August 1, 2022 at 07:01AM MUST SEE: GOP Rep. Dan Bishop DESTROYS DOJ Hack for Setting Up Lower Income White Men in Contrived and Paid For Fake Whitmer Plot (VIDEO)
In October 2020 press conference, the FBI announced it thwarted a plot by a so-called “right-wing militia” to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government. The announcement was made purposely right before the 2020 election.
The Whitmer kidnapping plot was in the media 24/7 and used to bludgeon Trump with just a few weeks to go until Election Day.
The FBI used at least 12 informants in the Michigan Whitmer kidnapping case.
There were 6 defendants and 12 FBI informants identified as the case progressed.
The FBI planned the Whitmer attack, organized the attack, paid for the attack, and recruited local men to join in their planned attack.
It was another complete setup by Chris Wray’s FBI to frame and ruin innocent men.
The case, which we now know was comprised of virtually all FBI agents and informants, took another devastating hit in August.
Michael Hills, an attorney for Brandon Caserta, one of the six defendants, produced text messages showing an FBI field agent telling an informant to lie, frame an innocent man and delete text messages.
This is why federal prosecutors are refusing to hand over text messages and laptops from FBI informants in the Whitmer kidnapping case. The FBI actually hatched the plot. paid for the plot, ran the plot, and set up the innocent men in their immoral scheme.
Two men were found guilty in the FBI’s made-up kidnapping case in Michigan and two men were released due to a hung jury back in April.
Now the two men released by the hung jury are back in court.
Defendants Adam Fox and Barry Croft are facing trial for the second time.
The Stasi FBI will keep going after these innocent men until they get a guilty verdict.
It’s how the FBI rolls.
Just before the 2020 election, the FBI announced it had thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor.
A jury found that the FBI had actually entrapped at least 2 of the defendants.
Is this how the DOJ carries out its operations? The American people deserve to know. pic.twitter.com/ZcjGtwKWtC
Finally — this past week a Republican lawmaker confronted the DOJ on their dirty tricks in the contrived Whitmer case.
Dan Bishop questioned Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen on the FBI’s illegal operation against innocent Americans.
Rep. Dan Bishop: “The FBI appears to have contrived the plot, used its informants to drive people into the plot, and provide logistical and financial support into what was in effect an FBI operation.”
July 30, 2022 at 08:29AM Alex Jones’ InfoWars conspiracy website parent files for bankruptcy
WARNING: EXTREMELY BIASED ARTICLE via NBC News
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy on Friday, but his attorney said it should not disrupt the defamation damages trial underway in Texas, that seeks to force Jones to pay $150 million or more to the family of one of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack.
The trial in Austin, where Jones lives and Free Speech Systems is based, wrapped up its first week of testimony Friday and is expected to conclude next week. The bankruptcy filing was announced by Jones’ attorney Andino Reynal late in the day.
Reynal and attorneys for the family suing Jones told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that the bankruptcy filing would not halt the lawsuit.
The company wants “to put this part of the odyssey behind us so that we have some numbers” set for damages, Reynal said.
Details of the bankruptcy filing were not immediately available.
It is not the first time a bankruptcy filing has come amid litigation against Jones by the Sandy Hook families. In April, Jones’ company Infowars and two more of his business entities filed for bankruptcy protection, which led to a trial delay. Free Speech Systems is the parent company of Infowars.
Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, judges issued default judgements against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.
Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut case, issued a statement Friday evening blasting the bankruptcy filing.
“Just two days before jury selection is due to begin in Connecticut, Mr. Jones has once again fled like a coward to bankruptcy court in a transparent attempt to delay facing the families that he has spent years hurting,” Mattei said. “These families have an endless well of patience and remain determined to hold Mr. Jones accountable in a Connecticut court.”
The trial in Austin is to determine how much Jones should pay for defaming Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the country’s deadliest school shooting.
They and other Sandy Hook families suing Jones say they have suffered years of harassment and threats resulting from Jones’ repeated false claims that the shooting was a hoax or didn’t happen.
Jones claimed in court records last year that he had a negative net worth of $20 million, but attorneys for Sandy Hook families have painted a different financial picture.
Court records show that Jones’ Infowars store, which sells nutritional supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018. Jones has also urged listeners on his Infowars program to donate money.
