RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-iran-envoy-to-teach-at-princeton-while-fbi-investigates-him-for-mishandling-classified-info/

One nation. Two sets of rules.

We already know what happens if you’re accused of mishandling classified information while being a conservative or an ordinary person. Here’s what happens when you’re a member of the ‘party’.

Robert Malley, an Obama campaign advisor dumped over meetings with Hamas, then brought back and elevated through the National Security Council despite a history of terrorist sympathies and a background that would give any self-respecting official in charge of national security clearances a severe fit, had his security clearance suspended while the FBI investigated the Iran envoy for alleged mishandling of classified information.

None of this was announced. Obviously. Instead, the Biden administration lied to senators to imply that Malley wasn’t taking part in negotiations because he had medical issues, and maintained an official listing of Malley as the Iran envoy even though he couldn’t properly fulfill that function. When the story leaked, there were no apologies, just the pretense that everything was completely normal.

Malley’s security clearance appears to have been suspended in late April or early May. A U.S. official said he went on a partial paid personal leave in late April. But until late June, Malley continued doing State Department work, including giving media interviews.

Malley’s changing role first drew attention from Congress when he didn’t participate in a May 16 briefing to senators.

When lawmakers’ offices asked about Malley’s absence, “We were told, ‘It’s extended personal leave’ with hints of, ‘Well, you know, it’s medical, we can’t talk about it,’” a Hill staffer told POLITICO. “It was deliberately done as a hand-waving thing.” Another congressional staffer said they received a similar response. Officials at State also told journalists Malley had taken a personal leave.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/15/when-the-justice-system-falls-apart-so-does-the-republic/

If we no longer uphold equal justice under the law, we still have a country, but not the one we thought we had.

Democrats’ crusade to weaponize the criminal justice system to put their chief political opponent in jail escalated again Monday night, with the release of an indictment pursued by Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against former President Donald Trump. The indictment, targeting not just Trump but 18 of his lawyers and advisers, is a clear message that if you’re a Republican, challenging election results — something Democrats have done after every GOP presidential victory this century — is now a criminal offense.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is tripping over itself to insulate Biden and his son from scrutiny or criminal consequences for their apparent scheme to get rich off of peddling American political influence abroad.

The hacks at DOJ, by the way, also indicted Trump over a classified documents dispute, after raiding his house and rifling through his wife’s closet. Soon after, Biden was found to have classified documents lying around in his garage, but in his case, the feds are content to play nice. Oh, and Hillary Clinton also had a classified records scandal — in which her team destroyed emails and devices with BleachBit and literal hammers — but enjoyed the protection of then-FBI Director James Comey.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-reduction-act-bidenomics-ira-2024-president-cost-of-living-energy-jobs-unemployment-fossil-fuel-318d577f?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

It isn’t surprising that President Biden is marking the Inflation Reduction Act’s first anniversary by traveling the country trying to convince voters that the law is working and the economy is getting better. Good luck to him.

A recent CNN poll found Americans still consider the economy the most pressing issue facing the country. More than half of Americans think the economy is bad and getting worse, and only 37% approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy. Just 30% approve of his handling of inflation.

That doesn’t augur well for the credibility of Democrats and the legislation Mr. Biden promised would “reduce inflation at the kitchen table” and kick-start new economic growth. Every Democrat in Congress supported the bill. It should doom them in 2024.

Republicans must aggressively articulate what is wrong with the legislation. The most obvious point: After a year, the legislation hasn’t reduced inflation. Food and consumer costs are increasing again. Rent is going up too. Even Mr. Biden conceded that the title is a misnomer, telling donors at a fundraiser, “I wish I hadn’t called it that.”

His administration has admitted the act could cost Americans their jobs. Brian Anderson, executive director of the administration’s interagency working group on energy communities, says the law will hit workers in the fossil-fuel industry especially hard.

The fossil-fuel industry supports nearly 100,000 jobs in West Virginia and more than 350,000 in Ohio, two states critical to control of the Senate. Yet Mr. Anderson told the New York Times, “We’re standing right at the cusp of potentially still leaving them behind again.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/14/joe-bidens-race-against-the-truth/

Joe Biden has about 17 months left as an elected politician—if he is lucky. That projection guides most of the inexplicable and shameless behavior of the Department of Justice and Biden himself. View Biden as in a race against the truth. Will he be physically and mentally able to complete his term and head to retirement before his decades-long crimes of corruption catch up to him?

Joe Biden’s serial yarn that he never knew anything about his son Hunter’s quid pro quo grifting with rich foreign grandees has been finally exposed as the old lie it always was.

