Tag: corruption

Sam Bankman-Fried’s dad allegedly had advisory role at top Democratic ‘dark money network’

Joseph Bankman, the father of troubled former crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, allegedly held an advisory role at a top Democratic dark money network, an arrangement a watchdog says “deserves serious scrutiny.”

The allegation appeared in a lawsuit Bankman-Fried’s former company, FTX, filed against his parents Monday after they allegedly “exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars,” the company’s lawyers wrote. FTX is seeking to recoup money to pay owed debts.

Bankman-Fried’s father, a Stanford University law professor, “sat on the advisory board of Arabella Advisors,” according to the complaint. 

Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, manages a nonprofit network that provides fiscal sponsorship to dozens of left-wing groups.

The funds it manages, which include the New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund and Hopewell Fund, collectively raise over a billion dollars in anonymous cash annually and, in turn, also shower liberal causes and initiatives with money nationwide.

Keep reading

46 Pages FOIAed Emails Between CDC Leaders, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and White House, NIH, HHS, Show They Knew About Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis and Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, a Blood Clotting Disorder. Emails Over 80% Redacted.

Attorney Edward Berkovich submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stating, “I request emails sent by and received by Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, Sherri A. Berger, and Kevin Griffis (all of whom are CDC personnel) on dates beginning February 1, 2021 through May 31, 2021, containing the word myocarditis.” DailyClout reported on the initial 472-page production from that FOIA on August 29, 2023.

Mr. Berkovich recently received 46 additional pages, over 80% of which were fully redacted, involving other government entities such as the White House and Executive Office of the President, as part of this production. Of the 46 pages, only two pages were released without any redactions. Seven pages were partially redacted pages, and 37 pages were fully redacted. The redactions were “pursuant to 5 U.S.C. §552 Exemptions 5 and 6.” According to the CDC cover letter accompanying this production:

  • “Exemption 5 protects inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency. Exemption 5 therefore incorporates the privileges that protect materials from discovery in litigation, including the deliberative process, attorney work-product, and attorney-client privileges. Information withheld under this exemption was protected under the deliberative process and presidential communications privileges.The deliberative process privilege protects the decision-making process of government agencies. The deliberative process privilege protects materials that are both predecisional and deliberative. The information that have been withheld under the deliberative process privilege of Exemption 5 are both predecisional and deliberative, and do not represent formal or informal agency policies or decisions. Examples of information withheld include recommendations, comments, opinions. The presidential communications privilege protects documents solicited and received by the President or his immediate White House advisers who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given to the President.“
  • “Exemption 6 protects information in personnel and medical files and similar files when disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. The information that has been withheld under Exemption 6 consists of personal information, such as a telephone number. We have determined that the individual(s) to whom this information pertains has a substantial privacy interest in withholding it.”

In this FOIA production, the first set of emails are dated May 24-25, 2021, with the subject “Draft WH [White House] Script and Slides.” Abbigail Tumpey, former Associate Director for Communication Science for CDC’s Public Health Infrastructure emailed Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, CDC Director and ATSDR Administrator, with Sherri Berger, Deputy Director for Policy, Communications, and Legislative Affairs/Chief Strategy Officer; Robert (“Robbie”) Goldstein, MD, Massachusetts’ Commissioner of the Department of Public Health (DPH), a former Senior Policy Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School; Paul Fulton, CDC Press Officer; and Jason McDonald, a CDC spokesperson and Public Affairs Specialist CCed. These emails had a “draft press conf script and slides for [Dr. Walensky’s] review” attached. However, the 10 pages of the script and slides are fully redacted.

Keep reading

BP’s Financing of Colombia’s Murderous Military

Files unearthed exclusively by Declassified in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, shine a new light on British oil giant BP’s financial arrangements with the Colombian military during the 1990s. At the time, the Colombian armed forces were one of the worst abusers of human rights in the Western hemisphere.

The documents show how BP not only offered to finance the military units operating around its oil sites in the department of Casanare, but also proposed funding Colombia’s “national defence activities” across the country.

