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I Read The ‘Project 2025’ Playbook, And I Couldn’t Find a Single White Christian Nationalist Policy


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JULY 08, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/08/i-read-the-project-2025-playbook-and-i-couldnt-find-a-single-white-christian-nationalist-policy/

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Project 2025, a suggested roadmap for a second Trump Administration pulled together by the Heritage Foundation, is a nearly 1,000-page document written by a bunch of think tankers and right-wing policy experts running the gamut of conservatism.

President Joe Biden says the document “should scare every single American.” Democrats, one strategist told the Washington Post, need to “instill fear in the American people.” Donald Trump and his surrogates are already distancing the candidate from the effort.

So, I decided to read it. Listen, it wasn’t easy. But the chances that Biden, or any other person fearmongering about it, understands what’s in it, is highly doubtful.

For starters, most of the Project 2025 “mandate” is just a compendium of long-held conservative wishes for government.

The Associated Press warns the effort champions a “dramatic expansion of presidential power.” Yet, nothing in Project 2025 is even on par with Biden’s unconstitutional loan “forgiveness” plan. The alleged presidential abuses the media lays out are well within the president’s power. They’re just policies Democrats happen to dislike.

Project 2025, we are warned, suggests the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers — which is well within the purview of the president. It will never happen, unfortunately.

Project 2025 suggests eliminating the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools.” Conservatives have been promising to get rid of the Department of Education since Ronald Reagan first ran for the presidency. It will never happen.

Project 2025 suggests prohibiting the FBI from “fighting misinformation and disinformation.” Great! The state shouldn’t be in the business of dictating speech. Not only do bureaucrats have no monopoly on truth; they are highly prone to abusing power. This would not have been controversial even a decade ago.

Moreover, curbing the DOJ’s efforts is limiting executive power.

Project 2025 also suggests deactivating FBI investigations that are “contrary to the national interest.” The Department of Justice — now engaged in lawfare against Democrats’ main political rivals, parents, and pro-life protesters among others — exists within the executive branch. It should always presumably act in the national interest.

Project 2025 also proposes ending the “war on fossil fuels.” This, too, has been a mainstream GOP position since Democrats began openly promising to dismantle our energy economy. If voters don’t like it, they can vote of the party that promises “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”

“Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism,” the star of “The Avengers” and budding Christian theologian Mark Ruffalo warns. “It is the Sharia Law of the ‘Christian’ crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive, and kindly teachings.”

Project 2025, you may be surprised to learn, does not feature a single mention of “Jesus” or “Christ.” It does champion long-held social conservative positions on religious freedom, abortion, marriage, and so on.

The policy guide features eight mentions of “God” in the entire document, most of those noting our “God-given individual rights to live freely.” Though this might be offensive to Politico writers or “New Right” intellectuals who’ve abandoned “liberalism,” it is one of the foundational ideas of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

“Christian” is mentioned seven times in the Project 2025 mandate. One, a warning about the left’s threats to tax-exemptions on churches and religious schools. Another mention suggests doing more to protect minority “Middle Eastern Christians” in foreign policy. Another reference reminds us about the COVID-era authoritarians who shut down “churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.”

Faith is also touched on in a section about attacks on religious freedom that “compel a Christian website designer to imagine, create, and publish a custom website celebrating same-sex marriage but cannot compel an LGBT person to design a similar website celebrating opposite-sex marriage.” There is nothing extreme about that statement.

Now, obviously there are numerous other nods to socially conservative policy that comports largely with orthodox Christian positions. Not everyone in the right-center coalition might agree them–especially on abortion. Trump doesn’t even embrace them. So much for MAGA extremism. You’re free to agree or disagree with the suggestions, but there is nothing weird or unique or new about faith informing politics. Moreover, none of these policies undermine the rights of other citizens.

And though I strongly disagree with plenty of the economic and trade ideas found in Project 2025, that’s not what the left is taking issue with, of course. They’re feigning horror at decades-old social conservative positions and warning us about authoritarian policies that aren’t actually found anywhere in Project 2025.

