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September 2022

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Federal Bureau Investigated What an independent search of FBI headquarters might turn up. by Lloyd Billingsley

By on September 12th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/federal-bureau-investigated/

On August 8, for the first time in U.S. history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the residence of a former president, Donald J. Trump. That home invasion invites another first for America: a sudden and thorough search of FBI headquarters, with bureau bosses and their lawyers barred from the premises and from contact with anyone inside.

Under these conditions, a crack team of independent investigators, deploying the latest forensic and high-tech tools, could be turned loose on all FBI files and records. The first thing this team might uncover is recent FBI action in a high-profile whistleblower case. Back on February 21, 2020, Philip Haney, author of  See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad was “found deceased” in Amador County, California, killed by a gunshot to the chest. Despite rumors, Haney’s death was not a suicide.

The Amador sheriff, “reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, numerous thumb drives and a lap top that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV. Those items and numerous other pieces of evidence, were turned over to the FBI. The FBI has performed a forensic examination of these items. We expect to receive these reports within the next few weeks.” More than two years later, there is no news on Haney’s thumb drives, documents and laptop in FBI custody.

With the evasive Christopher Wray removed from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, independent investigators could retrieve this material and possibly develop leads in the Haney homicide case. Somebody had motive, means, and opportunity. As Rod Steiger said in In the Heat of the Night, “we have the body, which is dead.” If investigators establish that the FBI destroyed or altered evidence, that would make for an obstruction of justice case against those responsible, and any FBI bosses who signed off on it.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

National Security Threat: China’s Eyes in America by Peter Schweizer

By on September 12th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18885/china-drones-dji-spying

The Chinese company DJI controls nearly 90% of the world market for consumer and commercial grade drones.

The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user’s contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.

Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.

DJI is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces…. DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.

Understanding these patterns is central to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well…. [through] many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail.

The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation… It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the “China Initiative” within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year….

China’s strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so.

Chinese intelligence gathering in the US takes many forms and has different purposes. Most Americans are familiar with some of their means and tactics, but not with how widespread and persistent they are.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We’re ‘Better Off’ Under Biden? Who Is Obama Kidding?

By on September 12th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/12/were-better-off-under-biden-who-is-obama-kidding/

When he wasn’t admiring his White House portrait, Barack Obama managed to say a nice thing about President Joe Biden. He must have been joking, though, because what he said defies reality.

“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president,” Obama said. “The country is better off than when you took office. We should all be deeply grateful for that.”

Our “good fortune”? Let’s review just how much “better off” we all are thanks to Biden and his fellow Democrats.

COVID deaths: When Biden took office on the promise that he had a plan that would end COVID, the official death count was 424,318. Today it is over 1.044 million. In other words, there have been nearly 620,000 COVID deaths on Biden’s watch. And that’s despite all the interventions Biden claimed would end the pandemic. Are the families of those 620,000 people better off?

Inflation: Despite the recent decline in pump prices, gasoline costs 91% more than it did on January 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index. Food prices are up 14%. Overall prices have climbed 13% in the time Biden has been president. To put that last number in perspective, the overall increase in the CPI during President Donald Trump’s entire four years in office was just 7%.

Real earnings: How about workers, are they better off? While wages have climbed, they haven’t nearly kept pace with Bidenflation. As a result, workers have seen their real wages decline by 5%, which works out to an effective average pay cut of $2,726 a year. Does that, in Obama’s mind, make them better off?

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