THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: BEYOND DEMOCRATIC DESPOTISM

John Adams Wettergreen (d. 1989), writing in 1988 with a startling prescience of our present time:

In 1970 I believed that Tocqueville’s soft despotism was the aim of the bureaucratizers. However today we cannot be so optimistic as was possible in 1970. Today’s bureaucratizers are not soft despots at all. The political use of criminal law, such as began during the Watergate scandals and has begun to be regularized during the Reagan administration, is characteristic of tyranny-not Tocqueville’s ‘new,’ ‘soft’ one, but a harsh one. . . To the carrot-spending unlimited by law-the legislature has now added the stick-the penalties of the criminal law.

What Wettergreen perceived in the shadows more than 30 years ago is now evident to most everyone with eyes to see.

FBI Whistleblower Steve Friend, A Messenger Worthy Of The Message

The FBI is a threat to our civil liberties, at least with the current crop of HQ executives at the helm. Coupled with a Department of Justice, led by a Democrat party apparatchik, there has hardly been a time when the liberties enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution have endured such a subversive attack.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is a coward. You can see it in his soft, watery eyes. He simply does the bidding of his addled master, targeting the little guy — the most at-risk among us. Garland stands with his baton extended toward school board moms and January 6th attendees while a legion of his DOJ and FBI storm troops usher from the darkened denizens of the Hoover Building, backed by his cadre of Assistant U.S. Attorneys General.

What many people do not understand is the FBI and DOJ work hand-in-glove. The FBI collects information and builds a case, while DOJ brings prosecution. Consequently, the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, is lorded over by the U.S. Attorney General, his immediate boss. A courageous FBI Director would balk at Garland’s fascism, but Director Wray has made no attempt to protest.

So, there is no calumny perpetrated by the FBI that does not have its inception within the halls of DOJ, and there is no DOJ cabal that isn’t given birth within the Oval Office. Every executive power devolves from the Chief Executive, the President. Or, from whoever is filling the role of puppeteer these days. As President Truman said, “the buck stops here.”

Under such a dysfunctional regime, the responsibility to speak out devolves to those courageous souls with fractional power and with everything to lose. Several FBI whistleblowers have made their voices heard in recent weeks, but none as thoughtfully or as professionally as Special Agent Steve Friend — a messenger worthy of the message.

Continue reading “”

Didn’t President Trump get impeached over something like this?

Did Joe Biden Try to Blackmail the Saudis To Interfere With the Midterms?

As you may recall, a few years ago Joe Biden’s son Hunter got a lucrative board position at Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, despite having zero relevant experience. So, when Burisma Holdings was being investigated by Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine (which is illegal) unless they fired Shokin. This wasn’t mere accusation, as we have video of Biden bragging about his quid pro quoimplicating Barack Obama in the scandal as well.

It looks like Joe Biden is up to his old quid pro quo habits.

Saudi Arabia says that Joe Biden is trying to get the Kingdom to delay a cut in oil production by a month. Why a month? Well, take a look at the calendar and you’ll see that in a month, the midterm elections will be over. Isn’t that convenient?

According to a statement by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they reject accusations made after OPEC+ cut production of oil describing the decision as the Kingdom “taking sides in international conflicts” and being “politically motivated against the United States of America.”

The Kingdom insisted that OPEC+ decisions are made by consensus, not by a single nation, and that these outcomes are based solely on economic considerations that aim to maintain oil market balance and limit volatility that harms consumers and producers.

The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would also like to clarify that based on its belief in the importance of dialogue and exchange of views with its allies and partners outside the OPEC+ group regarding the situation in the oil markets, the Government of the Kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the US Administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences. [emphasis added]

Here’s the full letter:

Six Takeaways From WSJ’s Investigation Into the Stock Trades of Government Officials.

A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.
Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.
The Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the conflict-of-interest rules across the executive branch, is “committed to transparency and citizen oversight of government,” said a spokeswoman.
Among the findings of the investigation, which is the most comprehensive analysis of stock trading by officials in the executive branch of the government:
Numerous federal officials owned shares of companies lobbying their agencies:
More than 200 senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency. EPA employees and their family members collectively owned between $400,000 and nearly $2 million in shares of oil and gas companies on average each year between 2016 and 2021.
Issues emerged at a wide array of agencies:
At the Defense Department, officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.
An EPA official reported purchases of oil and gas stocks. The Food and Drug Administration improperly let an official own dozens of food and drug stocks on its no-buy list. A Defense Department official bought stock in a defense company five times before it won new business from the Pentagon.
Some officials traded ahead of regulatory actions:
More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.
Federal officials are big technology investors:
While the government was ramping up scrutiny of large technology companies, more than 1,800 federal officials reported owning or trading at least one of four major tech stocks: Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and

Amazon.com Inc.

