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    Biden Under Pressure to Fire Energy Secretary After Alleged Ethics Violations

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    4
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm should be removed from her position amid a “litany” of alleged ethics violations, a group of conservative leaders report.

    More than a dozen conservative leaders, including Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting Granholm’s resignation “based on a series of violations of federal ethics laws and regulations,” the MRC reports.

    “In light of the repeated ethical lapses, as well as the apparent tolerance of a lax culture of ethical compliance at the Department of Energy, it is crucial for ensuring the trust of the American people that Secretary Granholm be immediately relieved of her duties,” the letter to Biden states.

    The letter lists a “litany of abuses of public trust,” including:

    Failure to accurately report financial holdings

    Participating personally and substantially in matters directly benefiting a company in which she had a financial interest

    Inappropriately using her official position to promote products for multiple companies in which she had a financial interest or covered relationship

    Abusing her position of authority and misusing government resources to advance partisan activities in violation of the Hatch Act

    Signaling to career civil servants and senior political leadership under her command that policy objectives take priority over basic compliance with ethics and legal obligations.

    The letter also accuses Granholm of using her office to boost the value of her stock in Ford Motor Company.

    “The recent revelations about Secretary Granholm’s continued financial ownership of Ford stock while acting to enrich – and at times even publicly endorse – the company is egregious,” the letter read. “However, it is simply the latest incident evidencing recklessness at best and intentional disregard for the law at worst.”

    The leaders also demand Granholm’s resignation for engaging in prohibited partisan political activity noting the Office of the Special Counsel found Granholm violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their positions to engage in some forms of political activity, in an October 2021 interview.

    “Taken together, these episodes cast serious doubt on the Secretary’s fitness to hold a cabinet seat,” the letter reads.

    “You often speak of maintaining the highest standards for your administration’s appointees. It is past time that you demonstrate that this promise holds some meaning,” the letter concludes.

    Granholm would not the first Biden administration Energy Department official to resign in disgrace.

    Former Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman amid allegations she used her office to benefit a former employer.

    Senior DOE official Samuel Brinton was also fired and later arrested for stealing womens’ luggage from airports.

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

    ‘Deranged’ Leftist NY Judge Declares Trump Guilty of Fraud Before Trial Begins

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    15
    Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

    ANALYSIS – In what is only the latest weaponized, partisan legal action against former President Donald Trump, the far-left Democrat New York state attorney Letitia James and her leftist cohort Justice Arthur Engoron have just found Trump guilty of civil fraud before his trial even began.

    Never mind that the case is obscene to begin with and should not even exist. And the law it is based on is obscene as well and should not exist either. Andrew McCarthy explains in National Review:

    James, an ambitious progressive authoritarian who campaigned for office on a vow to weaponize the Empire State’s legal processes against Trump, decided to package the scraps [of leftover fraud charges no one else could prosecute] into a lengthy civil complaint. After all, she had a secret weapon: New York’s Executive Law 65(12), which empowers an abusive prosecutor to put partisan enemies out of business without having to prove anything. Although this provision purports to outlaw “repeated” and “persistent” “fraud” and/or “illegality,” in reality, as I explained last week in a column for The Messenger:

    “The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them. The state just has to show that a defendant made false claims with enough “persistence” and “repetition” that at least two persons were “affected” — which, whatever it means, is not a synonym for ‘harmed.’”


    Claiming Trump significantly overvalued his properties and assets when presenting his company’s financials to banks and lenders and that this somehow “affected” someone, James is seeking at least $250 million in penalties, a ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric from running businesses in New York, and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.

    The accusations are that Trump inflated the value of assets by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion annually between 2011 and 2021 to save hundreds of millions on loans and insurance.

    This, even though no one has been claimed to have been harmed, and all financial institutions take self-declared valuations like those made by Trump, with a grain of salt when making loans and other major financial decisions.

    Bankers and insurance executives have a fiduciary obligation to conduct their own due diligence to determine what they believe are fair market valuations of assets. And they always do.

    And as McCarthy further explains, everyone involved knew Trump exaggerated just about everything:

    …this was for political consumption and the burnishing of celebrity. In the league of sophisticated financial actors in which Trump plays, where corporate departments are dedicated to valuation analysis because that’s the bread-and-butter of finance, nobody took this nonsense seriously. Indeed, Trump even included a “worthless clause” in his SFCs which, in so many words, warned that they were apt to be, you know, somewhat less than perfectly accurate. Many of the financial institutions that did business with Trump did so for years, and knew exactly the cat they were dealing with. They made loans and indemnified Trump because they knew, based on their own expertise and experience with him, that he was quite wealthy (even if not as wealthy as he claimed) and that he would pay up.

