Tag: corruption

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) Accused of “Criminally Laundering” Almost $28 MILLION in Campaign Contributions From “Smurfs” by President of Election Watch

Independent investigator and President of Election Watch, Inc., Peter Bernenger has publicly accused the far-left US Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin (WI), of “criminally laundering” an astounding $27,850,750 in campaign contributions from “Smurfs.”

According to Investopedia, smurfing (named after the popular cartoon characters) is “a money-laundering technique involving structuring large amounts of cash into multiple small transactions. Smurfs often spread these small transactions over many different accounts, to keep them under regulatory reporting limits and avoid detection.”

Election Watch claimed in its complaint to have identified thousands of ultra-small-dollar donations made in the names of hundreds of mostly elderly donors, none of whom had any idea that they had made such donations when a private investigator asked about them.

“The Federal Election Commission states the average number of political donations an individual makes, if donating, is 1.4 per year,” the complaint against Janet for Justice alleges. “239 [donors] donated more than 10 times [each] to Janet for Justice.”

Independent investigator Peter Bernegger has done an incredible job uncovering what appears to be a number of dirty “Smurf” operations that involve indivduals (real and imaginary) who make up to tens of thousands of small dollar (under $100) donations through Act Blue to Democrat candidates in one year or less.

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Green Bay City Clerk Claims Ignorance of Election Law to Justify Voter Registration Violations

Based on her admission, Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys, a Democrat, has not been following the recommendations of the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) or obeying Wisconsin election law.

Last month, she formally admitted to the WEC in a legal filing that she has not been conducting thorough investigations into all voters with undeliverable election day registration (EDR) postcards, nor has she been inactivating the voters’ registrations or referring their names to the district attorney, as required by statute.

Ms. Jeffreys claims in the filing that “she was unaware that she was required to do each of these things.” She promised the WEC that she would do better.

“Clerk Jeffreys has admitted not only that she was not following Wisconsin election law, but that she did not know the law. There is no excuse for election officials not knowing the laws and rules. Clerk Jeffreys is derelict in her duty to enforce Wisconsin’s election laws,” said J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a non-profit law firm that initiated the complaint against Ms. Jeffreys on behalf of three Green Bay registered voters.

The PILF asked the WEC to order Ms. Jeffreys to follow Wisconsin statutes and the WEC’s guidance on EDR, a directive that Ms. Jeffreys did not oppose.

The WEC has not made a determination in the case and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Despite progress in data transparency, the FDA still keeps its data secret

History shows that hiding clinical trial data can be deadly.

Vioxx is a well-known example of how the US drug regulator withheld important information about the harms of the drug for over three years, before it was withdrawn from the market and tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.

Numerous initiatives have been launched over the past two decades to improve access to trial data after it became evident that what was reported in peer-reviewed journals was often cherry-picked and misleading.

Eminent scientists have succeeded in gaining access to trial data from the European and Canadian drug regulators, but a recent analysis published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, found that the US FDA still lags behind others when it comes to data transparency.

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ND Rep. Emily O’Brien under review by Ethics Commission for using taxpayer money to benefit her company

North Dakota State Representative Emily O’Brien has recently been accused of using her elected office to the financial benefit of her employer, the Bioscience Association of North Dakota (BioND). Currently, she serves as the company’s Chief Operating Officer.

In the 2023 legislative session, O’Brien sponsored House Bill 1455. This legislation would grant tax exemptions for raw materials, single-use product contact systems, and reagents used for biologic manufacturing. According to an email crafted by State Representative and Citizens Alliance of North Dakota (CAND) Executive Director Brandon Prichard, the legislation would give a unique benefit to BioND. BioND serves as a recruitment and coordination tool for bioscience companies that currently operate in North Dakota, and potential investors that could bring bioscience operations to the state. 

CAND received this complaint, which lists several violations of ND Century Code 12.1-13-02. This code bans public servants from obtaining a pecuniary interest in any property, transaction, or business that may be impacted by official action or information to which they have exclusive access in their role as a public servant.

Thus far, BioND has obtained $1,670,000 in funding from the State of North Dakota since 2019. O’Brien’s key votes on two legislative items have played a pivotal role in this funding. Prichard noted that these votes raise “questions about her impartiality and commitment to serving the public interest.”

It should be noted that O’Brien is the chair of the Legislative Audit and Fiscal Review Committee (LAFRC). Any ethics rules and conflict of interest rules go through her committee. In effect, Rep. O’Brien is in charge of the very rules she is violating.

