RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July 6 to July 12 Featured Investigation: Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that a newly released CIA review contradicts sworn testimony from top Obama administration intelligence officials who denied using the discredited Steele dossier in the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference. Former CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and FBI Director James Comey all testified under oath that the Steele dossier was not used in the ICA's analysis or was only included as an appendix with no influence on conclusions. The CIA review shows the dossier was referenced "in the main body" of the ICA as the fourth supporting bullet for the judgment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win, effectively elevating unsubstantiated claims to credible evidence status. Declassified emails reveal Brennan personally overruled his own Russia analysts who warned that including the dossier would risk "the credibility of the entire paper." Multiple CIA managers objected to its inclusion, with some leaving the project over concerns about the dossier's veracity. The Clinton campaign funded the dossier, but this wasn't disclosed in the classified version. The public version omitted dossier references entirely, concealing Clinton's influence on the intelligence product from American voters. Subsequent investigations by Mueller, Horowitz, and Durham found the dossier's allegations baseless. The main researcher, Igor Danchenko, had no real Kremlin sources and invented key claims about Trump-Russia connections. The ICA was rushed to completion before Obama left office, taking weeks instead of the usual months for such assessments. Questions remain about whether the false testimony constitutes perjury, though the five-year statute of limitations may have expired for some statements. Featured Investigation: Los Angeles’ efforts to cut police funding have backfired, driving overtime costs to historic highs and worsening public safety challenges. Ana Kasparian reports for RealClearInvestigations that shrinking the LAPD has not saved the city money but instead led to ballooning payroll expenses, officer burnout, and delayed emergency response times. Following 2020's "defund the police" movement, the city cut $150 million from LAPD's budget. However, actual spending has surged due to ballooning overtime costs, costing taxpayers more than maintaining full staffing. LAPD spent $265.5 million on overtime in 2024, up $100 million since 2019. Some officers earned more than the mayor or governor. Officer ranks have dropped from 10,000 in 2020 to an expected 8,400 by June 2026, pushing more workload onto fewer cops. Nearly three dozen officers earned over $400,000 last year, with top earners surpassing $600,000 through overtime. Despite these costs, the City Council cut police recruitment further in 2025, rejecting a plan to hire 480 new officers. The city now has one of the lowest per-capita police ratios among major U.S. cities – 237 officers per 100,000 residents, compared to 543 in Washington, D.C. Mental health response teams, funded as alternatives to police, often request LAPD backup due to safety threats – undermining their effectiveness. Officer fatigue and morale are worsening, contributing to slower response times – up to an hour for non-emergency calls. Riots in 2025 following ICE actions required massive police overtime, forcing the city to borrow $17.3 million to pay officers. With major global events like the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics approaching, concerns are growing about the LAPD’s ability to maintain public safety. Critics argue that fewer cops, more overtime, and expensive stopgap measures amount to the “worst of both worlds” for Angelenos. Waste of the Day by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Hawaii’s Police Corruption Scandal, RCI Puerto Rico, Guam, Others in Debt, RCI Federal Purchasing Data is “Unusable”, RCI Throwback Thursday - Grant Funds Office, RCI Fed Gets “Palace of Versailles” Renovation, RCI Trump 2.0 and the Beltway FBI Starts Criminal Investigations of Brennan & Comey, Fox News Under Trump, CIA Is Still Covering Up Its Russiagate Fraud, Aaron Maté Substack Analysts Behind Russiagate Assessment Still at CIA, Federalist Attacks on Iran's Nukes Were Great Success, New York Times Biden's Doc Invokes Fifth Before Congress, New York Post State Dept Cable: Hamas Places Bounties on U.S. Aid Workers, Washington Free Beacon Marco Rubio impostor Using AI to Call Officials, Washington Post How Trump's Tariffs Swell Home Construction Costs, NBC Elderly Lawmaker’s Staff Keeps Walking Back Her Claims, Politico Why Biden Wanted Disastrous Early Debate, Politico Other Noteworthy Articles and Series New York Times Among the cruelties of the deadly flash floods that devastated the Texas Hill country last week is that it happened at night. Had this storm come 12 hours before or after, this article reports, the light of day may have allowed people to see what was happening before it was too late. A 1932 flood of similar scope struck the region during midday. It ripped away six cabins at Camp Mystic, but no campers died. This article centers on a place called the River Inn Resort as the storm intensified. Room to room, house to house, minds tried to make sense of the water rising all around. A woman in bed saw animals run past her window, not realizing that they were logs and debris being carried by a river that had climbed 30 feet in the dark. A woman told neighbors that she awoke in bed to discover her two dogs swimming toward her. People awoke to strangers banging on their doors. … The lightning and thunder were relentless. Connie Towery, Scott’s wife, was one of those who could not sleep. At about 2 a.m., she got up and looked at a rain gauge: 4.5 inches. She woke up her husband. In minutes, another inch had fallen. “Intense lightning, intense thunder and raindrops as big as your fist,” Scott said. He quickly understood that the river was rising, fast. The boathouse disappeared. The water was coming for the River Inn next. “The water sounded like a bunch of train engines running together,” Scott said. “A big force of noise.” This vividly written article, full of gripping detail, reports that the Towerys began knocking on cabin doors, urging people to take people to flee. Ultimately, more than 100 people found safety; at least 27 died. In a separate article, the Associated Press reports on the growing recognition that the search for survivors and those who lost