    But that didn’t stop Justice Engoron, who ruled preemptively on September 26 that James had proven Trump and his co-defendants fraudulently inflated his assets. 

    Engoron, in his ruling, ordered the cancellation of certificates that 10 of Trump’s business entities need to operate some of his marquee properties — including Trump Tower and his golf clubs in New York — and said he would appoint independent receivers to oversee their “dissolution.”

    The judge thus essentially imposed the corporate death penalty on Trump’s businesses BEFORE the trial even began.

    Trump responded in a post on his Truth Social platform the day of the ruling, calling accusations that he committed fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and hit back, calling Engoron a “DERANGED” judge.

    In this case, I must agree with Trump’s wording. The judge is deranged, but he is also a partisan hack and embarrassment in what is already a highly partisan and embarrassing New York judicial system.

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

    Radical Army Secretary Doesn’t Want White Men from ‘Patriot’ Families

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    6
    The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – In one of my earlier PDBs I asked if the Pentagon’s ‘Wokeness’ was a deliberate effort to keep straight, white Christian males from joining the military. Of course, I knew the answer was ‘yes.’ 

    I even said, “this may be the left’s goal – to deliberately alienate [straight] white Christian men from joining, so they can expand efforts to recruit non-religious, non-white, woke LGBT lefties instead.”

    But now Joe Biden’s Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, a lefty civilian bureaucrat who never served a day in uniform, is saying the quiet part out loud. And she is going even farther. Much farther.

    Wormuth doesn’t just want to alienate white Christian men, so they won’t join, she specifically wants to keep out recruits from what I call ‘patriot families’ – those who have a history of serving our country going back up to seven generations. 

    Most of these patriot family recruits would be white Christian men. Many of them are from the South.

    Since the end of the draft in 1973 at the close of the Vietnam War, notes the Wall Street Journal, the Army has relied “heavily on veterans and military families to develop the next generation of recruits, especially in the region known in the military as the ‘Southern Smile,’ a curving region from the mid-Atlantic and down across the southern U.S.”

    But we now also have multi-generational Hispanic service members and a few others. The children of all these military families make up most new recruits in the U.S. military. 

    The Journal added:

    Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because “people who know the most about it stick around.” 

    But to the far-left Democrats, including Wormuth, all these patriots are dangerous and must be purged from our fighting forces. That’s what the Pentagon’s wokeness is really about.

    As the Wall Street Journal reported:

    Depending too much on military families could create a “warrior caste,” Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.

    What does that nonsense mean in real terms?

    Well, Daniel Greenfield says it very well in Frontpage Magazine:

    There is a ‘warrior caste’ insofar as you have families who have fought for this country since the War of Independence. They showed up, they bled, and now they’re to be replaced by drag queens and identity politics quotas.

    And Wormuth’s radical plan to replace our ‘warrior caste’ is being finalized. 

    According to the WSJ, “Wormuth said she expects within weeks to begin drafting a proposal for a recruiting overhaul so sweeping that Congress might need to pass legislation to enact all of it.”

    While not going into details, Wormuth has stated that: “The Army is strategically deploying recruiters to communities across the country based on demographics, ethnicity, race, and gender.” 

    How does this translate into policy? 

    Greenfield writes in another Frontpage piece that: “Rather than getting the best people or even adequately qualified people, the goal is to match the force to the census data in a completely senseless exercise so that the people they do get are 20% black, 7.2% Asian, and 0.6% American Indian, or develop a plan to get those Asians.”

    He adds:

    That’s what deciding that the military should “look like America” really means in the ranks. You can’t have too many white men, but too many black men could also become a problem. If the goal is to match the census, then you can’t have too few minorities or too many. Come on in Jiang, we haven’t met our Chinese quota yet, sorry Jose, we have too many Hispanics already.

    But as the Pentagon’s annual June ‘Pride’ festivities highlight, it’s not just about racial quotas, it’s also about sexual identity politics. Greenfield concludes:

    Who needs a few good men when you can have a few good trans-men of color? And who cares if they speak English? No Habla Ingles? No problemo! Having HIV  is not a problem. Being from an enemy nation is not a problem. Being a man who believes he’s a woman is not a problem.

