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Former Treasury Secretary’s Portrait Covered Up After His Name Appeared In Epstein Files

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By Ralph Alswang, White House photographer - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-epstein-maxwell/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143417695

A federal watchdog group is going to court to learn more about why a former U.S. Treasury Secretary’s portrait was covered up after the release of a trove of disturbing email correspondence between him and deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury for records regarding the covering of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’ official portrait in the Main Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., reportedly after his name surfaced in records connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Treasury (No.1:26-cv-00446)).”

“Covering Larry Summers’ portrait won’t make the Epstein scandal disappear,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Covering the portrait raises obvious questions. Transparency—not cover-ups—is the proper response.”

“An exchange of emails between Summers and Epstein contained in a trove of Epstein records released by the House Oversight Committee, Epstein called himself Summers’ ‘wing man,’” Judicial Watch notes.

Judicial Watch reports it “filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Treasury Department failed to respond to a January 8, 2026, FOIA request for:”

All records, including communications, about the covering up of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers’ portrait in the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. Mr. Summers served as Treasury Secretary from July 2, 1999, to January 20, 2001.

“Judicial Watch submitted the FOIA request after a source inside Treasury informed a Judicial Watch lawyer about the portrait-covering incident,” the group notes.

Summers’ portrait was covered up after he announced his resignation from public life.

“In November 2025, soon after his name arose in connection with Epstein, Summers said, ‘I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused.… I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

Mexico’s Hosts Russian and Chinese Military Units in Independence Parade

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Kremlin.ru, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – In the ‘what the h*ll are you thinking’ category – a contingent of Russian soldiers marched in the annual Mexican Independence Day parade over the weekend. 

Russian troops had participated before, but not since Moscow launched its war of aggression against Ukraine.

This year marked 213 years since the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. 

And even as deadly fentanyl precursor ingredients are entering Mexico, to then be made into the deadly drug and flood the U.S., a Communist Chinese military honor guard from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) also marched alongside Mexican troops.

The presence of the Russian troops drew criticism because of the Russia’s brutal invasion of its neighbor. Mexico, which has long harbored bitterness against the United States for intervening militarily in Mexico in the 1800s, has condemned Russia’s invasion but has adopted a policy of ‘neutrality’ and has refused to participate in sanctions.

Populist socialist Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) noted that a contingent from China also participated. “All the countries that Mexico has diplomatic relations with were invited,” he said.

AMLO admitted the issue had become “a scandal,” but blamed it on the news media being against him.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Mexico, Oksana Dramaretska, posted online that “The civic-military parade in Mexico City was stained by the participation of a Russian regiment; the boots and hands of these war criminals are stained with blood.”

But this is only the latest Russian flirtation by AMLO.

As Arturo Sarukhan writes in his commentary for Brookings: “…it would seem that some in Mexico, unwittingly, or wittingly, seem intent on opening a ‘second front’ for Moscow from there.”

What’s behind all of this? Given that Mexico trades in two days with the United States what it trades in a whole year with Russia, ideology seems to be paramount. The traditional left in Mexico — and throughout Latin America in general — tend to support policies that push back against “Western imperialism” but is also skeptical of liberalism and what it perceives as its institutions and stakeholders, which — like many authoritarian regimes — it considers to be tools of Western values and hegemony. 

It should therefore come as no surprise that the Mexican left is inclined to swallow and regurgitate Russian disinformation and propaganda (“NATO aggression,” “denazification of Ukraine”), see sanctions as another form of “imperialism” and an attempt to corner Russia, and resort to RT and Sputnik as sources of valid information.

The Kremlin, creating a contrast with U.S. troops on Russia’s borders, has also asked frequently, if rhetorically, what if Russian troops were stationed across the border in Mexico?

Maybe this is one way for Moscow to make that point. But there is more to the story.

As ABC News reported:

Some members of López Obrador’s Morena party have publicly expressed affection for Russia even after the invasion, and López Obrador has frequently criticized the United States for sending arms to Ukraine.

López Obrador’s administration has continued to buy Russia’s Sputnik COVID vaccine and intends to use it as a booster shot later this year, along with Cuba’s Abdala vaccine.

Experts have questioned the use of those vaccines, along with Mexico’s own Patria vaccine, as a booster for new variants, because all of them were designed in 2020 to combat variants circulating at the time.

Mexico would rather buy old and likely ineffective vaccines from Russia, than be on better terms with the United States. Under AMLO Mexico is also a helpful tool for Moscow in other ways.

As Sarukhan wrote:

Viktor Koronelli, Russia’s ambassador to Mexico, who said during the recent launching of the Mexico-Russia friendship caucus that “Mexico will never join anti-Russian sanctions” and that “across the world, there are countries like China, like India, like Mexico, that will never say ‘Yes, Sir’ to Uncle Sam’s orders.”

Despite all this Russian bravado and bluster, I would be just as concerned, or more so, about the Chinese military presence in the parade.  As AMLO noted, a contingent from  China also participated, and no one complained about that.

