US antisemitism envoy and EU denounce Mahmoud Abbas’s speech: Distorts the Holocaust

 

Europeans blast ‘grossly misleading’ claims by Palestinian Authority leader that Hitler killed Jews because they were moneylenders, and Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of Khazars  

The US and EU on Thursday condemned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for a recent speech about the origins of Ashkenazi Jews and Adolf Hitler’s motivations, with the latter saying it fuels antisemitism and insults Holocaust victims.

US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt slammed the “hateful, antisemitic remarks” made by Abbas in a speech last month to his Fatah party’s Revolutionary Council.

“The speech maligned the Jewish people, distorted the Holocaust, and misrepresented the tragic exodus of Jews from Arab countries,” Lipstadt wrote on X.  

“I condemn these statements and urge an immediate apology,” she added.

Lipstadt’s condemnation came as the EU also denounced Abbas’s comments, saying they contained “false and grossly misleading remarks about Jews and antisemitism.”  

Abbas repeated a number of antisemitic canards he has uttered over the years, including that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had Jews slaughtered because of their “social role” as moneylenders, not because of enmity toward Judaism.

“Such historical distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can only serve to exacerbate tensions in the region and serve no one’s interests,” read the EU statement. “They play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated for.

“Moreover, they trivialize Holocaust [sic] and thereby fuel anti-Semitism and are an insult to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and their families,” continued the European condemnation.  

France’s embassy called the speech “clearly unacceptable” and stated that it “unequivocally strongly condemns antisemitism and the denial of the Holocaust in all its forms, as well as its determination to fight tirelessly against these scourges.”

In his speech, Abbas outlined the baseless theory that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from ancient Israelites but from an ancient Turkish people known as the Khazars, who according to a discredited theory converted to Judaism en masse. 

“The truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites,” Abbas said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “They have nothing to do with Semitism.”

“So when we hear them talk about Semitism and antisemitism, the Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are not Semites,” he added.

Abbas has previously claimed publicly that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of Khazars, including in a 2018 speech in which he also charged that Jews’ “social behavior” caused the Holocaust.

“They say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion,” Abbas said in August. “Several authors wrote about this. Even Karl Marx said this was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion but at Judaism for its social role.”  

“The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on and so forth,” he continued.  

Abbas then appeared to repeat the stab-in-the-back myth that Hitler subscribed to after World War I, blaming the Jews and others for Germany’s loss in the conflict.

“Everybody knows that during World War I, Hitler was a sergeant. He said that he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money. In his view, they were engaged in sabotage, and this is why he hated them,” he said. “We just want to make this point clear: This was not about Semitism and antisemitism.”

“As for the eastern Jews, they are Semites,” he added, referring to Jews from the greater Middle East.

Abbas also launched a fresh diatribe against the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 document issued by the British government declaring support for a “national home” for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, which he charged America was a party to at the time.

“Who invented the [Jewish] state? It was Britain and America, not just Britain,” he claimed. “I am saying this so that we know who we should accuse of being our enemy, who has harmed us and took our homeland away, and gave it to the Israelis or the Jews.  

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan ripped into Abbas on Wednesday, after the translation of the PA leader’s remarks was published.

“This is the true face of Palestinian ‘leadership,'” Erdan wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Just as Abbas blames the Jews for the Holocaust, he also blames the Jews for all the Middle East’s issues. While he spreads this pure antisemitism he also pays Palestinian terrorists for murdering Israelis and publicly commends Palestinian terrorism  

The world must wake up and hold Abbas and his Palestinian Authority accountable for the hatred they spew and the ensuing bloodshed it causes. There must be zero tolerance for Palestinian incitement and terror!” the envoy added.

Yad Vashem also panned the remarks on Thursday, saying Abbas’s “reprehensible remarks have no place in our society & must be unequivocally condemned by global leaders. We can’t stay silent in the face of such hateful rhetoric.”  

Abbas has a history of making antisemitic claims and incendiary comments about the Holocaust, including saying in May that Israel “lies like” chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Last year in Germany, he accused Israel of perpetrating “50 holocausts” at a press conference alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Israel, Germany, and the US reacted to the statement with shock and outrage. 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/eu-abbass-holocaust-speech-fuels-antisemitism-insults-holocaust-victims/  

Non-COVID deaths are still way higher than normal. Why?

