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Elise Stefanik Gives Master Class on Refuting Democrats’ ‘Insurrection’ Lies


BY: EVITA DUFFY-ALFONSO | JANUARY 08, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/08/elise-stefanik-gives-master-class-on-refuting-democrats-insurrection-lies/

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In an NBC interview Sunday, Rep. Elise Stefanik deftly demonstrated how to handle Democrats’ false claims about a Jan. 6, 2021 “insurrection” to justify criminalizing the speech of the half of the country that opposes their policies.

At the beginning of “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker’s interview with Stefanik, Welker played a deceptively edited clip from Jan. 6, 2021. On the House floor, Stefanik characterized the events from earlier that day as “tragic” and stated that violent individuals should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” 

Had NBC honestly portrayed the clip, it would have included the main point of Stefanik’s speech. That was to call out Democrats for dismantling election integrity laws ahead of the 2020 election in key swing states. Watch Stefanik’s remarks in full here

Welker asked the dark-horse potential for Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick whether she still believes “that day was tragic, and that those who were responsible should be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law.” This was an attempt to entrap Stefanik into accepting the Democrat lie that Jan. 6 amounted to an “insurrection” that justifies the Biden Department of Justice’s continued investigation and prosecution of nonviolent attendees at the protest.

Stefanik refused to take the bait, responding, “Well, first of all, Kristen, as typical for NBC and the biased media, you played one excerpt of my speech… If you go back and play the full speech I gave on the House floor, I condemned the violence just like I condemn the violence of the BLM [Black Lives Matter] riots. But I also importantly stood for election integrity and security of our elections. If we don’t have that, we do not have a democracy.” 

[Read: America’s Justice System Says Jan. 6 Was Neither A Terrorist Attack Nor An Insurrection]

Stefanik also expressed “concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages,” and the “weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but [all] conservatives.”

Indeed, countless peaceful protesters who demonstrated at the capitol three years ago have been slandered by the media and House Democrats’ J6 Committee, harassed by Biden’s Department of Justice, and held for months in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Traditional Catholics, pro-lifers, parents who oppose critical race theory at school board meetings, and Trump supporters have also found themselves targets of the Biden DOJ for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly.

“And that’s one of the reasons why I’m so proud to serve on the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the [Federal] Government,” said Stefanik. “Because the American people want answers. They want transparency, and they understand that as you look across this country, there seem to be two sets of rules. If your last name is Clinton, or it’s Biden, you get to live by a different set of rules than if you’re an everyday patriotic American.” 

“So the real threat to our democracy is these baseless witch hunt investigations and lawsuits against President Trump,” Stefanik added. “[It] is undemocratic and it’s shredding our Constitution, and you know who agrees with me, Kristen? The American people. That’s why President Trump is winning in poll after poll against Joe Biden.”

Welker also asked Stefanik if she would “vote to certify the results of the ’24 election no matter what they show?” Again, refusing to fall into Welker’s trap, Stefanik replied matter of factly, “We will see if this is a legal and valid election.”

This answer has been seized on by the corporate media to somehow insinuate that Stefanik is anti-democratic. Apparently, Welker and the rest of her media peers do not comprehend the point of certifying the presidential election, which is to validate the integrity of the electoral process. In other words, no representative should be committed to certifying or not certifying the election until after it has taken place and been verifiably conducted lawfully.

Importantly, Stefanik pointed out the key fact that Democrats are already interfering in the 2024 election through multiple means. “What we’re seeing so far is that Democrats are so desperate they’re trying to remove President Trump from the ballot,” Stefanik continued. “That is a suppression of the American people.”


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

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Jim Jordan To CIA: How Many Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Signatories Were On Your Payroll?


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | DECEMBER 08, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/08/jim-jordan-to-cia-how-many-hunter-biden-laptop-letter-signatories-were-on-the-cias-payroll/

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House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is investigating whether the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter were paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

After Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop surfaced during the 2020 election, more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter in Politico saying the computer “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” In a letter to CIA Director William Burns on Monday, Jordan, who leads the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, demanded the CIA chief come clean about the agency’s alleged involvement in branding the laptop as Russian disinformation, which plainly amounted to election interference.

