RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
September 24 to September 30, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten presents a timeline of events focusing on federal authorities’ pursuit of alleged Biden family corruption. It's relevant to the House impeachment inquiry getting under way, which has already produced a chronology of the Bidens' alleged influence-peddling. Here RCI sets forth the federal responses to that activity, which the inquiry will also scrutinize. Highlights: The timeline covers major threads, including the development and collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal; IRS whistleblower allegations of slow-walking and subversion of the case against him; and alleged retaliation by authorities and Hunter’s lawyer against the whistleblowers. It also covers the seeming discrepancies between assertions of Attorney General Merrick Garland and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss over Weiss’ independence and authority; and conflicts between congressional investigators and the Justice Department and FBI as the two sides pursued alleged Biden family corruption in their own ways. The timeline also details what the IRS whistleblowers and others saw as Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf's persistent obstruction of the case against Hunter Biden, and her pushing of his ultimately aborted plea deal. Also brought into sharp relief: the intersection of the first Trump impeachment and multiple Trump indictments with what some will surely see as a double standard toward Biden family corruption. The timeline can be accessed by clicking this link . In RealClearInvestigations, Maggie MacFarland Phillips delves into urgent privacy issues arising from "geofencing," the location-tracking capability that allows authorities to more easily identify offenders but also could trample on rights, including due process and religious liberty: Case in point: Calvary Chapel in San Jose, which is suing Santa Clara County for its warrantless use of location data, gleaned from satellites locking in on cell phones owned by church members. The church lawsuit stems from an order to pay over $1 million in fines for violating county COVID restrictions, violations determined after authorities used geofencing. Geofencing is increasingly deployed by governments at all levels – notably in response to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. It often begins with an innocent click. Smartphone apps ask if they can access location to improve service. When users say yes, the apps that help them drive, cook or pray are then used to resell their information to far-flung outfits. Google was recently ordered to pay $93 million in a settlement over its collection of location data even after users turned off their location history. Public pushback is mounting, notably in a bill called the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, meant to shore up the U.S. Constitution's shield against "unreasonable searches and seizures.” Data brokers insist their information is anonymized. But that's the problem, say critics: “There's no particular individual who the government is suspicious of. It's a dragnet.” Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books $25M to Pa. Lawmakers for 50 Days, RCI
FEMA Double Death Payouts, RCI
Chicago Flood Protection Down the Drain, RCI
When Coast Guard Cash Limped Into Port, RCI
Oral Histories of Climate Change, COVID, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Chinese Bank Wires List Joe Biden's Delaware Home Address, Daily Mail
Bidens Tied to $24 Million From Foreign Businesses, Daily Caller
New Hunter Biden Document Dump: Revelations, Washington Free Beacon
Biden Impeachment Hearing Gets Off to Sputtering Start, Axios
Hunter Biden-Sen. Menendez Foreign Lobbying Tie, Daily Caller
Claim of DeSantis Gitmo Abuses Unfounded, New York Times
Could Clarence Thomas Ruling Help Hunter Skate on Gun Rap?, CNN
Inside Iran’s Obama-Biden Influence Operation, Semafor
Biden Team's Goal for '24 Race: Keep Joe From Falling Down, Axios Other Noteworthy Articles and Series There’s more evidence that former National Institutes of Health head Dr. Anthony Fauci worked to steer the U.S. government away from discovering whether COVID-19 began with leak from a Chinese lab that had received NIH funding. This article reports that Fauci visited CIA headquarters to “influence” its review of COVID-19’s origins, according to a House Oversight Committee report: Last month, Committee Chair Brad Wenstrup made headlines when he revealed that seven CIA analysts “with significant scientific expertise” on the agency’s COVID-19 Discovery Team (CDT) received performance bonuses after changing a report to downplay concerns about a possible lab origin of the virus. Now, a months-long investigation by Racket and Public, which included interviews with the CIA whistleblower behind last month’s revelations and others in a position to know, reveals that Fauci not only visited the CIA but also pushed the controversial [paper he prompted that dismissed the lab leak theory] “Proximal Origin of SARS CoV-2” paper, published by Nature Medicine, in meetings at the State Department and the White House. … the new information from multiple sources, including a CIA whistleblower, a senior government investigator, and a senior official, suggests a broad effort by Fauci to go agency by agency, from the White House to the State Department to the CIA, in an effort to steer government officials away from looking into the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. The killing frenzy reached a climax over several days in mid-June as the Sudanese city of El Geneina was turned into “swamps of blood,” according to one survivor. Another described the bloodletting as “the end of days.” What happened in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, was part of a two-decade campaign of “ethnic cleansing, occupying land and demographic change” by paramilitary (RSF) and Arab militias against the city’s darker-skinned Masalit tribe. The Arab attackers, multiple survivors said, often referred to the Masalit as “anbai,” meaning slave. Drawing on interviews with more than 120 survivors of the massacre who have fled to neighboring Chad, Reuters has assembled the first comprehensive chronicle of the violence that consumed El Geneina earlier this year. The killings, dozens of witnesses recounted, included executions of El Geneina residents who were identified as Masalit, sometimes after being interrogated by RSF and Arab militia fighters. The