RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
January 23 to January 29, 2022 Court documents, behind-the-scenes video and other evidence reveal Hillary Clinton and her closest campaign advisers were much more involved in the operation to dredge up dirt on Donald Trump and Russia than they have let on, Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations. Amid clear signs that Special Counsel John Durham is zeroing in on the role of her 2016 campaign in the collusion hoax, Sperry reports: - Clinton told her running mate Tim Kaine that she and her aides were “scratching hard” to expose her GOP foe’s “weird connections” to Russia -- a largely overlooked backstage campaign moment captured in the Hulu documentary “Hillary.”
- In that October 2016 conversation, the pair also discussed Trump allies mentioned in false dossier reports that Christopher Steele had submitted to the Clinton campaign earlier.
- In July 2016, when he handed off installments of his dossier to an FBI agent in London, Steele noted that Clinton was aware of his reporting.
- During the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that same month, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.”
- Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV news tent in the convention parking lot to another, pitching a story that Trump and his advisers were in bed with Putin.
- Clinton also appeared to cite dossier falsehoods in the presidential debates.
In RealClearInvestigations, John F. Wasik reports that in a nation swimming in real debt, “phantom debt” scams have become the nation's most prevalent consumer swindle -- online grifters cowing victims over charges they had nothing to do with: - Four out of 10 of all consumer complaints are linked to these swindles.
- Millions get ensnared as they unwittingly give up credit and banking information – especially as the hardships of the pandemic continue.
- Given the wide variety of debts Americans accrue, phony debt grifters work a variety of angles. Some hound gullible and jittery victims for overdue student loans. Others focus on unpaid mortgages, car payments or credit card debts.
- Impersonations are rampant: Some heartless phantom debt merchants even call people who have recently lost a family member to “collect” a nonexistent bill.
- People over 60 are prime targets because they are more likely to answer their phone and respond to emails that may not look like spam.
- But increasingly, younger victims are being targeted too. Consumer advocate: “Scammers got good at tailoring audiences they’re trying to reach – on TikTok, Instagram and other social media.”
- Fraud operations increasingly suck up victims’ cash through less-regulated alternative payments systems such as Venmo and Cash App, as well as cryptocurrencies.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Trump Administration Didn't Draft Order to Seize Vote Machines
Washington Examiner Dishonest journalism has walked a fine line in recent years, using language that aims to seem responsible while reporting inflammatory information. The latest example came last week when Politico reported that a “draft executive order” in the Trump White House records, fed to it by the Democrat-run Jan. 6 committee, contemplated a dangerous series of moves, including having the defense secretary “seize voting machines." While Politico says it is not clear who wrote the draft and notes that it was never issued, the phrase “draft executive order” suggests to readers that oval office officials had drawn it up and Trump considered signing it – which is how CNN and others described the piece. Byron York reports that this misleading: According to a source familiar with the events in question, the "draft executive order" did not originate in the White House. It came, as they say, from outside the building [perhaps from Gen. Michael Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell]. … Someone – it is not clear who – brought the draft into the White House. And if a document, no matter how kooky or irrelevant or whatever, is brought into the White House and is shown to a White House official, the Presidential Records Act requires that it be preserved and retained and ultimately sent to the National Archives as part of the official records of the administration. (That is done automatically for documents that are originated on White House equipment.) So the "draft executive order," which did not originate inside the Trump White House, became a presidential record of the Trump administration. It may be worrying enough that such a plan made it into the building; Trump evidently was aware of it. But to describe it as a “draft executive order” – as opposed to “a terrible idea Trump heard and dismissed” – seems intentionally misleading. Biden Plans to Force Banks to Push Climate Policies
Politico Having nominated or appointed climate warriors to run major financial agencies, the Biden administration is about to begin a dramatic push to weaponize private financial firms for the cause. This article reports that they ... ... are likely to press banks to prepare for the fallout from a warming planet by stepping up scrutiny of fossil fuel financing. They will make the lenders undergo regular tests to measure how their investments could be threatened by flooding, wildfires and other growing risks. And they could rewrite the rules against the discriminatory practice known as redlining to push lenders to put money into disadvantaged communities most vulnerable to climate change. As RCI reported last year, this continues Obama-era efforts to blackball businesses in industries opposed by the left. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden FCC Pick Cut Sweetheart Deal After Nomination Free Beacon
Durham: DOJ Watchdog Withheld Russiagate Info Washington Examiner
Clinton Lawyer Elias Testifies to Durham Grand Jury The Reactionary
5 Takeaways From Carter Page's Spygate Lawsuit Federalist
The Unfettered Power of the Jan. 6 Committee Glenn Greenwald/Substack
Capitol Cops Pry Into Congressional Guests Politico Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Feds Releasing Single Male Illegal Aliens Into U.S.
