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What About the Federal Investigations on Biden’s Corruption?

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The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – We are rightfully covering all aspects of the ongoing legal proceedings against former president Donald Trump, especially the most recent federal indictment. 

But we also need to ask – what about the federal investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden? They are potentially far more serious.

Bill Barr, Attorney General under Trump, said the protracted investigation into Hunter Biden, which is being led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, is damaging the nation.

“I think it’s time to fish or cut bait and find out what actually happened in that investigation,” Barr said, according to The Blaze.

The Hunter investigation has the strong potential to also implicate Joe Biden criminally, including credible whistleblower allegations that the senior Biden took a $5 million bribe from the Chinese.

That would be a far worse crime than anything Trump has been accused of.

But Democrats are quick to dismiss these serious accusations, and in some cases even lie about them.

Case in point, a confidential human source (CHS) allegations that Biden had been involved in a criminal bribery scheme.

After meeting with the FBI, where they showed Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin and House Oversight Committee Chairman, Republican James Comer, a document detailing the allegations, Raskin dismissed the whole thing, and apparently lied about it.

As The Blaze reported: “Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat, claimed the Justice Department had investigated the allegations in 2020 but decided not to move further because then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady ‘found no evidence to corroborate’ them.

He also claimed information against Biden was given to the FBI by Rudy Giuliani, a high-profile, if slightly discredited, Trump loyalist.

In an interview on Fox News, Barr, who led the Department of Justice (DOJ) when the whistleblower allegations were made, disputed Raskin’s comments, saying the Democrat was “confused,” and essentially called him a liar.

According to the Blaze:

Barr said he assigned Brady the task of vetting the document to determine its credibility. He established this “intake process,” he explained, because there were a number of ongoing investigations related to the Biden family and he wanted to avoid “proliferating investigations around the country going in to the election year, all related to the Bidens.”

“We also wanted to protect the integrity of the investigations that were going on,” Barr said. “So this was a screening, a clearinghouse function to check evidence out before sending it to the ongoing investigations.”

Regarding Raskin’s claim that the document contained information provided by Rudy Giuliani. That is just flatly untrue, he said.

Barr added, “It was stuff that was developed within the department and the FBI from [a] confidential human source. And that information was checked out and it was determined that it was not likely to have been disinformation.” 

Meanwhile, Biden decided to joke about the serious allegations about Chinese bribery.

When confronted by a reporter at the White House who asked about them, saying “Congresswoman Nancy Mace says there’s damning evidence in the FBI file that you sold out the country,” Biden replied: “Where’s the money?” adding, “I’m joking. It’s a bunch of malarkey.”

The GOP Congresswoman quickly responded: “[W]e don’t find selling out your country funny. Prove us wrong by releasing your and your family’s unredacted bank records. The FBI can’t protect you forever.”

She went on to list the names of businesses the Biden family allegedly used as “shell companies” to conceal funds received from foreign nationals.

Comer earlier had explained: “Most of these companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.” 

“The bank records show the Biden family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies.”

According to Fox News, an executive with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas firm where Hunter Biden served as a board member, told the FBI’s source the payoff was to be divided: “$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden.” 

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

Fox News Issues Cease And Desist Letter to Tucker Carlson

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Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

The relationship between Tucker Carlson and Fox News continues to sour…

The network has issued a cease and desist letter to Tucker Carlson after the conservative pundit published the first two episodes of his new Twitter show.

Carlson remains under contract with Fox News despite being unceremoniously fired by the network in April days after Fox agreed to a historic settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. (RELATED: Fox News, Dominion Voting Systems Speak Out Over Tucker Carlson Exit)

In a Twitter thread posted Monday, Harmeet Dhillon, one of Carlson’s attorneys who regularly appeared on his show while he was still on Fox, accused the network of attempting to muzzle its former prime-time star.

“What you are seeing on Fox today is a censored version of the news,” Dhillon said. “Keep that in mind as you make your viewing and your commenting choices.”

Since leaving Fox News, Carlson has launched a new web series on Twitter Spaces. However, the network’s latest move may jeopardize the future of Carlson’s venture.

This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

Trump Splits With Attorneys After Federal Indictment

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    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Hours after being indicted for a second time and Donald Trump has parted ways with two of his attorneys.

    Shortly after being indicted in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials after leaving the White House on Thursday two of Trump’s lawyers have reportedly resigned.

