NY Times: Electric Cars ‘Province of the Rich’ Even with Democrats’ Subsidies

John Binder10 Aug 2022

Even as House and Senate Democrats look to further subsidize electric vehicles, the New York Times admits the cars “remain largely the province of the rich.”

Senate Democrats recently passed their “Inflation Reduction Act” on a party-line vote, a plan that is estimated to eliminate nearly 30,000 American jobs and includes subsidies for consumers to buy electric vehicles.

The subsidies come as the average cost of an electric vehicle has hit $66,000 — a 13 percent increase compared to the same time last year. Today, the average price of a Tesla electric vehicle is nearly $69,000, a cost far out of reach for the nation’s working and middle classes that continue to be squeezed by inflation.

After the passage of the Democrats’ deal, the New York Times admitted that the subsidies for electric vehicles are unlikely to help most working- and middle-class Americans, instead giving a boost to upper-middle-class and wealthy Americans who are most likely to be able to afford electric vehicles.

The Times reports:

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans. [Emphasis added]

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich. [Emphasis added]

With so much demand, carmakers have little reason to target budget-minded buyers. Economy car stalwarts like Toyota and Honda are not yet selling significant numbers of all-electric models in the United States. Scarcity has been good for Ford, Mercedes-Benz and other carmakers that are selling fewer cars than before the pandemic but recording fat profits.[Emphasis added]

Still, Democrats have continued suggesting that Americans avoid sky-high gas prices by buying electric vehicles, despite the inability of many to do so because of the costs.

“Under my plan … we can take advantage of the next generation of electric vehicles, that a typical driver will save about $80 a month from not having to pay gas at the pump,” President Joe Biden said in March.

“Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well. So the people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV [electric vehicle],” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in March, just as Tesla raisedthe prices of all its models.

Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), running for Senate, blasted Democrats for what he said will amount to working- and middle-class American subsidizing the rich.

“I see that [Democrats] want to help rich people buy a Tesla and … want to hurt working families who are trying to afford gas,” Budd said. “They completely have it backward.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/10/ny-times-electric-cars-province-rich-even-democrats-subsidies/

Episcopal Church Comes Out in Support of Sex Changes ‘at All Ages’

Spencer Lindquist10 Aug 2022

(Mass exodus coming for them now, sick perves)

The Episcopal Church passed a resolution in support of sex change attempts “at all ages,” calling it a matter of “religious liberty.”

Resolution D066, passed by the 80th General Convention, is titled “Addressing restrictions on access to gender affirming care.” The House of Bishops has concurred with the resolution.

It calls for the Episcopal Church to “advocate for access to gender affirming care in all forms (social, medical, or any other) and at all ages.” It goes on to say that advocating for sex change operations is “part of our Baptismal call to respect the dignity of every human being.”

The resolution specifically “affirms that all Episcopalians should be able to partake in gender affirming care with no restriction on movement, autonomy, or timing.” The Episcopal Church also opposes laws that prohibit people, including children, from being medically assisted in their attempts to change their sex.

What the Episcopal Church refers to as “gender affirming care” includes medical interventions such as the use of puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, as well as surgeries that permanently damage fully functioning body parts, or that seek to change one’s face shape.

Breitbart News has documented several instances in which directors of transgender health clinics, some of which are associated with children’s hospitals, have received significant funding from the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture puberty blockers.

Lupron, one of the drugs most commonly used as a puberty blocker, has been used to chemically castrate sex offenders. Meanwhile, puberty blocking drug Supprelin LA has been found to carry the risk of causing brain swelling and permanent vision loss according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The Episcopal Church’s resolution was proposed by Evangeline Warren, a PhD student at Ohio State’s Department of Sociology. Warren has dedicated much of her academic career to racial and sexual topics.

Her master’s thesis is titled “How proximity to whiteness impacts the health of non- white people,” while another paper focuses on “Pseudomedical Crisis Pregnancy Centers”

https://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2022/08/10/episcopal-church-comes-support-sex-changes-all-ages/

WEF Adviser Yuval Harari: ‘We Just Don’t Need the Vast Majority of the Population’ in Today’s World

Robert Kraychik10 Aug 2022

(God here’s another asshole asking for your wrath, please do it.)

Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser, said, “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” in the early 21st century given modern technologies’ rendering human labor economically and militarily “redundant.”

Harari’s remarks were made in an interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, published on Tuesday. He assessed widespread contemporarydisillusionment among “common people” as being rooted in a fear of being “left behind” in a future run by “smart people.” Such fears are justified, he added, given his projection that emerging technologies will displace economic needs to many categories of existing work:

A lot of people sense that they are being left behind and left out of the story, even if their material conditions are still relatively good. In the 20th century, what was common to all the stories — the liberal, the fascist, the communist — is that the big heroes of the story were the common people, not necessarily all people, but if you lived, say, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, life was very grim, but when you looked at the propaganda posters on the walls that depicted the glorious future, you were there. You looked at the posters which showed steel workers and farmers in heroic poses, and it was obvious that this is the future.

Now, when people look at the posters on the walls, or listen to TED talks, they hear a lot of these these big ideas and big words about machine learning and genetic engineering and blockchain and globalization, and they are not there. They are no longer part of the story of the future, and I think that — again, this is a hypothesis — if I try to understand and to connect to the deep resentment of people, in many places around the world, part of what might be going there is people realize — and they’re correct in thinking that — that, ‘The future doesn’t need me. You have all these smart people in California and in New York and in Beijing, and they are planning this amazing future with artificial intelligence and bio-engineering and in global connectivity and whatnot, and they don’t need me. Maybe if they are nice, they will throw some crumbs my way like universal basic income,’ but it’s much worse psychologically to feel that you are useless than to feel that you are exploited.

Harari contrasted the 20th century with the 21st while forecasting what he said is the current century’s and future economies progressively diminishing need for human beings. He said:

If you go back to the middle of the 20th century — and it doesn’t matter if you’re in the United States with Roosevelt, or if you’re in Germany with Hitler, or even in the USSR with Stalin — and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them.

“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” he concluded, “because because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/08/10/wef-adviser-yuval-harari-we-just-dont-need-the-vast-majority-of-the-population-in-todays-world/

TX Gov. Abbott to NYC Mayor Adams’ Threat to Campaign Against Him: ‘Go Ahead Mayor, Make My Day’

Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) said Wednesday on FNC’s “The Faulkner Focus” that New York City Eric Adams’ threat to bring buses of New Yorkers to campaign against him would “make his day.”

Tuesday, while responding to Abbott busing migrants from Texas to New York City, Adams said, “I already called all of my friends in Texas and told them how to on cast their vote. And I am deeply contemplating taking a busload of New Yorkers to go to Texas and do some good old-fashioned door knocking. For the good of America, we need to get him out of office.”

Host Harris Faulkner said, “Your reaction to that latest threat from Mayor Adams in New York City?”

Abbott said, “I kind of feel like Clint Eastwood. Go ahead, Mayor, make my day. There could hardly be anything better to aid my campaign against Beto O’Rourke than to have Beto O’Rourke’s campaign aided by a bunch of New Yorkers. That will not be viewed very positively in the state of Texas.”

He added, “This race is about Texans, and Texans are fed up with what the Biden administration has done on our border, the chaos that it’s has caused, the damage that it’s caused in the state of Texas, and that is exactly why we’re sending these illegal immigrants to places like Washington, D.C. and New York City.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/08/10/abbott-to-nyc-mayor-adams-threat-to-campaign-against-him-go-ahead-mayor-make-my-day/

Abbott said Soros gave $1 million to Beto

Outside State Money Floods Wyoming to Save Liz Cheney from Defeat

Wendell Husebø10 Aug 2022

Large amounts of outside state money is flowing into Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) coffers to save her from defeat on Tuesday against Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman.