But China’s influence in Mexico is likely far more significant than Russia’s, and far more threatening to the United States.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

How the FBI Colluded with Big Tech’s Twitter to Censor Hunter Biden Laptop Story

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President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

ANALYSIS – While the establishment media continues to ignore the disturbing ‘Twitter Files’ released by Elon Musk showing how Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, more information now indicates it was worse than we first thought.

As Musk noted, it’s not a direct First Amendment violation for a private company to censor the news, but it absolutely is if it’s done at the behest of our government.

And while I will argue that as the nation’s new ‘public square,’ Big Tech does violate the First Amendment when it censors news, there is now no denying that in the Hunter laptop case it did so with input from the FBI.

I will save the public square censorship discussion for another time.

These new disclosures provide more evidence that under the purported guise of stopping Russian election interference, the FBI ended up being guilty of employing its own U.S. election interference.

And Twitter (like Facebook and LinkedIn, et al.) took the ball and ran with it.

Based on the Twitter emails recently released by Elon Musk and reported by former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, the Daily Caller reports:

The FBI explicitly warned Twitter about a potential “hack-and-leak” operation involving Hunter Biden shortly before the platform censored the New York Post’s story based on emails from Biden’s laptop, according to a signed declaration by Twitter’s former head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth.

The FBI, along with several other agencies, warned Roth that “state actors” might attempt to leak hacked materials shortly before the 2020 election in a bid to influence its results, according to the declaration filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in December 2020, two months after the platform censored the NYP’s story. Roth stated that the conversation occurred during weekly meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, in which they warned him of potential threats to election security.

“These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” Roth wrote.

As Taibbi notes, Twitter, like all of Big Tech, including Twitter, is staffed by leftists and hence skewers its policies and actions to favor the left.

This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

The Daily Caller continues explaining the background to the Bureau’s own ‘election interference’ events:

Roth’s revelations about the meetings with intelligence agencies are similar to those of Mark Zuckerberg, who said in August that Facebook censored the Hunter Biden story after federal law enforcement officials asked him to restrict “misinformation” and “Russian propaganda” ahead of the 2020 election.

The FBI agent overseeing these weekly meetings was Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, according to the NYP; however, Chan claimed not to recall whether the topic of Hunter Biden came up at these meetings in a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general that alleged collusion to censor speech by federal agencies and Big Tech. Chan was also one of two FBI agents who met with Zuckerberg to warn him of potential Russian election interference before Facebook censored the story.

However, while the FBI insinuated and influenced Twitter and Facebook and other platforms, like LinkedIn, indirectly to censor the laptop story, it never explicitly provided Big Tech any evidence or statement claiming officially that the laptop info was hacked.

And this only makes Twitter’s decision more egregious.

As the Daily Caller concludes:

Taibbi tweeted an email indicating that Twitter’s trust and safety team initially explained to other employees that it made the decision to suppress the story — the company even went so far as to prevent it from being sent in private messages — because it violated Twitter’s policy for sharing “hacked materials.” Typically, such a ruling would require an official statement from law enforcement identifying the material as hacked, something that Twitter never received, according to Taibbi…

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Trump Compared to Tupac…What?

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Did you ever think that former President Donald Trump and infamous rapper Tupac would be compared to one another?

Watch Amanda explain the latest developments below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

The other Soros: Senator Reveals How this Liberal Swiss Billionaire Has Been Funneling Cash into US Elections

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Image via Pixabay free images

A left-wing Swiss billionaire has been bankrolling the voting systems used in American elections, with an alleged bias toward liberals, a U.S. senator reveals.

United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Rules Committee, pressed Benjamin Hovland, Vice Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on foreign influence in U.S. elections through what he called “a new form of Zuckerbucks: partisan, foreign-backed funding for local election administrators through the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.”

Hagerty calls it a “highly problematic scheme in which left-wing organizations provide substantial, foreign-funded resources for conducting American elections at the local level.”

Much of the funding comes from Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire and multi-million dollar donor to left-wing causes through his “Hub Project.”

“This is an $80 million initiative, funded by a web of left-wing entities, to ‘help’ local election administrators conduct elections,” Hagerty explained. “It’s a new form of ‘Zuckerbucks,’ is what it is. This network of entities has received tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars from a foreign left-wing billionaire named Hansjörg Wyss. He’s not a U.S. Citizen, so he can’t contribute directly to our elections, but he’s found a way to be involved in our elections.”

“After being repeatedly pressed by Hagerty to acknowledge whether foreign donations used to conduct American elections are acceptable, Vice Chair Hovland conceded that this interference is inappropriate,” a statement from Hagerty’s office reveals.

“Absolutely not. Of course not,” Vice Chair Hovland answered. 

“I want to be clear with that because what this is is Zuckerbucks 2.0 coming from a foreign billionaire involving themselves in our elections. What I want to make certain is that this Commission—that no Election Assistance Commission dollars are commingled in any way with these foreign funds,” said Hagerty.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Final Bit of Democrat Insanity at End of 2022

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Pixabay free images

ANALYSIS – As we end yet another crazy year, we have a new report on how Democrats continue to be the crazy party. 

Despite substantial scientific evidence to the contrary, a majority of Democrats still favor masking toddlers to battle the spread of COVID.

