Start-Up Linked to Hunter Biden’s Firm Bagged $3 Million From Government Program Run by Biden Adviser

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An investment fund connected to Hunter Biden received three million dollars in taxpayer cash from a federal program run by one of his father’s top advisers, according to revelations in Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite—a new book by Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News and the president of the Government Accountability Institute.

In December 2013, Hunter Biden along with his long-time business associate Devon Archer invested in a Hawaii-focused venture capital fund called mbloom. The investment in mbloom, meant to provide seed capital for technology startups, was the result of a public-private partnership between Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Technology (RST) Partners, and the state of Hawaii.

As part of the agreement, RST would provide five million for the fund, with the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation (HSDC) matching the same amount. Little-known at the time, however, was that more than half of HSDC’s contribution would come from a federal program controlled by a confidant of the Biden family.

As Schweizer reveals in Profiles in Corruption, three million of HSDC’s matching funds came from the Treasury Department’s State Small Business Credit Initiative. The program, which expenses more than $1.5 billion to state economic development agencies, was administered by then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Don Graves.

Complicating matters is that while Graves was overseeing the Small Business Credit Initiative, he was also informally advising Biden on economic and domestic policy as the executive director of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. That role took on a more official form shortly after mbloom received its contribution from HSDC, with Graves leaving the treasury department and joining the vice president’s office. (Read more from “Start-Up Linked to Hunter Biden’s Firm Bagged $3 Million From Government Program Run by Biden Adviser” HERE)

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DOJ Concludes That Two FISA Surveillance Renewals on Carter Page Were Illegal

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By The Blaze. The Department of Justice concluded that two renewals of the FISA surveillance warrant against a former Trump campaign official were illegal, according to a report Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.

Carter Page was targeted by the FBI for surveillance during the Obama administration because of ties he had to Russia, but critics have accused the government of acting improperly and out of political motivation.

Two of the renewals of the warrant against Page were made in 2017, and the DOJ now believes they had “insufficient predication to establish probable cause.”

The admission will undoubtedly help bolster claims of politically motivated abuse of power against former Obama officials.

“Today’s unprecedented court filing represents another step on the road to recovery for America’s deeply damaged judicial system,” said Page in a statement responding to the report. (Read more from “DOJ Concludes That Two FISA Surveillance Renewals on Carter Page Were Illegal” HERE)

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Justice Dept. Concedes It Had ‘Insufficient’ Cause to Continue Monitoring Former Trump Campaign Adviser in Russia Probe

By The Washington Post. The Justice Department secretly acknowledged last month that it had “insufficient predication” to continue monitoring a former Trump campaign adviser during the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to records made public Thursday — a notable admission likely to fuel continued criticism over how the bureau handled the high-profile case.

The concession was revealed in an order posted on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s website. In December, according to the order, the department told the court it had come to believe that in at least two of the four applications to monitor the former adviser, Carter Page, “there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause” to believe he was acting as a Russian agent. . .

The department’s concession is validating for conservatives who had long criticized the surveillance of Page, and it is likely to fuel continued attacks on the Russia probe, which was eventually taken over by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. (Read more from “Justice Dept. Concedes It Had ‘Insufficient’ Cause to Continue Monitoring Former Trump Campaign Adviser in Russia Probe” HERE)

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Three U.S. Firefighters Killed While Battling Australia’s Wildfires; Destructive Hail and a Massive Dust Storm Descend on Fire-Ravaged Australia (VIDEO)

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By The Blaze. Three American firefighters were killed in Australia while fighting the country’s ongoing wildfires on Thursday, when the air tanker they were flying in crashed. . .

The victims were crew members on Tanker 134, a Lockheed C-130 Hercules that was carrying retardant when it went down in New South Whales. Canadian-based private company Coulson Aviation, the owner of the aircraft, confirmed the tragedy in a news release.
The names of the fallen firefighters have not yet been released, but according to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Forest Service confirmed the tragedy in an email on Thursday.