While Hageman has out aised Cheney among Wyoming voters, nearly 400 Coloradans have donated about $363,000 to Cheney’s campaign through July 27, the Colorado Sun reported on Wednesday. Many of the donations have also come from the establishment uniparty:

Billionaire Phil Anschutz

Platte River Equity CEO J. Landis “Lanny” Martin

FLS Connect partner Rich Beeson

Aspen School district president Katie Frisch

Boulder’s Christopher Wirth

Brother of Elon Musk restaurateur Kimbal Musk

Former owner of the Denver Nuggets Billionaire Donald Sturm

El Pomar foundation chairman William Hybl

Showtime producer and political commentator Mark McKinnon

Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei

Unite America PAC

Ball Corp. PAC

Western Energy Alliance PAC

Holland & Hart PAC

Cheney has also been boosted by California money. The Los Angeles Times reported:

More than 1,100 Californians contributed nearly a tenth of the $13 million Cheney raised through June 30 for her reelection campaign. In that period, she received donations from just over 200 Wyoming residents, totaling more than $260,000.

Cheney’s California donors include Hollywood elites, such as studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, producer Kevin Bright, and director Gary Ross.

In contrast, Hageman has done very well with Wyoming voters, who have donated more than $1.2 million — more than four times as much as Wyoming voters have donated to Cheney, FEC data shows. Overall, Cheney has outraised Hageman by nearly three to one.

Hageman, however, has a polling lead of about 30 points. She is also predicted to win by 97 cents on the dollar, compared to Cheney’s four cents.

Cheney’s faltering support in Wyoming is due to her alliance with Democrats on the partisan January 6 Committee. Fifty-four percent of voters were less likely to support Cheney’s reelection “because she’s part of the panel investigating the attack on the Capitol,” Casper Star-Tribune/Mason-Dixon found.

“The big story is Liz Cheney is going to get beat,” Brad Coker, managing director of the polling firm Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, stated about the polling. “That’s a foregone conclusion.”

Hageman has noted that Cheney’s alliance with Democrats on the January 6 Committee is contrary to Wyoming’s interests. “Liz Cheney has lost Wyoming. Liz Cheney doesn’t live in Wyoming. She doesn’t represent us,” Hageman told Breitbart News. “She doesn’t represent our values.”

https://www.breitbart.com/midterm-election/2022/08/10/outside-state-money-floods-wyoming-to-save-liz-cheney-from-defeat-tuesday/

Nothing can save her so they are giving fraud funds.

Mysterious Cash Floods Upstate New York GOP Primary as Establishment Races to Stop Carl Paladino

A mysterious Super PAC has flooded upstate New York with attack ads trying to stop the insurgent campaign of brash businessman and political outsider Carl Paladino, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

The donors to the group, named American Liberty Action PAC, will not be publicly known until after the upcoming Aug. 23 GOP primary where Paladino faces off against the more establishment-backed New York GOP chairman, Nick Langworthy, in a primary for New York’s 23rd congressional district. But the group has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars—$344,354 to be precise—attacking Paladino in the primary. It has also spent $9,400 in favor of Langworthy, per FEC filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Paladino blasted the secretive spending in a statement to Breitbart News ripping his opponent Langworthy for benefitting from it.

“Nick Langworthy has shamefully lied to voters about having President Trump’s endorsement,” Paladino said. “He has also told NY Republican candidates, according to Rudy Guliani, not to mention Trump’s name. Now, he is enlisting the help of a Never Trump-backed shady Super PAC, with dark money donors. This same Super PAC has ties to pro-impeachment members. The establishment is doing everything they can to oppose me, because they know I will fight for the America First agenda and unlike my opponent, I cannot be bought.”

Nearly half a million dollars in a congressional primary in an otherwise sleepy upstate New York district in the suburbs of Buffalo is a huge amount of spending and begs the question why some as-of-yet-unidentified parties are spending so much to stop Paladino. The group need not disclose its donors until after the primary election, so the best information available about it so far is based in documents it filed at its formation with the FEC declaring its Treasurer—which the group identified as a man named Charles Gantt.