militiamen, survivors said, were particularly focused on killing Masalit men and boys, seen as potential fighters. Desperate to save their sons, mothers described dressing them in girl’s clothing, hiding them under beds or beneath their flowing robes, or shoving them out of windows so they could escape before RSF and Janjaweed fighters arrived. The survivors’ accounts reveal a campaign that was systematic and coordinated. Mortar fire was directed at specific areas of El Geneina where the Masalit lived. Roadblocks were set up on main arteries to control movement in the city. Arab militiamen specifically hunted for prominent figures in the Masalit community. When the campaign was over, RSF and Arab militiamen oversaw an effort to hide the atrocities, which included burying bodies on the city’s outskirts, more than 15 witnesses told Reuters. To strike oil you need plenty of water – often millions and millions of gallons per well. That is a problem, this article reports, as aquifers that provide drinking water around the country are being sucked dry: Today, the insatiable search for oil and gas has become the latest threat to the country’s endangered aquifers, a critical national resource that is already being drained at alarming rates by industrial farming and cities in search of drinking water. The amount of water consumed by the oil industry, revealed in a New York Times investigation, has soared to record levels. … Together, oil and gas operators reported using about 1.5 trillion gallons of water since 2011, much of it from aquifers, the Times found. Fracking a single oil or gas well can now use as much as 40 million gallons of water or more. These mega fracking projects, called “monster fracks” by researchers, have become the industry norm. They barely existed a decade ago. Now they account for almost two out of every three fracking wells in Texas, the Times analysis found. This article reports that oil companies require no permits to drill their own groundwater wells and there is no consistent requirement that groundwater used for fracking be reported or monitored. Internal documents obtained by the Free Beacon show that Mexico has experienced a spike in apprehensions of illegal immigrants since May – a tell-tale sign that a large population of migrants was preparing to cross the U.S. southern border. But, this article reports, the Department of Homeland Security appears to have taken no action to forestall an influx that has overwhelmed local officials across the United States: The warning signs on the Mexican side of the border came as immigration authorities recorded a record high number of migrant encounters in August. Customs and Border Protection announced last Friday evening that nearly 232,000 migrants crossed the border in August, a record for the calendar year and a nearly 27 percent increase from July. There is little evidence the situation is set to improve, although El Paso mayor Oscar Leeser said Saturday his city is "at a breaking point." Nearly 100,000 more migrants are traveling through Panama and Mexico with the hopes of crossing into the United States, Reuters reported last week. So many migrants have illegally boarded trains that railroad operator Union Pacific temporarily ended service in Mexico. President Biden has placed blame for the state of the southern border on the Republican Party. "MAGA Republicans in Congress and my predecessor spent four years gutting the immigration system," he recently told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. JPMorgan Chase has admitted to pressuring the financial software company Intuit to prevent gun sellers from using the company’s payment processing services, according to a letter Sen. Ted Cruz sent Monday after looking into the policy. This article reports that Bank of America, meanwhile, denied claims that it pressured Intuit into banning gun manufacturers from using its QuickBooks software: Cruz learned about the issue after Intuit withdrew its services from Dawson Precision, a Texas company that manufactures firearm parts. Intuit gave Dawson Precision no warning and simply refused to process payroll. Intuit later notified Dawson Precision that the software company had canceled the manufacturer’s account because Intuit’s acceptable use policy excluded firearm manufacturers. … Intuit also stopped processing credit card payments for the Arizona company Gunsite Academy, citing Intuit’s ban on companies that engage in gun sales that aren’t face to face. … When Cruz’s staff approached Intuit about its firearm policies, the company said its banking partners, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, demanded the policies. Specifically, Intuit said Bank of America required it to prohibit gun manufacturers from using QuickBooks and JPMorgan required Intuit to prohibit gun sellers from doing so. In a separate article, RealClearInvestigations reported in 2021 about efforts by banks to blackball “businesses in industries opposed by the left” including oil companies and firearms manufacturers and dealers. Robert Potts left his SUV running to warm up that January morning in 2020, when he went back to get his lunch before his drive to the police academy in Raleigh, North Carolina. When he returned, the car was gone along with his rubber training pistol, a set of handcuffs and a portable police radio. Raleigh cops found the SUV by lunchtime, but they still wanted to find out who had taken it. So, this article reports, they turned to Google: Within days of the theft, the Raleigh PD sent Google a search warrant demanding a list of people who were in the neighborhood when the gear was stolen. They also secured a judge’s order for the company to identify anyone who Googled “Motorola APX 6000,” the model of the radio, and similar phrases in the days after the device went missing. Google handed over user location data in response. Police say these warrants can unearth valuable leads when detectives are at a loss. But to get those leads, officers frequently have to rummage through Google data on people who have nothing to do with a crime. And that’s precisely what worries privacy advocates. This article reports concerns that these warrants reverse the age-old process in which law enforcement obtains a warrant to search the home or belongings of a specific person, in keeping with a constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Rather than naming a suspect, law enforcement identifies basic parameters – a set of geographic coordinates or search terms – and asks Google to provide hits, essentially generating a list of leads. |
