Is the Dam About to Burst on the Biden Crime Family?
By Andy Behlen | The Libertarian Institute | June 13, 2023
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said on June 5 that the FBI has a file on an informant that accuses President Joe Biden and his family of accepting millions of dollars in bribes.
“It suggests a pattern of bribery where payments would be made through shell accounts and multiple banks,” Comer said last week.
Comer described the informant as a trusted and “highly credible” source to the FBI.
FBI Director Christopher Wray initially refused to hand the committee the document, known as an FD-1023 form, which was dated from June 2020. Comer threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress over it. The committee even drafted a contempt resolution. But Wray yielded last week and allowed members of the committee to review the document.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), a Republican member of the House oversight committee, tweeted “The (FBI) is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family.” Neither Comer nor any other committee member have echoed that sentiment.
The draft of the contempt resolution and memos from Committee staff provided a few details about the GOP’s latest allegations against the Biden family.
“Without having custody of the FD-1023 form… the Committee cannot assess whether the allegations in the document pose a national security risk,” the resolution stated. “Because of the FBI’s refusal to cooperate with our investigation, the Committee cannot use the allegations in the FD-1023 form to evaluate whether anyone from the Biden family received payments from the foreign national, how much those payments entailed, if they were made, and what, if any, companies (including shell companies) were used to make such payments.”
A memo dated March 16, 2023, detailed bank records that the committee subpoenaed. According to the memo, one of Biden family business associates, Mr. John Robinson Walker (Rob Walker), “transferred over $1.3 million in payments to Biden family members and their companies between 2015 and 2017, which he received from foreign companies and foreign nationals. The Rob Walker accounts made payments while then-Vice President Biden held public office.”
A second memo dated May 10, 2023, outlined additional bank record subpoenas:
“Through the Second Bank Records Memorandum, the Committee released several new findings. First, Biden family members and business associates created a web of over twenty companies—most of which were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency. Bank records showed the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies. The Committee has identified payments to Biden family members from foreign companies while Joe Biden served as Vice President and after he left public office.”
After reviewing the FD-1023 form last week, Republican committee members confirmed that the allegations involve Hunter Biden’s relationship with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.
It’s no secret that the Biden family has profited from business overseas, especially in Ukraine. But according to mainstream media reporting, all of this is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with corruption—even when a $5 million bribe shows up to shut down an investigation into the company that paid the president’s son $1 million a year.
On June 13, 2020, Reuters reported that Ukrainian authorities detained three individuals for offering $5 million in bribes to stop a corruption investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder and former president of Burisma Holdings..
The president’s son Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings in 2014, a position he held until 2019.
In 2020, Ukrainian anti-corruption officials were quick to exonerate the Bidens from any connection to the bribes.
“Let’s put an end to this once and for all. Biden Jr. and Biden Sr. do not appear in this particular proceeding,” said Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of the anti-corruption investigations in 2020.
The New York Post reported last week that Burisma paid Hunter Biden $83,333 per month while his father served as U.S. Vice President, according to invoices on the famous abandoned laptop. Those payments dropped by half after his father left office. Hunter Biden resigned from the Burisma board in 2019 while his father announced his presidential campaign.
In addition, Fox News reported last week on emails found on the laptop between the President’s son and Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to the Burisma board. In one exchange, Hunter Biden asked Pozharskyi to pass along his thanks to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky for birthday gifts he received in 2016.
“Finally- thank (Zlochevsky) for the beautiful birthday gifts it was far too extravagant but much appreciated,” Hunter Biden said in the email dated February 4, 2016.
The emails did not indicate what the gifts were.
In March 2016, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously leveraged $1 billion in aid to Ukraine in order for the country to oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Shokin had investigated Burisma Holdings in 2014 for money laundering.
In 2018 Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations about his strong-armed negotiations with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to get Shokin removed: “I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
But those close to the president said the threat to withhold aid had nothing to do with Burisma or Hunter Biden. A USA Today “Fact Check” from 2020 claims the reason was because Shokin did too little to fight corruption:
“Mike Carpenter, who served as a foreign policy adviser to the then-vice president, told USA TODAY that Shokin ‘never went after any corrupt individuals at all’ and ‘never prosecuted any high-profile cases of corruption.’”
That’s right—the Ukrainian prosecutor who investigated Burisma for money laundering “never went after any corrupt individuals at all.” To say otherwise would imply that Shokin may have had a case against Burisma and the President’s son.
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) dropped a bombshell on Monday, saying that a Burisma executive at the center of the latest allegations has audio recording of then-vice president Biden accepting bribes, and that the FBI redacted this information in the FD-1023 form that the House Oversight Committee reviewed last week.
“The 1023 produced to that House Committee redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them—17 total recordings,” Grassley said in a speech on the Senate floor.
“These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot. The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden,” Grassley said.
Reporting on the development, Kerry Picket of The Washington Times wrote, “Mr. Grassley smelled a political double standard.”
“Special Counsel Jack Smith, who indicted former President Donald Trump on 37 counts, used an audio recording against former President Donald Trump and alleged Mr. Trump retained nuclear secrets and papers on foreign weapons systems at his Mar-a-Lago estate and waved around military plans to persons without proper clearance in 2021,” the article continued. “Mr. Grassley asked whether Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss was doing anything with respect to the alleged recordings of the Bidens ‘that are apparently relevant to a high-stakes bribery scheme.’”
It should be noted that the GOP’s investigation into Biden family corruption all began with tech companies’ efforts to censor stories about the Hunter Biden laptop in the leadup to the 2020 elections. Photos from the laptop purport to show Hunter Biden smoking crack and cavorting with hookers during the time when he sat on Burisma’s board of directors.
Andy Behlen is a reporter for the Fayette County Record, a twice-weekly newspaper in La Grange, Texas.
Ukrainian gas executive has Biden ‘bribe’ recordings – US senator
RT | June 13, 2023
A Ukrainian gas executive who claimed to have paid bribes to US President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, retained more than a dozen recordings of his conversations with them as an “insurance policy,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has said, citing FBI documents.
In a statement published on Monday, the GOP lawmaker urged the Justice Department to release a full, unredacted copy of FBI files that allegedly outline a criminal bribery scheme between the Biden family and Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. The documents are reportedly based on FBI interviews with a “highly credible” confidential source who described several interactions with a top Burisma executive starting in 2015, when Biden was serving as vice president.