Gantt, who works with FEC compliance outfit Bulldog Compliance and its affiliated firm Red Curve Solutions LLC, has been listed as the Treasurer for dozens of PACs over the years. This year, for instance, he was the Treasurer for a Super PAC that spent six figures backing outgoing Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI)—the establishment Republican who was one of 10 who backed former President Donald Trump’s impeachment and who just lost his primary in Michigan—and his LinkedIn page says he worked for the 2012 presidential campaign of then-former-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, now a U.S. Senator from Utah after he carpet-bagged his way out west to make a political comeback. Red Curve’s websitebrags of its founder Bradley T. Crate’s work for the “Romney-Ryan campaign” in 2012 and for Romney is his 2008 campaign.

But Red Curve’s website notes the firm also worked for Trump’s campaigns and several affiliated entities in both the 2016 and 2020 cycles. A huge story in November 2016 in the Salem News, a local newspaper in Massachusetts where the firm is based, detailed how big of a role the organization played in 2016 for Trump.

The Salem News’ Paul Leighton wrote on Nov. 4, 2016:

Red Curve Solutions is serving as the treasurer for the Trump campaign and two Trump fundraising committees that have combined to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. The company had been paid at least $2.1 million for its work so far by the Trump campaign and committees, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Red Curve Solutions was formed in 2008 by Beverly resident Bradley Crate, who was then the deputy chief financial officer of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The company worked for Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and is serving a similar role this year for Trump. Crate is listed as the treasurer for both the Trump Make America Great Again Committee and the Trump Victory Committee, which are joint fundraising committees for Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and various state Republican committees.

Based off this information alone, it is unclear who is funding the effort to try to kneecap Paladino. But the same PAC has, per FEC filings, also spent six figures attacking state Rep. Anthony Sabatini in Florida–a sign the organization is more establishment-aligned, as Sabatini is a hard-charging conservative outsider seeking the GOP nomination for Congress in Florida’s 7th congressional district.

Either way, it’s clear this race in upstate New York is getting nasty in the final weeks. In response to the attacks from the pro-Langworthy PAC, Paladino released a television ad of his own with six figures behind it mocking Langworthy for backing him back when he ran for governor:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/10/mysterious-cash-floods-upstate-new-york-gop-primary-as-establishment-races-to-stop-carl-paladino/

Massachusetts School District Charged Parent Group More Than $45,000 For Public Records Request

Chrissy ClarkAugust 10, 2022 5:33 PM ET

A Massachusetts school district attempted to charge a concerned parent organization more than $45,000 for public records related to the school’s diversity and equity curriculum, according to correspondence reviewed by the Daily Caller.

Newburyport Public Schools in Massachusetts estimated that the total cost of putting together a public records request for the concerned parent group “Parents Defending Education” would cost approximately $45,456.25, according to email communications between the two parties. Parents Defending Education requested electronic copies of communication between district leadership and a diversity consultant, emails show.

The organization said it faces other financial obstacles from other schools and districts nationwide. Parents Defending Education claims that some districts make it difficult to obtain information via public records requests.

Parents Defending Education told the Daily Caller that two other schools charged steep prices for public records, though not nearly as high as Newburyport Public Schools did.

East Grand Rapids Public Schools in Michigan attempted to charge $2,744.66 for emails between employees that use the words “LGBT, Transgender, and Gender Identity,” according to correspondence. Kenai Peninsula Borough School District in Alaska estimated a total cost of $1,347.82 for public records as well.

Some school districts create physical thumb drives with electronic paperwork, instead of emailing parents and organizations with the documents.

According to a financial breakdown from Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia, the district charged an additional $5 for each flash drive the documents were put on, and required that public record requesters pick up the flash drive in person.

Parents Defending Education argued these methods makes the process more burdensome for parents. (RELATED: Florida School Board Member Brags About Promoting Woke Ideology ‘From the Inside’)

One school district in Michigan sent a physical box containing 244 pages of documents for $246.43, according to Parents Defending Education. Lockwood School District #26 in Montana sent a physical box of documents at the cost of $815.17 as well.

Parents Defending Education said they specially requested that both districts send electronic copies of the documents.

