Trump Lawfare: The Next Stage Begins

posted by Byron York at Townhall 

Donald Trump was first indicted nearly a year ago, on April 4, 2023, when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced charges against the former president over a nondisclosure agreement Trump used to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels, with whom he had apparently had a brief sexual encounter. Bragg, an elected Democrat, won office by promising to go after Trump, and go after Trump he did.

Resurrecting an allegation that more responsible law enforcement agencies had declined to prosecute, Bragg came up with 34 felony counts against Trump, each of which carried a maximum sentence of four years in prison, which theoretically would result in 134 years behind bars for the former president. On Monday, Judge Juan Merchan announced that the trial will begin April 15.

The indictment was weak in a variety of ways. First, the main charge, that Trump falsified business records in 2016, was a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations. Even if Bragg could somehow jack the charges into a felony, which carries a five-year statute of limitations, the time in which Trump could be charged had passed.

But wait -- during the pandemic, when courts virtually shut down, New York, in a one-time-only move, extended its statute of limitations to six years, which allowed Bragg to get the Trump charges in right under the wire.

But only if he could charge Trump with a felony. So Bragg contended that Trump committed the misdemeanor of falsifying records in the act of committing another crime, which elevated the falsification charge to a felony. The problem was, Bragg has never clearly said what the other crime was. He appears to be relying on a dubious theory that Trump violated federal election law -- a theory that didn't work when the feds used it against John Edwards -- which Bragg, as a local prosecutor, does not have the authority to enforce.

Those are the legal defects of the case. Then there is its political import, which is heading into a new phase.

Before April 4, 2023, nobody knew how being indicted might affect Trump's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Back then, Trump led GOP challenger Ron DeSantis by around 15 points. After Bragg's indictment, Trump's support shot up and DeSantis' support trended downward. A 15-point lead became a 30-point lead.

Subsequent indictments have either further increased Trump's support among Republican primary voters or had no effect at all. Those voters have processed the whole indictment issue, and many have come to the conclusion that the charges are politically motivated attacks by elected Democrats, like Bragg or Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, or by the special counsel chosen by the Biden administration, Jack Smith.

In all, Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee, is in a stronger place politically than he was before he was first indicted. As he said in an interview recently, "Who would have thought that?"

Now the indictments, or at least one indictment, will turn into a trial. A deep-blue Manhattan jury is likely to convict Trump on at least some of the charges. What might happen then?

That is the prospect that raises Democratic hopes, at least for now. They have seen a number of polls that show some portion of voters who are now open to voting for Trump say that they would not vote for him if he were a convicted felon.

From a campaign standpoint, that is the great promise of the Bragg indictment. It can turn Trump into a convicted felon before the election, even as the other criminal cases against Trump sputter with delay after delay. Bragg, some Democrats believe, could have the power to turn voters in Biden's direction.

Or perhaps not. There is another Trump conviction political scenario. Back when Bragg indicted the former president, some Democrats were uncomfortable with the fact that the first of several anticipated indictments against Trump was also the weakest case. Democrats know as well as anyone else that Bragg's case is a bad one, and some worried that by going first, the weakest case would cause some voters to dismiss all the Trump prosecutions as weak and politically motivated.

Now, what if the effect of a conviction in the Bragg case is to diminish the prosecution, and not the defendant? And then, by extension, to diminish all of the prosecutions against Trump? Not in the eyes of the Democratic base or many in the media, of course -- nothing would diminish their opposition to Trump -- but in the eyes of voters who might seriously be considering voting for Trump as the better of the binary choice with Biden.

I am not saying that will happen. But I am saying that so far, the Democratic lawfare campaign against Trump has had some unintended consequences, and there is no reason to believe that, once a trial begins, everything will finally start going according to the Democratic plan. There could be more surprises to come.