A recent I&I/TIPP Poll showed this mass insanity when 56% of Democrats said they believed masking children under the age of 5 is still a good idea.

In contrast, only 24% of Republicans and 31% of independents believed that masking toddlers is a good idea.

When asked if masking toddlers was a bad idea, as much of the scientific evidence now shows, 58% of Republicans and 38% of independents said they think it is a bad idea.

And only 24% of Democrats thought the same way.

But the divide goes deeper, with ideology, race, and ethnicity playing big roles as well.

The Blaze reported:

When respondents were grouped by ideology rather than party, there was a similar divide: 56% of conservatives thought it was a bad idea; 31% of alleged conservatives supported the initiative. Liberals again majoritively (54%) supported covering children’s faces.

Ideology and party were not the only differentiators.

Only 33% of white Americans said it was a good idea, whereas 48% of black and Hispanic respondents supported masking kids. On the other hand, 44% of white respondents and 28% of black and Hispanic respondents were opposed.

When it came to opposing the idea, 39% of women were opposed — two points higher than their male counterparts.

The Blaze continued:

I&I intimated that what might partially account for the significant ideological split between the right and the left on the matter of masking kids is media and activist suppression of legitimate medical studies putting the efficacy of masking children in doubt.

Numerous studies questioned the effectiveness of masking in protecting from serious COVID effects.

As The Blaze explains, these studies highlight the adverse impact masks have on toddlers’ communication skills and the relative unlikelihood of children becoming severely sick from COVID.

The Blaze also notes that neither the World Health Organization (WHO) nor the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommends masking little kids.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Leonard Leo Pledges $1 Billion To Combat ‘Liberal Dominance’ In Corporate America, Media

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Image via Pixabay free images

Leonard Leo, a billionaire activist often credited as the architect of the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court, has announced a $1 billion investment aimed at countering what he calls “liberal dominance” in corporate America, the media and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview with the Financial Times, Leo detailed his plans through his nonprofit group, the Marble Freedom Trust, which will focus its resources on the private sector. “We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious,” Leo said, explaining that the initiative will build talent and capital pipelines in industries where he believes left-wing extremism is most pervasive.

Leo also emphasized targeting companies and financial institutions that he claims are influenced by “woke” ideology. “Expect us to increase support for organizations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs,” he said, vowing that these entities would face consequences for prioritizing “extreme left-wing ideology” over consumers:

Leo has spent more than two decades at the influential Federalist Society, guiding conservative judges into the federal courts and the Supreme Court itself. In 2018, conservative justice Clarence Thomas joked that Leo was the third most important person in the world.

Leo’s efforts culminated under Trump’s presidency, when three Federalist Society-backed judges were appointed to give conservatives on the Supreme Court a 6-3 supermajority, and profound influence over US law. The court has since then ruled to overturn the right to an abortion, among other long-sought rightwing causes.

In 2020, after Trump lost the election, Leo stepped back from running the daily operations of the Federalist Society, while remaining its co-chair.

The following year, Leo founded Marble, with a $1.6bn donation from electronic device manufacturing mogul Barre Seid, to be a counterweight to what he said was “dark money” of the left. He spent about $600mn in its first three years, according to public financial disclosures.

During the interview, Leo identified several potential targets for his campaign, including banks, China-friendly corporations and companies that have institutionalized diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) frameworks, as well as those adhering to environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing principles.

He added that his goal is to find “very leveraged, impactful ways of reintroducing limited constitutional government and a civil society premised on freedom, personal responsibility and the virtues of Western civilization.”

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.

Did Fauci Lie To Congress? New Investigation May Reveal The Truth.

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Photo Credit: Fogarty International Center from Bethesda, MD, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In the wake of revelations that the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci may have knowingly lied to Congress in sworn testimony, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is asking the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation.

Paul has asked U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves to open an investigation into testimony Fauci made to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on May 11, 2021, in which Fauci denied funding research at viral laboratory in China where the COVID-19 virus reportedly originated.

“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said under oath in May.

But a month later a June 14, 2023,  Government Accountability Office report concluded the Wuhan Institute of Virology did receieve NIH funding.

There are concerns the COVID-19 virus “may have been genetically engineered because gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic,” Paul reports.

Now Paul wants to determine if Fauci’s statements were illegal.

“I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statement,” Paul wrote in a letter to Graves. “Dr. Fauci’s testimony is inconsistent with facts that have since come to light.”

“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to his colleagues. His own colleagues have acknowledged Dr. Fauci’s inconsistency. A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games – especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line,” Paul writes.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 it is a federal crime to make “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” as part of “any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.”

The penalty for an offense includes criminal fines and imprisonment of up to five years.

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.

READ NEXT: Ukrainian Special Forces Reportedly ‘Pinned Down’ During Night Raid In Crimea By Security Guard In Underwear

Clueless Deputy Chief of Space Force Takes Sides in ‘Woke Wars’

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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.

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. 

Fox News explained:

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. 

Fox News quoted her as saying:

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.

Amanda Head: Another Indictment- Why Are They So Scared Of Him?

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Trump is facing a third indictment…

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.