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.

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.

"It was extraordinary," said Paul Moore, who served as the agency's chief investigative counsel during the Trump administration, in congressional testimony on Thursday. UPenn raked in over $100 million from China-based contributors between 2017 and 2022, the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this year. This was a substantial increase from the four years prior to 2017, when the school received a total of $19 million.

Moore's testimony comes as UPenn and the Penn Biden Center face scrutiny over the surge in foreign donations, many of them anonymous, that coincided with the think tank's opening and President Joe Biden's election. Watchdog groups have said the funding raises concerns about foreign influence-buying.

UPenn has said that no foreign donations were earmarked for the Penn Biden Center and that the think tank is supported by the school's general budget. But Moore said that foreign contributions to UPenn's general fund could have made their way to the Penn Biden Center indirectly.

"Those funds were co-mingled, and certainly went to the general operations, and may have gone to the Biden Center," he said.

Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) asked Moore if other universities saw similar increases in Chinese funding. Under federal law, schools that receive government support are required to disclose their overseas donations to the Department of Education.

"Not in that time frame. Absolutely not," said Moore, adding that while other schools saw an uptick in China donations, none saw an increase to the same extent as UPenn.

"It was particularly startling to see with UPenn what they had received. That was very notable," he said.

The former Education Department official told the committee that his office declined to investigate the donations because there was no evidence that UPenn was violating any of the agency's laws by accepting the funding.

"Members of Congress wrote to us, urging us to open an investigation," he said. "It would have been a very political thing, inappropriate, frankly, for the office of general counsel."

Several high-profile Biden officials worked at the think tank before joining the administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as the Penn Biden Center's director.

The National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, has said the donations raise concerns about foreign influence-buying and called on the Department of Education to release the names of the anonymous funders.

"The Department of Education's policy of hiding the identities of foreign entities showering our universities with billions of dollars is promoting a toxic brew of dark money and corruption," Tom Anderson, the director of the center's Government Integrity Project, told the Free Beacon in January.

The post 'It Was Extraordinary': Government Officials Were Stunned by 'Startling' Spike in Chinese Donations to UPenn After Biden Think Tank Opened appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Kerry's comments come ahead of his visit to Beijing next week to discuss climate change issues. The former secretary of state who now serves as the first ever special presidential envoy for climate also told Congress that China's human rights violations shouldn't be "showstoppers" that hinder climate negotiations.

When Kerry was asked by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) if he agreed with Biden's recent statement that Xi was a dictator, Kerry declined to say but conceded that Xi "wields enormous power as the leader of China."

"Frankly, all of that is water off a duck's back, and I don't think we ought to get tangled up in labels and names," said Kerry during the hearing for the House Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight and responsibility subcommittee.

Biden has stood by his description of Xi as a "dictator," a comment that sent Beijing into a fury last month, with the Chinese embassy denouncing it as "political provocation against China’s top leader."

Kerry has advocated for soft treatment of China by overlooking its human rights violations. He supports increased imports of solar panels, an industry linked to China's Uyghur slave labor. He said the Biden administration plans to keep human rights issues separate from his climate meetings in Beijing. The climate envoy appeared to stand by his comments to Congress two years ago, when he said he didn't believe human rights issues should have a role in climate negotiations because life is "full of tough choices."

The post Ahead of Beijing Trip, John Kerry Refuses to Call China's Xi a Dictator appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Under the White House’s proposed rule change, a London-based group called the Science Based Targets Initiative that is funded by the Democratic Party’s main dark money network would be responsible for approving the carbon emissions reduction plans of large federal contractors.

The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) is a fee-based service that helps companies set emissions reduction targets in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and verifies their progress. But its foreign status and murky financial background raise questions about the Biden administration’s decision to outsource its vetting process to the group. Critics say the proposal would give SBTi enormous veto power over American defense contracts and access to potentially sensitive data about U.S. military suppliers.

"I think Americans will be upset when they realize the Biden administration is trying to put a bunch of unelected bureaucrats and a climate activist group—headquartered in London—in charge of long-term planning for our national defense contractors," said Travis Fisher, a senior energy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The rule change is expected to impact 671 large contractors across multiple federal agencies, and steer an estimated $1.2 million in mandatory fees to SBTi each year, according to the proposal, which is still awaiting approval from government administrators.

Although SBTi publicly launched in 2015, the organization didn’t officially exist until June 26, when it filed incorporation papers in London, according to United Kingdom business records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The group is not registered in the United States. SBTi didn't respond to a request for comment.

