CBP Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Biden administration is unable to locate 85,000 child migrants initially processed at the U.S. border, and now members of Congress are demanding an explanation amid reports the children are being trafficked.
Seventy-six House Republican reveal in a letter that Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are “knowingly and recklessly discharging unaccompanied children to adults across the country and doing nothing to find the tens of thousands they had lost touch with,” the Washington Examiner reports.
The letter was issued after the New York Times reported the Biden administration cannot locate 85,000 children initially processed as migrants seeking asylum, and many are being forced into child labor.
Lawmakers “referenced reports by the New York Times that concluded children were extorted by smugglers to pay off the thousands they owed through forced labor, including sex trafficking. Other children were trafficked against their will and are effectively slaves within the U.S.,” the Examiner reports
“The border crisis is not a stand-alone crisis. It has created a new catastrophe in every direction,” said Congressman Morgan Luttrell (R-TX)
“Unaccompanied migrant children are crossing our border, and Joe Biden’s failed policies aren’t leading them to the American Dream. Instead, these children are released with no follow-up and are facing forced labor, sex trafficking, and abuse,” said Luttrell.
“The policies of the Biden Administration are failing everyone. Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden not only need to address the ongoing exploitation and lack of contact with minors, but also secure our southern border and ensure people seeking to come to our great country are going through the proper, legal channels,” Luttrell added.
Even worse, it appears many of the children tried to contact U.S. officials to seek help.
“We are particularly heartbroken to read reports of children contacting HHS after their release to their sponsors in hopes of the agency intervening, with no follow up,” the letter reveals.
“The policies of this administration are enriching the cartels and transnational criminal organizations, who are profiting from the pain, abuse, and exploitation of these children as they smuggle them into the country,” the lawmakers conclude.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Members of Congress want to know if one of America’s most powerful liberal political groups is evading federal laws requiring them to report lobbying on behalf of foreign billionaires.
U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) want League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski to answer questions about LCV’s fundraising, lobbying, and political activities, and whether it is complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The League of Conservation Voters, a radical environmentalist group, is one of the nation’s most powerful political organizations.
OpenSecrets reports the LCV donated $15,129,989 to federal political candidates in 2020. They also spent $42,272,125 on ads supporting or opposing federal candidates in 2020, making them the nation’s 15th-biggest political spending.
But members of Congress want to know if the LCV is lobbying lawmakers at the behest of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a radical leftist who opposes American energy independence.
The members write:
“Following ‘intense lobbying’ from LCV and related groups that led to passage of the [Inflation Reduction Act,] you met then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who told you Democrats ‘passed what you wanted’ and asked whether LCV would ‘have our backs’ in the 2022 election. Following the election, in an end-of-year memo on December 19, 2022, LCV detailed how the ‘LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities invested more than $100 million’ to elect Democrat candidates that align with LCV’s eco-agenda agenda in the 2022 elections. Previously, in the 2018 cycle, LCV spent $80 million on candidates that support its eco-agenda.
“LCV has registered to lobby on several activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee, including issues like opposing offshore drilling plans, supporting a ‘pause and review of the federal oil and gas program,’ and supporting the restoration and expansion of a number of national monuments. The Committee is concerned that LCV’s relationship with foreign donors, such as Swiss national Mr. Wyss, who are prohibited from contributing, either directly or indirectly, to domestic political campaigns may impact LCV’s political and lobbying activities relating to America’s ability to achieve energy independence. As you are aware, such political and lobbying activities may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“The central purpose of FARA is to ‘promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the United States by ensuring that the United States government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy, and laws.’ Hence, FARA requires any person or entity, including non-profits, to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they act as an agent or at the request ‘of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.’ Registration under FARA is also required for any entity that attempts, on behalf of a foreign principal, to influence any section of the U.S. public or a U.S. government official in ‘formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States.'”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – Two Proud Boys leaders have been sentenced to more than a decade each in jail after being convicted of the rarely used ‘seditious conspiracy’ charge for storming the Capitol.
They tried to overturn President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, which they considered fraudulent.
These sentences are much less than the three decades of jail time proposed by prosecutors but still very long prison terms for a few hours of rioting.
