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FBI Director’s ‘Contempt of Congress’ is Part of Bigger Problem

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ANALYSIS – FBI Director Christopher Wray has steadfastly refused to provide the House Oversight and Accountability Committee an internal Bureau document that alleges Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Chinese sources. 

The committee issued a subpoena for it a while ago. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has said he learned about the allegations from a whistleblower whom he declined to identify but has described as “very credible.”

With the committee’s deadline passing yesterday, Comer has said he will seek to hold Wray in contempt of Congress, rejecting Wray’s offer to allow lawmakers to view the FD-1023 form in a secure location instead of handing over the document.

A contempt vote would be the most significant confrontation between House Republicans and federal law enforcement since the GOP took control of Congress in January.

Wray insists that the FD-1023 form contains unverified claims from a single confidential human source (CHS), and that turning it over is irresponsible. Sources need to know their identities will be protected. 

And allegations shouldn’t be publicized without being corroborated.

Wray is right. 

In the past, neither party would push much on an issue like this because they understood that need. But they also trusted the Bureau to be nonpartisan.

As the National Review notes:

…the mere fact that a CHS may have alleged that Biden took part in a bribery scheme doesn’t mean it happened. It can’t be dismissed out of hand — there’s too much indication of Biden’s sleazy self-dealing and outright lying for that. But people in positions of authority get falsely accused of wrongdoing all the time. The FBI rightly keeps such allegations under wraps because those people are presumed innocent and the bureau can’t investigate without being discrete. Congress has traditionally given the FBI a wide berth because lawmakers know secrecy is a necessity for competent investigations — and it has assumed that the FBI is competent and non-partisan.

Unfortunately, those days are gone, and the FBI director can’t decide what part of a Congressional subpoena to honor or reject. Wray has no legal basis to keep it hidden.

And due to the recent history of partisanship and politicization at the Bureau, most egregiously the Trump-Russiagate hoax, this is only part of a much bigger problem.

The Bureau can no longer be trusted to be fair and apolitical. As the National Review explains:

[The FBI] is a contented cog of the progressive administrative state. In the Obama years, it was put in the service of the Democratic Party. It marched to President Obama’s beat, whitewashed and abetted Hillary Clinton’s malevolence, undertook to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency, spent years covering its tracks, and insulated his 2020 opponent from scrutiny. It has spent the Biden years helping Democrats craft a political narrative of a nation besieged by white-supremacist domestic terrorism — all the while slow-walking the investigation of the Biden family’s influence-peddling business.

National Review continues:

[FBI] abuses have proceeded under Wray’s stewardship — the FBI’s (a) illegal surveillance under FISA; (b) general participation in the suppression of political speech on social media; (c) specific complicity in the Democrats’ and the intelligence community’s suppression of the Biden influence-peddling scandal; (d) collaboration in the Democrats’ crafting of a political narrative that the country is overrun by white-supremacist domestic terrorists; and (e) retaliation against whistleblower agents who’ve reported to Congress about some of these issues (at least according to three of those agents, who testified under oath at a recent House hearing).

So, while normally, I would be understanding of the director’s arguments and attempts to limit dissemination of a form that could expose investigative sources and methods, in this case, the FBI simply can’t be trusted.

It needs to turn over the document to the committee, with minimal redactions, or Wray should be held in contempt. This is about a much bigger problem.

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

Amanda Head: Why Are Americans Always the Last to Know?

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President Joe Biden’s disturbing mishandling of classified materials is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the latest scandal to face the administration.

Let Amanda explain the latest controversy below:

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

Biden’s Totally Intentional Open Border Disaster

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CBP Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – I have long argued that Joe Biden’s border crisis is absolutely self-created, and it has become increasingly obvious that he in fact has essentially opened the border.

And worse this is absolutely intentional.

There can be no other explanation.

Biden’s shameful denials that there is no border crisis show that he is either delusional or a pathological liar. 

Or both.

But his appointment of Kamala Harris, who can barely find Mexico on a map, as his border czar, also speaks volumes. 

Neither has visited the border since coming to office two years ago.

Yet the illegal migrant numbers and incidents are only mushrooming in magnitude. 

And getting worse every day.

The border is going from disastrous to cataclysmic.

And it’s not just incompetence or bad policy.

It is part of a plan. 

Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says Team Biden “intentionally unsecured” the southern border because “they see a perceived political benefit from open borders.” 

In a recent podcast with the Heritage Foundation, Morgan said of the border:

It’s a total disaster, simply getting worse. And I think what’s important is we really need to compare it to the last year under the Trump administration. Now, look, this is not a Right or Left thing for me. This is about factual data.