Before its incorporation, SBTi was a partnership co-managed by five activist groups, including the "We Mean Business Coalition," a front group for a $900 million left-leaning dark money organization called the New Venture Fund. The off-the-books arrangement allowed SBTi to operate without filing financial disclosures for nearly a decade.

In 2015, the New Venture Fund, which promotes Democratic policies through an array of unincorporated shell organizations, helped launch and fund SBTi through the We Mean Business Coalition.

"Since its inception, [the We Mean Business Coalition] has been funding SBTi and mobilizing business towards science-based targets. One of our earliest milestones was reaching 150 corporate commitments to SBTi in 2016," said the We Mean Business website, where it also described itself as a "project of the New Venture Fund."

SBTi's connection to the New Venture Fund could raise questions about its political leanings. The New Venture Fund is facing scrutiny over its charity status, after the Free Beacon reported this week on a trove of internal documents and whistleblower allegations that indicate the group engaged in prohibited political activities during the 2020 elections. The documents also show that the liberal network maintains a high level of involvement in groups that it funds.

SBTi has also faced criticism from former allies over potential conflicts of interest and lack of transparency. Bill Baue, a sustainability expert who served on SBTi’s technical advisory board until 2020, described its operations as "ad hoc and haphazard" and compared the group’s leadership to the "Keystone Cops."

Baue said the organization doesn’t appear to have any procedures in place to address financial conflicts, ethics issues, or proper governance. When he voiced these issues internally, and later, in a formal complaint, he said leadership brushed him off and refused to respond.

SBTi would be "operating in a quasi-regulatory stance" under the Biden administration’s proposed rule change, Baue told the Free Beacon. "And yet it doesn’t have the kind of checks and balances or transparency for such an organization…certainly there’s reason to be concerned."

These issues could add to objections already raised by lawmakers and U.S. businesses. The American Bankers Association submitted a public comment criticizing the rule change in February, saying it "hands practical regulatory powers to non-governmental organizations" without verifying the "suitability of these organizations" to carry out the work. BP questioned the legality of the rule, saying it "effectively appoint[s] a third-party arbiter to determine which companies are eligible to be major contractors."

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), who sent a letter to the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council in March warning that the proposal could have "detrimental consequences for our national security and mission readiness," is looking into holding hearings on the matter, sources told the Free Beacon.

The idea for SBTi first took shape in 2013 during a meeting between climate activists and researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based offices of the World Resources Institute, a well-established environmental nonprofit funded by many of the left’s top benefactors, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

SBTi didn’t register as a stand-alone entity for eight years after its launch. Instead, it was staffed and co-managed by five activist groups: the New Venture Fund’s We Mean Business Coalition, the World Resources Institute, the Carbon Disclosure Project, the World Wildlife Fund, and the UN Global Compact.

Because of this arrangement, SBTi was not required to file public financial records disclosing its income, spending, salaries, and other information. The We Mean Business Coalition was also able to avoid filing such disclosures until 2021, when it spun off from the New Venture Fund and registered as a stand-alone nonprofit group.

Parker Thayer, a researcher at the Capital Research Center watchdog group, said this lack of transparency is common for projects associated with the New Venture Fund.

"The New Venture Fund is a dark money titan from the left that specializes in creating the appearance of broad public support" through unregistered front groups, said Thayer. "[They] allow the left to create the image that numerous organizations support their cause when in reality it’s all a one-man puppet show."

SBTi has also faced internal complaints. Baue said he was dropped from the technology advisory committee without explanation in 2020 after he expressed concerns that SBTi was using a weak methodology for setting emissions reduction targets. That method was created by one of SBTi’s parent groups, the World Wildlife Fund, which Baue said raised questions about "conflicts of interest and self-dealing."

"The effect is that [SBTi] monopolized the marketplace by removing any competition" from independent measurement standards, he said.

Baue added that SBTi’s validation service—in which it charges companies a fee to approve their emissions reduction targets and plans—also poses a conflict of interest, because it could give the group a financial incentive to weaken its standards in order to attract more paying clients.

"If you’re the standard-setter and you’re also making money from the validations there’s at least a temptation to water down your standards in order to continue to have a flow of validation revenue," said Baue.