And yes, I understand that the rioting was at the U.S. Capitol and that the certification of the Electoral College vote was in process. I also understand these two guys and the two others convicted on this same charge were intimately involved in organizing what became violent chaos that day.
I was there, at the Capitol, as an observer with a TV camera crew. And I denounced the violence the next day. It was outrageous.
I believe any violent rioter who attacked police or media, or anyone else, on Jan. 6 should be put in jail – as should all the BLM rioters who earlier caused $2 billion in damages throughout the country and injured 2,000 cops months earlier.
But a decade or two behind bars for ‘conspiracy’?
Biggs and Rehl are the first Proud Boys convicted of the Civil War-era seditious conspiracy charge to be sentenced for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
The sentences kicked off a series of hearings scheduled for this week and next, where punishment will be meted out against the former chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio (who was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 but was unbelievably arrested earlier for burning a BLM banner!), and two other members of the group.
All were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes at a landmark conspiracy trial this spring. But was what they did really as bad as the Biden Justice Department tries to portray?
Seditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past. “Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.
In the only similar case in the 20th century, federal prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building in 1954.
These four armed Puerto Rican independence militants entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators.
The four shooters and co-conspirators were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.
In that case, however, the perpetrators had firearms and used them to try to kill Congressmen. That’s a pretty big difference.
The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy was in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine Islamist co-conspirators for plotting to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building, and several other landmarks around New York City.
Again, this was very serious and involved planning mass murder and terrorism.
There is little or no evidence that any Jan. 6 rioters planned any offensive violence.
To date, of those charged in relation to Jan. 6, former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes holds the record with an 18-year sentence, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy earlier this year.
Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.
In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
And at first glance, this does seem serious.
But Rhodes claims that despite earlier texts about possible ‘civil war,’ Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble.
He has also stated that the armed ‘reaction force’ in Virginia was there to respond if armed leftist antifa thugs attacked pro-Trump protestors.
In the largest manhunt in FBI history, more than 1,100 people have been arrested on charges related to the Capitol assault. Of those, 597 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences. About 366 of them have been given jail time.
The vast majority of these Jan. 6 defendants, though, accepted plea deals for minor, nonviolent offenses such as trespassing or obstructing an official function. Many of them still got jail sentences totally out of proportion to their alleged crimes.
And these four got the worst of it.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It was first published in American Liberty News.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – As Republican senators try to conduct oversight over, and gain insight into, the outrageous, and supposedly now defunct, ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Team Biden is blocking the senators at every step.
The board was dismantled under pressure in August following the recommendation of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
However, many are concerned that DHS will continue with its dangerously un-American efforts under a different name.
And now they are clearly afraid of what nefarious collusion with Big Tech the senators might uncover.
So, as always, covering up is the next step when faced with hard questions and the great disinfectant called sunlight.
In this case, Team Biden is censoring its own documents which may describe its actions ‘prodding’ social media companies to censor conservative Americans under the guise of controlling ‘disinformation.’
Biden’s DHS essentially ‘misinformed’ Congress by totally redacting (censoring) large portions of documents requested by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri back in June.
These documents mostly related to the ‘Truth Board’s’ cozy relationship with social media platforms.
This issue is particularly critical now in light of recent revelations of collusion between the FBI and these same platforms, and the obscene partisan censorship done at Twitter in apparent coordination with the White House, as revealed by Elon Musk.
In a letter sent Thursday to embattled DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Grassley and Hawley said the Department of Homeland Security heavily redacted documents they had requested six months ago.
The letter read:
Based on our review of this material, it appears that many of the redactions are applied to pre-decisional and deliberative process material. We remind you that the oversight letters we send to the Executive Branch are signed in our capacity as sitting members of Congress, a separate and co-equal branch of government.
Grassley and Hawley then said they would formally renew their requests to the department, as it is still “impossible to know the full extent to which various DHS components and offices are engaged in DHS’s ‘burgeoning’ counter-disinformation efforts.”
“Please provide full and complete responses to all questions contained in our June 7, 2022, letter,” the two wrote, adding that they would also like “a detailed description of DHS’s policy for responding to congressional oversight requests.”
The letter comes months after the White House canned the project due to substantial backlash, officially citing a recommendation from the Homeland Security Advisory Council, according to a press release.
“With the HSAC recommendations as a guide, the Department will continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law while upholding the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work,” the statement read.