While the FBI shared the documents with select lawmakers last week, Grassley said key sections had been redacted, including “reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings.”
The Burisma executive kept the recordings “as a sort of insurance policy” in case he “got into a tight spot,” according to the senator, who said he had seen the full documents. He did not indicate what might have been said in the audio, however.
Senator Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer first highlighted the alleged bribes in May, citing a whistleblower who revealed the FBI was in possession of documents detailing its interviews with the confidential source. The Oversight Committee then subpoenaed the bureau for the records, which were only shared in redacted form last week after lawmakers threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress.
The documents are said to show that the unnamed Burisma executive discussed $5 million payments he allegedly made to both Joe and Hunter Biden during the Barack Obama presidency. Despite having little experience in the energy sector, the younger Biden was employed on Burisma’s board of directors between 2014 and 2019 and received more than $50,000 per month.
The Burisma official allegedly explained that the company had to “pay the Bidens” because a Ukrainian prosecutor was investigating the company. While Joe Biden recently dismissed the bribery allegations as “a bunch of malarkey,” he has acknowledged that he was responsible for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma and its executives for corruption at the time. Biden said he did so by threatening to withhold US aid, but insists Shokin was replaced for refusing to go after corruption.
Trump Indictment: FBI Veteran Raises Red Flags Over ‘Abnormal’ Mar-a-Lago Raid
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.06.2023
A senior FBI official charged with executing the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last year has raised a red flag about “abnormalities” and apparent violations in the Justice Department’s handling of the case.
Former Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono has reached out to the US Congress citing concerns and frustration with the manner President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice arranged the August 2022 raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan unveiled the damning testimony earlier this week and sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding answers.
First, D’Antuono, who had two decades of FBI experience, drew attention to the fact that the bureau’s headquarters made the decision to assign the execution of the search warrant in Trump’s Miami residence to… the Washington Field Office. As per D’Antuono, it looked strange given that the search occurred in the territory of the Miami Field Office, which should have been assigned with the task under the bureau’s rules.
Second, the DoJ failed to assign a US Attorney’s Office to the investigative matter of that magnitude which was “unusual” as per the FBI veteran. This triggered D’Antuono’s deep concerns as it was “out of the ordinary.” He noted that he “never got a good answer” from DoJ with regard to this decision.
Third, the FBI did not first seek consent to effectuate the search. D’Antuono recalled that at the meeting between FBI and DoJ officials, the Department of Justice pushed the bureau to execute the search warrant as quickly as possible. Referring to his experience, the FBI veteran underscored that the agency should have sought consent to search the premises prior to the raid. D’Antuono suggested that either AG Garland or FBI Director Christopher Wray made the decision to seek a search warrant despite “opposition” from the agents working on the case in the WFO. D’Antuono pointed out that “there was a good likelihood that [Trump’s legal team] could have given consent.”
Fourth, the FBI refused to wait for Trump’s attorney to be present before the raid, as per D’Antuono. The bureau veteran claimed that the FBI sought to exclude Trump’s lawyers from the search, which again sounded an alarm for the senior officer.
The FBI veteran’s testimony has prompted US Republican lawmakers to make a repeated request for bureau documents and information concerning the raid. In his latest letter to AG Garland, Jordan pointed out that a previous request regarding the matter was rejected by the Department of Justice.
The alleged expose of DoJ misconduct during the August raid comes after the department indicted Republican presidential candidate Trump earlier this week, charging him with 37 counts including the mishandling of classified materials. The charges further include obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements, as well as one charge under the Espionage Act.
“The Department [of Justice] will indict President Donald Trump, despite declining to indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information and failing to indict President Biden for his mishandling of classified information,” Jordan wrote. “The indictment creates, at the minimum, a serious appearance of a double standard and a miscarriage of justice.”
The latest row between House Republicans and the DoJ erupted amid the congressional investigation into the apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who has been probed for tax crimes since at least 2018. The House GOP is also presently looking into an uncorroborated report about Joe Biden receiving a $5 million bribe, which has recently been provided by the FBI to lawmakers.
Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Have Chance to Bust IRS & Expose Hillary’s ‘Pay-to-Play’
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 08.06.2023
Clinton Foundation whistleblowers are due to provide new information to the US Tax Court concerning the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charity. The IRS, FBI, and DoJ have already been under the spotlight over their apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
The Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower case has largely eclipsed another Tax Court development that could have serious consequences for US dynastic political families. Late last month, US Tax Court Judge David Gustafson reinvigorated a years-long whistleblower case concerning the Clinton Foundation, a charity run by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Two forensic investigators-turned-whistleblowers, John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, filed a lawsuit over the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to look into the charity’s alleged misdeeds.
Despite the IRS commissioner repeatedly trying to trash the case, the judge rejected the agency’s latest motion to dismiss and asked for new arguments by June 30, 2023.
What’s in the Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Case?
The story of the years-long case goes back to August 2017, when Doyle and Moynihan first submitted a whistleblower complaint with the IRS accusing the Clinton Foundation of tax crimes. However, in November 2018 they received a preliminary denial from the revenue service.
Nonetheless, the whistleblowers did not give up. On December 13, 2018, Doyle and Moynihan testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation owes the US government between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes. According to the forensic investigators, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, but acts as nothing short of a foreign agent.
“As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act). Ultimately, the foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax-exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2,” Moynihan stated at the time.
The two whistleblowers told US lawmakers that they had collected approximately 100 exhibits in excess of 6,000 pages, expressing bewilderment at the IRS’ hesitation to investigate the Clinton Foundation case.
Tax Court Judge Busted IRS
Having received the final denial from the IRS to look into the issue in February 2019, Doyle and Moynihan filed a lawsuit with the US Tax Court.
On October 8, 2020 they scored their first victory: Tax Court Judge Gustafson ruled that the IRS’ Whistleblower Office (WBO) had “abused its discretion” in trying to dismiss “specific credible documentation” put forward by Doyle and Moynihan, thereby allowing the case against the Clintons’ charities to proceed.