“We understand that former intelligence officials often return to the intelligence community under private contract for their previous agencies,” Jordan wrote. “It is vital to the Committees’ oversight to understand whether any of the signatories of the public statement were actively employed by CIA as contractors or consultants at the time they signed the public statement.”

“If so,” Jordan added, “this information would raise fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA as it pertains to the October 19, 2020, ‘Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails’ signed and published by 51 former intelligence community officials in the weeks preceding the 2020 presidential election.”

A report from the Weaponization Committee in May revealed the CIA’s covert involvement in orchestrating the letter. Evidence that surfaced from Hunter Biden’s laptop unveiled blockbuster details about the Biden family’s influence-peddling operations now at the center of a Republican impeachment inquiry.

[READ: CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows]

In his Monday letter to the CIA chief, Jordan demanded a list of all signatories to the letter “who were on active contract or consulting for the CIA at any time from January 1, 2020, to the present,” as well as whether any of those potential contracts “pertained to Hunter Biden’s business dealings, Biden family influence-peddling, Ukraine, or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.”

Several of the intelligence letters’ signatories have since doubled down on the debunked claims of Russian interference despite the laptop having been verified even by news outlets that first dismissed the computer’s legitimacy. Charges that the laptop stemmed from a Kremlin campaign were even debunked by rare on-the-record statements from the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of National Intelligence, and the State Department before Election Day. However, the laptop was suppressed by major online platforms, at least in part over the allegations that it was Russian propaganda.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended signing the letter in an interview with New York Magazine last fall, with the magazine noting that “Clapper was not pleased to be asked about the letter two years after its release.”

“What are you trying to get me to say, that I screwed up and I shouldn’t have signed the letter? I’m not going to say that,” Clapper told the paper. “As far as I was concerned, we were waving the yellow flag. At the time, it was fishy to me. It had the characteristics of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, likewise told Fox News in October, “No, I don’t have any regrets” about signing the letter.

Last week, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., became the latest to peddle the fake Russia narrative at a hearing on censorship with the House Weaponization Committee.

“The problem,” Goldman said about the laptop, “is that hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia.”

In April, House Republicans expanded oversight inquiries surrounding the Politico letter to include Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In a letter to Blinken, lawmakers wrote, “[W]e have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor, and we therefore request your assistance with our oversight.”

Jordan gave CIA Director Burns until Dec. 15 to comply with the congressional request for records.

Read the full letter from Jordan to the CIA below:https://www.scribd.com/embeds/690706131/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-Tbq648AcGGRZj45uKoS7

2023-12-04 JDJ MT to Burns … by federalistzoom


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.

Biden Admin Gives Catholics, Parents The ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Treatment But Not Violent Antisemites


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | DECEMBER 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/05/biden-admin-gives-catholics-parents-the-domestic-terrorist-treatment-but-not-violent-antisemites/

People carrying Palestine flags

The FBI interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond as part of an agency probe of “radical-traditional Catholics” as “potential domestic terrorists,” according to a new congressional report out Monday.

The interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed the FBI under President Joe Biden “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans” and “relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment.”

“The FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership,” House investigators wrote.

The violent rise in antisemitism from supporters of Hamas terrorists’ fight against Israel, meanwhile, has escaped the same “domestic terrorism” treatment that President Joe Biden’s administration applied to traditional Catholics, as well as to parents who protested Covid lockdowns and inappropriate content in their kids’ schools. (A separate interim staff report from the Weaponization Committee in March found the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” for investigating parents as terrorists.)

The White House was asked in October if the administration that directed counterterrorism resources toward concerned parents at school board meetings would apply the same “domestic terrorist” label to terrorist sympathizers who cheer violence against Jews.

“The people in this country making violent antisemitic threats. Are they domestic terrorists?” inquired Fox News’ Peter Doocy at a White House press briefing.