So if you look in the last fiscal year under the Trump administration, I think we were around 400,000 total encounters. What we saw the first fiscal year under the Biden administration, as you said, over 2 million. This last fiscal year, we had 2.7 million total encounters. In the first 23, now almost 24 months under this administration, we’ve seen over 4.7 million total encounters with another 1.2 million “got-aways.” So we’re actually getting close to 6 million total encounters, plus got-aways, in the first 24 months of this administration.

Those data points, Virginia, alone are staggering. It’s the worst self-inflicted border crisis we’ve ever seen on our southern border and our lifetime and the data is undeniable.

In response to a question about what the future may hold for the border under Team Biden’s remaining two years, Morgan said worst case things stay the same.

Horrible.

And that is unacceptable. As he added :

It’s insanity. It’s absolutely unsustainable. And again, it’s jeopardizing every aspect of our nation’s safety and national security. We cannot allow this to happen.GAND

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

Potential Trump Arrest a ‘Manufactured Circus’ by ‘Weaponized’ Prosecutor

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social media Saturday that he was going to be arrested on Tuesday, March 21. 

He also urged his supporters to protest.

So far no other news media has confirmed his claim and Trump remains untouched.

It appears that this announcement citing illegal leaks in the Manhattan DA’s office was Trump’s successful attempt to get ahead of the story.

In part, he wanted to mobilize the GOP.

Still, if or when, this does happen, an arrest of a former president, and current candidate, would be an unprecedented event in U.S. history.

It would look like third-world criminalization of politics, and can only further alienate many of the 70 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020.

Most Republicans will see it as a politicized witch hunt. It would also only deepens the belief that there continues to be a years-long conspiracy to bring down Trump.

It will seem that the Russia collusion hoax, the ‘resistance’ inside and outside of government, lawsuits, and two highly partisan, manufactured, and failed, impeachments against Trump by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t suffice.

Provoking a reaction from potential GOP primary opponents was also a Trump goal. 

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced he is running for president, had a few things to say about the issue, even while claiming he wasn’t “going to be involved.”

DeSantis called the whole prosecution a ‘manufactured circus.’

The conservative governor focused on how the George Soros-backed New York City prosecutor Alvin L. Bragg, has seen major crime skyrocket in Manhattan while focusing on a relatively petty alleged crime to go after the former president.

The petty prosecution is over alleged hush money payments to adult performer Stormy Daniels to, as DeSantis said dismissively, “secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”

But it’s not even about the alleged payments made on his behalf by his then-attorney Michael Cohen (which wouldn’t be too different from the numerous illicit ways Bill Clinton tried to hide his many affairs while in office from the public. 

This case is expected to actually focus on Trump’s role in recording the reimbursements he made to Cohen in the internal records of his company, the Trump Organization, which were entered as “legal expenses.”

That’s even pettier. The DA calls it “fraud.” Others might call it “sloppy bookkeeping.”

According to the Epoch Times (ET), DeSantis said:

We are not involved in this. We won’t be involved in this. I have no interest in getting involved in some kind of manufactured circus by a Soros-funded DA. He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base.

He added: “I can’t spend my time worrying about things of that nature. So, we’re not going to be involved in it in any way.”

Well, DeSantis is correct, even if he is getting somewhat “involved.”

And DeSantis does know a thing or two about ideologically motivated, Soros-backed prosecutors.

As ET reports:

DeSantis removed Hillsborough County District Attorney Andrew Warren from office last year for stating he wouldn’t prosecute certain crimes. DeSantis’s action has so far survived a review by a federal judge.

DeSantis added: “He [Bragg] is a Soros-funded prosecutor and, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”

The governor continued: “He has downgraded over 50 percent of felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn’t want to even have jail time for the vast majority of crimes. And what we’ve seen in Manhattan is, we’ve seen the crime rate go up and we’ve seen citizens become less safe,” DeSantis said.

But it’s not just DeSantis who sees this as a politically motivated vendetta that could cause far more harm to the American system than good. The New York Times reported that some Democrats and legal experts have their own doubts as well:

Charging former President Donald J. Trump in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star would catapult Mr. Bragg onto the national stage. Already he faces second-guessing, even from putative allies, about the strength of the case and the wisdom of bringing it. 

The Times continued:

…Bragg has been in a difficult situation. Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School and a former prosecutor in Manhattan, said that even though investigators do not target individuals for political reasons, politics does come into play in that “there is always a question of whether it is [in] the public interest to bring a certain charge or not.”