Let’s hope that these senators will soon get the unredacted documents, so we can all learn what was really going on inside Biden’s dark attempt to create its own Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Col. DeAnna Burt, 50th Space Wing commander, speaks to Airmen and civilians attending the Women's Leadership Symposium at the Peterson Club on Tuesday, Mar. 7th, 2017. Attendees came from a variety of bases, including Buckley, Peterson, Schriever, Vandenberg and Cheyenne Mountain. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Laura Turner)
ANALYSIS – You would think that a senior U.S. military officer would finally have figured out that they should stay out of the ‘woke wars’
Unfortunately, Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force (USSF), appears to have not gotten the memo.
Even as the Pentagon cracks down on ridiculous Drag Queen shows, and the Congress pushes to eliminate woke policies like taxpayer-funded abortion travel, and ‘diversity’ programs that are more divisive than inclusive, Burt decided now was the time to rail against what she called “anti-LGBTQ+ laws” at the state level.
She made her speech at a Pentagon ‘Pride’ event last week.
Space Force general decries 'anti-LGBTQ+' laws at Pentagon 'Pride' event, claims they affect hiring decisions https://t.co/VapBoI8uzo
Fox News reported that she “claimed that such laws affect her hiring and promotion decisions, sometimes leading her to choose a “less qualified” candidate because of a preferred candidate’s ‘personal circumstances.’”
Yes. She said that.
Fox said that Burt told those attending the event:
Transformational cultural change requires leadership from the top, and we do not have time to wait. Since January of this year, more than 400 anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been introduced at the state level. That number is rising and demonstrates a trend that could be dangerous for service members, their families, and the readiness of the force as a whole.
The “anti-LGBTQ+ laws” Burt mentioned appeared to be referencing the legislation passed by more than 20 states restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, as well as numerous bills limiting the amount of time in which an abortion can be performed during a pregnancy.
Most of these GOP-led state laws are perfectly reasonable, and designed to protect unborn children, and their mothers, as well as protect kids being pushed into irreversible transgender medical procedures.
They are also totally outside her purview, and democratically established by state legislatures.
But to Burt, they are so dangerous she prefers to hire less qualified candidates due to their ‘personal circumstances,’ rather than subject them to these states’ laws.
When I look at potential candidates, say, for squadron command, I strive to match the right person to the right job. I consider their job performance and relevant experience first. However, I also look at their personal circumstances, and their family is also an important factor.
If the good match for a job does not feel safe being themselves and performing at their highest potential at a given location, or if their family could be denied critical health care due to the laws in that state, I am compelled to consider a different candidate, and, perhaps, less qualified.
Which part of ‘don’t get into partisan politics or the culture wars’ doesn’t she understand. And hiring less qualified people for a job based on ‘personal circumstances’ sounds like discrimination to me.
Not to mention horrible leadership, dangerous to national security, and bad for America.
But it’s not just one senior leader at USSF. According to leaked emails, last month, two Navy officials derided critics of the service’s promotion of LGBTQ+ Pride as “bigots” and “a—holes.”
These two ‘Pride Pushers’ reportedly schemed on how to best post a “rainbow wingtip graphic” for LGBTQ+ Pride Month on the Navy social media accounts.
As I wrote about then, the Navy only had one Pride image up on social media for less than a day on June 1st, the start of ‘Pride Month,’ before removing it.
None of the other services posted Pride imagery this year, a stark difference from last year when ‘Pride Month’ began.
This is hopefully part of a broader Pentagon policy to pull out of the ‘woke wars’ and keep partisan, ideological, racial, and sexual politics out of our military.
I noted earlier: “Only the Coast Guard and the National Guard made posts for Pride Month, but neither service changed its profile pictures or header image. Hopefully, they will soon get the memo.”
Well, now I add – these navy officials and Lt. Gen. Burt should also get the memo, or even better, an invitation to a Congressional hearing to explain themselves.
It’s time to focus on real wars, not woke ones.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
The “special counsel” named by the Biden administration to indict and prosecute President Donald Trump is not only now dropping his criminal cases, he himself may now be the subject of an investigation.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, “sent a letter to Special Counsel Jack Smith demanding his office preserve all records surrounding the Biden-Harris Administration’s politicized prosecutions of President Donald Trump,” the Committee announced in a statement.