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CIA prevented investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer, new IRS whistleblower docs say

Anew cache of documents from the IRS whistleblowers released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee show how the Central Intelligence Agency directly intervened to prevent the IRS investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer and benefactor Kevin Morris.

The CIA’s involvement in the case was first suggested in earlier this year when the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees wrote a letter to Director William Burns that revealed impeachment investigators had at least one whistleblower who alleged the spy agency tried to interfere with a witness interview in the case, Just the News previously reported.

“According to the whistleblower, in August 2021, when IRS investigators were preparing to interview Patrick Kevin Morris, an associate of Hunter Biden, the CIA intervened to stop the interview,” Chairmen Jim Jordan and James Comer wrote. “Two DOJ officials were allegedly summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia for a briefing regarding Mr. Morris. At that meeting, it was communicated that Mr. Morris could not be a witness during the investigation.”

The new documents show IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler provided documents to the committee detailing the CIA’s intervention.

According to Shapley’s affidavit of the incident, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf from the Delaware prosecutor’s office in charge of the case and the Department of Justice Tax Division Attorney Jack Morgan were summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for a briefing.

At the meeting, the officials were given a classified briefing and were told by the CIA that the IRS “could no longer pursue” Kevin Morris as a witness in their case. Wolf did not share CIA’s reasoning with the IRS whistleblowers, who then requested their own briefing from the intelligence agency through Wolf.

According to Shapley’s account, Wolf ultimately failed to secure a briefing for the case investigators.

“Although AUSA Wolf initially appeared to be receptive to facilitating a briefing for me on the information, she ignored multiple attempts by me to arrange the briefing. Since obtaining this briefing was outside of my control, eventually I was forced to accept it would not happen,” Shapley wrote in his affidavit. “However, it served as yet another example of deviations from normal investigative processes in this matter.”

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New court document raises serious questions about Secret Service involvement in Hunter Biden gun case: ‘All scared to death’

An otherwise innocuous court filing is raising new questions this week over the Secret Service’s denials that agents inserted themselves into the Hunter Biden gun case.

Days before the 2020 election, Blaze News reported that Secret Service agents visited the Delaware gun shop — StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply — where Hunter Biden purchased a .38 caliber handgun in October 2018. During that transaction, Hunter allegedly lied on an ATF 4473 form about being a drug user.

Five months later, Politico confirmed Blaze News’ report.

Citing sources with “firsthand knowledge of the episode,” Politico reported that Secret Service agents approached the gun store owner, Ron Palimere, about two weeks after Hunter’s firearm transaction, requesting the paperwork involved in the sale.

At the time, the Secret Service denied any involvement in the incident.

More than three years later, special counsel David Weiss — who is preparing to prosecute the first son for allegedly lying on that ATF form — filed new evidentiary documents ahead of Hunter’s trial next month.

Included in the paperwork is an interview between Palimere, FBI agents, and federal prosecutors that took place on May 16.

During the interview, Palimere told investigators that he recognized Hunter Biden as a “celebrity-type customer” when he entered StarQuest on Oct. 12, 2018. Because he knew that Hunter’s father, then former Vice President Joe Biden, was not a gun supporter, Palimere said he wanted to complete the sale as quickly as possible, believing that having a Biden in the store would be bad for his business.

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No jail time for former Dem Baltimore prosecutor convicted of perjury, mortgage fraud

On Thursday, Marilyn Mosby was sentenced after being convicted of perjury and mortgage fraud.

The 44-year-old former Baltimore city prosecutor was spared jail time, instead receiving a sentence of 12 months home confinement, 100 hours of community service, and three years of supervised release.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who attended the sentencing hearing as a supporter, was seen celebrating the sentencing with Mosby and others.

According to the Associated Press, Mosby was accused of having withdrawn $90,000 from Baltimore’s deferred compensation plan in 2020 to make down payments on two homes in Florida, one in Kissimmee and another in Longboat Key.

Prosecutors argued that Mosby had lied about the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had on her travel-related side business in order to receive funds via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

While Mosby’s lawyers claimed that the $90,000 came from her own retirement funds and that she had paid a penalty to access it prematurely on top of federal taxes, the government maintained that it was the property of the city, and should have remained so until she was actually eligible to receive it.