X22, And we Know, and more- March 27

 

Two-Front Disaster

Because of the grievances and hubris of the neoconservatives, we have voluntarily undertaken a 

two-front war against both Islamic extremists 

and Russia, with a predictable lack of success.

by Christopher Roach for American Greatness

Most observers who study the world wars conclude that having to fight a two-front war significantly impaired the Germans. These circumstances permitted the allies alternately to concentrate forces and conduct attacks on one front or the other, forcing the Germans to shift their focus and reserves between the fronts on a timescale not of their choosing.

This is why I was puzzled and then disappointed by the treatment of Russia after the 9/11 attacks. Even though the Cold War had ended, a lingering mistrust characterized the Russia-US relationship, particularly after the 1999 Kosovo War. When Putin emerged, he made various gestures of rapprochement to the West, including, as he told it, reaching out to see if Russia could become a NATO member. But he was repeatedly rebuffed.

After the 9/11 attacks, Russia expressed not only its condolences but also offered its assistance, opened its air corridors to transport supplies, and requested that former Soviet republics in Central Asia permit the American military to use their airfields. Putin and George W. Bush also got along well personally, with Bush controversially saying he had a sense of Putin’s “soul.”

While those conciliatory moves were underway, officials within the United States continued to speak with a forked tongue. Fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan and other jihadis in Iraq, the State Department was still very critical of Russia’s ongoing fights with its own jihadis in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. In 2000, the second Chechen War began, this time with a large number of foreign jihadis among the nationalist Chechen ranks. Atrocities against Russians, including the beheading of a border guard unit, galvanized Russian public opinion.

Later attacks on civilians, including the Nord Ost theater attack in 2002 and the Beslan School massacre in 2004, demonstrated that militant Islamic terrorism was not just a problem for the United States or the Middle East but truly a worldwide problem. While the sympathies of the American people for Russia were very high after each of these incidents, the United States government continued, as a practical matter, to oppose both the Russian state and Islamic extremists. In other words, we voluntarily chose to fight a two-front war.

This is the reason the United States’ criticism of anti-Russian jihadis has always been muted. Instead of recognizing an opportunity for the West and the Orthodox World to unite against a common enemy, instead we pushed the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems into Eastern Europe, interfered with the internal affairs of Russia and its neighbors in the name of democracy, and made common cause with jihadis in our extensive, public criticism of Russian tactics in Chechnya and the Caucuses.

We later assisted jihadis in Syria when Russia came to the rescue of its ally. There is substantial evidence that different parts of the American government simultaneously funded jihadist rebels, including al Nusra and ISIS, while other branches of the government funded their opponents in the so-called Free Syrian Army.

In spite of all this history, Russia continued to share intelligence about Islamic terrorists with the United States, including passing along warnings about the Tsarnaev brothers, who would eventually perpetrate the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013

This unfortunate history should not be forgotten when trying to understand the recent attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow. The attack is horrible. The images of the people out shopping and being trapped in a theater are reminiscent of the Bataclan Massacre in 2015. In the latest, ISIS claimed responsibility, and the perpetrators so far appear to be from Tajikistan. The raw video of the attacks—widely available because of smart phones—highlighted the callousness and violence of the event. As of this writing, at least 130 are confirmed dead.

At this early stage, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Never deterred, a lot of foolish people have already announced, with no evidence, that this had to be a false flag orchestrated by Putin to garner sympathy for Russia. Others say it had to be CIA or Mossad. Many authorities, including the United States, have said it was ISIS without qualification. Finally, protests that the United States does not approve any Ukrainian attacks on civilians in Russia suggest maybe our client state is trying to force our hand, as well as the world’s, and somehow had a role in this attack. Anything is possible, but without some specific evidence, the definitive answer remains to be established.

So far, Russian authorities have been noncommittal. The brief field interrogations of the accused have suggested they were Tajiks recruited on Telegram and paid by unknown parties to carry out the attack. Whether they got assistance or funding from Ukraine or one of Russia’s many other enemies, and whether they had any formal training with ISIS, is not clear.

Local police arrested the perpetrators in Bryansk, a small city southwest of Moscow, which is less than an hour from Ukraine, which appears to have been their destination. But this by itself does not necessarily mean the Ukrainian state was involved. Notably, the United States issued warnings of an imminent terrorist attack in Russia only a few weeks ago.

