Tag: conflict of interest

Trump wages war, his sons get payoff through savvy investments

The U.S. military desperately needs drone capabilities for President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and fast. Coincidentally, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., are on the case.

Indeed, the Trump brothers are pumping money into defense-tech oriented firms that have already secured Pentagon contracts, or have already put battle-tested products to market. For example, they’ve invested in Powerus, a new drone company aiming to harness its “strong relationship with Ukraine” as a means to acquire and leverage war-tried Ukrainian drone technologies in a competitive U.S. market. Having bought out several competitors, Powerus already does business with the U.S. military.

In other words, the Trump family stands to benefit financially from the war, and already are.

Eric Trump also invests in Israeli drone firm and DoD contractor Xtend, whose “low cost-per kill” attack drones have been used by the IDF in Gaza. Expanding to the U.S., the company opened an office near Tampa last summer.

Donald Trump Jr. has a $4 million stake in, and sits on the board of Unusual Machines, a drone parts startup. In December, it secured a $620 million DoD loan — the largest loan in the history of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital — to make drone parts.

And Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789, a “patriotic capitalist” venture capital firm which backs a number of defense-tech startups. The firm, which Trump Jr. joined in November 2024 — right after his father was re-elected to the presidency — has since seen explosive growth: the assets it manages jumped in value from $150 million to more than $2 billion by the end of last year.

Suggesting the firm influences U.S. policy outright, Trump Jr. explained at a Future Investment Initiative event last year that 1789 “understand[s] what the administration wants to do, because [the firm] helped craft some of the messaging.”

Conflicts of interest percolate

As William Hartung, a Quincy Institute senior research fellow, tells RS, the Trump family’s defense-tech pursuits can be linked to a larger network of technology firms and venture capitalists that has significant influence within the Trump administration.

“The emerging military tech sector has deep ties to the administration, starting with vice-president J.D. Vance’s relationship with Palantir founder Peter Thiel, who employed Vance and helped fund his Senate run,” Hartung said. “The fact that Donald Trump Jr. — not only the president’s son but a close political advisor and unofficial spokesperson — will now profit personally from the fate of specific military tech firms adds an even more profound conflict-of-interest.”

To this end, 1789’s portfolio includes a number of defense-oriented companies, such as Anduril, Hadrian, SpaceX, and Vulcan Elements, a DOD contractor that makes rare-earth magnets, which are also backed by controversial venture capitalist Peter Thiel or his VC firm Founders Fund. A Silicon Valley kingmaker and Palantir co-founder to boot, Thiel has simultaneously worked to influence U.S. politics, bankrolling Congressional campaigns while many in his orbit now occupy major positions in the Trump administration.

Notably, Trump Jr. also sits on the advisory board of controversial prediction market Polymarket — which 1789 and Thiel’s Founders Fund also back — fostering an environment where people with insider awareness regarding the outcomes of world events could theoretically profit from that knowledge.

Hartung warns such political access — and, in the case of 1789, venture capital funding — can give certain defense-tech startups an unwarranted edge.

“Venture capital allows firms to stay in the market longer before they score their first big government contract, be it with the Pentagon, an intelligence agency, or the Department of Homeland Security,” Hartung told RS. “But once these influential firms have sunk substantial funds in a startup, they may use their influence to get that firm a contract whether or not its technology is ready for prime time, just to get a return on funds invested up to a given point in time.”

“If they can recruit the president’s son to join in boosting a particular firm, whether or not its product has been proven effective, they have a whole new level of influence, which can be wielded to serve their financial interests rather than the public interest,” Hartung said.

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Spanberger awards $5 MILLION to husband’s firm for Virginia Advanced Propulsion Facilities project

It has been revealed that Democrat Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed off on grants totaling $18 million to help a company where her husband works in expanding its operations in Orange County, $5 million of which will be awarded to the company directly. The grants will help build the Virginia Advanced Propulsion Facilities in Orange County.

L3Harris, an aerospace technology company as well as a defense contractor, had announced an over $1 billion expansion for solid rocket motor production capacity at the company’s site in Orange County. The grants are part of the project expansion.

“Governor Spanberger approved two grants of $12.5 million and $500,000 from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Orange County with the projects. The Governor also approved a performance-based grant of $5 million from the Virginia Investment Performance Grant, an incentive that encourages continued capital investment by existing Virginia companies. Funding and services to support L3Harris’ employee training activities will be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program,” a press release from Spanberger’s office said.

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Large Michigan Solar Projects Can Now Bypass Township Permit Denials. 122 of 148 Lawmakers Took Utility Money

One of Michigan’s electric utilities, Consumers Energy, announced plans to build up to 9,000 megawatts of solar power on 209,000 acres of farmland. The total size of these solar projects is about 326 square miles. That’s about 2.5 times the size of Detroit itself.