    Being white, especially a heterosexual male, is a very big problem. We need a military that looks like America and white heterosexual men look nothing like America.

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

    Congress Investigating Alleged Biden Attempt To Rig Election For Campaign Supporter

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    2
    Missvain, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    A congressional committee is now investigating allegations that the Biden White House tried to sway a major workplace unionization vote in favor of the United Auto Workers union bosses.

    U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) “probed senior Biden administration officials for their attempts to sway the outcome of a Mercedes-Benz unionization election,” the Committee announced in a statement

    “In a letter to Jake Sullivan, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Chairwoman Foxx is demanding information regarding the Biden administration’s attempts to influence the outcome of a unionization vote at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, as voting was underway,” the statement reads.

    The UAW is a major donor and political supporter of Democrats, spending a reported total of $22.64 million on politics in the 2020 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.

     “On May 17, Mercedes-Benz employees at a plant in Vance, Alabama, voted not to join the United Auto Workers (UAW). In this election, 56 percent of the workers cast their ballots against UAW membership, with more than 90 percent of eligible workers voting in the election. Simultaneously, the UAW became the first U.S. union to file charges using a new German supply chain law. The Committee on Education and the Workforce (Committee) is concerned about recent reports of unusual and inappropriate communications between you and German government officials in what appears to be an attempt to impact the outcome of this election,” Foxx writes in in the letter.

    “On May 6, a news report stated that U.S. government officials had a phone call with German government officials and raised concerns over the Mercedes-Benz representation election in Alabama. … A later report regarding the call also indicated that you prodded Germany to examine the UAW’s allegations against Mercedes-Benz at the direct request of UAW President Shawn Fain. On May 16, the UAW announced that the German government was investigating Mercedes-Benz as a result of charges filed by the UAW in Germany. … It appears the Biden administration, through your actions, sought to put its thumb on the scale to benefit the UAW as the Mercedes-Benz election in Alabama was pending,” Fox continues, adding “It also suggests the UAW sought to use your influence and the White House’s bully pulpit to impact a union representation election.”

    Foxx asked the White House for answers to the following questions:

    Did you raise concerns with German government officials over the Mercedes-Benz representation election in Vance, Alabama, at the request of the UAW?

    In your call with German government officials, did you or any other White House official ask Germany to initiate an investigation of Mercedes-Benz before the Mercedes-Benz union representation election in Alabama concluded?

    Was the purpose of the call with German government officials to discuss the Mercedes-Benz union representation election in Alabama? Were other labor issues or representation elections discussed?

    When did the call with German government officials take place? Provide any White House call logs related to this call.

    Did you discuss your call with German government officials with any employees of the Department of Labor or the NLRB? If so, who?

    Is a local union representation election a national security issue? Why is a local union representation election occupying the time of the U.S. National Security Advisor?

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


    Poll Shows Americans Evenly Split On Sending Trump To Prison. Do You Agree?

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    0
    Image via Pixabay

    A new Associated Press poll finds Americans are almost evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of falsifying business records in New York.

    “The public is divided over whether Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison for his felony conviction for falsifying business records in the hush money case,” the AP reports. “Opinions on the conviction itself have remained stable in the weeks since the decision was announced on May 30 with nearly half approving of the jury’s decision and about a quarter disapproving. The public is also divided on whether Trump has received fair treatment from the legal system.”

    Trump, convicted in June, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18, just weeks ahead of the November election.  Experts predict Trump will likely receive probation and a fine, but a prison sentence is a distinct possibility.

    The AP/NORC poll, conducted June 20-24, finds 48 percent believe Trump should receive a prison sentence, while 50 percent disagree.  That gap is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning Americans are essentially evenly split.

    Among independent voters, who will decide the election, 50 percent believe Trump should be imprisoned while 46 percent disagree.

    While Americans are split on whether Trump should go to prison, the number who support Trump’s conviction outnumber those who oppose it by nearly a two-to-one margin.

    The poll finds 46 percent of Americans support the jury’s decision to convict Trump, while 27 percent disapprove and 25 percent are unsure.

    Among independents, 32 percent agree with the conviction, 21 percent disagree and 47 percent are unsure.

    The nationwide poll was conducted June 20-24, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. 

    The poll, using online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones, was conducted with 1,088 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.0 percentage points.