Biden’s fallback untruth—that he never got involved in Hunter’s business—proved instantly laughable, given prior damning testimonies from Hunter’s business associates, from IRS whistleblowers, from the assertions of foreign beneficiaries, from Hunter’s own laptop, and from Joe’s own earlier loudmouth braggadocio about using threats of canceling U.S. foreign aid to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into corruption of the sort in which his own son was knee deep. (Did not then president Barack Obama know the nature of Biden corruption when he appointed him as point man on Ukraine)?

To his partners in corruption, Hunter referred to his father variously as the “big guy” as well as the recipient of “ten percent” of the leveraged income. And apparently as a rather greedy pop, Hunter whined that Joe himself demanded half of all Hunter’s own shake-down income from abroad—despite Hunter’s payment of many of Joe’s monthly bills incurred on his palatial lakeshore mansion.

At some point, even the corrupt leftwing media and DNC cannot continue to laugh off eyewitness testimonies, whistleblowers’ revelations, bank records, Hunter Biden’s own computer messaging, Joe Biden’s phone calls and personal appearances, and the evidence from foreign beneficiaries.

And then there is simply the power of reason and logic.

Over the last five years of this hushed-up tawdry saga, Americans knew immediately that Joe Biden was lying in all his denials of any involvement whatsoever in the procurement of a large part of his income from abroad simply because no one in the entire Biden family had any business, investment, or energy expertise. In other words, as grifters without Joe, the Bidens had zero market value.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19889/garland-illegally-appointed-weiss

“The special counsel shall be selected from outside the United States government.” — Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Chapter VI, § 600.3(c). [Emphasis added]

This requirement is the law. The regulations were authorized by Congress under 5 U.S.C. 301, 509, 510, 515-519.

The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. It is certainly expected that he would obey the law in its entirety.

If he feels that somehow there is an applicable exception to this requirement, he is obliged to explain why.

Special counsel is supposed to be independent of the current government, not an employee….

Democrats frequently say that no one is above the law. Yet they have been silent about Garland apparently placing himself above the law in choosing Weiss in violation of governing legal regulations.

[I]t is within the powers of Congress to summon Garland and ask him to explain why he believes he is justified in ignoring a federal regulation that seems to limit his authority to appoint special counsels.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/11/fight-over-new-fbi-hq-part-of-larger-debate-on-draining-the-federal-swamp/

As of now, House Republicans have removed funds from the FY 2024 budget for the controversial $3.5 billion proposed relocation of the FBI’s Washington, D.C. headquarters to a new complex at one of three locations in the D.C. suburbs of Virginia or Maryland.

Some House Republicans want to keep the FBI headquarters at its current location and view the relocation proposal as unwise and wasteful. Others want to downsize, defund or eliminate the Bureau – and not to reward it with a sprawling new headquarters complex – because they believe it has been weaponized against conservatives.

There also is growing support by Republicans to save money and depoliticize U.S. government agencies by decentralizing them and moving most of their personnel out of the “Washington swamp” (the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area) to locations across the U.S.

The Political Battle Over a New FBI HQ

The FBI’s current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover building, has been used by the bureau since 1974. It occupies a city block on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the Justice Department and equidistant between the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

FBI leaders have been fighting for a new headquarters building for over two decades because they claim the Hoover building is old and crumbling. They contend that a new and larger headquarters complex in suburban Maryland or Virginia will enhance the bureau’s operations and still be close enough to D.C. for its work with Congress, the White House, and federal agencies and courts.

President Trump opposed the FBI giving up its prime headquarters location and canceled the relocation. Instead, he ordered the FBI headquarters to be rebuilt at its current site. Congress blocked funding for this decision.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/11/merrick-garlands-latest-dirty-trick-to-protect-the-bidens/

Attorney General Merrick Garland may have just played his last trick card to save Joe Biden: appointing a special counsel to delay prosecution of his son Hunter.

With any luck, the official Justice Department final report on Biden family shenanigans will be released in December 2024, one month after the presidential election.

Perpetuating an investigation is the most respectable Washington cover-up scam.

Federal agencies and the Justice Department dragged out for five years the investigation of Hunter’s gun, tax and foreign influence peddling.

The statute of limitations already expired on several of his crimes, but that was OK because of the spelling of his last name.

Despite a string of crimes that would have sent average Americans up the river for a decade, Biden’s Justice Department cut a deal in June that permitted Hunter to plead guilty to misdemeanors, not serve a day in jail and dodge any other federal charges.

