Tag: corruption

Trump’s DOJ Sues Orange County, California for Allegedly Hiding Illegal Voter Registrations of Noncitizens

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Orange County, California, election officials, accusing them of concealing voter registrations of noncitizens on its voter rolls.

“Voting by non-citizens is a federal crime, and states and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement:

Removal of non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls is critical to ensuring that the State’s voter rolls are accurate and that elections in California are conducted without fraudulent voting. The Department of Justice will hold jurisdictions that refuse to comply with federal voting laws accountable.
[Emphasis added]

The lawsuit accuses the Orange County Registrar of Voters, Robert Page, of violating both the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by allegedly refusing to hand over voter information to the Justice Department and hiding voter registrations of noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls.

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Mike Lee’s proposed public lands sale blocked by Senate parliamentarian

A proposal by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, to sell millions of acres of public lands to private housing developers hit the skids late Monday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it couldn’t be included in President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill.

Why it matters: Lee’s plan would have ordered federal land managers to sell up to about 3.3 million acres of land for housing and infrastructure.

Driving the news: The Senate parliamentarian decided Monday night that Lee’s proposal violated rules limiting “extraneous” measures that can be added during budget reconciliation.

  • To overcome the ruling, Lee’s plan would require a 60-vote majority.

Catch up quick: Lee’s proposed land sale prompted widespread backlash, including from some Republicans.

  • Lee said the land sales would make room for more housing in western states — but the policy language didn’t require homes built on the land to meet any standard for affordability.

The intrigue: Shortly before the parliamentarian’s ruling, Lee posted to X that he planned to make major revisions to the proposal, making national forest land ineligible for sale and “significantly” reducing other lands that would be available.

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DC government is faking crime data, systematically under-reporting violence

Despite triumphant claims of “historic drops” in violent crime, D.C. residents find ourselves kicking off the summer with feelings of uncertainty. As I explore a possible run for local office, I have learned that systematic undercharging is fueling some portion of these so-called declines in violent crime. In short, a manipulation of the crime statistics is causing them not to align with reality, which helps explain why people in Washington don’t feel safe. 

When a violent crime is reported as a “felony threat,” rather than “assault with a dangerous weapon,” it is not counted as a violent crime.

Our city leaders must act now to determine whether this is happening, to what extent, and how it impacts not only those within my own Ward 6, but also throughout the district.

On Feb. 20, to great fanfare, the Metropolitan Police Department Public Information Officer released the following statement: “Our initiatives and investments led to a historic 35 percent drop in violent crime in 2024, including a 32 percent drop in homicides and a 39 percent decrease in robberies. These decreases drove crime in Washington, D.C. down to its lowest levels in more than two decades.”

Similarly, the Department of Justice previously announced that “total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35 percent from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the [Metropolitan Police Department].”

And, not surprisingly, these statistics have worked their way into the community’s bloodstream. In a May 24 Ward 6 Update, Councilman Charles Allen trumpeted them in his public safety updates by noting “a consistent decline in violent crime that we want to sustain and continue to drive down even further.” 

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FBI Won’t Say If It Will Reinstate Whistleblowers Who Were Booted After Exposing Biden-Era Corruption

The FBI is refusing to say if it will reinstate whistleblowers who said they were previously retaliated against after disclosing information about the agency’s Biden-era corruption, The Federalist has learned.

The saga became public roughly two years ago, when a handful of FBI officials came forward with allegations highlighting “egregious abuse, misallocation of law-enforcement resources, and misconduct with the leadership ranks of the FBI,” as the House Judiciary Committee summarized. The list of whistleblowers included special agents Steve Friend and Garret O’Boyle, Staff Operations Specialist Marcus Allen, and Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill.

As The Federalist previously reported, several of the whistleblowers testified in a House committee hearing on their experiences in May 2023, in which they “accused the FBI of engaging in a complex series of highly corrupt and partisan activities, including the manipulation of statistics, targeting of political opponents, and retaliating against whistleblowers seeking to expose the agency’s corruption.” With the exception of Hill (who had retired), Friend, O’Boyle, and Allen faced suspension in apparent retaliation after filing whistleblower complaints and raising concerns about the agency’s conduct.

Allen “voluntarily resigned under a settlement agreement with the FBI that includes full restoration of his pay and benefits for the entire 27 months of his suspension by the bureau,” according to a June 2024 Washington Times report.

With President Trump having returned to office and Director Kash Patel now leading the agency, The Federalist decided to reach out to the FBI to inquire about whether it is in the process of or planning to reinstate the agency whistleblowers who faced apparent retaliation under the Biden administration. The FBI did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, however.

The agency’s refusal to answer whether it will fully reinstate officials such as Friend and O’Boyle comes shortly after both former agents marked 1,000 days since being placed on suspension. In a recent X post recognizing the latter’s anniversary, Friend called O’Boyle’s continued punishment “unconscionable.”

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Ex-Biden Aide Neera Tanden Admits Under Oath to House Oversight Committee That She Controlled Joe Biden’s Autopen

Here it is.

