Tag: taxes

Biden administration admits to giving free cellphones to illegals

On Wednesday, the Biden administration revealed that illegal immigrants entering the United States are handed smartphones when they arrive.

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Jen Psaki about the attempt during today’s news briefing.

“Our team in Texas is saying that you guys are starting to give smartphones to border crossers, hoping that they’ll use the phones to check-in or – uh – to be tracked. Which part of that is supposed to ‘deter’ people from crossing illegally into the states?” asked Doocy.

Well,” replied Psaki, “I think you of all people – since you’ve asked me a range of questions on this topic over time – would recognize that we need to take steps to ensure that we know where individuals are and we can track – we can check in with them.”

Psaki went on to describe the three types of technology that the administration is using to track illegal immigrants: “Telephonic is one of them, which uses a participant’s voice to create a biometric voiceprint during the enrollment process. And when the participant has a check-in call, their voice is compared to the voiceprint.”

“SmartLink, which is another option, enables participant monitoring via smartphone or tablet using facial-matching technology to establish identity.”

“And Global Positioning System monitoring is of a participant’s location and movement history, using satellite technology through an ankle bracelet.  This is all part of our effort, as individuals come into the United States and individuals who are entering who will proceed to immigration proceedings, to monitor and track where they are.”

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Joe Biden’s Released Tax Returns Don’t Explain Millions In Income. Where Did It Come From?

In the week prior to the presidential election, I wrote a piece that asked the question, “Where Is Hunter Biden’s Money?” It was an important question then, even more so now. Given the legacy media’s recent validation of Hunter’s laptop that discussed a slice of equity planned for the “Big Guy” in a deal that involved an entity controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), we should know if any money from it (or other foreign sources) ended up in Joe Biden’s pocket, but we don’t.

Recall that despite then-presidential candidate Biden having bragged that he had released his tax returns with what his team called “a historic level of transparency,” the truth is that he only released his individual returns. Those returns provided no detail regarding the source of most of his income, dollars that flowed to him and his wife Jill by way of S-corporations they set up shortly after his departure from the office of vice president. Those entities, CelticCapri Corp (his) and Giacoppa Corp (hers), contained more than $13 million of the $17 million the couple had reported in income after Biden left office, most of it in the first year (2017).

The same media that ignored Hunter’s laptop has shown a complete incuriosity about these entities, accepting the premise that Joe and Jill raked in $13 million from their book deal to generate their huge increase in income. We simply don’t know if that’s true, though. What we do know is that their book sales were dismal.  

Perhaps sensing smoke starting to build just before the election, USA Today published a “fact check” piece that attempted to support that the Bidens earned “$15.6 million … from speaking fees and book deals” in the years 2017 through 2019 and that “more than $10 million of that total income was profits from Biden’s memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’ and $3 million in profits from Jill Biden’s book.”

Follow the source link provided to that $10 million number, though, and you’ll end up at Joe Biden’s campaign website with financial disclosure links to only their individual returns — no S-corporation tax returns. So, in reality, readers were left with a smokescreen. (Now the financial disclosure links for 2016, 2017, and 2018 have even been changed to connect to a Democratic National Committee fundraising site via ActBlue rather than the tax documents.)

I noted back in 2020 that, “While (Joe Biden’s) financial disclosures reasonably support the $2.7 million of net income reported by CelticCapri in 2018, a notable $8.7 million gap exists between its $9.5 million net income in 2017 and the $809,709 of disclosed income in that year from book tour and related speaking events. Since his disclosure covers only part of 2017, we lack the insight into other income that may explain it.” 

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Media Ran a Disinformation Campaign to Protect Fauci From Criticism Over Dog Torture

Based on Reinhard and Milbank’s work in the Post, Politifact, USA Today, Snopes, FactCheck.org, Media Matters, Mic and others parroted the claim that NIAID didn’t fund the study.

Now, thanks to a FOIA request from White Coat Waste, we have obtained the NIAID-approved grant application which confirms that, contrary to its public statement and denial, the agency did indeed fund an experiment in which sedated dogs were placed in cages full of sand flies.

“Dogs will be anaesthetized by subcutaneous injection of 200 μI of ketamine (10 mg/ml) (Merial, Lyon, France) and for 2 hours will be placed in a cage containing between 15 to 30 females P. perniciosus.”

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The FBI is spending millions on social media tracking software

Social media users seemed to foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it. 

Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.

The FBI has contracted for 5,000 licenses to use Babel X, a software made by Babel Street that lets users search social media sites within a geographic area and use other parameters.

The contract began March 30 and is worth as much as $27 million. The FBI has already agreed to pay an IT vendor around $5 million for the first year of the contract, procurement records indicate. The contract has not previously been reported.

The Justice Department has previously had Babel X in its arsenal, contracting records show. But the new contract appears to be by far the most the agency has ever shelled out for the software, and is one of the largest contracts for the software by a civilian agency, experts said.

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Secret Service is renting $30,000-a-month Malibu mansion to protect Hunter Biden, ABC News reports

Hunter Biden, President Biden’s remaining son, is living in a rented four-bedroom “resort-style” home in Malibu, California, and the nearest property his Secret Service detail could secure was a $30,000-a-month six-bedroom mansion with ocean views and a “castle-like tower to the master retreat with wet bar,” ABC News reports, citing the mansion’s listing and sources familiar with the matter. 

That’s “the cost of doing business for the Secret Service,” former agent Don Mihalek told ABC News. “Typically, wherever a protectee sets up their residence, the Secret Service is forced to find someplace to rent nearby at market value,” he added. “The Service has had to do this in past administrations, and unfortunately, the housing market right now has driven the prices.”

“The cost of protecting first families has raised eyebrows in the past,” ABC News notes. “In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the Secret Service requested $60 million of additional funding to protect Trump and his family, with about $27 million of that going to protecting them at their private residency at the Trump Tower in New York City,” and the Secret Service paid at least $1.2 million at various Trump properties while protecting the Trump family, including $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, The Washington Post found. 

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