The judge also raised concerns over the IRS’ handling of the case and detailed mistakes in the filing of specific forms by the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division and omissions in its conclusions concerning the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers’ complaint. Judging from the division’s documentation, it remained unclear whether the IRS had used the information provided by the whistleblowers in any investigation into the charity. The judge noted, however, that he had reasons to believe that the IRS had engaged in some investigative activity concerning the Clinton charity in coordination with the FBI.
“Prompted by petitioners’ [Doyle and Moynihan] allegations – explicit and detailed, with names, dates, and locations – the WBO’s email put a single direct question to CI: ‘Can you please confirm that IRS CI is not working with these [whistleblowers] on any investigation with these [target] entities?’ CI’s reply was a non-answer that looks like it may have been a deliberate evasion: ‘The claim was appropriately declined by criminal investigation.’ But was CI ‘working with’ petitioners or not? CI did not say,” Gustafson wrote at the time.
Besides this, in 2018 the CI “had to be asked three times to complete its Form 11369 for this case, giving ‘unacceptable’ responses to the WBO and grousing that it’s ‘somebody else’s job,'” the judge pointed out.
In April 2021, Tax Court Judge Gustafson suggested in his new ruling that the IRS Whistleblower Office had been withholding important information concerning the case: “The [IRS] Whistleblower Office must further investigate to determine whether CI proceeded with an investigation based on petitioners’ information and collected proceeds… It seems clear we should remand the case to the WO so that it can explore this gap,” the judge stated.
Durham Report Sheds New Light on Clinton Foundation Probes
Meanwhile, on October 26, 2021, Moynihan and Doyle announced that they had been approached and interviewed by Special Counsel John Durham, who at the time was investigating the origins and handling of the Trump-Russia probe.
Earlier, on September 24, 2021, The New York Times broke a story that the special counsel had sought information about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation inquiry within the framework of his probe, which was launched in 2019.
Later, in May 2023, Special Counsel Durham revealed in his 306-page final report that the FBI’s Washington, New York, and Little Rock, Ark., field offices had at least four ongoing probes into the Bill and Hillary Clinton charity’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes during the 2016 election cycle. Still, all four investigations were abruptly closed prior to the 2016 Election Day, with Hillary running as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Durham particularly pointed out that senior FBI and Justice Department officials engaged in slowing down and closing the aforementioned investigations. “Both senior FBI and department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months,” the special counsel emphasized.
Durham Report and Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Case May Help
Judge Gustafson’s May 30 ruling gives an opportunity to Doyle and Moynihan to incorporate Durham’s allegations in their forthcoming court filings, which they should submit no later than June 30, as per Just the News, a US independent media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.
In addition, a specific recent ruling in a Tax Court case titled Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission could also come in handy for the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, the media outlet noted.
“Whistleblowers may be granted limited discovery if they make a significant showing that there is material in the IRS’s possession indicative of bad faith on the IRS’s part in connection with the case or of an incomplete administrative record compiled by the IRS,” the ruling stated concerning the Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission.
The IRS’ lax handling of the Doyle and Moynihan complaint, as well as the agency’s ambiguous conduct and apparent unwillingness to look into the Clinton Foundation appear especially suspicious in light of the FBI’s closure of a whopping four probes into the charity.
Previously, similarly controversial behavior by IRS, FBI, and DoJ officials was exposed by Hunter Biden IRS whistleblowers.
On May 26, 2023, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley appeared before the US House Ways and Means Committee and provided seven bombshell documents totaling 23 pages to confirm his claims regarding the apparent “preferential treatment” of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. The documents presented by the agent indicated that starting from at least 2020, DoJ officials made repeated attempts to thwart his investigation.
Shapley blew the whistle in April. After that, the IRS veteran and his 12 subordinates were expelled from the probe at the request of the DoJ. What’s more, one of Shapley’s subordinates, who asked his seniors about the rationale behind booting the team out, was threatened and silenced by IRS officials.
What Will Happen to Clinton Foundation if Doyle and Moynihan Win?
Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel has been conducting a separate private investigation into the Clinton Foundation for the last several years. Ortel is an old hand in exposing potential financial fraud: he was the first to raise a red flag about General Electric (GE) shortly before the company’s stock crashed in 2008.
In an interviews with Sputnik, the Wall Street analyst repeatedly drew attention to the FBI, DoJ, and IRS’ failures to see obvious discrepancies in the Clinton Foundation’s operations and financial documentation. Per Ortel, the charity’s case remains the largest unprosecuted fraud ever.
Separately, the analyst referred to the US mainstream media’s unwillingness to touch upon the matter, too. The US mainstream press either silences or ridicules attempts to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes much in the same vein as it tried to trash the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story.
“The judge [Gustafson] and his staff likely have extensive evidence indicating that the entity originally known as ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ and subsequently operating under many other names is not validly authorized by the IRS or by any other government to conduct charitable activities as a nonprofit organization,” Ortel told Sputnik.
“Nonetheless, Bill Clinton and his associates have solicited more than $2 billion in the guise of charity but have failed to account for its financial results in the manner required by applicable laws and regulations.”
“Because Bill Clinton also is active politically and pursuing personal profit, there is great suspicion that the Clinton Foundation Charity Network is the core of an illegal conspiracy where donors seeking political favors from Clinton and his globalist allies exchange contributions for favors inside America and around the world. The Clinton approach and past failures by many governments to purge charity fraud and political corruption from the system likely inspired the Biden family to follow the Clinton script. Who knows how many other politicians will milk supposed charities for personal and political gain?” the Wall Street analyst pointed out.
If Doyle and Moynihan win their case in the US Tax Court and subsequent IRS/FBI investigations into the Clinton Foundation are conducted in good faith, it is likely that the alleged fraud and pay-to-play schemes would be proven, according to the analyst.
He believes that the Clinton Foundation should be placed in conservatorship and run by a nonpartisan group of Trustees, who would then be charged with constructing accurate records from October 23, 1997 to present.
“This course may not be possible because there are major defects in the known public record calling into question whether ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ actually existed after April 25, 2005 when Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws were defectively amended,” Ortel continued. “In a worst case scenario for the Clinton family and for ‘Trustees,’ all ‘revenues’ of ‘The Clinton Foundation’ would become taxable personal income to the co-conspirators while some expenses might be tax deductible. On top of this financial burden, fines and penalties and interest might also be assessed.”