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

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Report: Flyers Urging Illegals to Vote for Biden Found in Left-Wing Group’s Office in Mexico


BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | APRIL 17, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/17/report-flyers-urging-illegals-to-vote-for-biden-found-in-left-wing-groups-office-in-mexico/

A flyer purportedly encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for Joe Biden

Flyers reportedly posted around a Resource Center Matamoros facility in Mexico encouraged illegal immigrants — who are not eligible to vote in the United States — to vote for President Joe Biden in November, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. One of the organizations operating out of the Resource Center Matamoros (RCM) has ties to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose articles of impeachment the U.S. House of Representatives delivered to the Senate Tuesday afternoon.

The flyers, which the Oversight Project posted photos of on X, read “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The Heritage Foundation said the flyers were first discovered by Muckraker but also confirmed to The Federalist that their own team had obtained a copy of one of the flyers “inside the RCM office.”

“The flyer in the X thread is a direct scan of the one our folks obtained on-site inside the RCM office,” a Heritage Foundation representative said. “The flyers were also posted all over the camp in the port-a-potties.”

Nevertheless, others have raised questions about the flyer, including Fox News’ Bill Melugin.

“I am extremely skeptical of this. The flier appears to be a word for word Google Translate copy & paste of a portion of the NGO’s English website, with ‘vote for Biden’ randomly added in at the end, when it does not appear on the site,” Melugin posted on X. “The translation is bad, then you have ‘bienvenidos’ spelled wrong and ‘todos con Biden’ added onto the flier with a Biden logo.”

Another social media user associated with a left-wing immigration group claimed to have spoken with the executive director of RCM and said the posters were “Totally fake” and “Made up by two posers.”

It is unclear whether RCM authorized the posting of the flyers, but the Heritage Foundation told The Federalist that because they found flyers in the RCM office, they have “every reason to believe” the flyer is from the organization. The Federalist reached out to RCM for more information but did not receive a response.

The flyers “appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” according to the Oversight Project.

RCM says it is “a humanitarian organization that provides a safe space where refugees at the southern Texas-Mexico border can access legal and social support services.” Its “6-unit office complex” hosts the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides “legal assistance and assistance with obtaining formal documents for job search and integration into the city of Matamoros as [migrants] wait to access the asylum process in the US.”

RCM founder and executive director Gaby Zavala previously worked with La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)– a left-wing organization that is partnered with the Open Society Institute, as pointed out by the Oversight Project. The Open Society Institute is funded by left-wing billionaire and mega-donor George Soros.

RCM also worked alongside Team Brownsville, a left-wing organization, and Angry Tias and Abeulas, which aims to help illegal immigrants cross the border, according to the Oversight Project.

Mayorkas — whose disastrous handling of the invasion at the southern border earned him impeachment by the House — was formerly on the board of HIAS and in his current role with the Biden administration has met with members of both Angry Tias and Abuelas as well as LUPE, according to Judicial Watch.

[READ NEXT: Not A Single Democrat Witness In Congress Agreed Only Citizens Should Vote In Federal Elections]

While illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, federal voter registration forms simply require each individual to check a box affirming he is a U.S. citizen. The lack of any requirement that new voters show documentary proof of citizenship prompted former President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday to announce Republican legislation that would demand such documentation from new registrants.

The federal government currently prohibits states from requiring potential voters to provide such proof to register to vote in federal elections. States may require proof of citizenship to register for statewide elections, as Arizona does. But even in Arizona, a voter who attempts to register to vote with the state form but fails to provide proof of citizenship must then be registered to vote on a federal-only form.

During the 2020 presidential election, 11,600 voters voted using a federal-only ballot, AZ Free News reported. President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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Heritage’s One-of-a-Kind Election Fraud Database Hits 1,500 Cases


By: Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / Katie Samalis-Aldrich / January 29, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/29/heritages-one-kind-election-fraud-database-hits-1500-cases/

Finger with a voting sticker that says,
The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database now contains over 1,500 proven cases of election fraud that show the vulnerabilities in our election system. (Photo illustration: BackyardProduction, iStock/Getty Images)

The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, the only such database in existence, now contains over 1,500 proven cases of election fraud. The sampling of cases vary from lone wolves stealing one vote to conspiracies that stole many votes, defrauding citizens and candidates of honest elections and sometimes changing the outcome of an election. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

As the website states:

The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database presents a sampling of recent proven instances of election fraud from across the country. Each and every one of the cases in this database represents an instance in which a public official, usually a prosecutor, thought it serious enough to act upon it. And each and every one ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election hoping to affect its outcome—or that the results of an election were sufficiently in question and had to be overturned. This database is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list. This database is intended to demonstrate the vulnerabilities in the election system and the many ways in which fraud is committed.

