Joe Ziegler, a special agent with the tax agency for 13 years, described himself as a "gay Democrat married to a man" and said he decided to come forward despite his personal politics because he believes "no one should be above the law regardless of your political affiliation." It was the first public appearance by Ziegler, who had previously given closed-door testimony to Congress under the alias "Whistleblower X."

Ziegler and his former IRS supervisor, longtime special agent Gary Shapley, said during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday that federal prosecutors blocked agents from asking about Joe Biden while questioning witnesses, tipped off the Biden presidential transition team about the investigators’ next steps, and delayed search warrants. Their testimony comes one month after Hunter Biden reached a plea deal with prosecutors on misdemeanor tax charges, which Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R., Mo.) described as a "sweetheart agreement."

Prosecutors "did not appear to follow the normal investigative process, slow-walked the investigation, and put in place unnecessary approvals and road blocks from effectively and efficiently addressing the case. A lot of times, we were not able to follow the facts," Ziegler said.

He said prosecutors repeatedly tried to block agents from following standard investigative procedures. At one point, Ziegler said Assistant U.S. Attorney for Delaware Lesley Wolf warned that he would be in "hot water" if he tried to interview President Biden’s adult grandchildren, who were named as part of false tax deductions made by Hunter Biden.

Ziegler said he was initially worried about revealing his identity, adding that some critics have accused him of being a "traitor to the Democratic Party." But he said he felt a "duty" to speak out.

"I equate this to the experience and feelings I encountered when coming out [as gay]," said Ziegler. "It was, honestly, one of the hardest things I ever went through."

Shapley said the Hunter Biden probe was "very different than any other case in my 14 years in the IRS. At every stage decisions were made that benefited the subject of this investigation."

"There should not be a two-track justice system depending on who you are and who you’re connected to," said Shapley. "In this case, there was, based on my experience."

The former IRS agents said the case against Biden should have automatically carried a felony charge under Department of Justice rules. They also noted that the four prosecutors assigned to the case recommended felony charges last August, but Biden ultimately only faced misdemeanor charges.

"In August of 2022, the assigned prosecutors, all four attorneys, agreed to recommend felony and misdemeanor charges for the 2017, ‘18, and ‘19 tax years," said Ziegler. "That didn’t happen here and I am not sure why."

He said the DOJ tax division policy states that cases "involving individuals who fail to file tax returns or pay a tax, but also commit acts of evasion and obstruction, should also be charged as felonies to avoid inequitable treatment."

Democrats avoided direct attacks on the whistleblowers’ credibility but accused Republicans of "hypocrisy" for holding the hearing.

"There seems to be a new level of hypocrisy here," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.), claiming that Republicans had "no interest" in investigating President Donald Trump’s public criticism of the DOJ during the prior administration.

Smith, the Republican Ways and Means Committee chairman, slammed Hunter Biden’s legal team for mounting a "vicious smear campaign to discredit these whistleblowers and discourage others from coming forward."

The post IRS 'Whistleblower X,' a Gay Democrat, Reveals Identity and Tells Congress He Was Blocked from Investigating Hunter Biden appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Kennedy distanced himself from Farrakhan as part of a clean-up effort after the Democrat asserted that the coronavirus may have been "ethnically targeted" to harm black and white people, while Ashkenazi Jews appeared to have greater immunity to the virus. Kennedy, who was denounced by some Jewish groups and Democratic Party leaders, claimed his statements were taken out of context and that he is not anti-Semitic.

Kennedy’s remarks brought his relationship with Farrakhan back into the spotlight. Farrakhan has railed against "satanic Jews" and in 2013 claimed that "the Jewish media" promoted "sexual degeneracy, profanity, and all kinds of sin." Farrakhan said in 2018 that "powerful Jews are my enemy."

Asked this week about his relationship with Farrakhan, Kennedy claimed he is an "opponent" of Farrakhan and has "never endorsed anything that Louis Farrakhan has said."

But Kennedy’s previous actions appear to contradict that claim.

In 2015, Kennedy visited Farrakhan and introduced him to the unfounded theory that measles vaccines are linked to higher rates of autism, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A Nation of Islam official who attended the meeting said that Kennedy informed the group that the measles "vaccine is genetically modified to give black boys autism," a claim without evidence.

Kennedy called Farrakhan a "truly great partner" at a protest outside Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in October 2015. Kennedy continued over the next few years to work with the Nation of Islam on the vaccine issue. In 2020, Farrakhan urged his supporters to "follow Robert Kennedy," and claimed that scientists administered the coronavirus vaccine in order to "depopulate the Earth."

Kennedy claimed in his recent interview that he was not aware of Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitism when they began working together in 2015. But Kennedy’s writings in his private diary appear to contradict that. According to a 2013 report, Kennedy wrote that he was disenchanted with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson because of his "love affair with Louis Farrakhan and his Jewish xenophobia."

Kennedy claimed he cut ties with the Nation of Islam after a colleague informed him of Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. Kennedy said he asked his friend, Nation of Islam official Tony Muhammad, to publicly disavow Farrakhan. When Muhammad declined, according to Kennedy, "that was the end of our friendship."

Kennedy did not say when that conversation occurred, but he worked with Muhammad as recently as 2021. Kennedy hosted Muhammad to discuss his documentary Medical Racism: The New Apartheid. Kennedy pushed the unfounded claim that scientists are "conducting an experiment on black Americans" by vaccinating black children against measles.

In his interview, Kennedy said the "worst two accusations that anybody can make about you are that you’re an antisemite or a pedophile."

Kennedy recently interviewed Scott Ritter, a convicted child sex offender, on his podcast. The pair criticized United States support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.

Kennedy’s campaign and Tony Muhammad did not respond to requests for comment.

The post RFK Jr. Disavows Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, Whom He Once Called a ‘Truly Great Partner’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Then came the walk-back in the face of criticism from the dwindling number of her Democratic colleagues who are not anti-Israel. It's Groundhog Day in America.

Don't let that sideshow distract from the Democrats in the White House, whose decision to intrude into a matter of Israeli domestic politics is doing more harm to the U.S.-Israel relationship than the casual bigotry that has become a permanent feature of the American Left.

President Joe Biden and his ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, don't approve of a series of judicial reforms that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports. That sounds to us like something for Israelis to debate among themselves, but Biden has decided to throw spitballs from the sidelines, advising Bibi that Israel "cannot continue down this road"—and then icing him out, announcing in March that he had no plans to invite the prime minister to the White House.

Until Monday, it had been months since they spoke. Biden, at last, has grudgingly extended Bibi an invitation to meet in the United States—but not necessarily at the White House. His invitation to Herzog, who is a critic of the judicial reforms and whose position is purely symbolic, adds insult to injury.

The U.S. president's petulance, meanwhile, has forestalled conversations on important issues. News reports indicate Hezbollah has been crossing into Israeli territory, illegal weapons are proliferating in the West Bank, and the White House is trying to engineer another ill-conceived deal with Iran.

Jayapal's racism is not news, and the decision of a group of Democrats to boycott Herzog's speech makes clear their objection is not to any set of Israeli policies but to the existence of the Jewish state. Biden, on the other hand, has described himself as a "lifelong friend and supporter of the State of Israel." As on so much else, he has surrendered whatever principles he once held to his party's ascendant progressive orthodoxy.

The post On Israel, Biden Surrenders to the Left appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

At least four members of the Democratic Party’s progressive "Squad" announced they would boycott Herzog’s address to Congress this Wednesday. The group includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), Cori Bush (D., Mo.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). Omar and fellow progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) drew widespread scrutiny over the weekend for criticizing Israel, which Jayapal slammed as a "racist state."

Herzog’s visit comes days after President Joe Biden denounced Israel’s governing coalition as "extremist." Until Monday, when Biden spoke to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone and made plans to meet with him in person, the two had not talked in months, and Biden's invitation to Herzog, who has been a critic of Israeli judicial reforms backed by Netanyahu, was viewed as a rebuke. It was also a move that some Jewish community leaders say has emboldened Israel-bashing within the Democratic Party.

"The Biden administration has created an atmosphere that is literally anti-Israel, that doesn’t respect democracy," former Democratic New York assemblyman Dov Hikind told the Washington Free Beacon. "When the prime minister is not invited to the White House, which is a tradition going back decades and decades and decades, what message does that send? That gave a green light to these [anti-Israel] radicals."

Speaking at the left-wing Netroots Nation conference Saturday, Omar called for voters to elect to Congress "Palestinian people who have now experienced occupation and displacement for 75 years." At the same event, Jayapal, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was "fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state."