Some officials made large and risky trades:
About 70 federal officials or their family members reported using sophisticated techniques such as options trading and short selling, with some individual trades of between $5 million and $25 million. In all, the disclosure forms revealed more than 90,000 stock trades during the six-year period reviewed.
The husband of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission economist in a single year shorted nearly 3,000 stocks, betting on a drop in their price. Such trading is contrary to CFTC rules, but the agency waived them, fearing it could be sued.
The scope of the investigation was extensive:
The Journal obtained and analyzed more than 31,000 financial-disclosure forms for about 12,000 senior career employees, political staff and presidential appointees. The review spans 2016 through 2021 and includes data on about 850,000 financial assets and more than 315,000 trades reported in stocks, bonds and funds by the officials, their spouses or dependent children.
The federal government doesn’t maintain a comprehensive public database of the mandatory financial disclosures of all senior executive-branch officials. The Journal built its own.

This is much easier for Congress because that’s much easier than having to exert oneself to get out of that cushy chair on the .gov gravy train and actually do what they’re getting paid for.

The New Bicameralism and Presentment
The executive branch proposes a rule, a district court judge can block it, then one member of the Supreme Court determines if Congress would have approved of that rule.

The Constitution establishes a very precise process by which laws can be enacted. First, a bill must be approved by one house of Congress. Second, the other house of Congress must approve the bill. Third, the President can sign the bill into law. If the bill is vetoed, Congress can override the veto. This process is known as bicameralism and presentment: two houses must pass the bill, which is then presented to the President for his signature.

This process, regrettably, has become rarer and rare. Virtually all major changes to the law occur outside the confines of the traditional form of bicameralism and presentment. Instead, there is a different three-step process.

First, the executive branch proposes a new legal regime. Maybe there is notice-and-comment rulemaking, or maybe it is bypassed. There is always good cause when the need arises. Or an agency issues some sort of non-binding guidance document that regulated entities treat as binding.

Second, after the policy is promulgated, it is challenged in favorable forums. A district court judge then decides if the rule can go into effect, or not.

Third, if the trial court blocks the rule, the case is presented to the Supreme Court. And pursuant to the major question doctrine, the Justices must determine if this is the sort of rule that Congress would have approved of.

In this regard, there is still a familiar three-step process, involving the executive branch, the lower courts, and the Supreme Court. Congress is involved in an imaginative sense, as one Justice gets to decide what Congress would have intended. If all three boxes are checked, federal laws is changed! Call it a new bicameralism and presentment.

BOMBSHELL WSJ INVESTIGATION REVEALS RUNAWAY CORRUPTION IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Some Americans still believe the federal government is working in the public’s best interest. If anything can disabuse these naive holdouts of this notion, it will be the bombshell Wall Street Journal investigation that just dropped—revealing runaway corruption among the federal bureaucracy.

The Journal reviewed more than 31,000 financial disclosure forms and analyzed more than 850,000 financial assets and 315,000 trades to shed light on any conflicts of interest among more than 12,000 senior career bureaucrats and political appointees.  Its investigation found that “thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.”

“Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations,” the Journal reports. “When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.”

The federal employees weren’t even subtle about it. Per the Journal, “More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.”

That’s sus.

To get an understanding of how shady this behavior is, consider examples from a few specific agencies. At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, the Journal found that “more than 200 senior officials… or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency.”

Similar corruption plagues the Department of Defense, where, per the investigation, “officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.”

But at least they’re transparent about it all, right?

Ha! The Journal notes that the federal government “doesn’t maintain a comprehensive public database of the mandatory financial disclosures of all senior executive-branch officials” so they literally had to “buil[d] their own.”

I’m sure there are lots of good-hearted people who work in the federal government and genuinely do try to serve the public. (Unfortunately, very similar conflicts of interest hang over Congress, as well). But the rampant financial conflicts of interest plaguing so many top officials create a cloud of suspicion over the entire federal bureaucracy.

Federal employees are already paid quite well, more than the average private sector employee, in fact. Surely they do not need to also trade stocks in their agency’s industries. To have such suspicious activity occurring among those given vast power yet not accountable to voters is simply unacceptable.

We should prohibit this kind of stock trading among federal bureaucrats, and, even better, drastically scale back the power these bureaucracies have to begin with.

Is this what’s called a ‘rhetorical question’?

