Thursday, October 26, 2023
DOJ Should Investigate Its Own Russia-Collusion Hoax Leaks, Not the Hill Staff Who Caught Them
Instead of fixing its own leaks, the DOJ turned its investigative powers on the staff of Congress members probing the Russia-collusion scam.
Throughout the 2016 campaign and the Trump presidency, leaks cascaded out of the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) straight to The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and other left-wing organizations. Anonymous officials at these and other federal agencies ran an information operation to falsely accuse President Donald Trump of having stolen the 2016 election by treasonously colluding with Russia.
These leaks included sharing with Jake Tapper that discredited former FBI head James Comey briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump of false allegations, the criminal sharing with David Ignatius of a phone call Michael Flynn shared with his Russian counterpart to falsely portray him as a traitor, and hundreds if not thousands of other leaks to paint the false picture.
But instead of investigating any of those leaks, including the criminal leaks, the DOJ turned its investigative powers on the staff of Congress members looking into the Russia-collusion scam.
This week, the nonpartisan whistleblower organization Empower Oversight revealed that the DOJ targeted and surveilled Jason Foster, a Senate staffer heading the investigation into the Russia-collusion hoax, and other congressional staffers. The DOJ’s website suggests that subpoenas of Foster and other staffers’ personal information were “in connection with recent investigations of alleged unauthorized disclosures of information to the media.”
But the DOJ and FBI’s own staff are the most probable leakers. If “the personal phone and email records of every Executive Branch official who had access to the same information” were not also subpoenaed by the DOJ, “the entire exercise looks more like a pretext to gather intelligence on those conducting oversight of the Department rather than a legitimate classified leak inquiry,” Empower explained.
Foster, who is Empower’s founder, learned that in September 2017 the DOJ subpoenaed records from a Google Voice telephone number that connected to his family’s telephones. At the time, Foster was Chief Investigative Counsel to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, and he was investigating the FBI’s role in furthering the debunked Russia-collusion hoax.
Google provided Foster with a copy of the subpoena which also included the request for records from separate, redacted Google accounts. Empower Oversight says it has “information indicating that the other accounts listed in the subpoena belonged to other staffers, both Republicans and Democrats, for U.S. House and Senate committees also engaged in oversight investigations of the Justice Department at the time pursuant to their authorities under the U.S. Constitution.”
“For each of the listed telephone and email accounts, the subpoena compelled Google to release customer or subscriber information, as well as subscribers’ names, addresses, local and long distance telephone connection records, text message logs, records of session times and durations, length of service and types of service utilized for the period from December 1, 2016 to May 1, 2017,” Empower recounted in its FOIA request.
Both congressional Republicans and Democrats have called for investigations into the DOJ subpoenaing personal information on them, their staff, and even their families. For example, Empower notes that the number the DOJ subpoenaed for Foster was actually used by his wife, “who never communicated with the media on that phone number or any other.” The DOJ even sent a subpoena to Apple for the “communications data” of a child.
“There appears to have been an extensive and far-reaching effort to use grand jury subpoenas and perhaps other means to gather the personal communications records of innocent congressional staffers and their families with little or no legitimate predicate,” Empower stated in its FOIA request.
The watchdog is asking for “all documents or communications” related to the subpoena of Foster’s and other congressional staffers’ information, as well as “all [of the] grand jury subpoenas” in the case themselves.
Empower is also seeking “all communications exchanged between members of the press” and several senior officials within the DOJ between Dec. 1, 2016, and Sept. 26, 2017 “regarding communications between Michael Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, Carter Page, Joe Pientka, Bill Priestap, congressional oversight requests, Senator Charles Grassley, Jason Foster, and/or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Foster told The Federalist that each of these top officials, including Rod Rosenstein, Robert Hur, Edward O’Callaghan, Sarah Isgur, and Jessie Liu, would have had a role in approving or overseeing the subpoena on congressional staffers.
Lastly, Empower requested “All communications exchanged between the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the National Security Division, the Deputy Attorney General’s Office and/or the FBI and Verizon” since March 15, 2016 “regarding obtaining communications data associated with devices that Verizon serviced for U.S. House Representatives or U.S. Senate.”