Unlike the Paris attacks at the Bataclan Theater, you won’t see a lot of people putting Russian flags on their Facebook profiles. The western media has demonized Russia for years and downplayed its struggles with Islamic jihadis. International terrorism is a problem that ebbs and flows, but one of the reasons is a lack of solidarity among states targeted for terrorism.

Many countries would rather engage in struggles with other states, which are comparatively predictable, than cooperate against the stateless, barbaric, and mostly unpredictable jihadis. In some cases, as with the Syrian War and the Second Chechen War, certain elements within western intelligence communities have made common cause with extremists in order to pursue their realpolitik goals against perceived hostile states. Finally, many will make excuses for terrorism when they oppose the victim, whether it is a state like Columbia, Israel, or Iran.

Russia did not undertake the 9/11 attacks, the Bataclan Massacre, the French Riviera truck attack, the San Bernardino or Fort Hood shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing, or any number of recurrent acts of Islamic terrorism. In fact, it has been the victim of similarly horrific attacks by the same groups. If we had been more open to working together to defeat his common enemy, the threat could have been eliminated, and we would have had an opportunity to create pathways for more durable cooperation and peace in other areas.

Instead, because of the grievances and hubris of the neoconservatives, we have voluntarily undertaken a two-front war against both Islamic extremists and Russia, with a predictable lack of success.

'60 Minutes' Gets Caught Red-Handed After Interview With 'Misinformation Expert'

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Leave it to "60 Minutes" to bring on the leader of a "misinformation research group" and then fail to disclose all the pertinent details of her background. The left-wing news program was caught red-handed when it was revealed that Kate Starbird isn't actually an unbiased arbiter of truth and fiction. 

The background of this story involves the following interview, in which Starbird and "60 Minutes'" Lesley Stahl complain that X (formerly Twitter) wasn't at their beck and call to censor content they deem to be "misinformation." 

What is with left-wing operatives and taking their style cues from Rachel Maddow? All that's missing is a streak of purple in her hair. Regardless, on the merits, what Starbird says is derived from either dishonesty or stupidity. 

To clarify, Community Notes on X is not run by the social media company itself. As the name suggests, users of the platform suggest notes, and only notes with enough consensus are placed on posts to add context or offer a correction. There is no system whereby self-proclaimed "misinformation researchers" get to "flag" posts and then have their commentary added on demand by the powers that be. 

So is Starbird lying about the Community Notes system or is she just ignorant of how it works? Either way, the fact that she's complaining on "60 Minutes" about it as an "expert" does nothing for her credibility. Sure enough, it has now been revealed that Starbird is actually a Joe Biden donor who has received grants from his administration and worked with the DHS on censoring so-called "misinformation."

Shock of shocks, "60 Minutes" "forgot" to mention that in their report.

CBS’ “60 Minutes” failed to disclose that a prominent “misinformation” researcher it featured on its Sunday program received funding and collaborated with President Joe Biden’s administration.

University of Washington professor and researcher Kate Starbird was featured on the program about “misinformation” proliferating on social media. Starbird spearheaded a project that Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) granted $2.25 million in 2021, and the researcher collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by serving on an advisory committee under its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which CBS did not mention.

Far from an unbiased observer, Starbird is a hack who targets information she doesn't like and labels it "misinformation." Worse, she's receiving taxpayer money to do so while serving on DHS boards. "60 Minutes" didn't want that to be known, though, and instead made it seem as if Rep. Jim Jordan(R-OH), who has criticized her, was unfairly targeting a random citizen.

The mainstream press wants to live in a dictatorship so badly. They just want it to be a dictatorship run by people they approve of. There is no role for "misinformation researchers" to censor online speech based on the words of faux "experts" like Starbird. Just as absurd is a show like "60 Minutes" pretending to be an authority despite its own history of spreading misinformation. 

This isn't complicated. People should be allowed to say what they want, and self-appointed elites should not be curators. Starbird is nothing but a leech, suckling at the government teet to push a political agenda, and "60 Minutes" remains a joke for not being honest about her background. 