If Feds have the evidence, why haven’t they charged Hunter Biden with gun crime?

According to a bombshell report in the Washington Post, federal agents have gathered enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with lying on the paperwork he filled out to purchase a firearm, but prosecutors have been holding off for months on whether or not to actually prosecute the president’s son.

The WaPo report goes to great lengths to point out that Attorney General Merrick Garland has left any charging decision up to the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, but it’s hard to argue that politics isn’t playing a role in whether or not to prosecute Biden for not being honest about his drug use when filling out the paperwork required for a background check on all retail sales of firearms.

The primary focus of the tax investigation has been whether Hunter Biden did not declare income related to his various business ventures, including overseas. The gun paperwork part of the investigation stems from 2018, a time period in which Hunter Biden, by his own account, was smoking crack cocaine.

In October of that year, Biden purchased a handgun, filling out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

According to a book Hunter Biden later wrote about his struggles with substance abuse, he was using drugs heavily that year.

Prosecutions for false statements on gun-purchase forms are relatively rare, but they do happen. Federal agents refer to such cases as “lying and buying.” Historically, prosecutors have significant discretion to decide which ones are worth federal resources.

“A prosecutor can say they have bigger fish to catch, or they can decide to seek a deal,” said Joseph G. Green, a retired agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “As agents, we would always include as many charges as we could, but it’s ultimately up to the prosecutor to decide which ones they will bring.”

Yeah, these types of prosecutions do happen, and sometimes even celebrities wind up in court. Back in 2019, for instance, rapper Kodak Black was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to making false statements on the Form 4473 he used to purchase several firearms. Black’s sentence was ultimately commuted by then-President Donald Trump in 2021 on his last full day in office.

Who knows, maybe Trump will get the chance to do the same for Hunter Biden if he’s prosecuted and convicted. For now, however, attorneys for Biden are trying to deflect their client’s alleged wrongdoing by accusing the agents leading the investigation of illegally spilling the beans to the press in an attempt to pressure prosecutors.

In a written statement to the Washington Post on Thursday, Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark accused investigators of leaking information from ongoing grand jury proceedings.

“It is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one,” Clark said. “Any agent you cite as a source in your article apparently has committed such a felony. We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors. As is proper and legally required, we believe the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense. That is the job of the prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing their job.”

When it comes to the potential charge of making false statements, I’m not sure what any witnesses for the defense could say that would absolve Hunter Biden or get him off the hook. We know he filled out the paperwork attesting that he was not an unlawful user or addicted to any controlled substance at a time when he himself has admitted in print to smoking crack. That’s pretty damning information, and there have been previous cases where gun owners have been charged by federal prosecutors with similar evidence.

The U.S. Attorney in Delaware may still be digging into Hunter Biden’s financial doings, but it seems to me that the case against Biden and his gun purchase is wrapped up and ready to go. Are political considerations holding back prosecutors? It’s a reasonable question to ask, but don’t expect anything but boilerplate non-answers from the DOJ or the Biden administration itself.

The only real power congress has is ‘The power of the purse™‘ which is to cut whatever amount they can from an agency’s budget.

Can a Republican Majority Rein in the Lawless DOJ?

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Ronald rarely has the energy to socialize after making sure that his neighbor hasn’t installed any lipstick cams in his shower.

I wrote last week about the growing “fascist creep factor” in Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. The FBI has become a thug political hit squad under Joe Biden and Garland, with agents routinely being dispatched to harass and/or arrest American citizens who dare disagree with the Democrats’ radical progressive lunacy.

As Robert writes, while the DOJ continues its obsession with a right-wing terror threat that doesn’t exist, real criminals who commit Democrat-friendly crimes like firebombing pro-life pregnancy centers go unpunished.

Some Republicans in Congress have made some noise about dealing with Garland and the DOJ should they regain the majority in the House. The threats have been rather vague until now. Lincoln wrote an interesting column yesterday about some detailed ideas that are being considered:

The Washington Times reports that House Republicans have had it up to their eyebrows with misconduct by federal law enforcement and, armed with the information that has been provided to them by whistleblowers, are vowing a crackdown. GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee plan to create new laws and launch investigations into the FBI and DOJ. One of the moves that members have been spitballing includes, but is not limited to, requiring federal law enforcement officials to wear cameras when they stage a raid.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) has suggested moving the DOJ supervision of the FBI out of D.C. and giving it to U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the country. Other ideas include creating special committees to probe the FBI and DOJ and strengthening congressional referrals to the Department of Justice for criminal investigations. That last idea is backed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who told the Washington Times that he is drafting the necessary legislation. He recalled how Congress referred Lois Lerner and Eric Holder criminally during the Obama administration, but the moves were unsuccessful. Issa believes the new legislation will prevent this problem in the future.