“Not only should the FBI investigate the Clinton Foundation fraud conspiracy, but appropriate government authorities must investigate why current and former presidents who illegally abuse public charities are insulated and protected from prosecution and then discipline all bad actors involved forcefully and publicly,” the Wall Street analyst concluded.
The FBI, Ukraine’s Censorship Assistant
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | June 7, 2023
Aaron Maté has been among a handful of reporters to whom Elon Musk granted access to Twitter records to uncover efforts by the United States government along with Twitter to censor communication on the social media platform in the time before Musk gained control over it. The newest revelations from Maté concern the US government, via the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), having acted as an assistant to the Ukraine government’s main intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), to seek censorship of 163 targeted Twitter accounts — Maté’s included — as well as personal information related to those Twitter accounts.
Maté’s chilling revelations here.
It is bad enough that the US government has been seeking to censor social media communication to advance the goals of power-hungry politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats here in America. Now, comes revelations that, on top of that, the US government has been seeking to advance the censorship goals of, and hand over personal information of individuals using social media to, the government of Ukraine. Keep in mind that Ukraine is an intensely corrupt government, is overrun with nazis, and is apparently comfortable with targeting for assassination foreign individuals merely because those individuals have expressed views judged intolerable regarding Ukraine or its war with Russia.
The Ukraine government has also been relentless in suppressing free speech, opposition political parties, and the free exercise of religion within its borders.
Of course, the US assistance to Ukraine’s censorship effort has extended beyond Twitter. Maté notes in the concluding paragraph of his article:
News of the FBI’s work with Ukrainian intelligence to censor Twitter users also follows reporting from journalist Lee Fang that the FBI has pressured Facebook to remove accounts and posts deemed by the SBU to be Russian ‘disinformation.’ According to Fang, a senior Ukrainian official in regular contact with the FBI defined ‘disinformation’ in such broad terms that it could mean viewpoints that ‘simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.’
How about the US starts respecting the First Amendment, and stops assisting Ukraine in pursuing its authoritarian objectives?
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
‘Failing Our Children’: Weight-Loss Surgeries for Kids and Teens on the Rise, Study Says
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 7, 2023
As obesity rates among U.S. kids and teens continue to soar, more children and adolescents in the U.S. are undergoing weight-loss surgery, a new peer-reviewed study concluded.
According to the JAMA Pediatrics study, severe obesity is the “fastest-growing obesity subcategory in the US pediatric population.”
The researchers — including Sarah Messiah, Ph.D., MPH, professor of epidemiology at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, Texas — said the rate of invasive medical procedures on the gastrointestinal tract among 10- to 19-year-olds has been on the rise since 2016 and jumped by nearly 20% between 2020 and 2021.
“This analysis shows that families are making the decision to pursue bariatric surgery more frequently year-over-year,” Messiah said in a news release. The increase was most pronounced “among those from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds,” she said.
Commenting on the new study, pediatrician Dr. Lawrence Palevsky said, “Our medical community is failing our children by deciding that the best way to treat them [for obesity] is through medication and surgery.”
These measures do nothing to address the underlying factors that are negatively impacting the children’s health, such as “their psychology, their home environment, their diet, and the overall sociological issues with which they’re dealing,” Palevsky told The Defender.
Palevsky said many medical professionals refuse to acknowledge the role that diet and the environment both play in the health and welfare of children.
Palevsky’s first medical school instructor “within the first five minutes of introducing himself to the class, made it a point to let us know that nutrition is not a field of medicine,” he said.
The prevailing mentality is that “We, in the medical world, solve your problem by cutting you up and fixing you” — and then patients can go back to their lives and make the dietary and environmental choices they were just making all along.
“So go ahead, drink your beverages with high-fructose corn syrup … and play as many video games and computer games as you want so that you’re not physically active and we will just take you to the operating room and solve your problem.”
Palevksy said although he was “conventionally trained,” his approach to medicine is “to get to the root cause and to the contributing factors that are bringing on symptoms” — rather than using pharmaceuticals to suppress or treat symptoms — and “to educate parents and their children so they can resolve illness more easily.”
An increase in weight-loss surgeries among youth likely could lead to more medical errors — which researchers say is a leading cause of death in the U.S.
In a 2016 analysis published in the BMJ, John Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers said that more than 250,000 deaths per year were due to medical error — making medical error the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
‘Too quick to reach for a pill or surgical solution’
Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued new clinical guidelines for treating childhood obesity that endorsed weight-loss pharmaceuticals and — for the first time ever — more weight-loss surgeries as “safe and effective” treatments for childhood obesity.
The two AAP-approved methods of weight-loss surgery for children — sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass — entail removing or rendering permanently dysfunctional a large percentage of the stomach.
“Our analysis suggests that these access channels are being utilized, and more frequently, even during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Messiah said.
Meanwhile, critics — including Dr. Paul Thomas, an integrative pediatrician — said the increased “market” for weight-loss surgeries performed on children fails to address the root cause of children’s obesity.
“We are too quick to reach for a pill or a surgical solution,” Thomas said. “Addressing the root cause and underlying conditions that have resulted in obesity will give lasting results that will also promote physical, emotional and spiritual healing.”
Thomas, the subject of a book on how he lost his medical license after publishing a controversial study on the health of his vaccinated patients versus those unvaccinated, told The Defender :
“While there may be rare special circumstances where bariatric surgery for morbid obesity in children may make medical sense, the major focus should be lifestyle changes after endocrine etiologies have been ruled out.
“The AAP endorsement of this surgery may create a market for surgeries in children that could easily be avoided by proper attention to the underlying cause of the obesity, which in many cases is related to stress, poor nutritional choices, lack of exercise, inadequate sleep and psychological and emotional duress.”
1 in 5 American kids are obese
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines obesity as “a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile of the CDC sex-specific BMI-for-age growth charts.”
According to the CDC, the most recent national statistics show that 14.7 million children and adolescents ages 2-19 are obese. That equates to a child obesity rate of 19.7% — meaning roughly 1 in 5 kids is obese.