Foster explained that Empower singled out Verizon because all government-provided work phones on Capitol Hill use that provider.
The Justice Department claims to be “reviewing the DOJ’s use of subpoenas and other legal authorities to obtain communication records of Members of Congress and affiliated persons, and the news media in connection with recent investigations of alleged unauthorized disclosures of information to the media.”
“The subpoena for Mr. Foster’s records raises the same concerns as that of his other Democrat and Republican colleagues working for Congress at the time,” wrote Empower in its FOIA request. “It begs the question of whether DOJ was equally zealous in seeking the communication records of its own employees with access to any leaked information.”
The White House Has Become an Adult Daycare Center
With well over a thousand people having been slaughtered in Israel on October 7th and hundreds still being held hostage, Joe Biden's staffers and supporters are focusing on the real victims: The Muslim community.
Sure, you may have thought that the people mowed down at a music festival by hang-gliding terrorists or the babies who were burned alive alongside their parents were the story. You'd be wrong, though, because those atrocities simply can't match up to the nebulous scourge that is "Islamophobia."
According to a new report, those working inside and outside the White House are upset that Biden isn't showing them their required level of deference.
Hours before President Joe Biden gave a rare primetime address last week, his head speechwriter sat down with a group of senior Arab and Muslim-American officials to go over the draft and take suggestions.
Dissent was sprouting even inside the White House, where some aides worried that Biden hadn’t shown enough empathy for Palestinian civilians and a Muslim community facing a torrent of anger, said a person familiar with the discussions who, like others, requested anonymity to talk freely.
The hour-long editing session reflects a vigorous outreach effort the White House is undertaking to reassure Arab-Americans who feel they’re being scapegoated for the atrocities that Hamas has committed a half-world away.
Yes, the President of the United States let "Muslim-American officials" edit his speech to ensure it wasn't too focused on those massacred by Hamas. You see, an equivalency must always be drawn. Sure, murdering Jews in cold blood for being Jews is terrible, but is it really any worse than claims of rising Islamophobia?
In his West Wing office, speechwriter Vinay Reddy read aloud from the draft to make certain his Arab-American colleagues were comfortable with language denouncing “Islamophobia” and name-checking the Arab, Muslim and Palestinian populations that felt vulnerable, according to a White House official. The group listened and approved.
The Biden administration has become an adult daycare where supposedly "marginalized" people get listening sessions and special concessions regardless of how personally oppressed they actually are. That leads to the absurdity of Israel, a country that just suffered the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, being pushed down the ladder in favor of more preferred groups.
We had great concerns with what we saw at the beginning” of the war, said Hanna Hanania, former president of the Detroit-based American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, who voted for Biden in 2020. “We thought the messages were as if we were totally left out. The messages were going totally for the other side, as if we never existed.”
What I'm about to say is going to sound harsh, but that's not my intention. I understand that there are Palestinians in Gaza who have died needlessly due to what their leadership has brought upon them. With that said, when analyzing any war, you have to do so from a realistic footing, and it is simply ridiculous for Palestinians (and Muslims in general) in America to complain about being "totally left out" regarding messages of sympathy when it was Palestinians who marched across the Israeli border and butchered 1,400 people.
Even putting that aside and only focusing on what's happening in the United States, antisemitic attacks far outstrip attacks on Muslims motivated by bigotry. In 2021, for example, the FBI recorded five times as many anti-Jewish hate crimes compared to anti-Muslim hate crimes. To the extent that Islamophobia exists, it is nowhere near the threat of antisemitism. In fact, it barely outstrips anti-Catholic hate crimes (9.6 percent vs. 6.1 percent).
It is pathetic that the Biden administration has bought into this idea that there's any equivalence between what happened on October 7th and what happened afterward in pursuit of Hamas. A real president would tell his staffers to grow up or get out because the federal government shouldn't exist to pamper the wants of irrationally fragile people.
Gaetz Details Backroom Machiavelli Tactics by McCarthy During House GOP Conference
This is deep weeds inside baseball, but boy howdy does it tell a story. Representative Matt Gaetz (MAGA, FL) goes through the details of yesterday’s House republican conference assembly as they select a Speaker nominee.