On top of this, the files demonstrate how in 1994 BP collaborated with General Álvaro Velandia Hurtado, then the commander of the Colombian army’s notorious sixteenth brigade, on “conflict resolution” in Casanare.

An expert in military intelligence, Velandia has been accused of involvement in a series of brutal human rights abuses including the kidnap, torture, and murder of a social activist in 1987, and collaboration with a Colombian death squad. 

Keep reading

Democrat Senator Bob Menendez and his wife are indicted for ‘accepting $400,000 in gold bars from mob-linked New Jersey developer in return for favors – and giving Egyptian businessman highly sensitive U.S. information’

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine Arslanian have been indicted by a federal grand jury over corruption allegations in an investigation that focused on a luxury car, $400,000 in gold bars and an apartment allegedly received by Menendez and his wife.

The indictment claims the couple had an improper relationship with three New Jersey businessmen: Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, who allegedly paid the couple in exchange for Menendez to use his influence in Washington D.C. to their benefit.

The probe also looked at other bribes allegedly paid to the couple. A June 2022 raid on their home found ‘over $480,000 in cash – much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe,’ the indictment notes, adding Nadine had over $70,000 in a safe deposit box. 

The indictment accuses Menendez and his wife of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using the senator’s influence to protect and enrich the businessmen.

Keep reading

DHS Taps Spooks Who Signed False Hunter Biden Letter for ‘Intelligence Experts’ Group

Three former intelligence officials who signed the debunked letter asserting the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation plot have landed senior intelligence positions in the Biden administration.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday appointed former CIA director John Brennan, former national intelligence director James Clapper, and former CIA officer Paul Kolbe to the 17-person Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, which will “provide advice and perspectives on intelligence and national security efforts,” according to a press release from the agency. The new committee will focus on “foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cyber criminals” among other issues, according to Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Ken Wainstein, who served as an attorney for Brennan and Clapper.

The department’s choices to lead its initiative are sure to garner controversy. Neither Brennan, Clapper, nor Kolbe have expressed any contrition for their role in the now-infamous letter released on Oct. 19, 2020, which alleged the trove of incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The three former spies signed the letter at the behest of former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, who told Congress he spearheaded the letter in order to help Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and to provide Biden with a “talking point” to use in his upcoming debate with Donald Trump. Morell initially contacted Brennan, his former boss at the CIA, to sign the letter. Brennan immediately agreed, writing in an email to Morell that the letter was a “good initiative.”

There is no evidence that Russia was involved in the release of Biden’s laptop, which contains emails and other correspondences about foreign business dealings that are at the center of House Republican investigations. FBI analysts authenticated Biden’s laptop in November 2019, according to an IRS agent who investigated the younger Biden for unpaid taxes.

Keep reading

The Clintons Are Masters of ‘Disaster Capitalism’ — and Ukraine Is Their Next Big Project

The Clinton Foundation is back, and it’s headed to Ukraine.

Founded by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the foundation put its annual “Clinton Global Initiative” on a hiatus for a few years when their relevance ebbed and fundraising dried up, but their scandal-plagued charity has returned with a plan to provide humanitarian relief to warn-torn Ukraine, complete with a benediction from Pope Francis.

The Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings were exposed in 2015 by Peter Schweizer in the bestselling book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. On the most recent podcast of The Drill Down, Schweizer commented on the return of the Clintons and their historical gift for grift.

“The problem is that the Clintons have turned [disaster relief] into disaster capitalism,” Schweizer said. “What we found is that the Clintons were doing a lot of relief work and then working with major corporations that wanted deals in countries that were having a war.”

Clinton Cash documented examples of this in countries around the world, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, and Haiti, where the Clinton Foundation operated various disaster relief and reconstruction activities. Very often, the companies receiving the government contracts to perform those activities were major donors to the Clinton Foundation, not to mention relatives of the Clintons themselves.

Indeed, the largest single contributor to the Clinton Foundation in the 2010s was one Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch whose fortune came from making piping used in the energy industry. In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals “to modernize Ukraine,” according to the Clinton Foundation.

