’t seem to believe, however, that constitutional checks and balances apply to them. So long as Congress doesn’t enforce its own prerogatives, the FBI’s corrupt leaders are right.

It’s been publicly known for decades that the FBI uses its surveillance, investigatory, and other law enforcement powers to manipulate American politics. Recall its surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and infamous FBI head J. Edgar Hoover’s spying on the Supreme Court, Congress, and presidents.

The Durham report is, in that respect, nothing new. What would be new would be punishing the FBI’s use of blackmail, smear operations, threats, censorship, illegal spying, and election rigging. If that doesn’t happen, the United States is quite simply not a free country anymore.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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FBI Ignored ‘Clear Warning Sign’ of Clinton-Led Effort to ‘Manipulate’ Bureau for ‘Political Purposes’


Brooke Singman

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published May 16, 2023 2:43pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-ignored-clear-warning-sign-clinton-led-effort-manipulate-department

The FBI “failed to act” on a “clear warning sign” that the bureau was the “target” of a Hillary Clinton-led effort to “manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes” ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Special Counsel John Durham found. Durham was referring to intelligence on a plan stirred up by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in July 2016 to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia in an effort to distract from the investigation into her use of a private email server and mishandling of classified information.

DURHAM FINDS DOJ, FBI ‘FAILED TO UPHOLD’ MISSION OF ‘STRICT FIDELITY TO THE LAW’ IN TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE

A photo of John Brennan
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 16:  Former CIA director John Brennan (2nd L) and former director of National Intelligence James Clapper (R) arrive at a closed hearing before the Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee May 16, 2018 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.  (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Durham found that then-CIA Director John Brennan “realized the significance” of the intelligence that Clinton was stirring up a plan to tie Trump to Russia—so much so, he “expeditiously” briefed then-President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and other top national security officials. But nothing came of that briefing or of his subsequent referral of the information to the FBI, according to Durham’s final report.

“The aforementioned facts reflect a rather startling and inexplicable failure to adequately consider and incorporate the Clinton Plan intelligence into the FBI’s investigative decision-making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the report states.

Hillary Clinton rally
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Keane – D1BEULPJOPAC (REUTERS/Chris Keane)

“Indeed, had the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation as an assessment and, in turn, gathered and analyzed data in concert with the information from the Clinton Plan intelligence, it is likely that the information received would have been examined, at a minimum, with a more critical eye,” the report continued.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/05/ENCLOSURE_1__Brennan_Notes__U-1.pdf

In October 2020, Fox News Digital first reported the Brennan briefing to Obama and administration officials, after then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes memorializing that meeting.

The FBI on July 31, 2016, opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether candidate Donald Trump and members of his campaign were colluding or coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 campaign. That investigation was referred to inside the bureau as “Crossfire Hurricane.”

FLASHBACK: DNI DECLASSIFIES BRENNAN NOTES, CIA MEMO ON HILLARY CLINTON ‘STIRRING UP’ SCANDAL BETWEEN TRUMP, RUSSIA

Durham found, after years of investigating, that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation. But on July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama on a plan from one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisers “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” Biden, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Director James Comey, and former ODNI James Clapper were in the Brennan-Obama briefing, the report says. 

US President Barack Obama speaks with FBI Director James Comey (R).  (Getty)

After that briefing, the CIA properly forwarded that information through a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL) to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, with the subject line: “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Fox News first obtained and reported on the CIOL in October 2020, which stated: “The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate.”

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. “An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.“

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/05/ENCLOSURE_2__DCIA_Memo_09-07-16__U-1.pdf

The memo was heavily redacted.

Durham interviewed a number of Clinton campaign officials, including then-foreign policy advisor, now-Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Sullivan, when asked about the Clinton Plan intelligence, said he had not seen the reporting, and called it “ridiculous.” 

“Although the campaign was broadly focused on Trump and Russia, Sullivan could not recall anyone articulating a strategy or ‘plan’ to distract negative attention away from Clinton by tying trump to Russia, but could not conclusively rule out the possibility,” the report states. 

Jake Sullivan
FILE – White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks at a press briefing at the White House in Washington, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)


FLASHBACK: DNI DECLASSIFIES BRENNAN NOTES, CIA MEMO ON HILLARY CLINTON ‘STIRRING UP’ SCANDAL BETWEEN TRUMP, RUSSIA

Durham, in his report, said the FBI “failed to act on what should have been—when combined with other incontrovertible facts— a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.”