Jordan and Loudermilk also “reiterated outstanding requests to Special Counsel Smith,” including:
Documents and communications relating to meetings between FBI and Justice Department officials sent to or received by Jack Smith prior to the execution of the search warrant on President Trump’s private residence;
Documents and communications referring or relating to the hiring and selection of current and former Office of Special Counsel staff members;
And all documents and communications between or among the Office of Special Counsel, the Office of the Attorney General, or the Office of the Deputy Attorney General referring or relating to the investigation and prosecution of President Donald Trump.
Excerpts of the letter to Jack Smith read:
“The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing its oversight of the Department of Justice and the Office of Special Counsel. According to recent public reports, prosecutors in your office have been “gaming out legal options” in the event that President Donald Trump won the election. With President Trump’s decisive victory this week, we are concerned that the Office of Special Counsel may attempt to purge relevant records, communications, and documents responsive to our numerous requests for information. The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions. We reiterate our requests, which are itemized in the attached appendix and incorporated herein, and ask that you produce the entirety of the requested material as soon as possible but no later than November 22, 2024.
“Furthermore, this letter serves as a formal request to preserve all existing and future records and materials related to the Office of Special Counsel’s investigations and prosecutions of President Trump. You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry. This instruction includes all electronic messages sent using official and personal accounts or devices, including records created using text messages, phone-based message applications, or encryption software.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ALERT – If you’re reading this on your cell phone, and you are a Secret Service agent or officer on duty, please stop and put away the phone – immediately.
Otherwise, you can continue reading.
Ok. Now that we got that out of the way, we can inform you of how an intoxicated intruder was able to enter the home of Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor – Jake Sullivan – back in April.
While Sullivan isn’t particularly impressive (and I’m being gracious), he is one of Biden’s top national security officials. By virtue of his position, he is a very big deal.
He has direct access to the president, the White House, and to the nation’s most classified intelligence and national security information.
Terrorists or spies would love to get their hands on some of that stature, or just get into their homes undetected.
And one unidentified person did just that. But how?
Well, sadly the agents protecting Sullivan were distracted, at least in part, because they were using their personal cell phones while on duty.
A scourge that is affecting most of society.
This is according to an internal investigation by the Secret Service.
The incident at Sullivan’s home occurred in the early morning hours. Sullivan reportedly confronted the intruder inside his home and later told investigators that he believed the person, who was later seen on surveillance video entering and exiting the property, was intoxicated and entered the home by mistake.
Sullivan made the confused man leave his home and then went outside to tell the agents what happened.
Whether the intruder was really just a drunk nobody, or just pretending to be one, is still to be determined.
Meanwhile, Sullivan and his family were unharmed, but the Secret Service officers won’t be so lucky.
As CNN reported: “A law enforcement official familiar with the internal investigation said the agents on duty that night and their supervisors, are likely to be subject to disciplinary action, including an evaluation of whether they can maintain their federal security clearance, a requirement for their positions.”
So, basically, they could lose their jobs over this. And they probably should.
More importantly, the Secret Service, and all federal law enforcement agencies, and their private security contractors, must enforce rules limiting personal cell phone use while on duty.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle appears to be doing just that when last week she ordered increased penalties for employees who violate agency policies while on duty, including the use of personal electronic devices on the job.
According to CNN, Cheatle ordered “disciplinary penalties be increased to up to 21-day suspensions, and up to removal for infractions that lead to operational failure. Those include for the use of personal phones or the use of alcohol while on assignments.”
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stated:
We have zero tolerance for anything that jeopardizes operational success. While human errors may occur, what sets us apart is our unwavering commitment to maintaining very high professional standards and ethics. This includes enhanced penalties for incidents involving alcohol and a strict policy regarding personal cell phone use while on duty.
Well, that’s a start. The Secret Service is our nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, leading dignitary protection agency. It simply can’t allow things like this to happen.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – As the left implodes over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and many triggered liberals threaten to abandon the platform, conservatives are breathing a sigh of relief.
For years now, but increasingly since Donald Trump was elected, Big Tech has been on a rampage against mainstream conservative ideas and opinions.