July 28, 2022 at 05:11PM RNC warning to Trump: If you run for president, we stop paying your legal bills, says official
Republican leaders who worry that Donald Trump could hurt their midterm chances by announcing a presidential run too soon are hoping he’ll be dissuaded from doing so by the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal payments, according to an RNC official.
Since October 2021, the Republican National Committee has paid nearly $2 million to law firms representing Trump as part of his defense against personal litigation and government investigations.
But an RNC official told ABC News that as soon as Trump would announce he is running for president, the payments would stop because the party has a “neutrality policy” that prohibits it from taking sides in the presidential primary.
In January, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said, “The party has to stay neutral.”
“I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024,” she added. However she has since reaffirmed that Trump “still leads the party.”
RNC officials would not comment on the record for this story. Representatives for Trump also declined to comment.
This isn’t the first time that legal bills have been seen as possible leverage over Trump.
According to the book “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Trump told McDaniel he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — only to back down after McDaniel made it clear to Trump that the party would stop paying his legal bills for his post-election challenges and take other steps that would cost him financially.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a “Save America” rally in support of Arizona GOP candidates on July 22, 2022, in Prescott Valley, Ariz.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Both Trump and McDaniel have denied the story.
According to the RNC’s most recent financial disclosure to the Federal Elections Commission, from October 2021 through June of this year, the RNC paid at least $1.73 million to three law firms representing Trump, including firms that are defending him in investigations into his personal family business in New York. Last month alone, the RNC paid $50,000 to a law firm representing Trump in June.
The latest tally tops the $1.6 million maximum figure that the Republican Party’s executive committee reportedly voted to cover for Trump’s personal legal bills during an RNC meeting last year, a figure that The Washington Post, which first reported on the agreement in December, wrote could increase further with the party executive committee’s approval.
The RNC reported payments to law firms representing Trump as recently as mid-June, indicating the party leadership’s unfettered support for the former president and heightening critics’ concerns about the party’s neutrality ahead of the 2024 presidential primary season.
“I don’t think there’s been any effort” by the RNC to remain neutral, longtime Republican donor and Canary LLC CEO Dan Eberhart told ABC News. “This is a symbiotic relationship.”
“The RNC needs Trump or Trump surrogates or Trump’s likeness to raise money, and Trump wants them to continue paying his bills and be as pro-Trump as possible,” Eberhart said. “So neither is in a hurry to cut the umbilical cord.”
The RNC has continued to fundraise off of Trump’s name in its emails to supporters, touting a so-called “Trump Life Membership,” boosting his social media platform, and, most recently, promoting Trump’s first visit to Washington, D.C., since January of last year. Other potential 2024 presidential candidates and key party figures like former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have not received the same spotlight as Trump, experts say.
Eberhart said the current relationship between Trump and the RNC is putting other potential 2024 presidential candidates at an “absolute disadvantage.”
“Other Republican candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president have good reason to worry that the party apparatus is rigged against them in its unwavering support for Trump,” echoed Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the progressive government-watchdog group Public Citizen.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel gives remarks to a packed room at the opening of the RNC’s new Hispanic Community Center in Suwanee, Ga., on June 29, 2022.
Ben Gray/AP
“By paying Trump’s extensive legal bills, the RNC is indirectly helping finance the Trump campaign,” Holman said. “And given the history of the RNC zealously defending Trump, other Republican candidates should expect that they are not just running against Trump, they are also running against the Republican Party.”
Eberhart said “it’s an open secret” within the Republican Party that “nobody wants Trump to announce his candidacy until after the midterms.”
“Everyone thinks it’ll scramble the midterms and we could potentially destroy the advantage we have” if Trump would announce too early, Eberhart said. “It makes Trump more relevant and gives the Dems potentially a way to reset the race.”
RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn, who declined to comment on the RNC’s recent legal payments to firms representing Trump, had previously told ABC News that “as a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP.”
“It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never-ending witch hunt and attacks on him,” Vaughn told ABC News in January, in response to questions about the party’s earlier legal payments for Trump.
The Republican Party committee has described the legal payments for Trump as support for the former president against political attacks against him. But at least two of the three firms that have been paid on behalf of Trump are involved in legal work on behalf of the former president regarding investigations against his personal businesses by the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney.
Although both officials are Democrats, they have both said their probes are not politically motivated.