The increase in total deaths from all causes, 

not just COVID deaths, is up significantly

by Edward Ring for American Greatness

According to data reported weekly by the CDC, the death rate in America remains elevated. In the six years prior to the COVID era, deaths in the United States averaged between 2.6 and 2.8 million people per year. These averages are adjusted for population growth, and with a population as large as the U.S., the numbers should be, and are, remarkably stable. During the three years immediately preceding the 2020, for example, the population growth adjusted death rate from all causes varied by only 1.5 percent.

None of that is true today. The increase in total deaths – deaths from all causes, not just COVID deaths – is up significantly. If the period between October 2019 and June 2023 had adhered to predictable mortality rates, 10.5 million Americans would have died. Instead, during that period, 12.4 people died. This prolonged period of so-called excess deaths, 17 percent above normal, is only rivaled by the estimated 675,000 deaths from Spanish Flu in America in 1918-19 when the country had a much smaller population.

To illustrate how aberrant these grim statistics are, the chart below plots on a blue line the actual weekly deaths from all causes in the United States from the Fall of 2019 through the Spring of 2023. The grey line plots how many deaths would have occurred if mortality rates had adhered to predictable trends based on highly consistent statistics from the six prior years, 2013 through 2019. The data is indisputable, even if the causes remain mired in controversy. During the so-called COVID era, nearly 2.0 million people are dead who, if it had been normal times, would still be alive today.

There appears to be no end in sight, even though the horrific surges appear to be behind us. As shown on the right edges of the chart, going into the summer of 2023, weekly deaths from all causes remained persistently higher than normal. For example, during the last week of June, which is the most recent week for which there is reasonably complete reporting, 55,000 Americans died. Based on historical patterns, only 51,000 Americans would have died. Excess deaths in the U.S. are still about 7 percent above normal.

Equally, if not more alarming, even though the number of reported cases of COVID has been sharply down ever since the last major surge in January 2022, they now account for less than one in five of this persistent elevated death rate. Even during the first week of January 2023, when total deaths reached a yearly peak of 70,165 compared to a normal average estimate for that week of 57,545, only 3,656 of those 12,620 excess deaths were reported as COVID deaths. During the last week for which we have completed data, the week of June 26, 2023, of the estimated excess deaths of 3,265, only 566 were reported as caused by COVID.

In an attempt to get an idea of who is dying, the next chart shows deaths by week for the period of January 2015 through June 2023, plotted by age group. The results are interesting. The most obvious observation is that the top two lines, which plot weekly deaths of people over 75 and over 85, respectively, account for the most deaths in the U.S., as would be expected. These two age groups also experienced the highest spikes in mortality during the COVID years. The next two lines, representing Americans from 65 to 74, and from 45 to 64 track remarkably close to each other up until the COVID years and don’t diverge sharply even during the COVID years.

To dive deeper into the trends among Americans over 45, notice where each line begins and ends. The very old Americans are dying today in about the same numbers as they were in 2015, as are Americans between 45 and 64. In the case of the 85+ Americans, the cause may be there simply aren’t as many of them left, since so many were lost during the COVID years. In the case of the 45-64 year olds, the return to normal may be attributable to their relative good health and resilience compared to their older counterparts. But notice the trend that applies for the 65-74 and the 75-84 year olds: The summertime low for 65-74 year olds in 2015 was around 9,000 per week, and today it is elevated to around 13,000 per week. Similarly, and in even more dramatic fashion, the summertime low for 75-84 year olds in 2015 was around 12,500 per week, and now it is all the way up to nearly 18,000 per week. Most of the persistent increase in the death rate can be found in Americans between 65 and 84.

For young Americans, two things are evident. First, during the COVID years there was a significant increase in the death rate among 25-44 year olds, and even though the numbers are relatively small, they are currently dying at a significantly greater percentage rate than in the pre-COVID years. Second, it is quite clear that for Americans under the age of 25, as shown in the virtually-horizontal plot at the bottom of the chart, COVID was of zero statistical significance, nor are they experiencing statistically relevant excess deaths today.

Wading through this data reduces to a sobering reality: Americans over the age of 65 are dying in numbers and at rates far in excess of what data from recent pre-COVID years would predict. These are not Americans that typically show up in the elevated drug overdose and homicide statistics. And at least according to the CDC, the vast majority of them are not dying of COVID.