“Whether or not the Clinton plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false it, it should have prompted FBI personnel to immediately undertake an analysis of the information and to act with far greater care and caution when receiving, analyzing, and relying upon materials of partisan origins, such as the Steele Reports, and the Alfa Bank allegations,” Durham’s report states.

Durham also said the FBI “should have disseminated the Clinton Plan intelligence more widely among those responsible for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation so that they could effectively incorporate it into their analysis and decision-making and their representations to the OI attorneys, and, ultimately, the FISC.”

Christopher Steele
Christopher Steele authored the infamous anti-Trump dossier first published by BuzzFeed News. (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

The anti-Trump Steele dossier was also linked to the Clinton campaign. The dossier contained allegations of purported coordination between Trump and the Russian government. It was authored by Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence officer. The Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie, where both Elias and Sussmann were employed at the time. 

The Justice Department inspector general revealed that the unverified anti-Trump dossier helped serve as the basis for controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. 

And the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference revealed that the dossier had, at the time, only “limited corroboration.” CIA officials at the time pushed back, arguing the dossier should not be included in the assessment, casting it as simply “internet rumor.” 

John durham special counsel
Special Counsel John Durham, who then-United States Attorney General William Barr appointed in 2019 after the release of the Mueller report to probe the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, arrives at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on May 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C.  (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

The dossier has been largely discredited. 

FLASHBACK: NEWLY DECLASSIFIED INTEL DOCUMENT NOTED STEELE DOSSIER CLAIMS HAD ‘LIMITED CORROBORATION’ 

The FBI’s investigation was handed off to Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Trump was elected. Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017. But Mueller’s team, like the FBI, did not investigate the allegations linked to Clinton-affiliated individuals.

But Durham’s team could not charge anyone related to omission or failure to act on the “Clinton Plan Intelligence.”

“Whether these failures by U.S. officials amounted to criminal acts, however, is a different question,” Durham’s report states.

“Although the evidence we collected revealed a troubling disregard for the Clinton Plan intelligence and potential confirmation bias in favor of continued investigative scrutiny of Trump and his associates, it did not yield evidence sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any FBI or CIA officials intentionally furthered a Clinton campaign plan to frame or falsely accuse Trump of improper ties to Russia,” the report states.

TRUMP SAYS THERE ‘MUST BE A HEAVY PRICE TO PAY’ FOR COMEY, DEMOCRATS AFTER RELEASE OF DURHAM REPORT

Former President Donald Trump
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in at the Waco Regional Airport in March 2023. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

READ DURHAM’S REPORT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE FBI’S RUSSIAN COLLUSION PROBE

Durham said his team also was not able to find sufficient evidence to prove that the “omission” of the Clinton Plan intelligence from applications to the FISC “was a conscious or intentional decision, much less one intended to influence the Court’s view of the facts supporting probable cause.” 

“In sum, the government’s handling of the Clinton Plan intelligence may have amounted to a significant intelligence failure and a troubling instance in which confirmation bias and a tunnel-vision pursuit of investigative ends may have caused government personnel to fill to appreciate the extent to which uncorroborated reporting funded by an opposing political campaign was intended to influence rather than inform the FBI,” the report states.

It added: “It did not, all things considered, however, amount to a provable criminal offense.” 

Reacting to Durham’s report, the FBI said in a statement: “The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Pam Bondi to Newsmax: ‘Damaged’ FBI Agents Should Pay Targets’ Legal Fees


By Fran Beyer    |   Tuesday, 16 May 2023 02:22 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/pam-bondi-john-durham-fbi/2023/05/16/id/1120034/

The FBI should pony up for all the legal fees of people investigated during an inquiry into potential contacts between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general, said Tuesday on Newsmax.

In an interview on “John Bachman Now,” Bondi, who also was on the legal team defending the former president during his first impeachment, said the report completed Monday by special counsel John Durham “gives new meaning to weaponization of the federal government.”

“First of all, civilly, they all need to be held accountable for all of the legal fees that these people had to pay as a result of this fake witch hunt,” she asserted.

“Anyone at the FBI who was involved in this, they are in trouble now,” she said.

“If any of these people, any of these agents in the top down … if they made any criminal cases during that time, any legitimate cases whether or not the people have been convicted or not, [U.S. Attorney General] Merrick Garland has an obligation to let the defense attorneys know in those cases.

“These are damaged agents, according to John Durham … they have an obligation and they should be right now scouring through any cases that those agents have ever touched.”