What Gaetz reveals in detail is how Kevin McCarthy has been working the conference to undermine any other Speaker candidate so that McCarthy would be renominated as the only possible alternative. The insight and details are really interesting. This is a must watch.
Neocons Fear Speaker Mike Johnson Could Bring an End to Ukraine War Cash
The recent election of Mike Johnson as speaker of the House has struck terror in the heart of the uniparty, with neoconservatives and Democrats fearing that their reckless Ukraine spending may finally be put to an end.
President Biden is currently exploiting the conflict in Israel and Palestine to secure more funding for Ukraine in a joint package for Israel and Ukraine aid. However, only a small portion of the $100 billion the president is requesting would go to Israel, with the majority — $61.4 billion — going to Ukraine.
With Johnson now speaker and leading the House, Biden’s Ukraine funding request is in a precarious situation. Johnson voted for the initial Ukraine spending bill In April 2022 but has taken a dramatic turn since then, opposing all new Ukraine funding requests and demanding transparency from Ukraine on its use of American tax dollars.
Back in February, Johnson wrote on X: “American taxpayers have sent over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine in the last year. They deserve to know if the Ukrainian government is being entirely forthcoming and transparent about the use of this massive sum of taxpayer resources.”
Likewise, in May 2022, Johnson expressed America First sentiments, saying, “We should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.”
“Republicans for Ukraine,” a nonprofit that believes “the Republican Party must continue to support Ukraine,” has given Johnson an “F” on his support for the war.
Meanwhile, neocon Republican turned Democrat grifter Bill Kristol fretted on X before the speaker vote, writing, “If Mike Johnson wins, and unless he’s made private commitments for a floor vote on Ukraine and funding government: Gaetz wins, MAGA wins, and Trump wins, and institutionalist, responsible, moderate Republicans lose, once again having pitifully folded when the crunch came.”
Ending funding to Ukraine means that President Volodymyr Zelensky will finally be forced to negotiate a peace deal with President Vladimir Putin. From the onset of the war, there has been no end strategy presented by Ukraine or the American Uniparty other than the “total defeat” of Russia. If there is a plan, no one has cued in the American taxpayers who are bankrolling the war effort.
Like with Iraq and Afghanistan, the Uniparty leaders in support of fueling conflict in Ukraine do not have a strategy, arguably because they do not want the war to end. As Federalist Senior Contributor Jonathan S. Tobin wrote, “The continuation of the current stalemate as the death tolls rise benefits only the political interests of Zelensky, Putin, and those who profit from the war.”
Meanwhile, Americans have been suffering under a potentially compromised executive branch, an inflationary economy, and an open border crisis. Perhaps Johnson’s election represents a turning point for Congress, and the issues impacting American day-to-day life will finally be a priority.
Hillary Clinton Gets into a Crazy Shouting Match with a Heckler as the Left Continues to Eat Its Own
Following her two presidential losses, Hillary Clinton has settled right back into the grift of making lots of money speaking at various left-wing conferences. Those are typically friendly affairs, but she ended up with more than she bargained for on Tuesday.
While speaking at the "Institute of Global Affairs," which is located at Columbia University in New York, Clinton was faced with a relentless heckler.
As hecklers go, this was one of the worst I've seen in a political context. Usually, within a minute or so, they run out of juice or are physically removed. Instead, this guy just kept going, and in return, Clinton engaged in a shouting match with him.
HECKLER: Can you please make a statement about President Joe Biden’s speech? This is a clearly warmongering speech! President Joe Biden is calling for $100 billion of funding for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, and we’re supposed to just bundle these together and pretend like we’re going to rush to World War III, and we’re all just gonna let Hillary Rodham Clinton sit here and, okay, yes...
CLINTON: I'm, this is not the way to have a conversation, if you want to have a conversation, you're welcome to come talk to me afterward.
HECKLER: You can sit here, okay, right, you're gonna wait for me right?
CLINTON: I will wait for you, and I will listen to you, and I will respond to you
HECKLER: I do not believe you. Respsectively, I do not believe you, and the fact of the matter is that the American people's voice needs to be heard.
