RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
June 23 to 29, 2024 With the week's news framed by liberal Nobel economists' curious warning just before the presidential debate about inflation under Donald Trump, Paul Sperry offers some startling historical context in RealClearInvestigations: The pre-debate smear is looking like an old Democrat trick. Sperry recounts how intelligence official James Clapper orchestrated well-timed pseudo-intelligence just before presidential debates in 2016 and 2020, which helped both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden discredit Donald Trump as a potentially Kremlin-compromised figure -- and arguably helped seal Trump’s defeat four years ago: With President Obama’s blessing, Clapper dropped an unprecedented “intelligence advisory" just before Hillary Clinton's Oct. 9, 2016 debate with Trump that the Democratic nominee pounced upon to suggest he was a Russian lackey. In 2020, just three days before Biden and Trump debated, Clapper was the lead signatory on the “intelligence" statement that discredited the New York Post’s October bombshell exposing emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop; they documented how Hunter’s corrupt Ukrainian paymasters had met with Joe Biden when he was vice president. Former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell, a Clapper confidant and one of the 51 signatories of the letter, testified that one of the goals in releasing the letter “was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate.” The phony laptop letter actually helped Biden seal his narrow victory, since many of his voters in the close election told pollsters they would have had second thoughts about backing him if they had known of damning materials contradicting his denials that he knew anything about his son’s shady foreign dealings. Sperry also relates how CNN's Jake Tapper, a moderator at this week's Trump-Biden presidential debate, served as a key conduit for Clapper's leaks, including about the so-called Steele dossier, which sent the Trump-Russia hoax into media overdrive for years. Tapper has offered no apology for his partisan water-carrying. Related: Laptop Letter Cosigners Were Quietly in Pay of CIA NY Post Related: Pro-Biden Donations Omitted From Report on Economists Who Say Trump Will Destroy the Economy Fox News In RealClearInvestigations and on LeeFang.com, Lee Fang examines Kamala Harris’s thin record as green crusader while San Francisco’s District Attorney – a record she nevertheless has emphasized in her political career ever since: Far from taking on the powerful corporate interests befouling Bayview Hunters Point, still the city’s most toxic neighborhood, the “environmental justice” unit she formed appears to have filed only a few lawsuits, against small-time defendants. Harris’s targets included a young man accused of illegal smog checks at a small auto body shop; and a community newspaper accused of illegally dumping buckets of leftover ink in an abandoned lot. The prosecutor Harris hired to lead her unit later worked as outside counsel for the company hired to hired to clean up the area, Tetra Tech. She defended the contractor against claims that it had concealed radioactive waste in the neighborhood. Records also show that a developer with interests in the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard quietly paid $1.3 million to expedite cleanup there, to a firm controlled by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who previously dated Harris and helped connect her to the city's elite as she started her political career. As Harris ascended to the heights of politics, an analysis by the state of California concluded that Bayview Hunters Point was “disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution.” Still, Harris’s environment justice crimes unit remains a bedrock of her political identity. Biden, Trump and the Beltway With murders and rapes by illegal migrants across the U.S. under Biden finally gaining wide notice, notably from Trump in this week's debate with the President, still more startling news, from the Center for Immigration Studies: The U.S. government is withholding the names of two illegal alien Jordanian nationals, one of whom illegally crossed the Southwest Border, who on May 3 tried to ram a box truck into the Quantico Marine Corps base, citing as grounds that their personal privacy outweighs “minimal” public interest in knowing who they are, according to a government letter responding to the Center for Immigration Studies' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. And from NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security has identified over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as “subjects of concern” because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network, three U.S. officials tell NBC News. While over 150 of them have been arrested, the whereabouts of over 50 remain unknown, the officials said. The week also brought Supreme Court rulings on issues RCI has paid close attention to. The overturning of the 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine will curb the executive branch's ability to interpret laws it's charged with implementing: Why it matters: The landmark ruling ... could make it harder for executive agencies to tackle a wide array of policy areas, including environmental and health regulations and labor and employment laws. Context: The ruling marks another major victory for conservatives, who for decades have sought to limit the federal government's ability to regulate businesses. Earlier in RCI: The Government and the Case of the Phantom Frog The high court also put a stop to the use of a financial crimes statute passed by Congress in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal to bring felony charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants. From Declassified With Julie Kelly, a regular contributor to RCI: The statute, commonly referred to as “obstruction of an official proceeding,” has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington. ... Today’s decision means hundreds of Americans have been wrongfully prosecuted by Attorney General Merrick Garland as he insists his department is dedicated to upholding the “rule of law” and pursuing justice “without fear or favor.” Earlier in RCI: Untested Legal Imagination's
the Mother of Trump and Jan. 6 Prosecutions The New York Times reports that the plea deal that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has reached with prosecutors is bad for American press freedoms. But the outcome also could have been worse: The deal, which was finalized on Wednesday in a courtroom in a remote U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, cleared the way for him to walk free after more than five years in British custody, most of which he spent fighting extradition to the United States. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act. ... The agreement means that for the first time in American history, gathering and publishing information the government considers secret has been successfully treated as a crime. This new precedent will send a threatening message to national security journalists. ... But its reach is also limited, dodging a bigger threat. Because Mr. Assange agreed to a deal, he will not challenge the legitimacy of applying the Espionage Act to his actions. The outcome, then, averts the risk that the case might lead to a definitive Supreme Court ruling blessing prosecutors’ narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms. More Biden, Trump and the Beltway Bidens Used Delaware Homes as ATMs With 35 Refinancings Daily Mail DNC Sent Millions to Firms Waging Anti-Trump Lawfare Daily Caller Biden Trans Admiral Torpedoed Trans Age Guidelines Singal-Minded New Biden Communication Official’s Anti-Cop Tweets New York Post Waste of the Day
By Adam Andrzejewski, OpenTheBooks Taxpayers Get Pence’s Campaign Debt RCI Nearly $100 Million to EcoHealth Alliance RCI $1M to Study Why Commuters Dodge Fares RCI Pentagon Takes a Costly Powder RCI Fat City Under New Congress Meal Rules RCI Other Investigations Dormant laws that criminalize mask-wearing are being revived to penalize pro-Palestinian protesters who conceal their faces, the Washington Post reports, raising concerns among COVID-cautious Americans: Decades-old laws against masking — often crafted in response to the hooded terror of the Ku Klux Klan — are on the books in at least 18 states and D.C., according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law. Lawmakers in some areas passed legislation to create health exemptions during the coronavirus pandemic while other authorities vowed not to enforce the statutes. Immunocompromised Americans and civil libertarians who have long criticized mask bans as a cudgel against protesters of police shootings, economic inequality and environmental injustice say the bans are being revived because covid is no longer treated as a public health emergency. Coronavirus levels in wastewater are reaching high levels across much of the Sun Belt and Florida, early indications of a summer covid wave, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Nobody else is going to tell you this, but they're not considering any white males for the job," says Michael Giordano, a Vice President of Business affairs, "there’s no way we’re hiring a white male.” Giordano reveals Disney uses "code words and buzzwords" to avoid legal action and even mentions a candidate being rejected for not looking black enough. Giordano also admits Disney gives bonuses to executives for practicing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), agreeing that "diversity helps with financial incentives." Giordano further claims he’s been denied promotions due to his race. |
