RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Jan. 13 to Jan.19 Featured Investigation The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering was in a peck of trouble back in 2011 after Tea Party fervor swept Republicans to control of the House, and they sought to abolish its key benefactor back east, the National Endowment for the Arts. But Harry Reid, then Senate Majority leader, headed them off at the pass, helping save the festival held in his home state of Nevada by lambasting a "mean-spirited" GOP budget. Reid has retired from the Senate, but the cowboy-poetry fest's federal subsidies live on, even amid the ongoing partial government shutdown. It willhold its 35thannual gathering later this month in Elko, Nevada. As Max Diamond reports for RealClearInvestigations, the continued funding makes the celebration of by-the-bootstraps Americana an unlikely lightning rod for conflicting views of the proper role of government -- and a window into how arts funding can have as much to do with politics as culture. The pertinent detail may be not how much, but how little the NEA provides events like the gathering. The amounts might seem minuscule, raising the question of why the arts need federal money at all. But on a national scale, that go-small approach allows the NEA to spread its beneficence across the country. A broad array of politicians see the agency's benefits and are more likely to support it. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles In newly disclosed House testimony, Bruce Ohr, a demoted Justice Department official, says he repeatedly told top officials at the FBI and Justice about dossier author Christopher Steele's anti-Trump bias and the conflicts of interest of Steele's Democrat-paid employer, Fusion GPS -- details all kept hidden from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved spying on the Trump campaign. As Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist, Kimberley A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal and others reported, the conversations Ohr had with high-level officials included some who are now senior prosecutors with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe. Ohr said he also informed the officials that his wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS. As Hemingway noted, the New York Times in August presented the idea of Bruce Ohr's having a role in the Trump dossier saga as a "conspiracy theory." What Bruce Ohr Told the FBI, Wall Street Journal
Mueller Officials Coordinated With Fusion GPS Spouse in 2016, The Federalist
DOJ's Ohr Warned: Dossier Tied to Clinton, Might Be Biased, The Hill
Ohr: Mueller Lawyers Part of Events Being Probed, Fox News
Trump Allegedly Told Cohen: Lie to Congress, BuzzFeed
Trump Lawyer Hired Firm to Rig Online PollsBeforeCampaign, Wall Street Journal
Files Show FBI Debate on Whether Trump Under Russia's Sway, CNN
Ex-FBI Lawyer BakerUnderCriminal Probe for Media Leaks, WashingtonExaminer
ManafortHid Outreach to TrumpViaTexts, Mueller Says, Bloomberg
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
D.C.'s Foreign-Influence Racket: A Clear and Present Muddle
RealClearInvestigations
Among the ignored laws revived in the Trump era, none has been used more effectively against the president's allies than the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In August, Special Counsel Robert Mueller got Trump's former campaign manager, PaulManafort, to plead guilty to violating the act - becoming only the fourth defendant found guilty of a criminal FARA violation since 1966. Mueller's use of the law, first passed in 1938 to ferret out Nazi sympathizers, has sparked a wave of fear among D.C. lobbyists, and FARA registrations have spiked dramatically. Yet, as Lee Smith reports for RealClearInvestigations, FARA remains one of Washington's most ambiguous and widely flouted laws: - In a town awash with foreign influence, only 429 active registrants are listed on the FARA website, which is roughly the same number of lobbyists registered in the state of Vermont.
- Ambiguities in the law mean that many of Washington's most famous power brokers who advise foreign countries, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, have never registered under the law.
- Those same ambiguities mean that Washington think tanks and news outlets that receive funding from foreign governments also claim they are not covered by FARA.