Hours After Congress Passes Spending Bill, DOJ Announces a New Way It Will Target the Second Amendment

Leah Barkoukis reporting for Townhall 

The Department of Justice on Saturday announced the launch of what critics say is a federal ‘Red Flag Center’ to keep firearms away from “people who pose a threat to themselves or others.”

The Justice Department launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center (the Center) which will provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals responsible for implementing laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others. […]

ERPO laws, which are modeled off domestic violence protection orders, create a civil process allowing law enforcement, family members (in most states), and medical professionals or other groups (in some states) to petition a court to temporarily prohibit someone at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing and possessing firearms for the duration of the order. (DOJ)

“The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Republican lawmakers pointed out the announcement came just hours after the omnibus passed.

"The Biden DOJ’s plan for a federal Red Flag Center is a direct threat to the Second Amendment and liberty as we know it," said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). "They’re going to use it to target law-abiding Americans and veterans. Members of Congress who voted for the Swamp’s Omnibus this week are responsible for funding it. We cannot allow this operation to continue. When President Trump returns to the White House, we will DESTROY it!

Everything Is Worse Now

posted by Kurt Schlichter at TownhallVIP 

Have you noticed how things – institutions, products, services – just don't work like they used to? Now, I'm old. I was literally born the last week of the Baby Boom. I grew up in the glorious '70s and '80s. I didn't know at the time that those decades would be the high point of American civilization. When we grew up then, we always thought things would get better. And the '90s were okay in a lot of ways, the Clintons notwithstanding. But if you look at the ‘90s in retrospect, we were doing a lot of drafting behind better times. We're living off the preceding decades' social, cultural, and economic equity. If you look at today, we have depleted those savings and are on a downward spiral.

I don't mean just politically, though obviously, we're on a downward spiral politically. Culturally, too, with weird perverts and creepy losers having enlisted the ruling class into normalizing their bizarre behavior and ideas. No, I mean just normal things in life are worse. Things don't seem to work as well as they used to. We once had a default assumption of societal function; now we default to expecting failure. You used to be able to get stuff done. You used to be able to accomplish basic tasks. Today, we have all sorts of computers, including computers more powerful than the Apollo moon mission (not unrelated, we haven't been back to the moon in half a century) that you can carry in the palm of your hand. That's a mixed bag. In some ways, things are easier. You can order airline tickets on your phone without driving down to the airport to print the damn things out. But in other ways, it's just plain worse. Look around at people. Half of them have their faces buried in screens. My face is buried in a screen as I type. Hell, you look at footage from a concert and half the people are filming what they should be looking at. Like somebody's going to go back and review his video of Coldplay.

Also, the fact that Coldplay exists is proof that everything is worse. Music in the 70s and especially the 80s rocked. 

Is service worse? People have been complaining about service for as long as people have been serving. We're always about 20 years behind the good old days, so with that in mind, you need to take my observations with a grain of salt. Oh, have any of you noticed how restaurants usually don't put salt and pepper out on the table anymore? You usually have to ask for them. Of course, that's when you can find a server. Now there are plenty of good waiters and waitresses out there, and we tend to get good service because we tend to go to the same places, and they know us and they take care of us. But there are a lot of places that don't seem to have any experience with customers anymore. You come in and want something, whether it's food or to try on clothing, or to buy a ham, and it's like the first time that's ever happened. They're baffled. Again, every generation complains that the current generation is providing lousy service. But we're objectively getting lousier service.

And we're burdened by a lot of it is obnoxious rules and regulations designed to make your life more difficult as a pagan sacrifice to the angry climate gods. It's tiresome to be asked if I want a bag for my groceries. No, I'll just juggle them as I walk out to my car. In my local city, you have to pay extra for a bag because otherwise the penguins will catch fire. And straws. Remember when straws worked? Remember when they didn't turn into pulpy paper mush? That's because they were made out of useful, practical plastic. They didn't disintegrate into goo, like Joe Biden in a deposition. We have the technology to make a straw that works, but we don't use it.