The post Biden Proposal Would Give Foreign Climate Group Veto Power Over U.S. Military Contracts appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Cristina Caffarra, a European economic expert with Keystone Strategy, was brought in by the FTC as a consultant for an unsuccessful antitrust case against Facebook that was dropped in February. She also served "within the last three years" as an adviser to ByteDance, according to her April 4 disclosure statement to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank for which she spoke on a panel in the spring.

The FTC paid Caffarra's firm $2.7 million last July for a one-year consulting contract that is still ongoing and expires on Friday, according to federal spending records. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.

Caffarra told the Washington Free Beacon that her work for ByteDance didn't overlap with her work for the FTC. She declined to comment on whether she was hired by ByteDance before or after her consulting work with the agency. Her work from ByteDance also doesn't appear on her official Keystone Strategy biography, which lists several other tech companies with which she has worked.

ByteDance has mounted a massive public influence campaign as it fights against the prospect of American lawmakers banning its subsidiary, TikTok. The Chinese company has hired firms and lobbyists with deep connections to the Biden administration, such as Democratic powerhouse SKDK. Though some states have moved against the Chinese social media platform, TikTok has thus far avoided any concrete federal action.

The disclosure by Caffarra could raise questions about the potential for foreign influence at the FTC, which is heavily reliant on outside advisers. Under FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, the agency has "deployed unpaid consultants and experts at an increasing rate," according to an inspector general report last August, and "lacks an important layer of assurance against potential ethical dilemmas, such as conflicts of interest."

Caffarra said in an article last month that she "had a role advising the FTC in Meta/Within." The FTC brought the case against Meta last July, shortly after inking the multimillion-dollar consulting contract with Caffarra's firm. The FTC objected to Meta's merger with Within Unlimited, a virtual reality gaming company, on the grounds that Meta was trying to monopolize the VR market. ByteDance's subsidiary Pico is a competitor to Meta in the virtual reality industry.

The Chinese government-linked ByteDance is fighting U.S. congressional efforts to ban its subsidiary, TikTok. Lawmakers from both parties have slammed the social media app as a national security risk and criticized its influence on children and its data-collection practices.

In response, ByteDance has ramped up its lobbying efforts, splashing out millions on consultants and lobbyists with ties to the Biden administration and to prominent legislators. Executives at high-powered firms working for TikTok visited the White House at least 40 times as of April, the Free Beacon reported.

The aggressive lobbying campaign has been effective, Reuters reported this week. Democratic senator Mark Warner (Va.), who cosponsored a bill to rein in TikTok, said the social media app's public relations blitz has "slowed a bit of our momentum" on the legislation.

Khan is scheduled on Thursday to testify for the first time before the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers are expected to grill her over the agency's investigation of Twitter under Elon Musk.

The post Biden's FTC Adviser Discloses Work for China's ByteDance 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.

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.

While the Court rejected affirmative action, Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow noted that it also "ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions ‘an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.’"

"We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision," Bacow and other Harvard administrators wrote in a Thursday statement.

Harvard president-elect Claudine Gay released a video statement saying that the school was still "working to understand this decision and its implications for our policies."

"While we don’t have all the answers about what’s next, we do know that we will move forward together," she said.

The essays could provide a loophole for advocates of race-based admissions, some of whom have vowed to fight the ruling. In a speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden said "we can’t let this decision be the last word" on affirmative action, and said he would direct the Department of Education to come up with alternatives to ensure racial diversity on college campuses.

But the move could also violate the Court’s ruling, which held that college admissions essays could not be used directly as a tool to continue race-based admissions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, said that while nothing prohibits schools from considering essays that discuss the race of the applicant, "universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today."

"A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination," Roberts wrote. "In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race."

Bacow's full statement to the Harvard community can be read below.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions "an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise." We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday. So too are the abiding values that have enabled us—and every great educational institution—to pursue the high calling of educating creative thinkers and bold leaders, of deepening human knowledge, and of promoting progress, justice, and human flourishing.

We affirm that:

Because the teaching, learning, research, and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence.

To prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience. No part of what makes us who we are could ever be irrelevant.

Harvard must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed, a place where many will have the chance to live dreams their parents or grandparents could not have dreamed.

For almost a decade, Harvard has vigorously defended an admissions system that, as two federal courts ruled, fully complied with longstanding precedent. In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.

The heart of our extraordinary institution is its people. Harvard will continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world. To our students, faculty, staff, researchers, and alumni—past, present, and future—who call Harvard your home, please know that you are, and always will be, Harvard. Your remarkable contributions to our community and the world drive Harvard’s distinction. Nothing today has changed that.