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also accused of anti-Semitism over the weekend after he said there was "an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted" to have a greater impact on white and black people and a lower impact on Chinese and Jewish people.

The American Jewish Committee said Kennedy’s claim "reflects some of the most abhorrent antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout history and contributes to today’s dangerous rise of antisemitism."

After facing backlash from Jewish community leaders—who noted that her remarks fall under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism—Jayapal tried to dial back her comments slightly. In a statement, she said she was referring to the "outright racist policies" of the Israeli government and does not believe that "the idea of Israel as a nation is racist."

But in her apology, Jayapal reiterated her opposition to conservative Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, writing: "I do, however, believe that Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government."

The apology did not go nearly far enough for mainstream Jewish Democrats, who are circulating a letter calling for the expulsion of "anti-Zionist voices" from the party, according to a copy of the missive obtained Sunday evening by Axios.

"Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and efforts to delegitimize and demonize it are not only dangerous and antisemitic, but they also undermine America’s national security," the signatories wrote. The letter stopped short of calling Jayapal’s statements anti-Semitic.

Biden has been increasingly vocal with his criticism of Israel as well. In a July 9 interview with CNN, he labeled Netanyahu’s government "one of the most extremist" of all time, and called on the Israeli leader to "move toward moderation." The White House also appeared to support anti-Netanyahu protests in Israel last week, saying it "urge[s] authorities in Israel to protect and respect the right of peaceful assembly"—a comment that the administration has not made about protests in other countries, such as France, and which carries the implication that Netanyahu’s government is undemocratic.

Biden reiterated these concerns in his Monday call to Netanyahu, during which he also "expressed concern" about Israeli settlements, according to the White House.

Republicans have seized on Democrats’ internecine conflict in advance of Herzog’s trip, set to mark 75 years of Israeli independence. Republican presidential hopefuls Mike Pence and Nikki Haley both condemned the boycott. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), who has repeatedly clashed with anti-Israel Democrats, told reporters on Friday that "anti-Semitism shouldn’t be anywhere, and especially shouldn’t be inside Congress."

Hikind, a longtime Democratic politician in New York, said the increasing animosity against Israel from Biden and top Democratic leaders has crossed the line—and pushed him to register as a Republican for the first time.

"That’s not because things are perfect in the Republican Party, they’re not," said Hikind. "But the Democratic Party, forget it, they’ve gone off a cliff."

Update July 18, 11:00 a.m.: This post has been updated to correct Dov Hikind’s position. He was a New York state assemblyman, not a New York City councilman.

The post ‘Gone Off a Cliff’: Dems Grapple with Anti-Semitism Ahead of Israeli President’s Visit appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

In a Monday letter sent to State Department acting inspector general Diana Shaw, a group of 17 senators, led by South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, demand the watchdog "conduct an independent investigation into whether State Department officials complied with all appropriate laws and regulations" when they removed Malley from his posting. The signatories say the State Department must clearly explain why Malley was only placed on unpaid leave after information about an FBI investigation into his actions spilled into the press.

"We were alarmed to learn that the U.S. Department of State has suspended Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley's clearance, is conducting an investigation into Malley's handling of classified information, and only recently placed Malley on leave without pay," the senators wrote.

The charges against Malley come as the Biden administration conducts secret diplomacy with Iran aimed at securing a new nuclear deal. The United States is reportedly prepared to give the cash-strapped Iranian regime access to billions of dollars in exchange for minimal restrictions on its nuclear program, which is closer than ever to developing an atomic weapon.

Malley quietly had his security clearance revoked sometime earlier this year, but that information was kept hidden from Congress until late last month, when Malley himself confirmed he was on extended leave. Congressional leaders in both chambers have now initiated investigations into the matter and suspect the Biden administration may have intentionally tried to hide the investigation into Malley's apparent mishandling of classified information.

For at least a month, the State Department would only say that Malley was on extended leave for personal reasons, but later changed his status once the investigation became public. Malley's official biography has now been scrubbed from the State Department's website, and his image removed from the Iran envoy's Twitter page, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week.

Scott and his colleagues want to know exactly when Malley was informed his security clearance had been revoked and when he turned in "all 'department-issued credentials that provide logical or physical access to classified systems or designated classified spaces.'" This information will help the senators determine if the investigation into Malley began earlier than publicly known.

The lawmakers also ask the State Department, "On what date did the State Department place Special Envoy Malley on leave without pay? Why did the State Department make the decision to do so on this date rather than on the date on which Malley's clearance was suspended?"

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), is running its own investigation into the Malley scandal. The State Department is stonewalling the probe, telling McCaul last week that it "is not in a position to provide further documents or information related to this personnel-security clearance matter."

The State Department also will not answer press questions about the situation, only telling the Free Beacon that Malley "remains on leave" and that "we have nothing further to share at this time due to privacy considerations."

The post Senators Demand Independent Probe Into Rob Malley Security Clearance Fiasco appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Despite being an artist of underwhelming talent, Hunter has sold paintings for as much as $500,000 to anonymous buyers.

• President Biden refuses to acknowledge his granddaughter's existence and has reportedly instructed White House staff to do the same.

Rogue gallery: These are the paintings Hunter's daughter will receive in lieu of cash, according to documents recovered from an iPad the Washington Free Beacon exclusively found on the floor of the men's bathroom at Archibald's Gentleman's Club in Washington, D.C., several blocks from the White House. Enjoy!

1)

Context: An email recovered from Hunter's abandoned laptop said the "big guy" was to receive a 10 percent stake in a sketchy investment deal involving a Chinese energy firm in 2017.

2)

Context: Hunter has claimed to have "no recollection" of his sexual encounter with his daughter's mother, Lunden Alexis Roberts, but admits to cavorting with dozens if not hundreds (thousands?) of women who were "hardly the dating type."

3)

Context: Hunter Biden smoked copious amounts of crack cocaine.

4)

Context: Hunter wrote eloquently about how good it feels to get high from crack cocaine in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things. "The sensation is one of utter, almost otherworldly well-being," he explained. "You are at once energetic, focused, and calm. Blood rushes to every extremity; your skin ripples with what feels like bumblebees ... the sensation of being transported—at something like warp speed, as if riding bareback on a rocket ship—to some far-off, beautiful place."

5)

Context: Hunter once described his stepmother, Dr. Jill Biden, as a "selfish silly entitled c—t" who "wouldn't survive one class in a ivy [sic] graduate program."

6)

Context: The Secret Service still can't figure out who left a bag of cocaine in one of the most secure locations in the White House earlier this month.

7)

Context: Located a short walk from the White House, Archibald's is Hunter's happy place. He spent enormous sums of money at the gentleman's entertainment club over the years and wrote it off as a business expense on his taxes. Hunter was once admonished for smoking crack in one of the VIP rooms. Good times.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Here Are the Paintings Hunter Biden Gave His Daughter in Lieu of Child Support Payments appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Assistant professor Charles H.F. Davis III in 2020 founded the University of Michigan's Campus Abolition Research Lab, which aims to "disrupt and dismantle the carceral university" and create "police-free futures." As part of that effort, the lab publishes a "#PoliceFreeCampus Podcast" and hosts campus events that teach students how to become "campus abolitionists." Davis in recent weeks has also reiterated the need to abolish police "now." Davis and his lab have not, however, commented on the recent crime wave that has plagued his university's campus.

In late May, a man approached a female student from behind and groped her before carrying on throughout campus and exposing his genitals to other female students, the school's public safety department said in a crime alert. Just days later, on June 4, a man approached a small group walking a block from campus and shot one of the group's members following an argument. The next night, a woman attacked a man with a folding knife inside of student housing and fired shots through the man's window before fleeing. And in the first week of July, two women were sexually assaulted near a dorm and inside of the school's robotics building, respectively.

So far, the university has not adopted its Abolition Research Lab's suggestions and has instead used the Ann Arbor Police Department and its own armed campus security force to respond to the crimes. Still, many cities and universities alike have pursued plans to defund police—only to renew their relationships with law enforcement thereafter. A majority of Minneapolis's city council, for example, pledged to defund police in the summer of 2020, but members later said the pledge "created confusion" and was made merely "in spirit." The state's flagship school, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, in 2020 also said it would no longer contract with the Minneapolis Police Department to provide additional security at football games and other events. The school reversed course last year.