“The wildland firefighting community is a family and when there is a loss it is felt throughout the entire organization,” the email said. “We extend our deepest sympathy to the families of the fallen.”

New South Whales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said during a press conference, “Initial reports are that there was a large fireball associated with the impact of the plane as it hit the ground. Unfortunately, all we’ve been able to do is locate the wreckage and the crash site. We have not been able to locate any survivors,” NBC News reported. (Read more from “Three U.S. Firefighters Killed While Battling Australia’s Wildfires” HERE)

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Destructive Hail and a Massive Dust Storm Descend on Fire-Ravaged Australia

By NPR. Australia’s southeast was already dealing with the terrible effects of historic bushfires and huge smoke clouds. Then Canberra, Melbourne and other places were hit by golf-ball-sized hail that destroyed car windshields, killed birds and shredded the leaves off trees.

The Bureau of Meteorology in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, warned residents of “damaging winds, large, possibly giant hailstones and heavy rainfall” as it issued severe thunderstorm warnings in the east and northeast.

The storms also prompted warnings of flash floods — adding another element of risk to areas that have been hit hard by the fires.


In the Australian Capital Territory, which includes the capital city of Canberra, the weather service reported hail Monday measuring up to nearly 2 inches in diameter — accompanied by wind gusts that were near hurricane-strength.

The storm was intense and fast-moving. The territory’s Emergency Services Agency reported receiving a record 1,900 calls for help — more than three times the average for a storm. All of those calls came in after midday, the agency said.

(Read more from “Destructive Hail and a Massive Dust Storm Descend on Fire-Ravaged Australia” HERE)

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Report: Co-Workers of Alleged Whistleblower Say They Heard Him Plotting Trump’s Removal in 2017; Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’

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By The Blaze. Former colleagues of alleged impeachment whistleblower Eric Ciaramella say they heard him discussing ways to get President Donald Trump out of office within days of his inauguration in January 2017, according to RealClearInvestigations.

The sources, who spoke to RCI under the condition of anonymity, said Ciaramella talked about ousting Trump with Sean Misko. Ciaramella and Misko were holdovers from the Obama Administration’s national security team.

According to the sources, Ciaramella and Misko, who are reportedly friends, were upset about Trump’s policy changes from the Obama administration.

“They were popping off about how they were going to remove Trump from office. No joke,” one ex-colleague told RCI. (Read more from “Report: Co-Workers of Alleged Whistleblower Say They Heard Him Plotting Trump’s Removal in 2017” HERE)

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Trump Disrupts Republican Trial Strategy

By Politico. Just five hours after Senate Republicans carefully assembled and passed an impeachment trial framework that could clear Donald Trump by next week, the president himself delivered an unwanted surprise to the GOP: The prospect of a longer trial with lots of witnesses.

Senate Republicans have been publicly and privately maneuvering to give Trump as quick an acquittal as possible while still keeping 51 GOP senators on board. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has largely thrown cold water on the idea of hearing from new witnesses and many of his members are eager to end the trial, not extend it.

In interviews Wednesday morning ahead of House managers’ opening arguments, Republicans empathized with the president’s call for new testimony. But they also said that they will tune out any outside noise if they can — including the running commentary from a president who demands party loyalty — and potentially wrap up the trial far more quickly than Trump desires.

“Certainly, the president has those in the Senate who are very interested in his views,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), but added, “Those are decisions to more likely be made by senators themselves, and individually and collectively, than outside influences.” (Read more from “Trump Disrupts Republican Trial Strategy” HERE)

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Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’

By Daily Caller. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters on Wednesday that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s day two impeachment arguments before the Senate made testimony by Hunter Biden “directly relevant” and “critical.”

“I think the House managers made a very serious strategic error today,” Cruz said, according to ABC News. “Adam Schiff’s arguments to open the day today directly drew into question Hunter Biden and made not only his testimony relevant which it already was but it is now critical.”

