Melania, wife offormer President Donald Trump, will reportedly be attending a fundraiser for the Log Cabin Republicans later this month, multiple publications have reported.
Garvey, 74, said his experience with baseball has trained him how to put together a winning team, saying he's"been able to do it in Los Angeles and San Diego and in the community. ... I'll be a one-term, six-year senator who will step up to the plate every day and go to bat for the people of California who know there's a better life and need somebody to be their voice. They'll be the wind beneath my wings, too," he added.
Fox News correspondent David Spunt has the latest on the first son's refusal to testify on 'Special Report.'
The assistant U.S. attorney who was accused oflimiting questionsrelated to President Biden during the federal investigation into Hunter Biden is no longer employed by the Justice Department, Fox News has learned.
Lesley Wolf, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware, is no longer with the DOJ, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The source said Wolf had longstanding plans to leave the Department of Justice and did so weeks ago.
Wolf, who IRS whistleblowers claimed slow-walked the Hunter Biden investigation, is sitting for a transcribed interview before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning.
Specifically, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley alleged that Wolf worked to "limit" questioning related to President Biden and apparent references to Biden as "dad" or "the big guy."
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.
WASHINGTON — The former federal prosecutor who allegedly shielded President Biden and his son Hunter
during a criminal investigation testified 79 times to Congress that she
was “not authorized” by the Justice Department to answer questions
about the case, according to a transcript reviewed by The Post.
Former Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf repeatedly cited a
five-page authorization letter from Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer as she refused to answer questions during a House Judiciary Committee deposition last week.
Weinsheimer’s Dec. 12 letter, also reviewed by The Post, says: “[T]he
Department generally does not authorize congressional testimony from
line-level personnel, especially relating to an ongoing investigation
with charges pending in court. The Department has declined to do so in
connection with this matter.”
Wolf’s dozens of refusals to answer questions — just one day after the full House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry
into President Biden — frustrated attempts to firm up the storyline
involving what whistleblowers say was a sweeping cover-up by Wolf and
colleagues to protect the Biden family.
The near-blanket rejection of questions follows pressure from House
Republicans on the administration to allow witness testimony and could
bolster GOP arguments that the White House is obstructing the inquiry,
which itself could form an article of impeachment.
Two IRS agents who worked on the long-running tax fraud investigation
into Hunter Biden, which focused on his foreign income from countries
such as China and Ukraine, alleged in prior testimony to House
committees that Wolf tipped off the first son’s lawyers to investigative
steps and forbade inquiries into Joe Biden, even when communications
mentioned him.
Wolf served on the squad of prosecutors that signed off on a
probation-only plea deal in June for the first son on tax and gun
charges, which fell apart the following month under scrutiny from a federal judge.
IRS supervisor Gary Shapley, who oversaw the Hunter Biden
investigation for three years, and case agent Joseph Ziegler, who worked
on the inquiry for five years, made a series of specific claims against
Wolf, which she did not refute in her testimony.
Tax investigators learned in December 2020 that Wolf “reached out to
Hunter Biden’s defense counsel and told them” about investigators’ plans
to search a northern Virginia storage unit that contained business
records, “circumventing our chance to get to evidence from potentially
being destroyed, manipulated or concealed,” Ziegler testified in July.
Shapley testified that investigators were months earlier barred from
searching a guest house at Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, where
Hunter often stayed.
Shapley said that on Sept. 3, 2020, “Wolf told us there was more than
enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there, but the
question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze.”
Wolf also allegedly objected during a meeting on Dec. 3, 2020, to questioning a key Biden family associate, Rob Walker, about the president.
“Wolf interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy
and stated she did not want to ask questions about ‘dad,’” he said.
“When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had
to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of
questioning. This upset the FBI, too,” Shapley testified.
Wolf served as a key point person for the investigation, serving under Delaware US Attorney David Weiss.
The whistleblowers accused Weiss’ office of giving Hunter Biden’s
legal team advance knowledge of a planned interview attempt in late
2020, scuttling a planned approach, and said prosecutors didn’t pass
along a paid FBI informant’s tip that Joe and Hunter Biden received $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma,
which paid Hunter a salary of up to $1 million to serve on its board
beginning in 2014 when his vice president dad led US policy toward the
country.
