RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Nov. 17 to Nov.23, 2019

Featured Investigation
Analysis: Media's 'Biden Standard' of 'No
Evidence' Is a Double Standard

There's a glaring media double standard in reporting on accusations against Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Eric Felten writes in a news analysis for RealClearInvestigations:

• The media have embraced a guilt-implying Trump Standard, but also an innocence-presuming Biden Standard.
• No matter how lurid the charges against Trump in the Steele dossier, including prostitutes peeing on beds, the media entertained them as possibly factual, using anticipatory hedge words - "unverified" or "not yet proved."
• But when it comes to ex-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter's lucrative work in Ukraine, the new media norm demands that charges be dismissively labeled "without evidence" or supported by "no evidence" absent definitive proof.
• Last month, the New York Times declared at least half a dozen times that there was "no evidence" of Biden wrongdoing.
• Even after the Mueller Report, the New York Times was still not prepared to let go of the dossier's story of "Mr. Trump's alleged dalliance with prostitutes" in Moscow, which the Times declared "neither proved nor disproved." 
• Feltenwrites that a case can be made for adopting the Trump Standard or the Biden Standard, but it's hard to justify switching between the two in what can only be called a double standard.

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Featured Investigation
Watchdog: Hunter Biden's
Burisma Post Had a Troubling Conflict

Hunter Biden's work at Ukrainian energy firmBurismaincluded a little-noted conflict of interest, an investor watchdog says: Ex-Vice President Joe Biden's son was paid by management while also a supposedly independent corporate monitor. It also found that he got more than 12 times normal board pay at similarly sized companies. As Mark Hemingway reports for RealClearInvestigations:

• That sort of conflict - pay from management while supposedly an independent overseer on the board -- would be illegal under U.S.securities law, according to investor-focused Watchdog Research.
• Biden was also working for politically connected law firmBoiesSchiller Flexner, which got hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting money fromBurisma.
• Burismamay have paid Biden as a board member more every month than board members at similar-sized companies would be expected to receive each year.
• Biden'sBurismaboard pay of $83,333 monthly amounted to roughly $1 million annually. His business partner and co-board member, Devon Archer, got identical compensation.
• "Hunter Biden was potentially breaking a cardinal rule created to promote good governance and stop corruption," the watchdog study says.

The Trump Investigations: Top Articles

Envoy Sondland: I Followed Trump's Ukraine Orders, New York Times
Dem Rep. Led Boycott Squeeze on Impeachment Witness, Willamette Week
Ukraine MPs Name Templeton Fund, Obama Aide in $7.4B Graft, Interfax
Soros Group Kept 'Whistleblower' Updated on Ukraine, Breitbart
FBI Seeks InterviewWithCIA 'Whistleblower', Yahoo
Impeachment Probers Explore if Trump Lied to Mueller, New York Times
Justice IG Probing Ex-FBI LawyerOverAltered File, CNN
The Facts vs. Lt. Col. Vindman, John Solomon Reports
Hyperlinked Ukraine Timeline Dems Don't Want You to See, John Solomon
Graham Begins Probe ofBidens,Burisma, Ukraine,Washington Post
IRS Whistleblower Case Emerges vs. Trump or Pence, Washington Post
White House Official Sues Politico for Libel, Targeting Schiff's Role, Fox

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

'No Mercy': Leaked Files Expose Chinese Crackdown
New York Times
A cache of secret state documents confirms what the world already knows: that Chinese "job-training centers" for Muslims are really part of a ruthless and extraordinary campaign against a religious minority. The leaked papers offer a striking picture of how the Chinese state carried out the country's most far-reaching internment campaign since the Mao era. Key documents show that President Xi Jinping laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014, just weeks after Uighur militantsstabbed more than 150 people at a train station, killing 31. The internment camps in Xinjiang expanded rapidly after the appointment in August 2016 of ChenQuanguo, a zealous new party boss for the region. The crackdown encountered doubts and resistance from local officials who feared it would exacerbate ethnic tensions and stifle economic growth. Mr. Chen responded by purging officials suspected of standing in his way.