Nearly all these costs get added to citizens’ electric bills. Recognizing this would likely create opposition within townships, Democrat politicians in Michigan passed Public Act 233. It overrides a township if they deny a solar or wind farm permit.

For decades, Michigan’s 1,773 local township governments had the authority to decide whether a large solar farm could be built in their communities. In late November of 2023, Public Act 233 was signed into law. Larger solar (>50MW) and wind (>100MW) projects can now skip the voices of local residents. They now have almost no say in some of Michigan’s biggest industrial projects.

If the local jurisdiction denies the solar application, takes too long, or imposes excessive rules, the developer can bypass the township entirely. They can apply directly to the 3 person Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) for approval. All 3 commissioners are appointed by Democrat governor Gretchen Whitmer. In some cases, these developers can bypass townships from the onset.

PA 233 was introduced by MI House of Representatives Abraham Aiyash (D), a top Muslim lawmaker from the Detroit area. Every Democrat voted in favor of the bill, every Republican against (20-18). Like fascists, the MI Democrats took oversight from these small townships and gave it to MPSC. Democrats also control MPSC, which determines how much the two utility companies can charge their MI customers (Consumers Energy, DTE Energy).

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They Are Experimenting on Your Dog

You read the labels. You check the ingredients. You avoid seed oils, limit sugar, and side-eye anything with a barcode longer than a haiku. You subscribe to Substacks that dissect institutional capture. You understand, probably better than most, that “the science” can be quietly purchased by the people it is supposed to regulate.

So let me ask you a question that might sting.

What did you feed your dog this morning?

If the answer is a brown pellet from a bag, you are running the same ultraprocessed food experiment on your dog that you have spent the last few years learning to reject for yourself and your family. And you are doing it for entirely understandable reasons, because the same machinery of institutional capture, industry-funded research, and reassuring pseudo-scientific language that once told you margarine was healthier than butter has been quietly operating in veterinary medicine for decades.

I am a practising veterinary surgeon in the UK. I have spent over 30 years in clinical practice, and I am the founding president of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society. I also lecture on canine nutrition at the University of Glasgow and around the world. I was in Florida last year and San Diego the year before. I am writing a book on ultraprocessed food for dogs, because someone needs to say plainly what the pet food industry would rather you never thought about: your dog has been subjected to the most sustained ultraprocessed feeding experiment in mammalian history, and almost nobody noticed.

The Cleverest Marketing You Never Saw

Here is how it works, and it will feel familiar to anyone who has followed the corruption of nutritional science in human medicine.

The major pet food corporations do not merely sell food. They fund the university departments in the UK and the US where veterinary nutritional science is researched. They endow professorships. They provide free student packs and educational materials to veterinary schools. They sponsor the conferences where vets gather for continuing professional development. They supply the textbooks. They fund the bursaries. They stock the waiting room shelves and put posters on the surgery walls.

They do this so quietly and so comprehensively that most vets do not even realise they have been swimming in industry-sponsored water since the first day of vet school.

The result is predictable. Almost all large-scale nutrition studies published over the past 50 years have been conducted on extruded, grain-based diets produced by the very companies that funded the research. That research became what vets are taught. 

Raw and fresh diets, by contrast, have received almost no industry funding, which means almost no large-scale trials. Vets are then honestly told there is “no evidence” for raw, because nobody with money has paid for that evidence to exist.

It is rather like sponsoring every study on buses and then declaring there is “no evidence” that bicycles work.

The World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s Global Nutrition Committee now explicitly warns that most pet nutrition studies are industry-funded and says conflicts of interest should always be declared. RCVS Knowledge, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in the UK, which runs the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Network, notes that funding source is one of the strongest predictors of outcome in nutrition trials. JAVMA News has run pieces on corporate influence in veterinary education.

This is in the official documents. It is no longer fringe grumbling.

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Senate Armed Service Committee Member Profited From Venezuela Invasion

Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has cultivated an image as a Rambo-type hero, which was burnished in August 2021 when he took an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan to try to help rescue people fleeing the Taliban after they returned to power in Afghanistan.

A former mixed martial arts fighter and wrestler who champions the Trump administration’s trillion-dollar-plus military budget, Mullin is a super-hawk sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee who criticized President Joe Biden for supposedly “appeasing” countries like Iran.

