RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
December 31 to January 6, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, Julie Kelly reports how a much-hyped, supposedly white-supremacist “plot” to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan has been exposed as more like a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap Americans with unpopular political views. Highlights: -
Details revealed during largely successful appeals by defendants – proceedings mostly ignored by national media – make the operation sound like something out of an over-the-top Hollywood script. -
Public defenders have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by numerous field offices. -
The plot line features secretive FBI cash payouts; drug parties; a wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon turned bureau asset and later accused as a “double agent” – all wrapped up with a dramatic FBI takedown scene at the end. -
FBI informants met with their targets to brainstorm how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and perhaps bring her across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin for a “citizen’s trial” over her COVID-19 lockdowns. -
The reported plot mastermind was not, as originally portrayed by prosecutors, a bigoted extremist, but a homeless man, dubbed “Captain Autism,” living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop with no running water or toilet. -
A 2020 protest at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing appeared to presage FBI tactics during the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, with similar optics. The head of the Detroit FBI field office was promoted to run the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the protest -- the episode three years ago today that lives on as a cudgel for President Biden and the left to attack Donald Trump.
Waste of the Day
By Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books $175.6M Corporate Welfare Boondoggle, RCI
$2 Billion From Feds for Abortion, RCI
$250K for Loudon Schools Spokesperson, RCI
Contractor Devours Food-for-Poor Cash, RCI
Leftover COVID Aid Left Can Be Spent on Anything, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden Admin Waters Down Vetting of Chinese Illegals, Daily Caller
Why Would Lawyer Lend Millions to Hunter Biden? Los Angeles Times
1st Set of Epstein Files Out, Naming Clinton, Prince Andrew, CNN
Victim: Epstein Told Me Clinton ‘Likes Them Young’, New York Post
Dems Revive Trump Emoluments Case re: Stays at His Hotels, Yahoo
How Liberal Justice Sotomayor Went From $750K to Millions, Forbes Other Noteworthy Articles and Series More evidence has emerged showing that leading U.S. scientists were not forthright when they claimed for years that the COVID-19 pandemic could not have sprung from a Chinese lab in late 2019. This article reports that a 2018 grant proposal submitted to the Pentagon that was co-authored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2: Most worrying to some scientists: The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites – the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. Indeed, some scientists have likened [the proposal, titled Project] DEFUSE to a blueprint for generating SARS-CoV-2 in the lab. … New documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know now show that these experiments were proposed to occur in part in Wuhan with fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. – apparently to save on costs. American scientists at the center of the “lab leak theory” controversy appear to have concealed this from their desired funder – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China. The article reports that two scientists long connected to the lab leak theory – Peter Daszak, who leads EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that discovers novel viruses, and Ralph Baric, who helms a University of North Carolina lab with a focus on coronaviruses – are mentioned in the proposal. Emails suggest they tried to downplay the role of U.S. in the work because it involved controversial gain-of-function research. “That’s really damning,” said Justin Kinney, a quantitative biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co-founder of Biosafety Now, an organization that seeks tighter regulations for gain-of-function research. “These revelations are important because these specific experiments could, quite plausibly, have led to the genetic engineering and accidental release of SARS-CoV-2.” Remember when everyone assumed Russia would flatten Ukraine in a New York minute? This article reports that the effectiveness of China’s military may not be all it seems, even as the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, ramps up his martial rhetoric concerning Taiwan. A sweeping purge of nine Chinese generals has weakened the People's Liberation Army, exposing deep-rooted corruption that could take more time to fix, slowing Xi’s military modernization drive: The purges are a setback for Xi, who has pumped billions into buying and developing equipment as part of his modernising efforts to build a "world-class" military by 2050, with Beijing's outsized defence budget growing at a faster pace than the economy for some years. … Analysts say that while the Chinese military has long been known for corruption, the extent of the latest crackdown and the involvement of the PLA's Rocket Force is shocking. … In the longer run, analysts expect the chronic problem of corruption to persist in the Chinese military because some root causes - including low pay for officers and opacity in military expenditure – have not been