Nicole Neily, the president and founder of Parents Defending Education, told the Daily Caller that such burdens — both physical and financial — are used to discourage parent activists.

“Many parents are ‘accidental activists,’ this is their first rodeo! When roadblocks are thrown up, people get discouraged because they don’t know what to do; the process is confusing — perhaps intentionally so — and they give up,” Neily said.

“We … want to help families navigate these situations because the past two years have shown us all that at the end of the day, activists and bureaucrats care far more about money and power than they do about the welfare of our children,” she concluded.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/10/school-charged-parents-45-public-records/

The Silence of DeSantis – Florida Governor Ducks Media Appearances, Records Statements, Seeking to Avoid Questions About Trump Raid

August 10, 2022 | sundance

We are here because we discuss uncomfortable truths. We accept things as they are, and not as we would wish them to be.

Since the original innocuous tweet 48 hours ago, from a private account, which did not even use the name “Trump,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been absolutely silent about the illicit FBI raid on the home of Florida citizen and former President Donald J Trump. DeSantis is showing us all who he really is; but are you willing to accept it?

The raid on President Trump’s home is a moment for all to stand and take a position. On the day after the raid, much like the entire DC Decepticon establishment, Ron DeSantis hid in the bunker and kept quiet. No tweets. No appearances. Nothing that would create a situation where he would have to enter this ‘time of choosing.’ This is what politicians do. This is what Nikki Haley does. Avoiding controversy is not what war time leaders do.

On the second day after the raid, again with the politics of the issue as the dominating consideration, DeSantis releases a recording of a statement as Florida schools begin to open for the fall semester. Again, avoiding any situation where he would be asked to take a position on the raid. Please take note and pay attention. These are the moments that matter, the examples that show the true intents and motives of political leaders.

DeSantis is doing what he has been advised to do.

The silence of DeSantis is deafening.

DeSantis’ supporters, cheerleaders, GOPe promoters and sycophants will ignore it, but deep in their psyche they know what I am saying is true.

Ron DeSantis is a good governor for the state of Florida and has many attributes that make him important for a host of reasons, but this is not a war-time general. Ron DeSantis is a politician.

Accept things as they are, not as you would wish them to be. Because this is the same man that many people would select to face the greatest enemy to our republic. DeSantis is showing us right now that he does not possess the courage, desire in scale, or ability to fight the enemy we face in this battle.

DeSantis is a good finisher, a good maintainer, a good and solid ally who operates well when surrounded by the fortune of an aligned legislative body; but he is not yet the weapon that can stop the corrupt UniParty enemy within our republic.

There are moments that show the character of the politicians in the club apparatus. The pathetic and embarrassing Ted Cruz speech at the 2016 RNC nominating convention was one of those moments. The response, or lack thereof, to an illegitimate FBI raid on the personal home of the leader of the republican party is yet another.

Accept things as they are, you will be far less disappointed later on.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/10/the-silence-of-desantis-florida-governor-ducks-media-appearances-records-statements-seeking-to-avoid-questions-about-trump-raid/

Sundance and anons who have said, don’t trust DeSantis are right. That doesn’t mean he’s all bad but he’s not the leader we need.

AUGUST 09, 2022

Economic Justice Agenda Created with La Raza Group’s Help Gets $113 Mil from HUD

An Economic Justice Agenda designed with the help of a leftist La Raza group is getting $113 million from the Biden administration to bridge the racial wealth gap by helping low-income renters achieve homeownership. The taxpayer dollars will flow through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is committed to expanding asset building polices for renters as a reparative tool for economic justice. “We’re looking at everything through a lens of equity and how we address systemic racism,” HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said in a statement announcing the nine-figure allocation. “We’re giving people who have historically been left out and underserved the resources to take a chance on their futures – to improve their credit, save resources for homeownership and other needs, and build wealth. That’s what this is all about.”