That's just a preview because it gets way crazier from there. For another two solid minutes, they shout back and forth at each other, with the protester bringing up Eleanor Roosevelt at one point (a clear piece of evidence that he's protesting from the left). Eventually, another person on the stage starts lecturing about those on the stage risking their "lives" and "careers" to defend human rights.
SPEAKER: Every person on this stage has risked their life, their income, their reputation, their careers, and what have you done other than talk about (inaudible)...I will put my record, and these women's records, and Frank's record any day of the week.
I'm not sure who the other people on the stage are, but I can say with confidence that at least one person on the stage hasn't done any of that. That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose most harrowing tale of danger turned out to be completely false. Namely, her claim that she once dodged sniper fire while boarding a helicopter overseas.
Further, her pursuit of "human rights" has done nothing but make her fabulously wealthy as she's showered with money to destroy countries like Haiti and Libya. Given that, the self-righteousness being shown is just a bit much.
Is it possible to be on no one's side here? Obviously, the heckler's understanding of foreign policy is extremely limited and simplistic. With that said, of all the people credible enough to lecture others on human rights, Clinton isn't one of them. This is a person who turned Libya into a modern slave state and helped usher in over half a million deaths in Syria in order to build a resume for her final, failed presidential run. So yeah, I won't be taking my cues on human rights from Hillary Clinton.
WATCH: Josh Hawley's Scathing Exchange with This Smug HHS Official Will Make Your Day
There were fireworks aplenty at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when Josh Hawley (R-MO) challenged Robin Dunn Marcos, director of HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement, over her testimony on the subject of child trafficking amongst migrant children.
The topic of the hearing was: "Ensuring the Safety and Well-Being of Unaccompanied Children." Marcos, who hit the headlines earlier this year when she admitted to the House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs that her department had lost contact with over 85,000 unaccompanied minors, failed to impress Hawley with her statement and seeming lack of accountability.
The heated exchange began when Hawley questioned Marcos over her department's practice of providing a "Know Your Rights" presentation to every migrant child. The senator wanted to know if that presentation took place "before or after" HHS "released them to labor traffickers." Marcos stammered out an answer, but Hawley quickly cut in to question if she had read a series of New York Times articles that documented the dire fates of many of those 85,000 children who have been released by HHS into uncertain situations.
The New York Times, in a rare act of journalism, has revealed what awaits many of these youngsters when they are released from HHS custody. Hawley, in referring to the articles, alleges the minor children are reduced to scrubbing dishes, operating heavy machinery, delivering meals, harvesting coffee, working construction, working as housekeepers, and working overnight shifts at plants. He concluded, "They are not paid, they are not going to school, they are not cared for, they are not given meals ... almost all illegally."
Marcos acknowledged she had read the articles, but failed to take any accountability when she launched into what looked like an ask for more money. Hawley was having none of that, cutting in again to make this withering reply:
"Respectfully, I would like you to do your job and not release children to human traffickers. Respectfully, that is what I would like. I would like you not to facilitate the largest child trafficking ring in the history of America."
It's worth a watch:
Hawley has been one of the Republican Party's most vocal critics of the Biden administration over its failed border policies. Of late, he has been hammering DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his agency's lax enforcement rules at the southern border, particularly in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Hawley wrote to Mayorkas, "I write with alarm regarding the uptick in potential terrorist-linked illegal aliens encountered at the southern border. This development follows the barbaric attack perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on innocent American and Israeli civilians."
The list of issues grows by the day due to Biden's failure to secure the border, with unknown numbers of illegals flooding communities across the country with little-to-no follow-up from the government. Many of these illegals are young children who are brought across the border by mules, who then abandon them to whatever awaits them. As Josh Hawley points out, what awaits them is often a cruel existence.
On Israel, Biden Picks Up Where Obama Left Off
The former president forever changed the trajectory of the Democratic Party.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken contends that Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”
You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.
The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.
The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.
It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.
Yet, only days after the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Biden was already lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu on how “democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.” The insinuation, again, is that there is something nefarious about winning a war against those who massacre your citizens.