Of course, it would be better if the FBI started raiding the homes and offices of actual criminals, but some added transparency would be a good start.

The lack of accountability right now is what is most problematic. When those charged with keeping the law aren’t subject to that law, abuse of power is inevitable.

As Lincoln wrote, these ideas are a good start. The real problem with the DOJ and the FBI is the rot at the top. As I’ve written many times, as much as I enjoyed Donald Trump’s presidency, I thought his failure to clean house at the FBI was a permanent stain on his record. I’m still surprised that he didn’t fire Christopher Wray on his way out of the door on Jan. 20, 2021.

More from Lincoln:

There may be some DOJ and FBI employees who are true believers in the progressive agenda. But the rank-and-file didn’t come up with these things on its own. The fact that there are whistleblowers at all would indicate that. No, the problem is deeper and higher than that. To address the problem effectively, the source of the infection itself needs to be removed, along with treating the symptoms.

Bingo.

The big question is whether the Republicans will have the fortitude to follow through with these plans. The party has an annoying history of talking a big game when it’s in the minority, then just behaving like grandstanding bureaucrats once it’s back in the majority. While my skepticism does remain high, I do think that the DOJ under Garland has strengthened the resolve of the Republicans.

A lot will depend on who the new speaker is. If it’s Kevin McCarthy, we could very well be in for more empty grandstanding.

Here’s hoping they elect someone who’s in the mood to go scorched Earth.

Wife of Top Biden Aide Named Ambassador for Plants and Animals.
Ron Klain’s wife, a supporter of the Green New Deal, gets a plum new gig

The wife of President Joe Biden’s top aide has a fancy new gig at the U.S. State Department.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday announced that Monica Medina, wife of White House chief of staff Ron Klain, will serve as U.S. Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources.

According to the Washington Post, which initially declined to note that Medina is married to Klain, the decision to promote her to the newly established role of “diplomat for plants and animals” is one that “underscores the Biden’s administration’s desire” to fight climate change.

“There’s a direct connection between biodiversity loss and instability in a lot of parts of the world,” Klain’s wife told the Post. “It’s not just about nature for nature’s sake. I think it is about people.”

Medina currently serves in the State Department as assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She is an outspoken proponent of the Green New Deal, a controversial legislative proposal sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) that would cost roughly $9 trillion to implement but would have a negligible effect on global temperatures.

“The Green New Deal is a unifying political message that gets back to the basics of creating an economy that works for all people and protects the planet as a result,” Medina wrote in January 2019. A national poll conducted the following month found that just 29 percent of Americans supported the Green New Deal, while 51 percent of respondents said they would rather the government spend trillions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S. southern border.

Medina is also a prominent advocate for fully integrating women into military combat units, which resulted in the lowering of rigorous physical standards to accommodate female trainees.

Whistleblower Alleges FBI Schemed to Distort January 6 Cases Into Nationwide ‘Domestic Violent Extremism’ Epidemic

A whistleblower has accused the FBI’s Washington Field Office of using cases related to the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot to “overstate” the threat of “domestic violent extremism” in America, according to Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The whistleblower alleged the FBI office did not follow standard investigative practices for the January 6 cases when it moved the cases to various local Field Offices around the country based on where the case subjects were from, Jordan revealed in a letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday.

January 6 cases “should all be officially led by the WFO [Washington Field Office] and categorized as WFO cases,” according to the letter, but instead, a “task force” dispatched instructions to open January 6 investigations to local field offices nationwide.

Those local offices received the cases, making it look as if they were conducting the investigations on the cases, when, in reality, the Washington Field Office continued to conduct the bulk of the work, according to the letter.

The whistleblower told Jordan:

The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics. Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.

Jordan noted in the letter, “Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide,” which supports a narrative being perpetuated by the Biden administration.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
Pelley’s reluctance to ask tough questions about Hunter is deliberate and straight out of the corporate media handbook.

The corrupt press knew Hunter was sealing deals using his dad’s name and title. They also knew that was compromising for the then-presidential candidate. That’s why when Hunter’s laptop with information indicating Joe was not as clueless about Hunter’s business as he seemed surfaced shortly before the 2020 election, the media claimed it was “Russian disinformation” and refused to cover any of the corruption.

Pelley’s refusal to make Joe answer for the Biden family business in a 2022 “60 Minutes” interview is no different than the media’s deliberate memory holing of Hunter’s depravity and the Bidens’ wheeling and dealings in 2020.