Sincerely,

Lawrence S. Bacow

President, Harvard University

Alan M. Garber

Provost, Harvard University

Meredith Weenick

Executive Vice President, Harvard University

Claudine Gay

Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

President-elect, Harvard University

Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Nancy Coleman

Dean, Division of Continuing Education and University Extension

George Q. Daley

Dean, Harvard Medical School

Srikant Datar

Dean, Harvard Business School

Emma Dench

Dean, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Francis J. Doyle III

Dean, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Douglas Elmendorf

Dean, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

William V. Giannobile

Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine

David N. Hempton

Dean, Harvard Divinity School

Rakesh Khurana

Dean, Harvard College

Bridget Terry Long

Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education

John F. Manning

Dean, Harvard Law School

Sarah M. Whiting

Dean, Graduate School of Design

Michelle A. Williams

Dean, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The post Harvard Hints It Will Use Personal Essays To Circumvent Court Ruling appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

In a 6-3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime opponent of racial preferences, the court ruled that the admissions programs at Harvard and University of North Carolina "cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause" because they "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that "the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right" and racial preferences "appear to be leading to a world in which everyone is defined by their skin color, demanding ever-increasing entitlements and preferences on that basis."

Roberts was also joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Court’s ruling "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress" and "cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter."

The decision is a major victory for opponents of affirmative action, including Students for Fair Admissions, the advocacy group that brought the cases against Harvard and University of North Carolina. The ruling will also force many universities that use race as an admissions criteria to find new recruitment strategies.

Students for Fair Admissions argued that Harvard, in its quest for racial diversity, violated the Civil Rights Act by holding Asian applicants to higher admissions standards than other racial and ethnic groups. Students for Fair Admissions also claimed that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s race-based admissions policies were at odds with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The decision overturns the 45-year-old Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which held that colleges could use race as one of multiple factors for admission.

Supporters of affirmative action—including the Biden administration, which had urged the Supreme Court not to take the case—argued that overturning that decision would be a massive setback for campus diversity.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law wrote in a pro-Harvard amicus brief that the university does not "treat race as the defining feature of an application" and said race-conscious admissions are necessary to ensure that students of all races are well-represented on campuses. The group also claimed that outlawing the practice would cause the share of black students admitted to plummet from 14 percent to 6 percent.

The ruling will likely force many schools across the country to revamp their recruitment and application processes. In California, where affirmative action was banned in 1995, the percentage of black and Latino students at the University of California at Los Angeles fell by around 50 percent immediately following the prohibition. Since then, the university has managed to recruit an even higher percentage of black and Latino students than before the ban, without using race as an admissions factor.

The last time the Court revisited the Bakke decision on affirmative action was in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion upholding Bakke at that time, argued that affirmative action should be a temporary measure and "expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

The post High Court Strikes Down Racial Preferences In College Admissions appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Pressed at a New Hampshire campaign event on whether he would be willing to withdraw funding for Israel, Ramaswamy said he would draw back the foreign aid as "part of a broader disengagement with the Middle East."

"I would not do that as an isolated policy," Ramaswamy said on Saturday, according to a video of the event obtained by the Free Beacon. "I would do it as part of also making sure that we're not leaving other people we've also propped up, from Saudi Arabia to even Iran, in other ways. It has to be part of a comprehensive strategy."

While Ramaswamy has tied himself closely to Trump on the campaign trail, donning a Trump hat and promising to pardon the former president if he's convicted, his advocacy for slashing foreign aid to the entirety of the Middle East, including Israel, seems to differentiate the two. While Trump is skeptical of foreign aid, he was a staunch supporter of Israel, signing the largest ever aid package for the Jewish State into law in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

Ramaswamy, who is also a strong critic of U.S. financial support for Ukraine's war with Russia, says his comments at the campaign event were actually a show of support for Israel. Ramaswamy told the Free Beacon on Tuesday that he was not expressing support for cutting Israel funding, adding that he was "opposed to selectively criticizing U.S. aid to Israel. That was my point."

"When someone asked about aid to Israel, I said we can’t narrowly criticize our financial aid to Israel in isolation when our other policies of engagement in the Middle East have indirectly contributed to the threats that Israel faces (e.g. the disastrous Iran nuclear deal which Iran regularly cheats on)," said Ramaswamy.