“I don’t know that we’re classifying people as domestic terrorists for that,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “I mean, that’s really a question better left to law enforcement. I’m not aware that there’s been such a characterization of that.”

Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed upwards of 1,200 civilians, violent and explicitly antisemitic demonstrators showing solidarity with Hamas have terrorized Jewish Americans. In late October, Jewish students at a Manhattan science and art school were compelled to take shelter at a campus library as anti-Israel protesters stormed the building. Demonstrators in Times Square even presented Swastikas at a rally celebrating the massacre of Jews.

Anyone could easily predict what the FBI protocol would be had recent anti-Israel demonstrations been full of right-wingers waving Confederate flags. The federal intelligence agency kicked into high gear six years ago to prosecute those involved in Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, even raiding an organizer’s Discord chats.

After carrying a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a 53-year-old man was sentenced to three years in prison. The presence of a few Confederate banners at the rally that day earned endless headlines in nearly every major publication.

To the Boston Globe the sight was a “horror.”

To The New York Times the sight was “unnerving.”

To The Washington Post it was “the flag of fascism for Trump.”

To USA Today it was a “reminder” of America’s “darkest past.”

But the pundit class doesn’t seem to mind Palestinian flags taking over the nation’s capital.

And eight years after the Confederate banner was taken down at the South Carolina state house, the Palestinian flag is now being raised over one town in Massachusetts.


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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10 Abnormal Things Biden’s ‘Return To Normalcy’ Brought Americans


BY: SAMUEL BOEHLKE | JULY 13, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/13/10-abnormal-things-bidens-return-to-normalcy-brought-americans/

Biden speaks at an Iowa rally in 2019

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As they worked tirelessly to oust Donald Trump from the White House in 2020, a chorus of corporate media, Never Trumpers, establishment Democrats, and Joe Biden himself promised Americans a Biden presidency would usher in a “return to normalcy.”

Two and a half years later, normalcy has yet to appear. Biden’s tenure has cemented a new “normal” of men pretending to be women, a march toward global conflict, and synthetic drugs in the White House. Decency and decorum? Not exactly. As the 2024 election season heats up, now is as good a time as ever to take stock of our cultural and political status quo and remind ourselves that the self-proclaimed unifier-in-chief and his administration’s lackeys have done everything in their power to upend our norms, not return to them. Here are 10 examples.

1. Obscene LGBT Activism

In exchange for Trump’s mean tweets, Biden’s normal includes men showing off their prosthetic breasts on the White House lawn. As LGBT extremists enforced pride month on the rest of the country, the Biden family saw fit to host a pride party at the symbolic residence. Three of their guests proudly stripped off their tops to flaunt their mutilated “true” selves.

After immediate backlash, the Biden administration noted the behavior was “inappropriate” and disinvited the three people involved — but there was nothing “normal” about nude White House party guests.

Speaking of indecent exposure, LGBT activism under the Biden administration has taken an obscene turn and not just during “pride month.” The White House’s gay and trans agenda has no limiting principle, with the president going out of his way to promote irreversible medical interventions for confused youths. This radicalism trickles down into defending pornographic books for children, explicit “education,” public nudity, and graphic sexual depictions in family-friendly public environments. 

2. Corruption

When Biden talked about normalcy, did he mean multimillion-dollar bribery schemes? Thanks to astute lawmakers like Sen. Chuck Grassley and brave whistleblowers within the Internal Revenue Service and FBI, Americans are finally seeing past the Biden-protection racket to the corrupt family business.

Biden and his DOJ will pretend the sins are littler misdemeanor tax crimes limited to his poor addict son Hunter, but whistleblower testimony about a damning FBI document suggests “the big guy’s” hands are dirty — and the Justice Department has been covering it up.

3. Cocaine at the White House

The same administration that tracked down grandmas who happened to be in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, claims it won’t be able to figure out who brought cocaine into the high-security White House, complete with Secret Service agents, cameras, and records of every guest’s name, date of birth, and social security number, among other things.