addressed. Looking ahead: "More heads will roll. The purge that centered around the Rocket Force is not over," said Alfred Wu, associate professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. Overwhelmed by the millions of migrants crossing the southern border, the FBI now has a 15-month backlog on DNA testing for migrants and is running out of money to sustain the program, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) email chain reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses tests from the FBI, which then analyzes and stores them for federal border authorities, to test migrants 14 years old and older to connect offenders to crimes: When it comes to the migration flows to the U.S., federal border authorities have found significant numbers of migrants that are fraudulently making it seem like they’re legitimate families. ... A Department of Homeland Security pilot program previously found that 16 out of 84 families were “fraudulent” and not actually related, while a separate program discovered that out of a total of 522 migrant families, 79 were fraudulent. The Trump administration expanded the federal government’s DNA program at the border in 2020. Water disputes are increasingly triggering violence around the world. Deadly clashes in India, Kenya and Yemen, on the Iran-Afghanistan border and in Ukraine – where Russia is blamed for an explosion that ripped apart a major dam, unleashing floods that killed 58 people while cutting off water to productive farmland – are just a few of the 344 instances of water-related conflicts worldwide during 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to data compiled by researchers at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. hotspots. Their newly updated data shows a major upsurge in violent incidents: “It’s very disturbing that in particular attacks on civilian water infrastructure seem to be on the rise,” said Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and senior fellow. “We also see a worrying increase in violence associated with water scarcity worsened by drought, climate disruptions, growing populations, and competition for water.” … Not every case involves injuries or deaths, but many do. In African countries including Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan, fighting has erupted between farmers and herders over water sources and land. … In South Africa, protests over lack of access to clean water have turned volatile, with people burning tires and throwing rocks at police. During droughts in Iran and India, protests over water shortages have also sparked violence. This article opens with a nice lead: “When Zaher Jabarin ran a Hamas cell in the 1980s, he borrowed cash from his mother to buy weapons. Now, he oversees a financial empire that the U.S. estimates is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and funds Hamas’s operations against Israel.” It goes to profile the 55-year-old militant who manages Hamas’ financial relations with its main benefactor, Iran, and others: Jabarin has built relationships with people close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan [of Turkey] that Israeli security officials say helped Hamas procure weapons and funding. Jabarin has helped maintain Hamas’s relationship in Lebanon with Iranian proxy Hezbollah, working with money changers there, according to U.S. officials who have tracked the financial flows. Iran transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas in recent years via money changers using the hawala [informal, non-bank] system, and more recently cryptocurrencies. ... The cash was routed via exchanges in Beirut, Istanbul and other regional business hubs before getting to Gaza, according to the U.S. officials, and the current and former Palestinian officials. This article reports that Jabarin, who lives in Turkey, and his financial network may be beyond the reach of Israel and the U.S., for now: Israel fears that even if it destroys Hamas’s military in Gaza, the group’s financial empire will remain. Jabarin for years defied layers of Western sanctions to use financial systems in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and lately Turkey, to establish companies and move money into Gaza, according to the current and former U.S. and Israeli security officials, and current and former Palestinian finance officials. The enduring financial flows illustrate the difficulty the U.S. and Israel have faced shutting down funding to Hamas. The U.S. has sanctioned Hamas officials and affiliated companies for more than two decades but has struggled to disrupt its ability to raise cash. Campaign donations are not a definitive measure of one’s political leanings. Elections, after all, present choices between individuals as much as ideologies. And defining the politics of an entire group of people – e.g., doctors, engineers, school teachers – based on its politically active members also raises questions. Nevertheless, this article presents a series of dynamic charts showing changes over the last few decades strongly suggest how “white-collar elites” have “been wholly captured by far-left fundamentalism.” The eight charts – showing changes for American physicians, nurses, psychologists, accountants, engineers, tech professionals, teachers and professors – all move sharply leftward over time. The accompanying text traces the change back to schooling: In order to enjoy a career in the professional realm, one must first pass through the left-wing university system and receive the requisite piece of paper. Thus, college graduates – the people who go on to get the white-collar jobs — are overwhelmingly leftists. |
