RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18, 2025 In RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry reports that the Biden administration is formally considering commuting the sentence of the convicted felon who stole and leaked incoming President Trump's tax records along with those of thousands of other taxpayers, in the biggest tax data heist in U.S. history. -
A search of the Justice Department's pardon database reveals Charles Edward Littlejohn – who just began his five-year sentence in May – has been assigned a clemency case number. It says a petition for "commutation of sentence" was recently sought and is "pending." -
Liberal advocacy groups have been lobbying President Biden to free Littlejohn because, they argue, he is a "selfless defender of tax fairness" for exposing how Trump and other wealthy Americans, including billionaires Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos, take advantage of tax breaks. -
Littlejohn leaked the sensitive IRS data to the New York Times and the liberal news site ProPublica, which published them in a series of articles before and after the 2020 election. -
The pending clemency comes as Biden has issued a record number of controversial pardons and commutations, including ones for his son Hunter Biden for tax evasion and firearms violations. - On Friday, the White House disclosed new clemencies, for nearly 2,500 serving what were described as unduly harsh sentences for drug crimes.
In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney finds a prevailing view among energy experts that when he takes office, President Trump may not be able to deliver on his campaign pledge to “cut energy prices in half within 12 months” – although in the long run prices could well come down. -
The experts foresee huge increases in energy demand from artificial intelligence and data centers – meaning Trump's “drill, baby, drill” approach might merely keep prices steady in the short term while advancing affordability in the long run. -
The anti-fossil fuel “green” agenda of departing President Biden curbed free-market forces, limiting energy exploration on federal lands and liquid national gas exports, but American energy companies have refined their techniques, allowing them to tap more from existing sources. -
Consequently, the Trump administration will be trying to goose production at a time when environmentalists insist it is unnecessary, and with inflation still percolating, it may be difficult to deliver lower prices in the near term. -
Still, optimism is high among energy mavens supporting Trump’s approach. One analyst: “I've been at this 17 years now, and it's definitely at a peak in terms of enthusiasm and opportunity in this sphere.”
Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books No-Bid Contracts Pick Taxpayer Pockets, RCI
Ohio State Spends on DEI, Bug-Eating and More, RCI
JetBlue Gets Subsidy, Then $2 Million Fine, RCI
In Washington State, a Bridge Too Many, RCI
IRS Left Taxpayers’ Forms in Open Bins, RCI Election 2024 and the Beltway In contrast to the lengthy and widely covered reports Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued regarding his probes of Donald Trump, Special Counsel David Weiss’ final report on his years-long investigation of Hunter Biden is short, just 27 pages, and has been mostly ignored by the legacy media. Still, even as GOP lawmakers criticized Weiss’ work for being "incomplete," it is also devastating, this article reports: ... [I]n simple terms it affirmed for history some simple conclusions: 1.) Hunter Biden broke the law. 2.) The Biden family engaged in a political grift that sucked millions from foreign interests by trading on its powerful name. And 3.) the family patriarch, Joe Biden, misled the public by suggesting his family was a victim of politics that warranted a pardon that erased his son’s dual convictions in tax and gun cases. … "[Hunter] Biden made this money by using his last name and connections to secure lucrative business opportunities, such as a board seat at a Ukrainian industrial conglomerate, Burisma Holdings Limited, and a joint venture with individuals associated with a Chinese energy conglomerate," the prosecutor wrote. Weiss added for emphasis: “He negotiated and executed contracts and agreements that paid him millions of dollars for limited work.” The matter may not be over. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which investigated a large part of the Biden scandal, told Just the News that Weiss’ report left much to be still investigated by Congress, including the potential national security risks from Joe Biden’s decisions for countries where his son collected millions. Other Election 2024 and the Beltway Jack Smith Report: Evidence 'Sufficient' if Not for Trump '24 Win, DOJ
Biden to Lift Cuba's Terrorism Designation to Free Prisoners, Associated Press
Biden Allowed Thousands Tied to Terror Into U.S. Last Year, Fox News
Trump Assembling a Government of the Canceled, City Journal
NY: Trump DOJ Leaked Too, Exposing Cuomo COVID Fail, Intercept
Probe: Remote Work Costs the Federal Gov't Billions, Just/News
Video: Pentagon Adviser Talks of Scheming Against Trump, O'Keefe Media
Watchdog: Gen. Austin's Absence Increased Security Risk, CBS