Obese children are at greater risk of developing related functional, metabolic and psychological conditions, experiencing pervasive weight bias and stigma and having greater healthcare costs.
Childhood obesity also is strongly correlated with the risk of adult obesity and poor health, with considerable social and economic consequences.
The proportion of U.S. children who are overweight or obese surged to unprecedented levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to CDC data.
Public health experts cited economic hardship, school closings, shutdowns, limited physical activities and increased food insecurity for many families caused by COVID-19 mitigation measures as reasons for the surge.
Palevsky noted that many children living in inner cities do have access to fresh food.
Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a general and cardiothoracic surgeon with more than 20 years of experience, commented on the same problem.
In the area of Philidelphia where Noorchashm lives, he said, “You can go to McDonald’s and buy a thousand calories worth of food for 4 or 5 bucks at McDonald’s [but] you can’t get a healthy salad for less than 20 bucks.”
Surgeon: ‘I personally would never subject my child … to bariatric surgery’
Childhood obesity is a “real clinical problem,” Noorchashm said — but it’s a “multifactorial problem” that has a great deal to do with “access to healthy food and people’s relationship to food.”
And when it comes to addressing the problem, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment, he added.
Noorchashm said there was “no question” that severely obese children “need effective treatments.”
However, when treatments — like weight-loss surgeries and weight-loss medications — are “so lucrative,” it creates an economic incentive to focus research and government funds on treatments rather than on prevention, he said.
Within the AAP, there is a society of pediatric surgeons and pediatric bariatric surgeons, Noorchashm said. “These organizations have lobbying power.”
“It’s a problem of economy,” he said, adding:
“In other words, because the Bandaid costs so much and so many special groups are making money off it, regulatory incentive decreases to actually solve the root cause …
“I personally would never subject my child or any child that’s related to me to bariatric surgery.”
According to Palevsky, government and food industry leaders — including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — should be held responsible for providing kids with nutritious foods.
Instead, as The Defender recently reported, more highly processed foods will be on the menu for children in public schools this fall thanks to a “major new initiative” to get Kraft Heinz’s “Lunchables” products into U.S. public school cafeterias.
Two styles of Lunchables ostensibly meet the federal nutritional guidelines set for the USDA National School Lunch Program, which provides meals to nearly 30 million kids across the country.
Commenting on the AAP’s new guidelines for treating childhood obesity, Mary Lou Singleton, midwife and family nurse practitioner, said they “offered no meaningful analysis or explanation of what is driving the childhood obesity epidemic.”
Singleton added:
“I found no mention of the massive changes in the U.S. food supply that correlate with the skyrocketing rates of obesity among children and adults alike …
“The document fails to address the school lunch program, which is providing a significant amount of the calories U.S. schoolchildren are eating weekly. Most schoolchildren in the U.S. are fed plastic-wrapped, chemically-preserved, pesticide-laden food made in factories months or years earlier.
“In addition to the sugar, the chemicals in these foods have endocrine-disrupting obesogenic properties.”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Is a Change of Course at State Department Coming?
Some senior officers are retiring but who and what will replace them?
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 6, 2023
There are a lot of anonymous bureaucrats that man the offices in the nation’s capital. If one were to mention the name Wendy Sherman at a Washington DC cocktail gathering it is likely that few in the room will have ever heard of her, but she has long been one of the most important players in Democratic Party administrations when it comes to foreign policy in key parts of the world. Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, will be retiring this summer after more than thirty years with the Foreign Service. She has been a fixture in often controversial top level policy making since Bill Clinton was in the White House, where she served as a top adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, also taking on the role of lead negotiator in the ultimately unsuccessful talks to stop North Korea’s ballistic missile program in the late 1990s. With a return to power of the Democrats in 2008, she served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Obama. To her credit, she was a lead negotiator with Iran on the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which Donald Trump acting on bad advice subsequently withdrew from.
More recently, Sherman has been a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to develop strategies to confront China in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere whenever Beijing has sought to develop trade relationships with key suppliers of essential raw materials. This has included putting pressure on allies like Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific to reject Chinese commercial initiatives, elevating what began as competitive trade policies into a perception that China was becoming a threat to American national security. Sherman also played a significant role in encouraging international diplomatic and military support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.
Sherman’s current position as State Department number two was bestowed on her by President Joe Biden. Her comments relating to her retirement reveal something of her own philosophy as well as the views of the current administration. She said “The arc of history will only bend toward justice if people of conscience steer it in the right direction. That it is our job to have courage, to collaborate with others and seek out common ground, to persist against the odds, to use our voice and our power for good—to keep faith with the promise of our democracy and to never, ever lose hope. Diplomacy is not for the faint of heart…”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken not surprisingly praised Sherman’s career, saying that “President Biden asked Wendy to serve in this role because he knew he could count on her to help revitalize America’s alliances and partnerships and manage our complex relationships with competitors.” Blinken described Sherman’s lengthy career as a diplomat in a statement after her resignation was announced, saying she has “helped lead our engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the region where the history of the 21st century will be written. She has deepened our bonds with our friends around the world, especially with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the European Union. She has overseen our efforts to strengthen the Department’s capabilities to manage our relationship with the People’s Republic of China, and built greater convergence with allies and partners… Her remarkable career – which spans more than three decades, three presidents, and five secretaries of state – addressed some of the toughest foreign policy challenges of our time. Our nation is safer and more secure, and our partnerships more robust, due to her leadership.”
One can expect kind words wrapped around positive government-speak both from Blinken and from Sherman herself after her admittedly long years of service, but there is something manifestly false about the euphoria over a US foreign policy that has during the Biden time in office eschewed diplomacy in favor of military threats and thousands of punitive Treasury Department sanctions. If anything, contradicting Blinken, the United States is in no way “safer and more secure” thanks to his and Wendy Sherman’s efforts, quite the contrary. It has, inter alia, converted major powers Russia and China, who were actively seeking normalized relations, into de facto enemies with all that implies, a result that, even if it does not turn into World War 3, might well mean the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency as the world moves towards increased financial and banking system multipolarity.