their lives in tragedies such as the Texas floods can take a grim toll on the mental health of some first responders. “The discussion about first responders’ mental health likely wouldn’t have occurred a generation ago, experts say. And while first responders have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological health conditions, most are able to process the heavy realities of the job.” New York Times In the United States, this article reports, people often get away with murder. The clearance rate – the share of cases that result in an arrest or are otherwise solved – was 58% in 2023, the latest year for which FBI data is available. And that figure is inflated because it includes murders from previous years that police solved in 2023. In other words, a murderer’s chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip. Compared with its peers, America overall does an unusually poor job of solving killings. The murder clearance rates of other rich nations, including Australia, Britain and Germany, hover in the 70s, 80s and even 90s. Several issues, including a lack of resources, the sheer volume of cases and a distrust of the police, have converged to make the jobs of American detectives much more difficult. “It’s a serious problem,” said Philip Cook, a criminal justice researcher at Duke University. The lack of legal accountability emboldens criminals, leading to more crime and violence. “It’s a vicious cycle,” Brian Forst, a criminologist at American University, told me. “When the bad guys see that the police are not there to deter crime and catch criminals, they remain on the streets to do more bad stuff. And the rest of the community is less deterred from crime. They think, ‘Why not? I’m not going to get caught.’” Los Angeles Times Social media only tells the beginning of the story with its videos of "smash and grab" and "flash mob" thefts. But once the crooks have the goods, they need to unload them. This article reports that some retail stores are eager to buy the merchandise stolen from their peers, at a deep discount. Authorities allege the stores are part of a wide network of thieves and brokers who are reaping big profits in Los Angeles County. Serial shoplifters – "boosters," police call them — travel far and wide to pilfer makeup, clothes, tools, household supplies and other goods, sometimes hitting multiple retailers in a day. The thieves sell their haul to "fences," who resell the items out of brick-and-mortar stores, sidewalk stalls or through online platforms at prices far lower than what a legitimate business could offer, said Lt. Derek White, who leads a sheriff's task force focused on organized retail theft. … Fences buy the goods for "pennies on the dollar," White said, and sell them for nearly all profit. Consumers like the dirt cheap prices – even if they know they're too good to be true. "If you're buying something that costs $50 for $3, you know," White said. This article reports that “smash and grab” is just one of the ways thieves steal. “Burglars break into stores in the middle of the night. Cargo theft rings use phony bills of lading to divert entire truckloads of merchandise. A crew recently made off with 100 chain saws from a construction site in Shasta County, White said. Detectives seized about 40 of them in the backyard of a Downey home after seeing they were being sold on Facebook Marketplace, the lieutenant said.” Wall Street Journal Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old nanny in central England, has been in jail for more than 330 days because of a Tweet – which she took down few hours after posting – that repeated false rumors that a Muslim asylum seeker had murdered three children. This article reports that she is not alone as several European countries are arresting and sometimes jailing people for their utterances. A German right-wing journalist posted a fake image online of the interior minister holding a sign that read “I hate freedom of opinion” and was subsequently handed a seven-month suspended prison sentence. A woman who posted images of politicians with painted-on Hitler mustaches and called a minister a terrorist was fined about $690. In France, a woman spent 23 hours in custody for giving French President Emmanuel Macron the middle finger. (She was acquitted after arguing she had pointed her finger in the air and not directly at the president.) Denmark passed a new law outlawing “improper treatment” of religious texts after a series of incidents in recent years when Quran burnings sparked an angry response. A landmark trial began in May for two men accused of burning a Quran at a folk festival in front of an audience. This article reports such cases have informed the Trump administration’s criticism of European governments for curbing free speech in ways that could impact Americans, who enjoy greater protections. “The administration has also taken aim at European laws to police online content, making U.S. tech firms such as X responsible for ensuring certain types of harmful material aren’t published. The U.S. State Department has said such laws are leading to a ‘global censorship-industrial complex.’” NPR This first-person account, by NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip who says “I have lost a third of my body weight after nearly 21 months of war,” describes the difficulty of getting food in the war zone. People are pale and weak. They walk on the street supporting themselves by grabbing onto walls and fences, or they walk together in groups to support each other. Women and children faint in the street. … In recent months, I have eaten one small meal a day, rationing my own stock. Three weeks ago, I ran out of the basics – flour, lentils, cooking oil. Street vendors sell items with skyrocketing prices I can no longer afford. Two pounds of potatoes cost around $100. I began buying watermelon peels and spoiled potatoes to pickle them. So we had only one choice: going to get food from GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation]. But since day one, we have witnessed one thing that made all of us terrified: that every single day people are getting killed when they go to pick up food from GHF sites. But hunger is a little bit of an addiction. Once it's controlling your own mind, you cannot think straight. Once you feel that your stomach, your brain, your body, are craving something, you will not be afraid of anything. You will do anything to get food. This article recounts Anas Baba’s hours-long walk to get to the facility, the crowds he saw there and the mood of desperation and fear. |