Altogether, based on CDC statistics, the difference between excess deaths and deaths reported as COVID deaths in the United States over the past three years now exceeds 650,000. The percentage of excess deaths that are not recorded as COVID deaths has never been higher, and currently exceeds 80 percent. Without far more analysis, as well as the truths that will eventually emerge through the filter of history, it is sufficient to say excess deaths in the United States that aren’t caused by COVID might be primarily the sum of increases in suicides, murders, car accidents, drug overdoses, a disproportionately large number of 1946 babies reaching the limit of their life expectancy, and deferred diagnoses and deferred treatments.

Or it might be something else.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- Sept 7

 

What Will America Be Like Under Biden’s Digital Dollar? Look At Communist China

Biden’s executive order gave the game away by stating that a U.S. digital dollar must ensure ‘financial inclusion and equity’ and monitor or mitigate ‘climate change and pollution.’

Helen Raleigh reporting for The Federalist

President Joe Biden issued a sweeping executive order last year on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.”  

The Biden administration and its corporate media echo chamber want Americans to focus only on CBDC’s many benefits. But experiences in China, a nation that launched a digital currency in 2020, have shown that a CBDC considerably expands government power at the expense of individual freedom. 

China’s digital currency, e-CNY, differs significantly from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. For instance, neither central banks nor governments have the power to program or manage Bitcoin. The total amount of Bitcoin was capped at 21 million by its mysterious creator. Such a finite supply gives Bitcoin its anti-inflation property. While Bitcoin transactions are transparent for all to see, users remain anonymous. 

China’s central bank, however, controls the supply of its digital yuan and can dictate when and how people spend it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese digital yuan is programmable, and “Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start.”  

Users of the digital yuan do not have the benefit of anonymity, so they are traceable, and the government knows precisely when each person spends money and what they spend it on. The digital yuan gives China’s authoritarian regime another powerful surveillance tool to control the Chinese people. 

China’s intrusive social credit system already monitors 1.4 billion Chinese people, and it subjects their behaviors to various rewards and punishments. Beijing has a broad definition of “bad behavior,” ranging from running a red light to being critical of the Chinese government’s policies. Even before the digital yuan’s issuance, those Chinese citizens who received lower social credit scores due to “bad behaviors” struggled to live an everyday life. Many couldn’t travel because they were unable to buy plane or train tickets, some were denied school or employment opportunities, and some pet owners even had their pets confiscated.  

The digital yuan has enabled the Chinese government to reprimand human rights activists, religious practitioners, and government critics in new and terrifying ways: by instantly deducting fines from their bank accounts, confiscating their wealth, or banishing them from China’s digital payment system completely. Knowing they won’t be able to survive for a day in a cashless society is frightening enough to silence most dissenting voices. 

A young Chinese woman’s viral video demonstrates what life in China was like when shut out of the nation’s digital payment system — what she called a “global social monetary control information system.” No matter how much paper currency she was willing to pay in a cashless city like Shanghai, she couldn’t buy anything, not even a pork bun. Frustrated and hungry, she complained, “How horrible China has become.” 

Anyone who assumes the U.S. and other democracies will not abuse CBDCs like China has done is delusional. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how quickly democratically elected governments in the West expanded their powers and intruded on citizens’ economic and political freedom in the name of public health.  

The most notorious example was when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crack down on truckers who protested peacefully against the government’s vaccine mandate. Without a court order, he froze bank accounts and suspended vehicle insurance for anyone linked to the protests. 

Before pushing for the digital dollar, the Biden administration had already looked for other ways to track Americans’ personal finances. It proposed to compel U.S. financial institutions to report all transactions from accounts holding more than $600 to the IRS, hoping to catch so-called “tax cheats” to help pay for the administration’s massive spending increases on left-wing causes, such as climate change.  

Many critics warned that such a move would invade Americans’ privacy and put more personal financial data at risk. After much public outcry, the Biden administration backed down and recommended raising the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions.  

The digital dollar is Biden and his Democrat allies’ renewed and barely disguised effort to track American transactions and collect financial data. Given how often foreign adversaries have hacked various government agencies’ databases, Americans already have little faith in the U.S. government’s ability to protect Americans’ privacy. Why should we be coerced to hand over even more personal financial data to the government by using a CBDC? 

Another troubling aspect of the digital dollar is that, once implemented, government officials can hardly resist the temptation to impose politically or ideologically driven limitations on spending. Biden’s executive order gave the game away by stating that a U.S. CBDC must ensure “financial inclusion and equity” and monitor or mitigate “climate change and pollution.”  