It's unclear how Davis, who did not return a request for comment, would aim to combat shootings and sex crimes should the campus become "police free." Davis has in some cases acknowledged that his abolitionist ideas are more theoretical than practical. During a recent episode of his lab's "#PoliceFreeCampus Podcast," Davis said that while abolition skeptics may ask for "solutions," he doesn't "have all of them."

"People often are going to ask for solutions," Davis said. "That’s always a looming question: ‘Well, what about x?’ And, admittedly, we don’t have all of them." Davis later called his work an "exercise of imagining."

A group affiliated with the University of Michigan's Campus Abolition Research Lab, #PoliceFreeCampus, has echoed Davis's uncertain rhetoric. An FAQ document on the group's resource page addresses a central concern with police abolition: In a "police-free future," who should a citizen call when a violent crime occurs? The document admits that "in this long transition process, we may need a small, specialized class of public servants whose job it is to respond to violent crimes," adding that such a proposal is "one option, and it’s an option that brings up as many questions as it answers."

The University of Michigan distanced itself from its Campus Abolition Research Lab, telling the Washington Free Beacon that the lab "isn't funded by the university." But the lab's affiliate group, #PoliceFreeCampus, says on its website that it has produced studies thanks to "funding from the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan." The university did not answer questions about that funding.

The school is no stranger to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. It has the largest number of DEI staffers of any university in the country and in 2021 launched a Center for Racial Justice, which aims to expand "knowledge about the complex intersections between race and public policy" and engage students and scholars "in social justice work focused on racial equity." But the school's own data indicate that those efforts have not helped matters—as the number of DEI officials ballooned, nearly all measures of student satisfaction plummeted.

The post University of Michigan Hosts '#PoliceFreeCampus' Project As Shootings and Sex Crimes Plague School appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Biden, 80, might have accidentally wandered off to join the riots in Paris had his numerous handlers and nursemaids not repeatedly told him where to go. Efforts to control the president's public statements were often thwarted by his cognitively impaired brain.

For example, Biden praised NATO as "the 30-second free standing, have free 30 free," whatever the hell that means. He fell down some stairs, bumbled around London with King Charles III, a.k.a. "Sausage Fingers," and took off his shirt to soak up some rays on the beach. It was disturbing.

Have a great weekend!

BIDEN SENIOR MOMENT ARCHIVE:

WATCH: Biden's Senior Moment of the Week Vol. 1

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The post WATCH: Joe Biden's Senior Moment of the Week (Vol. 51) appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Those are words President Joe Biden's climate czar, John Kerry, would do well to ponder as he prepares to board his fossil-fuel emitting jet to Beijing this weekend to resume in-person climate negotiations with his communist counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. If the trip yields commitments from China to "accelerate its phase-out of coal," Kerry said, it will be a success.

Low bar. China has long pledged to do as much, only to ramp up its coal consumption and carbon emissions. In 2014, one year after CCP head Xi Jinping became president, China unveiled a plan—to much fanfare from the American press—to cap its annual coal consumption at 4.2 billion tons by 2020. China's commitment to lower emissions, former president Barack Obama said at the time, "shows what's possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge." Today, the Chinese have blown past that number and burn more coal than the rest of the world combined.

Kerry has nonetheless argued that, in the case of the Chinese, words alone are proof of climate "progress." He has lauded the genocidal dictator for using the term "climate crisis" and for pledging to cut emissions as part of an "ecological strategy."

"I’d rather have those words than not," Kerry told lawmakers in 2021.

A wise man once said to "trust but verify." A year later, in 2022, Xi approved the equivalent of two new coal power plants per week.

That unfortunately is not the way the Biden administration conducts diplomacy. Kerry in March expressed regret that "other tensions" between China and the United States—you know, spy balloons, concentration camps, and the hacking of America’s commerce secretary—had "gotten mixed up" with climate cooperation.

It is revealing that Kerry and his allies in the Biden administration take the measure of a man by the extent to which he has adopted their own woke rhetoric. We can be sure that Xi understands perfectly who will come out ahead.

The post Climate Czar John Kerry Takes Xi Jinping at His Word. That's the Problem. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The State Department on Tuesday informed House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) that it wont answer any questions about the matter or provide the committee with details about the allegations against Malley, who was placed on unpaid leave late last month while the FBI and other security agencies investigate his actions.

"The Department is not in a position to provide further documents or information related to this personnel-security clearance matter," the State Department informed McCaul, according to a copy of the correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The exact charges against Malley remain unclear, but the decision to revoke his security clearance has led lawmakers to suspect the top diplomat may have mishandled classified information during diplomatic talks with Iran. Malley has been working to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which would remove sanctions on Tehran and provide the hardline regime with billions in cash windfalls.

Malley has a history of going off the rails in his diplomatic efforts. In 2008, he was fired from the Obama campaign for conducting unauthorized talks with the Iranian-backed terror group Hamas.

McCaul and other lawmakers suspect the Biden administration tried to conceal Malley’s alleged mishandling of classified information. He has been on an extended leave of absence from the State Department for some time, but was formally placed on unpaid leave after news of the investigation into his behavior leaked to the press last month.

Instead of answering McCaul’s questions, the State Department referred him to the Foreign Affairs Manual, an internal employee handbook that summarizes how classified information should be treated.

The State Department’s refusal to answer basic questions and turn over information to Congress is "absolutely unacceptable," according to McCaul, who said that "nothing could be more serious" than the charges outlined against Malley.

"Congress deserves to know exactly why the U.S. Special Envoy to Iran had his security clearance suspended, was then suspended from his position, and now, according to news reports, is being investigated by the FBI," McCaul told the Free Beacon in a statement. "This is a person whose mission is to negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran—nothing could be more serious than this."

A senior congressional source familiar with the matter said the foreign affairs committee will send another letter to the State Department this week outlining specific questions that must be answered immediately.

The charges against Malley come at a sensitive time for the Biden administration, as it conducts secret diplomacy with Iran aimed at securing a new nuclear deal. The United States is reportedly prepared to give the cash-strapped Iranian regime access to billions of dollars in exchange for minimal restrictions on its nuclear program, which is closer than ever to developing an atomic weapon.

McCaul first pressed the State Department for answers in late June, after Malley publicly confirmed that his security clearance was revoked. The State Department has repeatedly declined to comment on the matter, saying only that Malley is on extended leave.

"The Department’s failure to inform Congress of this matter demonstrates at best a lack of candor, and at worst represents deliberate and potentially unlawful misinformation," McCaul wrote in his initial letter.

The committee chairman had instructed the State Department to turn over "any and all allegations, investigations, and/or findings of misconduct, including security violations, against Special Envoy Malley."

The post Biden State Department Blocks Congressional Investigation into Scandal-Plagued Iran Envoy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The White House on Monday announced its opposition to a range of national security provisions included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress is currently debating. One provision would force the Pentagon to disclose information about foreign nationals working on military-funded research programs at American universities, where Chinese spies are known to steal proprietary research. Another would order the secretary of defense to determine whether Chinese government officials assisted or were aware of the transportation of fentanyl precursors to Mexican drug cartels.

According to the provisions' author, the White House’s opposition is tantamount to capitulating to Beijing.

"The Chinese Communist Party is poisoning and killing nearly a hundred thousand Americans each year with ‘Made in China’ fentanyl while their spies infiltrate our universities and even high-level government laboratories," Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told the Washington Free Beacon.

"It’s an upside-down world in the Biden White House," added Banks, a member of the House Select Committee on China, "where appeasing Communist China comes first and America’s national security and well-being comes last."

Banks’s measures are part of a larger effort by congressional Republicans to use the NDAA as a vehicle to combat China. China hawks, in particular, have been angling for months to increase pressure on American universities that partner with the CCP on sensitive research projects. Lawmakers are already investigating American schools that use Pentagon funding for research projects that involve entities tied to the Chinese military.

China is one the most prolific donors to American universities, handing out more than $426 million to American schools since 2011, even as the federal government warns that Beijing is using its status to steal proprietary research and spy on Americans.

Under Banks’s transparency provision, the Pentagon would have to publicly disclose the identities of all individuals working on government-funded projects, including the "date and place of birth, country of citizenship, and immigration status in the case of a foreign national."

The White House, in a Monday statement on the NDAA discussions, said it "strongly opposes" this measure because it would "impose a significant increase in disclosure requirements for university research funded by DoD."

The White House also expressed concerns the reporting requirements could "jeopardize the Department’s ability to fund universities in States with nondiscrimination laws that prohibit citizenship and nationality reporting." The administration also worries the strict parameters would "deter the ability to attract the best and brightest foreign scientists from working with the Department."

