23 May, 2023 19:49

FBI defies subpoena on Biden corruption case

The top US law enforcement agency has refused to give Congress documents detailing allegations of a bribery scheme

The FBI has again refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by Congress regarding allegations of a bribery scheme allegedly perpetrated by then-Vice President Joe Biden, escalating a row with House Republicans over the agency’s handling of the case.

The latest refusal to comply with the subpoena came during an FBI briefing of the US House Oversight Committee on Monday. At issue is a so-called FD-1023 form, which details accusations that President Biden accepted foreign bribes in exchange for policy favors when he was vice president under President Barack Obama.

FBI officials previously missed a May 10 deadline to provide the requested materials to Congress. At the time, the agency claimed that the allegations against Biden were unverified and that theFD-1023 must be kept private to protect FBI informants. Ironically, a four-year probe by US special counsel John Durham found that the FBI improperly launched an investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign based on unverified allegations funneled to the agency by rival candidate Hillary Clinton.

“This allegation happened a long time ago, and the FBI has done nothing,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said on Monday in a Fox News interview. “We want to know exactly what they did.We not only want the file, but we want to know what action they took.”

Comer said Republican members of the committee are so concerned about the case because the allegations “fit a pattern” of then-Vice President Biden flying to such countries as Romania, taking an unusually active role on US foreign policy decisions, then receiving wire transfers from those nations into bank accounts linked to his family.

“This is one of the most serious accusations I think has ever been leveled against any political leader in the history of our country,”Comer said.“And for the FBI to act like, ‘Well, we don’t know, we can’t talk to you about this. Just trust us.. . .’ It’s not normal for the president of the United States’ children and grandchildren, and in-laws and nieces and nephews to receive wires from foreign nationals.”

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said on Sunday that he called FBI director Christopher Wray on Friday to demand the Biden file.“I believe after this call, we will get this document,” he said.(If congress doesn’t fence their money, they will never comply.)

Comer said US media outlets have begun to report on the case because the American public is following it closely, despite their efforts to ignore or downplay the allegations against Biden. “The American people do not want to see public corruption,” he said. “They expect Congress to investigate public corruption.”

The US Department of Justice formally shut down an investigation of Clinton’s family foundation in August 2021, seven months after Biden took office as president, and the FBI destroyed all of the evidence compiled during the probe, according to a New York Timesarticle published on Monday.

https://www.rt.com/news/576793-fbi-defies-congress-on-biden-bribery-case-subpoena/

23 May, 2023 18:42

Moscow accuses G7 members of hypocrisy

The US and its allies are manipulating their data on nuclear weapons in an attempt to score political points, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has claimed

Members of the G7 are providing false dataabout the size of their nuclear arsenals, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov claimed on Monday. The remarks came after the group accused Russia and China of not being transparent in reporting their strategic offensive weapon capabilities.

In a statement following the latest G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, the group stressed the “importance of transparency with regard to nuclear weapons” and praised the US, UK, and France for “providing data on their nuclear forces and the objective size of their nuclear arsenal.”

“Such statements are inadequate,” Ryabkov claimed, arguing that the data published by the West is intended to score political points and is “frankly hypocritical.”

The diplomat asserted that thefiguresdeclared by the US and its allies“are often fictitious or conditional.” In particular, he pointed to data recently published by the US under the New START treaty, which he said “continues to be misleading due to its inconsistency with the START counting rules.”

He also accused Washington of manipulating the data by leaving “more than 100 units” of its nuclear weapons “outside the brackets.”

Data published by France and the UK, meanwhile, is “not verifiable at all” and “purely declarative,” Ryabkov insisted. He also accused NATO of continuously refusing to provide specific figures on US strategic arms in Europe.

The diplomat argued that Russia, in contrast, “invariably acts in a responsible manner”regarding nuclear matters and shows “all possible transparency,” as long as this does not pose undue risk to national security.

“In general, one gets the impression that Western rhetoric about the size of their nuclear arsenals pursues asingle goal – to exert psychological and military-political pressure on Russia and China. Behind it isclearly a pathological desireto denigrate our countries,”Ryabkov said.

Earlier this year, Russia officially suspended its participation in the New START treaty – the last bilateral nuclear arms reduction deal with the US. Moscow explained the move by pointing to Washington’s refusal to allow Russian inspections of its nuclear facilities, as well as the alleged use of the Ukrainian military to carry out proxy attacks against Russia’s strategic aviation forces.

On Tuesday, Ryabkov reiterated that Russia does not intend to share data on the total number of its warheads under the START agreement, despite the US recently publishing its own. “START has been suspended,” the official stressed.

https://www.rt.com/news/576786-ryabkov-g7-nuclear-hypocricy/