The Texas senator, who last week said he is “open to the possibility” of the Senate calling witnesses, including the whistleblower, contended that if the “House managers’ case is based on the allegations of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Joe Biden being a scam,” then the Senate being able to hear from Biden is “directly relevant.”

“And I gotta say, the need for the Senate to hear the testimony of Hunter Biden and the need for the senate to grant the White House lawyers the ability to take that testimony has become all the more relevant,” he said per ABC. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Says Adam Schiff Made Hunter Biden’s Testimony ‘Directly Relevant’” HERE)

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Elite Religious Order Repeatedly Raped Girls as Young as Eight Years Old

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By Associated Press. The administrator of the elite Catholic school in Cancun, Mexico, used to take the girls out of class and send them to the chapel, where the priest from the Legion of Christ religious order would sexually abuse them.

“As some were reading the Bible, he would rape the others in front of them, little girls aged 6 to 8 or 9,” said one of his victims, Ana Lucia Salazar, now a 36-year-old Mexican television host and mother of three. . .

Salazar’s horrific story, which has been corroborated by other victims and the Legion itself, has sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order, 10 years after the Holy See took it over after determining that its founder was a pedophile. (Read more from “Elite Religious Order Raped Girls Repeatedly as Young as Eight Years Old” HERE)

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Sex Scandal Shocks Mexico: The Vatican Must Probe Cover-Up of Child Sexual Abuse

By WION. Ten years after the Vatican took it over, the Legion of Christ religious order is in crisis again. This religious order in Mexico founded in 1941 was once powerful influential. But it now faces an existential crisis.

Its founder, a Paedophile, is said to have sexually abused more than 60 boys. And this latest scandal will raise questions that the Vatican will have to answer. . .

Legion of Christ was once an influential religious order which was founded by Marcial Maciel in 1941. He passed away in 2008. The Legion of Christ was taken over by the Vatican in 2010. . .

Salazar’s horrific story has been corroborated by other victims and the legion itself. The revelations have sparked a new credibility crisis for the once-influential order.

A recent investigation has revealed that sexual abuse of minors was rife, especially among superiors of the legionaries of the ultraconservative religious order. 175 minors were victims of abuse by 33 priests and 71 seminarians. Most victims were boys between 11 and 16. (Read more from “Sex Scandal Shocks Mexico: The Vatican Must Probe Cover-Up of Child Sexual Abuse” HERE)

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Cal Thomas: America’s Expiration Date — Will U.S. Collapse in 2026?

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. . .In my new book, “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers … and the Future of the United States,” I examine eight empires that believed their economic strength and military power were enough to sustain them well into the future and in the case of the Roman Empire, eternally.

Nations are made up of people. While modes of transportation, hairstyles, clothing and other things change, human nature remains the same. A nation’s strength and sustainability require more than economic and military success. There are issues of character and virtue that are stronger supporters and sustainers of any nation. As the Psalmist asked, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” He isn’t talking about money and a military.

The book is inspired by the late British diplomat Sir John Glubb, who found a pattern to the decline of nations. He said that pattern has not changed in the 4,000 years of history he studied and that the average age of great nations is 250 years. Rome was an exception, but even Rome followed the same path to self-destruction. . .

This includes uncontrolled immigration without assimilation. No nation can be sustained if it forgets its identity and fails to absorb new immigrants, requiring they learn the native language and understand the native history while leaving behind the agendas and issues of the country from which they came, while obeying the laws. . .

Massive national debt is another cause of the decline of superpowers. The U.S. currently is $23 trillion in the red (and counting). Neither political party will do what is necessary to reverse course, though both parties know entitlement reform is a key to the restoration of financial stability. (Read more from “Cal Thomas: America’s Expiration Date — Will U.S. Collapse in 2026?” HERE)

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U.S. Student Jailed in China After Critical Tweets About Government

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A 20-year-old University of Minnesota student named Luo Daiqing was arrested in China and sentenced to six months in prison for sending tweets critical of the Chinese government while he was in the U.S., according to court documents reported on by Axios.