In all, the $1.7 million paid in total to the three firms includes more than $862,000 paid to NechelesLaw LLP, $516,000 paid to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, and $350,000 paid to van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin, the RNC’s disclosure filings show. The most recent payments are $50,440 to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP in mid-June and $186,182 to NechelesLaw LLP in May.
Former President Donald Trump delivers speaks at the America First Agenda Summit hosted by America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2022.
Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2 via ZUMA Press Wire
Neither NechelesLaw LLP, Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, or van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
The RNC is reportedly not covering Trump’s legal bills related to the House special committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But as previously reported by ABC News, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, and his presidential committee-turned-PAC Make America Great Again PAC have been footing legal bills for witnesses involved in legal battles related to the events of Jan. 6, which has raised concerns about witness coercion from Jan. 6 committee members and legal experts.
Holman, the watchdog group lobbyist, said regulations that would govern legal expense funds for executive branch officials and candidates have been proposed to the Office of Government Ethics. Among the proposals are regulations that would enforce contribution limits, prohibit certain funding sources, and require the full disclosure of where money comes from and how it is spent.
“Until OGE finalizes these rules, however, Trump and the RNC legally can do almost whatever they want to pay for Trump’s legal woes and largely evade meaningful disclosure of the sources and expenditures of these funds,” Holman said.
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said whistleblowers have disclosed FBI leadership is ‘pressuring’ agents to artificially pad domestic terrorism data.
The FBI is weaving a narrative that helps the Biden Regime while painting Trump supporters as terrorists.
Rep. Jordan sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray detailing new disclosures by insider whistleblowers.
“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” Jordan wrote in the letter. “Given the narrative pushed by the Biden administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous.”
The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee says new whistleblower disclosures allege FBI officials are pressuring agents to “reclassify” cases as “domestic violent extremism” in order to appease the Biden administration’s push to focus on these cases.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray Wednesday after he says “brave whistleblowers” came forward with information about “disturbing conduct” at the agency.
During congressional hearings last year, Wray testified that investigations into domestic violence extremism have increased “significantly” and the FBI had “doubled the amount of domestic terrorism investigations,” Jordan notes.
The Biden administration unveiled a national strategy for countering domestic terrorism last year, with officials telling Fox News it’s designed to cut across the political spectrum while warning that White supremacy and “militia violent extremists” currently present the “most persistent and lethal threats.”
Jordan says this narrative by the administration is “misleading” due to new whistleblower accounts.
“We have received accusations that FBI agents are bolstering the number of cases of DVEs to satisfy their superiors. For example, one whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification,” states Jordan.
Trump files defamation lawsuit against CNN, vows to sue others ‘who have defrauded the public’ regarding the 2020 election
President Donald Trump announced his intent to file lawsuits against several media outlets, including CNN, over their “repeated defamatory statements” against him.
“I have notified CNN of my intent to file a lawsuit over their repeated defamatory statements against me,” Trump wrote via his Save America PAC on Wednesday. “I will also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election.”
Trump continued, “I will never stop fighting for the truth and for the future of our Country!”
In his letter of intent, Trump accused CNN of “malice” for broadcasting “numerous articles and televised transmissions” with the purpose to defame him.
The 45th president also slammed their coverage of the presidential races from 2016 and 2020. He accused the network of airing false, unchallenged statements from media personalities who purported that he was “illegitimately elected” in 2016.
In 2020, however, CNN seemingly dismissed all claims of election illegitimacy, according to the document, and said Trump was a “liar” who “falsely claimed the election was being stolen from him.”
“CNN’s reporting, both before the election, as well as after the election, consistently fed a narrative that denounced President Trump’s legitimacy and competency,” the letter read.
The document also cited a Project Veritas video from last year that showed CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester bragging that the network, who dubs themselves “the most trusted name in news” helped remove Trump from of the White House.
“Look at what we did. We [CNN] got Trump out. I’m 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out,” said Chester.
The 282-page notice of intent called upon CNN to publish a “full and fair correction, apology, or retraction” for more than 30 libelous articles and broadcasts, in accordance with the Florida Statues.
According to Fla. Statute § 770.02, media networks must issue a “correction, apology, or retraction” of their libelous materials within ten days of receiving a notice before they are subject to lawsuits and damages.
It is
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Trump conduct, conversations part of Justice Dept. investigation
The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers,including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.