Banks’s fentanyl measure also attracted White House opposition, primarily because it would force the Pentagon to publicly acknowledge that China is pumping deadly drugs into America—an accusation that could inflame tensions at a time when American diplomats are trying to repair relations with Beijing.

The U.S. ambassador to China, for instance, recently claimed the CCP is not responsible for America’s fentanyl crisis, even though virtually all of the ingredients for the drug are produced in China and shipped to Mexican cartels illicitly running the drug into the country.

The White House says any effort to tie China to the fentanyl crisis would interfere with its ability to "ensure foreign assistance or engagement is carried out in a manner consistent with foreign policy priorities."

The post White House Fights to Strip Tough-On-China Provisions From Annual Defense Spending Bill appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The all-white seminar, "From Integration to Anti-Racism," cost $360 to attend and met six times between February and June, according to a description of the program that has since been scrubbed from the university’s website without explanation. Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was "designed specifically for white public school parents" committed to "becoming anti-racist" and building "multiracial parent communities."

But to promote solidarity with all races, participants were told, it was necessary that the seminar include only one.

A few days before the first session, facilitators circulated a short handout, "Why a White Space," to explain "why we are meeting as white folks for these six months." The handout, produced by the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, argued that white people need spaces where they can "unlearn racism" without subjecting minorities to "undue trauma or pain."

Facilitators reiterated this argument on day one of the seminar, audio and video of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. When a parent questioned the premise of the workshop—saying it seemed "a little counterintuitive" to exclude minorities from an anti-racism seminar—Barbara Gross, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, assured her that it was for their own good.

"People of color are dealing with racism all the time," Gross said. "Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts."

Even before the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions, it was illegal for universities to practice other forms of race discrimination. The whites-only workshop, five lawyers said, almost certainly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which applies to the recipients of federal funds, and—since NYU charged parents for the seminars—also ran afoul of laws banning discrimination in contracting, according to Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project.

"It’s quintessentially illegal," said Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. "This episode illustrates the horseshoe theory whereby left- and right-wing radicals end up agreeing on race-based societal balkanization. It’s like that social media meme: ‘woke or KKK?’"

The program took place while NYU was under an ongoing consent agreement with the U.S. Department of Education over a string of anti-Semitic incidents on campus. As race-based programs of all stripes face added scrutiny in the wake of the High Court’s affirmative action ban, the seminar is a stark signal that "anti-racism" doesn’t just mean minority-only fellowships or workforce diversity targets; at one of the top universities in the country, it now includes programs that bear an eerie similarity to Jim Crow.

"They are literally running a ‘whites only’ program in the interest of so-called social justice," said Samantha Harris, an attorney who litigates campus speech and civil rights issues. "I find it inconceivable that the people putting these programs together don’t see the irony."

NYU told the Free Beacon that it would be "reviewing these matters to determine whether they conform to our standards." Gross did not respond to a request for comment.

The seminar is a fascinating study of how one group of white liberals guilt-tripped and self-flagellated their way into segregation.

Participants seemed petrified by the possibility that they could "harm" a person of color with a misplaced comment or anecdote, a fear that made the whites-only training a kind of therapeutic refuge.

Asked when they first "learned about race," one parent recalled how, while she was in kindergarten, a black classmate had been expelled for bringing a knife to school. Later in the session, she expressed relief that there had been no minorities around to hear such a traumatizing tale.

"I was so grateful that there weren’t, you know, people of color in this space to hear me say [that] my first experience learning about what my race was was a black boy with a knife," she said. "That can be harming."

The first session of the workshop, which included approximately a dozen parents and ran for two hours, encouraged that sort of hypersensitivity. As participants filed into the meeting, they were greeted by a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s "All You Fascists Bound to Lose" performed by the "Resistance Revival Chorus," a group of women and "non-binary singers" that "centers women in music."

After participants shared their pronouns—most of which were "she/her"—facilitators performed a brief land acknowledgment and laid out the ground rules for the session.

"Resist the urge to intellectualize," Gross said. "We’re not going to get through this without welcoming the feelings."

In what seemed like an effort at self-awareness, another facilitator, Courtney Epton, told participants to avoid virtue-signaling. "Trying to compete with each other to be the ‘good white person,’" she said, is itself a "part of white supremacy."

Epton—a "senior equity associate" at NYU Steinhardt and a board member of the nonprofit Integrated Schools—did not respond to a request for comment.

At least one parent in attendance, Jordan Feigenbaum, had direct say over the governance of local schools. Feigenbaum serves on the Community Education Council for New York City’s District 13, an elected policy body that reviews school curricula and approves district zoning lines. He touted his participation in the program when he ran for office, saying the whites-only workshop would "enhance" his ability to serve the district.

Feigenbaum—who described himself as an "ally" in his candidate statement—did not respond to a request for comment.

Gross indicated that the workshop began four years ago when she heard from white parents with kids in majority-black schools that they felt like "everyone hates me." Since then, she said, the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd had made those parents more concerned about systemic racism—and more guilty about their assumed role in it.

She spoke of anti-black bigotry as though it were a genetic condition, passed down biologically as well as socially. "What we know intellectually is very different from what’s in our bones and in our nervous systems," Gross said. "What we have internalized. What we have inherited."

As a result, she added, "young African-American girls face 23 microaggressions every single day."

Instead of just wallowing in shame, however, Gross promised participants they would learn to "love [other] white people" in spite of their collective guilt.

The seminar also included a discussion of Tema Okun’s "Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture," which include "perfectionism," "a sense of urgency," and "worship of the written word." Many parents struggled to reconcile these teachings with the day-to-day demands of their careers, taking the already thin line between parody and reality and smashing it altogether.

"I’ve been correcting grammar a lot and typos," one self-identified editor said, "and reading this I was thinking, ‘Wow, I had no idea.’"

Another parent fretted that the characteristics of white supremacy culture were nearly identical with the values of her law firm. That wasn’t surprising, Gross said, given that American law "was built on racism and white supremacy."

Even Gross admitted that she was not immune to bigotry. One time, she said, several "women of color" in her office were laughing and playing games while they were supposed to be planning an event.

"I was thinking, ‘How can they get anything done,’" Gross said. "I had to catch myself."

At the end of the session, participants were assigned readings for their next meeting, including "Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People about Racism" by Robin DiAngelo and "Qallunology 101: A Lesson Plan for the Non-Indigenous" by Derek Rasmussen. Readings for later sessions included "Internalized White Superiority," "Toward a Radical White Identity," and "4 Ways White People Can Process Their Emotions Without Bringing White Tears," according to slides from the workshop obtained by the Free Beacon.

Participants were also asked to share what they learned with someone outside the seminar. But there was a catch.

"Share what you learn today with another white person," the slides for each session said, "not a BIPOC."

The post ‘Woke or KKK’: NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Antiracism’ Workshop for Public School Parents appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Examples of the president's foul-mouthed eruptions include: "God dammit, how the f—k don't you know this?!" "Don't f—king bulls—t me!" and "Get the f—k out of here!"

• Biden's temper tantrums are so bad some staff members "try to avoid meeting alone with him."

What it means: Increased anger and agitation are common symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, according to the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

• "People with Alzheimer’s disease may become agitated or aggressive as the disease gets worse," the NIA advises Alzheimer's caregivers on its website. "Try not to ignore the problem. Doing nothing can make things worse."

Why it matters: Biden, 80, is running for a second four-year term as president of the United States. Concerned citizens have repeatedly expressed alarm over the state of his physical and mental health.

• The president suffered a near-fatal fall last month at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among Americans over the age of 65.

• In September of 2022, Biden attempted to converse with a congresswoman who died a month earlier. That episode is merely one of the most memorable examples of his innumerable brain-related gaffes.

• Biden may have exacerbated his risk of cognitive decline by neglecting to properly treat his longstanding sleep apnea, the Washington Free Beacon reported in June.

• Tucker Carlson heard members of Biden's family say "out loud that he had dementia," the former Fox News host told journalist Steve Krakauer.

Crucial context: Axios cofounder Jim VandeHei is also prone to fits of rage.

Be smart: Biden is not qualified to serve as commander in chief, and neither is Vice President Kamala Harris. Some of his allies are clearly worried he might die or become too incoherent to function on the campaign trail, which is why we are seeing leaks about his (probably) dementia-related temper, along with op-eds in the Atlantic urging the president to step aside in 2024.