Whether the synthetic drug belongs to Hunter Biden, an obvious suspect who is believed to be living in the White House right now, or someone else, Colombian bam-bam turning up at the president’s house isn’t normal.

4. Federal Weaponization and Censorship

To suppress its ideological and political opponents, the Biden administration found convenient ways to silence social media users. As recent House reports have shown, Biden’s agencies regularly engaged in collusion with the largest Big Tech companies to suppress free speech. Not only did they push for the censorship of speech that was factually wrong — speech that is still protected by the First Amendment — but they labeled information critical of the Democrat regime as “disinformation” and “misinformation” to justify stripping it from the public square. Worse, the Biden administration devised a category of speech that’s true but inconvenient, called “malinformation” — and worked to silence that too.

5. Bidenomics

Despite recovering some of the jobs the government forced workers out of during Covid lockdowns, Biden’s economy overall has been disastrous for the American people. Inflation in particular has been a steady theme, with prices for essentials from groceries to gasoline soaring throughout the early years of Biden’s term. Prices are still high and many Americans are still suffering in 2023, but in January the president had the audacity to claim a high inflation rate was a good thing because it had “cooled” from the 40-year record Biden broke the previous year.

6. The Edge of World War

Aggressive support for Ukraine in its war with Russia has been a constant theme of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, this support edges us closer to a global war. With escalation as the apparent goal of this conflict, depleted stockpiles put the U.S. at increased risk of war with insufficient supplies to fight it. NATO’s recent shortening of Ukraine’s membership application process could threaten to drag NATO member countries, and America in particular, into a great power conflict once again.

Of course, this is in addition to rising threats from China and at America’s southern border, with foreign threats growing under the noses of a distracted national security apparatus.

7. Science-Denying HHS Assistant Secretary

How’s this for normal? Biden appointed a science-denying man as the first “female” four-star

admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The president selected Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender-identifying person and motivated LGBT ideologue, as the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Levine previously promoted the most extreme policies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during Covid and was responsible for thousands of excess deaths in Pennsylvania during his tenure as the head of the Pennsylvania Health Department. In his position as Assistant Secretary, Levine has consistently fought to deny biological realities and promote the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children.

8. Pop Star as a Medical Expert

In keeping with Biden’s elevation of the unqualified, his administration turned to celebrities such as Olivia Rodrigo to persuade Americans to fawn over a flailing Anthony Fauci. In 2021, Rodrigo partnered with Fauci and Biden to produce videos encouraging youth vaccination. Her fans, along with the rest of the world, realized her expertise in healing hearts through music did not extend to medicine; her vaccination video remains one of her least-liked social media posts. 

9. Senility and Lying

Probably the easiest return to normal would have been the election of a younger, coherent president who maintained some semblance of accountability to Americans. Instead, Biden offers regular doses of verbal incoherence, sleepiness, gaffes, uncomfortable whispers and shouts, and tumbles. These are all bad looks, but not as bad as the lies that spill out of the president on the daily, which The Federalist has tracked since his first day in office. Lying may be normal for Biden, but it shouldn’t be normal for the presidency, and neither should perceived physical and cognitive weakness on the world stage. 

10. War on SCOTUS

It’s no surprise attacks on the Supreme Court have ramped up under the Biden administration. After all, this president evidently believes he’s above the law, and the court has disagreed, smacking down his administration on everything from student loans to Covid jab mandates. Not to mention other blows to the left during Biden’s tenure, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 303 Creative decision, and a university affirmative action takedown.

With the help of the media, the Biden administration has gotten bold about its plans to undercut and circumvent the court wherever it can. And the president is not alone; private universities will also be doing their best to dodge the law to keep supporting racial discrimination.


Samuel Boehlke is a rising senior in Mass Communication/Law and Policy at Concordia University Wisconsin and a current intern at The Federalist. He is Web Editor for CUW’s The Beacon and External Affairs Editor for Quaestus Journal. Reach him at sboehlkefdrlst@gmail.com or by DMs @vaguelymayo.

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/

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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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