Tag: Washington Examiner

REPORT: Grassley Shut Out of Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Investigation

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

WASHINGTON– A top Senate Republican with a long history of advocating whistleblowers is being shut out from the Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower investigation by a Democratic Senate chairman despite the whistleblower wanting the GOP senator on the case.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a member of the Senate Finance Committee and a co-chairman of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus,is being denied access to the investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the Washington Examiner has learned.

Lawyers for the IRS whistleblower sent letters to Congress on April 19 and May 15 providing details about their client’s protected disclosures alleging wrongdoing related to the federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s son. The attorneys have gone out of their way in both letters to include Grassley despite the Iowa Republican not being a current chairman or ranking member for a committee with specific jurisdiction regarding the tax code, but he is a leader of a Senate caucus dedicated to protecting whistleblowers.

The IRS whistleblower’s legal team told the Washington Examiner on Monday, “Naturally, we addressed letters to Sen. Grassley because he is co-chair with Sen. Wyden of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus as well as a senior member and past chair of both the Finance and Judiciary committees. Also important, though, is that he is more trusted than any other public official by whistleblowers to give them air cover regardless of the political implications and keep fighting to protect them when others cut and run. What whistleblower wouldn’t want Chuck Grassley in on their case?”

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code requires the chairman of congressional tax committees to grant access to sensitive tax return information, and Wyden has refused to provide that access to Grassley or his team.

Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy told the Washington Examiner the IRS whistleblower’s lawyers had “specifically included” Grassley “in their communications with Congress, so there’s no legitimate reason to exclude Grassley’s staff from participating in this investigation.”

The Grassley spokesman said that “Grassley and his investigations unit are subject matter experts on both whistleblower protections and the Biden family business controversies” and that “they also happen to be very familiar with the specific statutes protecting sensitive tax information.”

Grassley and Wyden are co-founders of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, and the whistleblower’s attorneys are warning about “clearly retaliatory” action against their client.

The whistleblower’s attorneys said Wyden and Grassley have historically had a good relationship and should be able to cooperate — “unless partisanship is getting in the way.”

“Although our client is an IRS supervisor, his protected disclosures implicate the Justice Department, so the Judiciary Committees and others in Congress will need to have access to some version of the disclosures in order to give the Justice Department’s conduct in this case the public scrutiny that it deserves,” the legal team said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Our client’s interests and the country’s interests would be best served if Congress would resist the urge to be distracted by jurisdictional turf wars or playing partisan defense and offense.”

Grassley, a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, designated six Wyden staffers as agents under Section 6103 in 2019 related to a whistleblower complaint his office had received that year.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), the ranking member on the Finance Committee, also received the IRS whistleblower letters, and the Washington Examiner learned that ranking member Crapo’s staff is not objecting to Grassley’s staff participating in the IRS whistleblower investigation, but Wyden is refusing to provide access to any Grassley staffers.

Wyden’s chief communications adviser, Ryan Carey, told the Washington Examiner that “the committee is handling this matter on a bipartisan basis according to its standard procedures governing legally protected taxpayer data” and insisted that “those procedures are designed both to protect taxpayer confidentiality and the integrity of any ongoing investigations.”

The IRS whistleblower’s legal team said last week that the IRS had removed the entire investigative team in the Hunter Biden tax evasion investigation at the request of the Justice Department, according to a letter attorneys Tristan Leavitt and Mark Lytle of Empower Oversight and Nixon Peabody, respectively, wrote to Grassley and multiple heads of the House and Senate last week.

Republicans have demanded an “urgent briefing and explanation” from IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel about the whistleblower’s claims.

Lytle also sent a letter to Grassley and the heads of multiple congressional committees in April, alleging politics and preferential treatment had been “infecting” decisions in the investigation. While the letters consistently do not name Hunter Biden, rather a “politically connected” subject, congressional sources have revealed the allegations involve the president’s son.

The IRS agent’s allegations also “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” against Hunter Biden and “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.”

A source familiar with the whistleblower letter confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Attorney General Merrick Garland is the unnamed senior Biden official whose testimony before Congress is being challenged.