    “This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” Trusty and Rowley said in a statement Friday. “It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system. 

    “Now that the case has been filed in Miami, this is a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry the cases through to completion,” they added. “We have no plans to hold media appearances that address our withdrawals or any other confidential communications we’ve had with the President or his legal team.” 

    Trump, taking to his TRUTH Social on Friday, said he will bring on a new attorney, Todd Blanche. 

    “For purposes of fighting the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time, now moving to the Florida Courts, I will be represented by Todd Blanche, Esq., and a firm to be named later,” Trump wrote. “I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and “sick” group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before.” 

    He added: “We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days. When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation? MAGA!” 

    Trump was indicted on at least seven counts involving obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and illegal retention of classified government material. 

    Anti-Trump Political Witch Hunt or Valid Criminal Indictments?

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    Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump faces a slew of legal onslaughts, the latest being a federal indictment by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.

    Like the FBI raid on his Florida home, this divisive and politically charged indictment is an unprecedented development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government.

    And the political fallout will be huge.

    Trump denies any wrongdoing and is calling the indictments a witch hunt. And yes, he has been unfairly targeted before – many times.

    But is this case really part of that same anti-Trump vendetta? And does it matter?

    The latest indictment is for the willful retention of highly classified national security documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.

    Many will point to the later discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s homes and properties connected to him without him facing criminal charges (yet) as proof that this is an anti-Trump witch hunt.

    Last week, the DOJ also cleared former Vice President Mike Pence of any wrongdoing after a small number of classified documents were found at his Indiana home in January.

    Trump posted a slew of angry social media posts against federal investigators Tuesday highlighting different treatment.

    “The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in one of several posts.

    And yes, as I have repeatedly written about, the DOJ and the FBI have been heavily politicized, or even weaponized against conservatives.

    But, as with Richard Nixon and Watergate, the problem for Trump here is the cover-up. Had he simply returned the documents once they were discovered, it would have been far less likely he would have been indicted.

    Instead, Trump repeatedly refused to turn over the materials to federal officials once he left the White House, and then provided a series of bizarre justifications for his actions, before the FBI raided his home.

    A separate special counsel is investigating Biden’s handling of classified material after documents were found at his Wilmington, Del., home and a Washington, D.C., office from his time as vice president. 

    The difference here is Biden’s team alerted federal officials upon discovering the documents and promptly turned them over.

    Trump’s own former Attorney General Bill Barr pushed back on Trump’s claims that a special counsel’s ongoing documents probe is politically motivated. 

    As reported by The Hill:

    “Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”

    The indictment carries serious legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. Trump will appear at a federal courthouse in Miami on June 13.

    In March, the notoriously liberal, Soros-backed Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on state charges related to hush-money payments to a former porn film star in 2016. 

    That local indictment appears far more political and ‘Trumped-up’ (pun not intended) than this federal one. The trial for this case begins in March 2024.

    Jack Smith, the special counsel coordinating federal investigations into the Espionage Act indictments, oversees other inquiries related to Trump, including those regarding the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.

    But none of this will prevent Trump from continuing his campaign for president. “Nothing stops Trump from running while indicted, or even convicted,” University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen told CNN.

    The Constitution requires only three things of candidates. They must be a natural-born citizen (not a naturalized one), at least 35 years old, and residents of the U.S. for at least 14 years.

    So theoretically, Trump could be convicted and still be elected President.

    Not only won’t this keep Trump from running, but it will probably help him with his core base of supporters in the GOP primary.

    And Trump won’t even go to trial for any of this until well into the next presidential term.

    But the optics and politics of all this is the biggest issue.

    As the Daily Caller reported Pence as saying: “I think this is going to be terribly divisive for the country. I also think it sends a terrible message to the wider world that looks at America as a standard of not only democracy, but of justice.”

    The question is when does all of this come to a head? And what will happen when it does?

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

    Report: Trump Aide Indicted In Classified Documents Investigation

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    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    A close aide for former president Donald Trump has been indicted in Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified information.

    Fox News has reported that Walt Nauta, who served as a Trump personal aide and valet in the White House and later at Mar-a-Lago, has been indicted. It’s unclear what exact charges Nauta is facing.

    Sources told Fox News that Nauta was seen on surveillance video moving boxes of sensitive material from a storage area at a time when the government had sought information about those documents. At some point, he reportedly had stopped speaking with investigators.    

    Nauta’s indictment comes after a Miami grand jury indicted Donald Trump on Thursday.