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

    Amanda Head: Trump Masters The Art Of Blue Collar Appeal

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    0

    Like it or not Donald Trump is still popular…

    The 2024 Republican frontrunner recently attended a UFC fight and the night’s events were interesting, to say the least.

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

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

    85,000 Migrant Kids Go Missing at US Border Under Biden as Questions About Trafficking Explode

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    6
    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.

    Why is the Government Hiding Records on the Trump Raid?

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    11

    The Biden administration is allegedly illegally concealing records on the unprecedented FBI raid on the home of former President Donald Trump, which comes as Trump leads President Joe Biden in polls ahead of a possible 2024 re-election contest.

    The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced that, as of March 31, the National Archives has released only 1,276 pages of over 8,000 records on the federal government investigations of allegations Trump illegally retained and handled classified documents. 

    “The Biden administration’s National Archives is hiding almost every record it has about its manufactured records dispute with President Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

    The released records were secured after Judicial Watch filed an August 2022 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, after the National Archives and Records Administration allegedly unlawfully failed to respond to a February 2022 FOIA request for: 

    “All records regarding the referral from NARA to the Department of Justice regarding the records management procedures of former President Donald Trump.  This request includes all related records of communication between any official or employee of NARA and any official or employee of the Department of Justice and/or any other branch, department, agency, or office of the federal government.”

    “All records regarding the retrieval of records from President Trump or any individual or entity acting on his behalf by the National Archives and Records Administration. This request includes related records of communication between any official or employee of NARA and President Trump and/or any individual or entity acting on his behalf.”

    Judicial Watch claims the released records confirm how “the Biden White House was directly involved in the dispute by initiating ‘special access request’ that advanced an FBI investigation of Trump’s records.”

    According to Judicial Watch, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives wrote to his colleagues on August 23, 2022:

    And, this evening the Post just published a new story detailing an April 12, email that I sent to the Trump reps concerning the DOJ special access request for the 15 Trump boxes, along with many other details concerning the DOJ request and the overall issue. [Redacted]

    “On April 12, an Archives official emailed Philbin [former White House deputy counsel Pat Philbin] and John Eisenberg, another former deputy White House counsel, to tell them the Justice Department, via the Biden White House, had made the request. The email offered the lawyers the opportunity to view the documents as well, but said the documents were too sensitive to be removed from the agency’s secure facility.”

    Conservatives expect further releases of documents will show how the investigation and the current Justice Department criminal investigation are driven by concerns Trump will defeat Biden, and do not show any criminal intent or offense.

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

    Biden Admin. Caught Spying On Trump Supporters’ EventBrite GoFundMe Pages

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    0
    Image via Pixabay free images.

    In a disturbing expansion of the Biden White House’s illicit monitoring of political dissidents, federal authorities quietly sent letters to the operators of crowdfunding sites asking for private financial information on pages that used terms associated with Republicans, conservatism and former President Donald Trump.

    In response, and to determine the extent of Biden administration’s wrongdoing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has sent his own letter to Eventbrite and GoFundMe “requesting documents and communications between federal agencies, including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

    A statement from the Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government announced they are “conducting oversight of financial surveillance of American citizens, including the tracking and monitoring of private financial records in coordination with federal law enforcement.”

    According to the Judiciary Committee:

    The federal government, through FinCEN, urged large financial institutions to comb through their customers’ private transactions and report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression. The Committee and Select Subcommittee have uncovered how the FBI worked with Bank of America to gather private financial data of Americans. Congress has an important interest in protecting Americans’ privacy and First Amendment activity. Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee raise the prospect that Eventbrite and GoFundMe may have been in communication with FinCEN or other federal law-enforcement agencies about activity on Eventbrite and GoFundMe’s platform. 

    Excerpts of the letter to Eventbrite read:

    “The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that following the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outlined the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provided financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement, ostensibly to aid in investigations. These materials included a document recommending that financial institutions ‘search Zelle payment messages’ using  generic terms like ‘TRUMP,’ ‘MAGA,’ ‘America First,’ ‘PELOSI,’ ‘PENCE,’ ‘SCHUMER,’ as well as a document reflecting a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators.’ According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, the federal government, through FinCEN, urged large financial institutions to comb through their customers’ private transactions and report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.

