14 Jun, 2023 20:58

News

CIA knew Russia wasn’t behind Nord Stream attack – WSJ

US media is coalescing around the theory that Ukraine planned on blowing up the pipelines

The CIA has known since at least October that Russia did not blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. While the report claimed that the CIA had attempted to foil a Ukrainian-led plot to bomb the pipelines, a competing report alleges the agency actually carried out the demolition job.

The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines were destroyed in a series of near-simultaneous explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm in late September. The blasts severed a key conduit for Russian natural gas to Europe, effectively removing the possibility of European countries lifting their sanctions on Moscow and restarting gas purchases.

While US President Joe Biden refrained from blaming Russia for the blasts, US Energy Secretary JenniferGranholm told the BBC that “it seems” like Moscow was to blame, while Ukraine has publicly and repeatedly accused Russia of sabotaging its own gas lines.

However, CIA Director WilliamBurns told “a European counterpart” in October that “available evidence didn’t point to Russia,“ the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an official present at the meeting.When asked if Ukraine was to blame, Burns reportedly answered “I hope not.”

According to the American newspaper, theCIA knew about a Ukrainian plot to bomb the pipelines earlier in 2022, but warned Kiev not to go through with the attack. The agency told its European counterparts in August that Ukraine had agreed and the threat had subsided, but both sets of Nord Stream lines were destroyed a month later.

The Wall Street Journal’s report was published a day after Dutch outlet NOS and Germany’s Die Zeit published similar articles claiming that American spies were tipped off by their Dutch colleagues about the alleged Ukrainian plot, and intervened to prevent it. According to earlier reporting by the New York Times and Der Spiegel, a “pro-Ukrainian group” actually managed to take out the gas lines, using a rented yacht to transport explosives to the blast site.

This entire sequence of events has been dismissed by American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who claimed in February that the Biden administration ordered the CIA to bomb Nord Stream with the help of the Norwegian Navy. Citing sources in US intelligence, Hersh claimed that the explosives were planted during NATO military drills in the Baltic Sea last June and triggered remotely three months later. Therented yacht story, Hersh said afterwards,was planted in the US and German media as a red herringby the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND.

(The US and EU want to blame it on Zelensky and Ukraine so they can force Ukraine to negotiating table, because they know Ukraine won’t win. They are leaking these reports to send a message to him.)

https://www.rt.com/news/578037-cia-knew-russia-nord-stream/

Republicans Question Murky Origin of $10M on Biden 2017 Tax Return

By Becky Noble | 3:15 PM on June 14, 2023

As more and more questions arise about President Joe Biden’s possible link to a $5 million bribery plot, scrutiny around a 2017 tax return is also garnering some attention from GOP lawmakers looking into the alleged scheme. And while Joe Biden has claimed total transparency regarding the release of tax returns, new details are coming to light.Those details include income of $10 million to a Biden S-Corporation. As Presidential candidates do, on September 29, a few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, then-candidate Joe Biden released 22 years of tax returns.A USA Today “fact check” showedwhat happens to many former Presidents and Vice Presidents, an increase in income once they leave office. Biden’s tax returns show a gross income between 2017 — when he left the office of Vice President — and 2019 of $15.6 million, attributed to speaking fees and book deals.

But Joe Biden’s transparency over his tax returns may not be all it’s cracked up to be. The $15.6 million number is broken down this way: $10 million from sales of Biden’s memoir “Promise Me, Dad,” and $3 million from a book penned by now-First Lady Jill Biden, including royalties and $700,000 in speaking fees.The question of transparency comes into play when we learn that Joe Biden only released individual tax returns. The Individual returns are completely separate from the S-corporations the Bidens set up shortly after Joe Biden left the office of the Vice President. Those numbers tell a whole other story.Of the $17 million of income reported after Biden left office, two S-Corporations, CelticCapri Corps and Giacoppa Corps, contained roughly $13 million as of 2017.

Republican lawmakers want to know more about the Bidens’ S-corps income. Sen. Ron Johnson, who co-authored a 2020 report on the Bidens’ income, stated that Joe Biden needs to disclose the source of the income: “Biden should disclose and every member of the press ought to hound him until he does.” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), said that Biden needs to release bank records if he wants to appear transparent. She referenced a recent incident where reporters asked Biden about the ongoing bribery investigation and he laughed it off. Mace said:

The President seems to find selling out our country funny. We don’t. If he’s serious about proving our allegations wrong he should release his and his family’s unredacted bank records and show the American people where all this money is coming from. The FBI can’t protect him forever.

The harshest condemnation of Joe Biden’s financial practices came from Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), who agreed with Johnson and Mace, and stated that Biden needs to release all his financial information, especially in light of the ongoing bribery investigation. Crane did not hold back:

The fact that there arecredible claims signaling that a foreign national bribed the President of the United States with cash in exchange for influence over U.S. policy decisions is appalling. The American people deserve to know who paid the Bidens and what exactly they were paid for.