Corporate Media Enable Biden Family Corruption By Refusing To Ask Tough Questions About Hunter.

Joe Biden hasn’t had to answer tough questions about Hunter Biden and the Biden family business because the corporate media doesn’t make him.

Thanks to the complacent, corrupt corporate media, President Joe Biden has once again failed to answer questions about the Biden family business and whether his son Hunter Biden’s foreign entanglements have affected how he chooses to run the country.

The most recent side-stepping happened during a “60 Minutes” interview with CBS news anchor Scott Pelley, who claimed that if Joe seeks re-election, “Republicans are most likely to go after your son Hunter.”

“I wonder what you would like to say about your son and whether any of his troubles have caused conflicts for you or for the United States,” Pelley said.

First, Pelley’s “question” was not a question but a softball statement designed to save him from criticism for failing to raise Hunter as a topic of conversation at all. Much like the rest of his corporate media colleagues, Pelley seems to have an incessant desire to prop up the declining president instead of making him answer tough questions.

Secondly, Republicans aren’t “going after” Hunter to get to Joe. They are raising legitimate concerns about someone whose foreign business dealings and criminal dabbling, combined with his closeness to POTUS, pose a serious threat to the national security of the United States.

Continue reading “”

“NASDAQ Nancy” holds up bills on congressional trading while the insider rot spreads.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hemmed and hawed again last week about the House plan to rein in sketchy trades by members of Congress and their families, making empty noises about getting it done in the wake of a brutal New York Times report ID’ing almost 100 members — nearly 20%! — who reported trades in apparent conflict with their duties as overseers of laws and regulations around American industry in 2019-’21.

She’s plainly stalling, and for obvious reasons: Pelosi’s a byword for such trades with her husband — financier Paul Pelosi — making moves that regularly beat the market, often in sectors highly vulnerable to legislation the speaker can advance or kill.

Indeed, she’s long blocked real action on this problem, saying she’s open to considering the various bills now proposed in the House but doing nothing.

Yet the Times report shows she’s far from the only legislator with a vested interested in stifling such bills.

Consider California’s shouty progressive Rep. Ro Khanna. He loves to chastise Wall Street on Twitter. But that sure didn’t stop him from reporting an eye-popping 10,500 stock trades involving nearly 900 companies via trusts under his wife and kids’ names — of which a staggering 149 may be conflicted, including moves in companies under investigation by committees he sat on. Typical hypocrisy from Khannawho also enjoyed massive donations from the financial industry during his 2016 campaign.

And what about NJ Dem Josh Gottheimer? He reported massive trades in his former employer Microsoft while serving on a committee holding hearings on cybersecurity issues, including a hack that hit the software giant.

Don’t forget Tennessee’s GOP Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who (it was revealed last year) failed to report in a timely way trades worth between $700,000 and $10.9 million and is still, per the Times, mega-active in the markets. Oopsie!

Yes, dozens of members, per the Times analysis, report small-scale trades here and there, likely totally routine.

But the many major moves made by powerful politicians with access to sensitive information long before it becomes public — even if they were in good faith — stink to high heaven.

And credit where it’s due: Some members, again on both sides of the aisle, have for years been trying to address this very problem. The STOCK Act of 2012 made some inroads on this front — but as the Times report shows, it went nowhere near far enough.

Now a host of bills around the issue have been sponsored by GOP Rep. Michael Cloud, Dem Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others.

Pelosi’s reasons for standing pat on the House side are obvious. But the Times report shows that the whole body has a clear disincentive to make a move toward reform. As a DC insider told The Post, “You’re not getting members of Congress to self-regulate the money they can or can’t make. Why would they do something that doesn’t benefit them?”

The rot, in other words, is everywhere. And it’s going to take a wholesale cleaning — plus a lot of backbone, including the steel to take on knife-fighter Pelosi — to excise it. Absent real reform, Congress will keep losing ever-more faith and credit from the voters, who now face a skidding market without the benefit of insider info.

Trump/Russia investigator hid ties to Russian billionaire.

If there is one thing you can count on with The Swamp it’s that every time they accuse a Republican of doing something, they themselves are likely to be guilty of that very thing themselves.

That may be the case with Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City. In an exclusive report by Military and Defense Insider it was revealed that McGonigal appears to be under grand jury investigation for–get ready–improper ties to Russia.

 

McGonigal was no bit player in the Russia Russia Russia drama: he was one of the key instigators who got the ball rolling back in 2016. When he was at the FBI he was quite the bigwig, playing major roles in a number of high profile cases.

Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton’s national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York.

He has apparently been swept up into a grand jury investigation that is looking into his ties to a Russian billionaire and work he appears to have done with his representatives. It isn’t totally clear what exactly is being investigated and how central McGonigal is to the inquiry, but it looks pretty bad.

Late last year, according to internal court documents obtained by Insider, US attorneys secretly convened a grand jury that examined the conduct of Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City. The Justice Department declined to comment on what the grand jury was investigating or whether it remained ongoing. But a witness subpoena obtained by Insider seems to indicate that the government, in part, was looking into McGonigal’s business dealings with a top aide to Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who was at the center of allegations that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to interfere in the 2016 election.

The subpoena, issued in November, requests records relating to McGonigal and a shadowy consulting firm called Spectrum Risk Solutions. A week after the subpoena was issued, a Soviet-born immigrant named Sergey Shestakov said in a separate filing that McGonigal had helped him “facilitate” an introduction between Spectrum and Deripaska’s aide. The filing also states that McGonigal helped introduce the aide to Kobre & Kim, a New York law firm that specializes in representing clients who are being investigated on suspicion of “fraud and misconduct.” Shestakov, who has been identified on TV panels as a former Soviet foreign ministry official and former chief of staff to the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, reported receiving $33,000 for the referrals.

It’s not clear that anything McGonigal did for the sketchy Russians was illegal, but he failed to report doing any work for them. That in itself may be a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Depending upon the exact scope of what the former FBI agent did he may or may not have violated the law.

While it wouldn’t necessarily have been illegal for McGonigal to work on behalf of Deripaska, failing to disclose activities covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, such as lobbying and public relations, is punishable by a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Deripaska was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for acting as an agent for the Kremlin, and has been accused of ordering the murder of a businessman. “If McGonigal is mixed up in any way shape or form with Deripaska, that strikes me as unseemly, to put it politely,” says Tim Weiner, the author of “Enemies: A History of the FBI.”

There is little doubt that McGonigal’s ties to a sketchy Russian oligarch are clear evidence that he isn’t as squeaky clean as a top FBI official would like to appear. After all, one of the great perks of having had such a position is peddling the prestige of having had such a job. He certainly has been capitalizing off his status, and getting tied up with sanctioned Russian agents of the Kremlin might hit him in the pocketbook. Perhaps that is why he decided to hide his relationship.

It’s impossible to know at this stage whether McGonigal’s super-friendly ties to Russians played a role in his zeal to get Donald Trump, but these revelations certainly raise questions. Despite the constant repetition that Trump was Russia’s puppet, he was actually far more antagonistic in policy to Russia than Obama ever was. And we know that Hillary Clinton used her ties in Russia to stir up suspicion that Trump was colluding with Russia (she colluded with Russians to fake a narrative that Trump colluded with Russia; how ironic), faking the whole Steele Dossier narrative with Russian help.

Was McGonigal somehow involved? Did he have any contemporaneous or future financial interests? At the moment nobody but the grand jury knows.

These days McGonigal presents himself as a pious and wise man who is using his expertise to defend truth, justice and the American way. He compares the FBI to the FSB favorably.

Since he left the FBI, McGonigal has continued to trade on his expertise in counterintelligence. In 2020, months after his reported assistance to Deripaska’s aide, he appeared on a panel at the Atlantic Council, where he condemned the corruption of Russia’s security services. “You are seeing an erosion in any rule of law as it relates to the FSB,” he said. “It would be akin to having in the United States the FBI as a rogue element, operating at the behest of the highest bidder.”

Unfortunately too many Americans have come to suspect that the FBI actually is a rogue element, operating at the behest of, if not the highest bidder, then the most powerful one.

As Donald Trump would say: sad.

Court Effectively Says ATF Can Continue Covering for Hunter Biden on Gun Buy

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “[T]he Court GRANTS Defendant’s motion for summary judgment (ECF No. 8),” Judge Rudolph Contreras of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia concluded in David Codrea v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. “An order consistent with this Memorandum Opinion is separately and contemporaneously issued.”

The order ends a legal effort that started in August of 2021 and grants ATF its wish that the case involving Hunter Biden is dropped.

Attorney Stephen Stamboulieh, who filed the complaint on my behalf “for injunctive and other appropriate relief and seeking the disclosure and release of agency records” related to its investigation into Hunter Biden and a handgun reportedly belonging to him, advises that no appeal will be filed due to the unlikelihood that it would succeed.

Seriously, what did we expect? We were never under any illusion that we had a magic bullet. But we had to try for no reason other than to once more expose how the most in-your-face outrages, get a pass when people have the right connections.

