Tag: conflict of interest

Biden’s Lame-Duck Loan Czar Finalizes $1.6 Billion Award to Green Power Company He Invested In

President Joe Biden’s departing green energy loan czar this week finalized a controversial $1.6 billion federal loan to a green energy company with which he had prior financial ties—a farewell shot at federal investigators who have been probing conflicts of interest in his lending office.

The Department of Energy’s loan to Plug Power, a hydrogen fuel developer, comes months after Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the company’s past business relationship with DOE Loan Programs Office director Jigar Shah. Shortly before joining the Biden administration, Shah invested $100 million in Plug Power through a green financial firm he founded called Generate Capital, the Washington Free Beacon first reported last year.

The funding announcement comes just weeks after the department’s inspector general called on Shah to immediately halt all loans from the Loan Programs Office, citing a “significant risk of fraud” and conflict-of-interest concerns within the lending program. The LPO eschewed the warning and has pumped out billions to companies in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

The Plug Power announcement is likely to fuel Republican criticism of Shah’s tenure at the LPO, which ballooned from a near-dormant program during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term to a $400 billion spending powerhouse under Biden.

Securities and Exchange Commission records detail a long-standing financial relationship between Plug Power and Generate Capital, an investment firm that Shah founded before joining the Biden administration in 2021, the Free Beacon reported last January. Shah sold his shares in Generate when he entered the government, according to federal disclosure records.

Under Shah’s leadership, Generate loaned over $100 million to Plug Power, one of the firm’s most significant investments, according to its website. Plug Power described Generate as its “longstanding partner” in a 2020 press release, while Shah was running the investment firm. The loan was still active when Shah left Generate to become head of the DOE loan office.

One month after Shah joined the Biden administration, Plug Power applied for federal financing from his office.

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Transgender judge seeks leave to intervene in UK court case over legal definition of ‘woman’

The UK’s first transgender judge is seeking leave to join the litigation in a crucial supreme court case that could significantly affect legal protections for transgender women, the Guardian has learned.

Victoria McCloud, a senior civil judge who became the youngest person appointed as master of the high court in 2010, will make an application to intervene in the supreme court appeal brought by the campaign group For Women Scotland about the legal definition of “woman”. Interveners can put a case without being among the main parties to the litigation.

For Women Scotland is challenging whether Scottish government legislation aimed at improving gender balance on public boards should include transgender women.

The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 has been the subject of a long-running court action by the group, which most recently resulted in a ruling by Lady Haldane at the court of session that it was lawful to extend the definition of “woman” to transgender women with a gender recognition certificate.

McCloud, who transitioned in the late 1990s and subsequently changed her legal sex under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, is supported in her application by the Good Law Project.

She is concerned about the effect of a successful appeal – which would affect the whole of the UK – on her legal recognition.

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9 New ‘Independent’ Advisers to CDC Publicly Promoted Vaccines or Took Money From Pharma — or Both

Nine new members named to the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine recommendations have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies or have worked with public health agencies to promote the COVID-19, RSV or HPV vaccines.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in mid-February appointed the new members to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which shapes U.S. vaccine policy.

Commenting on the new appointments, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) President Mary Holland said:

“ACIP has long been a rubber stamp for any and all vaccines Big Pharma wants to push. But the brazenness of the HHS-Big Pharma fusion has never been so much on display.

“The only silver lining in this grotesque display is that more and more people are waking up to the reality that ACIP has nothing to do with health and everything to do with profit.”

The ACIP is described as an independent, nonfederal expert body made up of professionals with clinical, scientific and public health expertise. The committee decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often — recommendations the CDC typically rubber stamps.

This external advisory committee includes a chair, an executive secretary, and 15 voting members — 14 medical experts and a lay member representing consumers.

It also includes a non-voting body that offers input composed of eight ex officio members from other federal health departments and liaison representatives from health-related professional organizations like the American Association of Pediatrics.

However, when the committee convened last week to make its spring recommendations, it was missing so many voting members that it lacked a quorum. Vacant committee spaces on the “independent” committee had to be temporarily filled by government employees — ex officio members can be sworn in as temporary voting members.

Over the last year, HHS struggled to fill eight vacancies. An additional four members will be needed when existing members’ four-year terms are up at the end of June.

As seats on the committee sat unfilled, industry news sites like StatNews suggested the committee “appears to be atrophying” and Medriva said there is an “unprecedented lack of expertise in the committee.”

When HHS finally announced the new members to fill the vacancies, it was also reported the new members would be filling spots at last week’s meeting. However, they had not yet taken their positions at the time the meeting occurred on Feb. 28-29.

A CDC spokesperson confirmed to The Defender that nine members have been appointed to the committee, including Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, an infectious diseases researcher at Vanderbilt University who previously served on the committee from 2018 through 2022 and will rejoin the committee to serve as chair.

