DOJ Special Counsel on Candidate Trump; Focus: Effort to Overturn 2020 Election, Mar a Lago Documents

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By Breitbart. Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly plans to name a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump, though he has yet to name such counsel to investigate President Joe Biden or his son, Hunter. . .

Garland named John L. Smith as special counsel Friday afternoon in a televised press statement. According to LinkedIn, Smith is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division at U.S. Department of Justice — one of the most highly politicized, left-wing departments within the agency.

Hunter Biden acknowledged in December 2020 that he had been under federal investigation for possible tax violations. Since then, the investigation reportedly broadened to include more of his global business dealings.

However, Attorney General Garland has declined to appoint a special counsel, despite criticism from legal scholars who say that greater political independence is needed in an inquiry involving the president’s family. . .

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported — nearly a week after the midterm election — that the Mar-a-Lago documents were of a personal interest and there was no indication that the former president intended to sell any national secrets. The story has largely been ignored. (Read more from “DOJ Special Counsel on Candidate Trump; Focus: Effort to Overturn 2020 Election, Mar a Lago Documents” HERE)

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U.S. Justice Dept. names war crimes expert as special counsel for Trump probes

By Reuters. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday named Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor, to serve as special counsel to oversee Justice Department investigations related to Donald Trump including the former president’s handling of sensitive documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Garland’s announcement came three days after Trump, a Republican, announced he would run for president again in 2024. Garland said Trump’s candidacy, as well as Democratic President Biden’s stated intention to run for re-election, made the appointment of a special counsel necessary.

Special counsels are sometimes appointed to investigate politically sensitive cases and they do their jobs with a degree of independence from the Justice Department leadership.

“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch,” Smith said in a statement. “I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.” (Read more from “U.S. Justice Dept. names war crimes expert as special counsel for Trump probes” HERE)

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Mother of Disgraced Crypto Billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried Is a Democratic Fundraiser Who Once Wrote Essay Blasting ‘Personal Responsibility’

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The mother of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is a law professor and Democratic fundraiser who once wrote an essay decrying “personal responsibility.”

The cryptocurrency platform filed for bankruptcy last week after users discovered that adjacent trading firm Alameda Research had allegedly been using consumer holdings from FTX to make investments. Following the incident, in which billions of customers’ dollars may have been stolen, the life of Bankman-Fried has come under scrutiny.

Barbara Fried, the mother of Bankman-Fried, is a law professor at Stanford University who has written about “questions of distributive justice” in areas such as tax policy and political theory. She also runs a political action committee called Mind the Gap, which fundraises for the Democratic Party among executives in Silicon Valley. The organization raised nearly $4 million in the most recent midterm election cycle, according to data from Open Secrets, which showed that FTX Director of Engineering Nishad Singh made a $1 million contribution.

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have also backed the organization, according to a report from Vox, which described one of the entity’s purposes as avoiding “public detection.”

Bankman-Fried himself contributed nearly $39 million to various campaigns during the recent midterm elections, with 99.6% of funds benefiting Democratic candidates, according to more data from Open Secrets, which listed him as the nation’s sixth-largest individual midterm donor. He was previously the second-largest contributor to President Joe Biden amid his successful bid for the White House. (Read more from “Mother of Disgraced Crypto Billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried Is a Democratic Fundraiser Who Once Wrote Essay Blasting ‘Personal Responsibility’” HERE)

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American Bar Association Panel Makes LSAT Optional for Law School Admittance

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A panel of the American Bar Association voted Friday to make the Law School Admissions Test optional, a win for critics who said the standardized test hampered diversity efforts.

The panel’s decision comes amid debate on whether the exam harms or helps with diversity in law schools. Nearly 60 law school deans in September signed a letter that claimed getting rid of the requirement would actually hurt the goal of diversifying law schools by leaning harder on individual GPAs or other factors that could be tinged with bias.

“We believe that removal of the testing requirement could actually increase the very disparities proponents seek to reduce by increasing the influence of bias in the review process,” Kristen Theis-Alvarez, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said in the letter.

The Southern University Law Center, a historically black university in Louisiana, will still use the LSAT to analyze candidates, according to the university’s chancellor, John Pierre, who said he agreed with the panel. However, schools should make their own decisions, Pierre added. (Read more from “American Bar Association Panel Makes LSAT Optional for Law School Admittance” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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GOP Is Holding Democrats Accountable for the Border Crisis

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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who is set to be the leader of the House Judiciary Committee, is calling on 11 Department of Homeland Security officials to give voluntary testimony and compliance as Republicans launch an investigation into the border crisis and the politicization of the Justice Department.

In a letter, Jordan criticized ten officials, including DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, over “serious allegations of abuse and misconduct within the senior leadership.”

For the past 21 months, Republicans have investigated the lawlessness of the department that has allowed for chaos at the border. Since the GOP won the House, those investigations will intensify.

“Over the past twenty-one months, we have made several requests for information and documents concerning the operations and actions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its components,” Jordan’s letter states. “To date, you have ignored these requests, or you have failed to respond sufficiently.” (Read more from “GOP Is Holding Democrats Accountable for the Border Crisis” HERE)

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Elon Musk Reinstates Three Big Twitter Accounts

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In a thread posted Friday afternoon, Elon Musk shared more about his plans for Twitter’s philosophy surrounding expression on the platform and announced a few accounts that had been reinstated.

Explaining Twitter’s new policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” Musk stated that posts deemed “negative/hate tweets” would be “max deboosted & demonetized” and only visible to those who “specifically seek it out.”