We launched the database in 2017 with 1,071 entries. We added 98 cases to the database in 2023 alone and are following several hundred other cases that are being investigated by local authorities. No case is added until and unless there is a conviction or a judicial or official finding that an individual or group of individuals engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election.

Here are some of the most recent cases that pushed the database above the 1,500 mark:

  • Let’s start with a local Democratic primary election in Bridgeport, Connecticut, between Joseph Ganim (the incumbent mayor and the party-endorsed candidate) and John Gomes (the challenger), which was decided by 251 votes. Following the September 2023 election, videos surfaced showing Ganim supporters Wanda Geter-Pataky (a Democratic town committee member and the leader of Voting District 136) and Eneida Martinez (a candidate for City Council) illegally dropping off stacks of votes into various drop boxes.

In overturning the election and ordering a new one, Superior Court Judge William Clark concluded that “the number of ballots at issue, brings the reliability of the primary into serious doubt.” He added, “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties. To disregard the significant mishandling of ballots by partisans that were caught on video flouting the provisions of Connecticut law … endorse(s) this blatant practice of ballot harvesting.”

A new primary election was held on Jan. 23, which Ganim won, and a new general election will be held Feb. 27.

This is not the only example of ballot trafficking that was recently added to the database.

  • In Arizona, Gloria Lopez Torres (a San Luis city councilwoman) and Nadia Lizarraga-Mayorquin were charged with illegally trafficking absentee ballots during the August 2020 primary election. Arizona law only permits family members and close relatives to return ballots. They both pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse, were sentenced to 24 months of probation, and fined $2,500 each. The violation of the law was so serious that Torres was barred from running for or being appointed to public office again.  

Torres is also, unfortunately, not the only public official engaging in election fraud in our latest batch of cases.

  • David Cole, a Republican member of the Alabama House of Representatives, was charged with falsely claiming he resided in Alabama’s 10th state house district during the 2022 primary and general elections despite living in District 4. To disguise his ineligibility, Cole entered into a $5-per-month lease at a home in District 10, which he never occupied, although he registered it as his voting address and had mail sent there. He also falsely claimed he had sold his District 4 house.

While Cole’s crime came to light during his campaign, he was not charged until after the election, which he won by 973 votes. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and three years of probation; agreed to resign from his legislative seat; and was ordered to pay $52,885.79 in restitution, the salary he was paid as a state legislator. A judge ordered a new election to fill his seat.

Christopher Coyle, the former Democratic candidate for Clark County, Indiana, clerk, and a former chairman of the Clark County Democratic Party, was charged with falsely claiming his residency in Clark County and voting there during the 2022 election.

He filed a false report with the Clark County Clerk’s Office claiming he lived in Memphis, Indiana, despite having sold his home and having not updated his driver’s license or voter registration to reflect the fact that he was living in Louisville, Kentucky. He then voted in person in Sellersburg, Indiana, on Election Day. He admitted the conduct and entered into a pretrial diversion agreement. The charges were dropped once he successfully completed the program.

  • We also added our first cases from the District of Columbia, which has not shown much interest in investigating allegations of election fraud. Five individuals—Renee Diggs, Jessica Miser, Eddie Bishop, Margaretta Sibert-Dean, and D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Vanessa Rubio—were all fined by the D.C. Board of Elections for voting twice in the 2020 general election.

Diggs, Miser, Sibert-Dean, and Rubio all voted in person both in Washington and Maryland, while Bishop voted in person in Washington and by absentee ballot in Maryland. Laughably, Rubio, an elected public official, claimed she thought her duplicate voting wouldn’t count because the district is not a state.  

  • We also added 16 cases from North Carolina of aliens charged with falsely claiming to be citizens when registering to vote.

George Ian Richardson, Soraya Paktiawal, Lurbyn Chirinos-Castro, Miriam Perez Robledo, Faustin Ngaruyinka, Jeffrey Hamilton, Miguel Angel Dominguez Martinez, Gessyca Eyene Jeaspautine Misse, Gloria Lopez, Odalinda Mondragon-Arroyo, Byron Benavides-Campos, Ikechukwu Augustine Okeke, Denis Javier Miranda, Fathy Ahmed Nasser, Jose Abraham Navarro, and Gabriela Guzman-Miguel all made false claims of citizenship.