As per Judge Contreras’ decision, disregarding that Hunter Biden could not have legally purchased a handgun in Delaware without illegally denying documented controlled substance abuse on the Form 4473 Transfer Record, which is a felony, his privacy interests are officially deemed to outweigh any public interest.

“Mr. Codrea cites a news article stating that an FBI-seized laptop shows that Hunter Biden allegedly sent text messages discussing the handgun incident and a police investigation,” Contreras elaborates. “The Court is skeptical that one’s private texts can so easily be repurposed into public acknowledgment of a criminal investigation.”

On top of that, “Mr. Codrea did not provide a signed privacy waiver [from Hunter Biden] . . . that might authorize the release of information. Thus, the Court will examine Hunter Biden’s privacy interests on the merits.”

Right, and what were the odds of getting that?

The rest of the cited technicalities and arguments give legal cover for the judge’s order, but realistically, there was no real hope things would be decided differently. That’s in spite of all the original reporting presented on AmmoLand (and ignored by other media) culminating in compelling photographic evidence that Biden had also obtained at least one other gun, [possibly an airgun], presumably under the same felonious circumstances. That last one has also been ignored, with the exception of social media: Twitter put a warning on my tweet to Joe Biden about it, and Facebook was reportedly handing out “fact check” suspensions to anyone sharing it.

“That no media organizations are scrambling to be the ones to ‘break’ what appears to be a directed cover-up to the general public tells us much,” I noted in a report on how a black man was punished by the Justice Department over similar gun possession and substance abuse. “So will what Barack Obama-nominated Judge Contreras order.”

Here is what the Judge ordered:

If there is any outside coverage on this, don’t look for the focus of it to be on Hunter Biden getting away with “gun felonies,” with the full cognizance of ATF and the federal courts. That said, there’s nothing to stop any person from lecturing on what we should have said from stepping up and showing so call media how it’s done.

I mean, what other reason could there be that those with greater reach and resources wouldn’t want the truth known by all?

Leaked memo states that in NYC anyone carrying a firearm, legally, is now presumed guilty until proven innocent

NEW YORK CITY, NY – Leaked documents from the New York Police Department (NYPD) indicate that anyone carrying a firearm is now presumed guilty until proven innocent.

The new guidance highlighted in the leaked memo proves that almost anywhere in New York City — public or private — is a gun-free zone.

It basically states that unless someone is a police officer or a former cop, no one can bring their legal firearm out of their house for protection, like on public transportation.

The memo, titled New York State Restrictions on Carrying Concealed Firearms, states very clearly in its “key points”:

“Anyone carrying a firearm is presumed to be carrying unlawfully until proven otherwise.”

The other “key points” are listed below:

Possessing a firearm in New York City requires a special license issued by the New York City Police Department;

Carrying a firearm in New York City requires a concealed carry license issued by the New York City Police Department;

License holders are required to carry their license when carrying a firearm and must provide their license to law enforcement upon request; and

Recent changes in law do not impact the way officers conduct investigative encounters. Officers may stop an individual when the officer has reasonable suspicion that an individual is carrying a firearm (Level 3) and may frisk that individual since the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed and dangerous.

The memo also describes what are to be considered “sensitive” and “restricted” locations throughout the city. According to the memo:

“Even though a person may be licensed to carry a firearm, they may not bring a firearm to a ‘sensitive’ location … All private property (residential and commercial) that is not on the sensitive location list is considered ‘restricted.’ People who are licensed to possess firearms may not bring firearms to a restricted location unless they get permission from the property owner.”

Expect Silicon Valley Censorship To Ramp Up with ‘Civic Integrity Policy

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- With the news that Twitter is bringing back its “Civic Integrity Policy,” Second Amendment supporters need to be ready for censorship to ramp up. This is something that has been building up for a long time.

Of course, this is just one possible avenue of attack. There have been other revelations about censorship – at least on Twitter’s part – that Second Amendment supporters should take note of. If anything, these revelations, at a bare minimum, will need some serious oversight by Congress, and some serious corrective actions will be needed.

Those actions will require substantial Congressional majorities and, alongside efforts to halt financial de-platforming, are probably the most important battles for Second Amendment supporters to win – more important than constitutional carry or other legislative fights. Don’t take my word for it – look at what Google did with regard to crisis pregnancy centers after a push from Letitia James.

Yes, the same Letitia James who sought the NRA’s dissolution. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, this is a bad sign.