Bottom line: Uh oh.

The post Brain Rage: Biden’s Violent Temper a Common Symptom of Dementia, Alzheimer’s appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

In reality, the group funds research with the goal of promoting DEI practices in education and partners with other left-wing organizations to promote "inclusive mathematics environments" and push universities to abandon standardized tests. Earlier this month, the Student Experience Research Network took a victory lap after the University of California system said it would toss out the SAT in its admissions process.

The Student Experience Research Network and hundreds of other left-wing activist groups like it are controlled from the top down by Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consultancy that plays an integral role in Democratic causes, fueled by donations from billionaires including George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. The company, which distributes billions to Democratic pet projects, has established five tax-exempt nonprofit groups that pay Arabella a hefty fee—ostensibly for back-office work—and in turn operate a vast array of left-wing advocacy groups including the Student Experience Research Network.

In fact, the Student Experience Research Network’s ostensible employees don’t even work there. They are employees of an Arabella offshoot, the New Venture Fund. The average citizen would have no idea who’s pulling the strings.

This is the first of two reports based on internal Arabella documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. They provide a rare window into the inner workings of the Left’s dark-money network, revealing just how centrally controlled a vast swath of activist organizations are by a central clearinghouse based in the nation’s capital—as well as the lengths to which Arabella’s leaders go to disguise that control and create the illusion of grassroots political activism.

This is hardly the sort of relationship that Arabella and two of its offshoots, New Venture Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, described to the IRS when seeking tax-exempt status.

The agency challenged New Venture Fund when it first applied for that status in 2006, over its obvious conflicts of interest with Arabella. At the time, Arabella founder and sole owner Eric Kessler served as both New Venture Fund’s chairman and president, and the New Venture Fund proposed paying Arabella a 5 percent overhead fee to handle administrative tasks. Arabella’s current ownership is unclear: It is owned by a Delaware business called Arabella Acquisition, LLC, which doesn’t disclose its ownership.

The IRS had concerns that New Venture Fund didn’t seek competing bids for the contract and that Kessler would reap illegal profits from his own charity. But the feds ultimately relented, granting the fund nonprofit status after Kessler claimed New Venture Fund’s contract with Arabella would last only a year, or until New Venture Fund could run its own human resources department.

"The Advisors are providing management and administrative support services until such time as the Organization has sufficient financial resources to make the operation of its own back office cost-efficient," New Venture Fund told the IRS. "Further, the Agreement is anticipated to be temporary and, indeed, only has a one-year term. As soon after this period as the Organization has adequate funding, it would no longer require the services of the Advisors."

Suffice it to say, the services are still flowing. What is true for the Student Experience Research Network is also true for hundreds of other activist groups, including Stop Deficit Squawks, Americans for Tax Fairness, the Institute for Responsive Government, Defend American Democracy, Fix our Senate, the Voter Engagement Fund, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and hundreds of other groups—they are controlled by the Democratic elites who staff Arabella Advisors.

"If the New Venture Fund anticipated their agreement with Arabella Advisors to only be temporary when seeking a tax exemption, why has this arrangement continued for nearly two decades?" said Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland. "For Arabella to collect over $200 million in fees for a ‘temporary’ agreement warrants a second look from the IRS."

Arabella’s five funds serve as fiscal sponsors of the network’s pop-up groups, organizations that exist for a brief period and then disband, often rallying support for or opposition to a particular political objective. Fiscal sponsorship is a unique arrangement that allows the initiatives to operate as nonprofit entities without disclosing their board members and obfuscates the sources of their revenue, expenses, or to whom they distribute grants. From protest movements to lobbying, if there is a new liberal pet cause, there is usually an Arabella group to advocate on its behalf.

Some of Arabella’s more prominent pop-up groups, such as Demand Justice, end up breaking away from the network and establish themselves as independent nonprofits. Others, such as Kansans for Secure Elections, SoCal Healthcare Coalition, and Justice March exist for a brief period and then disband.

Arabella’s former CEO, Sampriti Ganguli, has described the company as a humble business that provides human resources, accounting, and legal guidance to clients. However, the New Venture Fund’s employee handbook, obtained by the Free Beacon, paints a different picture of centralized control.

It reveals that Arabella controls New Venture Fund and its various pop-up groups with management teams of Arabella employees.

"NVF’s board of directors has hired Arabella Advisors, to provide staffing and management services," the handbook states. "Arabella Advisors provides support to NVF projects via dedicated oversight by a managing director (MD), an account manager (AM), accounting and financial services, and human resources support."

The account manager serves as the "first point of contact at NVF for all transactions and inquiries related to the project," according to the handbook. In some cases the manager has a team of Arabella employees assisting in the operations of a pop-up group.

Those teams, including the manager, are considered contractors. Therefore they are hidden from IRS disclosure forms and not listed as staff members of New Venture Fund or its pop-up groups.

New Venture Fund’s pop-up groups do not operate within typical nonprofit parameters outlined by federal law. They are effectively departments of the New Venture Fund and each of their employees are on the fund’s payroll. That means a group like the Student Experience Research Network or the Institute for Responsive Government doesn’t have its own employees, but rather, New Venture Fund employees under the guise of the Institute for Responsive Government. The same goes for the Compassion Project, the Alaska Venture Fund, the Healthy Voting Project, and countless other New Venture Fund "pop-up" groups.

IRS does not require New Venture Fund to report how many pop-up groups operate under its wings, let alone the names of the groups or how many of its employees work at each initiative. The fund employed 986 people in 2021, according to its tax return that year.

And the staff of New Venture Fund’s pop-up groups are prohibited from discussing their ties to the broader network, according to the fund’s employee handbook, which, according to the document’s metadata, was prepared in April 2019 by Arabella senior director Gideon Steinberg.

"In general, only staff with designated authority may represent NVF or its projects externally," the handbook states. "NVF staff should always clearly state the project they are representing and not imply that they are representing all of NVF unless explicitly authorized to do so."

New Venture Fund does not hide the ball from its employees. The handbook refers to itself as well as the network’s other funds—the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, and the Windward Fund—as "managed organizations," each of which is overseen by a team of Arabella staffers.

The benefits of Arabella’s centralized control over the network are made clear to New Venture Fund employees. With Arabella in control, it can "coordinate collaborative initiatives between donors" and gain access to "expert philanthropic strategy development, execution, and evaluation support services."

In practice, this means Arabella can shuffle around big money between its funds, and it does: The network’s five funds passed a combined $189 million between themselves those two years, according to their tax returns.

Arabella’s funds hauled in a combined $3.3 billion in 2020 and 2021. Its primary political arm, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, doled out $61 million to Democratic Super PACs during the 2020 election cycle, second only to Majority Forward, a dark money group associated with Senate Democrats. The Sixteen Thirty Fund spent so much on politics in 2020 that the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel urged the commission in June 2022 to "find reason to believe" the fund violated federal law by failing to register as a political committee. The FEC, however, went against its attorney’s recommendation and closed the case in September.

More than a decade after New Venture Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund filed for nonprofit status, Arabella still controls the funds. Its management fee for some of them has increased to 15 percent. New Venture Fund ended 2021 with assets exceeding $1.2 billion and funneled nearly $30 million in service fees to Arabella. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, which ended 2021 with more than $97 million in the bank, paid Arabella more than $5 million the same year.

The post Documents Provide Rare Glimpse Into How Arabella Advisors Exerts Centralized Control Over a Vast Left-Wing Advocacy Network appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The dark money behemoth, an arm of Arabella Advisors’ sprawling nonprofit network, was looking to challenge red-state voting laws that curtailed mail-in voting, but staffers were keenly aware of the hurdles they would face making inroads with Republican lawmakers.

They embarked on a project to take control of a 501(c)4 nonprofit, Secure Democracy, and lobby Republican lawmakers—and run ads against them—on voting rights issues from behind the veil of an ostensibly nonpartisan group.

For a time, they gained traction. In 2020 and 2021, Secure Democracy pushed lawmakers in over 20 states to expand mail-in balloting and other liberal voting initiatives. Those lawmakers were seemingly unaware that they were being influenced by political operatives working at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. New Venture Fund, after all, is the largest branch of the multibillion-dollar Democratic dark money clearinghouse controlled by Arabella Advisors.

"Every lawmaker at the state level was misled," a former New Venture Fund employee involved in Secure Democracy’s lobbying operations, who requested anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation, told the Washington Free Beacon.