That's true of a lot of things, like appliances. Did you know that dryers can actually dry things? We mastered dryer technology decades ago. But now dryers don't dry, and washers don't wash, because they are underpowered on account of these stupid climate change rules. They want to do that to cars, too. Cars work fine now. Hell, they break down a lot less often than they did when I was growing up, so that's something that has actually gotten better. You can buy cars big enough to carry whatever you need or small if that's what you prefer. But the busybodies aren't satisfied with that. No, they want to make things worse. They always want to make things worse. They want to tell you what you can drive, and the excuse they use is the climate hoax. They want to take your gas car and make you buy electric ones. I like electric cars. Elon Musk made me a lot of money on electric cars. But I want to choose what I drive. The next things are mandatory kill switches in cars so you can't drive drunk and governors to ensure that you can't speed. Well, I don't need somebody mucking around on my vehicle because I'm not going to drive drunk. And I'm going to drive at the rate of speed that I think I need to. This is so obnoxious. Mind your own damn business.

Look at movies. We used to be able to go to a movie pretty much every weekend, and we did. Just the other day, I asked Irina, "What do we want to do tonight?" I then added, "We can't go to a movie because there aren't any good movies out." When I was growing up, you had two or three movies you actually wanted to see coming out every week, and more in summer and around Christmas. Now you go months between movies. I saw "Dune 2," so I've used up my allowance of movies that I might actually want to watch for this quarter. Most everything else out there is superhero idiocy made for borderline mentally defective children of all ages. Even worse are the little art films. I'm not going to pay 70 bucks – itself a problem – for two people to go to the movies to watch some boring crap about a differently-abled two-spirit of color overcoming the racist Christian gun owner conservatives' oppression of them. Not her, them.

There is a huge space in American politics for a return to normalcy. That was what Joe Biden pretended to be for. He would've been a popular president if he had actually delivered it. When I say "normalcy," I mean the America I grew up in, where you looked to the future and assumed things were getting better. It was an America where young people could afford houses and not have $200,000 in debt hanging around their necks for their gender studies degrees. It was an America where everything wasn't allegedly racist and sexist and where mediocre people didn't get ahead because their grandfather came from Papua New Guinea. That's the other thing. We've gotten away from merit in favor of equity. It used to be that the smartest and best people became our engineers. The smartest and best people became our doctors. The smartest and best people became our lawyers. Looking at Fani Willis, do you think that corrupt tub of goo got to be district attorney because she was the second coming of Perry Mason? No, she got it because she's a commie black chick. That's it. Those are her qualifications. I guess that she's fat gives her another box to check – for some reason, we're now supposed to pretend that giant people are attractive. Have you walked by a Victoria's Secret lately? Apparently, Victoria's Secret is now carbohydrates.

I'm tired of woke America. I'm tired of worse America. I want to get back to an America where everybody's equal and everybody gets ahead or falls behind based on his own efforts and talents. I want the nanny state jerks to keep out of my business, and I want products and services that are the most efficient possible rather than ones that pass muster with a bunch of grim-faced weather Puritans who are mad because my dishwasher actually cleans my dishes. Like I said, there's a huge political opportunity for the politician who brings back normalcy. And normalcy for America is optimism and prosperity, not this miserable nightmare that we're stuck in today.

Have We Considered Arming Ukraine With Haitian Cannibals?

by Samuel Mangold-Lenett for The Federalist 

President Joe Biden can solve the migrant crisis and bring peace to Ukraine in one fell swoop, solidifying his place in the annals of history as America’s greatest president. He will have to get a little creative, but accomplishing this is surprisingly achievable and aligns with his priorities.

The war in Ukraine rages on. As does the invasion at our southern border and the broader illegal immigration crisis. Biden’s handling of both has left him politically vulnerable and threatens his reelection. The latter will now only grow worse, with Haiti descending further and further into chaos as heavily armed street gangs allegedly led by cannibal warlords run amok. Some red states are already preparing for the inevitable influx of Haitian refugees. 