Wolf allegedly instructed FBI agents in August 2020 to remove
references to Joe Biden from a search warrant affidavit, writing,
“Someone needs to redraft [the affidavit] … There should be nothing
about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to an email released by the Ways & Means Committee.
“That email, I think, is super important because it’s a one-off
example in writing of the constant concern of following investigative
leads that might lead to Joe Biden,” Ziegler said last week in a Fox
News interview.
“The FBI agents who drafted that affidavit, they believed that they
had sufficient evidence — probable cause — to support including
Political Figure 1 in that affidavit,” said the self-identified Democrat.
“That related to [Ukrainian energy company] Burisma, access to Joe
Biden and access to the administration and there was ample evidence that
was included in that affidavit that’s supported including Political
Figure 1. That has a waterfall effect on the investigation because those
emails that we’re searching for might not come through to the team.”
Shapley and Ziegler said they were not allowed to get cellphone
geolocation data that could have proved Joe Biden was with his son in
July 2017 when Hunter sent a threatening text message to a Chinese government-linked businessman saying, “I am sitting here with my father,” and warning of retribution.
Within 10 days of that message, $5.1 million flowed to accounts
linked to Hunter and first brother James Biden from CEFC China Energy —
after a tranche of $1 million earlier that year, less than two months
after Biden left office as vice president.
A May 2017 email penciled in Joe Biden, referred to as the “big guy,” for a 10% cut from CEFC dealings.
The IRS whistleblowers say that — in addition to preferential
treatment for Joe and Hunter Biden — Attorney General Merrick Garland
misled Congress under oath about Weiss’ ability to independently bring
criminal charges against Hunter Biden.
Biden-appointed US attorneys in Los Angeles and Washington have
confirmed in testimony that they declined to partner with Weiss, who in
August was elevated by Garland to be a special counsel, allowing him to bring charges independently outside of Delaware.
The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Wolf’s testimony.
According to multiple sources within the group,
officially known as "The Eight-Year Alliance," DeSantis is "a proven
winner," a contender with a depth of policy proven by what he's
accomplished at the state level, and a leader who "does what he says."
The
primary motivation of the group, the sources said, is to promote a
candidate they feel would be a viable contender for two presidential
terms, something they see in DeSantis. They also want to prevent former President Donald Trump
"immediately becoming a lame-duck president" should he win back the
White House, considering the polarizing affect his persona has had on
American politics.
Key point: depth of proven policy in Florida sustainable nationally over two presidential terms is a better choice than another drama-plagued and by definition ineffectual presidency under the best of conditions.
The GOP has now won 218 seats after the Associated
Press projected that Republican Mike Garcia will win reelection in
California's 27th Congressional District.
Democrats, meanwhile,
have secured 209 seats as vote counting continues more than a week after
Election Day. Eight seats are still in play.
"My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities,
and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and
friends. None of this is the government’s business."
''There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,'' Mr. Cheney said. ''There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.''
Equity used to mean everybody had a reasonable expectation of receiving what they put into the system, but that stopped being true for high income earners in the 1990s.
Last year, a person making $200k taxed at the current 6.2% rate for 30 years would have to live 10 years beyond full retirement age of 67 to recoup all his contributions at a 2021 maximum benefit level of $3,113 per month, or to age 77.
But now his administration has taken a worse stance, in regard to protesters who are demonstrating in front of the doxxed addresses of the members of the US Supreme Court.
He hasn't called it inappropriate, and officially the administration won't take a position on where protests should and should not occur.
This is the sort of ugliness which leads people to forgo public service, and the worse public officials who replace them to assemble their own security forces.
Private armies can develop that way, which become a threat to the civilized order.
If you think I'm exaggerating the slippery slope here, imagine the guffaws heard all around when I was a kid when occasional firebrands then predicted there would be widespread public vulgarity, pornography, open homosexuality, gay marriage, anti-white racism, trillions of dollars in public debt, hostility to the police, refusal by the authorities to prosecute crimes, complete politicization of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, yada, yada, yada.
The reason they don't teach history much anymore is they don't want you to know how really far we have fallen.