If Sherman and Blinken, acting on behalf of Joe Biden, have had a success it would consist of getting the allegedly defensive alliance NATO on board the China-phobia train, with Beijing joining Russia as one of the two great autocratic “threats to democracy.” At the end of June 2022, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, declared that China does represent “serious challenges” to the alliance, which, for the first time agreed to include “threats posed by Beijing” into plans for its “future strategy” concept (PDF), joining Russia as a threat to “NATO’s interests, security and values.” Stoltenberg explained how “We now face an era of strategic competition … China is substantially building up its forces, including in nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, including Taiwan. China is not [yet] our adversary but we must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents.”
Antony Blinken also climbed on to the horse that Stoltenberg was riding, commenting in familiar terms how “One of the things that [China’s] doing is seeking to undermine the rules-based international order that we adhere to, that we believe in, that we helped build. And if China’s challenging it in one way or another, we will stand up to that.” That the rules-based order is little more than a contrivance to maintain political and military dominance by Washington and its friends is by now clear to everyone except the people sitting in and around the White House, most particularly to include Blinken and Sherman.
So what comes next as the featured act post Wendy Sherman? It should be noted that the State Department top level is completely staffed by Jewish Americans who are politically-speaking neocons with close ties to Israel who also believe that the maintenance of total military dominance by the United State is good both for them and good for the Jewish state. All of them are Russo-phobes for various reasons often related to the history of Jews in Russia. Sherman recently participated in discussions in Washington with her Israeli counterpart intended to “…further deepen and expand the US-Israel relationship.” Someone should tell her that it is already far deeper than it should be if one were to go by American interests.
The current third in line at State is the notorious Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland who started the problems in Eastern Europe when she worked with her colleagues to overthrow and replace the existing government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland, who recently spilled the beans about direct US involvement in the Ukraine war, is married to leading neocon Robert Kagan. It has often been observed that neocon foreign policy, which originated with the Republican Party and is based on maintaining a US government monopoly on forms of international violence, has now come to dominate both parties.
If Biden chooses to pull a rabbit out of his hat and comes up with a replacement for Wendy Sherman who is actually in favor of active diplomacy as a mechanism to avoid war, I and many others will be pleasantly surprised and even astonished. More likely it will be Nuland or a Nuland clone or possibly someone having all the Democratic Party boxes checked, i.e. black, Jewish and a transexual who uses the right pronouns and pretends to be a woman. The fundamental problem is that the United States government is no longer run by people capable of acting in rational self-interest, which would mean doing things for the good of the country. The system is in reality broken and it is now clear that something has gone terribly wrong. The sad truth is that the United States is in decline, wallowing in debt and corruption, and Joe Biden and company have lost control, lying and misrepresenting nearly everything. So good bye Wendy! It was great having you at State where you and your friends turned competitors into enemies. It will be interesting to see what happens next!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Enthusiasm for the vaxx falls ever lower & millions of unwanted doses expire
The German press discover that maybe big pharma & their political enablers are not our friends after all
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | June 2, 2023
I know it’s not the repudiation we hoped for, but the widening displeasure over the deeply idiotic and imprudent contracts that the European Union negotiated with Pfizer and BioNTech for Covid-19 vaccine doses says a lot about where the vaccinators find themselves, politically and socially, at this late hour.
That erstwhile pillar of the vaccinator-industrial complex, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, has revealed a markedly reduced enthusiasm for the vaccines and their procurement in the past months. After attacking the lack of transparency surrounding the contract negotiations, they’ve found the energy to deplore all the worthless vaccine that our health ministers have purchased:
In Germany, by the end of March 2023, around 83 million Covid-19 vaccine doses expired and were thrown away by with the federal government alone. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has informed a private session of Bundestag budget committee of these developments …
These figures raise many questions. Did Germany, especially under Lauterbach’s predecessor Jens Spahn (CDU), but also during Lauterbach’s tenure during the fight against the pandemic, order too much vaccine? Could they have avoided these costs, which reach into the billions? Or did the state have no choice, because it was not foreseeable how many people would get vaccinated, and how many injections would be needed for effective protection in the longer run?
What devastating answers all of these questions have.
In any case, the EU and the Federal Republic of Germany have purchased far more vaccine than is needed now. As the Ministry of Health informed the Bundestag, Germany has donated 120 million vaccine doses to other countries. Even after these donated doses left the central warehouse, further doses nevertheless expired …
The Ministry explains that additional doses have expired ““at the various stages” of the supply chain. This refers to doses shipped to wholesalers, pharmacies and doctors’ offices. These parties are in turn responsible for “proper disposal,” the ministry explains. They did not provide figures on how many doses had expired and been destroyed by these wholesalers, pharmacies and medical practices. It is possible that these numbers have not been collected.
In other words: The 83 million figure represents a floor; nobody actually knows or is all that eager to tabulate how many doses have been thrown away.
When asked by the SZ, the Ministry of Health did not say how much the expired and destroyed doses at the federal level cost. Publicly available data nevertheless supports the assumption that the costs to the taxpayer … are in the billions.
And that may not be all.
Through the start of 2023, the federal government had ordered a total of 672 million doses for 13.1 billion Euros, generally via the EU. Each jab therefore costs just on average just under 20 Euros … According to the Ministry of Health, by the start of May, around 192 million doses had been injected in Germany, and some of the deliveries are still outstanding.
More than a year ago, the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel asked whether Lauterbach was threatened with “billions in damages”. At that time, it was already becoming apparent that vaccine could remain unused. In mid-2022, 3.9 million vaccine doses had expired. By the beginning of 2023, there were already 36.6 million vaccine doses. And now, only five months later, it is already 83 million. By the end of last year, approximately 54 million doses had expired and in the first quarter of 2023, approximately 29 million doses had been destroyed, the ministry informed the Bundestag.
Possibly even more vaccine will have to be destroyed. As of the beginning of May, the federal government still has stores amounting to around 120 million doses. Their future is “fraught with uncertainty” and depends, among other things, on the future course of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health informed the Bundestag. The Federal Government still intends to give “unneeded vaccine” to other countries.
Not a single country anywhere on earth can be found to take this stuff.
To avoid having to destroy more vaccine, the EU has now negotiated a partial cancellation of supply contracts with the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer. A “cancellation fee” is due for this, Lauterbach informed the Bundestag. According to reports, Lauterbach did not give a figure. The cancellation fees for unwanted vaccine is likely to reach costs in Germany alone of hundreds of millions of Euros.