America’s military resources are running low, and inflation is out of control. Sending more government cheese to Ukraine is unwise, albeit inevitable. After all, Biden is committed to supporting the Sisyphusian Ukrainian war effort until Zelensky declares victory. On this, he is resolute and uncompromising.

And, indeed, compromise is unnecessary, but so is sending money and guns. 

Biden routinely praises Ukraine as a bastion of democracy and freedom. And we’re led to believe one of the main reasons people continue to disregard our immigration laws and enter the country is because they are seeking political refuge. Fighting-age men riot at the Texan border, brandishing knives and makeshift shivs at the National Guard because they desperately want to live in a democratic nation, so the narrative goes. 

Other than obesity and porn addiction, the only thing the U.S. really has an abundance of is members of the huddled masses yearning to kill me and rape you celebrate and participate in our democratic republic.

Polling indicates Biden’s immigration policies are sinking his candidacy, but his administration is just as ideologically committed to ensuring a chicken in every pot and a ballot in every hand of the unassimilable mob of fighting-age men crossing the border as it is to providing Ukraine with munitions.

So why not split the baby and arm Ukraine to the teeth with violent migrant hordes who will stop at nothing to live under democratic rule? Maybe the silver lining is that out of the chaos, Biden can help form a coalition between the Haitian gangs and migrant caravans that guarantee Ukraine’s victory.

“We’ll fight [] until the last drop of blood, we’ll fight until he resigns. I am ready to make an alliance with the devil, ready to sleep in the same bed as the devil,” Haitian warlord Jimmy Cherizier (alias Barbecue) recently told The Associated Press. Cicero couldn’t put it better if he tried.

The Barbecue Battalion could take a bite out of Putin’s forces and finally change the conflict’s trajectory. 

Instead of admitting Islamic terrorists Middle Eastern religious scholars into the U.S. — where they hope to make bombs sell Khlav Kalash — why not send them to Ukraine? This seems like a no-brainer.

If we are truly committed to protecting democracy around the globe, the president must consider exhausting every option available to him. The more than 10 million illegal border crossers democracy lovers — thousands of whom rape and kill with impunity patiently wait for their turn to vote — would provide Ukraine with desperately needed reinforcements to further “strengthen democracy’s arsenal.”

All that really matters, anyway, is whether global democracy is saved and whether the people attempting to enter the U.S. get to enjoy it. Fighting for Ukraine is just one potential path to democracy that happens to be far, far away from here.

Feds Investigating Jim Biden's Finances Around Hospital Chain, Improper Loans

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

President Biden's brother James has reportedly been the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department as part of a larger examination of a hospital chain that is reported to have received "improper" Medicare payments. 

Federal investigators in South Florida recently probed transactions linked to Jim Biden as part of a criminal investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter. The investigation remains open, according to one of them.

Meanwhile, Justice Department officials prosecuting an ongoing Medicare fraud case in Pennsylvania were seeking information about the activities of President Joe Biden’s brother as recently as last year, according to a third person familiar with that case. All three were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The revelations add to the potential legal minefield surrounding the first family at a time when House Republicans are pursuing an impeachment inquiry aimed at the Biden family’s business dealings and Hunter Biden faces federal tax charges in California and gun charges in Delaware.

The hospital chain in question, Americore, has already suffered one "health care entrepreneur" pleading guilty to Medicare fraud in Pennsylvania.

At least one transaction described by the anonymous sources and supposedly examined in the investigation involved a $200,000 "loan payment" to President Biden.

But a previously unreported lawsuit alleges that the payments Jim Biden received were improper. In a complaint filed in Palm Beach County in 2022, investors in the Third Friday Total Return Fund allege that the money manager in charge of the fund looted millions of dollars from it by making sham loans to Americore, then diverted roughly $600,000 of the embezzled funds to Jim Biden.

Jim Biden transferred $200,000 of the disputed money to Joe Biden in a transaction that he and the White House have said was a loan repayment.

Joe Biden seems to have acted as a personal savings and loan for much of his family, based on the number of loan repayments he has seemed to receive.

