Tag: secrecy

House Takes Steps to Hold Attorney General in Contempt

Two top lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 13 took steps to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recommended the lower chamber hold Mr. Garland, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, in contempt for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), meanwhile, scheduled a hearing this week to advance a resolution to hold Mr. Garland in contempt.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) did not respond to a request for comment.

The actions come after the DOJ, Mr. Garland’s department, declined to provide the House with audio tapes of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, despite subpoenas being issued for the tapes. The department also refused to hand over recordings of President Biden’s ghostwriter speaking with Mr. Hur, who was appointed by Mr. Garland.

Mr. Hur said in his report that President Biden intentionally kept and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency ended. President Biden repeatedly consulted the documents after leaving office for a book, one of the “strong motivations” to not comply with rules governing retention of materials marked classified, according to the report.

Keep reading

Senator Tom Cotton Demands Secret Service Release ALL Info Related to Cocaine Found in White House

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is demanding that the Secret Service turn over all information regarding the cocaine recently discovered in the White House.

The story about where the drugs were found keeps changing and Tom Cotton rightly calls this a national security issue. If someone can sneak illegal drugs into the White House, what is to stop someone from sneaking a much more dangerous substance into the building?

The media is preparing to drop the story and move on because they want to protect Biden. Cotton is not letting it go away.

The Daily Mail reports:

Top Republican Senator demands Secret Service release ALL information on White House cocaine – including lists of guests who avoided screenings – to determine if President’s home is secure

Sen. Tom Cotton wants more clarity after the Secret Service found cocaine inside the White House over the weekend – and is demanding Americans and Congress receive their well-deserved answers.

Cotton, the top Republican on the Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, wrote a letter to U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Director Kimberly Cheatle on Wednesday with six questions he wants answered.

He demanded that Cheatle schedule a briefing with his staff.

‘Congress and the American people deserve to know how cocaine got into the White House,’ he said in a tweet along with an image of the letter…

‘According to public reports, the Secret Service has not yet confirmed where in the West Wing the cocaine was found,’ Cotton wrote in his Wednesday letter. ‘I urge you to release that information quickly, as the American people deserve to know whether illicit drugs were found in an area where confidential information is exchanged.’

Keep reading

NIH Refuses To Release Details Of COVID-19 Vaccine Royalty Agreement

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is refusing to release additional information about an agreement it reached over a COVID-19 vaccine that has earned it at least $400 million.

The NIH declined to provide any materials in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Epoch Times.

“The NIH withholds the entirety of the records as they are protected from release,” Gorka Garcia-Malene, an NIH officer, told The Epoch Times in a letter.

She cited an exemption outlined in the act that allows government agencies to partially or fully withhold information.

“In this case, exemption 3 incorporates 35 U.S.C. 209 (f), which reads in relevant part, ‘No Federal agency shall grant any license under a patent or patent application on a federally owned invention unless the person requesting the license has supplied the agency with a plan for development or marketing of the invention, except that any such plan shall be treated by the Federal agency as commercial and financial information obtained from a person and privileged and confidential and not subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5,’” Ms. Garcia-Malene wrote.

“Exemption 4 protects from disclosure trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential,” she added.

In February 2023, Moderna announced that it had paid $400 million to the NIH and would make additional payments in the future as part of a licensing agreement for spike proteins used in the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the contract, which confirmed the payment but redacted details of the future payments.

The Epoch Times then lodged a new request, seeking more details about the future payments, which are said to be based on how many COVID-19 vaccines are sold.

Ms. Garcia-Malene was responding to the new request.

James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, said the information should be made public.

“The NIH put out several press statements about the royalty dispute with Moderna, and they should not now claim it is some secret confidential information. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, the public interest in transparency is large too,” Mr. Love told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There are a lot of NIH officials who resent transparency,” he added.

Keep reading

Publicly Funded LGBT Group Asks Teachers Not To Inform Parents About ‘Transitioning’ Children

A government funded LGBT lobbyist ‘charity’ is encouraging teachers in Scottish schools not to communicate with parents if their children express a desire to ‘transition’ to a different gender.

The Telegraph reports that one school issued such guidance to teachers based on the ‘inclusion scheme’ advice of LGBT Youth Scotland, a radical activist group that receives almost £1 million per year in taxpayer funding.

In a second school, concerns were raised that there could be “problems” with parents discovering their child had changed their name when reports were sent home.

The report notes that more than half the secondary schools in the country are signed up to the LGBT Youth Scotland scheme, costing £850 and offering “charter status” if schools abide by their ‘inclusivity’ guidelines.

A further 40 primary schools in the country are signed up. Primary schools are for children aged 4-11.

Keep reading

Why Nashville school shooting victims’ families don’t want the handwritten confession of killer Audrey Hale from ever being released

Grieving families of the Covenant Christian School shooter’s six victims have claimed they own copyright of the full handwritten confession of the killer.

They are arguing before a Nashville judge that the confession, and other documents, should never be publicly released because no good can come from it. 

The families’ claims comes as both city police and the FBI fight to stop the confession, and potentially information about mysterious notes and numbers found on Hale’s body, from being made public. 

Audrey Hale, 28, was a transgender artist, who identified as a male named Aiden, shot her way into the Tennessee elementary school in March 2023, killing three adults and three nine-year-olds, before responding officers killed her.

Following the shooting, Nashville’s Metropolitan Police Chief John Drake said his force had recovered the shooter’s manifesto, as well as hand-drawn maps in her car, and said they would eventually be made public. 

Now, both city police and the FBI say the material shouldn’t be released because the information could damage any potential  investigation.

Keep reading

Fauci Adviser Secretly Messaged Zoologist Who Funneled Money to Chinese Lab: Emails

A top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci secretly messaged a zoologist who funneled money from Dr. Fauci’s agency to a laboratory in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared, according to newly disclosed emails.