Ex-Biden official Neera Tanden admitted under oath to the House Oversight Committee during a closed-door testimony on Tuesday that she controlled Joe Biden’s autopen.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer recently identified five Biden aides who were involved in the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline and autopen scandal.

Director of Domestic Policy Council Neera Tanden was brought before the Committee on Tuesday and admitted she was authorized to use Joe Biden’s autopen between October 2021 to May 2023.

According to the Washington Examiner, Neera Tanden testified that she was also authorized to direct the autopen, however, she denied manipulation or abuse.

Excerpt from the Washington Examiner:

A top former aide to former President Joe Biden testified behind closed doors Tuesday for more than four hours as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into his mental fitness to serve and his White House’s use of an autopen, confirming she was authorized to use the automatic signature device while pushing back on concerns about alleged manipulation or malfeasance.

Neera Tanden, who served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, explained in her opening remarks Tuesday that she was given authority to wield the autopen. She said she “was responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president” and was authorized to direct autopen use from October 2021 to May 2023 when she was serving as staff secretary and senior adviser to Biden.

Tanden confirmed that during her tenure as White House staff secretary, she oversaw the many documents coming to and from the president’s desk, and she noted that her role included authorization to direct autopen use.

“As staff secretary, I was responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president,” she said. “I was also authorized to direct that autopen signatures be affixed to certain categories of documents. We had a system for authorizing the use of the autopen that I inherited from prior administrations. We employed that system throughout my tenure as staff secretary.”

However, Tanden noted that she stopped overseeing autopen use after May 2023, when she became head of the Domestic Policy Council.

The Oversight Project previously pointed out that Neera Tanden was the White House Staff Secretary when Joe Biden autopenned pardons from a golf course in the US Virgin Islands.

Neera Tanden was a frequent mention in the leaked Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks.

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RFK Jr. Clashes with Democrat in House Hearing over Vaccines: ‘You’ve Accepted $2 Million from Pharma’

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. clashed with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) during a fiery House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday, claiming the Democrat was abandoning vaccine-injured Americans after accepting millions in donations from the pharmaceutical industry.

Kennedy was testifying on the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services when Pallone launched into a blistering attack. “Secretary Kennedy, quite frankly, I think you’re trying to defend the indefensible. There’s no way that this budget or the actions you have taken thus far as secretary are going to make this country healthier,” he said. Pallone went on to accuse the Secretary of pushing anti-science views, promoting conspiracy theories, and endangering lives with his vaccine policies. “I just really think that people are going to die as a result of your actions and congressional Republicans’ actions,” he warned.

Pallone also raised concerns about the lack of communication between HHS and Congress. He pressed further, demanding to know why Kennedy had not opened public comments on vaccine-related decisions. “You say you want transparency, but there’s been no public process for any of this. Why?” he asked.

Kennedy replied, “We have a public process for regulating vaccines. It’s called the ACIP committee, and it’s a public meeting that we —”

Pallone cut in, “You fired the committee.”

Kennedy responded, “I fired people who had conflicts with the pharmaceutical industry. That committee has been a template for medical malpractice for years.”

As his time for questioning drew to a close, Pallone concluded, “The bottom line is here we have no transparency, we have no response. You feel no responsibility to Congress whatsoever, and you just continue this ideology that’s anti-science, anti-vaccine. That’s all I see. I see nothing else. And I don’t think I’m ever going to get a response.”

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Spies For Empire: Beware UN-Affiliated Organisations

On June 13th, the Zionist entity carried out an unprovoked, criminal military strike on Iran. While its impact was limited, with Tehran’s counterattack far more devastating, Israel’s targeted assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists indicates Tel Aviv knew their identities and locations with some precision. Coincidentally, a day prior to the entity’s broadside, Press TV published documents indicating the International Atomic Energy Agency previously provided Israeli intelligence the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently killed.

Other documents indicate IAEA chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials, and has frequently acted upon their orders. The files are part of a wider trove obtained by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, containing unprecedented insights into Tel Aviv’s secret, illegal nuclear weapons capability, and its relationships with Europe, the US and other countries, among other bombshell material. The tranche could well shed further light on the IAEA’s brazen, murderous collusion with the entity.

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Did Head of CDC Vaccine Safety Office Delete COVID Vaccine Injury Records?

A key official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responsible for monitoring vaccine safety and reports of vaccine injuries may have mishandled or deleted official records subpoenaed by Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) alleged earlier this week. The New York Post first reported the story on Thursday.

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office, maintained the records in question. Shimabukuro previously authored a key paper and participated in public messaging claiming the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women.

Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, requested the records in a subpoena sent in January to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The subpoena pertained to an investigation into internal COVID-19 vaccine safety communications.

According to the New York Post, the subpoena led HHS to discover “potential discrepancies” in the emails maintained by Shimabukuro.

“HHS officials recently informed me that Dr. Shimabukuro’s records remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether,” Johnson wrote in a letter he sent earlier this week to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and HHS Principal Deputy Inspector General Juliet Hodgkins.