Silicon Valley’s actions will force many Second Amendment activists to confront a very hard question:

How do we reconcile using the power of government when we ourselves have expressed suspicion – if not opposition – to increasing the size and scope of government? Because at this point, it looks increasingly likely that we will need to use government power to protect our First Amendment rights on at least a short-term basis, and it probably may be for the long haul.

Some of it will be using Congress to check the executive branch – in essence, invoking Constitutional powers – to rein in efforts by various agencies to get social media companies to censor based on such pretexts as “medical misinformation” or even just “misinformation” in general. That is not going to be the big issue.

The big issue will be addressing the fact that these companies also act independently, and their censorship decisions didn’t just come from the government. How much was government influence? That is currently unknown, but perhaps the litigation by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana will change that.

As private entities, they have the same freedom to associate – or not associate – as we do, to a large extent. How much of the censorship is their own doing? We don’t really know. Could the Elon Musk saga change things on Twitter? That is an unknown, as well.

That will require answers. Some will come from the litigation, some from the Congressional hearings. Some, we may not know for sure. How much will the litigation reduce the censorship (we shouldn’t presume it will end all of it)? Again, we don’t – in fact, we can’t – know.

One thing is certain: Second Amendment supporters will have a lot of work to do to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels this coming November and the November two years from now. Get out the vote!

Attorney General Merrick Garland Threatens DOJ Employees About Contacting Congress – In the Current Environment He Appears to be Breaking the Law

According to attorney Mike Davis, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland just ordered that no members of the DOJ can contact Congress. That’s against the law.

In a Twitter thread this evening, attorney Mike Davis shared that AG Merrick Garland ordered all members of his corrupt DOJ to not contact Congress.

Image

 

Report on Possible Trump Charges Leaves the Resistance Reeling

As RedState reported, the DOJ dropped a filing on Tuesday evening in an attempt to deny the appointment of a special master regarding the documents seized during the now infamous Trump raid. In that filing was a photograph that set leftwing hearts a flutter, purporting to show “top secret” documents scattered on the floor of a Mar-a-Lago storage room.

In reality, the documents were found in boxes per the DOJ’s own documentation.

The DOJ knew what it was doing putting that photo out, though. They wanted to gin up more “the walls are closing in” outrage from the left, and sure enough, they got it. Social media was swamped with hysterical declarations that charges were incoming. That picture was “criminal evidence,” they screeched while racking up the likes and shares along the way.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
Americans may shrug when prosecutors use pretext to target known drug dealers or human traffickers, but manipulating the criminal code to find a basis to search the home of a former president and a political enemy represents an appalling weaponization of the criminal justice system. And while large portions of the affidavit remain under seal, the country has seen enough to know that is precisely what the Biden administration did to get Trump.

Redacted Mar-A-Lago Affidavit Confirms Biden’s DOJ Fished For A Crime To Pin On Trump.

The search warrant affidavit unsealed on Friday confirms the Department of Justice used a bait-and-switch tactic to justify the FBI’s unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s home. The unredacted portions of the affidavit further expose the Biden administration’s manipulative and tenuous basis for the search and its reliance on inapplicable federal criminal code provisions to justify the targeting of a political enemy.

At noon on Friday, the search warrant affidavit used by the DOJ to obtain a warrant to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home hit the public court docket, albeit with heavy redactions. While sparse, the unredacted portions of the affidavit nonetheless proved significant, especially when read in conjunction with the previously unsealed search warrant and the leaks to the compliant media cartel.

“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” the affidavit opened, before noting that “the investigation began as a result of a referral the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on February 9, 2022.”

The affidavit then summarized the background of the NARA referral, explaining that “on February 9, 2022, the Special Agent in Charge of NARA’s Office of Inspector General sent a referral via email to the DOJ.” The referral explained that the NARA’s White House Liaison Division director had reviewed 15 boxes NARA had retrieved from Mar-a-Lago including “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’” “Of most significant,” the search warrant affidavit explained, was that “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”

While the next nearly eight pages of the search warrant affidavit remained redacted, the disclosures that followed exposed the affidavit’s focus on “classified records” as a sham. “On or about May 6, 2021, NARA made a request for the missing PRA records and continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021 when NARA was informed twelve boxes were found and ready for retrieval at the [Mar-a-Lago],” the affidavit continued, with the abbreviation “PRA” previously noted to stand for the Presidential Records Act.

As I explained previously, to fully comprehend the Biden administration’s weaponizing of the DOJ and FBI, it is necessary to understand the Presidential Records Act, the concept of “presidential records,” and the NARA’s role, and the search warrant affidavit’s references to those concepts confirm that point. In short:

Continue reading “”