    “In addition, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that on January 18, 2021, FinCEN emailed financial institutions a list of ‘crowdfunding sites’ that included Eventbrite, GoFundMe, and Anedot, among others, and explained how financial institutions could use a ‘transaction reference’ to identify customers making certain transactions on crowdfunding sites. For example, in the email, FinCEN alerted financial institutions to customers’ use of Eventbrite, noting that ‘people have been observed using this site to post an event and sell tickets including bus tickets to the demonstrations.’ FinCEN noted how ‘Card Purchase[s]’ to events are findable using ‘the transaction reference ‘EB [the EVENT] with the phone number’ and detailed how individuals who purchased tickets to events in support of President Trump could be identified using the transaction reference, ‘EB MARCH FOR TR 801413720.’ FinCEN also provided a second method for identifying individuals using transaction references, writing: ‘[y]ou may see a Card Purchase with the transaction reference in the following format . . . [a Message or like a cause or candidate] with the phone number in the following format . . . .’ 

    “Despite these transactions having no apparent nexus to criminal activity—and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their First Amendment rights—FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with federal law enforcement, without legal process, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the federal government’s potential abuses of Americans’ fundamental civil liberties.”

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

    Congress Reveals Stunning New Information on January 6 Attacker

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    7

    Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the federal government’s response to the January 6, 2021 incidents at the U.S. Capitol now reveal that a pair of pipe bombs planted at the Capitol Hill offices of the Republican and Democrat parties may have been a diversion to distract law enforcement from other events.

    They also reveal that while the bombs contained live explosives, it does not appear the timers were operable, and the FBI may not even have interviewed the witnesses who discovered them.

    In response, Chairmen Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray “revealing new information surrounding the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 5, 2021,” the Judiciary Committee reports.

    “On June 7, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO),” the Committee announced.

    “In that role, Mr. D’Antuono oversaw the WFO’s investigations into the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including the placement of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and RNC on January 5, 2021. Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony provided new information about the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs and reinforces our concerns about the FBI’s handling of this matter,” the Committee revealed.

    In his transcribed interview, Steven D’Antuono “suggested that the FBI could not even determine whether the placement of the pipe bombs was a ‘diversionary’ tactic for the events of January 6,” the Committee also revealed.

    D’Antuono testified:

    MASSIE: Are you familiar with the diversion thesis, that these were set up to be a diversion?

    D’ANTUONO: Yeah, I’ve heard people say that, but if you watch – I’ve done a lot of media reports. I was trying to get the information out there, tips and stuff like that, right. I will not speculate. I’m not going to speculate on that. I think that’s speculation, at best, when people say that it’s a diversionary tactic. We’ll never know until we find the person that actually did – or persons that actually did it. So I can’t speculate on that. Could it have been? Yes, that’s one theory. Obviously, it’s one theory. But is it the only theory? I don’t – I really don’t know.

    MASSIE: It looks like the head Capitol Police [sic] believes it was a diversion.

    D’ANTUONO: So Steve Sund, chief of police, yes. I believe he wrote that in his book. Again, it’s pure speculation. There’s no intelligence – look, I ran the investigation for 2 years until I stepped out. We don’t know. We don’t even know the gender at this point as to – we could speculate, and there’s a lot of people that are speculating as to the gender.

    MASSIE: How confident are you that the individual depicted in the surveillance footage on January 5th set both of those pipe bombs in place?

    D’ANTUONO: So the video that we saw, I feel confident that by the video that we have, that that person planted those. 

    D’Antuono also testified on the “viability of the pipe bombs, which, according to reporting, were deemed to be ‘inoperable,’” the Committee reports.

    “D’Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and ‘they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,’” the Committee notes, adding. “D’Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.”

    He testified:

    MASSIE: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?

    D’ANTUONO: No, I don’t. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t—we don’t know. We honestly don’t know, and that’s some of the pain . . . .

    D’Antuono’s testimony “provided additional details about the FBI’s use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect,” the Committee revealed.

    He testified:

    D’ANTUONO: So the – there’s a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I’ve seen the same video. I’ve watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone’s not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they’re on a bench taking a phone call? We don’t know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.

    We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn’t corrupted – and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.

    D’Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.

    He testified:

    MASSIE: So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?

    D’ANTUONO: I don’t know.

    The Committee notes “D’Antuono conceded that it would be ‘investigation 101’ to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.”

    He explained:

    MASSIE: So – but the person who found – you either haven’t identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?

    D’ANTUONO: I – honestly, sir, I don’t know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It’s just – it’s a whole host of stuff that’s going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I’m getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –

    “D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” the Committee concludes.

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