The clarification comes as Ramaswamy, who describes himself as an "American nationalist," has seen an uptick in support. Ramaswamy is polling at six percent among Republican primary voters, according to a Morning Consult survey on Tuesday, just one point below former Vice President Mike Pence and three points ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

While a growing segment of far-left Democrats objects to funding Israel, it has almost universal support among Republican lawmakers.

Ramaswamy told the voter who asked about Israel that all foreign spending will come under the microscope if he's president.

"My view is we need to stand for American interests, full stop. And the answer is, I don't believe in answers ad infinitum," said Ramaswamy at the event on Saturday, according to a video of the exchange obtained by the Free Beacon. "My question number one, in foreign policy, will be how do we advance the interests of Americans who actually live here? That sets a really high bar before giving a lot of money to other countries, even when it comes to foreign aid."

"Even in Africa and other parts of the world. I think those are problems that need to be solved, but using the U.S. taxpayer, military resources to do it has to answer a narrow question of how it actually advances the American interest," he added. "So that's my litmus test for every use of federal dollars abroad, full stop."

The post Vivek Ramaswamy Told a Voter He's Open to Ending Foreign Aid to Israel. Now He Says It Was a Misunderstanding. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

During the hour-long panel discussion, Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall highlighted incidents of anti-Semitism involving neo-Nazis and far-right nationalists, but failed to mention anti-Zionist attacks against Jews, according to Jewish Insider.

A senior White House official also declined to comment during an interview on the administration's plans to deal with anti-Zionism as part of its anti-Semitism strategy, Jewish Insider reported.

The failure to mention anti-Zionism could add to concerns that the Biden administration is attempting to water down the definition of anti-Semitism to exclude anti-Israel extremism. The White House in May rolled out its long-awaited national strategy to combat anti-Semitism, a document that barely mentioned Israel. In the strategy, the White House also declined to officially endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, which includes certain extreme anti-Israel views.

The White House recently tapped CUNY professor Ramzi Kassem as an immigration adviser. Kassem has accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "systematic genocide," the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

The post The Country That Shall Not Be Named: Biden Admin Omits Mention of Israel in Rollout of Anti-Semitism Strategy appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Kennedy's guest was Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector who served jail time in 2011 after exposing himself to a cop posing as a 15-year-old girl. The sex pest was brought on to discuss "Putin's Wagner Crisis" as the leader of a Russian mercenary group turned against the authoritarian leader. Ritter has predicted that Putin "will go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time."

The podcast episode comes as Kennedy has been surging in the polls as voters grow weary of the prospect of a second term for President Joe Biden, who will turn 81 later this year. Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters say they would consider backing Kennedy over Biden, according to a recent CNN survey.

During the show, Ritter slammed the Russian mercenary leader who turned against Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, calling him "a traitor" who "stabbed Russia in the back."

Ritter and Kennedy also speculated that the CIA could be behind the Russian coup attempt.

"I believe that eventually they're going to show that [Prigozhin] was influenced by foreign powers to carry out a coup d'état designed to collapse the government of Vladimir Putin," Ritter said. Kennedy responded that there was "chatter on the internet that the CIA was behind this insurrection as a regime change, but, you know, who knows whether it's true or not."

Ritter, who during the Iraq war gained fame as an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, is a controversial figure due to his criminal history and his strong support for the Putin regime. In 2009, Ritter was arrested after masturbating on a webcam in front of a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. He served jail time for the incident and was required to register as a sex offender.

Prior to that conviction, he was also arrested in 2001 for arranging meetings with undercover officers posing as minors online.

Ritter, who recently completed a month-long propaganda tour of Russia, has claimed that Putin "will go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time."

Earlier this year, Ritter dropped out as a speaker at the Libertarian Party anti-war rally after uproar over his attendance, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The Quincy Institute, an isolationist think tank, in 2021 also pulled an article he wrote for its website.

Ritter has also been embraced by many libertarian and anti-war activists on both the right and left. Former Fox News host Andrew Napolitano and Russian defector Tara Reade—known for accusing Biden of sexual assault—urged the Libertarian Party to keep Ritter on as a speaker. Ritter also spoke last year at a conference hosted by former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The post RFK Jr. Hosts Convicted Sex Predator on His Podcast To Praise Putin appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Jean-Pierre repeatedly dodged questions about the messages during a press briefing on Friday and referred reporters to the White House counsel’s office.