While the details of the deal are officially secret, an outraged Polish health minister revealed several weeks that Pfizer and BioNTech have demanded that EU countries pay 50% of the cost for every previously ordered yet unneeded vaccine dose.
At the end of the article there lurks this foul paragraph:
With early access to safe and effective vaccines, many lives have been saved and millions of people have been protected from serious illness. The economic costs of the pandemic have also been reduced and the “impact on social life has been noticeably mitigated.” The vaccine surplus is a consequence of this strategy. This is how the Ministry of Health justified the bulk purchases in the Bundestag.
We’ve been over this many times at the plague chronicle, but as long as politicians and the press continue to indulge in these hollow excuses, I’ll keep repeating myself: It’s strange indeed that enthusiasm for these SaFE aNd EfFeCtIvE vaccines should have plummeted in precise inverse correlation to public experience with them. You’d almost think that the more the vaccinators were allowed to vaccinate, the more everybody decided the vaccines weren’t for them after all. This is hardly the response you’d expect to such miraculous, life-saving side effect-free products.
A great many journalists, bureaucrats, politicians and ordinary people were complicit in the excesses of the past several years, and as the policies of the pandemic continue to sour, they’ll do anything but talk about it. This more than anything is the reason for the deafening silence surrounding all of these matters. What critique there is will increasingly attach itself to isolated matters, such as school closures, and to specific initiatives in which few participated directly, such as the buying of vaccines. They’ll do everything they can to assign blame in those few areas, where they can’t be blamed themselves.
The Ursula von der Leyen Affair
Free West Media | June 2, 2023
After a criminal complaint in Belgium against the President of the European Commission, the so-called SMS-case, now takes a new turn. The judge responsible for the investigation will likely gain access to the secret messages exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, at least if they haven’t been deleted.
The agreements on vaccines negotiated via SMS between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have caused much ink to flow, not least because many legally knowledgeable claim that the EU Commission, which is not elected, does not have the mandate to negotiate in these matters.
Due to this suspicion of negotiations “outside the framework” of the mega-contract for vaccine procurement signed, it would constitute a crime not to present these SMS messages, which are legally considered administrative documents and thus should be recorded. If they have been deleted, President Ursula von der Leyen, as the responsible head of a public authority, must answer in court. The case could reveal the existence of “a corruption pact,” according to French lawyer Diane Protat, but has received very little attention in mainstream media.
Several alternative media have written about the administrative contortions in the case when EU parliament members twice unsuccessfully invited Pfizer’s CEO to come and explain himself before the European Parliament. He accepted the first invitation, but canceled at the last minute and sent a subordinate, Janine Small, instead. When asked directly, she admitted that they had not tested whether the vaccine was effective against transmission but stubbornly refused to disclose any financial terms in the agreement.
Conflicts of interest? Corruption?
Since October 2022, an investigation has been ongoing within the European authorities. Then in December, the BonSens association initiated a procedure at the New York State Court to have the infamous text messages handed over, as they have serious suspicions against the President of the European Commission regarding conflicts of interest or even corruption.
The fact is that no official document precisely describes the official terms from the negotiations of the gigantic third contract for the purchase of Pfizer vaccines, covering 1.8 billion doses, for an amount of more than 70 billion euros.
Something else not reported to any significant extent by mainstream media is that the New York Times sued the European Commission, on the same grounds, to gain access to the text messages on January 25, 2023.
On April 5, 2023, lobbyist Frédéric Baldan filed a new complaint, this time as a criminal case in Belgium, to investigating judge Frenay in Liège. His complaint directly refers to the issue of the third contract for vaccine procurement and the fact that the negotiations were apparently conducted outside the usual framework to negotiate this type of contract, bypassing the steering committee responsible for evaluating the bids. Ursula von der Leyen, however, has no mandate giving her the right to intervene in this type of contract negotiation.
Belgian law has a peculiarity. A public authority operator who arbitrarily violates a constitutional law risks imprisonment (article 151 of the penal code). In this case, it is about the right to allow every citizen access to administrative documents, according to the principle of publicity.
The complaint is thus from a private individual and concerns civil liability for improper exercise of authority, exceeding powers, destruction of public records, illegal bias, and corruption. The complaint, therefore, aims to cover all eventualities.
This case is a real earthquake on the European political scene, which has already been hit by suspicions of corruption against the EU’s Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou and the QatarGate scandal.
Chaos
Even though the EU Commission did not want to let citizens, or even EU parliamentarians, shed light on the (expensive) economic conditions for the purchases of vaccines, a legal solution could be found at the state level and its jurisdiction, in this case, Belgium.
Moreover, a dozen European states, including Poland and Bulgaria, are now questioning the purchase price of vaccine doses and are concerned about the obligation to recommend products that, besides widespread doubt about their real effectiveness, are no longer useful since the Covid-19 epidemic phenomenon is over.
In France, 46 million doses remain in the health administration’s warehouse and will go to waste. There are more than 30 million doses in Italy and more than 10 million in Belgium. A real waste. How to support – or how it was possible to support – the idea that even more doses need to be purchased under threat of being sued for non-compliance with a commercial contract … that nobody gets to see?
This situation has handed all the cards to the pharmaceutical industry, primarily to Pfizer, which has grabbed more than three-quarters of the sales contracts. This prompts European Parliament Member Michèle Rivasi, from Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), to say:
“It seems as if it is the pharmaceutical companies that have been holding the pen at the EU Commission.”
She has discussed the case in several French media, such as the left-wing newspaper l’Humanité, which has presented the subject on its YouTube channel. The newspaper Valeurs Actuelles brought up the subject in a column by Patricia de Sagazan. The EU news website EURACTIV covered the subject. Sud-Radio also addressed this news thanks to André Bercoff, who left the word to Diane Protat and Frédéric Baldan.
A Catastrophic Silence for Democracy
The subject could quickly go from soap opera to a major legal and political scandal. The President of the EU Commission, who already has a turbulent past with the German justice system from when she was the country’s defense minister, has shown many signs of close friendship with Albert Bourla, not least through her husband, who works in the pharmaceutical field.