Keep reading

Media Critics Agree: Stop Interviewing the Bad People!

On Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, which has been interviewing notable politicians for the past 75 years, brought in for questioning the runaway favorite for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination: Donald Trump.

Media critics were—predictably by now—livid. Not just at new MTP host Kristin Welker’s inability to corral Washington’s most slippery fish, but at the very notion that a politician-interviewing show should even interview this particular politician, after all that he has done.

“It’s arguable that, at this juncture, there is really no need to interview Trump,” posited CNN media writer Oliver Darcy. “Just a colossal mistake to showcase this sociopath,” tweeted American Enterprise Institute emeritus scholar and Atlantic contributing editor Norman Ornstein. “Downright dangerous journalism to legitimize this guy—in the name of having a ‘talked about’ premiere,” charged former New York Times media reporter Bill Carter. “Is it possible,” an exasperated former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob wondered, “that journalists who platform lying fascists don’t know they’re undermining democracy?”

It may seem counterintuitive that protecting democracy requires refusing to talk with a primary-frontrunning former president who more than 74 million Americans voted for in 2020. But not if you think that Trump is uniquely awful and dangerous, that his fact-tethered interlocutors are helpless against his firehose of lies, and that there are no meaningfully compensatory benefits to be gleaned from the traditional journalistic practice of interrogating a candidate for high office.

Keep reading

He told on ‘badge bending’ and was fired. Now, former Vallejo cop will get nearly $1 million

A former police captain who alleges in a lawsuit that he was fired for whistleblowing on his colleagues and exposing corruption within the Vallejo Police Department will receive nearly $1 million in a settlement with the city.

John Whitney and his attorney, Jayme Walker, agreed to the settlement last week, in which the city will be required to pay Whitney $900,000 as well as all costs, liens and attorney fees.

“I feel vindicated by the settlement agreement because of the amount,” Whitney told The Times in an interview Monday. “You don’t settle for nearly $1 million if you did everything correct.”

Whitney alleges in a lawsuit filed against the city and his former employers in 2020 that he was fired after he told Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, Mayor Bob Sampayan and then-City Atty. Claudia Quintana that members of the Police Department were bending the corners of their badges to commemorate every time an officer killed a civilian.

Keep reading

Like other ‘antiracist’ activists, Ibram X. Kendi proves he’s only in it for himself

The real measure of an individual’s character isn’t what he portrays to the public but how he treats people in private.

Truly righteous people treat others with respect and dignity when there is no one else around and no social credit to be earned for doing the right thing.

This distinction matters — especially for people who’ve made a career lecturing others on the appropriate way to treat people, especially those perceived as having less power in society.

But when no one was looking and nothing was to be gained, it seems Ibram X. Kendi used his power and privilege as the director of a think tank to exploit and mistreat the people who worked under him as if they were people who are beneath him.

Amid confirmation of layoffs being made at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, former and current faculty have spoken out about Kendi’s mismanagement, “exploitation” and enrichment.

“There are a number of ways it got to this point, it started very early on when the university decided to create a center that rested in the hands of one human being, an individual given millions of dollars and so much authority,” stated Spencer Piston, a BU political science professor. 

Keep reading

Hunter Biden Sues His Dad’s Government For ‘Embarrassing’ And ‘Targeting’ Him

Attorneys for Hunter Biden on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the Internal Revenue Service “targeted and sought to embarrass” their client by mishandling its investigation into his tax returns and, ironically, cited testimony by whistleblowers they once threatened with legal action.

Biden’s lawsuit, according to Fox News, accused the IRS of “willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s confidential tax information.” The suit cites testimony by IRS career bureaucrats Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two whistleblowers who have claimed the agency’s handling of the investigation was ripe with political interference culminating in a sweetheart deal that would have resulted in no prison time for the son of President Joe Biden.

In addition, Biden is seeking $1,000 in compensation for “each and every unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns” which occurred as the case gained notoriety and was further investigated by House Republicans who demanded documentation from the IRS as they sought to tie President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland to the case.

Keep reading