That deal collapsed when federal Judge Maryellen Noreika asked a few questions after she was blindsided by a last-minute sweeping exoneration paragraph added to the plea deal.

With no deal, Hunter Biden faced a federal trial.

The Justice Department cut a deal in June that permitted Hunter Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanors while not serving a day in jail and dodge federal charges.

But Garland came to Hunter’s rescue Friday by appointing David Weiss special counsel.

https://us.cnn.com/2023/08/11/economy/inflation-rate-spending/index.html

US inflation has had a snowballing effect on family budgets.

The typical American household spent $709 more in July than they did two years ago to buy the same goods and services, according to Moody’s Analytics.

That figure underscores the cumulative impact high inflation has had on consumer finances — even as price growth has cooled considerably in recent months.

“High inflation of the past 2+ years has done lots of economic damage,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Most of that increase in spending is driven by housing costs, which have surged, Zandi told CNN in an email on Friday. He added that families are also spending more at the grocery store; on buying, maintaining and insuring vehicles and on recreational services like cable.

Of course, paychecks have also grown over the past two years — but not by as much as the cost of living.

Inflation-adjusted earnings are stuck in 2019

Even though prices have soared, real earnings, which adjust for inflation, are stuck at late 2019 levels.

“Real earnings remain below what they would have been if not for the pandemic and the Russian war, which is weighing on the collective psyche,” Zandi told CNN in an email on Friday.

The good news is that wages are finally starting to outpace inflation and consumer price growth has eased significantly, so much so that many investors are betting the Federal Reserve is done raising interest rates.

Americans’ wages are finally outpacing inflation. Here’s why it may not last

Looking at just the last year, Zandi calculates that the typical household spent $202 more this July than they did a year ago to buy the same goods and services.

https://thespectator.com/topic/hunter-biden-special-counsel-david-weiss-investigating-probe/

At long last, Attorney General Merrick Garland decided to appoint a special counsel to continue the investigation of Hunter Biden, his family and associates. His choice: US Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, who has been on the case for several years. He was originally appointed as US attorney by Donald Trump, a point Democrats always highlight without noting that he was promoted by both Democratic senators from the state. 

Being named special counsel gives Weiss some authority beyond that of a regular US attorney. In particular, he can bring federal cases outside his narrow territorial domain without consent from US attorneys in those other districts. That’s an important point, since Weiss was apparently denied the right to bring at least two other cases his office sought. 

His appointment makes sense in one way: any other choice would have added years to the investigation. Weiss is already up to speed. The question is whether he is speeding down the right road. 

Weiss might have been appointed special counsel during the Trump administration, but outgoing AG Bill Barr has said he thought that decision should be left to the incoming administration. His rationale was a strong one: he feared that appointing a special counsel as one administration went out the door would set a precedent for future administrations to begin investigating their successors. If a special counsel was needed, Barr concluded, that should be up to the Biden administration. 

Shockingly, the Biden administration did not want to appoint a special counsel to investigate itself or the president’s family. The new attorney general could have given Weiss those additional powers two years ago but declined. Garland actually made the incredible argument that Weiss, as a US attorney, had more powers than he would have as a special counsel. 

Both Garland and Weiss have also told Congress that Weiss had ultimate authority to bring cases wherever he wished. But those statements may not be true, since Weiss was apparently blocked from filing cases in other jurisdictions, and since he told multiple IRS investigators that he was not the ultimate decision-maker on these cases. The latter statement directly contradicts what he and Garland have told Congress.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/the_deadly_untrustworthiness_of_general_mark_milley.html

Once, he was a soldier. Now, though, Milley has become a bureaucrat in uniform, trading national security for leftist policies.

General Mark Milley, who is Secretary of Defense, has forgotten that he was a soldier. Now, he’s only a leftist bureaucrat in uniform. Milley’s basic mode of operation is ingratiating himself to a political class that values the servile.

What makes Milley dangerous is his willingness to lie unhesitatingly, particularly in public. He is the highest-ranking military officer in the nation, and this matters. Technically the Secretary of Defense is a civilian post even though the Secretary may have a military background. The President and Congress provide civilian oversight but can only do so when presented with truthful, accurate information.

In June 2021, Tucker Carlson made some very strong remarks about Milley’s attempts to make teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the military seem benign. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Milley compared CRT to reading Marx and Mao, as if it’s just part of educating the troops about different ideologies. However, our military is not urging the adoption of Marxism. (At least not yet!) What Milley is doing is cooperating with the Democrat left to indoctrinate the troops in blatant racism.