Despite the fact that such a violation of the law is a federal felony and grounds for an alien to be denied citizenship, each was given the opportunity to enter a pretrial diversion program for 12 months after admitting their conduct, and the charges were dropped upon successful completion of their respective programs.

As the 2024 election draws near, let’s hope states prioritize implementing election reforms—like requiring an ID to vote and effectively maintaining accurate voter registration rolls—that are needed to ensure fair and honest elections, and then vigorously enforcing them, so Americans can feel confident casting their votes in the polls.

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EXCLUSIVE: FOIA Turns Up Zilch on The ‘Full Authority’ Garland Claims He Gave Weiss Over Hunter Biden


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/07/exclusive-foia-turns-up-zilch-on-the-full-authority-garland-claims-he-gave-weiss-over-hunter-biden/

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal a glaring gap in the documentation maintained by the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office: There is nothing memorializing the authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claims he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss for the Hunter Biden investigation. 

For more than a year, Garland represented to Congress that Weiss held ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation — which the eventual appointment of Weiss as special counsel contradicted. But now there is more evidence — or rather a lack of evidence — indicating the claimed authority was always a charade. 

The Friday before the long holiday weekend, the DOJ provided the Heritage Foundation with the second batch of documents it was ordered by a federal court to produce in response to Heritage’s FOIA lawsuit. This installment concluded the DOJ’s production of the non-exempt documents in Weiss’s custody which concerned his authority for investigating Hunter Biden. But none of the documents produced addressed Weiss’s authority or any authority promised by Garland.

Mike Howell, the director of the Heritage Oversight Project and a co-plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ, stressed the significance of this omission to The Federalist. 

“The DOJ lives on paper.” Anything as important as granting Weiss ultimate authority over an investigation or promising to give him authority to bring charges in another venue, if necessary, “would have been written down,” Howell explained. To Howell, this last batch of documents constitutes an admission by Garland that “there was nothing written down at the DOJ and sent to Weiss, indicating Weiss had any of the authority that Garland claimed he did.”

“We’re beginning to understand why Biden’s DOJ is throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us to fight the release of these records in federal court, all paid for by the taxpayers of course,” Howell told The Federalist.

While the DOJ withheld some documents from the production, claiming various exemptions from FOIA, it is difficult to fathom what FOIA exemption would permit the DOJ to withhold a communication granting Weiss the authority Garland publicly discussed on multiple occasions. When asked why Garland had not memorialized his supposed grant of ultimate authority to Weiss, the DOJ did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiry.

The lack of any materials documenting such authority raises more questions about the statements both Garland and Weiss made to Congress. As far back as April 26, 2022, the attorney general told Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty that the “Hunter Biden’s investigation … is being run by and supervised by the United States attorney for the District of Delaware,” and that Weiss “is in charge of that investigation.”

Then on March 1, 2023, Garland unequivocally testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in response to questioning by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, 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.” 

Garland maintained that position even after IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified that during an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, “Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” Specifically, after news broke of the whistleblower’s testimony, Garland said during a press conference that Weiss was assured he could “make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

Weiss would later write to Congress to confirm Garland’s position, 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.

After the transcript of Shapley’s testimony was released, however, Weiss would walk back his claims by clarifying that what he meant was that Garland had promised him that he would be granted ultimate authority to make charging decisions — not quite the same thing as having that ultimate authority. 

Either way, one would presume that if Garland had granted Weiss full authority over the Hunter Biden investigation and promised to authorize him to file charges in other venues, there’d be some documentation to back up the claim. But there was none in the FOIA production.

Of course, after the sweetheart plea deal — footsied out between one of Weiss’s top assistant U.S. attorneys, Lesley Wolf, and Hunter’s attorneys — imploded, Garland named Weiss special counsel. So, the federal prosecutor now has the requisite authority to charge the president’s son in whatever district he wants. 

But that belated appointment isn’t a grant of absolution for misleading Congress, which is precisely what appears to have happened. And the documents that weren’t suggest as much.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—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. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Attorney Weiss Colluded With DOJ To Thwart Congressional Questioning, Emails Show


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | AUGUST 28, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/28/exclusive-u-s-attorney-weiss-colluded-with-doj-to-thwart-congressional-questioning-emails-show/

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and shared exclusively with The Federalist establish that on multiple occasions, the Department of Justice intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to the Hunter Biden investigation. This revelation raises more questions about the June 7, 2023, letter dispatched to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan under Weiss’s signature line, in which the Delaware U.S. attorney claimed he had “ultimate authority” over charging decisions related to Hunter Biden. It also suggests Weiss and the DOJ may have conspired to mislead Congress.