That tactic, lawyers say, may have put the charity on the wrong side of nonprofit tax laws. In October 2021, the New Venture Fund dismissed a senior executive who blew the whistle internally, arguing that the group was illegally using charitable resources to direct Secure Democracy’s 501(c)4 political activities. New Venture Fund abruptly shut down Secure Democracy a month later.

This story is based on a trove of internal New Venture Fund records obtained by the Free Beacon that suggest the group ran roughshod over tax laws in an effort to influence Republicans to change voting laws before and after the 2020 elections. Legal experts and watchdog groups said the New Venture Fund’s apparent use of charitable resources to direct Secure Democracy’s partisan political activity provides grounds for the IRS to investigate New Venture Fund and potentially strip it of its charity status.

The New Venture Fund operates hundreds of liberal projects that present themselves to the public as grassroots initiatives. The charity pays a hefty fee to Arabella Advisors, a for-profit business, to manage and provide legal compliance for its projects, according to a New Venture Fund employee handbook obtained by the Free Beacon.

But interviews with five former New Venture Fund employees involved in the Secure Democracy arrangement raise questions about Arabella’s commitment to the law.

The group of New Venture Fund employees pulling the strings at Secure Democracy came from a team within the New Venture Fund that worked on one of the organization’s legitimate projects, the Voting Rights Lab. Led by former Everytown for Gun Safety executive vice president Megan Lewis, Voting Rights Lab billed itself as a nonpartisan organization that tracks election-related legislation in states across the country. But behind the scenes, former employees told the Free Beacon, they were working away at Secure Democracy.

And the New Venture Fund’s control of Secure Democracy was absolute. Lewis approved "everything" the 501(c)4 group did both internally and externally for "organizational consistency," according to a document outlining internal processes dated Feb. 4, 2020.

Under New Venture Fund’s direction, Secure Democracy embarked on "under-the-radar battleground state campaigns" in the leadup to the 2020 elections to "prevent interference" from Republican lawmakers concerned about widespread mail-in ballots, records obtained by the Free Beacon show. Secure Democracy lobbied in North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and other critical battleground states, the records show. Among the GOP officials the group lobbied: the now famous Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffenspberger, who did not respond to a request for comment.

But Secure Democracy never publicly disclosed its ties to New Venture Fund because it would have hurt their ability to engage with GOP lawmakers and voters on both sides of the aisle, four former staffers told the Free Beacon.

"There were so many discussions about how Secure Democracy had to remain pristine and separate, and there could not be any illusion of a link between the two," said a former employee. "One of the reasons was because they obviously wanted to appear unbiased and influence voters."

Emails reviewed by the Free Beacon also reflect New Venture Fund’s efforts to conceal its ties to Secure Democracy. Former Secure Democracy communications director Jay Riestenberg told the head of another left-wing organization in July of 2021 that New Venture Fund’s control of the group "is not publicly advertised for strategic reasons."

New Venture Fund also controlled Secure Democracy’s hiring decisions. Secure Democracy launched in 2018 and operated with a small pool of no more than eight part-time employees on its payroll, all of whom were simultaneously employed by New Venture Fund.

"I applied for a position that was listed as Voting Rights Lab. It was only later in the interview process I was told you’re going to be on the Secure Democracy side," a former staffer said.

Lewis and other senior New Venture Fund employees who ran Secure Democracy were compensated solely by the charity rather than by Secure Democracy.

It’s not uncommon for charities to partner with other 501(c)4 nonprofit groups. But Secure Democracy financial records reviewed by the Free Beacon and accounts from three former New Venture Fund employees indicate that the charity had no formal cost-sharing agreement with Secure Democracy in 2020 and 2021. The lack of such an agreement, which is typical in partnerships between 501(c)3 charities and 501(c)4 groups, meant no legal guardrails were in place to prevent New Venture Fund’s charitable resources from subsidizing Secure Democracy’s political activities.

"I think they’re sort of skating on thin ice," said nonprofit attorney Alan Dye. "The IRS could take the position that the 501(c)4 is acting as the agent of the charity. And since that includes activity the charity could not itself engage in, that’s a problem."

Several legal experts said New Venture Fund may have crossed a legal red line as it directed Secure Democracy’s partisan political activities, given that charities are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activism.

In one instance, Secure Democracy had to seek Lewis’s approval before running nearly $90,000 in political ads against five Republican senators in September 2020, emails reviewed by the Free Beacon show. But that campaign, according to Secure Democracy’s attorney David Mitrani, needed to be logged as political spending.

Despite Mitrani's advice, Lewis approved the ad purchase from her New Venture Fund email account. That exchange, according to former IRS Tax Law Specialist Patrick Sternal, may be evidence of unlawful activity.

"Theoretically, the prohibition on charity intervention in political campaigns is absolute, meaning that any amount of political activity could lead to revocation," Sternal said.

Nonprofit tax attorneys Jason Torchinsky and Paul Kamenar urged the IRS to investigate New Venture Fund’s use of charitable resources to advance Secure Democracy’s political activity.

"Since NVF appears to be directing the political expenditures of Secured Democracy, as a c3 they are doing indirectly what they cannot do directly. NVF is at risk of losing their tax-exempt status," said Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group.

"It’s something the IRS should take a serious look at since charities are expressly prohibited from engaging in partisan campaign activity," added Torchinsky.

The extent of New Venture Fund’s control over Secure Democracy was of particular concern to former Secure Democracy executive director Sarah Walker, who emailed New Venture Fund general counsel Andrew Schultz on Oct. 28, 2021, expressing her fears that the arrangement was "fraught with compliance and potential legal ramifications," and put her, Secure Democracy, and New Venture Fund in "legal jeopardy."

Walker now alleges she lost her job for blowing the whistle on the group’s mismanagement. She retained a high-powered legal team that included former independent counsel Ken Starr and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in federal court in November 2022. Her legal team informed New Venture Fund of their belief that the charity had illegally subsidized Secure Democracy to the tune of more than $10 million.

"New Venture Fund, and any project they manage, are expressly prohibited from engaging in any political activity," said Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland. "Not only do these records show careless and sloppy bookkeeping, but also seem to indicate a pattern of flagrant violations of the rules governing nonprofits."

By that time, however, New Venture Fund and Arabella Advisors had already started their attempt to shield the charity from IRS scrutiny.

On Nov. 5, 2021, Schultz, the New Venture Fund general counsel, sent a letter informing Secure Democracy he had instructed the charity’s staff to refrain from interacting with Secure Democracy employees. Also around that time, Walker alleges New Venture Fund booted her from her Secure Democracy email, according to her wrongful termination lawsuit.

This left Secure Democracy’s small pool of part-time employees in a lurch.

"Suddenly Sarah disappeared. And then who we worked for became very unclear," a former Secure Democracy lobbyist told the Free Beacon. "We started receiving conflicting information about who we worked for and who of our colleagues we were allowed to work with."

New Venture Fund then moved to shut down Secure Democracy and replace it with a new group, Secure Democracy USA, formed in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 17, 2021.

Smith, the Secure Democracy board chair, and Schultz, the New Venture Fund general counsel, signed a contract on Dec. 1, 2021, agreeing to disburse Secure Democracy’s assets to New Venture Fund and Secure Democracy USA. New Venture Fund also agreed to pick up the tab for Secure Democracy’s outstanding bills.

"The most damning thing in this sordid story is the way the Arabella empire shuttered Secure Democracy within weeks of the whistleblower’s warning," said Capital Research Center president Scott Walter. "The powers-that-be must have feared possible damage to the billion-dollar-a-year New Venture Fund, Arabella’s crown jewel."

A former New Venture Fund employee involved in the transaction said Secure Democracy's abrupt shutdown was directly related to the legal implications of New Venture Fund’s control of the organization’s political activity.

"It was determined that there were compliance issues," the former staffer said.

New Venture Fund went on to alter employee timesheets to make it appear that another Arabella Advisors offshoot, the North Fund—a 501(c)4 nonprofit that can legally engage in political activity—had subsidized Secure Democracy’s work in 2021, two former staffers said.

The staffers said they received orders from Eva Keller, an Arabella Advisors employee, around March 2022 to modify timesheets for their colleagues that worked with Secure Democracy the prior year.

"It was all just kind of haphazard," one of the former staffers said.

Sometime later in 2022, the two former employees said, the North Fund billed Secure Democracy USA hundreds of thousands of dollars for the work it supposedly provided to Secure Democracy the previous year. The figure was based on the modified New Venture Fund timesheets.