The exchanged text messages must be shown to the public to not further discredit the EU institutions, short-circuited by von der Leyen’s wish to handle this matter herself. EU institutions suffer from an apparent worrying structural weakness, namely, being overly exposed to the power behind industrial and financial lobbying groups.
Since the beginning of the “health crisis” in 2020, mainstream media has shown a clear inactivity on these issues. The ethical rules for journalists established in the Munich Declaration of 1971 aim to guarantee citizens objective and factual information about the dangers threatening public affairs and the common interest. Today’s corps of journalists often seems to have forgotten these rules.
This silence is serious for democracy and stability in the political sphere in Europe. While citizens’ mistrust of the media continues to grow in Europe, this situation also damages the image of the EU, and its member states that do not react to the deficiencies in the supranational institutions that now largely govern the countries.
CIA Vets: FBI Withholds Damning Evidence on Bidens Prior to Presidential Election, Again
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 01.06.2023
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer moved to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in criminal contempt of Congress on Tuesday after the agency refused to provide a subpoenaed document potentially implicating US President Joe Biden.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has refused to provide a form that “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions,” as per James Comer, R-Ky.
According to Larry Johnson, a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, the information in the FD-1023 form would require criminal charges to be filed against the incumbent president.
“It’s just that simple,” Johnson told Sputnik. “I think the evidence is conclusive that [Joe Biden and his son Hunter – Sputnik ] have been involved with bribery and with activities that are taking advantage of Biden’s position in government. It is corruption on a scale that is frankly astonishing. (…) [The FBI is] doing everything they can to try to cover for the president.”
What’s a FD-1023 Form?
Comer and his fellow lawmakers subpoenaed the FBI for the document in question last month. However, the bureau refused to provide it, claiming that a specific Justice Department policy “strictly limits when and how confidential human source information can be provided outside of the FBI.”
On May 30, acting assistant director of the FBI, Christopher Dunham, sent a letter to Comer, downplaying the significance of the document: “Investigative reports, such as an FD-1023, include leads and suspicions, not the conclusions of investigators based on fuller context, including information that may not be available to the confidential source.”
“That document is the record of somebody who is – of a source of an informant,” said Johnson. “That’s all it is, it’s a written account of someone’s testimony. So it is one piece of that. But apparently, it provides very specific facts about what the Bidens did. Joe Biden has become rich while being president. And I find it fascinating that the United States will always want to criticize or make claims about corruption in Russia, for example, when they’re guilty – the people of the United States – the Bidens are guilty of the very thing they accuse the others of.”
The very next day, on May 31, Wray held a phone conversation with Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and confirmed the existence of the aforementioned FD-1023 form. He further offered to provide the congressmen “an opportunity to review information responsive to the subpoena in a secure manner to accommodate the committee, while protecting the confidentiality and safety of sources,” as per the bureau’s statement.
“While Director Wray — after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed — has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena,” Comer stated, adding that the Committee is ready to begin contempt of Congress proceedings.
Is the FBI Deliberately Delaying the Process?
Just hours after holding talks with Comer and Grassley, Wray “hopped” on the bureau’s jet and headed to the FBI’s Las Vegas field office to hold a meeting and attend a counterterrorism conference there, according to Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by American investigative journalist John Solomon. The media outlet remarked that the trip allowed the FBI chief to escape “an increasingly hostile atmosphere” for himself in DC.
The FBI is interested in further delaying the congressional probe prior to the 2024 elections, believes former CIA station chief Philip Giraldi.
“The FBI works for Attorney General Merrick Garland who works for the president,” Giraldi told Sputnik. “The president will be badly damaged politically if the investigation is carried out diligently so it is on a slow schedule with no results out before next year’s election in all probability. Denying material to the House panel means that there will be procedural delays which will slow up the process even more.”
FBI and DoJ Have Record of Shielding Bidens
Sputnik’s interlocutors noted that the unfolding spat between GOP lawmakers and the FBI should be seen in a larger context of the Justice Department and bureau operatives hindering attempts to turn the spotlight on the Bidens’ potential wrongdoing.
“There is hard evidence of income from foreign sources that was not reported for tax purposes,” Giraldi said, referring to the ongoing Hunter Biden tax probe. “Also some evidence that Joe Biden took bribes from foreign governments and/or intelligence agencies to influence certain policies favorable to those governments. Whistleblowers inside the IRS have indicated that the FBI and attorney general have both been deliberately slowing down the investigative process, presumably to protect the president.”
In April, an IRS whistleblower came forward informing the US Congress about apparent violations during the Hunter Biden tax crimes investigation by the DOJ, citing “preferential treatment” and attempts to shield the first son.
He also alleged misleading statements to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland related to the probe. After that, the whistleblower’s team was abruptly suspended from the Hunter Biden investigation at the DoJ’s orders, as per IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel. According to the whistleblower, who turned out to be Gary Shapley, a 14-year IRS veteran, the expulsion could be nothing short of “retaliation.”
FBI agents facilitated the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter “laptop from hell” story in October 2020 as his father, Joe Biden, ran for the presidency, according to Elon Musk’s Twitter Files expose.
In addition, 51 ex-top intelligence officials branded Hunter’s laptop from hell as “Russian disinformation” at the time. As it turned out in April, it was done at the request of then-Biden campaign top operative Antony Blinken, now serving as a secretary of state.
How Could FBI’s Doc Affect Biden’s 2024 Bid?
The unfolding row over the FD-1023 form replicates the circumstances of 2020, when Joe was amidst his presidential campaign.
“If the story will ever develop fully and appear in the mainstream media, which is unlikely, it could easily change the outcome of the 2024 election if Biden runs,” Giraldi suggested.
“I suspect the story will be played down by the media, however, and I would imagine Biden would not run again if he decides that he has been badly damaged.”
For his part, Johnson does not believe that Biden will be able to run.
“I think he will either decide not to run or may be removed from office before his term is out. So, I think there will be evidence coming out of the nature of this corruption that will be impossible to deny,” the former CIA analyst said.
Team Biden and their allies in the FBI and DoJ appear to have been doing “everything they can to try to obstruct justice,” Johnson noted. “That would be another charge that should be filed against them, they’re making sure that they’re not held accountable.”
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New Book
Breast Cancer: Before You Consent
A new Unbekoming paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | September 18, 2026
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
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