This latest revelation comes as the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is still carrying out an impeachment inquiry against the President.

Two of the key figures in the case, money manager Michael Lewitt and Amer Rustom, the CEO of a business development company called The Platinum Group, apparently had ties to prominent Middle Eastern and North African figures. Jim Biden worked with Lewitt and Rustom to negotiate loans to Americore. The timing of these loans is very, very interesting:

The first loan on Jan. 12 coincided with a $400,000 payment from Americore to Jim Biden’s company, the Lion Hall Group. In his prepared statement for his impeachment inquiry interview, Jim Biden said that payment and a subsequent one he received for $200,000 were made partly as compensation for arranging the loans.

On the same day Jim Biden received the $200,000 payment, March 1, he or his wife, Sara Biden, made out a $200,000 check to Joe Biden from their joint account, describing it as a loan repayment on the memo line.

It is, of course, unclear as to when Joe Biden loaned his brother any money, under what terms any such loan may have been made, or what repayment terms were involved; a lump-sum loan repayment of $200,000 between family members seems a bit suspect.

Medicare fraud is a major problem in the American healthcare industry, costing the U.S. taxpayers as much as $60 billion per year. In my previous career, I have had occasion to testify in Medicare fraud cases, and I suspect that the $60 billion figure is low; that only counts Medicare fraud cases that are exposed, and there may well be that much more again that goes undetected.

Floating Offshore Wind Projects Will Squander Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

 From a financial perspective, offshore wind, should it go forward, will be the biggest waste of money ever imposed on the backs of working Californians.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/27/floating-offshore-wind-projects-will-squander-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars/

In December 2022, after years of planning, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior sold rights to develop offshore wind in five lease areas off the California coast. Five companies submitted successful bids, paying a total of $757 million for development rights.

These leases are located 20 miles off the California coast in water approximately 4,000 feet deep. The floating wind turbines will be tethered to the ocean floor with cables, and each of them will also require a high-voltage transmission cable that will pass through the water and traverse the sea bottom for 20 miles to connect to the grid onshore.

The environmental impact and logistical challenges of installing and operating these floating leviathans are devastating. With 25 gigawatts of installed “nameplate capacity” called for by 2045, even at 10 megawatts per wind turbine, this would require 2,500 floating turbines. Each one would tower roughly 1,000 feet from the water line to the tip of a rotor blade in vertical position, with substantial additional structure required underwater in the form of floatation pontoons and counterweights. To put this in perspective, these dimensions are longer than a modern American supercarrier.

Imagine the impact on the California coast as port facilities are constructed, along with substations, transmission lines, battery farms, housing and services for workers, and new access roads. Imagine the impact on whales and other marine life of submarines installing concrete underwater to anchor the tethering cables or laying high-voltage lines on the sea floor. Imagine the operating impact of thousands of rotors turning along avian flyways or the impact of high-voltage electrical waves and mechanical vibrations from the rotor being transmitted into the ocean depths from an obstacle course of thousands of tethering and power cables, each one nearly a mile in length. Where is the coastal commission? Where is Greenpeace? Where are the regulators that won’t allow desalination plants with a footprint that is negligible by comparison? Where are the environmentalists whose entire business model is litigation?

Citizens in the afflicted coastal counties are apoplectic over the momentum and support these offshore wind development efforts are generating. Money is pouring in from wind developers to contribute to local politicians who support these projects. But the ordinary citizens who live in these communities, who can’t even get a permit to add a room to their home or build a seawall to protect their property, are watching the wholesale industrialization of their coast in a display of institutional hypocrisy that will go down in history.

What will stop offshore wind from ever realizing the ambitious scale currently proposed, however, is its preposterous cost. Unfortunately, that reality may not assert itself until a pretty big mess is made of California’s coastline and coastal communities that, to date, have remained among the most pristine and beautiful swaths of real estate in America. And since the State of California and the proponents of floating offshore wind energy won’t offer a straightforward disclosure of how much they ultimately will have to spend to build this stuff—all of which will ultimately be paid by taxpayers and ratepayers—here are some estimates.