The HUD initiative receiving the sizable allotment is officially known as the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program and it aims to help those already receiving government assistance increase earned income and improve financial stability. It is part of an agencywide plan for economic justice that outlines actions to help low-income renters build assets. A 13-page document titled “Bridging the Wealth Gap: An Agenda for Economic Justice and Asset Building for Renters” outlines how the administration plans to accomplish it. Many of the ideas in the extensive HUD racial agenda were concocted with the help of an influential open borders group, National Council of La Raza, which changed its name to a less divisive UnidosUS a few years ago. Biden administration officials convened with the national open borders organization throughout the summer and fall of 2021, according to the agenda, which claims to provide a “cohesive framework to guide both internal policy creation and external stakeholder engagement.”

The HUD plan aims to bridge the wealth gap by focusing on asset building through increased savings, banking, and credit history improvement for the poor. “Unequal access to savings, positive credit history, and banking is a national problem that especially impacts renters and contributes to the racial wealth gap,” the agency writes in its economic justice agenda. The government must intervene, according to the initiative, because many hard-working families and individuals earn low incomes due to persistent and systemic inequality. “This agenda recognizes the role that government programs can play in perpetuating those inequalities and is an effort to break down some of the barriers within federal programs that can erode progress towards financial stability,” the plan states, adding that “asset building policies have the potential to move federal assistance programs in a more equitable direction and facilitate economic justice for millions of Americans.”

The backbone of the agenda is homeownership because it is a pillar of wealth building and is critical to creating a source of wealth that can be passed down to future generations, HUD asserts. “Therefore it needs to be attainable for more families, especially families of color,” the agency writes, adding that “racial disparities in homeownership remain significant” in the U.S. In fact, the agenda says, “recent research shows that in 2020, the Black-White homeownership gap reached 31 percentage points, the greatest gap in decades.” Part of the problem is that poor credit prevents minorities—especially blacks—from qualifying for home loans. HUD refers to this as “credit invisible” and reveals that black people have the lowest credit scores in the country, followed by Hispanics. The agency does not offer specific details on how to correct this pervasive issue in communities of color but does blame “wage gaps along racial and educational divides” as a big contributing factor to the crisis. “Families looking to increase their wages face numerous additional barriers such as racism, discrimination, and lack of accommodations for certain people such as parents who need childcare,” according to HUD…

https://www.judicialwatch.org/economic-justice-agenda-created-with-la-raza-groups-help-gets-113-mil-from-hud/

==unfucking believable=•

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES DOJ TO RELEASE TRUMP-DECLASSIFIED ‘SMOKING GUN’ DOCUMENTS FROM RUSSIA PROBE

AUGUST 8, 2022

Part 1 of 2

The conservative watchdog Judicial Watch has sued the Justice Department to compel the release of “smoking gun” documents former President Donald Trump declassified and ordered release that detail misconduct in the FBI’s discredited Russia collusion investigation.

The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed quietly in federal court on Aug. 1 and announced Monday by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“The Obama-Biden Administration and Deep State spying on Trump and his associates is the worst government corruption scandal in American history,” Fitton said. “And to make matters worse, the Biden DOJ simply refuses to release smoking gun documents about this corruption that the American people have an absolute right to see!”

Just the News reported last month that Trump ordered the declassification and release of a binder filled with sensitive FBI documents on Jan. 19, 2021, but the Justice Department never complied.

The release was delayed during the final hours of the Trump presidency when the DOJ raised privacy concerns about some of the memos and asked to make additional redactions, according to a memo from then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows obtained by Just the News. The memos were never released.

The declassified binder included hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents from the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation.

The declassified memos included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Judicial Watch said in its lawsuit that it filed a FOIA request for the declassified documents in February, but the DOJ never complied.

“As of the date of this Complaint, Defendant has failed to (i) produce the requested records or demonstrate that the requested records are lawfully exempt from production; (ii) notify Plaintiff of the scope of any responsive records Defendant intends to produce or withhold and the reasons for any withholdings; or (iii) inform Plaintiff that it may appeal any adequately specific, adverse determination,” the lawsuit said.

