Tag: corruption

What Can You Do While Waiting for a FOIA Response?

The government is slow, especially at answering questions about itself. In theory, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lets Americans ask any federal agency for any public record and get a response back within 20 days. All 50 states have similar records laws. After all, government documents are the property of the taxpayer.

In practice, almost no government agency meets its own deadlines. FOIA requests can take weeks, months, or even years longer than the legal deadline. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are notorious for sitting on requests for ages before handing back pages that are almost entirely censored with a black highlighter.

Using data from the public records site MuckRock, Reason calculated the average response times for several agencies. It turns out that you can do a lot of fun (and not so fun) things while waiting for bureaucrats to give you the documents that your taxes paid for.

The averages only include cases where the agency actually managed to turn up documents. It doesn’t count requests that are still pending or cases where an agency straight-up ghosted the requester.

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Biden Admin Asked Amazon To Hide Vaccine-Critical Books During Pandemic

The Biden Administration pressured Amazon to hide books for sale on its platform that were critical of vaccines during the pandemic, it has been revealed.

The findings were presented by the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in documents that show Amazon reduced the visibility of titles that the government deemed overly critical of big pharma shots.

The documents show that some books were simply generally critical of vaccines, with several written by medical professionals. Some were even just reviews of scientific studies.

The Federal government compiled a “Do Not Promote” list, to which more than 40 titles were added.

In a series of X posts, Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan explained how internal emails from Amazon contain employees revealed that “the impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden Administration.”

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FBI Raids Home of Democrat Oakland Mayor

FBI agents on Thursday conducted an early morning raid on the home of Democrat Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, possibly in relation to a corruption probe.

Agents with the Bureau were seen removing boxes from the mayor’s home around 10AM, however they did not immediately identify the cause of the raid.

“The FBI is conducting court authorized law enforcement activity on Maiden Lane. We are unable to provide additional information at this time,” the FBI said.

In a statement on X, ABC7 chief investigative reporter Dan Noyes claimed he’d received a tip from a law enforcement source the raid was in relation to a “public corruption investigation of Thao and her boyfriend.”

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Prosecutor had dog cremated, bought Target pillows on taxpayers’ dime with funds meant for crime victims: Cops

Authorities in Georgia have arrested an Atlanta prosecutor who allegedly used taxpayer funds meant to help crime victims to buy items for herself such as cremation for her dog, breakfast and pillows from Target.

A grand jury indicted Hall County Solicitor General Stephanie Woodard on 11 counts of theft by taking and 13 counts of false statements and writings, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in a press release. Woodard on “several occasions from July 2018 through September 2022” used funds from Hall County and the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia for personal expenses, according to Carr. She also allegedly accepted reimbursement for travel and continuing education classes she didn’t actually attend.

“Those elected to uphold the law must operate honestly, ethically and transparently, and anything less undermines our system,” Carr said in a statement. “Theft of taxpayer dollars and falsifying documents to cover up that theft are entirely unacceptable.”

Woodard was tasked with prosecuting misdemeanor cases within the county, but now faces felony charges herself.

Among the allegations: Woodard turned in a receipt from a breakfast restaurant, claiming it was for abuse awareness when it was not. She said she was paying an expense related to law school admissions for a victim in a local youth program when it was really for someone else. Woodard requested reimbursement for costs related to a court case but it was actually to pay for cremation for her dog. She bought pillows for herself at Target and said they were for a victim.

Atlanta Fox affiliate WAGA has been investigating Woodard’s actions for years. The TV station even tracked down the person who cremated her dog. Rick Farmer, of Precious Memories Crematory, gave a statement to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about the $190 expense.

“It was paid to me, for her dog,” Farmer told the outlet. “Sounds like she owes the county some money and a whole bunch of other people a big apology.”

Woodard’s attorneys released a statement calling the indictment “absurd” and “unfathomable.”

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Indiana Cop Used Facial Recognition Scans To Preform Non-Work-Related Searches

The use of Clearview’s facial recognition tech by US law enforcement is controversial in and of itself, and it turns out some police officers can use it “for personal purposes.”

One such case happened in Evansville, Indiana, where an officer had to resign after an audit showed the tech was “misused” to carry out searches that had nothing to do with his cases.

Clearview AI, which has been hit with fines and much criticism – only to see its business go stronger than ever, is almost casually described in legacy media reports as “secretive.”

But that sits badly in juxtaposition of another description of the company, as peddling to law enforcement (and the Department of Homeland Security in the US) some of the most sophisticated facial recognition and search technology in existence.

However, the Indiana case is not about Clearview itself – the only reason the officer, Michael Dockery, and his activities got exposed is because of a “routine audit,” as reports put it. And the audit was necessary to get Clearview’s license renewed by the police department.

In other words, the focus is not on the company and what it does (and how much of what and how it does, citizens are allowed to know) but on there being audits, and those ending up in smoking out some cops who performed “improper searches.” It’s almost a way to assure people Clearview’s tech is okay and subject to proper checks.