Often, Big Tech employees and executives have been found overtly colluding with the Democrats in Washington to spread their agenda and talking points while quashing and canceling any opposing (i.e.; conservative views).
Their weapons of choice – ‘independent fact checking’ (aka – their leftist views on things by fellow leftists) and of course, the ubiquitous and amorphous company ‘terms of use,’ ‘community standards,’ and unknowable internal policies, which seem to always target conservatives while giving leftists and other radicals a pass.
Most conservatives know all this, but many independents and liberals do not.
Then there are those who do, and don’t care. Or do – and lie about it.
But how can we show just how bad things were at Twitter (and by extension other Big Tech platforms, including Facebook, and the often-overlooked LinkedIn, where I was permanently banned).
Well, we can thank Musk for uncovering the depths of leftist wokeness which had spread like ideological cancer at Twitter.
On Tuesday, as Musk continued his overhaul of Twitter, he said he had stumbled upon a closet chock full of “#StayWoke” t-shirts at the company’s headquarters.
Fox Business noted that Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey infamously wore a “#StayWoke” t-shirt during an interview with journalist Peter Kafka for ReCode’s Code conference over six years ago in 2016.
When asked to explain his shirt, Dorsey said the meaning has evolved over time but “to me… it’s really being aware, and staying aware, and keep questioning.”
Unfortunately, that is NOT the meaning of ‘woke’ most follow today.
Instead, it now means an increasingly intolerant leftist ideology centered on promoting radical agendas such as transgender transitioning of children, bullying friends, and allies to accept LGBT views and policies, and imposing anti-white racist indoctrination, along with many other extremist and socialist ideas.
And along with this agenda, leftist ‘wokesters’ also believe in crushing any dissent of these radical views, by censoring or canceling anyone who dares disagree.
As Fox Business wrote: “With the rise of cancel culture, many have interpreted “woke” to describe people who would rather silence their critics than listen to them.”
Hopefully, this will now change; at least at Twitter. And Musk believes it will:
As he said this week: “More and more over time, as we hew closer to the truth, Twitter will earn the trust of the people…”
More and more over time, as we hew closer to the truth, Twitter will earn the trust of the people
With Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and the GOP’s takeover of the House, as well as Florida Governor Rion DeSantis’ victories against the left, we may be seeing a turning point in the ‘woke wars.’
Now if Musk will only buy LinkedIn too, so I can recover my profile and 20,000 followers.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The top Republican investigators in the House and Senate warn America may face a constitutional crisis, with the Director of the FBI facing possible Contempt of Congress charges for refusing to turn over a government document alleging a foreign national offered a $5 million bribe to then-Vice-President Joe Biden.
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) blasted FBI Director Christopher Wray for defying a congressional subpoena for an unclassified record “alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.”
“The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions. In a new letter to Director Wray, Comer warns that if the FBI fails to produce the record by May 30, 2023, the Oversight Committee will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” Grassley reports in a statement.
“The FBI has continued to tie itself in knots to ignore a legitimate subpoena from Congress, which has a constitutional duty of oversight. The Bureau’s developed a serious reputation problem through its spate of failures and overreach, and leadership is doing it no favors by attempting to stiff-arm Congress. The FBI knows exactly what document Chairman Comer and I are seeking, and if they know us at all, they know we will get it, one way or another. If FBI leadership truly cares about protecting the agency’s reputation, they’d cooperate. These needless delays only harm the Bureau,” Grassley said.
“The FBI’s refusal to provide this single document is obstructionist. Whistleblower disclosures that Joe Biden may have been involved in a criminal bribery scheme as Vice President track closely with what we are seeing in our investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes. Congress and the American people need to know what, if anything, the FBI did to verify the allegations contained within this record. If Director Wray refuses to hand over this unclassified record, the Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings,” Comer said.
“Comer issued a subpoena for the unclassified FBI record on May 3, 2023 with a return date of May 10, 2023. After the FBI failed to produce the record, Oversight Committee counsel have attended two in-person meetings with FBI officials where they again refused to produce the FD-1023 form or offer any reasonable accommodation that would allow the Committee to review the document,” Grassley reports.
On May 16, 2023, Grassley and Comer requested a phone call with Director Wray to discuss the subpoena, but despite repeated requests the FBI has not scheduled a phone call.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
