Johnson after pulling votes on dueling FiSA reform bills says House will just extend authorization

The short-term extension will be attached to the defense spending bill

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday, after pulling dueling competing bill to reform and extend Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that he chamber will instead temporarily extend the law to meet its Dec. 31 expiration date.

At issue is Section 702 of the law that allows the government to conduct warrantless surveillance on non-U.S. citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes.

"There's still some disagreement about a couple of those key provisions," Johnson said. "I am not one who wants to rush this."

The Louisiana Republican said the FISA extension will be included in the Defense spending bill.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/johnson-confirms-house-gop-will-extend-fisa-temporarily-over-disagreements

Mercs Unmasked: US Hired Guns From Ukraine Spotted in Gaza Operating on Behalf of Israel

The American mercenary firm, Forward Observations Group (FOG), previously known for its presence in Ukraine, has claimed to have active members engaged in combat inside Gaza on behalf of Israel, Sputnik has learned.

FOG's official social media accounts have posted numerous photos and videos from Israel, including the southern regions near the Gaza border and the Gaza Strip itself. Some of the images show equipment decked out with both US and Ukrainian flags.

Since March 2022, FOG members have made multiple visits to Ukraine.

The company openly acknowledges its involvement in fighting alongside the Kiev regime, namely, in the battle for Severodonetsk.

Moreover, there are photos on the firm's social networks that prove that FOG's mercenaries use kindergartens in Ukraine as deployment sites.

Forward Observations Group was officially registered as a private company in the US state of Nevada on October 15, 2020. Founded by Derrick Bales, a former American soldier with experience in Afghanistan, the company, among Western outlets, presents itself as a lifestyle brand, specializing in the sale of tactical gear.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231211/mercs-unmasked-us-hired-guns-from-ukraine-spotted-in-gaza-operating-on-behalf-of-israel-1115521415.html

Scotland’s wind turbines secretly use generators powered by “fossil fuels”

https://youtu.be/oLQvW01d9_w

Who Is Sara Biden? Joe’s In-Law Emerges as Central Figure in Foreign Cash Deals

Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.

Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe’s Senate donors, who later accused her of “fraud” and “unjust enrichment,” according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations. In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.

Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.

GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as “loan repayment.” Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks “were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.”

“The Committees require you to provide details of these payments and other related matters,” the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees said in a joint letter they sent to her last month demanding she make herself available for a transcribed interview. In addition, they sent a subpoena to her husband for testimony and information.

Although Hunter and Jim Biden’s questionable business dealings – and their possible blessing from the president – are drawing increasing scrutiny, Sara Biden has drawn little attention until now. But court records and other documents show she has been a central player in the Biden family business for decades. They show how her and her husband’s desire for a lifestyle they could not quite afford has repeatedly led them to form relationships with shady figures and enterprises that often ended in lawsuits and even criminal investigations.

Looming over it all is Joe Biden. Documents recently obtained by government watchdog America First Legal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that Sara and Jim’s main business, the Lion Hall Group, shows up in more than 3,735 emails generated by the former Vice President Biden’s office. The sheer volume of communications concerning his brother and sister-in-law’s business appears to contradict Biden’s repeated claims over the years that he was never involved in, or even aware of, his family’s business dealings.

Sara Biden’s links to Joe Biden date back to the early 1990s, when she landed a committee job with his close personal friend, Sen. Wendell Ford, a Kentucky Democrat.

“Sen. Ford has been an important part of our family for a long time,” Joe Biden said after Ford died in 2015. “He gave Sara Jones Biden, from Owensboro, Ky., her first job on the Hill when she graduated from Duke Law School, and that’s how she met my brother Jimmy.”

Jimmy and Sara weren’t just sweethearts; they were also business partners – with a taste for high living.

In 1997, Sara and Jim Biden formed consulting firm Lion Hall Group with the help of Joe Biden’s old law partner, David Walsh, who acted as their registered agent, according to incorporation records they filed with the Delaware Department of State.

That same year, they bought an expensive home in the Philadelphia suburbs and struggled to make payments on the $650,000 mortgage, records show, even though a longtime Democratic fundraiser for then-Sen. Biden, Joel Boyarsky, loaned them as much as $200,000. In 1998, the IRS filed its first lien against their home to collect $145,000 in unpaid taxes.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/12/11/who_is_sara_biden_joes_in-law_emerges_as_central_figure_in_foreign_cash_deals_996942.html