Smith explores some of these issues through former Sen. Joe Lieberman's recent decision to register as a lobbyist for work he's doing representing Chinese telecom giant ZTE. Lieberman did not register under FARA but the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which covers domestic lobbying. Smith reports that this a common practice among lobbyists who do not want to advertise their work for foreigners. Smith's reporting also suggests that FARA enforcement is now being applied selectively -- toManafort, for example, but perhaps not to Tony Podesta, his co-lobbyist for Ukraine. Philly's Soda Tax: Little Revenue, Unchanged Sugar Intake
National Review
In 2017 Philadelphiadecided it could improve the health of its residents and fund auniversal pre-K programby slapping huge taxes on sweetened sodas such asCoke and Pepsi (andeven Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi). As a result, the price of a two-liter bottle of soda rose by roughly 67 percent. And surprise, surprise: Soda sales have plummeted 42 percent. The health benefits, meanwhile, are nil. Biggest beneficiaries so far: stores just outside the city. Biggest losers: the city's poor, who don't have transportation that allows them to enjoy those sweet prices. As Fires Ravaged California, Utilities Lobbied Lawmakers in Maui
New York Times
As California's deadliest wildfire was consuming the town of Paradise in November, some of the state's top power-company officials and a dozen legislators were at the Fairmont KeaLaniresort on Maui. In the course of four days, they discussed wildfires — and how much responsibility the utilities deserve for the devastation, if any. Realizing that their fire liability could bankrupt them, the utilities are spending tens of millions on lobbying and campaign contributions. Their goal: passing on the cost of wildfires to their customers in the form of higher electricity rates. Sacklers Directed Efforts to Mislead on Oxycontin, Files Indicate
New York Times
For years, Purdue Pharma, the company behindOxycontin, has sought to depict theSacklerfamily that owns it as removed from its day-to-day operations - feeding a narrative that members are mostly involved in philanthropy. But newly disclosed court records show family members directed years of efforts to mislead doctors and patients about the dangers of the powerful opioid painkiller. RichardSackler advised pushing blame onto people who became addicted. "We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,"Sacklerwrote in an email in 2001, when he was president of Purdue Pharma. "They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals." He also urged that sales reps advise doctors to prescribe the highest dosage of Oxycontin because it was the most profitable. Is Tehran Spying on Southern California?
Los Angeles Times
U.S. authorities allege two men now in custody were operating in Orange County, California, as spies for Iran. The men's goal, authorities say, was to conduct surveillance on Israeli and Jewish facilities in the U.S., and to collect information on members of an Iranian exile group that has long sought to topple the regime in Tehran and enjoys newfound support among members of the Trump administration. Within the span of a year — from the summer of 2017 to the spring of 2018-authorities say the men crisscrossed Orange County and the United States, videotaping participants at dissident rallies in New York and Washington, D.C., and photographing Jewish centers in Chicago. Feds Say 'Star' DEA Agent Abroad Stole Millions
Associated Press
A U.S. federal narcotics agent known for his expensive tastes and high-profile drug seizures has been implicated in a multimillion-dollar money-laundering conspiracy that involved the very cartel criminals he was charged with fighting in Colombia.Jose Irizarry is accused of conspiring with a longtime DEA informant to launder more than $7 million in illicit drug proceeds, sometimes using an underground network known as the black-market peso exchange, according to five current and former law enforcement officials.It is unknown where the 44-year-old Irizarry is living, or whether he has been charged in the ongoing criminal probe. On another front, in trial testimony in New York, a witness said the former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, took a $100 million bribe from the infamouscrime lord known as ElChapo. Outside Pittsburgh, Town Fights a 'Depressed Mindset'
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says it will profile a dozen local areas in which half of the kids are in poverty — "a circumstance that hamstrings their futures, and that of the region." This first installment looks at Rankin, ahalf-square-mile borough that "looks quaint as you gaze across the Monongahela from The Waterfront's eastern edge," but limps along on thecounty'sleanest tax base.As it describes a mindset of hopelessnessthat pervades the area, the article also reports on the efforts on one local resident, James"Cube" Weems, to defy the odds and open a restaurant in an area that needsbusinesses and the jobs they bring. Are the Smiley-Face Killers Murdering American College Men?
Daily Beast
On March 6, 2017, 40 days after Dakota James disappeared, a woman walking her dog saw his body floating in the Ohio River about 10 miles from where he was last seen in downtown Pittsburgh—at 11:49 p.m. that January night—and about 30 feet from the shore. His death was ruled an accidental drowning. But a team of retired detectives anda gang expert believe he's one of about 100 victims of the Smiley-Face Killers, an alleged organized gang of serial killers that communicates on the dark web, with cells in dozens of cities across the United States. An additional 250 cases might be connected. James fits the profile of the other suspected victims: smart, athletic, popular, college-age white men who went out drinking and never came home, they say. More recently, some alleged victims have been openly gay, like Dakota. Gang trademarks are bodies discovered in lakes or rivers with smiley-face or other graffiti specifically connected to the group spray-painted nearby. The sleuths' effortsare featured on the new Oxygen series, "Smiley Face Killers." The Hidden Dangers of TV's True-Crime Craze
Hollywood Reporter
True-crime programs that turn viewers into armchair detectives have enjoyed critical and commercial success in recent years - from the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer" to highbrow offerings like the podcast "Serial" and HBO's "The Jinx." Then there's the Oxygen network, which rebranded as a true-crime channel in 2017 with unscripted shows like "Cold Justice," "License to Kill" and "Buried in the Backyard." Now such shows are generating lawsuits from law enforcement officers, family members and other people who say they have been portrayed inaccurately. "The folks doing these true-crime series need to adhere to the first word: true," says a plaintiff lawyer. "If they want to suggest conclusions or make accusations, then they better damn well be sure they've got facts, not exaggerations." |