    During an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital Thursday night, Trump said the case is “election interference” and “the greatest witch hunt of all time.” Trump said he will “of course” plead not guilty to charges in federal court on Tuesday, and said he is “totally innocent.”

    “This is the most corrupt administration in history—there has never been an administration so corrupt, and they’re just starting to find it right now,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “They are trying to deflect all of their dishonesty by bringing this ridiculous boxes hoax case.”

    This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

    CNN Dumps Trump Transcript Over Classified Docs

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    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Things are not looking good for Donald Trump.

    Hours after Trump was reportedly indicted by a Florida grand jury in the classified documents case CNN’s Paula Reid shared a transcript of the tape in which Trump discusses not being able to share secret information.

    Reid and Kaitlan Collins broke the news last week that Trump was caught on tape discussing an allegedly classified document that he had taken with him when he left the White House. During the tape, Trump reportedly acknowledged he can’t show the document, which outlines a plan to attack Iran, to his visitors because of the classification attached to it.

    Read the transcript below:

    “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

    Trump was complaining in the meeting about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. The meeting occurred shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern.

    “Well, with Milley – uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump says, according to the transcript. “They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”

    Trump continues: “All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”

    During an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital Thursday night, Trump said the case is “election interference” and “the greatest witch hunt of all time.” Trump said he will “of course” plead not guilty to charges in federal court on Tuesday, and said he is “totally innocent.”

    “This is the most corrupt administration in history—there has never been an administration so corrupt, and they’re just starting to find it right now,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “They are trying to deflect all of their dishonesty by bringing this ridiculous boxes hoax case.”

    He added: “They’re not going to get away with it.”

    “I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said, citing the Presidential Records Act, saying it “makes me totally innocent.”

    Report: Trump Indicted In Documents Case

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    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Former President Donald Trump broke the news that he’s been indicted in the classified documents case.

    A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump on seven charges for his alleged mishandling of over 100 classified documents after leaving office.

    It is the first time a former president of the United States has been indicted on federal criminal charges.

    Trump has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m.

    Fox News has more:

    Former President Trump has been indicted on federal charges that emerged out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s months-long investigation.

    Trump facing at least seven federal counts related to document handling and obstruction of justice. He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.

    Trump himself announced the indictment on his social media platform, Truth Social.

    “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is “secured” by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time,” Trump said on Truth Social.

    This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

    Amanda Head: DeSantis Campaign Caught Using Fake Photos to Smear Trump

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    Ron DeSantis via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    This is a new low.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had enough of Trump’s insults and the gloves are coming off.

    watch Amanda explain the situation below:

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

    On Twitter Show, Tucker Carlson Blames Ukraine for Attack on Dam

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    Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,

    ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.

    And he may be right.

    Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

    Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.

    As Newsweek reported, that is part of Tucker’s claim, too.

    And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.

    Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.

    This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.

    While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.

    On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”

    And that has always been a stretch. Instead, The Post reporting today reinforces my earlier conclusion that it is “likely, the U.S. was aware but turned a blind eye.”

    Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

    Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:

    The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

    Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.

    Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.

    Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”

    Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.

    So, what are the facts?

    The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

    At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.

    Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

    However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.

    The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.

    Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.

    In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

    Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”

    In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack. 

    But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:

    So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.

    Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.

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

    Trump Responds to Latest Indictment Whispers

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    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Former President Donald Trump is responding to fresh claims that federal authorities are closing in on a new indictment against him.

    On Wednesday, a former Trump associate testified before a federal grand jury in the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials.

    “Today, in what can only be described as a bogus and deeply troubling effort to use the power of government to ‘get’ Trump, I fulfilled a legal obligation to testify in front a federal grand jury and I answered every question honestly,” Taylor Budowich, a former Trump spokesperson, wrote on Twitter.

    “America has become a sick and broken nation—a decline led by Joe Biden and power hungry Democrats,” he added. “I will not be intimidated by this weaponization of government. For me, the need to unite our nation and make America great again has never been more clear than it is today.”

    Budowich previously served as a spokesperson for Trump after he left the White House. He is now the head of MAGA Inc., a super PAC backing the former president’s 2024 bid.

    The Florida grand jury hearing testimony is the latest development in the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving office.

    Multiple outlets have reported that Trump has received a letter from federal prosecutors notifying him of the impending indictment.

    https://twitter.com/MishaFitton/status/1666737315060826114