>>19041410

>Dough

>>19041657

>3 years old: 'I'm a girl person'

okay just eat your dinner for fucks sake

>>19041528

>gender-affirming care

>>19041748

>Pentagon ‘accounting error' provides extra $6.2 BILLION for Ukraine

>>19041849

>John Durham will publicly testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 9:00 am

>>19041866

>jacked to the tits

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1671302886402211854

Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, first hired the research firm that months later produced for Democrats the salacious dossier describing ties between Donald J. Trump and the Russian government, the website said on Friday.

The Free Beacon, funded in large part by the New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had begun paying Fusion GPS in April for research that eventually became the basis for the dossier.

The Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee on Friday that it had retained the firm. That committee is one of a number of congressional committees investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the 2016 election and whether there was any collusion with Mr. Trump’s associates.

The role of the website answers one of the lingering mysteries behind the events leading up to the production of the dossier and its publication by BuzzFeed in January.

It has long been known that Fusion GPS was first hired by Republicans, but it was not known who was the source of the funding. This week, Mr. Trump and his allies seized on the fact that Democrats had paid the firm for the research as evidence that the dossier was part of a political smear campaign.

Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that it was a “disgrace” that Democrats had funded the dossier, calling it “a very sad commentary on politics in this country.”

At the heart of the story is Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm founded by former Wall Street Journal employees. Little is known about the firm’s list of clients, and Republicans in Congress have pressed the firm and one of its founders, Glenn Simpson, to hand over documents about the funding and research that produced the dossier.

The Free Beacon’s editor, Matthew Continetti, and its chairman, Michael Goldfarb, said in a statement that the website was not involved in the dossier.

“All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to The Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that The Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier,” they said. “The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele.”

The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week. Working for them, the firm retained Christopher Steele, a respected former British intelligence officer.

He went on to produce a series of memos that alleged a broad conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Mr. Trump. The memos, which became known as the “Steele dossier,” also contained unsubstantiated accounts of encounters between Mr. Trump and Russian prostitutes, as well as real estate deals that were intended as bribes.

>>19041900

>https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1671302886402211854

Speculation had circulated for months that Mr. Singer was involved in the dossier, but his allies had denied that. On Friday, an associate said Mr. Singer had not been aware of the dossier or Mr. Steele’s involvement in Fusion GPS’s research until January, when BuzzFeed published the dossier.

Mr. Singer was among the leading Republican critics of Mr. Trump during the Republican presidential primary race. Even after Mr. Singer’s first choice, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, dropped out of the race, Mr. Singer continued to fund efforts to block Mr. Trump from the party’s nomination.

The revelation of The Free Beacon’s involvement with Fusion GPS threatens a rapprochement between Mr. Trump and Mr. Singer, who donated $1 million to the president’s inaugural fund and has visited the White House on multiple occasions. After one such visit, Mr. Trump declared that Mr. Singer “was very much involved with the anti-Trump or, as they say, ‘Never Trump,’ and Paul just left, and he’s given us his total support and it’s all about unification.”

Josh Levy, a lawyer representing Fusion GPS, said questions about who funded Mr. Steele’s work should be secondary to its credibility.

The Free Beacon has a history of employing so-called opposition research firms to assist in news articles critical of targets like Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. In their statement, Mr. Continetti and Mr. Goldfarb said that “we stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods.”

Investigators working with several congressional committees and the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, have delved into Mr. Steele’s work as part of inquiries into connections between Russia and Mr. Trump and his associates, including whether they conspired to influence last year’s election.

The Free Beacon’s notification to the House Intelligence Committee came a few days before a deadline set by a federal judge for Fusion GPS’s bank to respond to a subpoena issued by the committee for financial records that could have revealed who funded the dossier.

Fusion GPS had filed a motion to block the subpoena on the grounds that it would “irreparably damage” the company’s business and also “chill” its free speech rights and those of “many others engaging in opposition research on political candidates.”