The IRS whistleblower attorneys also sent their letters to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the committee’s ranking member; to Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), the committee’s ranking member; and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), its ranking member.

Grassley and Wyden have clashed over investigations in the past, including when Wyden sought to undermine Grassley’s investigation into the shady foreign business dealings by Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s family, including in Ukraine and with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. Wyden claimed in 2020 that the Grassley evidence was a product of Russian disinformation, while Grassley argued his evidence was based on U.S. government records and interviews with Obama administration officials. Grassley said his investigation has since been corroborated by bank records.

Grassley said on the Senate floor in the summer of 2020 that “the hard truth is that it’s the Democrats who are engaged in a disinformation campaign, all because the facts don’t fit their political narrative” and that “their silence regarding the Steele dossier and fake Russia investigation yet public complaints about my legitimate oversight investigations is proof of that.”

Wyden claimed on Twitter in September 2020 that Grassley’s investigation with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in Biden family finances was “laundering Russian propaganda” and that Russian “disinformation” was “the basis” of the GOP investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. Wyden further claimed on the Senate floor that the GOP report on Hunter Biden was part of “the spread of the spread of Russian propaganda.” Wyden also co-authored a lengthy September 2020 rebuttal claiming the Grassley-Johnson report “amplifies discredited allegations that are part of a known Russian campaign to interfere in the 2020 election.”

Grassley and Johnson denied all of this, and further evidence to buttress their 2020 report has emerged since then.

Grassley has also been deeply involved in whistleblower investigations related to Joe Biden’s son.

Whistleblowers told Grassley last summer that Timothy Thibault, the former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” in October 2020, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.”

The whistleblower disclosures made public by Grassley also alleged that FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten “opened an assessment, which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease” in 2020.

Grassley also sent an October letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and others that said the FBI is in possession of “significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence” of “potential criminal conduct” by Hunter Biden related to his overseas business dealings with China and Ukraine.

Hunter Biden leaves after President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 people during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
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UNSTOPPABLE: Trump Message Continues On Social Media Despite Ban, Says Report

by Breck Worsham, posted in news, politics, technology

WASHINGTON (Washington Examiner) — Despite a ban from most major platforms, former President Donald Trump‘s online statements are reportedly spreading far and wide on social media.

Many of Trump’s statements after his January social media ban have received as many, if not more, likes or shares online as they did before, according to an analysis published Monday by the New York Times.

Before his ban, due to his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Trump’s social media engagement generated a median of 272,000 likes and shares, primarily on Facebook and Twitter. After the ban, his median engagement dropped to 36,000 likes and shares, but 11 of his 89 statements in the past few months have been either just as popular or more popular than before the ban.

The top sharers of some of Trump’s statements after his social media ban include Breitbart News, a Facebook page called “President Donald Trump Fan Club,” Fox News, and Jenna Ellis, a member of Trump’s legal team who was roundly defeated in court in 2020 election fraud lawsuits.

Sometimes, when Trump criticized conservatives, his statements would get shared widely by those on both ends of the political spectrum and mainstream publications. Top sharers of his statements on the Left include popular Facebook page “Stand With Mueller” and CNN journalist Jim Acosta.

However, Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud were 17 times less popular after his social media ban because of efforts by Facebook and Twitter to curb political misinformation.

“As the Trump case shows, deplatforming doesn’t ‘solve’ disinformation, but it does disrupt harmful networks and blunt the influence of harmful individuals,” Emerson Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told theTimes.

Trump’s statements that got the most traction on social media in the past few monthswere his posts on culture, like his boycott of baseball; his praise for certain conservatives, such as radio host Rush Limbaugh; and his criticism of President Joe Biden on political issues related to the border crisis and taxes.

The Washington Times’ Nihal Krisham contributed to the contents of this report.

REPORT: Military to Offer Free Transgender Surgery Per Biden Executive Order

by Breck Worsham, posted in law

WASHINGTON (Newsmax)– The Department of Defense has confirmed in recent memos that sex reassignment surgery could be provided free of cost as part of the military’s medical benefits package following President Joe Biden’s Jan. 25 executive order.

“America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. The military is no exception,” the White House said in a press release announcing the order. 