Israel doesn’t target civilians, as Blinken, busy placating the progressives who now infest Washington and academia, knows well. Many Israeli soldiers have died because the nation avoids civilian casualties – even as Hamas diligently places their weapons and themselves behind women and children.
Then again, the idea Hamas’s greatest victory would be Israelis exacting revenge is itself the kind of self-satisfying gibberish that might impress a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival or readers of Tom Friedman columns.
Hamas’ greatest victory is killing and terrorizing as many Jews as possible. We know this because Islamists tell us this all the time. Why is this confusing? “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad” are the words literally written into the group’s charter.
And Hamas is quite popular in both Gaza and the West Bank. Islamic fundamentalism is popular.
“Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people,” Joe Biden said the other day. This is the “religion of peace” canard, begun by George W. Bush and widely promulgated by Obama all over again.
When our former president declared that the “future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he wasn’t joking. Every time Islamists committed acts of terror, the Obama administration would turn the conversation towards “Islamophobia,” a neologism that conflates tolerance of individuals and groups (Muslims) with tolerance of a belief system (Islam).
This rhetoric is not only meant to cloud reality but to chill speech and create immunity for the many progressive “anti-Zionists” on the left.
The modern Democrats have taken up this dishonest framing with gusto. When a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week if the president was concerned about rising anti-Semitism — you know, because of the Jew-hating protests that have broken out across the country — she responded by saying there were no “credible threats” and then pivoted the claims that “Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”
She did this twice. Not only is it a gross deflection, it is a lie. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews represent over 50 percent of all religion-related hate crimes, while hate crimes against Muslims are under 10 percent.
But Obama’s most corrosive legacy is foreign policy. Democrats have become obsessed with turning Iran into a regional counterweight to Israel while also restarting a “peace process” that would surely create a Muslim Brotherhood-led terror state on Israel’s borders.
Before Israel could even identify all the bodies of their citizens, Biden was already yammering on about the “dignity” and “self-determination” in places where “self-determination” manifested in the creation of a Jihadist terror state.
Donald Trump nixed this strategy, punishing Iran and circumventing Hamas/PLO in peace negotiations with Gulf states. That success was shattered when the Obama retreads entered the White House again and began opening up billions to Iran and sending Hamas and Fatah hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.
“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”
Definitely.
Even now, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in the killing of not only 1,300 Jews, 30 of them Americans, the administration does everything it can to deny Iran provided logistical and financial help that killed 30 Americans.
Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.
Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.
When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.
And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs.
DOJ Subpoenaed Phone and Email Logs of Hill Staffers Probing Crossfire Hurricane Malfeasance
The executive branch’s targeting of staffers assisting with congressional oversight represents a dangerous intrusion into the legislative branch’s functioning.
While House and Senate oversight committees were investigating the Department of Justice and the FBI for their role in the Russia-collusion hoax, the DOJ subpoenaed the private phone and email logs of multiple congressional staffers, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed Tuesday reveals. The executive branch’s targeting of staffers assisting with congressional oversight of the DOJ and FBI represents a dangerous intrusion into the legislative branch’s functioning — and one that demands answers and an accounting.
On Tuesday, the Virginia-based whistleblower firm Empower Oversight dispatched a letter to the attorney general and a slew of other DOJ officials, including the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. That letter detailed how the organization’s founder, Jason Foster, learned last week from a notice provided by Google that the DOJ had subpoenaed records of his Google Voice telephone number. The subpoena issued to Google required the tech giant to provide all telephone connection records and text message logs for Foster’s private Google account from Dec. 1, 2016, to May 1, 2017.
At that time, as the Empower Oversight letter explained, Foster served as the chief investigative counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley. In that role, he directed congressional oversight into misconduct at the Justice Department. The DOJ likewise subpoenaed other House and Senate staffers working with oversight committees — both Republicans and Democrats — according to Empower Oversight.
The Federalist has independently confirmed that at least one staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) received the same notice from Google of the subpoena, which was issued by a D.C. grand jury on Sept. 12, 2017.
That date proves significant because former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had reportedly threatened to subpoena the personal records of HPSCI staffers during a heated January 2018 closed-door meeting concerning oversight requests served on the DOJ. But based on the Google notice sent out last week to the subpoenas’ targets, the DOJ had already executed that threat.