In a telephone conference with representatives for Fusion GPS, the committee and the bank, the judge hearing the case said that Fusion GPS’s clients have “the expectation of confidentiality.” But the judge added that it was “not to say that the congressional committee doesn’t have interests that may trump those expectations of confidentiality.”

The firm’s connection to Democrats was revealed in a letter this week from Matthew J. Gehringer, the general counsel of the law firm Perkins Coie. The letter said that Fusion GPS had already been conducting the research “for one or more other clients during the Republican primary contest,” and urged the earlier clients to waive their confidentiality “given the interest in this issue.”

Perkins Coie was paid $12.4 million to represent the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 race, according to campaign finance filings, though most of that money probably went to legal compliance.

https://apnews.com/article/stamford-vermont-63e6b05e7e2af5fca2ef407132d46a70

Ex-CNN producer pleads guilty to child sex charge in deal

A former CNN television producer pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity at his Vermont ski house.

As part of the plea deal, the government will drop the two remaining counts of enticement of a minor against John Griffin, 45, of Stamford, Connecticut.

According to the plea deal, Griffin met a woman on a website during the summer of 2020 and persuaded the woman to bring her 9-year-old daughter to his Ludlow, Vermont, ski home for illegal sexual activity.

Griffin paid the woman and girl to fly from Nevada to Boston, picked them up and drove them to his Vermont home where the girl said Griffin sexually assaulted her, court records say.

Griffin was arrested on Dec. 10, 2021, a day after he was indicted by a grand jury. He originally pleaded not guilty to three counts.

Griffin worked for CNN for about eight years but was fired after he was arrested, the network said last year.

He faces a possible sentence of at least 10 years and up to life in prison when he is sentenced on March 20, 2023. He must pay full restitution to the victims, an amount which will be determined by the court. He also faces a fine of up to $250,000 and other fees and has agreed to forfeit a Tesla vehicle, and electronic items and to donate half of the proceeds from the sale of his Vermont home and the upcoming sale of a Mercedes vehicle into the court registry.

He also faces a term of five years to life on supervised release, with conditions, including that he participate in a sex offender evaluation and treatment and register as a sex offender. He also cannot have contact with people under the age of 18, except in the presence of a responsible adult who has been approved by a probation officer, and is prohibited from being in areas where children congregate, such as schools, playgrounds and theme parks, unless approved by the probation office beforehand.

>>19041925

>likely averts time behind bars

https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-charges-income-tax-weapon-ea6b78d4bac037da24b485985b99bc1c

Hunter Biden will plead guilty in a deal that likely averts time behind bars in a tax and gun case

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will plead guilty to federal tax offenses but avoid full prosecution on a separate gun charge in a deal with the Justice Department that likely spares him time behind bars.

Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement made public Tuesday. The agreement will also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.

The deal ends a long-running Justice Department investigation into the taxes and foreign business dealings of President Biden’s second son, who has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden. It also averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks of distracting headlines for a White House that has strenuously sought to keep its distance from the Justice Department.

The president, asked about the development at a meeting on another subject in California, said simply, “I’m very proud of my son.” The White House counsel’s office said in a statement that the president and first lady Jill Biden “love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”

While the agreement requires the younger Biden to admit guilt, the deal is narrowly focused on tax and weapons violations rather than anything broader or tied to the Democratic president. Nonetheless, former President Donald Trump and other Republicans continued to try to use the case to shine an unflattering spotlight on Joe Biden and to raise questions about the independence of the Biden Justice Department.

Trump, challenging President Biden in the 2024 presidential race, likened the agreement to a “mere traffic ticket,” adding, “Our system is BROKEN!”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy compared the outcome to the Trump documents case now heading toward federal court and said, “If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another presidential challenger, used the same term.