In 2022, Mullin introduced a bill in Congress that would allow U.S. citizens to volunteer to fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine, claiming that thousands of Americans were ready to fight communism. (Lacking even a bachelor’s degree, Mullin does not seem to realize that Russia under Vladimir Putin is not a communist country.)[1]

While Mullin may genuinely subscribe to reactionary political views,[2] his opportunism was disclosed in an article in The Oklahoman in late January, which revealed that he had bought Chevron and RTX (formerly Raytheon) stock just days before U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an illegal Special Forces raid, Operation Absolute Resolve.

A spokesperson for Mullin told The Oklahoman that the purchases were made without Mullin’s input by a firm that manages his stock trading. This excuse seems to be disingenuous since Mullin had to have green-lighted the stock trades and did not demand their cancelation or say that he sold back the RTX and Chevron stock shares after they were disclosed.

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Kirk Assassin Tyler Robinson Moves to Disqualify Utah Prosecutors

Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson is seeking to disqualify Utah prosecutors on the case over a conflict of interest.

Robinson fatally shot TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025 during an event at Utah Valley University.

Robinson was charged with:

– Count 1: Aggravated murder (capital offense)
– Count 2: Felony reckless discharge of a firearm causing bodily injury
– Count 3: Felony obstruction of justice for hiding the firearm
– Count 4: Felony obstruction of justice for discarding the clothing he wore during the shooting
– Count 5: Witness tampering for asking roommate to delete incriminating messages
– Count 6: Witness temperating for demanding trans roommate stay silent, and not speak to police
– Count 7: Commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child

Utah prosecutors are also seeking the death penalty.

Robinson, 22, has three public defenders: Kathy Nester, Michael Burt, and Richard Novak.

Robinson has not entered a plea.

Tyler Robinson’s defense attorneys on Friday were back in court and sought to disqualify several prosecutors from the Utah County Attorney’s Office.

A child of one of the Utah County Attorney’s Office prosecutors was 85 feet away from Charlie Kirk and police rushed in to protect her.

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Potential Conflict of Interest Rocks Charlie Kirk Murder Case – Utah Prosecutor’s Relative Was in the Crowd During the Assassination, Defense Demands Disqualification

Newly revealed court documents in the prosecution of Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of assassinating conservative icon Charlie Kirk, have exposed a potential conflict of interest within the Utah County Attorney’s Office.

Defense attorneys are pushing to boot the entire prosecution team, citing personal ties to the crime scene.

Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA, was killed on September 10 while addressing a massive crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University during his “American Comeback Tour.”

The conflict centers on an unnamed prosecutor whose family member, a student, was present at the event, just 85 feet from Kirk when he was killed.

According to court filings, which were made in October but just released to the public on Monday, the relative texted the prosecutor in a group chat amid the pandemonium, “SOMEONE GOT SHOT,” followed by, “I’m okay, everyone is inside.”

The prosecutor immediately shared these messages with Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray while both were attending a separate presentation.

Later, the prosecutor and an investigator visited the campus to pinpoint the relative’s exact location and learned that the family member had abandoned their backpack while fleeing the scene.

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Scientists who advised government during Covid did not reveal they had received more than £200m in grants from one of the world’s biggest pharma investors, report says

Scientific advisors to the Government during the Covid pandemic failed to reveal they received over £200million in grants from one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical investors, a report reveals.

Twenty-six members of the influential Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which helped shape lockdown rules, did not register the research funding from the Wellcome Trust in an apparent conflict of interest.

The report by the campaign group UsForThem analysed research data from The Wellcome Trust, which is largely funded by its investment portfolio and links to the pharmaceutical industry.

It claims the 26 members received at least £210 million in grants from Wellcome between 2018 and 2026 which were not declared on the SAGE register of participants’ interests (Ropi) with £175 million provided during the key Covid years of 2020 and 2021 alone.

Analysis by the Mail on Sunday of publicly-available information shows one grant recipient was Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the biggest advocates for vaccines and whose advice to Prime Minister Boris Johnson led to the UK lockdown in March 2020, and who famously resigned as a government adviser two months later after it emerged he broke rules to meet his married lover.

Prof Ferguson declared in the register that he was involved with a ‘Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium’, but did not mention Wellcome anywhere.

Yet he was either the lead applicant or sponsored other applications for grants worth £5.6million including a £1.25 million grant looking at influenza-like viruses in Vietnam, according to the analysis of Wellcome’s figures.

Of the 149 SAGE members during the Covid crisis 38 applied for funding or supported other applications to the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s biggest charity.

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Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts

Trump bought up to $6 million worth of corporate bonds in Boeing, even as the Defense Department has awarded the company multi-billion dollar contracts, new financial disclosures reveal.

According to the documents, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Boeing bonds on August 28. On September 19, he bought more Boeing bonds worth between $500,000 and $1 million. In total, Trump appears to have bought at least $185 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds since the start of his presidency.