“Plaintiff is being irreparably harmed by Defendant’s violation of FOIA, and Plaintiff will continue to be irreparably harmed unless Defendant is compelled to comply with it,” it added.

You can read the full lawsuit here:

JW-v.-DOJ-Crossfire-Hurricane-Complaint-02264.pdf

Continued

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/judicial-watch-sues-doj-release-trump-declassified

>>17351727

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES DOJ TO RELEASE TRUMP-DECLASSIFIED ‘SMOKING GUN’ DOCUMENTS FROM RUSSIA PROBE

Part 2 of 2

The suit asks a federal judge in Washington DC to: order DOJ to search for the records and demonstrate how it looked for the records; require DOJ to produce all nonexempt records responsive to the FOIA request plus an index of any responsive records that are being withheld; enjoin DOJ from continuing to any and all non-exempt records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request; order DOJ to pay the group’s attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs.

In the end, multiple investigations found there was no collusion between Trump and Russia to hijack the 2016 election, and that the FBI violated rules and misled the FISA court in an effort to keep the probe going.

The documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president through Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary.

"I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied," Meadows wrote in the memo.

Just the News obtained the memo after going to the Trump collection at the National Archives and asking it to look for the binder of documents Trump had declassified. The Archives said it did not possess the documents, the Justice Department did and provided a copy of Meadows' memo.

In an interview, Meadows said he was dismayed that DOJ ignored a lawful instruction from a sitting president and said it was part of a larger dynamic in which the permanent federal bureaucracy repeatedly tied to undercut Trump to protect itself.

"Well, you know, the swamp is pretty deep," Meadows said. "But when we look at this, this particular president was all about draining the swamp, you know, and when he was running, that was more of a campaign slogan. When he got there, he realized that not only was the swamp very deep, but they they would fight back. And oftentimes he said, 'You know, I want to do this and get this out to the American people,' not just the classification in terms of issues that affected him or his campaign personally, but issues that affect the American people.

"What would happen is he would have a directive, and then we would see, as people were leaving the Oval Office, you know, they were nodding compliance in the Oval Office, and the minute they go out, they said, 'Well, we're not going to do that' or 'We're going to find all the reasons not to do it.' So I found that very often while I served as chief of staff, but also found that as a member of Congress, that many times we would go in and the president was all in on a transparency issue, only to find that many, whether they be at a particular agency or the Pentagon, they started pushing back."

Liz Harrington, Trump’s spokeswoman, told Just the News that DOJ’s failure to release the memos fit a pattern of political abuse inside an agency that is supposed to be above politics.

“For four years they lied, leaked, spied on, and smeared President Trump in their attempts to defy the will of the people,” she said. “This is further proof of the depths they will go to hide their corruption. It is far past time for transparency of one of the biggest political scandals in American history.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/judicial-watch-sues-doj-release-trump-declassified

Security Sting: Feds able to buy nuclear material using forged license and fake firm

August 11, 2022

Exposing a stunning security lapse, Government Accountability Office investigators were able to forge a license and buy dangerous radioactive materials through a shell company.

The investigators were able to trick two U.S. vendors to ship the material, according to a new GAO report exposing weaknesses in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ability to regulate the sale and procurement of dangerous materials.

The report said the watchdog “provided a copy of a license that GAO forged to two vendors, subsequently obtained invoices and paid the vendors.” In the end, GAO did not accept the shipment, instead it “safely and securely” returned the radioactive material to the vendors.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, is calling on the NRC to tighten licensing and oversight to avert a national security disaster.

“While radioactive materials have legitimate medical and industrial uses, the illicit possession, purchase and use of radioactive materials poses an extreme threat to homeland security,” Torres wrote in a letter to the agency.

”Without additional security protocols, including a more rigorous system of independent license verification, a terrorist could exploit current vulnerabilities to obtain radioactive material and weaponize it into a dirty bomb against a soft target in America’s largest cities.”

https://justthenews.com/world/foreign-desk/gao-employees-able-purchase-nuclear-material-fake-companies-forged-licenses

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/rep-claudia-tenney-fbi-raid-fourth-impeachment