"My colleague at the White House counsel has dealt with this, and I would refer you to them," said Jean-Pierre, who also snapped at reporters, "I just answered the question. It’s not up to you how I answered the question."

The White House counsel’s office has not appeared to address the text messages. Responding to Hunter Biden's plea deal on tax charges earlier this week that will likely see him avoid prison time, the counsel’s office said the president and first lady "love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life."

The White House’s refusal to address the texts comes as Biden has publicly embraced his son. Hunter Biden attended a high-profile White House state dinner with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Thursday night, and the president told reporters Tuesday that he was "very proud of my son."

The text messages were revealed in testimony from IRS agent Gary Shapley and published by House Republicans on Thursday. In a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message, Hunter Biden told Chinese businessman Henry Zhao that he was with his father and "we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled."

"Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand," wrote Hunter Biden. "I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction."

Hunter Biden added that he was "sitting here waiting for the call with my father. I sure hope whatever it is you are doing is very very important."

Photo metadata from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicate that he was at his father’s house in Wilmington, Del., on the day he sent the text messages, the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.

Jean-Pierre said during the briefing that she had not spoken to Joe Biden about the text messages and has no plans to do so. She also said she stands by her previous statement that Biden never discussed business dealings with his son.

"Nothing has changed," she said. "Nothing has changed and I will leave it there."

The post Karine Jean-Pierre Ducks Questions on Hunter Biden's Texts Linking Father to Shakedown appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The alleged deal with his four-year-old daughter’s mother, Lunden Alexis Roberts, would slash Biden’s child support from $20,000 per month to just $5,000 and allow Biden to avoid a drawn-out court dispute that could have required him and his business partners to reveal information about his finances.

Roberts’s lawyer Clint Lancaster told the Post, which temporarily took down its report before adding comment from the attorney, that the terms of the agreement are still being worked out. "The case is sealed, and these are financial terms that should never be disclosed," he told the Post.

Lancaster added that he was concerned Hunter Biden might use the settlement terms to "promote some agenda" and Roberts’s team was disappointed there was "not more contact" between the child and the Biden family. President Joe Biden has declined to acknowledge the four-year-old as his grandchild, even after a court-ordered paternity test found Hunter Biden was the father.

The settlement would be the third legal issue to reach its conclusion for Hunter Biden on Tuesday, who also reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges.

Biden and Roberts negotiated the settlement late last week, according to the Post, which cited a "source close to the first son." As part of the deal, Roberts also reportedly dropped a request to change their daughter’s last name to Biden.

The reported settlement agreement had not been publicly filed in the case as of Tuesday evening, a clerk for the Arkansas court confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. Lawyers for Roberts and Biden did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Biden was in Arkansas last week for a closed-door deposition in the case. He was also scheduled to appear in court on July 10 for a hearing on contempt charges, after Roberts’s lawyer accused the first son of withholding financial records.

Biden made his first and only appearance in the case in May, when his lawyers revealed that he had agreed to pay Roberts $20,000 in monthly child support in 2020. Biden reopened the case last year and claimed he could no longer afford those payments. He also filed a motion to block Roberts from changing their daughter’s last name to Biden.

Lancaster, Roberts’s lawyer, had argued that Biden’s high-priced legal team—which included prominent Washington, D.C., fixer Abbe Lowell—was evidence that Biden had the funds to pay child support.

The Free Beacon reported last week that Biden repeatedly ignored Roberts’s attempts to reach him during the final months of her pregnancy and cut her off from his company’s health insurance a few months after she gave birth.

The post Source Close to Hunter Biden Says He Reached Settlement With Arkansas Baby Mama appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The proposal is included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act and comes months after the Washington Free Beacon reported that President Joe Biden was considering appointing a civilian for the first time to run the Missile Defense Agency—drawing concerns from the defense community. Following the backlash, Biden in May nominated Air Force major general Heath Collins to the position.

Now lawmakers are working to ensure that civilians are barred from the position in the future. The NDAA provision would "amend current law to require the director of the Missile Defense Agency to be a military officer," according to the defense funding bill. The Missile Defense Agency oversees U.S. military defense systems and coordinates with other agencies under the Department of Defense umbrella.

The push to keep the nuclear arsenal in military hands comes amid heightened aggression from Russia—which recently moved some of its warheads to Belarus as a warning to Ukraine and U.S. allies—and nuclear build-up by China and North Korea. Biden said on Monday that the chance of the Putin regime launching tactical nukes is "real."

