RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
February 9 to February 15, 2025 In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten details evidence that several FBI leaders fired by the Trump administration weaponized their offices – contradicting Democrats’ claims that the firings were unjust “retribution” comparable to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” Weingarten reports: Former colleagues of the terminated G-men allege that at least two of the fired officials, Jeffrey Veltri and Dena Perkins, manipulated the security clearance review process to punish conservatives, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics and Jan. 6 whistleblowers who suspected bureau misconduct – and retaliated against those who came to the whistleblowers’ defense. A third cashiered official, Timothy Dunham, is also alleged to have improperly suspended individuals’ security clearances. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) read such whistleblower accounts into the record last week as the committee considered the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI Director. Actions under the man Patel is designated to replace, Christopher Wray, were behind President Trump’s first-day executive order “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” and his Jan. 31 directive terminating the eight high-level figures. Wray came under fire from Republicans for alleged FBI politicization targeting Trump supporters, parents critical of the ideological bent of their kids' schools, anti-abortion activists, and others. Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Embattled MD Is Top-Paid DHS Employee, RCI
Ugly Truth About 'Reduced' Deficit Projection, RCI
Congress Gives Generously to Alma Maters, RCI
A Safe Landing for Earmark Money, RCI
Deportation Flights Costlier Than 1st Class, RCI Trump 2.0 and the Beltway Audits: FEMA Mismanaged Billions Largely Unchecked, New York Post
Trump Fired the 'Donald Trump of Inspectors General’, Just the News
Federal Courts Become Bulwark Against Trump, Politico
Anti-Trump Think Tanks Rake In Millions From Taxpayers, Free Beacon
Trump Leniency for Democrats Eric Adams and Rod Blagojevich, CNN
On House Floor, Nancy Mace Levels Multiple Sex Abuse Charges, CNN
Emails: Biden White House Pushed Trump Docs Probe, Just/News
Trump Formally Ends Biden's War on Gas Stoves, Free Beacon
AOC's Office Tells Migrants How to Avoid Deportations, Fox News
Trump's Worry Iran Wants to Assassinate Him Is Well-Founded, Axios
Charlie Kirk: Youth Whisperer of the American Right, New York Times Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Billionaire George Soros has famously devoted a chunk of his fortune to advancing progressive policies in the U.S. and around the world. This report, from the Media Research Center, focuses on the largely successful efforts of George and his son Alex Soros to support the election of left-leaning prosecutors in the U.S. Drawing on “thousands of never-before-seen internal communications from dozens of Soros prosecutors in response to public records requests” the report describe the extent of Soros’ influence, which continues long after the votes are tallied. It reports: The 7,785 pages of internal documents show a shocking level of control by the Soros-funded groups over the prosecutors. The Soros machine sets their policies and priorities, staffs their offices with hand-picked leftists, dictates media narratives, lobbies government officials and perverts the American justice system. The Soros empire spent at least $40 million to elect its prosecutors. It then invested an additional $77,663,316 to 20 leftist nonprofits to coordinate and control the prosecutors, bringing the total Soros spending to at least $117,663,316. At least 30 percent of the U.S. population currently lives under Soros prosecutors, who were pressured to sign pledges vowing to adhere to various Soros priorities. The Soros machine orchestrated 33 of these “joint statements” and pledges, which were signed by 123 of the 126 Soros prosecutors. Soros-funded groups set the political agenda for the prosecutors, incentivizing them to target police and the left’s political opponents while pushing them not to enforce certain laws, constituting an unlawful “prosecutorial veto” of duly established laws. Soros-funded groups like Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), the Vera Institute, the Prosecutors Alliance of California and the Anti-Defamation League organized at least 51 meetings (sometimes making them “mandatory”) to coordinate the Soros prosecutors. American universities raked in nearly a billion dollars in the past four years from mystery donors in offshore tax havens, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. While the universities listed the unnamed donations as coming from places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, the Free Beacon traced millions of dollars back to donors linked to China: Since 2021, U.S. universities reported receiving over $600 million from donors in Bermuda, $280 million from Guernsey, $25 million from the British Virgin Islands, $25 million from the Bahamas, $17.5 million from Cayman Islands, and $11 million from the island of Jersey, Department of Education records show. While universities are required to disclose those foreign donors to the federal