Musk did not share who would make such decisions or how tweets would be deemed negative or hateful, details that will hopefully be forthcoming as one of the old Twitter’s biggest issues was selectively enforced content standards that seemed to be based on the whims of liberal mobs and the feeble sensitivities of the tech company’s moderation team.

Musk did clarify that the new Twitter policy regarding “deboosted” tweets found to be negative or hateful would only apply to individual posts, and not to accounts posting such content.

(Read more from “Elon Musk Reinstates Three Big Twitter Accounts” HERE)

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State’s New Gun Control Law Sparks Buying Spree as Thousands Race to Get Firearms

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Oregon’s new law that will rigidly tighten the state’s gun restrictions led to a massive uptick in attempted firearms purchases, according to NBC affiliate KGW8.

Ballot Measure 114 was passed during the midterm elections and is credited as one of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, sending background checks skyrocketing from 850 per day, prior to the midterms, to 4,000 per day after the law’s passing, according to KGW8. The measure, often referred to as the Reduction of Gun Violence Act, will require deeper background checks, firearm training, fingerprint collection and a permit to purchase any firearm, according to the legislation, set to be effective in December.

The Oregon state police reported more than 18,000 transactions during election week, resulting in a backlog in background checks, according to KGW8. In 2020, COVID-19 restrictions caused a backlog in background checks that eventually leveled off right before the elections, the Oregon State Police reported.

The measure’s requirements have caused controversy for gun owners in Oregon, leading Lincoln County Sheriff Curtis Landers to release a statement Wednesday clarifying the new law.

(Read more from “State’s New Gun Control Law Sparks Buying Spree as Thousands Race to Get Firearms” HERE)

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‘Pregnancy Is Not an Illness’: Doctors Sue FDA Over Approval of ‘Dangerous’ Abortion Pill

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Four national medical associations and four doctors are suing the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for “illegally” approving abortion drugs that they claim harm women, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

The groups, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, are claiming that, “the FDA failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States.”

The lawsuit alleges that the FDA had to designate pregnancy as an “illness” and the abortion drugs as providing a “meaningful therapeutic benefit” in order to get them approved so rapidly.

“Pregnancy is not an illness, and chemical abortion drugs don’t provide a therapeutic benefit—they end a baby’s life and they pose serious and life-threatening complications to the mother,” ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a press release. (Read more from “‘Pregnancy Is Not an Illness’: Doctors Sue FDA Over Approval of ‘Dangerous’ Abortion Pill” HERE)

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Elon Musk Mocks Senate Democrats for Calling for FTC to Investigate Twitter

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Twitter CEO Elon Musk took a shot at Senate Democrats on Friday after several members penned a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking they investigate any potential consent decree or consumer protection laws violated by the social media giant.

Musk mocked the senators for calling for the probe while remaining mum on the historic implosion of the crypto currency exchange company FTX, which has declared bankruptcy after losing billions of dollars.

He made his case by tweeting a meme showing two Rhinoceroses mating behind a wildlife photographer who’s paying no mind to the scene.

[Warning: Tweet contains explicit content.]

(Read more from “Elon Musk Mocks Senate Democrats for Calling for FTC to Investigate Twitter” HERE)

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How Joe Biden Used Taxpayer Money to Buy Young Voters in the 2022 Midterms

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In the lead-up to the 2022 midterms, President Joe Biden had American universities use taxpayer-funded Federal Work Study programs to pay college students to engage in voter registration campaigns for the benefit of Democrats.

“[O]n its face, you have to question whether this is legal or not,” Thomas Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, told The Federalist. “Their target audience here, college students, is overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, so you have to question whether ‘non-partisan’ is really non-partisan.”

Last April, the Biden administration told universities they are required under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to “make a good faith effort” to make mail voter registration forms “widely available” to their students. But the president’s acting assistant secretary for the Office of Postsecondary Education, Michelle Asha Cooper, went much further, claiming that as part of such efforts to increase voter registration among their students, universities may use work-study funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — to pay students to “support voter registration activities.”

Having taxpayers fund get-out-the-vote activities that support Democrats in this way had previously not been allowed. (Read more from “How Joe Biden Used Taxpayer Money to Buy Young Voters in the 2022 Midterms” HERE)

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Report: New York Paid $11 Billion in Fraudulent Unemployment Claims in a Single Year of COVID

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Add another infraction to the list of New York’s crime problems: fraud. A report recently released by the state’s comptroller found that, in the first year after the Covid pandemic hit, the state paid out at least $11 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims.

That staggering sum reflects one state’s worth of fraudulent claims in one year. And the fraud’s far-reaching consequences will continue to hurt businesses while exacerbating inflation for families. . .

The report notes the explosion of unemployment insurance payments when lockdowns shut down most of the economy. From April 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021, the state paid out more than $76 billion in unemployment claims — a more than 31-fold increase from the previous year.

The skyrocketing caseloads, coupled with New York’s generations-old UI computer systems, led to widespread fraud. During that same 2020-2021 period, the estimated fraud rate more than tripled to 14.48 percent, up from just 4.51 percent the prior year. Multiplying the 14.48 percent fraud rate by the amount paid out in benefits yields an estimated total fraud of just over $11 billion.

Believe it or not, the news gets worse. In the following year, which ended this past March 31, the fraud rate in New York’s UI program grew even higher, to 17.59 percent. All told, the improper payment rate — which includes payments made in the wrong amount or without the correct documentation, in addition to outright fraud — reached 28.89 percent in 2021-22. Put another way, nearly 3 in 10 unemployment dollars paid out by New York state either were paid incorrectly or fraudulently. (Read more from “Report: New York Paid $11 Billion in Fraudulent Unemployment Claims in a Single Year of COVID” HERE)

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