Two people familiar with the investigation said the Justice Department would recommend 24 months of probation for the tax charges, meaning Hunter Biden will not face time in prison. But the decision to go along with any deal is up to the judge. The people were not authorized to speak publicly by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

He is to plead guilty to failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018, charges that carry a maximum possible penalty of a year in prison. The back taxes have since been paid, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The gun charge states that Hunter Biden possessed a handgun, a Colt Cobra .38 Special, for 11 days in October 2018 despite knowing he was a drug user. The rarely filed count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but the Justice Department said Hunter Biden had reached a pretrial agreement. This likely means as long as he adheres to the conditions, the case will be wiped from his record.

Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that it was his understanding that the five-year investigation had now been resolved.

“I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” Clark said. “He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”

The agreement comes as the Justice Department pursues perhaps the most consequential case in its history against Trump, the first former president to face federal criminal charges. The resolution of Hunter Biden’s case comes just days after a 37-count indictment against Trump in relation to accusations of mishandling classified documents on his Florida estate. It was filed by a special counsel, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the Justice Department.

That indictment has nevertheless brought an onslaught of Republican criticism of “politicization” of the Justice Department. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans continue to pursue their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including foreign payments.

>>19041949

Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the younger Biden is “getting away with a slap on the wrist,” despite investigations in Congress that GOP lawmakers say show — but have not yet provided evidence of — a pattern of corruption involving the family’s financial ties.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, on the other hand, said the case was thoroughly investigated over five years by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Delaware prosecutor appointed by Trump.

Resolution of the case, Coons said, “brings to a close a five-year investigation, despite the elaborate conspiracy theories spun by many who believed there would be much more to this.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was scheduled to campaign with the president Tuesday evening, reaffirmed his support for Biden’s reelection.

“Hunter changes nothing,” Newsom told the AP on Tuesday.

Misdemeanor tax cases aren’t common, and most that are filed end with a sentence that doesn’t include time behind bars, said Caroline Ciraolo, an attorney who served as head of the Justice Department’s tax division from 2015 to 2017. An expected federal conviction “is not a slap on the wrist,” she said.

Gun possession charges that aren’t associated with another firearm crime are also uncommon, said Keith Rosen, a past head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. For people without a significant criminal history, the total number of multiple types of illegal possession cases filed every year in Delaware amounts to a handful, he said.

The Justice Department investigation into the president’s son burst into public view in December 2020, one month after the 2020 election, when Hunter Biden revealed that he had received a subpoena as part of the department’s scrutiny of his taxes. The subpoena sought information on the younger Biden’s business dealings with a number of entities, including Burisma, a Ukraine gas company on whose board he sat. A federal grand jury in Delaware heard testimony related to his taxes and foreign business transactions.

In February 2021, the department sought the resignation of most Trump-era U.S. attorneys, as is customary in a new presidential administration, but made a point of noting that it was leaving Weiss in place as a way to ensure continuity in the probe. Weiss said in a June 7 letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that he had “ultimate authority” over the investigation.

At a congressional hearing last August, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the investigation remained active out of the bureau’s Baltimore field office and said it was a matter that “I expect our folks to pursue aggressively.”

Garland pledged not to interfere in the probe at another hearing in March. An unnamed IRS special agent, though, later alleged mishandling of the investigation in a letter to Congress in which he sought whistleblower protection.

The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then Barack Obama’s vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies.

Years before the case was brought, Hunter Biden surfaced as a central character in the first impeachment case against Trump, who in an apparent bid to boost his own reelection bid had asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a telephone call to announce an investigation into the younger Biden.

Republicans later sought to make Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine a prominent issue during the 2020 presidential election.

In October of that year, the New York Post reported that it had received from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved.

The story was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden ahead of the November election. No evidence has emerged of any Russian connection to the laptop or to emails found on the device.

>>19041985

https://twitter.com/Sprinter99880/status/1671319151204356098

The US fears that the Communists will win the elections in Taiwan.

Pro-Chinese political parties are leading the polls in Taiwan, and if these parties win in 2024, they will peacefully join China, which is not to the liking of the US.

https://twitter.com/0rf/status/1470841402112327686

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1671266988382097408

Feel the force!

>>19042071

>A Blinken