Johnson called Shimabukuro’s possible mishandling of his official records “highly concerning.”

Journalist Paul D. Thacker, a former U.S. Senate investigator, said, “Every American should be concerned about government scientists deleting or hiding federal information to shape a political agenda. That information belongs to the taxpayers.”

Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, whose questioning of the COVID-19 vaccines led the Center for Countering Digital Hate to add him in 2021 to its “Disinformation Dozen” list of the “leading online anti-vaxxers,” said he was “not surprised” by Johnson’s allegations.

“For years, I’ve seen patterns like this before regarding vaccine safety data. The public health establishment often prioritizes profits over people and continuously seems to protect the lies over the truth. The idea that critical records might vanish — whether through negligence or intent — fits a familiar playbook,” Tapper said.

California attorney Rick Jaffe said Johnson’s allegations are “troubling, but not surprising, given longstanding concerns about transparency at the CDC.”

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year, the CDC told Children’s Health Defense the agency has no records of certain internal email communications relating to the agency’s follow-up investigation of safety signals associated with COVID-19 vaccines.

HHS, CDC and Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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US auditors arrive in Kyiv to check for corruption

American auditors have just landed in Kyiv, and their plan is simple – to dig out what is really happening with the billions of dollars that the US has already sent to Ukraine.

The West has poured an estimated $133bn into Ukraine since the start of the war over three years ago, but for much of that time there has been little accountability or reporting on where the money went and to whom.

Ukraine has been plagued by corruption since independence and as bne IntelliNews has reported, corruption is not a problem of the system; it is the system. Ukraine has long been dubbed one of the most corrupt countries in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Part of the motivations behind the 2014 Euromaidan evolution was that former president Viktor Yanukovych is believed to have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the state.

Now that the US ardour for supporting Ukraine is beginning to cool, the Trump administration intends to hold the Zelenskiy administration to closer account. And the momentum for more transparency has been building. When the US ran out of money for Ukraine at the start of 2023, part of the $60bn emergency bailout package included several tens of millions of dollars in a special budget dedicated to accounting and audits.

Scandals have plagued the Defence Ministry, including one last year when the government was caught procuring eggs for four times the market value and heavily overpaying for dud winter jackets. Zelenskiy sacked Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in September 2023 in a military shake-up to crack down on corruption, but it remains rife. Reznikov himself was not accused of any wrong-doing.

The arrival of the US audit team has been confirmed by US State Department of contracts worth $814,806. That amount will cover the hotel accommodation of the employees who will stay in the capital of Ukraine for a month in the luxurious Hilton Kyiv hotel.

The audit comes as Trump has been leaning on the Ukrainian presidential administration to cut a ceasefire deal with Russia, but Zelenskiy has proved reluctant to do so. Some experts have speculated that audit comes as part of the pressure Trump hopes will push Zelenskiy into cutting a “quick and dirty deal” with President Vladimir Putin.

A group of 80 to 100 people is in charge of a comprehensive audit, according to reports, checking how funds for military and humanitarian support, logistics, security and security were spent.

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“Where’s Jackie?”: Why The Public Needs Answers On Biden’s Alleged Incapacity

“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?”

When then-President Joe Biden asked in September 2022 if House Rep. Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Republican who had died weeks earlier in a car accident, was in a meeting, observers were shocked. Biden had not only issued a statement of condolence; he had attended the  congresswoman’s memorial service to lower the flags at the White House in her honor.

As Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple noted last week, that moment should have been a wake-up call. In Washington parlance, it left no room for “plausible deniability” about whether Biden was still fit to hold the office of president. And it wasn’t just Democratic politicians who were willfully blind to Biden’s obvious deterioration; it was the media, too.

That’s why the country should fully support President Donald Trump’s June 4 order for his administration to investigate Biden’s competence and answer some of these questions, including the possible abuse of an autopen to sign legislation, pardons and other documents while he was president, instead of looking for political motivations.

Similarly, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee is also investigating.

The New York Times called it part of Trump’s “campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies” and “the latest effort by President Trump to stoke conspiracy theories about his predecessor.”

There is a weird dissonance when journalists blame Biden’s White House for a coverup, but then criticize efforts to investigate that coverup. While criminal charges are unlikely to stem from the investigation, if the White House autopen, for instance, was used without Biden’s consent, that would amount to forgery, obstruction of justice, fraud or other serious crimes.

The complicity of politicians, staff and even the press in deception is nothing new in Washington. A century ago, after President Woodrow Wilson experienced a severe stroke in September 1919, his wife, Edith, and his staff covered up the severity of his condition, which made him incapable of fulfilling his duties till the end of his term and affected the race for a Democratic successor. To end such abuses, we must demand accountability and greater transparency on matters of presidential health and competence.

The 25th Amendment of the Constitution was intended to address succession issues, including the incapacity of a president, but it is very difficult to remove a president without the support of the vice president and most of the Cabinet, meaning, little can be done without a virtual mutiny within the White House.

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