Bondi also praised the GOP-majority House for taking on the matter, asserting Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who heads the Judiciary Committee, “is going after this.”

“They’re not going to let it go. They are fighting it,” she said. “What would have happened if we didn’t have Congress at least right now to hold these people accountable? There have got to be criminal investigations.”

She also railed at “the weaponization of district attorneys” investigating Trump, including New York and Georgia.

“Look what they’re doing,” she said. “It’s no coincidence that all this is being piled on at one time. All these cases around the country against him. … it should scare every single American now what’s happening with the FBI.”

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Feds Started A Dangerous Game With Hunter Biden’s Laptop, But GOP Lawmakers Can Finish It


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 11, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/11/feds-started-a-dangerous-game-with-hunter-bidens-laptop-but-gop-lawmakers-can-finish-it/

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The interim report of the House Intelligence Committee and Weaponization Subcommittee released Wednesday established extensive coordination between the Biden campaign and those behind the statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that painted the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation. More explosive, however, is the fact, first reported on Tuesday by The Federalist, that a Central Intelligence Agency employee solicited a former CIA officer to sign the statement. 

Yet there is still much more to unravel to expose the breadth and depth of the info op painting the infamous laptop as Russian disinformation and the government actors involved. Here are five threads that will lead to the truth.

Subpoena All 51 Signatories

As its title stated, the House’s report focused on “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.” While the October 2020 letter signed by the former intelligence officials is only part of the scandal, it’s a solid entry point to learning the identity of many of those involved. 

The report already established Secretary of State Antony Blinken — then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign — contacted Obama’s CIA acting director, Mike Morell, to discuss the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Morell also testified that speaking with Blinken spurred him to craft the letter in question so Biden could reference it during his final debate against then-President Trump. 

The House report highlighted several other plays involved in gathering signatories for the letter and revealed that at least one CIA employee solicited an individual to sign the letter. 

The House stressed its investigation is continuing but that neither Blinken nor the CIA have yet to provide documents requested by the committees relating to both the statement and the interactions between its signatories and the CIA. The committees also reportedly scheduled interviews with former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. 

But it is not merely Brennan and Clapper who should be interviewed. While they are two of the most prominent former intelligence officials to have signed the letter, every signatory should be questioned and asked to provide relevant communications. If they refuse, subpoenas should be served and enforced.

Specifically, Brennan, Clapper, and other signatories should be asked to identify anyone they communicated with, or tried to, about the laptop or the letter to reveal the identity of the “nine additional former IC officers” who were unnamed but represented as supporting the letter’s conclusions.

Those 60 people should be asked about everyone with whom they spoke or attempted to speak about the laptop or the letter at any time, including those connected to: 1) the Biden family, 2) the Biden campaign, 3) elected officials, 4) the Democrat Party, 5) politicians opposed to Trump, 6) the media, 7) current government officials, 8) other signatories, 9) foreign governments, and 10) anyone else. All related communications should be obtained.

Based on those findings, any individuals not previously known should be added to the list of those to be questioned and subpoenaed. Those names will likely include many members or allies of the Biden campaign. We already know former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter and Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, were involved in pushing the “Russian disinformation” narrative.

Additionally, from Morell’s testimony to House investigators, we know the head of Biden’s campaign, Steve Ricchetti, was involved, given that he arranged to personally thank Morell for the letter. Morell also said Jeremy Bash, whom Morell knew through Beacon Global Strategies, arranged Morell’s conversation with Ricchetti, raising the possibility that Beacon Global Strategies played a role in the plot. 

These individuals should be further questioned on their roles related to the letter: Did they draft any language? Propose revisions to the language? We know some of this already from the House report, but there’s more to probe.

Furthermore, all of the signatories should be asked: Had they read the New York Post articles? Did they know of the existence of the laptop or the FBI’s seizure of it? Why did they supposedly believe it was Russian disinformation? Did they have any doubts? Did they watch the final Trump-Biden debate and, if so, did they believe Biden had accurately described their letter? What about Politico’s infamous “Russian disinfo” article? Did they believe Biden or Politico had misrepresented their letter? If so, to whom, if anyone, did they express their concerns? If not, why not? 

Probe FBI’s Involvement

The aforementioned strategy is a good starting point, but because members of the Biden campaign and others involved outside the government may not know — or be honest — about who inside the government participated in the election-interference scheme, investigators should simultaneously work from the FBI out.