FBI Warns Hackers Stole Agents' Call Logs, Bloomberg Other Noteworthy Articles and Series A Washington Post investigation into police use of facial recognition software found that law enforcement agencies across the nation are using the artificial intelligence tools as a shortcut to finding and arresting suspects without other evidence: Most police departments are not required to report that they use facial recognition, and few keep records of their use of the technology. The Post reviewed documents from 23 police departments where detailed records about facial recognition use are available and found that 15 departments spanning 12 states arrested suspects identified through AI matches without any independent evidence connecting them to the crime — in most cases contradicting their own internal policies requiring officers to corroborate all leads found through AI. Some law enforcement officers using the technology appeared to abandon traditional policing standards and treat software suggestions as facts, The Post found. One police report referred to an uncorroborated AI result as a “100% match.” Another said police used the software to “immediately and unquestionably” identify a suspected thief. At least eight people have been wrongfully arrested in the United States after being identified through facial recognition. While all those cases were dismissed, this article reports that “police probably could have eliminated most of the people as suspects before their arrest through basic police work, such as checking alibis, comparing tattoos, or, in one case, following DNA and fingerprint evidence left at the scene.” Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley warned city officials on November 18 that her department had about half as many firefighters as it needed. When deadly wildfires struck the city two months later, Mayor Karen Bass's administration pulled Crowley's memo from its website: "In many ways, the current staffing, deployment model, and size of the LAFD have not changed since the 1960s," wrote Crowley, who also complained that a spike in emergency calls and a shortage of fire stations had led to longer response times. In 2022, Crowley said, 61 percent of the department's firefighters failed to meet the 4-minute first response time, a national firefighting standard. The National Fire Protection Association, meanwhile, recommends that cities like Los Angeles employ some 1.51 to 1.81 firefighters per 1,000 residents. But Los Angeles, Crowley wrote, only staffs 0.91 firefighters per 1,000 people. As the fires engulfed parts of Los Angeles, Crowley's memo disappeared from a city website. The New York Times referenced the memo in a Thursday piece but did not link to it. The memo was available online at this link as recently as Friday. By Saturday night, however, the memo was replaced with a message stating, "404! We are sorry, but the page you requested was not found." Bass's office did not respond to questions about the deleted memo. In a separate article, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a growing number of wealthy Californians have turned to private firefighting teams as an added layer of protection. Also in a separate article, the Marshall Project reports “more than 900 prison firefighters were responding to the crisis in Los Angeles – but their pay is low and the ethics of their choice are complicated.” In a series of articles last year about the epidemic of sexual abuse by teachers and staff members against students at America’s public schools, RCI reported that many perpetrators are able to victimize kids for years because their employers ignored or covered up their behavior. This article reports on that same phenomenon regarding a youth minister in Virgina named Jeff Taylor, who has been accused of sexually abusing three children. In addition, 11 male students reported that Taylor asked them how frequently they masturbated; six children said he talked with them about the sizes of their penises or his own. Quote: Ultimately, throughout three decades, Taylor ministered at multiple churches – two of them high-profile – despite many of those organizations either questioning his honesty, investigating him for possible rules violations or learning that Taylor had been accused of sex abuse with the boy on the Illinois trip. After Taylor was forced out of his final church, was suspended from ministering and resigned his orders as a priest, none of the three institutions that later hired him – the Red Cross, the University of Cincinnati Foundation and the Cincinnati Nature Center – could tell The Post whether they vetted him with his churches. This article reports that Taylor was married with children. The oldest of Taylor’s four sons, the Rev. Porter “Pete” Taylor, who is an Episcopal priest in Georgia, told the Post, “The abuse is horrifying in its own right, but what also concerns me is the number of times his behavior was overlooked, left unchecked and protocols broken, enabling him to move from church to church and gaining access to even more students.” From the Annals of Unintended but Entirely Predictable Consequences, this article reports on a mess arising from a federal program created for some small hospitals to expand their care for needy patients by allowing them to buy drugs at a steep discount. Although the program was meant to serve a small number of safety-net providers ... ... Now, more than half of nonprofit hospitals in the United States take part. While some providers say it has helped keep their doors open, others — especially large nonprofit health systems — have been accused of maximizing payouts and swallowing the profits. The program’s escalation has driven up health care costs for employers, patients and taxpayers, studies show. In 2023, for instance, New York changed the way it administers drug benefits for Medicaid patients, in part because the state had discovered the cost of the federal program had increased by more than 200 percent over three years, said Amir Bassiri, the state’s Medicaid director. “The numbers and the growth were staggering,” he said. “We all bear the cost.” This article reports that one little-known middleman has been cashing in: The company, Apexus, has worked behind the scenes to supercharge the program, according to interviews with current and former employees and emails, internal reports and other documents. … Apexus was on track to double its revenue from 2018 to 2022, projecting $227 million that year, according to a 2022 internal memo written for the directors of Apexus’ parent corporation and reviewed by The Times. The company costs relatively little to operate and has enjoyed profit margins above 80 percent, according to that memo and three former employees. |