If he does not bring a case even though there is clear evidence to prove it, Ms. Roiphe suggested, he could violate the longstanding principle that no person is above the law. But if he does indict Mr. Trump, who has begun a third presidential campaign, the choice could also be “incredibly destabilizing and harmful,” Ms. Roiphe said.

Meanwhile, many Republicans will be getting very “involved” in this potential outrage. Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy has already accused Bragg of “abusing his office to target President Trump.”

He also is threatening to defund Bragg and is investigating whether federal funds were used by Bragg to pursue Trump.

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

Musk Questions Radical Leftist Soros and Asks if Davos ‘Globalist Elite’ is Trying to Rule the World

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ANALYSIS – Elon Musk is challenging fellow billionaire George Soros and the entire globalist elite now meeting in Davos Switzerland. Musk, still majority owner and CEO of Twitter, made his challenge via his recently acquired social media platform. 

In a tweet by Ian Miles asking, “If we got George Soros in a Twitter Space what question would you ask him?” – Musk responded with his own simple question for Soros: “Do you actually know where your money is going?”

This prompted a flurry of anti-Soros comments. 

One user said he would ask: Do you realize that you are part of the hegemonic imperialism you claim to be fighting against..?”

Another said Soros would respond by saying: “To fund the demise of capitalism so no one will ever be as rich as me again”

Musk has never directly attacked Soros, but his provocative question comes less than two months after Soros disclosed that he had tripled his investment stake in Tesla over the summer.

Since then, Tesla’s shares lost almost two-thirds of their value in 2022. 

We will have to wait until February’s 13F quarterly financial disclosures to know whether Soros remains a shareholder of Tesla.

But getting back to Musk’s question, Soros, who is reportedly worth about $8.5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, should definitely know where his money is going.

Most recently the far-left financier who is one of the Democrat Party’s biggest donors spent $128.4 million on the midterms, says the Americans for Tax Fairness.

And the Democrat Party has been effectively co-opted by the extreme, so-called ‘progressive’ left.

However, that is trifling compared to the vast sums of money and resources he uses to fund a radical leftist agenda, causes, and NGOs worldwide through his Open Society Foundations, the billionaire also funds many socialist and socially radical causes and NGOs worldwide. 

In the U.S. his organizations are notorious for funding the election of leftist prosecutors who are releasing hardened criminals into our nation’s cities without bail, and supporting the extreme transgender agenda, as well as various extreme far-left ‘racial justice’ groups throughout the country.

He does all this under the highly deceptive banner of promoting democracy, human rights, and press freedom.

Rather than attack Soros too directly, Musk heaped most of his scorn on the World Economic Forum (WEF), apparently trying to shake up the gathering of those liberal political and economic elites. 

The forum is traditionally held every year in January in the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, though it was suspended for the covid-19 pandemic.

This year’s event, which opened on Jan. 16, brought together 52 heads of state and government and nearly 600 CEOs, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and BlackRock’s Larry Finkis.

A few days before the forum opened, Musk said he’d been invited to join the WEF but had turned down the invite – a claim denied by the WEF. 

They stated he had not been invited.

“My reason for declining the Davos invitation was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring,” Musk explained on Dec. 31.

However, later Musk tweeted: “I guess there’s value to having a mixed government & commercial forum of some kind,” the billionaire said on Jan. 15. “WEF does kinda give me the willies though, but I’m sure everything is fine 👀.”

His mockery of the WEF only intensified after that.

He wondered in particular about the message of Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, urging the participants of the 2023 edition to “master the future” in the face of the challenges currently facing the world.

“‘Master the Future’ doesn’t sound ominous at all,” the billionaire said sarcastically. “How is WEF/Davos even a thing? Are they trying to be the boss of Earth!?”

Later on Musk dialed it back quite a bit in response to comments from Chris Rufo of the conservative Manhattan Institute arguing that the Davos forum was essentially an overrated clown show and not a serious concern to Americans.

It is still good to see Musk questioning both Soros and the Davos WEF forum. I can only hope this is the beginning of even more questioning – especially of Soros and his deceptive and extremely far-left Open Society Foundation.

There is a lot to question.

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

Biden Classified Documents Scandal Blows Open Again After Nine Mystery Boxes Discovered

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

The same United States Justice Department prosecuting former President Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents ordered the National Archives and Records Administration to recover nine boxes of documents that had been held by Joe Biden – but a federal prosecutor investing whether Biden illegally retained documents appears to have not looked into the matter.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, “sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, and Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding an apparent ‘significant factual omission’ in the Special Counsel’s report on President Biden’s handling of classified records,” a statement from Johnson announced.