Based on the Biden administration’s track record, it is likely to use the digital dollar to enforce a version of communist China’s social credit system. The administration will divert government resources to advance left-wing causes, such as climate change, without congressional oversight, while restricting government payments in areas such as oil and gas production or firearm manufacturing and trading. No wonder Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Biden’s digital currency proposal “a wolf coming as a wolf.”  

Early this year, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced legislation to “prohibit the Federal Reserve from developing a direct-to-consumer central bank digital currency which could be used as a financial surveillance tool by the federal government.”  

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a co-sponsor of the bill, said: ”The American people ought to be able to spend their money how they choose without the possibility that every transaction could be tracked by the government. Policy this impactful should be made by Congress, not government bureaucrats.”  

Two months later, Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., introduced his own bill to close the Federal Reserve’s CBDC pilot program loophole. Unfortunately, unless the GOP wins back the White House next year, none of these bills are likely to become laws.  

Meanwhile, the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve continue to make progress in their quest for the digital dollar. In July, the Federal Reserve launched FedNow, allowing businesses and individuals to “send and receive instant payments in real-time, around the clock, every day of the year.” Some experts warned that FedNow could “lay the groundwork for the infrastructure needed for a potential central bank digital currency in the U.S.”  

The Biden administration has placed “the highest urgency” on the development of the digital dollar, so all Americans who cherish liberty and want to protect their privacy must clearly, loudly voice their opposition to a CBDC. Public resistance may be our only way to prevent the U.S. from becoming a digital dystopia like communist China. 

Oil Prices Surge After Saudi Arabia and Russia Announce Extended Oil Production Cuts Through End of 2023

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Oil prices shot passed $90/bbl today after Saudi Arabia and then Russia announced a continuance of production cuts through the end of this year.

The BRICS alliance is going to deliver some pain to the Western alliance.  Those people living in the yellow zone, with leadership chasing climate change and Green New Deal policies, are going to see more durable inflation as the cost of oil is attached to just about every product and service.

Gasoline, energy products, petroleum products, home heating oil, groceries, everything will cost more as the geopolitical battle continues; but we are supposed to pretend we are unaware of the global political dynamic.

(Zero Hedge) – […] Just after 9am ET, Saudi Arabia said it would extend the voluntary cut of 1 million b/d of for another 3 months, from October until the end of December, well beyond the expectation of just 1 more month. Saudi press agency SPA notes that the voluntary cut decision will be reviewed monthly to consider deepening the cut or increasing production.

The extension of cuts is meant to reinforce the precautionary efforts made by OPEC countries with the aim of supporting the stability of the oil market. The Saudi announcement came a shock to market as 20 of 25 traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg last week had predicted the additional cutback would be continued for just one additional month.

And then, literally seconds after the Saudi decision, Russian deputy PM Novak said Russia would also extend its reduction of oil exports until the end of the year, reducing its oil output by 300kb/d in voluntary cuts until December 2023.

Similar to the Saudis, Russia said that the decision to reduce oil production to be reviewed monthly to consider possibility of deepening reduction or increasing production depending on situation on the world market. (read more)

“The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is empty, my friend”… 

(Yahoo) – […] Higher oil prices are bad news for the world’s central banks, which have been trying to tame high inflation since last year. Energy is a key input for economic activities, so higher oil prices generally lead to inflation.

But Saudi Arabia and Russia’s keeping their oil supply cuts for longer means “they have no interest in what central banks are worried about,” Naeem Aslam, the chief investment officer of Zaye Capital Markets, wrote in a Tuesday note seen by Insider. (read more) 

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Biden Bribery Breadcrumbs Leave Only One Possible Conclusion: Deep-State Partisans Buried The Evidence

Who buried the Biden bribery scandal? Mounting evidence of deep-state corruption and cover-ups demands an answer.

Margot Cleveland reporting for The Federalist

The Federalist’s blockbuster exclusive on Tuesday revealed U.S. Attorney David Weiss was spoonfed The New York Times’ false narrative that the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney had pushed the Delaware office to investigate Rudy Giuliani’s claims of Biden family corruption. That revelation adds new texture to the IRS whistleblowers’ earlier testimony. More importantly, it suggests a select few DOJ and FBI agents buried the FD-1023 sent to Delaware for further investigation — a report memorializing a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source’s claims that Burisma paid $5 million bribes each to Hunter and Joe Biden.