“This means no one will be separated or discharged, or denied reenlistment, solely on the basis of gender identity,” the release continued. “Prospective recruits may serve in their self-identified gender when they have met the appropriate standards for accession into the military services.”

“This revised policy will also ensure all medically necessary transitionrelated care authorized by law is available to all Service members,” wrote Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a memo obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said the military would “perform an assessment of the necessary steps to eliminate the exclusion of ‘gender alteration’ (gender affirmation surgery) in the medical benefits package.”

He wrote last month, in a memo ordering a review of the department’s policies and practices, that “Every person at VA, whether a customer or member of VA’s workforce, should be treated with respect and dignity. Our success as a team — our ability to deliver world-class care for our veterans — depends on our respect for our fellow VA employees and the veterans we serve and is critical to everything we do.”

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., an Iraq War veteran who says he supports transgender people serving in the military, told the Examiner: “This is radical and new territory for a presidential administration to force taxpayers to fund sexual reassignment surgeries for those in the military. I’m compassionate toward those individuals who want to undergo an elective surgery of this nature, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook to pay for it. It’s constitutionally dubious that Congress hasn’t passed these measures, but the administration, in a radical way, is pushing through this agenda. I sit on the committee that should debate these issues.”

Pink News notes that the military’s health insurance provider, TRICARE, already covers the cost of hormone therapy and psychological counseling for gender dysphoria and, while they generally do not cover surgery, they do note that “active-duty service members may request a waiver if their provider deems surgery medically necessary.”

The Pentagon first paid for gender-reassignment surgery for a transgender soldier in 2017, and has paid $8 million to treat 1,525 transgender troops between 2016 and 2019. Most of that cost covered psychological counseling and not surgical operations related to transitioning. A total of 161 surgeries were performed during that time, according to data provided to USA Today in 2019.

REPORT: Homeschooling soars in wake of recent school shootings

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, news, politics, Uncategorized

Washington, D.C. (Washington Examiner) — After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida, the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.

The Lubbock-based organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of this year’s deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas.

“When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded,” said coalition president Tim Lambert. “In the last couple of months, our numbers have doubled. We’re dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to that it was 600 to 700.”

Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of public schools to protect students from harm.

And it’s not just the threat of school shootings. Christopher Chin, president of Homeschool Louisiana, said parents are also increasingly concerned about “the violence, the bullying, the unsafe environments.”

“One of the things we’ve seen definitely an uptick in the last five years is the aspect of violence. It’s the bullying. That is off the charts,” Mr. Chin said.

In his experience, a mass shooting won’t change the minds of parents satisfied with their children’s public-school experiences, but it can tip the balance for those already leaning toward home education.

“I think what happens with these school shootings is they’re the straws that broke the camel’s back,” Mr. Chin said. “I don’t think it’s the major decision-maker, but it’s in the back of parents’ minds.”

Brian D. Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Oregon, who has conducted homeschool research for 33 years, said school safety has increasingly become an issue for parents looking at teaching their kids at home.

He said the top three reasons that parents choose homeschooling are a desire to provide religious instruction or different values than those offered in public schools; dissatisfaction with the academic curriculum, and worries about the school environment.

“Most parents homeschool for more than one reason,” Mr. Ray said. “But when we ask families why do they homeschool, near the top nowadays is concern about the environment of schools, and that includes safety, pressure to get into drugs, pressure to get into sexual activity. It includes all of that.”

After the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, Florida, vows by parents to pull their kids out of school erupted on social media, and some of them apparently followed through by making contact with their local homeschool advocates.

“I talk with these people on a regular basis, and clearly after a shooting, more of them are saying, ‘Hey, we’re getting more phone calls, we’ve got more people at the beginner session asking about safety,’” Mr. Ray said.

Not everyone agrees with the homeschool response. Takisha Coats Durm, lead virtual school teacher for the Madison County Schools System in Huntsville, Alabama, said that fleeing the classroom teaches the wrong lesson.

“Even though it seems we may be protecting them, we may be sheltering them instead of teaching them to work and find a solution for the issues and not necessarily running away from them, because these things are going to happen,” Ms. Durm told WAAY-TV in Huntsville.