Did the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs respond to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson’s May 9, 2022, letter seeking information concerning the Hunter Biden investigation? Weiss posed that question to one of his lead assistant U.S. attorneys, Shannon Hanson. 

“Not to my knowledge,” Hanson replied, followed soon after with a second email noting that Joe Gaeta, the then-deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legislative Affairs, was working on a response. And although Grassley and Johnson had addressed their May 9, 2022, inquiry solely to Weiss, DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs would intercede on his behalf, responding in a letter dated June 9, 2022, that the DOJ would not respond to the questions posed. 

The following month, Grassley and Johnson dispatched another letter requesting information related to the Hunter Biden investigation, addressing this letter to Weiss, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Again, the Office of Legal Counsel intervened, telling Weiss’s office in an email reviewed by The Federalist that it would “take the lead on drafting a response” to Grassley and Johnson’s letter.

These never-before-seen emails establish the Department of Justice and U.S. attorney collaborated in responding to congressional inquiries and were among the first batch of documents provided to the Heritage Foundation following a court order last week in Heritage’s FOIA case against the DOJ. That court order required the DOJ to produce, by Aug. 25, 2023, all records collected from Weiss and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf that were responsive to the Heritage FOIA lawsuit. 

Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, initiated the FOIA request and then filed suit against the DOJ after the Biden administration attempted to slow-walk the production. Howell told The Federalist the emails show that while Garland was claiming Weiss had the independence to bring whatever charges he wanted, Garland was “simultaneously running communications from Weiss to Grassley through the political controls of Main Justice.” “It is a slap in the face,” Howell said. 

Significantly, the emails also call into question the veracity of a series of exchanges between Weiss and Jordan, beginning with Weiss’s June 7 response to the May 25, 2023, letter Jordan sent to Garland. In that May 25 letter, Jordan questioned Garland on the removal of the IRS whistleblowers from the Hunter Biden investigation. 

Even though the House committee addressed that letter solely to Attorney General Garland, Weiss responded to the inquiry on June 7 in a letter, which opened: “Your May 25th letter to Attorney General Garland was forwarded to me, with a request that I respond on behalf of the Department.” Weiss then claimed that, as Garland had stated, the Delaware U.S. attorney had “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…”

Two more letters would soon follow, the first being to Weiss from Jordan on June 22. In that letter, Jordan reiterated the Judiciary Committee’s need for substantive responses, before asking Weiss for more details “in light of the unusual nature of your response on behalf of Attorney General Garland…” Specifically, Jordan asked for information concerning the names of individuals who drafted or assisted in drafting the June 7, 2023, letter, as well as details concerning the drafting and dispatching of the letter.

Weiss responded in a June 30 letter that he was not at liberty to provide substantive responses to the questions concerning an ongoing investigation. The Delaware U.S. attorney then sidestepped questions about the DOJ’s role in drafting the June 7 letter, stating only that he “would like to reaffirm the contents of the June 7 letter drafted by my office” — a statement representing that the Delaware office had composed the letter. 

Weiss then proceeded to “expand” on what he meant when he said in his June 7 letter that he had ultimate charging authority, writing: 

As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is geographically limited to my 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. If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary, after the above process, I 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.

Of course, having ultimate authority and being assured that you would be given ultimate authority, if need be, are two different things. But the scandal goes beyond Weiss not having the authority to charge Hunter Biden, to what clearly seems to be an attempt by the DOJ and Weiss to mislead Congress. 

It’s important to remember that when Weiss sent the June 7 letter to Jordan, the whistleblowers’ transcripts had not yet been released. Thus, neither Weiss nor the DOJ knew the specifics of the whistleblowers’ testimony, leading them to represent to Congress that Weiss had ultimate decision-making authority — something Weiss would later have to massage. Weiss’s questionable statements didn’t end there, however. In the June 30 letter, Weiss represented to Congress that he had drafted the June 7 letter. 