On Dec. 11, 2020, The New York Times ran an article titled, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden.” As I previously detailed, the Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” and sought to paint the “then-U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Scott Brady, whom Barr had tasked with screening any new material related to Ukraine,” as a partisan hack out to get the Bidens. The article falsely represented Brady as pushing the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office to investigate the Bidens based on material provided by Rudy Giuliani. 

However, as a whistleblower would later confide in Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office had sought the investigation not of Giuliani material, but of separate intel provided by a longtime and “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) on which agents briefed the Delaware office.

As Grassley explained in a July 2023 letter to Weiss, “[O]n October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD-1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden.” 

Grassley would later release a minimally redacted copy of the FD-1023, which confirmed the information provided to the Delaware office came not from Giuliani, but from the CHS. 

An individual familiar with that Oct. 23 meeting previously confirmed to The Federalist that Weiss was not present for it. That detail gained new significance last week when FOIA documents, obtained by the Heritage Foundation following its lawsuit against the DOJ, revealed that one of Weiss’s top assistant U.S. attorneys forwarded him the Times article portraying the Pittsburgh evidence as originating from Giuliani. 

With the Times piece purportedly sourced to “five current and former law enforcement officials and others with knowledge of F.B.I. interactions with the Justice Department,” unless someone told Weiss about the FD-1023 or its contents, Weiss would have had no basis to know the Pittsburgh office had given the Delaware office independent evidence of Biden family corruption. And this was evidence that had already been partially corroborated, as the Pennsylvania-based agents detailed in the briefing on Oct. 23, 2020. 

So the key question, as Grassley asked Weiss, is when did he first learn of the FD-1023? 

Weiss has yet to answer that question. But IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley’s testimony and supplemental affidavit suggest Wolf and the Baltimore agents briefed by Pittsburgh about the FD-1023 buried that evidence. 

During Shapley’s testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS special agent made no mention of the FD-1023. Later, though, after former Attorney General William Barr confirmed to The Federalist that the FD-1023 had been sent to Delaware for further investigation, Shapley submitted a supplemental affidavit.

In it, Shapley said no one provided him, the line IRS agents acting under his supervision, or the FBI agents working with the IRS the FD-1023 or any of the details included in the FD-1023. Shapley further stated that he and other IRS investigators had requested to be included in the briefing from the Pittsburgh office but their requests were denied. 

One tidbit from Shapley’s testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee further suggests Wolf and whoever else from the FBI Baltimore field office attended the October briefing buried the FD-1023. 

In discussing a Dec. 3, 2020, meeting of the Delaware prosecution team — a meeting Weiss was in and out of — Shapley noted his team wanted to interview one of Hunter Biden’s associates to ask him, among other things, what “Ten held by H for the big guy” referenced. 

“But AUSA Wolf interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy,” Shapley explained. Then when, as the IRS whistleblower put it, “multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask,” Wolf responded, “there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning.” 

While “multiple people in the room” allegedly objected to Wolf’s limits on questioning, none of them apparently challenged Wolf’s claim that there was “no specific criminality.” Nor did anyone present raise the FD-1023 or the CHS. 

Surely, they would have, though — if they knew about its existence. 

This again raises the question: Who knew of the FD-1023, and when did Weiss learn of its existence?

From Grassley’s whistleblower, it appears Wolf included at least two Baltimore field office agents in the brief. However, from Shapley’s testimony, it appears the Baltimore field agents Wolf allowed to participate in the briefing were not the ones working Hunter’s case — which makes no sense. 

That is, unless you are trying to bury the evidence.

FBI & DOJ Officials Colluded With NYT to Launder False Information to David Weiss

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

In yet another example of how corrupt the FBI is, an exclusive report from Margot Cleveland over at The Federalist has exposed how the bureau laundered lies about Biden family corruption directly to David Weiss' office. 

The revelation comes from emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request. The contents contain proof that the FBI fed lies about the origins of the now infamous FD-1023 form implicating the Biden family in a bribery scheme to The New York Times. The FBI Office of Public Affairs National Press Office then forwarded the Times' false reporting to various officials surrounding Weiss, who then passed it on directly on to him.

“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.

The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.

The Times story, which was published in December 2020, alleged that Rudy Giuliani was the source of the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden. In reality, a confidential human source had provided the sourcing for an FD-1023 with no involvement from Giuliani. 

Further, one of the officials who forwarded the false reporting to Weiss was Delaware U.S. Assistant Attorney Lesley Wolf. What makes that so damning is that Wolf was present for the original briefing on the FD-1023 form. In other words, she knew the Times report about its origins was not true, yet she sent the article to Weiss anyway. 