In a press conference Monday, Rinkevics said that public opinion and
policymakers’ decision-making had shifted with regards to military
deployments, noting that now “we need a permanent stationing of NATO
troops, including U.S. troops, on our soil” — something he had called
for before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On the day Russia invaded Ukraine (Feb. 24), Biden ordered the
deployment of an additional 7,000 U.S. troops to Europe, and moved
forces already in Europe to NATO’s eastern flank, including to Latvia. ...
Even though the Baltic states have been a part of
NATO and the EU since 2004, with all three using the euro as their
currency, their geographic location makes them vulnerable. Like Ukraine,
they all share a border with Russia. Latvia and Lithuania also share a
border with Russia’s ally Belarus, which is widely believed to be
supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
Buchanan with Hannity and Colmes, November 26, 2007, Putin's seventh year in office:
COLMES: You want — yes, you want us to get out of Russia, too.
You want us to pull the troops back, get the troops out of all —
wherever we have United States troops.
BUCHANAN: Look, the
Russians got up and walked out of Eastern Europe. They moved their army
behind the Urals. They let Eastern Europe go free. They let 15 nations
break up. What did we move NATO into their face for?
Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says. ...
Former chief investigator of the Trump-Russia probe for the House
Intelligence Committee under then-Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., Kash
Patel, said the filing "definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton
campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to
orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between
President Trump and Russia."
"Per Durham, this arrangement was put in motion in July of 2016,
meaning the Hillary Clinton campaign and her lawyers masterminded the
most intricate and coordinated conspiracy against Trump when he was both
a candidate and later President of the United States while
simultaneously perpetuating the bogus Steele Dossier hoax," Patel told
Fox News, adding that the lawyers worked to "infiltrate" Trump Tower and
White House servers.
The Taliban’s threat has been a constant for years; it was a very real threat during President Donald Trump’s administration. We met that threat with American strength and smart diplomacy. ... The Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy utilized a combination of deterrence and negotiated agreements based on conditions in the country to keep the Taliban in check while we withdrew our forces. This kept Americans who were still there safe while reducing our military footprint in the region.
"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."
The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.
An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.
The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.
The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.
If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.
Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.
Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.
Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.
"Originalism says the rights of the Constitution that were given in
1789 are the rights you enjoy today and they can never be taken -- and
if you want to add to them, we the people add to them," Gorsuch told
Bream.
Add rights? You mean like a right to healthcare? A home? A pony?
The original Bill of Rights enshrines the chartered rights of Englishmen which were perceived by the first Americans to have been abused by England's king. They are old rights, anciently memorialized in the long history of England's Christian civilization. While not exhaustive in an ideological sense, it is dubious to assert we can just invent new rights such as those out of thin air if we want to. The list is pretty complete as it is.
Amending the Constitution is not the same thing as "adding rights". If it is, we're all in trouble.
A 63-page report released last month found "numerous issues" with the
FBI's use of confidential sources during a period that included the
2016 election. That report revealed that the FBI lacked appropriate
procedures to vet and maintain oversight of sources like the ones used
against the Trump campaign. This created a security risk for the United
States. Yet no prosecutions have been announced.
Last August, an even more serious finding was released when the IG
determined that the FBI director himself [James Comey] had violated FBI policy and the
terms of his own employment agreement in disseminating classified
information for release to the media. Though the DOJ could have
prosecuted based on the report's findings, it declined to do so.
A May 2019 IG report implicated the FBI deputy assistant director for
unauthorized contacts with the media, illegally disclosing sealed court
documents and other sensitive information to the media, and accepting
gifts from the media. The DOJ declined to prosecute. But why? The IG
recommended prosecution.
The IG's June 2018 probe into the Hillary Clinton email investigation
implicated the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, of
repeatedly articulating a strong political bias even as he headed up the
investigation of Clinton's exposure of classified information. The
500-page report, which reviewed 1.2 million documents and included
interviews with more than 100 witnesses, documented numerous
questionable decisions that benefited Clinton or damaged Trump, though
the IG acknowledged the parties denied their political bias impacted
their decisions.
Finally, an April 2018 report implicated FBI Assistant Director
Andrew McCabe of inappropriately authorizing the disclosure of sensitive
information to a reporter and repeatedly lying to investigators about
it. The report found McCabe lied four times, three under oath, and that
it was done "in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at
the expense of Department leadership." Though McCabe was fired, he
wasn't prosecuted.