"The number I saw on a budget sheet was between $630,000 and $700,000," one of the former employees told the Free Beacon.

The modification of time sheets so long after the fact is highly unusual and warrants an IRS investigation, legal experts told the Free Beacon.

"The attempt to retroactively involve a c4 in the spending is an indication that someone realized how risky the political activity is for the charity," said Torchinsky, the nonprofit attorney. "While nonprofits regularly file amendments, going back and changing time sheets after the books are closed and nearly 18 months prior is unusual to say the least."

Secure Democracy’s IRS tax returns for its 2020 and 2021 tax years also contain curious discrepancies. The group’s attorney regularly instructed employees during those years to categorize work as partisan political activity, emails reviewed by the Free Beacon show. But Secure Democracy told the IRS that it engaged in no political activity whatsoever.

"It is certainly odd that they had internally flagged activity as political, and then reported nothing on the 990," said Sternal, the former IRS Tax Law Specialist.

New Venture Fund cut ties with the Voting Rights Lab project in June 2022 because of the compliance issues surrounding its control of Secure Democracy, two former staffers said.

"It was because of the Sarah matter," one source said. "It didn’t make any sense to keep them under their umbrella."

Voting Rights Lab is now a project of SD Foundation, a charity Lewis launched in August 2022. SD Foundation got its start thanks to a $4.8 million cash injection from New Venture Fund, according to an IRS tax exempt application obtained by the Free Beacon.

A New Venture Fund spokesperson told the Free Beacon that the charity complies with the law.

"New Venture Fund supports a wide range of nonpartisan projects from across the ideological spectrum, appropriately uses funds, and complies with the law," the spokesperson said. "Allegations to the contrary are false, and we are litigating them with the former NVF employee making these false claims."

Secure Democracy USA did not return a request for comment.

The post Top Democratic Operatives Were Quietly Pulling the Strings at a Voting Rights Group. Lawyers Say They May Have Broken the Law. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

It was a pretty ordinary week for the octogenarian president. He displayed a level of incoherence that could only be rivaled perhaps by Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), a recovering stroke victim.

Biden touted the benefits of "wrlfghfv" for U.S. foreign policy, struggled to pronounce the word "technical," and repeatedly failed to grasp basic numerical concepts such as hundred, thousand, million, and billion.

The oldest president in American history also celebrated a momentous birthday of sorts. According to the Washington Free Beacon's proprietary age-tracking technology, Sleepy Joe turned 80 years, 8 months, 8 days, 8 hours, 8 minutes, and 8 seconds old on Thursday afternoon.

Have a great weekend!

BIDEN SENIOR MOMENT ARCHIVE:

WATCH: Biden's Senior Moment of the Week Vol. 1

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WATCH: Biden's Senior Moment of the Week Vol. 40

WATCH: Biden's Senior Moment of the Week Vol. 41

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The post WATCH: Joe Biden's Senior Moment of the Week (Vol. 50) appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Asked whether he could rule out the possibility that the drugs belong to Hunter Biden, White House spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters he couldn't comment "because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act," which prohibits federal officials from using their positions to engage in certain political activities that could influence elections.

The Biden administration, however, has repeatedly disregarded the law. Just weeks before Bates's comments, for example, the Office of Special Counsel determined that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre broke the law by repeatedly slamming "MAGA Republicans" from the White House podium. The White House nonetheless said it had no plans to change its behavior and has continued using the term.

Bates’s Hatch Act excuse baffled ethics experts, who said it wouldn’t apply to questions about the discovery of cocaine in the White House over the weekend. The Hatch Act "has nothing to do with the question of the discovery in the White House," former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter told the Washington Free Beacon. "It’s completely irrelevant."

In response to a Free Beacon inquiry, the White House suggested that Bates cited the Hatch Act because the reporter who asked the cocaine question at one point mentioned former president Donald Trump. The question itself did not mention Trump—the reporter asked Bates if he was "willing to say" the drugs "don't belong" to the president or Hunter Biden.

Jean-Pierre is far from the only prominent Biden administration official to flout the Hatch Act since the president took office in January 2021. Jean-Pierre's predecessor, former Biden spokeswoman and current MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki, also broke the law when she endorsed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, during a press briefing. Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra similarly violated the Hatch Act in April when he endorsed Sen. Alex Padilla (D., Calif.) during a Congressional Hispanic Caucus gala. Becerra praised Padilla as "my brother, my friend and senator, and someone I will be voting for in a little bit more than a month," prompting an aide to exclaim, "No, no, you can't say that."

Jean-Pierre's continued use of the term "MAGA," meanwhile, came after the Office of Special Counsel warned the press secretary that doing so would be seen as "a knowing and willful violation of the law" that could result in "disciplinary action." Both Jean-Pierre and Bates went on to use the term in statements and memos. Jean-Pierre also defended the phrase, saying she merely used it "in the context of talking about [Republican] policies and talking about their values."

Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain was also found to have violated the Hatch Act last October after he retweeted a Democratic political action committee post promoting President Joe Biden and asking people to buy the group’s "Democrats Deliver" t-shirts.

"By retweeting this message, Mr. Klain used his official Twitter account to promote a partisan political group’s interests and, therefore, OSC has concluded that he violated the Hatch Act’s use of official authority prohibition," said the Office of Special Counsel in a letter to the America First Legal Foundation, which filed the complaint.

Biden administration officials have offered shifting stories about where the cocaine was initially found. The Washington, D.C., fire department on Sunday said the substance was discovered in the "library" of the executive mansion, but a Secret Service spokesman later said it was found in the West Wing. Days later, White House officials said the cocaine was actually found near the White House's West Executive entrance.

The various locations all come with different clues as to who may have brought the cocaine into the building. While the West Wing houses the daily work offices for Biden and White House staffers, the library is located in the White House living quarters below, where access is more restricted. The White House's West Executive Entrance, meanwhile, is near where the vice president's limo parks.

Hunter Biden, who was rumored to be living at the executive mansion earlier this spring, has publicly struggled with cocaine addiction for years. The president's son was booted from the U.S. Navy in 2014 after testing positive for the drug, which he blamed on a cigarette he said he bummed outside of a bar from "two men who told him that they were from South Africa." On Friday, not long before the substance's discovery at the White House, pool reporters saw Hunter Biden depart the residence with his father to travel to Camp David.

Update 9:15 p.m.: This piece has been updated to include comment from the White House.

The post Biden White House Didn’t Care About the Hatch Act—Until It Faced Questions About Hunter and Cocaine appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

When he returned home, Pence explained why assistance to Ukraine is essential to American security. "We’re there because it’s in our national interest to give the Ukrainian military the ability to rebut and defeat Russian aggression," Pence told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. "Because if Russia overran Ukraine, I have no doubt, John, that it wouldn’t be too long before they crossed a border where American servicemen and women would be required to go and fight."

Pence said that President Biden has failed to make a compelling case for American leadership. Biden rarely discusses Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He would rather devote his limited energy to domestic policy. On the few occasions when he does address the conflict, Biden says that Ukraine is part of a global contest between democracy and authoritarianism. This abstract framework, Pence said, is too closely related to Biden’s partisan agenda to attract support from Republicans and independents.

Nor does Biden’s grand rhetoric match his overly cautious actions. Biden continually delays sending Ukraine the platforms required to defeat the Russian invaders, needlessly extending the war and undermining Western resolve. And Biden rejects the defense buildup necessary to replenish U.S. weapons stocks, bolster allies, and deter further aggression. "The Biden administration has been cutting back on our defense spending at a time that the world is becoming more dangerous by the day," Pence told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday.

Pence says that Biden’s lassitude on Ukraine is connected to his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, his foolish pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, and his recent turn toward dovishness on China. Pence offers a full-spectrum critique of Biden’s progressive foreign policy that one rarely hears from the other GOP presidential candidates, who tend to harp on one or two discrete issues when they mention international affairs at all. Pence’s trip not only demonstrated his commitment to advancing freedom abroad. It revealed his intention to resist those in his own party who are prepared to abandon Ukraine and the West.

Pence is not alone in this fight. Republican views on Ukraine are more complicated than a casual observer of conservative media might assume. For example, a late spring poll conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research on behalf of the Ronald Reagan Institute found that GOP voters back increased defense and security spending and American leadership and engagement in the world. A 71-percent majority of Republicans said that Ukrainian victory is important to the United States. Fifty percent of Republicans support further military aid to Ukraine.