Fox News Large numbers of single adult illegal immigrants are being released and transported into the U.S. in Texas via a small, unmarked office in a parking lot, this article reports: Fox witnessed men go into a small, unmarked office, then re-emerge moments later as multiple taxi cabs then showed up to collect the migrants – who were then shuttled off to nearby Harlingen Airport. There were no children or migrant families among the groups. Several of the migrants told Fox that they had crossed illegally that morning, paying approximately $2,000 per person to cartel smugglers. They also said they were flying to destinations including Miami, Houston and Atlanta. This challenges the common perception that most single adults are being expelled via Trump-era Title 42 public health protections, which the Biden administration says it has kept in place. New York: Steward of Vanishing Rent Aid Boasts of 38% Profit
Washington Post The chief executive of the consulting firm that won a no-bid contract under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to run New York’s emergency rental assistance program boasted to employees that the company made “38 percent margins” on its contract with the state - earning $115 million in fees over six months, according to a video of the presentation obtained by the Washington Post. That success stands in stark contrast to the failures of New York’s program, which was part of a national effort to distribute $46.5 billion in federal funds to struggling renters nationwide: New York’s program struggled out of the gate, as it failed to get any of the $2.4 billion the state was allotted to renters until August, according to the Treasury Department. It then dramatically increased its pace, making more than 108,000 payments on behalf of the state’s families. It has since run out of funds, prompting a lawsuit by a tenants’ groups against the state. Gulf Money Bankrolls New U.S. Progressive Media Outlet
Washington Free Beacon The new progressive media outlet Grid, which has attracted press buzz and big-name talent, was developed by registered lobbyists for the United Arab Emirates with funding from the UAE's deputy prime minister. Grid which went live this month with a masthead including ABC News, Vox, and NPR alums and left-leaning blogger Matthew Yglesias as its editor-at-large. It raised seed money from a holding company owned by Emirate royal Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister. The foreign funding and lobbyist involvement raise questions about the news outlet's independence – and whether it should be required to register as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice, according to ethics experts. In recent years, the DOJ has cracked down on news outlets that receive foreign funding and seek to influence a U.S. domestic audience, pushing Russia's RT and China's CGTN to register as foreign agents. News of Grid‘s funding ties comes amid scrutiny into UAE's ramped-up lobbying in Washington, where the oil-rich Gulf state has poured millions into influencing the United States on issues such as climate change and relations with its regional adversary, Qatar. 'Decolonizing' Ballet at Princeton (Part 1)
Power Line Woke ideology is pretty easy to understand. Find a topic, any topic, and then use the same buzzwords to describe it as a problem that needs to be reformed to its critics' liking. Health, transportation, housing, food, music and art all are vehicles of racist power. And professors, especially at top schools, are teaching our future leaders this fill-in-the-blanks skill. Paul Mirengoff provides a new example by highlighting a document sent by leaders of the student-run Princeton University Ballet club declaring that “ballet is rooted in white supremacy and perfectionism.” It continues: We aim to decolonize our practice of ballet, even as ballet remains an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist art form. We realize our distinct freedoms as a college run dance group, which is that we do not report back to any sort of board or funding programs that would restrict our choices. In selecting new members and cultivating our style, we want to centralize artistry instead of technique, in the hopes of maintaining our core purpose as a ballet company but doing away with some of the stringent and exclusive standards that pervade the art form. As this is particularly important during auditions, we will be prefacing audition discussions with a frank recognition and repudiation of our own biases. Of course, it’s not enough to simply pay lip service to the cause – members have to prove their loyalty through action (that has nothing to do with dance): We hope to take steps to ensure that PUB membership, not just leadership, requires a commitment to EDI [equity, diversity, and inclusion] work. As such, we have decided that participation in service and outreach to local communities will become a requirement of every company member. The creators of the document note that they are all white, which comes as no surprise to Mirengoff, who quips: “Could black students have written anything this ridiculous? Other than as a parody of the white left, I mean.” Coronavirus Investigations A Covid Origin Conspiracy?
City Journal At the start of the pandemic, experts publicly claimed that only conspiracy nuts believed covid might have emerged from a Chinese lab. But now, reports former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade, whose earlier reporting rehabilitated the lab-leak theory, a string of unearthed private emails make it seem increasingly likely that there was, in fact, a conspiracy “to suppress the notion that the virus had emerged from research funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Anthony Fauci.” On Jan. 31, 2020, a group of four virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute sent an email to Fauci saying their analysis of Covid’s genome convinced them that the virus didn’t come from nature and may instead have escaped from a lab. When he heard about their findings, NIH head Francis Collins was alarmed. “The voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony,” he wrote on Feb. 2, 2020, according to the new emails. By Feb. 4, Wade reports ... Andersen was singing a different tune. In a February 4, 2020 email, he derided ideas about a lab leak as “crackpot theories” that “relate to this virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case.” Andersen and his colleagues then prepared an article, published on March 17, 2020, in the journal Nature Medicine, that declared flatly, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” The article was highly influential, persuading the mainstream press not to investigate lab-leak theories. Why the switch? “The latest emails don’t prove a conspiracy [between Fauci, Collins and the researchers],” Wade reports, “but they make it more plausible, for two reasons: because the expert virologists therein present such a strong case for thinking that the virus had lab-made features and because of the wholly political reaction to this bombshell on the part of Francis Collins.” Other Coronavirus Investigations Why Are We Boosting Kids? Common Sense
Deadly Blowback: When Humans Infect Animals New York Times
Shady Site Fuels Anti-Vaxxer Fears Daily Beast
How Yale Made a Covid 'Surveillance State' Free Beacon
Neil Young’s Long Legacy of Spreading Scientific Doubt Daily Beast | 