Her comments came shortly after the May 18 shooting at Santa Fe High School, which left 10 dead, just three months after 17 were killed in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

While homeschool advocates are confident their ranks are growing, pinning down the number of U.S. at-home students is a challenge, given most states don’t keep count.

A 2017 U.S. Department of Education report estimated 1.69 million homeschool students from ages 5-17 in spring 2016, using data from the National Household Education Surveys program, which mailed questionnaires to about 200,000 selected households.

Those findings would indicate that homeschooling has been flat since 2012, but Mr. Ray estimated there were 2.3 million homeschool students in spring 2016, using figures provided by the 15 states that track homeschoolers, as well as Maricopa County, Arizona.

His figure represented a 25 percent increase between 2012-16. During the same period, the U.S. school-age population grew by about 2 percent.

“My bottom-line summary is that it’s been growing at an estimated 2 to 8 percent per year, and that’s compounded,” Mr. Ray said.

In Louisiana, which does ask homeschoolers to report their kids, Mr. Chin said there were 30,134 homeschool students registered in January, up from an estimated 18,500 to 20,000 in 2011.

“Homeschooling has exploded in our state,” said Mr. Chin, who homeschools his five children with his wife in New Orleans. “If homeschoolers were their own school district in our state, we would be the sixth largest in the state.”

Texas doesn’t require registration, but Mr. Lambert, who homeschooled his four now-adult children, estimated that the state has about 150,000 families and more than 300,000 students being taught at home.

“In fact we have more students being homeschooled in Texas than we have in traditional private schools in Texas, and that’s quoted by a number of our state officials,” he said.

His organization sponsored a poll last year that found safety ranked fourth among reasons parents decide to educate their kids at home.

“I’m required by law to place my kids in a public school or private or homeschool, but the state is not accountable in terms of the safety of these children,” said Mr. Lambert. “So we get lots of calls from people saying, ‘Hey my kid’s being bullied, my kid’s being attacked, and the school either can’t or won’t do anything about it, so we’re going to take care of our child. We’re withdrawing him.’”

Like Mr. Chin, he said a highly publicized school shooting may come as the tipping point for parents already inclined to pull their kids out of the public system.

“When a shooting happens, I call it the straw that basically breaks their idea of the public schools,” Mr. Lambert said. “They’ve already been thinking about it, and now somebody gets stabbed, or another teacher beats up another kid, or another kid beats up another teacher, and they say, ‘You know what? We don’t want to be there.’”

homeschooling

THE PRICE OF BEING WHITE: Restaurant admits to charging white customers more than blacks to highlight ‘wage inequality’

by Breck Worsham, posted in news, politics

NEW ORLEANS, La. — A New Orleans restaurant has admitted to charging white customers more for their meals than blacks in an effort to protest against “wage inequality”.

According to a report published by New Orleans ABC affiliate WGNO, Saartj, a restaurant inside the Roux Carre market on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., says it’s intentionally overcharging whites to spark a conversation about a perceived white privilege.

The restaurant’s head chef, Tunde Wey, says white customers can expect to pay $30 for a typical Nigerian food dish, while black customers are asked to pay $12.

“Saartj combines food with critical discourse. We are a space for important and ernstwhile marginalized perspectives. We cook and discuss what ought to be acknowledged,” the food shop states on its website.

According to Wey, seventy-eight percent of white customers have thus far chosen to pay the extra fee.

“Refusing to pay more comes off as anti-social and people don’t want to be judged for that,” Mr. Weytold Civil Eats. “People look on the other side of the till and see me standing there and they’re thinking that I’m judging them.”

Wey said the decision to do so reveals a mistaken tendency on the part of white people to perceive their wealth as “justly acquired”.

“The ownership of wealth has been contingent on taking from someone else,” the chef said, “and money doesn’t distill virtue on you.”

Brooklyn's Famous Junior's Restaurant To Be Sold To Developer

IS SPICER NEXT TO GO? WHITE HOUSE SOURCES SAY PRESS SECRETARY PRESIDENT’S LATEST TARGET AS TRUMP ATTEMPTS TO DRAIN THE SWAMP

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON, D.C. — White House press secretary Sean Spicer may be the next to go as president Donald Trump attempts to rid his cabinet of “establishment” high rollers.