But why would Weiss draft the June 7 letter? That letter was not even addressed to Weiss. And the emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation establish that even when congressional oversight letters were addressed directly to the Delaware U.S. attorney, Weiss did not answer them. Instead, the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs intervened and spoke on his behalf.

There is a second reason to suspect Weiss did not draft the June 7 letter: the footnote reference in the correspondence to the Linder letter. 

Tristan Leavitt, a former Capitol Hill staffer and the president of Empower Oversight, which is helping represent IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, told The Federalist that when he “worked on Capitol Hill (particularly on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which did regular oversight of the Justice Department), the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs frequently referenced the otherwise-obscure Linder letter in response to congressional oversight.”

“It’s hard to imagine the letter was widely known outside of Justice Department headquarters,” Leavitt continued, “especially in U.S. attorneys’ offices, which almost never respond directly to congressional correspondence.”

Conversely, it is easy to imagine Main Justice drafting the June 7 letter on behalf of Weiss to provide Garland cover and to seemingly corroborate the attorney general’s Senate testimony that he had given Weiss full authority to make charging decisions in the Hunter Biden investigation.

That cover may soon be blown away, however, thanks to the Heritage Foundation. 

“The only reason these documents are starting to trickle out is because we sued for transparency,” Howell told The Federalist. “We’ve faced taxpayer funded resistance at every step of the way and haven’t given up,” he added, noting that “the DOJ is under a judicial order to continue this production.” 

The next round of responsive documents is due by Oct. 31, and since none of the documents produced to date include references to Jordan’s May 25, 2023, letter, it seems likely we’ll see those emails in the next batch — unless House Republicans seek access to them first through a subpoena.

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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Tucker Carlson: ‘Information Control’ Via Internet Censorship Is A Huge Problem For Democracy


BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/24/tucker-carlson-lack-of-information-changes-american-lives-for-the-worse/

Tucker Carlson speaks at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th celebration

Tucker Carlson told attendees at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th-anniversary gala that the biggest variable changing everyday Americans’ lives in recent years is the ruling class’ monopoly on information.

“What do you think over the last 10 or 20 years — whatever timeline you think is appropriate —has changed the most?” Roberts asked. “I mean that socially and culturally, I don’t mean that politically, although you can go there if you want, that has affected everyday Americans’ lives?”

“The lack of information,” Carlson quickly replied.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ebG2POkoHgU%3Fstart%3D1049%26enablejsapi%3D1%23038%3Bfeature%3Doembed

Despite living in a digital world where data and details are available to everyone with access to the internet, Carlson said normal Americans’ access to the information pipeline is significantly hampered.

“The core promise of the internet was as much information as we’ve ever had at your fingertips, and the result has been a centralization of information. This is deliberate, needless to say, but unnoticed by most people. That results in more controlled information than we could even have imagined more than 20 years ago,” he said. “A lot of information just is not available because it’s digital and it’s controlled by a small number of companies.”

Carlson said “hundreds of millions” of Americans “have no idea what’s going on” because the ruling class does not want them to know the facts.

“It’s not just because they’re dumb or they’re distracted on their iPhones. The whole point of the iPhone was to inform you, and the net effect has been to make people completely ignorant of the core, the actual facts, like the non-disputed facts about a lot of different things. And you saw this, certainly, during covid,” Carlson remarked.

Keeping Americans clueless, Carlson said, is advantageous to those who control information pipelines because it “challenges the idea of democracy, which rests on the notion of an informed voting public, of a citizenry.”

“We don’t have that, and that really, I never would have expected that at all,” Carlson said.

Next, Carlson warned listeners not to throw away hardcopy books and to consider buying “gold and ammo.”

“Definitely don’t throw away your books because they can’t be disappeared, because they exist physically,” Carlson repeated.

Similarly, Carlson said Americans should be keen not to throw away “relationships with other people because they can’t be disappeared either.”

“The material, the physical, things that you can smell, those are the things that you can trust,” Carlson said between a smattering of applause. “Your spouse, your dogs, your children, especially your dogs, but your actual friendships, your college roommates, people in person. As the world becomes more digitized and people live in this kind of this realm that’s disconnected from physical reality, I think the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to the things that you can smell.”

Carlson said that he’s “gotten to the point where if I can’t smell it, I’m not dealing with it.”

“Books, relationships, and ammo: Tucker Carlson’s guide to the universe,” Roberts remarked.

“Yes!” Tucker replied.