Secret Files Show How Tehran Wields Power in Iraq
The Intercept/New York Times
Leaked Iranian documents expose Iran's vast influence in neighboring Iraq, detailing years of painstaking work by Iranian spies to co-opt the country's leaders, but off Iraqi agents working for the Americans, and infiltrate every aspect of Iraqi's life.Many of the cables describe real-life espionage capers that feel torn from the pages of a spy thriller. Meetings are arranged in dark alleyways and shopping malls or under the cover of a hunting excursion or a birthday party. Informants lurk at the Baghdad airport, snapping pictures of American soldiers and keeping tabs on coalition military flights. Agents drive meandering routes to meetings to evade surveillance. Sources are plied with gifts of pistachios, cologne and saffron. If necessary, Iraqi officials are offered bribes.More broadly, the documents - mainly from 2014 and 2015, when the Obama administration was negotiating and signing the Iran nuclear deal - show how Tehran, at nearly every turn, has outmaneuvered the United States in the contest for influence.

Church Sex-Abuse Boards Often Undermine Victims, Help Clergy
Associated Press
Facing thousands of cases of clergy sex abuse, U.S. Catholic leaders addressed their greatest crisis in the modern era with a promised reform: mandatory review boards. Lay people in each diocese were supposed to review allegations fairly and independently, and ensure that no abusive priests stayed in ministry. But almost two decades later, an Associated Press investigation found boards nationwide routinely shielded accused priests and helped the church avoid payouts.

New York: Widespread Bias in Long Island Real Estate Sales
Newsday
In one of the most concentrated investigations of discrimination by real estate agents in the half century since enactment of America's landmark fair housing law, Newsday found evidence of widespread bias against minority potential homebuyers on Long Island. The three-year probe reveals that Long Island's dominant residential brokers frequently directed white customers to areas with the highest white representations and minority buyers to more integrated neighborhoods. They also avoided business in communities with overwhelmingly minority populations.

NY: Al Sharpton Is Paid $1 Million From His Own Charity
New York Post
The Rev. Al Sharpton raked in $1,046,948 from his own charity last year, according to National Action Network's latest tax filings, obtained by the New York Post. Sharpton got a $324,000 salary — 32% higher than his 2017 pay — in addition to a $159,596 bonus and $563,352 in "other compensation." The Harlem-based nonprofit — which Sharpton controls as president and CEO — said the extra cash was to make up for the years from 2004 to 2017 when he didn't get his full pay.

Epstein Jail Guards Charged With Falsifying Records
Associated Press
Two jail guards responsible for monitoring Jeffrey Epstein the night he died have been charged with falsifying prison records to conceal they were sleeping and browsing the internet during the hours they were supposed to be keeping a close watch on prisoners. The indictment also contained new details about the circumstances of Epstein's death that might dampen conspiracy theories by people who have questioned whether he really took his own life. Among them: Prosecutors said security camera footage confirmed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging, although lawyers for the disgraced financier have questioned that conclusion, arguing his injuries are more consistent with homicide.

Killing Over Scarce Sand and Avocados
BBC
A South African entrepreneur shot dead in September. Two Indian villagers killed in a gun battle in August. A Mexican environmental activist murdered in June. They are just some of the latest casualties in a growing wave of violence sparked by the struggle for one of the 21st Century's most important, but least appreciated, commodities: ordinary sand. Trivial though it may seem, sand is the primary raw material that modern cities are made from. Sand is essential to the concrete used to build cities and to the asphalt used to pave roadsthat connectthem. The glass in every window, windshield, and smart phone screenis made of melted-down sand. And even the silicon chips inside phones and computers are made from sand. And the world is using so much sand that we're running out of it. Hence, people die. In a separate article, the Los Angeles Times reports on the violence gripping Mexico as criminal cartels armed with "automatic weapons and chainsaws" seize and clear protected woodlandsto produce a lucrative cash crop: avocados.