The Empower Oversight letter takes to task the DOJ for undertaking what appears to be “an extensive and far-reaching effort to use grand jury subpoenas and perhaps other means to gather the personal communications records of innocent congressional staffers and their families with little or no legitimate predicate.” Here, Empower Oversight highlighted the substantial constitutional issues raised by the DOJ’s subpoenas, which targeted not merely a separate branch of government but also attorneys providing legal advice regarding congressional oversight of the very DOJ that subpoenaed the records.
Clearly foreseeing the excuse the DOJ will likely give for subpoenaing the staffers’ personal records — namely the need to uncover the individual who leaked classified information to the press — the Empower Oversight letter also launched a preemptive strike to that rationale, writing:
If the only reason the Justice Department targeted the communications of these congressional attorneys was their access to classified information that was later published by the media, it raises the question of whether the Department also subpoenaed the personal phone and email records of every Executive Branch official who had access to the same information. If not, then the entire exercise looks more like a pretext to gather intelligence on those conducting oversight of the Department rather than a legitimate classified leak inquiry.
To obtain answers to these questions, the Empower Oversight letter ended with a FOIA request for all grand-jury subpoenas issued related to the same investigation that resulted in the targeting of Foster and other legislative staffers, as well as any grand-jury subpoenas issued for Rosenstein and other DOJ officials. Empower Oversight also requested copies of communications between the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office and Rosenstein’s office discussing the possibility of subpoenaing communications data from Verizon for official House and Senate cell phones. Additionally, the FOIA request sought communications between members of the press and Rosenstein and other DOJ officials concerning a variety of people and topics, including Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Joe Pientka, Bill Priestap, Grassley, Foster, congressional oversight requests, and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
While these FOIA requests may uncover a few details, the federal government rarely complies with its statutory requirements without judicial intervention and, even then, often succeeds in secreting information from the public by relying on broadly worded FOIA exemptions. The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, however, aren’t hampered by the limitations of FOIA, and given that the DOJ targeted House staffers as well as Senate staffers, the majority-controlled House should seek the same documents directly from the DOJ.
For that matter, so should the Democrat-controlled Senate, as the executive branch’s offense was to the legislative branch as a whole, not just to Republicans.
CDC Confirms Only 3% of Eligible Americans Have Taken COVID Booster Shot
Sheesh, talk about the timing of two different articles. Politico reported yesterday that CDC officials admit only 3% of eligible Americans have chosen to get the latest COVID-19 booster shot, although there could be some delay in reporting.
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration’s campaign to convince Americans to get an annual Covid shot is off to a very slow start. Even so, the nation’s top disease-fighting official says the U.S. remains “on track” to hit last year’s uptake levels, which crested at just 17 percent of the U.S. population. (more)
Today, the FDA announces when COVID booster is combined with Flu shot, there is a slight elevated risk of blood clots causing stroke in people over the age 85.
CNN – Vaccines for Covid-19 and influenza may slightly increase the risk of strokes caused by blood clots in the brains of seniors, particularly when the two vaccines are given at the same time and when they are given to adults who are age 85 and older, according to a new study.
The safety signal was detected by experts at the US Food and Drug Administration who analyzed data from Medicare claims.
It is the second study to find an elevated risk of stroke for seniors after Covid-19 and flu vaccinations given together. The US Centers for Disease Control and FDA issued a public communication in January explaining that one of their near real-time vaccine safety monitoring studies—called the Vaccine Safety Datalink–had picked up a small and uncertain risk of stroke for older adults who received a dose of Pfizer’s bivalent Covid-19 vaccine and a high-dose or adjuvanted flu shot on the same day. That study triggered the FDA’s broader look at strokes after vaccination noted in the medical records of seniors on Medicare. (read more)
Meanwhile, trust in U.S. government institutions is at an all-time low.
PEW RESEARCH – Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to near record lows following a modest uptick in 2020 and 2021. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. Last year, 20% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time. (read more)
Gee, ya think?
None of this is related folks…. It’s all just disconnected. Swear!
Meanwhile, Suspicious Cat remains, well,… increasingly suspicious.
