Hunter Biden and his associates, in their foray into the world of international deal-making, worked with a rogue’s gallery of foreign partners who were under investigation in their home countries or were convicted in the United States.
In certain cases, the Biden team appeared to use this to their advantage, extracting concessions in exchange for assistance in the United States.
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Just weeks before then-Vice President Joe Biden took the opposite action in late 2015, a task force of State, Treasury, and Justice Department officials declared that Ukraine had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, according to government memos that conflict with the narrative Democrats have sustained since the 2019 impeachment scandal.
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Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline — until it began to implode.
Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?
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The anticipated documentary based on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New York Times bestseller exposing the influence White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has had on government policy, the pharmaceutical industry, and Americans’ health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, will be available for free viewing for 10 days, beginning October 18, on the film’s website.
In The Real Anthony Fauci, filmmaker Jeff Hays seeks to reveal Fauci’s motivations behind his authoritarian decrees that kept Americans separated, businesses upended, and children out of schools – all without pushback from the establishment media.
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Virginia ranks 43 — in the bottom ten — in the 2022 State Campaign Finance Index, which ranks the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., based on state laws around campaign finance and funding transparency for state legislative and executive races.
“How these races are financed and how much transparency is required are key to curbing the influence of money in our political system and enhancing trust that politicians are not representing only wealthy special interests. A state’s score does not necessarily mean its politicians are more or less corrupt than another, but it does reflect the willingness of the state’s politicians to favor special interests and lessen the appearance that politicians are beholden to donors who write the biggest checks,” the Coalition for Integrity said in a June 21 press release announcing the results.
Virginia earned 55.48 percent out of a possible 100 percent; Washington took first place with 83.99 percent.
The index is based on 10 principles, including the presence of an independent agency with wide power to enforce campaign finance laws; meaningful sanctions if there are violations; contribution limits to campaigns and parties; bans on contributions from unions and corporations; comprehensive disclosure of independent expenditures; and easily accessible campaign finance data on a state agency website.
In Virginia, the Department of Elections oversees campaign finance law, but according to the index scoring chart, the agency doesn’t have power to conduct its own investigations, hold public hearings, issue subpoenas, issue sanctions, only partial ability to issue late filing fines, and no ability to issue other fines.
Virginia does properly protect its oversight officials from removal without cause.
The Commonwealth performed poorly on questions about campaign finance contribution limits — it’s one of only five states that have no contribution limits.
“As financing political campaigns remains the best way to buy influence in policy decisions, the amount spent dramatically increases from year to year. In the 2020 election cycle, contributions to gubernatorial and state legislative candidates set new records with contributions nearing $1.9 billion, up from nearly $1.6 billion in the 2016 race. The trend continued in 2021. In Virginia, which has no limits on campaign contributions, the candidates for Governor raised over $130 million – Terry McAuliffe (D) received just over $54.2 million in contributions, while Glen Youngkin (R) received roughly $65.7 million,” the report states.
On transparency, Virginia earns mediocre scores. Contributors to independent spenders must be reported, but not the owners or funders of LLCs or 501(c) nonprofits that contribute to independent spenders. Virginia earned full marks on disclosure of advertisers. Virginia does allow reports to be filed online with the Department of Elections, but they’re not easily available on the DOE website. Instead, Virginians rely on the nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project to provide that data.
Virginia has a poor reputation on campaign finance law.
Former Governor Bob McDonnell was convicted of corruption-related charges in 2014, although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that in a 2016 decision.
“Is Virginia Americas Most Corrupt State?” conservative blog Bacon’s Rebellion asked in 2014.
In 2016, the AP reviewed Virginia campaign donations and expenditures and found that politicians are spending donated funds on fancy restaurants, hotels, and personal bills, with some appearing to use campaign finances as personal income.
“Virginia Is for Corruption,” The Cato Institute reported in 2019.
In 2021, the Democratic-controlled Senate blocked passage of a law to largely ban personal use of campaign funds. In 2022, a Republican-controlled House committee killed a similar bill, and the General Assembly instead opted to continue a campaign finance reform study committee begun in 2021.
Senator John Bell (D-Loudoun) sponsored the 2022 bill, based on the study committee’s work in 2021.
Bell told a House Privileges and Elections subcommittee in March, “Over the years, I know we’ve had many bills in this subject area, frankly, by members of both parties. This is a really tough area to go into, I want to just say to the committee as we get into it. And we took the bill that started off, we heard testimony, and we worked with stakeholders again and worked with members of both parties, and we dialed the bill back in a few areas.”
“This isn’t a perfect bill. It doesn’t hit every area of campaign finance. It’s a start. I think if we tried to do a perfect bill, we’re going to end up with more problems than we want,” he said.
Delegate Margaret Ransone (R-Westmoreland) told Bell, “I’ve heard you say a couple of times, this is a start, this is a beginning. I personally am uncomfortable putting something in code that’s a start.”
“Putting something in code that’s not perfect, that’s not just right, I feel like is wrong. We established a work group. My understanding is that the work group never came to a consensus together collectively on legislation and voted collectively as a majority,” she said.
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
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A Queens, New York City, high school principal who had been removed from his post after accusations he padded his school’s graduation rate, has received a “sweetheart” settlement deal that allows him to have a “desk job” with the city’s Department of Education and ultimately pocket more than $1.8 million, the New York Post reported Saturday.
Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, former principal at Maspeth High School, which was conferred the federal “Blue Ribbon” award in 2018, demanded his teachers pass students and allow them to graduate regardless of their academic performance, the Post revealed in reports over the past several years.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington reporter and editor John Solomon about the stories he broke about corruption in Ukraine, many of them involving the Biden family, for The Hill newspaper.
Although, there was a newsroom protest against Solomon, who as a news columnist had more latitude than staff reporters, an editorial review of his articles showed that all of them were factual.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington reporter and editor John Solomon about the stories he broke about corruption in Ukraine, many of them involving the Biden family, for The Hill newspaper.
Although, there was a newsroom protest against Solomon, who as a news columnist had more latitude than staff reporters, an editorial review of his articles showed that all of them were factual.
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On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was sued by a watchdog group after the agency failed to hand over requested documentation of communication between the government agency and the leaders of various teachers’ unions, Fox News reports.
The suit was filed by Americans for Public Trust (APT), a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. The group alleges that the documents they previously requested via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) could prove that there was “undue political influence” expressed over the CDC by teachers’ unions, which ultimately dictated the CDC’s lockdown recommendations.
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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar paid her husband’s political consultancy firm $2.8 million during the 2019-2020 election cycle, campaign finance records show.
Omar handed husband Tim Mynett’s E Street Group LLC $1.6million between 2019 and July 22 this year, Fox News reported Tuesday, citing Federal Election Commission data.
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Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredricks welcomed Breitbart News Political Editor Matt Boyle to the show to outline the culture of corruption surrounding Joe Biden, his family, and his outer orbit.
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Friday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Senior Strategic Advisor to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign Steve Cortes to the show. Cortes weighed in on The New York Post story about the Biden family emails and how no one in the mainstream media questioned them.
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Newly elected Mayor David Briley announced Tuesday that Metro Nashville Government Chief Operating Officer, Rich Riebeling will be leaving his administration. As part of a reorganization of the Office of Mayor, Briley named Emily Passini as Chief of Staff, the administration’s senior official who will “organize the policy priorities of…
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