Members typically are not eligible for reappointment, but in Talbot’s case, the HHS provided a waiver to that existing policy.

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JULIAN ASSANGE JUDGE PREVIOUSLY ACTED FOR MI6

One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, Declassified has found.  

Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top secret information.

Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years.

His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations.

Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.

As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest.

Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000. 

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Kurt Cobain coroner boasted he was ‘intimate’ with rocker’s wife Courtney Love & ‘unqualified’ to carry out autopsy

THE coroner who carried out Kurt Cobain’s autopsy boasted he’d been intimate with the Nirvana star’s wife Courtney Love, it has been sensationally claimed.

Bestselling author Ian Halperin says medical examiner Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne admitted to him that he had a “conflict of interest” when determining that Cobain killed himself at his home in Seattle.

Halperin claims Dr. Hartshorne – who died in a BASE jumping accident in Switzerland in 2002 – was a Nirvana and Courtney Love super fan who lacked the necessary expertise in toxicology.

He exclusively told The U.S. Sun that the medical examiner confessed during an interview with him in 1996 that he should have been recused from the autopsy.

The bombshell allegations come after a purported copy of Cobain’s autopsy report – which has never before been made public due to Washington state privacy laws – was leaked online last week.

The alleged report confirms that Cobain died by suicide after turning a shotgun on himself.

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Before investigating Hunter Biden, prosecutor worked with brother Beau

When Delaware’s acting U.S. attorney David C. Weiss celebrated a fraud conviction in 2010, he was joined by a key partner in the case: Beau Biden, the state’s attorney general.

Weiss worked with Joe Biden’s eldest son to hash out prosecution strategies. “We will continue to aggressively pursue all types of fraud in order to protect the public,” Weiss said in his part of a statement with Beau Biden on the fraud case.

Today, that little-known history highlights the deep challenges Weiss faces as he pursues a newly recharged investigation into Beau’s brother, Hunter Biden, in a small state long politically dominated by their father.

Although Democrats point to Weiss’s appointment by President Donald Trump as evidence of his independence, the full story of his career is more nuanced, as he spent two years as acting U.S. attorney under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and then remained as a top deputy for the remainder of their term.

Weiss, who was named special counsel on Aug. 11, is now confronting blowback from formerly supportive Republicans, who accuse him of offering Hunter Biden an unfairly soft plea deal on tax and gun charges. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) summarized that view when he said on Fox News that “Mr. Weiss has been compromised.” A spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Weiss “can’t be trusted.” Whistleblowers interviewed by the GOP have also accused Weiss and the Justice Department of limiting the scope of the Hunter Biden probe, a claim Weiss has denied.

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Prosecutor Told Hunter Biden He Loved Him During US Attorney’s Investigation Into First Son

The ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs and overseas business dealings has come under increased scrutiny recently, revealing disturbing connections that raise serious questions about conflicts of interest.

According to a report from Fox News, a thorough examination of Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware Alexander Snyder-Mackler, his association with the Biden family, and the investigation into Hunter Biden brings to light a concerning web of relationships that demands closer scrutiny.

Mackler’s long-standing ties with the Bidens cannot be overlooked, having served as Joe Biden’s legal counsel during his vice presidency and as a press secretary during the former senator’s tenure between 2007 and 2008.

Perhaps even more significant is the fact, Mackler’s stint as an assistant United States attorney in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office coincided with the federal inquiry into Hunter Biden’s financial affairs.

While the specifics of Mackler’s involvement in the probe remain elusive, his prominent position in the office investigating the president’s son raises legitimate concerns about impartiality.

Intriguingly, emails retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop, verified by Fox News, depict a close relationship between Mackler and Hunter Biden, with Mackler signing off one email with “Love you brother.”

Although Mackler insisted he was unaware of the investigation during his tenure as a federal prosecutor, the timing and nature of their communication after the probe’s initiation could raise eyebrows.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding Mackler’s direct role in the investigation, his current position as the Deputy Attorney General of Delaware and his multiple visits to the White House during the Biden administration inevitably raise questions about potential conflicts of interest. Notably, one-on-one meetings with President Biden and other high-ranking officials further add to the complexity of the situation.

Recent developments in Hunter Biden’s case, such as his initial promise to plead guilty, followed by an unexpected plea of not guilty, fuel suspicions of corruption and political maneuvering.

This shift has not gone unnoticed by the public, who seek clarity and transparency in this high-profile investigation. The denials of claims made by IRS whistleblowers, alleging interference with the investigation into Hunter Biden, only deepen the skepticism surrounding the case.

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Half of POLITICO Letter ‘Foreign Policy Experts’ Calling for More Arms to Ukraine Tied to Arms Industry

An open letter signed by “46 foreign policy experts” calling for more arms shipments to Ukraine published in POLITICO failed to mention ties of nearly half of the signatories to the defence industry, allegedly glossing over conflicts of interest, the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft claimed.