Congressional oversight committees should start by interviewing and obtaining all relevant documents, voluntarily or by subpoena, from the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop. They should begin with those who first learned of its existence when the father of John Paul Mac Isaac — the owner of the computer repair store where Hunter had abandoned his laptop — contacted the agency. 

According to Mac Isaac, in October 2019, his father, a retired Air Force colonel, reported the laptop to FBI agents in the Albuquerque, New Mexico field office. Mac Isaac’s father spoke with an agent, telling him that his son had “the laptop of the son of a presidential candidate” and that it “has a lot of bad stuff on it, and he needs your help.” 

Mac Isaac’s father also told the agent the hard drive contained pornographic material and content that was “geopolitically sensitive,” including “dealing with foreign interests, a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, lots of foreign money.” And while Mac Isaac’s father offered the FBI a copy of the laptop, the agent instead asked to review the repair contract.

After reviewing it, the agent reportedly “consulted with a regional legal officer,” then told Mac Isaac’s father they should “lawyer up” and not “talk to anyone about this.” The agent then directed the repairman’s father to the door. 

An agent later reportedly contacted Mac Isaac’s father, who provided the agent with his son’s contact information. Then, “on December 9, 2019, the FBI served a subpoena on John Paul for the computer, the hard drive, and all related paperwork,” which Mac Isaac provided. 

Mac Isaac would later claim one of the two FBI agents who retrieved the laptop from his Delaware store suggested he keep quiet. According to Mac Isaac, as the agents were leaving, he quipped, “Hey, lads, I’ll remember to change your names when I write the book.”

At that point, Mac Isaac claimed, “Agent DeMeo paused and turned to face me,” replying: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.”

After seizing the laptop, the “local FBI leadership told employees, ‘You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,’” according to multiple whistleblowers. The whistleblowers further alleged that “the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election — potentially a year after” retrieving it.

These details give congressional investigators ample leads to uncover who in the FBI knew about the Hunter Biden laptop, beginning in Albuquerque and then moving to the FBI’s Baltimore field office, which holds jurisdiction over Delaware-based investigations.

The agents involved should be questioned to learn what they knew, what they did, and with whom they spoke, including whether they communicated with any member of the Biden family, campaign, or media. Investigators should also obtain the various FBI reports, the subpoena, the warrant used to obtain the subpoena, the chain of custody for the laptop and other seized material, and all written or electronic communications. 

Focusing on the FBI is especially important because the day after the Post broke the laptop story, Russia-collusion hoaxer Ken Dilanian, ran an “exclusive” at NBC, reporting that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” The next day, USA Today similarly reported the FBI’s supposed involvement in investigating whether a Russian influence operation was at play. On Oct. 17, 2020, USA Today reiterated that the “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia.”

However, the FBI was not investigating whether the laptop was related to a “foreign intelligence operation,” but instead was investigating Hunter Biden. This FBI leak nonetheless furthered the “Russia disinformation” narrative. In fact, Blinken went on to share one of the USA Today articles with Morell. Then Morell referenced the nonexistent FBI investigation as a justification for the letter, as a text included in the House report shows. 

Specifically, Morell texted Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA acting chief of operations, saying, “I’m thinking of writing something that says the FBI is investigating whether there is Russia involvement in this thing and that makes sense because it has the feel of a Russian op.” Morell asked Polymeropoulos if he wanted to help with the effort, leading the duo to draft the initial version of the statement together.

Questioning the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop and obtaining relevant communications would help establish who was behind the leak and whether anyone from the FBI communicated with the Biden campaign, the CIA, or any of the letter’s signatories. Likewise, this line of inquiry would establish if anyone with knowledge of the laptop cautioned social media companies — or suggested other FBI agents warn Big Tech — to expect a “hack-and-leak” operation.

Probe DEA’s Involvement

A third line of inquiry requires looking to the Drug Enforcement Administration and its role in executing a search warrant on the Massachusetts office of Hunter Biden’s former psychiatrist Keith Ablow. 

On Oct. 30, 2020, NBC News first reported that during a February 2020 DEA raid on Ablow’s office, agents reportedly recovered a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden from a safe in Ablow’s basement. The DEA then returned the computer to Hunter’s lawyer George Mesires.

For a year, Ablow had reportedly “made repeated efforts to persuade Hunter Biden to retrieve his computer.” But then the DEA raided Ablow’s office just a few months after the FBI had seized Hunter’s other laptop from Mac Isaac. 