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In addition, Justice Department investigators in April received phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort isanother indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol built their case over a series of eight public hearings. Here’s how they did it. (Video: Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
The Washington Post and other news organizations havepreviously written that the Justice Department is examining the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump’s orbit. But the degree of prosecutors’ interest in Trump’s actions has not been previously reported, nor has the review of senior Trump aides’ phone records.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesman and a lawyer for Meadows both declined to comment.
The revelations raise the stakes of an already politically fraught probe involving a former president, still central to his party’s fortunes,who has survived previous investigations and two impeachments. Long before the Jan. 6 investigation, Trump spent years railing against the Justice Department and the FBI; the investigation moving closer to him will probably intensify that antagonism.
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Federal criminal investigations are by design opaque, and probes involving political figures are among the most closely held secrets at the Justice Department. Many end without criminal charges. The lack of observable investigative activity involving Trump and his White House for more than a year after the Jan. 6 attack has fueled criticism, particularly from the left, that the Justice Department is not pursuing the case aggressively enough.
In trying to understand how and why Trump partisans and lawyers sought to change the outcome of the election, one person familiar with the probe said, investigators also want to understand, at a minimum, what Trump told his lawyers and senior officials to do. Any investigation surrounding the effort to undo the results of the election must navigate complex issues of First Amendment-protected political activity and when or whether a person’s speech could become part of an alleged conspiracy in support of a coup.
Many elements of the sprawling Jan. 6 criminal investigation have remained under wraps. But in recent weeks the public pace of the work has increased, with a fresh round of subpoenas, search warrants and interviews. Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and lawyer, Greg Jacob, appeared before the grand jury in downtown Washington in recent days, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Both men declined to comment.
The Justice Department efforts are separate from the inquiry underway by the House committee, which has sought to portray Trump as responsible for inciting the Capitol riot and for being derelict in his duty for refusing to stop it. Both Short and Jacob have testified before the committee, telling lawmakers that Pence resisted Trump’s attempts to enlist him in the cause.
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Unlike the Justice Department, the House panel does not have the power to launch criminal investigations or charge anyone with wrongdoing.
The Justice Department probe began amid the smoke, blood and chaos at the Capitol and has led to criminal charges against more than 840 individuals, expanding to include an examination of events that occurred elsewhere in the days and weeks before the attack — including at the White House, in state capitols and at a D.C. hotel.
There are two principal tracks of the investigation that could ultimately lead to additional scrutiny of Trump, two people familiar with the situation said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
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The first centers on seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding, the type of charges already filed against individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and on two leaders of far-right groups, Stewart Rhodes and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who did not breach the Capitol but were allegedly involved in planning the day’s events.
The second involves potential fraud associated with the false-electors scheme or with pressure Trump and his allies allegedly put on the Justice Department and others to falsely claim that the election was rigged and votes were fraudulently cast.
Recent subpoenas obtained by The Post show that two Arizona state legislators were ordered to turn over communications with “any member, employee, or agent of Donald J. Trump or any organization advocating in favor of the 2020 re-election of Donald J. Trump, including ‘Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.’ ”
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No former president has ever been charged with a crime in the country’s history. In cases when investigators found evidence suggesting a president engaged in criminal conduct, as with Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton, investigators and successive administrations concluded it was better to grant immunity or forgo prosecution. One goal was to avoid appearing to use government power to punish political enemies and assure the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed that the Jan. 6 investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead and saidthat no one is exempt or above scrutiny, while refusing to divulge information outside of court filings.
Garland told NBC News in a Tuesday interview that the department pursues justice “without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone, anyone, who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6th, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable — that’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”
The Jan. 6 investigation is by some measures the largest ever undertaken by the Justice Department. While investigators in nearly every part of the country have been involved, the lion’s share of the work is being done by three offices: the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, and the criminal and national security divisions at department headquarters.
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In the probe’s first year, prosecutors focused largely on the people who breached the Capitol, some of them violently, charging hundreds with interfering with or assaulting police or obstructing an official proceeding.
This year, the fake-elector scheme has become a major focus of the Justice Department inquiry. After Trump lost the election, lawyers and others close to him urged GOP officials in key states to submit alternate and illegitimate slates of electors to reject the results of the state vote totals. Those would-be electors were aided in their effort by Trump campaign officials and Giuliani, who said publicly that the rival slates were necessary and appropriate, and has been described as overseeing the strategy.