The Reagan Institute survey suggests that GOP support for aid to Ukraine will rise if figures such as Pence continue to inform voters of the war’s stakes. For instance, after pollsters explained that U.S. aid to Ukraine is a small percentage of the Pentagon’s budget, that Ukraine controls most of its territory, and that the war has seriously degraded the Russian military, the percentage of Republicans who said that U.S. assistance has been worth it jumped by 18 points, to 59 percent.

The data imply that, in the absence of energetic and effective leadership, negative partisanship determines voter attitudes. Republicans soured on aid to Ukraine not because they side with Russia, but because they consider the war to be another wasteful Biden project. When Republicans learn the facts behind U.S. involvement, however, their instinctual hawkishness kicks in. What they have lacked is a prominent GOP spokesman for freedom.

Mike Pence has stepped into the breach. Of course, at this stage, Republican support for Ukraine is considerably stronger than Republican support for Pence’s campaign. He trails both former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis in national and state polls—distantly.

Nonetheless, Pence’s decision to highlight his support for Ukraine is not only courageous, but also savvy. It draws a contrast with DeSantis, who hasn’t found his footing on the issue, as well as with Trump, who says that he will end the war in 24 hours, with details to be worked out later. Aid to Ukraine, moreover, is the one place where Republican voters disagree with the former president. It’s a wedge issue in a GOP primary that, unlike criminal indictments, separates Trump from many in his party.

Foreign policy can pop up in unusual ways in presidential elections. Pence must recall how John McCain rode the success of the surge in Iraq to a late-breaking win in the 2008 Republican contest. Pence might benefit from a similar vindication this fall if the Ukrainian counteroffensive bears fruit and Russian lines collapse.

Even if Pence loses the GOP nomination, he may galvanize enough Republican voters to dissuade Trump from appeasing Putin. His stand for American strength and leadership in defense of democracy sustains a noble tradition of conservative internationalism. "I’m a guy who believes in that old Reagan Doctrine," Pence told Hugh Hewitt. "If you’re willing to fight the enemies of the United States on your soil, we’ll give you the means to fight them there so our men and women in uniform don’t have to fight them."

Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression has proven that there’s nothing old about the Reagan Doctrine. It’s as necessary today as it was 40 years ago. Reminding voters of this fact, and of America’s role as a beacon of hope for those without freedom, is Mike Pence’s mission. And most Americans—and Republicans—share his cause.

The post Mike Pence and The Fight Over GOP Foreign Policy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The law school's office of student services, which coordinates applications to all journals including the flagship Columbia Law Review, said Sunday that journal acceptances had been postponed until the school could verify that they comport with the new, race-blind standard articulated in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

"In light of the Supreme Court decision on Thursday, we are working with university leadership to better understand any implications for the journal ranking process," the office told students in an email. "Because of this, journal acceptances will be delayed until we receive further clarity."

"We have an obligation," the office added, "to … ensure that our decision processes are consistent with the law."

Law journals have long used affirmative action to select student editors as well as articles for publication. The delay suggests that this widespread practice could be on the chopping block as a result of the High Court's sweeping ruling, which experts say has laid the groundwork for invalidating a host of race-based policies across academia and corporate America.

"It's almost impossible to avoid the implication that all recipients of federal funds are now subject to the same rule announced in Students for Fair Admissions," said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, which filed an amicus brief in support of the group that sued Harvard. As long as a law review is part of a federally funded university, it faces "the same constraints that the 14th Amendment applies to state entities."

That could spell trouble for Columbia's journals in the event of a legal challenge. Though the Columbia Law Review is technically an independent nonprofit, students apply to it through the university's online portal, and those with questions about the review are referred to the law school's associate director of academic advising, Jordan Carr. Other journals at the law school are published "in partnership" with the university, according to their websites.

Neither Columbia Law School nor the Columbia Law Review responded to requests for comment.

Legal academia is already feeling the heat from the Supreme Court's decision. Within 24 hours of the ruling, the conservative public interest firm America First Legal sent letters to 200 law schools demanding that they scrap racial preferences not just in student admissions but also in faculty hiring and law reviews.

"We will represent victims of these policies and sue any law school that allows these illegal and discriminatory practices to continue," the letters read.

The pause at Columbia indicates that the school's journals have similar programs, as do the demographic data solicited by the Columbia Law Review. Applicants are asked about their race, gender, and sexual orientation, according to segments of application form reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, and can also submit "other relevant information" about their "personal identity."

Even before the Supreme Court's ruling, law reviews were dealing with legal headaches over their use of racial preferences. In 2018, a Texas-based group sued the Harvard Law Review and the New York University Law Review for allegedly discriminating in the admissions process. While both lawsuits were eventually dismissed—largely on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing—law reviews may struggle to fend off similar complaints going forward, Morenoff said.

The Supreme Court's new standard could pose a particular problem for the Yale Law Journal, which in 2021 released admissions data following accusations of racism from minority students. It turned out the top-ranked law review accepted white and Asian applicants at much lower rates than their black counterparts, numbers that parallel the disparities cited by the Supreme Court in its judgment against Harvard.

"It certainly sounds like the whole set of elite law journals will need to change their MO or face consequences," Morenoff said.

The post The Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Ruling Is Already Having an Impact. You Might Be Surprised Where.  appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

A Washington, D.C., fire department dispatch call on Sunday said the white powder, identified as "cocaine hydrochloride," was discovered in the "library" of the executive mansion. But a Secret Service spokesman later said it was found in the West Wing.

While the West Wing houses the daily work offices for President Joe Biden and White House staffers, the library is located in the White House living quarters below, where access is more restricted.

The location of the substance could provide clues to whether it was brought into the building by a White House staffer, a visitor, or a Biden family member. Hunter Biden, who pleaded guilty to tax and gun charges in June, has publicly struggled with cocaine addiction for years and was booted from the U.S. Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.

The discovery of cocaine at the White House is politically inconvenient for Biden, who has faced questions about his son’s rampant drug use and foreign business dealings. During Biden’s time in the Senate, he drafted a 1986 law that instituted significantly harsher prison sentences for crack cocaine possession as compared to powder cocaine. Critics have slammed the law as racist, arguing that it disproportionately targeted the black community.

The White House was briefly evacuated on Sunday after Secret Service agents discovered the suspicious substance during a sweep of the building. President Biden and his immediate family, including son Hunter, were not at the White House at the time.

The D.C. fire department was called in to test the substance. "We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride," said a responder in a dispatch call published by the Daily Mail, adding that it was discovered in the library. Cocaine hydrochloride refers to the powder version of cocaine.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, later said the substance was found in the "work area of the West Wing," according to the New York Times. Two law enforcement officials also told the Associated Press that the cocaine was found in an "area accessible to tour groups." A subsequent CBS report said the drug was found "near an entrance where visitors taking tours are directed to leave their phones."

But West Wing tours are not typically available on Sundays, according to the White House's website. Those tours are also expected to end at 12:30 PM.

A White House spokeswoman said it is "not accurate" to say tours are not given on Sundays. While the spokeswoman initially declined to answer a question on whether any outside guests or tour groups were invited into the White House the same evening the Secret Service discovered the bag of cocaine, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later said during a Wednesday briefing that there was a White House tour on Sunday. Jean-Pierre refused to disclose what time the tour occurred.

It is not uncommon for senior White House staff to invite friends for unofficial visits to the West Wing. Former president Donald Trump instituted a crackdown on outside devices allowed into the premises in an attempt to stop leaks to the press. Two individuals who visited the White House during that time told the Washington Free Beacon they were instructed to leave their phones in a small cubbie outside of the West Wing for the duration of their trip.

Hunter Biden was rumored to be living at the executive mansion earlier this spring, but this has not been confirmed by the White House.

President Biden has publicly embraced his son since his guilty plea in June. Hunter Biden attended a state dinner with the Indian prime minister last month, and he joined the president and First Lady to watch July 4th fireworks from the White House balcony this week after the white substance was discovered. On Friday, shortly before the substance's discovery, White House pool reporters saw Hunter Biden depart the White House with his father to travel to Camp David.

While Biden has defended his scandal-plagued son, other presidents have moved to distance themselves from drug users. Former president Dwight Eisenhower, for example, was "so anti-pot" that he barred actor Robert Mitchum from the White House movie theater because the celebrity had been convicted of a marijuana charge, presidential historian Tevi Troy told the Free Beacon.

Update 2:55 p.m.: This piece has been updated to include additional information.

The post Who Left Cocaine at the White House? Shifting Stories Make It Difficult to Determine. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.