The DEA agents involved should be asked whether they knew Ablow possessed the laptop and whether that fact motivated the execution of the search warrant. Did the DEA agents speak with any FBI agents? Did the DEA know of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s investigation into Hunter? Did agents review the laptop before returning it? If not, why not? If so, what information did they discover, and why was the laptop not retained as evidence? 

This line of inquiry may prove a dead end, or it could reveal more election interferers.

Dig Into Biden Briefings

Next, investigators should review the intelligence briefings provide to Biden since October 2019 when the FBI first learned of the laptop’s existence. Given the incriminating evidence contained on it, the intelligence briefings should have alerted Joe Biden to the national security risk.

If the briefings included details about the laptop, the individuals involved should be questioned and documents subpoenaed to learn who knew what and did what with the information. But if the briefings did not mention the laptop, investigators should ask those responsible for putting together the briefings about their knowledge of the laptop and their explanation for omitting mention of it. 

Investigate the Giuliani Investigators

A fifth line of inquiry should look to those behind the investigation of Rudy Giuliani. 

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine previously reported: “[T]he FBI spied on the former mayor’s cloud for two years from May, 2019, a month after he began working as then president Donald Trump’s personal attorney. … So the FBI had access to all Giuliani’s emails and iMessages for two years,” meaning it’s possible the FBI saw Bob Costello’s Aug. 27, 2020, email to Giuliani “telling him of Mac Isaac’s ‘amazing discovery.’”

In that email, Costello wrote: “I am arranging to get a complete copy of the hard drive as it contains lots of materials beyond the Ukraine stuff according to the owner. … The five emails he sent show that Hunter was directly involved in orchestrating his father Joe Biden’s intervention to stop the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma.” The email continued: “I believe that we are on the verge of a game changing production of indisputable evidence of the corruption we have long suspected involving the Biden’s and Ukraine — but there is more.”

The joint committees’ investigation should run down the possibility that those investigating Giuliani had access to his emails and learned of the laptop before the Post’s stories. If so, with whom did the agents share that knowledge? Again, interviews and documents are necessary to determine if any of these FBI agents were responsible for the leaks or communicated with the Biden campaign or Big Tech.

Wednesday’s report provides crucial details about the info ops run on Americans, but there is much more left to investigate to uncover all of the players who helped interfere in the 2020 election.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Overflowing

A.F. BRANCO | on May 11, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-overflowing/

The Mainstream left-wing media would rather talk about Santos than the abundant Biden scandals.

Biden Scandal Blackout
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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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 Presiden Trump.

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Chuck Grassley Demands DOJ Cough Up Document Over Criminal Scheme Involving Joe Biden


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 04, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/04/chuck-grassley-demands-doj-cough-up-document-over-criminal-scheme-involving-joe-biden/

Chuck Grassley

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is demanding transparency from an agency with no interest in transparency.

On Thursday, the Iowa lawmaker went to the Senate floor to demand FBI compliance with a congressional subpoena compelling documents related to a criminal scheme involving the president and a “foreign national.” Grassley joined House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in issuing the subpoena Wednesday.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley wrote. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”

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

In his Thursday floor speech, Grassley spoke about his tenure conducting constitutional oversight of federal law enforcement agencies.

“In many of those floor speeches, I’ve discussed legally protected and unclassified whistleblower disclosures made to my office relating to the Hunter Biden criminal investigation,” Grassley said. “Those disclosures have a very common theme: the Justice Department and FBI have allowed political infection to take root within each agency’s decision-making process. Such an infection is an existential threat to any government agency.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sIE6riyjqnA%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26enablejsapi%3D1

The latest whistleblower cited in Republican lawmakers’ demands to the FBI on Wednesday alleges President Biden engaged in bribery while serving in the Obama administration.

“The allegations my office has received are very precise, very direct, and very consistent. Accordingly, they’re highly credible,” Grassley said Thursday. “Not once – let me emphasize that again – not once has the Justice Department or FBI substantively disputed the whistleblower allegations that I’ve made public.”

“Simply put, did the Justice Department and FBI treat this information like they would if we, the people, were implicated, or did they sweep it under the rug to protect then-candidate Biden and President Biden now?” Grassley added. “If the Justice Department and FBI have any hope of redeeming their once-trusted position with the American people, Attorney General Garland and Director Wray must answer. Their credibility is on the line.”

[READ: 19 Times Democrats And DOJ Deliberately Politicized Law Enforcement]

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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