Kedric Payne, Vice President of the Campaign Legal Center, told RS in a phone interview there is “absolutely” a conflict of interest in Trump’s purchase of Boeing, especially since it is “a government contractor that is connected to military actions that the president controls almost unilaterally.”

Trump also bought between $1 and $5 million worth of Intel bonds in August, a week after the Trump administration took a 10% stake in the company. “I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER,” Trump posted on Truth Social on August 25. Trump purchased Intel bonds on August 29.

The partial purchase of the chip manufacturer, done under the auspices of driving technology research vital to national security, drew praise from some advocates of corporate accountability, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Others raised concerns about how the U.S. government could maintain fairness. “Will the government favor firms in which it owns stakes over other competitors that might have better technology or processes?” asked Peter Harrell, a Non Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Since the U.S. government’s partial ownership could give the Trump administration far more influence over the company, Trump’s personal investment in Intel could blur the lines between personal, corporate, and national interests. Intel has said the government’s partial ownership would be passive, with the government agreeing to “vote with the company’s Board of Directors on matters requiring shareholder approval, with limited exceptions.”

Upon entering office, Trump did not move his assets into a blind trust run by an independent trustee that could not be directed by the Trump family. Instead, he opted to hand over his business empire to his sons. The White House did, however, insist that the bond purchases were made by independent financial managers “using programs that replicate recognized indexes when making investments.”

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Wisconsin’s Leftist Supreme Court Justices Have A Recusal Problem

Michael Gableman is asking another leftist Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to recuse herself from his disciplinary case before the state Office of Lawyer Regulation, according to court documents obtained by The Federalist. 

Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice tapped by Republican legislative leadership in 2021 to lead a politically-doomed investigation into Wisconsin’s irregularity-filled 2020 presidential election, could have his law license suspended at the hands of a liberal-led court that clearly loathes him. 

The court will ultimately decide if the recommended 3-year suspension is proper.

‘No Reasonable Person’

On Wednesday, Gableman’s attorneys filed a motion with the court calling on Justice Janet Protasiewicz to step away from the proceedings, citing biased comments she made on the campaign trail. Protasiewicz, who in 2023 defeated former Justice Daniel Kelly in what was at the time the most costly judicial election in U.S. history, released a caustic press release effectively declaring Kelly and Gableman enemies of the state. 

”It’s too bad that Dan Kelly continues to join Mike Gableman in courting extremists who oppose democracy,” the Milwaukee County liberal opined. “Dan Kelly and Mike Gableman have demonstrated to the citizens of Wisconsin that they are not fit to be on the bench.”

In the same campaign statement, Protasiewicz denigrated all Republicans concerned with election integrity, accusing them of being part of “disgraceful effort to promote Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election.” 

Given her history, Gableman argues Protasiewicz is unable to live up to a core judiciary standard: Avoiding even the appearance of bias. 

“Because of her statements on the campaign trail, she can’t comply with this standard while deciding whether Gableman has breached his professional responsibilities or, if he has, determining the appropriate discipline,” the recusal motion states, adding that “no reasonable person would want a judge to rule on his or her case after publicly and zealously attacking the person‘s professional judgment and character.”

The motion quotes from a 2020 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, which borrows from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1965 Estes v. Texas decision, cementing the basic requirement of due process, and the pursuit of preventing even “the probability of unfairness. . .”

Noble words. But In Wisconsin, the justices alone are the final arbiters of recusal, each deciding the question of whether to recuse, or not to recuse. 

‘Rubber Stamp’

Last month, leftist Justice Rebecca Dallet denied a similar request to recuse herself from the Gableman disciplinary proceedings. 

On the campaign trail in 2017, Dallet accused Gableman, a justice at the time, of running “one of the most unethical campaigns in state history.” She attacked him for refusing to recuse himself from what she banally described as a “criminal campaign-finance” investigation, accusing Gableman of being a “rubber stamp for his political allies.” Dallet was referring to Wisconsin’s notorious “John Doe” investigations, politically-driven probes led by left-leaning government agents who secretly targeted Wisconsin conservatives. Gableman wrote the majority opinion that found the star chambers unconstitutional and that the special prosecutor “was the instigator of a ‘perfect storm’ of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent…” 

In her denial order, Dallet insisted that none of the public statements she made about Gableman while she campaigned for her Supreme Court seat “create a serious risk of actual bias…” The justice claims she can act fairly and impartially in Gableman’s case. 

“In short, the opinions I expressed about Gableman’s judicial and campaign conduct from 2008 to 2018 say nothing about the conduct he is now accused of committing, let alone demonstrate that in either fact or appearance I cannot act impartially in this matter,” Dallet wrote. 

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