During the more lighthearted portion of the q-and-a session, Roberts joked that “if things go south for you at Fox News, there’s always a job for your Heritage.”

Mere days after the event and Roberts’ teasing, Fox News abruptly announced that it “mutually agreed to part ways” with the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which is consistently ranked the highest-rated cable news show. Carlson has yet to announce his plans for the future.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Newsom Signs Bill To Let California Strip Gender-Confused Teens From Parents — Even When They Live In Other States


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/30/newsom-signs-bill-to-let-california-strip-gender-confused-teens-from-parents-even-when-they-live-in-other-states/

Gavin Newsom

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law Thursday night to strip rights away from parents who protest their children’s blind pursuit of destructive surgeries sold to confused minors as “gender affirmation.”

Under Senate Bill 107 introduced by San Francisco-area State Sen. Scott Wiener, California will now become a “refuge” for trans-identifying minors who seek irreversible medical treatment for gender dysphoria. The legislation was supposedly aimed at blocking red states from enforcing laws barring extreme treatments for underage victims, and instead invited those minors to seek surgeries in California.

“In California we believe in equality and acceptance. We believe that no one should be prosecuted or persecuted for getting the care they need — including gender-affirming care,” Newsom said upon signing the bill into law. “Parents know what’s best for their kids, and they should be able to make decisions around the health of their children without fear. We must take a stand for parental choice.”

Except the bill undermines parental choice by empowering the state to strip custody from those who refuse to support their children’s demand for “gender-affirming care,” a euphemism used to describe something that is neither gender-affirming nor caring. Such procedures could range from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to surgeries leaving a child’s genitals permanently altered. The bill extends California’s reach beyond its borders, enabling minors in other states to pursue treatment on the West Coast away from parental oversight.

Jay Richards, a policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, and Emilie Kao, a vice president and senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, broke down the components of the law in Newsweek.

“California courts will have the power to strip custody from parents, wherever they live, who doubt the wisdom of these experimental and irreversible procedures — if their child so much as steps foot in California,” the pair explained. “It would also allow California doctors to treat minors still in other states. With the advent of telehealth, a child could get a prescription for hormones from a California doctor while at home in Arkansas or in Florida.”

Both states have instituted protections to restrict cross-sex hormones from ending up in the hands of gender-confused minors.

Under California’s new law, parents might not even know whether their children are pursuing these dangerous drugs and procedures. Senate Bill 107 mandates that doctors hide children’s medical information from parents if related to “gender identity,” even if requested by subpoena.

Last week, a coalition of organizations representing parents both in and out of state condemned the law’s reach with a letter to the governor.

“[Senate Bill] 107 makes California akin to the Pied Piper, enticing minor children nationwide to leave their families and run away in pursuit of harmful drugs and sterilizing surgeries, all of which cause irreversible harm to the minds, bodies, and family relationships of America’s precious children,” they wrote. “Children experiencing gender confusion need the love, support, and guidance of their parents. They do not need to be taken from their parents and rushed down a pathway which leads to a lifetime of medicalization and sterilization.”

This summer, researchers at the Heritage Foundation found that “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.” The findings contradict a key argument among proponents of aggressive “gender affirmation” who claim minors denied permanently life-altering procedures are more likely to kill themselves.

“There is a 14% increase in suicide rates among young people by 2020 in states that have a provision allowing minors to access care without parental consent relative to states that do not,” explained Heritage Senior Research Fellow Jay Greene. “Easier access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors actually exacerbated suicide rates.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.

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Democrats And Republicans Unite To Rescind Last-Minute Obama Order Seeking Federal Election Takeover


waving flagAuthored by Photo of Richard Pollock Richard Pollock | Reporter | 9:59 PM 01/24/2017

URL of the original posting site:http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/24/democrats-and-republicans-unite-to-rescind-last-minute-obama-order-seeking-federal-election-takeover/#ixzz4WocGXJCH

President Barack Obama (L) announces Jeh Johnson (R) to be his nominee for secretary of Homeland Security, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Oct. 18, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

President Barack Obama (L) announces Jeh Johnson (R) to be his nominee for secretary of Homeland Security, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Oct. 18, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)   

All 50 state secretaries of state are urging the Trump administration to rescind a last-minute Department of Homeland Security directive calling state election systems “critical infrastructure.” Many state officials fear this is the first step toward a federal takeover of state-run elections, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

While deep political discord may be found on other issues, state secretaries — who oversee all election machinery — appear completely united against the former administration’s attempt to insert the federal government into state-run elections.

Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson surprised and outraged state election officials with his Jan. 6 action, just two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump was to assume the presidency. Johnson tried to portray his move as part of the Obama administration’s effort against Russian government hacking of Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign. But state officials retort that election machines and the infrastructure are not connected to the Internet and therefore are immune to cybersecurity attacks.partyof-deceit-spin-and-lies

Incoming DHS Secretary John Kelly indicated in written testimony prior to his confirmation he was troubled by Johnson’s directive.

“The notion that DHS can or should exercise some degree of influence over state voting systems is highly controversial and appears to be a political question beyond the scope of DHS’ current legislative cyber mandates,” Kelly wrote.

The National Association of Secretaries of State, which represent secretaries in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, is planning to take up the DHS action at its next full meeting. It is scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C., in mid-February. Association president Denise Merrill, who also serves as the secretary of state for Connecticut, told TheDCNF in an interview, “I’m certain this will be a hot topic among all of us.”

Merrill confirmed the association and many secretaries of state have been in touch with Trump transition staff seeking revocation.

“I haven’t heard one Secretary of State — Democrat or Republican — that’s for this,” she said. Merrill is a Democrat.

Republican Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler, who served as the association’s immediate past president, urged Trump Jan. 11 to “direct the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to rescind the designation of state election systems as ‘critical infrastructure.’”

A DHS spokesman told TheDCNF he could not comment on a possible revocation by Kelly.

Johnson sent shockwaves through every state capital when he issued his official proclamation, stating, “I have determined that election infrastructure in this country should be designated as a subsector of the existing Government Facilities critical infrastructure sector.” He broadly put all state election facilities under the federal “critical infrastructure” purview. His designation would affect all state-operated polling places, centralized vote tabulations location, election storage facilities and IT systems holding voter registration databases.Oh good

He also angered state officials because the federal designation would exempt future election activities from public access via the Freedom of Information Act or from state open record laws.

“This something that came out of the blue,” noted Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in an interview with TheDCNF. “They had never talked to any Secretaries of State or election officials around the country before the whole critical infrastructure designation came up. We were literally blindsided by this.”

“We thought we had turned the tide in convincing DHS that this was not the thing to do,” Schedler told TheDCNF. “It was very obvious to everyone — and it was nonpartisan, my Democratic colleagues were as against this as my Republican colleagues.”

“Suddenly, it was decided that they were going ahead with it and we didn’t get any notice and read about it in the paper,” Merrill recalled. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have some concern about it. It’s not a particularly partisan issue at this point.”

The association called the designation, “legally and historically unprecedented and raised questions for states and local governments about administration of the voting process.” Critics contend the action was part of a long-standing goal by progressive activists to “nationalize” future elections with a federal takeover.that-is

“There’s no denying what this looks like: a blatant move to politicize the election process,” wrote Heritage Foundation founder Edwin Feulner in a Jan. 16 opinion article.

Feulner, a staunch conservative, called Johnson’s action a “federal takeover” of state-run elections. “It’s a takeover ostensibly designed to address a nonexistent security threat — and in the process, ironically, make our elections less secure.”

Kemp agreed, saying, “I think that the Obama administration was interested in a universal or nationwide registration data base versus the states doing that. It was part of nationalizing elections which I think is a terrible idea.”

While the Obama administration tied its action to Russian hacking, election machinery is not connected to the Internet.

“All our equipment you actually vote on — the scanners or touch screens or whatever a state uses — are not connected to anything,” Merrill told TheDCNF. “They are not connected to the Internet. They’re not connected even to internal systems.”

“I don’t think they (DHS) understood the election process,” she added. “It’s not very cyber and I’m not sure they exactly understood that.”

Merrill also added that the hacking of the emails from the Democratic National Committee and of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta were not part of the government’s election systems.

“It was not a hacking of the election. It was a hacking of emails at the DNC which is NOT a government agency,” she added.

Support for the designation can be found among liberals and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Jan. 16, Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat who also is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, introduced legislation to support the designation.

“In the wake of the DNC server hack and well-documented efforts by states to suppress the vote, citizens are rightly concerned,” Johnson stated when he introduced the bill.

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