According to a report published by Infowars on Thursday, Spicer could be fired as early as next week as Trump carries out his campaign promise to “drain the swamp”.

The report comes just days after the ultra conservative White House spokesman was reportedly sent to the sidelines amid concerns by Trump that he had become overwhelmed by his high pressure role.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, has been called in to step in for Spicer as the president is said to be contemplating his next move. Officially, the White House says Spicer is absent due to a previously scheduled assignment related to his Navy Reserve duty at the Pentagon (http://www.thewrap.com/sean-spicer-skip-comey-press-briefing-sarah-huckabee-sanders-white-house/), but sources say the interim departure couldn’t have come at a better time.

Spicer has come under fire in recent weeks after a series of contentious encounters with members of the left leaning press press left him shaken and visibly angry. During one occasion in early May, the press secretary made headlines after walking out on a scheduled press conference where he refused to answer, or even acknowledge, certain members of the media (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/reporters-erupt-when-spicer-ends-press-conference-without-taking-questions/article/2621911).

On other occasions, Spicer allowed his anger to get the best of him and engaged in a series of back and forth banters with members of the White House press corps. During one heated exchange in March with American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan, Spicer, borrowing from his Trump’s attack on “fake news”, quipped “I appreciate your agenda here. … At some point, report the facts”. The blow up came after Ryan attempted to corner Spicer on the ongoing allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.

According to the Infowars report, Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, who Trump previously considered for the role as White House spokesperson, is among Trump’s top picks to replace Spicer.

Despite the innuendo that Spicer’s career may be the next to follow the fate of former FBI director James Comey, who was fired by Trump earlier this week, a White House spokesperson says the recent speculation about Spicer’s future is baseless.

“Sean has always taken his Navy duties very seriously,” said a White House spokesperson when reached for comment. “So when he says he’s on duty, he’s on duty. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

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TRUMP’S REVENGE? POTUS CONSIDERS BREAKING UP 9TH CIRCUIT COURT AFTER RECENT RULINGS AGAINST HIM

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One thing is for certain when it comes to president Donald Trump….He doesn’t like being told “no”.

In a counter to recent rulings against him, the 45th president told The Washington Examiner on Thursday (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-absolutely-looking-at-breaking-up-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals/article/2621379) that he has “absolutely” considered proposals to break up the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit.

The president’s comments come after yet another ruling by the San Francisco based 9th Circuit Court against that blocked his order to restrict funding for cities and jurisdictions that refuse to comply with federal programs on immigration enforcement.
The same court also infamously shot down a previous executive order by the president to ban travel from immigrants seeking to enter the U.S. from countries deemed to be hot spots for terror.

“There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous,” said Trump, who has accused liberal foes of “judge shopping” by filing suit in courts they knew would rule against him.

“Out of our very big country, with many choices, does everyone notice that both the “ban” case and now the “sanctuary” case is brought in the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%). They used to call this “judge shopping!” Messy system,” the president tweeted on Wednesday.

“I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they don’t even mention the words in their rejection on the ban,” he told the Examiner.

If the president does decide to move forward with plans to break up the court, it appears that he will have a wealth of Republican support. Earlier this year, Sen Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) encouraged Trump to do what it takes to dismantle the 9th Circuit, which is regarded as one of the most liberal court districts in the country.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week that he is seeking moving forward with plans to develope legislation to punish sheriffs who operate sanctuary cities with fines and jail time.

Calling out Sheriff Sally Hernandez of Travis County, Texas by name last month, Abbott said he and Texas lawmakers intend to hit mayors of sanctuary cities where it hurts.

“She has knowingly released from jail in Travis County people who have been either convicted of or accused of serious felonies such as sexual assault,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “(Those charged with) sexual assault of a minor, she’s put right back out on the streets. This is a dangerous practice that Texas is gonna hammer down. We will not tolerate this, and so we have taken action we’re gonna take even stiffer action to ban sanctuary cities in Texas.”

ANGRYTRUMP