An online document recently produced by a consortium of some of the biggest offshore wind developers in the world titled “Guide to a Floating Offshore Wind Farm” includes a chart of “Wind Farm Costs” with over 70 line items specifically called out, each one showing construction costs per megawatt.

This report is produced by BVG Associates, with offices in London, Glasgow, and Trondheim. They are renewable energy consultants with clients around the world. It is unlikely they are overstating their cost estimates. We also know that since 2021, the year for which the cost data in this report is compiled, costs for offshore wind have gone up considerably. And we know that in California, not only are the challenges of floating offshore wind greater than usual because of the plan to float them in waters 4,000 feet deep and 20 miles offshore, but also because in California everything costs more to construct.

So here is what is likely to be an impossibly low estimate of what it would cost Californians to install 25 gigawatts of floating wind turbine capacity:

The per-megawatt construction costs (in 2023 dollars) are summarized as follows: $231,953 for “development and project management,” $2,010,261 for the wind turbine, $2,628,802 for the “balance of plant,” and $572,151 for installation and commissioning. That’s $5,443,167 per megawatt. Accordingly, to construct 25,000 megawatts of capacity, Californians will have to spend $136 billion. And that price tag doesn’t include transmission line upgrades or battery storage. Tack tens of billions onto the total to account for those necessary additions.

When it’s all done, if it’s ever done, these planned offshore wind installations will actually only contribute the equivalent of 10 gigawatts of baseload power to California’s electricity grid, since even offshore, wind can only be relied on about 40 percent of the time. If anyone, anywhere, wants to bet that 10 gigawatts of baseload power can be realized in California—through the construction of giant floating wind turbines, onshore battery farms, and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines both underwater and on land—for a total project construction cost of less than $150 billion, I’ll take that bet and give you odds. It is more likely the total project cost will soar beyond $300 billion. This is California, after all.

To further put this in perspective, 10 gigawatts of baseload electricity is only about 10 percent of what California’s going to need if it goes 100 percent electric. Floating offshore wind at any meaningful scale would be a financial and environmental catastrophe. But there’s a reason offshore wind developers are all running to the fertile territory of California, a land of high taxes, high utility prices, and institutionalized climate crisis conniptions. They’re failing everywhere else.

Offshore wind developers have experienced cost overruns and had to abandon or resubmit bids on major projects along the U.S. East Coast as well as in the North Sea. Headlines from late last year and so far in 2024 tell a dismal story. “Wind Warning: Equinor, BP seek 54% hike in US offshore wind power price,” “Equinor calls halt to North Sea Trollvind project,” “U.S. Offshore Wind Projects Hit by Surging Costs,” “Another Offshore Wind Project Terminated Off Coast of New Jersey and New York,” “Equinor Abandons Offshore Wind Projects in Ireland,” “BP and Equinor scrap New York offshore wind contract as costs rise,” “Offshore Wind in U.S. Is Fundamentally Broken,” Says Top Industry Leader,” and “Offshore wind project cancellations jeopardize Biden’s clean energy goals.”

Had enough?

But in California, watching the state government squander billions of dollars again and again is a way of life. As long as California’s preening politicians can beat their chests and tell us they’re coping with the “climate emergency,” it doesn’t matter how many whales and other marine life die, how many birds are killed, how many coastal ecosystems are fouled as the most beautiful coastline in the world is industrialized, or how many communities are ruined. Never forget that these are communities where, until now, land development of any kind, no matter how personal and trivial, had to pass through a gauntlet of hostile agencies that would make Stalin blush.

Offshore wind, should it go forward, will be one of the biggest wastes of money ever imposed on the backs of working Californians. And in a state willing to commit tens of billions to build a “High Speed Rail” network that will never divert more than a minute fraction of drivers off the state’s neglected roads and allocate additional tens of billions to a Homeless Industrial Complex whose special interest constituents have looted taxpayers while actually increasing the number of homeless and level of disorder on the streets of California’s beleaguered cities, that’s saying a lot.