Last month, federal agents fanned out in multiple states to serve grand jury subpoenas, execute search warrants and interview witnesses — a significant escalation of overt investigative activity. As part of that effort, agents searched Eastman’s electronic devices, and conducted a search at the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who enthusiastically embraced some of Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stop Biden from becoming president. Many of those who received subpoenas were told specifically to turn over their communications with Giuliani.
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The Justice Department inspector general is also an important player in the investigation, as it examines Clark’s role as a department official in allegedly furthering the efforts.
In a call on Dec. 27, 2020, witnesses have said, Trump told acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that he wanted his Justice Department to say there was significant election fraud, and said he was poised to oust Rosen and replace him with Clark, who was willing to make that assertion.
Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department could not “flip a switch and change the election,” according to notes of the conversation cited by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I don’t expect you to do that,” Trump responded, according to the notes. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
The president urged Rosen to “just have a press conference.” Rosen refused. “We don’t see that,” he told Trump. “We’re not going to have a press conference.”
Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
Several FBI whistleblowers say that the agency’s probe into Hunter Biden was internally sabotaged during the 2020 election in order to derail the investigation, after agents wrongfully deemed verified evidence as “disinformation” to ignore.
According to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), agents investigating Hunter “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” adding that his office received “a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers” regarding the investigation.
Grassley added that “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” according to the Washington Examiner.
FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened in August 2020 the assessment that was later used by the agency, according to the disclosures. One of the whistleblowers claimed the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time.
A whistleblower also said Thibault “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting,” according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” The senator said Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required” and that FBI officials “subsequently attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to the disclosures.
The whistleblowers say investigators from FBI headquarters were “in communication with FBI agents responsible for the Hunter Biden information targeted by Mr. Auten’s assessment,” and that their findings on whether the claims were in fact disinformation were placed “in a restricted access sub-file” in September 2020, according to Grassley, who added that the disclosures “appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.“
Grassley summarized the new allegations in a Monday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The Examiner notes that FBI agent Auten was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, including interviewing Christopher Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko.
According to Grassley, the “volume and consistency” of the allegations regarding the handling of the Hunter Biden probe “substantiate their credibility.”
The assessment by Auten in August 2020 was opened the same month Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) received a briefing from the FBI “that purportedly related to our Biden investigation and a briefing for which the contents were later leaked in order to paint the investigation in a false light,” Grassley said. The senator said Senate Democrats asked for a briefing in July 2020 “from the very same FBI HQ team that discredited the derogatory Hunter Biden information.”
The FBI inquiry into Hunter Biden reportedly began as a tax investigation, then expanded into a scrutiny of potential money-laundering and foreign lobbying; the DOJ has declined to hand over investigative details. -Washington Examiner
Thibault, the FBI agent who allegedly quashed the Hunter probe, may have violated the Hatch act in 2020 after making posts on social media which were critical of then-president Donald Trump and former AG William Barr.
Also notable – Hunter had the numbers of several FBI agents in his iCloud contacts.
Joe Biden, top Democrats, and virtually the entire mainstream media dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation when bombshell allegations from the New York Post emerged weeks before the 2020 election. In March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report claiming that figures tied to Russian intelligence promoted “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” about Joe Biden.
July 25, 2022 at 03:34PM via Reason.com Most Americans Think Government Is Corrupt, According to a New Poll
Another sign of growing discontent in America? A new poll from the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics finds a majority of Americans think the government is corrupt and stacked against them.
To probably no one’s surprise, 73 percent of poll respondents who identify as “strong Republican” respondents agreed with the statement that the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me.” But Republicans are far from alone in this sentiment. Fifty-one percent of “very liberal” voters agreed with the same statement.
Overall, 56 percent of survey respondents said that the government is corrupt. This included 66 percent of all Republican respondents, 63 percent of independents, and 46 percent of Democrats.
The survey of 1,000 registered voters found that a significant number of people expect that extreme measures may be necessary to protect against government overreach. 28 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” Thirty-six percent of Republicans, 35 percent of independents, and 20 percent of Democrats agreed.
While some have portrayed this as a sign of increasing polarization or extremism, I think it’s the kind of poll question that makes for dramatic results but doesn’t really tell us much. Agreeing that armed revolution “may” (or may not!) be necessary at some unspecified point in the future doesn’t mean you think it’s terribly likely to be necessary.