government under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the Biden administration broke precedent with prior administrations by withholding the names of foreign donors to the public. As a result, for the past four years, the Department of Education only released the names of the countries where each donation came from. Tax haven countries represented some of the largest sources of funding during that time, raising questions about transparency and where the actual money is coming from. This article reports that the University of Pennsylvania, for example, reported in June 2022 that it received $3 million from a donor in the Cayman Islands to support the "Penn Wharton China center including research articles and case studies," according to federal records. But state records from Pennsylvania – where schools are required to report the names of foreign donors – list the donor as E-House Enterprise Holdings, a Chinese real estate company with a listed address in Hong Kong. The company is led by Xin Zhou, a Chinese national who serves on Penn's Wharton Board of Advisors. In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, this article reports, the head of St. Petersburg’s prisons delivered a direct message to an elite unit of guards tasked with overseeing the influx of prisoners from the war: “Be cruel, don’t pity them.” What followed was ... ... nearly three years of relentless and brutal torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Guards applied electric shocks to prisoners’ genitals until batteries ran out. They beat the prisoners to inflict maximum damage, experimenting to see what type of material would be most painful. They withheld medical treatment to allow gangrene to set in, forcing amputations. Three former prison officials told The Wall Street Journal how Russia planned and executed what United Nations investigators have described as widespread and systematic torture. Their accounts were supported by official documents, interviews with Ukrainian prisoners and a person who has helped the Russian prison officials defect. The officials – two from the special forces and one member of a medical team – have entered a witness-protection program after giving testimony to the International Criminal Court’s investigators. This article notes that Russia has a long history of cruelty in its prison system, reaching back to the earliest decades of the Soviet Union, when Josef Stalin created labor camps for those deemed dangerous to Soviet rule. In 2023, the main hedge fund at billionaire Dmitry Balyasny’s eponymous firm notched a gross return of 15.2%. Investors, however, walked away with a gain of just 2.8%. This article reports that the rest they paid in fees – more than $768 million – mainly for compensation but also a wide variety of other costs down to mobile-phone service. Those costs – called Passthrough fees – can cover just about anything and , increasingly, they do. A Bloomberg analysis found that: [P]ublicly disclosed lists of expenses eligible to pass through have exploded in recent years. A decade or so ago, they typically called out run-of-the-mill categories like compensation, rent and computers. Now, some firms specify that fees may include artificial intelligence, compliance costs, internal referral payments, the expense of terminating staff and catch-all items – like “extraordinary or non-recurring expenses.” … [The] list of potential expenses has increased by almost 40% since 2018. This article reports that one industry study shows that the portion of gross returns shared with clients is shrinking. One group of fund, called “multistrats” because their trading “pods” chase profits in all kinds of markets, kept 59 cents of every dollar they made for investors in 2023, up from 46 cents two years earlier. On the outskirts of Cairo, a cutting-edge space lab was supposed to be the first in Africa to produce homegrown satellites. But, this article reports, satellite equipment and parts arrive in crates from Beijing. Chinese scientists scan space-tracking monitors and deliver instructions to Egyptian engineers. A Chinese flag hangs from one wall: The Egyptian satellite lab is the latest advancement in China’s secretive overseas space program. Beijing is building space alliances in Africa to enhance its global surveillance network and advance its bid to become the world’s dominant space power, Reuters has learned. China has publicly announced much of this space assistance to African countries, including its donations of satellites, space monitoring telescopes and ground stations. What it hasn’t discussed openly, and which Reuters is reporting for the first time, is that Beijing has access to data and images collected from this space technology, and that Chinese personnel maintain a long-term presence in facilities it builds in Africa. This article reports that Egypt, a major recipient of U.S. military aid, is not the only country in Africa being drawn into China’s orbit: Beijing has 23 bilateral space partnerships in Africa, including funding for satellites and ground stations to collect satellite imagery and data, according to the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank. In the past year, Egypt, South Africa and Senegal agreed to collaborate with China on a future moon base, a project that rivals the United States’ own lunar plans. | 