Defense hawks and national security officials raised alarms earlier this year after the Biden administration privately told members of Congress that it was looking at non-military candidates to replace outgoing Missile Defense Agency director Jon Hill, a vice admiral. The agency's civilian deputy director, Laura DeSimone, was one of the names being floated at the time, according to congressional sources.

The possibility prompted four former agency directors in January to write a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee asking that the committee reject any non-military nominee and arguing that "it would have been impossible in our experience for this job to have been effectively executed without a senior military flag officer."

"Any suggestion that the next director could be a civilian leader should be carefully scrutinized and almost certainly rejected," wrote former Missile Defense Agency directors Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering, and Vice Adm. James D. Syring.

"Now is not the time to experiment with the leadership of the agency best suited to defend against those threats to the American people, their allies and partners, and the deployed sons and daughters in uniform," the former directors wrote.

Collins, whom Biden has nominated for agency director and who has also been tapped for a promotion to lieutenant general, is the agency's program executive for ground-based weapon systems. His selection is expected to go forward without controversy, according to a Republican congressional source.

The post 'Not the Time To Experiment': Congress Moves To Bar Civilians From Leading Missile Defense Agency appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The objections could sink the proposal, currently under consideration by Georgetown’s administration, to rename the school in honor of Albright, the first female secretary of state who passed away last year.

Critics claim that Albright, who served under the Clinton administration, "supported some of the U.S. government’s most devastating interventions in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and South Eastern Europe."

"By moving ahead with this project, the University would honor a name associated with gross human rights violations," said the petition.

Protestors say that Albright oversaw the Clinton administration’s sanctions against Iraq, which were imposed in response to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s buildup of weapons stockpiles and refusal to cooperate with international arms inspectors. Hussein’s lawless actions led to the death of half a million Iraqi children under the sanctions.

"When asked many years later to comment on the half a million Iraqi children who died as a consequence of the drastic sanctions imposed on Iraq during her tenure, Madeleine Albright’s answer was ‘the price was worth it,’" said the petition. "These facts are well known among the SFS faculty, students, and alumni, and suggest that a renaming would be met with considerable unease and opposition in the School."

Georgetown University President John DeGioia is expected to make a final decision on the renaming soon.

According to a source familiar with the internal debate, about half of the foreign service school’s faculty objects to the renaming. The university press office declined to comment on the petition.

The Walsh School of Foreign Service is one of the top international relations programs in the United States and a training ground for many Washington diplomats. Albright was a former professor at the school.

Marwa Daoudy, an associate professor at SFS who helped organize the protest, said the petition "received +1300 signatures... largely from our great community of SFS alumni and students!" since it was launched last week.

Samar Saeed, another organizer, called the renaming proposal "a disgrace."

"I honestly don’t know how this aligns with @Georgetown values of ‘women and men for others,’" she said.

The Washington Free Beacon reached out to faculty members who declined to publicly voice support for Albright – potentially a reflection of the traction the protest has gained on campus. President Bill Clinton, a School of Foreign Service alumnus, also did not respond to a request for comment.

The School of Foreign Service is currently named after its founder Edmund A. Walsh, a Jesuit priest, and staunch anti-Communist who advocated for preemptive nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. Some faculty members and students have also objected to the renaming because they say it erases Walsh’s legacy at the school, which he founded in 1919 at the age of 34.

The post Georgetown Faculty Object to Renaming Foreign Affairs School After Madeleine Albright appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

A Republican lawmaker said the State Department’s diversity chief has created an "inherent quota system" for hiring based on race, and compared it to choosing employees by physical characteristics such as height and baldness.

Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight and accountability subcommittee, grilled the agency's outgoing "diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility" director Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley over her race-related hiring policies during a hearing on Tuesday.

"Is baldness—somebody that looks like me—does that make you a better diplomat?" asked Mast, a double-amputee Army veteran who is also bald. "If somebody’s 5’8 like me or 6’3, like somebody else, does it make them a better diplomat?"

Abercrombie-Winstanley laughed at the questions before responding, "No, I do not believe so."

The heated exchange came as Abercrombie-Winstanley is wrapping up her controversial, two-year tenure as diversity chief, and as the State Department prepares to choose her successor. Republicans have criticized Abercrombie-Winstanley for focusing on race and gender in hiring, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) calling her policies "brazen discrimination."