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Karine Jean-Pierre doubles down on awkward videos of Biden being ‘cheap fakes’ and insists clips are ‘disinformation’ from conservatives

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre continues to say President Biden is being miscast by videos she calls ‘cheap fakes’ after repeated videos of him being guided by other leaders or briefly ‘freezing’ on stage.

She hammered the media and blamed Republicans for attacks she called ‘misinformation.’ She did not repeat the use of another term – ‘deepfakes’ – that she used at her Monday White House briefing.

That is a form of digital altering of video an images, which the White House and Biden backers have not established took place with video from him at the G7 in Italy, at a White House Juneteenth event, or at an LA fundraiser.

‘It’s also very insulting to the folks, the viewers who are watching it. And so we believe we have to call that out. We’ve been calling it cheap fakes. That is something that came directly from the media outlets in calling it that, the fact-checkers and calling it that. And so we’re certainly going to be really, really clear about that as well. And calling it out from where we are, from where we stand,’ she said.

Then she specifically took on some of the Biden incidents that have drawn notice – including one of him walking away from a group of world leaders at the G7 in Italy, only to be guided back to a photo-op by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. 

‘I think there is so much misinformation, disinformation as we’ve been talking about. You talked about the video of the president wandering. And it’s not true. Right? The president wasn’t wandering. He was talking to a parachuter that was right in front of him. And what you saw is the Republican Party really manipulating what was being said and what was being seen by the American people,’ she said.

On Monday at her White House press briefing, Jean-Pierre told DailyMail.com that former President Barack Obama‘s decision to guide Biden after a big bucks fundraiser was a function of their longstanding relationship. 

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CDC STACKS ITS VACCINE COMMITTEE WITH PHARMA-AFFILIATED MEMBERS AHEAD OF JUNE 2024 VOTE ON COVID-19 VACCINES

An ICAN investigation into the background of new members appointed to CDC’s highly influential Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) reveals deep ties with the pharmaceutical industry. Later this month, ACIP will vote on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for the 2024-25 season. In May, ICAN filed a lawsuit against HHS for its failure to comply with a FOIA request related to these ACIP appointments.

Recently, the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) announced that it had finally filled eight vacant positions and added an additional voting member to ACIP (which advises CDC on which vaccines should be administered within the United States, how often, and to whom), bringing the number to sixteen voting members.

Given that half of the committee is being replaced at once, ICAN submitted FOIA requests seeking more information on these appointments and, when HHS failed to respond in accordance with the law, ICAN brought suit. In the meantime, ICAN conducted its own investigation and, disturbingly, found that seven of these nine individuals have direct financial ties to vaccine manufacturers, and many have received multi-million dollar grants from NIH.

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NIH Scrambled After ZeroHedge Report On Fauci Beagle Experiments, Scrubbed Database, Then Fed WaPo Disinformation

Last week, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene took a detour from grilling Anthony Fauci over COVID-19, to confront him with photos of beagles who had been subjected to animal testing experiments widely reported to be funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following a 2021 investigation series by the group White Coat Waste Project.

“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene told Fauci. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison,” she continued, adding “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”

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Biden’s ghostwriter deleted recordings, special counsel’s transcript confirms

The ghostwriter of President Biden‘s memoir told federal investigators he deleted many recordings of his conversations with Biden after a special counsel was appointed to investigate the president, according to a partial transcript of the interview obtained by Axios.

  • Writer Mark Zwonitzer said he erased the recordings because he was afraid of being hacked, the transcript says.

Why it matters: Biden’s transcribed conversations with Zwonitzer were among the most damaging evidence in special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

  • In his final report, Hur highlighted Biden telling Zwonitzer in February 2017 — just after he left office as vice president — that he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
  • Hur wrote that “evidence supports…[Biden] was referring to the same marked classified documents about Afghanistan that FBI agents found in 2022 in his Delaware garage.”

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After Trump, Will U.S. Lawmakers be Charged for $17M in Hush Money?

Are various members of Congress, who paid some $17 million in taxpayer funds to silence people who brought sexual misconduct claims against them, now going to be investigated, tried, and convicted of felonies, like President Trump? After all, they didn’t report those payments as campaign contributions.

That’s the suggestion that has been raised in a congressional hearing.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against President Donald Trump over business reporting issues, described as a “hush money” case because of testimony from ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, likely will be overturned, witnesses have told Congress.

And given the multiple constitutional errors allowed by Judge Juan Merchan, whose daughter is a Democrat activist and was fundraising off her father’s courtroom decisions during the trial, one member has defined what the entire exercise was about:

“This irony here is that this is going to be vacated and this trial was all about trying to influence an election using the process as the punishment,” charged U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

His comments came in a hearing on Bragg’s scheming against Trump held by the House Judiciary Committee.

Bragg charged Trump with 34 felonies based on a handful of alleged business reporting violations which were misdemeanors for which the statute of limitations had expired. Bragg, however, filed them as felonies claiming they were in support of some other, unidentified, crime.

They essentially involved payments to a Trump lawyer who then paid Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair, which both individuals have denied happened.

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