One interesting finding is that people across the board believed that their political opponents might agree with them if they were better informed. Asked about “people who you disagree with on political issues,” half said that “the root of the problem” is that these people “are misinformed because of where they get their information.” Fifty-one percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats, and 37 percent of independents believed this.
And despite being a poll about political polarization, the survey actually found a number of areas of agreement.
Asked if “immigration is good for the country,” only 34 percent of Republicans agreed, while 57 percent of independents and 73 percent of Democrats did. But asked if “legal immigration is good for the country,” these numbers were boosted to 70 percent, 72 percent, and 82 percent, respectively.
Most respondents, regardless of political affiliation, were also in agreement that “it should be illegal for private companies such as Verizon, Google and Facebook to collect information about people’s phone and internet usage.”
The poll was conducted at the end of May. You can find the full results here.
America is now subjected to a culture of totalitarianism worse than the former Soviet Union, according to liberal linguistics professor Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky argued that the U.S. is experiencing a form of information warfare and censorship that’s much more radical and oppressive than what the Soviets inflicted upon their people at the height of the Cold War.
“Take the United States today. It is living under a kind of totalitarian culture which has never existed in my lifetime, and is much worse in many ways than the Soviet Union before Gorbachev,” Chomsky said Friday on “Under the Skin with Russell Brand.”
“Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice of America, German television if they wanted to find out the news.”
Chomsky went on to argue that the ongoing Ukraine conflict has prompted the Western governments and tech companies to engage in unprecedented censorship, preventing the American people from hearing information from Russia’s point of view.
“If today, in the United States, you want to find out what [Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov of Russia is saying, can’t do it. It’s barred. Americans are not permitted to hear what Russians are saying. Can’t get Russian television, can’t access Russian sources,” Chomsky said, adding that also includes “fine American journalists” who happen to do business with Russian media.
“You want to find out what the adversary is saying, which is of the utmost importance, you can maybe tune into Indian state television and find it out, or you can read it on Al-Jazeera,” he said.
“But the United States has imposed constraints on freedom of access to information which are astonishing, which in fact go beyond what was the case in post-Stalin Soviet Russia,” Chomsky added.
Shortly after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February, Big Tech barred Russian state media like RT and Sputnik from disseminating across platforms like Facebook and YouTube in the name of fighting “disinformation.”
Twitter also censored Russia’s Foreign Ministry from appearing in its search results, prompting Russia to call on the social media platform to “revise their policy that limits the audience’s right to access to information and to renounce the use of anti-democratic tools of unfair competition between American mainstream news outlets and alternative media sources.”
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that defending free speech used to be a “central” virtue of the left before it became radicalized by its “authoritarian wing.”
“This is how the American Left used to think before its authoritarian wing that supports censorship, Big Tech control of political discourse, and the US security state and its various narratives about Russia became dominant,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Chomsky, like everyone, has had some bad moments, including his call for the unvaccinated to be housed in camps and his Vote Dem mania. But he has never wavered an inch in his unyielding defense of free speech and contempt for censorship. That value was once central to leftists,” Greenwald added.
Naturally, Chomsky was immediately chastised by the left for criticizing U.S. censorship.
Joe Biden, who told Americans last year, “You’re not going to get covid if you have these vaccinations,” has just tested positive for COVID after having had four vaccinations.
Oh dear.
Biden: “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations”
“This morning, President Biden tested positive for COVID-19. He is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and experiencing very mild symptoms,” said a statement by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Biden has begun taking begun taking Paxlovid and will now work in isolation until he tests negative.
During a CNN town hall event last year, Biden told Americans, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
“This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Back in January, Biden said, “This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Biden now has COVID after taking two vaccinations and two boosters, a total of four shots.
No doubt the media, which ran with the “100 per cent safe and effective” mantra for months before that proved to be completely untrue, will now go into overdrive claiming Biden would be seriously ill without the vaccines.
As we highlighted last month, quadruple-vaccinated Dr. Anthony Fauci also tested positive for COVID-19, before catching it again two weeks later.
Fauci subsequently acknowledged during an appearance on Fox News that while vaccines may protect from symptoms of the virus, they “don’t protect overly well” when it comes to transmission of COVID.
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