Dr. David Morens, the adviser, sent at least four messages to Peter Daszak, the zoologist, the emails show. Images of the email headers were obtained and released by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Dr. Morens, who was messaging from his personal email, wrote to Mr. Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, and others on April 26, 2020; July 13, 2020; and Feb. 20, 2022. At least three of the messages were about a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to EcoHealth to study bat coronaviruses. Money from that grant was funneled by EcoHealth to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Please read and acknowledge receipt — Actions needed regarding 2R01AI110964-06,” the subject line of one message stated.

In another, Dr. Morens was responding after Mr. Daszak told him an NIAID grant officer said “he’s unable to talk with me anymore about our suspended [grant].”

The grant was suspended on April 24, 2020, by former President Donald Trump’s administration after the COVID-19 pandemic started. President Joe Biden’s administration restored funding in 2023, although it suspended and later banned the Wuhan lab from receiving money.

An inspector general determined in a 2023 report that EcoHealth and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) failed to properly monitor research being done in Wuhan. EcoHealth also failed to obtain documents the NIH requested following the emergence of COVID-19, which EcoHealth blamed on a lack of cooperation from Chinese officials. The NIH is the NIAID’s parent agency.

Dr. Morens in a previously released email said that he “retained very few emails or documents” on the origins of COVID-19 “and continue to request that correspondence on sensitive issues be sent to me at my gmail address.”

He said in another email that “I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly“ and that ”I will delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times.”

Keep reading

DOJ Refuses to Provide House GOP Audio of Biden’s Interview With Special Counsel Hur

The Department of Justice (DOJ) says it will not provide audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, which was subpoenaed by the House GOP.

In a letter to the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee on April 8, Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte lamented that despite the department cooperating with the committees’ Feb. 27 subpoenas, “the committees have responded with escalation and threats of criminal contempt.”

“We urge the committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it,” he added. “It is not too late for the committees to choose a different path, to take an offramp towards the ’spirit of dynamic compromise’ that the Constitution requires of us both.”

The “spirit of dynamic compromise” quote comes from a federal court case.

The Feb. 27 subpoena was for notes, audio files, video, and transcripts of Mr. Hur’s probe. The committees set a deadline of March 7, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The Epoch Times.

“Americans expect equal justice under the law and DOJ is allowing the Bidens to operate above it,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in a statement. “Special Counsel Hur’s report outlined that classified documents Joe Biden stashed for years relate to countries where his family cashed in on the Biden brand.”

Keep reading

Federal Reserve Refuses To Provide Records Of Foreign Gold Holdings

Weeks after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell evaded a sitting congressman’s questions about the central bank’s foreign gold holdings, the Fed has also declined to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records about such holdings.

The Federal Reserve’s lack of transparency comes amidst reports that countries are removing their gold and other assets from the U.S. in the wake of the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. According to a 2023 Invesco survey, a “substantial percentage” of central banks expressed concern about how the U.S. and its allies froze nearly half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and forex reserves.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., asked Powell about the matter in a December letter, only to have the Fed chair respond last month with evasive non-answers, telling him that the Federal Reserve does not own gold but holds it as a custodian for other entities—a fact that the congressman presumably already knew.

Following Powell’s evasive response, Headline USA filed a FOIA request with the Fed for records reflecting how much gold the Federal Reserve Bank of New York currently holds in its vault, as well as records reflecting the ownership stake that each of FRBNY’s central bank/government clients have in that gold. The FOIA request also sought records about the Fed’s gold holdings prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

However, the Federal Reserve denied the FOIA request on Wednesday.

“Board staff consulted with staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (‘Reserve Bank’) and have been advised that such records, if they exist, would be Reserve Bank records, and consequently, not subject to the Board’s Rules Regarding Availability of Information,” the Fed said.

The Federal Reserve said that this publication could take its request to the New York Fed. However, that institution isn’t subject to FOIA.

Headline USA is working on an appeal.

Meanwhile, sound-money advocates are blasting the Fed’s lack of transparency.

Keep reading

“INTELLIGENT LIQUID” CREATED BY HARVARD SCIENTISTS REPRESENTS STRANGE “NEW CLASS OF FLUID”

Harvard researchers say they have developed a programmable metafluid they are calling an ‘intelligent liquid’  that contains tunable springiness, adjustable optical properties, variable viscosity, and even the seemingly magical ability to shift between a Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid.

The team’s exact formula is still a secret as they explore potential commercial applications. However, the researchers believe their intelligent liquid could be used in anything from programmable robots to intelligent shock absorbers or even optical devices that can shift between transparent and opaque states.

“We are just scratching the surface of what is possible with this new class of fluid,” said Adel Djellouli, a Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the first author of the paper. “With this one platform, you could do so many different things in so many different fields.”

Keep reading

Judge Rules New Mexico Officials Violated Federal Law by Restricting Access to Voter Data

A federal judge has ruled that New Mexico officials violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by refusing to provide voter data to a conservative-backed group named Voter Reference Foundation.

In a 329-page ruling on March 29, Albuquerque-based U.S. District Judge James Browning said the New Mexico secretary of state’s office and the state’s attorney general had violated the Public Inspection Provision by denying the group’s request for voter data.

The court documents named New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Attorney General Raul Torrez as the defendants.

The ruling states that the Voter Reference Foundation created a “searchable” database online that includes voters’ names, dates of birth, registration addresses, registration dates, party affiliations, registration statuses, precincts, and voting participation histories.

The group said that voter information is required to “provide public access to official government data pertaining to elections, including voter registration rolls,” according to the court’s ruling.

New Mexico election law bans the publication of voter registration data. It restricts the use of the data for political campaigning and noncommercial government purposes.

Keep reading