A source familiar with the Pittsburgh brief of the Delaware office confirmed to The Federalist that in addition to agents from the Pittsburgh and Baltimore FBI field offices, Lesley Wolf attended the briefing on the FD-1023 and was informed of those details. Weiss, however, was not present for the briefing. Nor, as we previously learned, were the IRS agents-turned-whistleblowers included in the briefing. 

The Federalist has also learned from a source with knowledge of the matter that the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office kept the Hunter Biden laptop secret from the Pennsylvania-based U.S. attorney’s office, which surely limited the investigators’ ability to assess the credibility of the evidence it was screening for disinformation.

Nonetheless, through its independent investigation of the CHS’s reporting, Pittsburgh corroborated several details of the FD-1023 and briefed Wolf on those details, telling her they believed the CHS’s information warranted further investigation.

Wolf would then go on to spearhead an attempt to give Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal that included broad immunity, possibly in an attempt to protect the president and his son from any more questions surrounding the FD-1023. 

Putting this all together, it appears that facets of the FBI and the DOJ were very keen on burying anything to do with the FD-1023, up to and including spreading falsehoods to the Times about it so those falsehoods could then be sent inconspicuously to Weiss. As Cleveland asks in her piece, what did Weiss know and when? I'm also especially interested in finding out more about Wolf's involvement, given she keeps finding herself at the center of this scandal. We need those answers to gauge her involvement in what appears to be a massive cover-up with the direct intent to protect the Biden family.

Oversight Committee Demands Unredacted File On Bidens’ ‘Foreign Business Dealings’ From NARA

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist 

Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is probing an instance of apparent “collusion” between then-Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden, to “spin media stories about Burisma’s corruption while Vice President Biden was publicly pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.”

In a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on Wednesday, Comer demanded the agency disclose documents related to the family’s influence-peddling schemes to Congress. NARA has publicly released a file titled “Records on Hunter Biden, James Biden, and Their Foreign Business Dealings,” but has redacted or “withheld” sections of the records, Comer noted. The Oversight Committee is seeking the complete, unredacted file, and Comer highlighted in his letter one of the specific portions that warrant further investigation.

“For example, on December 4, 2015, at 10:45 a.m. — in an email with the subject of ‘Quotes’ — Eric Schwerin (a longtime Biden family business associate) wrote to Kate Bedingfield in the Office of the Vice President providing quotes the White House should use in response to media outreach regarding Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company,” Comer wrote. “Later that day — at 2:30 p.m. — Ms. Bedingfield responded to Mr. Schwerin saying ‘VP signed off on this[.]’ The timing of this email traffic is concerning to the Committee.”

During that time, Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma raking in upwards of $83,000 a month despite having no prior experience in the industry. The payout was far beyond comparable board compensation.

Comer also cited former family business partner Devon Archer’s July testimony to the Oversight Committee suggesting President Biden himself was closely involved in Hunter Biden’s Burisma schemes.

“According to Devon Archer (another longtime Biden family business associate), after a Burisma board of directors meeting in Dubai — on the evening of December 4, 2015 (midday in Washington, D.C.) — Hunter Biden ‘called D.C.’ to discuss pressure that Burisma asked him to relieve,” Comer wrote.

Contrary to President Biden’s repeated denials of being involved, the president allegedly interacted with his son’s corporate clients more than 200 times.

“Joe Biden never built an ‘absolute wall’ between his family’s business dealings and his official government work — his office doors were wide open to Hunter Biden’s associates,” Comer said in a statement.

“Suspiciously, Hunter Biden’s associate had a media statement on Burisma approved by Vice President Biden himself the same day Hunter Biden ‘called D.C.’ for help with the government pressure facing Burisma,” he added.

Comer’s demand follows his request last week for flight logs showing when Hunter Biden and associates such as Schwerin, Archer, or Jeffrey Cooper used the vice presidential aircraft. And last month, Comer sought records “in which then-Vice President Joe Biden used a pseudonym” or on which “Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer is copied.”

In July, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled he would push for an impeachment inquiry if the information Republicans are seeking in their probe of the Biden family business is withheld.

“What I’ve said is, if they withhold information, the impeachment inquiry allows Congress to have the apex of power to get all the information they need. All this information people are finding out now is only because Republicans have investigated,” McCarthy said.

Since then, he’s reportedly been discussing plans for impeachment behind closed doors.

2023-9-6 JC Letter to NARA ... by The Federalist