The report says that Luo was arrested in his hometown of Wuhan, where he returned after finishing up the spring semester at Minnesota, in July 2019. He was then held for several months and sentenced in November, all for posts that the government referred to as “denigrating a national leader’s image.” . . .

This arrest and sentence could chill any criticism of the government by Chinese citizens, even when they’re in foreign countries. Over the past year, the Chinese police has escalated their fight to censor social media and crack down on critical posts by arresting more and more users who post content that they consider objectionable. (Read more from “U.S. Student Jailed in China After Critical Tweets About Government” HERE)

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Cyber Expert Behind a Report on Saudi Arabia’s Alleged Bezos Hack Was Paid $4 Million to Verify Steele Dossier

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One of the experts who spearheaded a forensics report alleging Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was also part of an attempt to verify the Steele dossier.

Bezos’s iPhone began sharing large amounts of data after receiving an encrypted video file from bin Salman’s WhatsApp account in May 2018, according to a November 2019 report cobbled together by Anthony Ferrante, a cyber expert at the advisory firm FTI Consulting. The report, which Vice News published Wednesday, concluded with “medium to high confidence” that the crown prince’s phone was involved.

BuzzFeed asked Ferrante, a former FBI agent who joined CNN as a contributor in 2019, to investigate the Steele dossier’s claims that Russian tech executive Aleksej Gubarev played a “significant” role in hacking Democrats’ computer systems. BuzzFeed published the full dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.

Ferrante determined that Gubarev’s companies “have provided gateways to the internet for cybercriminals and Russian state sponsored actors to launch and control large-scale malware campaigns over the past decade.”

Gubarev’s lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer, dismissed Ferrante’s contention in a March 2019 statement. “Buzzfeed spent $4.1 million on a team of former FBI agents to try to prove that Gubarev and his companies did what was alleged in the Steele Dossier and came up empty-handed,” he said. (Read more from “Cyber Expert Behind a Report on Saudi Arabia’s Alleged Bezos Hack Was Paid $4 Million to Verify Steele Dossier” HERE)

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21-Year-Old Son of Christian Rapper TobyMac Died of an Accidental Drug Overdose

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Truett Foster McKeehan, the son of popular Christian recording artist, TobyMac, died of an accidental drug overdose, autopsy and toxicology results show.

Davidson County Medical Examiner Feng Li said that an “acute combined drug intoxication” of fentanyl and amphetamines resulted in the 21-year-old’s death last October, according to the Tennessean.

In the report, Li said that McKeehan had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and possibly abused nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas.” He also had Adderall and marijuana in his system at the time of his death.

McKeehan was discovered unresponsive in his bed on Oct. 23 when a friend was conducting a welfare check on him. . .

Truett’s father, TobyMac — real name Kevin Michael McKeehan — inspired faith and hope through his response to the sudden passing of his eldest son. (Read more from “21-Year-Old Son of Christian Rapper TobyMac Died of an Accidental Drug Overdose” HERE)

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WATCH: Numerous Injured, One Dead in Seattle Shooting

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A gunman opened fire in Downtown Seattle around 5 p.m. PST Wednesday evening near Third Avenue and Pine Street. According to Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, one person died and seven others were injured. The gunman is still on the loose.

MyNorthwest has the latest on the victims being treated at Harborview Medical Center

One victim died at the scene, said to be a woman between age of 40 and 50. Among those injured included a 9-year-old boy, who is in serious condition. The other shooting victims were: a 55-year-old woman in critical condition; a 35-year-old man in stable condition; a 21-year-old man in stable condition; and a 34-year-old man in stable condition. All seven injured victims are being treated at Harborview Medical Center

(Read more from “Numerous Injured, One Dead in Seattle Shooting” HERE)

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