Mosby was also said to have submitted a “gift letter” of $5,000 in order to take out a loan that was used to purchase the aforementioned property in Longboat Key that, contrary to her claims that it was from her husband, had actually come from her own account.

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NIH adviser David Morens can’t recall if he deleted COVID records, laughs off Fauci FOIA evasions

A top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19 — and used a “secret back channel” to help Dr. Anthony Fauci and a federal grantee that funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, evade transparency.

NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday.

“[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d [sic] but before the search starts,” Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail [sic].”

“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],” he emphasized again in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization was suspended this month from receiving federal funds for the next three years and who was himself proposed for debarment on Wednesday.

In the most shocking exchange, on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 “[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

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Newsgate: Reporters Caught Coordinating With Political Hacks

In my last post, “When Beat Reporters Act Like They Work for the Agency They’re Supposed to Cover,” I outlined why some reporters, such as NBC Justice Reporter Ryan Reilly, seem to carry water for those they cover rather than act as independent journalists. 

And I promised this eye-opening follow on.

Inside documents and leaks have given us graphic glimpses into the transactional journalism practiced by reporters at prominent national news groups. It amounts to our own industry scandal: Our Newsgate.

Compromised reporting has always existed as a result of covert collaborations between reporters and political interests—Democrats and Republicans alike. Some of the most exemplary hard evidence available happens to be heavy on reporters with Democrat ties. Much of it came during the scandal-ridden 2016 presidential campaign when candidate Donald Trump upended politics and ran against Hillary Clinton, who was also running against Bernie Sanders for the Democrat nomination. As you’ll see, much of the political establishment and establishment media seemed to be working on Team Hillary.

It can be argued that some individual accounts provided here can be rationalized and are not serious breaches of ethics. But taken as a whole, it’s easy to see how we as journalists have done a poor job protecting ourselves from being co-opted by organized interests, often ones that are paid and politically-motivated. Whether we realize it or not, they’ve figured out how to exploit the media and use us to publish their propaganda. It implies a broad and growing trend that has seriously undermined the credibility of the news industry.

Opinion reporters and those who work for obviously ideological news groups are entitled to publish party propaganda. It’s one matter to provide viewpoint journalism. But it’s quite another for us to pretend to be independent journalists while acting as a tool of any interest, or publishing narratives or talking points upon suggestion or demand, without disclosing we’re doing just that.

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Pentagon says none of the aid unloaded from US pier off coast of Gaza has been delivered to broader Palestinian population

None of the aid that has been unloaded from the temporary pier the US constructed off the coast of Gaza has been delivered to the broader Palestinian population, as the US works with the UN and Israel to identify safe delivery routes inside the enclave, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Several desperate Gazans intercepted trucks delivering aid from the pier over the weekend, leading the UN to suspend the delivery operations until the logistical challenges are resolved.

The US is working with Israel and the United Nations to establish “alternative routes” for the safe delivery of the 569 tons of aid transported to Gaza since last week, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday.

Asked whether any of the aid has been delivered to the people of Gaza, Ryder said, “As of today, I do not believe so.” He added that aid had been held in an assembly area on shore, but as of Tuesday had begun getting moved to warehouses for distribution throughout Gaza as alternative routes have been established.

A US official told CNN that the Defense Department and UN are still working to determine how much aid can be held at he staging area inside Gaza at any given time.

The amount of aid getting to the Gaza shoreline from its initial staging area in Cyprus has also fallen short of initial Pentagon estimates.

Since Friday, more than 569 metric tons of humanitarian assistance have been delivered through the temporary pier, called JLOTS, or Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, to the shore of Gaza to be distributed by humanitarian partners, Ryder said. But Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command, said last week that the US hoped to initially transport 500 tons of aid per day via the pier, and scale up as time went on.

Over the weekend, as trucks began moving the aid delivered off the floating pier, CNN reported that a group of men in Gaza intercepted the aid, saying they did not trust that it was actually meant for the Palestinian people.

“I have doubts,” Mounir Ayad, a Gaza resident, told CNN near the pier. “I don’t understand this floating pier or what it indicates and what its purpose is. They say it’s for aid, but people are apprehensive. Is this aid or something else? We know that the US has never supported the Palestinian cause, so it’s implausible that it’s giving us aid without something in return.”

Ryder acknowledged on Tuesday that some initial aid brought into Gaza was “intercepted by some people who took that aid off those vehicles.”

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