On June 5th, the neo-liberal POLITICO news website published an open letter entitled ‘Ukraine Needs a Roadmap to NATO Membership ASAP‘, calling for Western leaders at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week to commit to supplying Ukraine with weapons, fighter jets, and tanks in “sufficient quantities to prevail on the battlefield”.

The letter argued that Western leaders should help facilitate a “comprehensive transition” of the weapons systems being used in the war against Russia up to “NATO standards”.

“The focus should be on the transition to Western weapons systems; creation of a modern, NATO-compatible air and missile defense system; creation of a medical rehabilitation system for wounded soldiers, as well as a system for soldier reintegration into civilian life and a comprehensive demining effort,” the letter stated.

Although POLITICO listed the names of the 46 ‘foreign policy experts’ and claimed to have outlined their “affiliations”, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — which argues for a less interventionist U.S. foreign policy — claimed that at least 21 of the signatories currently have connections to the military-industrial complex that were left unmentioned by the news outlet.

Quincy Institute Senior Advisor Eli Clifton writing for Reasonable Statecraft noted that “support for increasing Western military aid to Ukraine is not a view exclusively held by those with direct or indirect links to the weapons industry, but signatories of the letter are noticeably embedded in the financial umbrella of institutions and businesses with direct financial ties to some of the world’s largest weapons firms.”

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Democratic senator keeps breaking conflicts-of-interest law over and over and over again

Members of Congress keep struggling to comply with a decade-old financial disclosure and transparency law — the latest, two federal lawmakers who were late reporting stock and U.S. Treasury transactions.

For the third time in 14 months, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) missed a 45-day disclosure deadline imposed by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act.

Carper was as much as two weeks late in reporting his spouse’s U.S. Treasury bill purchases and sales totaling up to $345,000, as well as a PayPal stock sale up to $15,000, according to a June 30 federal financial report reviewed by Raw Story. The STOCK Act only requires legislators to disclose their own, their spouse’s and dependent children’s transactions in broad ranges.

“There was a clerical error,” Natasha Dabrowski, Carper’s communications director, told Raw Story. “Senator Carper is working with the Ethics Committee so he can fully resolve the matter.”

The STOCK Act — passed in 2012 to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency — requires prompt reporting of most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures and cryptocurrency by key government officials, particularly members of Congress.

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‘This calls into question the integrity of their investigation.’ Sen. Ron Johnson slams Hunter Biden probe as it’s revealed prosecutor who signed off on ‘sweetheart’ tax deal previously worked for First Son’s business partner

A prosecutor who signed off on the documents charging Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes previously worked with one of the First Son’s business partners, DailyMail.com can reveal. 

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss officially filed charges against the president’s son last Tuesday after a near five-year probe into his alleged tax crimes and foreign financial dealings. 

Weiss’s deputy, Assistant United States Attorney Derek Hines, signed off on the charging documents alongside his boss and two other assistant US attorneys – indicating he has a central role in Hunter’s criminal prosecution.

According to Hines’s LinkedIn account, he previously worked as Special Counsel to ex-FBI director Louis Freeh at his private company, Freeh Group International Solutions, a lobbying and ‘risk management’ consultancy that teamed up with Hunter on overseas business currently under scrutiny by lawmakers.

Freeh worked with Hunter on a $3million job consulting for a Romanian criminal, a deal that is allegedly now part of his federal criminal investigation and is being investigated by Congress.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson told DailyMail.com the link between the prosecutor and Hunter’s business associate ‘calls into question the integrity of their entire investigation’ – after GOP lawmakers slammed the relatively minor charges filed by the Delaware prosecutor this week as a mere ‘slap on the wrist’.

DailyMail.com has previously revealed that Freeh and his firm worked closely with Hunter Biden trying to get the US State Department to help limit the prosecution of Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu, who was on the brink of a bribery conviction in 2015.

Freeh proposed setting up a private consultancy with Hunter and Joe Biden when he ended his vice presidential term, offering ‘lucrative future work options’ including working for overseas clients such as corrupt former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

He also sent $100,000 to a private trust for Joe’s grandchildren – though he wrote an email to Hunter saying it was intended for a charity instead.

Hines’s LinkedIn says he worked as ‘Special Counsel’ for the ex-FBI director at his company Freeh Group in New Orleans, Louisiana, between August 2013 and February 2015. It is unclear what projects he counseled Freeh on.

It wasn’t until 2016 that Hunter started working with Freeh consulting for Popoviciu.

But emails on his laptop show the Biden family had a close relationship with Freeh – – who headed the FBI from 1993-2001 – dating back to when Hines worked for him. 

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