“In March 2023, the senators revealed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) tasked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to retrieve nine boxes of Biden records from the Boston office of Patrick Moore, one of Biden’s personal counsels. NARA told the senators that it did move the boxes to its facility in Boston on November 9, 2022.  It remains unclear whether any of the records in those boxes contained classified information,” the statement reveals.

Many assume the boxes contained classified documents, as the order to retrieve them came from the Justice Department.

The senators wrote, “[o]ddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA’s retrieval of the nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s office. This apparent omission is significant given that, according to NARA, the Department of Justice requested that NARA recover the boxes. In fact, in March 2023, NARA informed our offices that ‘while NARA has not yet reviewed the contents of the nine boxes, the FBI has.’” 

“The senators noted that if the FBI did review the contents of the boxes, it is unclear what was found, if it included any classified information, and ‘whether the FBI informed Special Counsel Hur’s office of its findings,’” Johnson noted.

The senators added, “it is unclear if Special Counsel Hur had any awareness of or reviewed the information contained in these nine boxes. It would be extremely troubling if Special Counsel Hur failed to investigate the contents of these nine boxes particularly given that we first publicly revealed the existence of these specific boxes on March 27, 2023 — nearly one year ago.”

Amanda Head: New Poll Reveals Depressing Facts

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The latest Rasmussen poll is reporting some unfortunate facts about the state of America. A plurality of those polled said that our country’s best days are behind it…Do you agree?

Watch Amanda break down the problem below:

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

Amanda Head: We Are Winning!

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The latest polls show why liberalism sucks…

It’s unavoidable and now more Americans are sick and tired of Biden’s leadership has resulted in nothing but an epic failure.

Let Amanda break down the latest situation below:

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

House Investigating Democrats Who Fraudulently Obtained Private Military Records of GOP Candidates

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INVESTIGATION – As I noted in my late January PDB, a ‘Democrat Colluded With Air Force Against Black Female GOP Candidate.’ 

In that case, the Air Force took the fall for the release of the congressional candidate’s military record, blaming “a junior individual [who] didn’t follow proper procedures.”

However, Jennifer-Ruth Green, a Republican, continues to blame U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for illegally obtaining and releasing the information through corrupt Air Force personnel to damage her campaign in the weeks leading up to the November election.

The release despicably included information about a sexual assault Green had suffered while serving in Iraq.

But, it seems there is much more to the story.

We now learn she wasn’t the only target of the corrupt DCCC.

We also learn that a Democrat-linked consulting and research firm called ‘Due Diligence Group’ (DDG) has been at the center of a partisan effort to improperly, and likely illegally, obtain the service records of at least 11 service members via fraudulent SF-180 requests.

According to data from OpenSecrets.org, the DCCC has paid more than $100,000 to DDG since 2021.

SF-180s are used by veterans, authorized legal recipients and next of kin to legally obtain information from military personnel records. 

Third-party requests require the service member to authorize their request with their signature.

In these 11 cases, it is clear the service members did not provide their authorization.

Just the News reports:

In an unprecedented breach, the Air Force improperly released to a research firm tied to Democrats’ congressional campaign arm the confidential personnel files of eleven members of the military, including one involving a retired lieutenant colonel running for office as a Republican that detailed how she had been sexually assaulted in the Air Force, Congress has been told.

And the House Armed Services and Oversight committee are demanding answers. The news outlet continues:

[In a February 13 letter], House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer are demanding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explain how he will prevent future breaches of military members’ private information while pressing to know if there will be criminal prosecutions.

Just the News further reports on the letter:

“The Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (OSAF) has informed the Committee that it released 11 individuals’ records over a 14-month period from October 2021-December 2022 to a private research firm which allegedly misrepresented itself in order to obtain access to the personnel records without authorization or consent.” 

Rogers and Comer wrote that the release of other service members’ personal information highlights “not only the inadequacy of procedures to secure military personnel files, but also raises concerning questions of possible illicit motive or political partisanship.”

“This conduct by the Air Force is, at a minimum, unacceptable,” they added, “The conduct by the research firm is quite possibly criminal.”

Just the News reported that Rogers told the outlet that much more needs to be investigated.  

Rogers stated:“It’s abhorrent that a Democrat-aligned firm would do something so despicable as fraudulently obtaining service records. Chairman James Comer and I pressed the Department of Defense for answers on this egregious breach.”

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

Amanda Head: ‘Jesus Revolution’ Destroys Box Office Performace of Oscar-nominated Films

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It’s time to run to your local movie theaters.

A new faith-based film “Jesus Revolution” is setting the box office on fire. The new film has already surpassed numerous Oscar-nominated films’ box office earnings.

Watch Amanda explain the phenomenon below:

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