Crane also referenced recent revelations that an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, whose board Hunter Biden sat on, and who allegedly paid the Bidens, has audio recordings of conversations with both Joe and Hunter Biden, and also the indictment on Tuesday of former President Donald Trump. He added:

Now that we know there are recordings of conversations Joe Biden and his degenerate son had with a Burisma executive, it’s becoming more andmore obvious how the indictment of President Trump is meant to be a distraction. It would shock no one in this town if Joe Biden received millions of dollars from selling out the country in a bribery scheme and then hid that money in shady shell companies.

Jerry Allison is a CPA at Allison Financial Services, and says that it is quite common for personal tax returns not to list income items from S-Corps. He added:

It is my opinion that both S Corporation returns should be examined to find the actual amount of income and to obtain clues as to where the income may have originated.The S Corporation returns might reveal other entities from which the income may have originated.

The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, to testify this week. If Joe Biden is unwilling to unravel the tale of the Biden S-Corporations,Devon Archer may be willing to do it for him.

https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2023/06/14/republicans-question-murky-origin-of-10m-on-biden-2017-tax-return-n761296

The Self-Immolation of the Fourth Estate Continues as the National Press Club Awards Ben Collins

By Brad Slager | 3:30 PM on June 12, 2023

(The Biggest Conspiracy Theorist of them all got a Cronkite award, Cronkite just rolled over in his grave and groaned loudly)

NBC News punchline Ben Collins was given a Cronkite Award this weekend for his “honesty” and reporting, a true sign journalism is dying.

If you ever want to see the sad state of journalism in the country these days you need only to look over the spate of journalism awards handed out and the recipients of these honors. There is consistency and uniformity in the process as anyone even close to the center — to say nothing of a crossover to conservative coverage — is rarely if ever honored. But this weekend, we saw something that cemented the sad state of this industry.

On Saturday, the National Press Club handed out its Walter Cronkite Awardsfor Excellence in Television Political Journalism. The running theme throughout the proceedings was the battle against disinformation, with advance copy from the ceremony declaring they would honor some of the best journalists on TV who are imperturbably digging for truth, combating deception and defending democracy.

It is with this theme in mind that one particular honoree is a curious selection. Or a puzzling selection. Or, most accurately, an utterly hilarious and completely invalidating selection. Amid the assembly line of journalists who took the podium was Ben Collins of NBC News, and this was all that was needed to see what a sheer farce this ceremony has become. Honoring Collins for any recognition in the business is questionable, but to hold up this serial fabulist as anything resembling a shining example of truth-based journalism is undiluted comedy.

Where to begin? Well, one of the prevailing reasons that Collins was citedexposes both him, as well as the vacancy of the journalism standards of this group. Specifically mentioned was his work surrounding the shooting that took place in Colorado Springs.

Judges praised the NBC News senior reporter’s “brilliant, brave work.” “It’s inspiring to watch Collins” cover stories like the racist manifesto of the Buffalo shooter or the anti-trans campaigns in the lead-up to the Club Q shooting, “bearing witness to the extremism on the dark web” and “holding it accountable.”

Collins spent quite a bit of energy explaining how the Q-Club shooter had to have been the result of anti-LGBT𝜋 sentiment (something the Cronkite board highlighted). He laid out a number of examples as “proof” of his theory that right-wing media was responsible, and was all over the news explaining his position. Then it was all blown apart when it was discovered the shooter was declared to be non-binary. Even dismissing it as a gambit to evade punishment was washed out when it was learned this was declared years earlier.

Ben Collins shifted his stance on a dime with this revelation.

How the NPC still alludes to this event in this way is more amazing, as these journalists know the facts of this story months after the event. Yet they still cling to an original narrative. What you have to absorb is that Collins spent days blaming conservatives for the shooting, then, the moment he learned the shooter’s self-identification, his stance was wholly renovated, and then he dropped the story entirely…..

These are deeply disqualifying episodes that should lead to Collins not even being considered for praise, but they are hardly isolated instances. NBC’s professional prevaricator had a number of other cases of him displaying an aversion to the facts and the truth, the very thing the NPC is supposed to be celebrating. For instance, Collins:

Called the Libs of TikTok “anti-LGBT” for merely retweeting already tweeted posts.

Claimed that Elon Musk Taking over Twitter would endanger the election and our democracy.

Stated that Elon Musk was apathetic towards curbing voices and it could lead to post-election violence. (None occurred, of course.)

Steadfastly refused to look into revelations from the Twitter Files, while draping himself as an online guru concerning misinformation.

But there is one other glaring example of how ridiculous it is for this cabal of journalists to award Ben Collins for excellence in his reporting. The man’s hysterical wrongness in his reporting was what led to him being suspended by his own network! Just before Christmas, NBC News placed Collins on leavefollowing his unhinged coverage of Elon Musk being injected with too much personal animus.

But today, he is heralded by his peers over his supreme quality, high-grade adherence to the truth and journalism ethics. Just…ignore his track record of being wrong and refusing to correct the record when it transpires.

https://redstate.com/bradslager/2023/06/12/the-self-immolation-of-the-fourth-estate-continues-as-the-national-press-club-awards-ben-collins-n760043