Abercrombie-Winstanley has said she holds "diversity" as a top consideration for employee recruitment, arguing in an interview last year that when State Department officials are "putting together panels of officers to consider for positions, that list better be diverse."

Mast said the race of candidates shouldn’t matter in hiring, calling it "un-American."

"It shouldn’t matter that I’m half Mexican. It shouldn’t matter whether I’m able-bodied or ambulatory or not ambulatory," he said. "That doesn’t have anything to do with what my background is, that I served in these operations in the military, that I gained these skills."

He added that diversity "can’t be the number one filter because it does create an inherent bias, an inherent quota system" in hiring.

Abercrombie-Winstanley was testifying before the subcommittee about the State Department’s diversity budget for fiscal year 2024.

The post GOP Lawmaker Blasts Biden Diversity Chief for 'Un-American' Race-Focused Hiring appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

"In hopes that you even read this- Baby was born Aug 28. Beautiful & Healthy," she wrote in a text on Oct. 16, 2018. "If you ever become curious and want to know more I can send pictures, details, or whatever you may request."

"I know that’s a long shot and you’d much rather avoid the whole situation," she added, "but just wanted you to know the door is always open for you in the baby’s life."

Biden never responded. But years later, Roberts and their four-year-old daughter—whom President Joe Biden has refused to publicly acknowledge as his grandchild—have become an issue the Biden family can no longer ignore.

The ongoing child support case in Arkansas, which has drawn Hunter Biden into the courtroom and made national headlines, could force the younger Biden to release sensitive financial information. At the same time, several federal investigations, including a congressional probe into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, are likely to keep eyes peeled on financial disclosures that come out of the Arkansas trial.

While Roberts has declined public interviews, court filings and text messages shed light on her battle to extract child support from a member of one of the world’s most powerful families, as well as her unsuccessful efforts to make Hunter Biden a part of their daughter’s life.

The text messages show Hunter Biden dropped out of contact a few months into her pregnancy, cut off her salary and health insurance shortly after she gave birth, and declined to even see a photograph of his newborn daughter. He had initially put her on his company’s payroll, likely to provide her with health care during the pregnancy. The messages show she did not go to court to seek child support until several months after Biden cut her off from his company's health insurance.

Hunter Biden reopened the paternity case last September, saying he could no longer afford to pay Roberts the $20,000-per-month in child support he had agreed to during his father’s presidential campaign in 2020. He is also asking the court to block the child from taking the "Biden" last name.

Hunter Biden, who initially denied he was the girl’s father until a court-ordered DNA test proved him wrong, said he has "no recollection" of sleeping with Roberts after they met in 2017, noting that he was a drug addict and had many casual sex partners at the time.

But according to text messages, Roberts and Hunter Biden were in frequent contact and discussed her pregnancy for the first few months. He added her to the payroll at his company, Owasco P.C., a perk that came with health insurance. But the text messages indicate that Biden was unhappy about Roberts’s pregnancy, and he dropped out of contact when she was about three months along.

"Last we spoke you were upset because I hadn’t kept you ‘updated.’ That was in February," Roberts wrote to Biden in October 2018, shortly after their daughter’s birth. "I’ve called numerous times and sent a few messages as well."

"I understand you despise me and want nothing to do with the decision I’ve made," she added. "However, I still felt you deserved to hear about it from me … Baby was born Aug 28."

Biden had also ignored Roberts’s attempts to reach him in the summer of 2018, as her September due date approached. "Just called to check in on you.." she wrote the evening before Independence Day. Later that month, she sent him an update from the doctor.

On Aug. 8, she wrote: "Reached out a few times, it’s clear you don’t want to be reached. Need to talk to you. If you feel the need to reach out, my line is always open. Hope you are well."

Roberts gave birth to their daughter on Aug. 28, 2018. A month and a half later, she wrote Biden to tell him that he was welcome to be a part of their child’s life. "I have left my ‘DC lifestyle’ in the past as I decided to come home [to Arkansas] and jump back into who I was before DC, bettering myself for a child," she told him.

Hunter Biden didn’t respond. But a few weeks later—after depleting his company’s bank accounts and facing financial difficulties—he told his personal assistant to remove Roberts from the Owasco P.C.’s payroll to cover his other expenses. "Take Lunden off payroll," he wrote, referring, at one point, to Roberts as "what’s her name."

Hunter Biden’s personal assistant, Katie Dodge, noted that this would also cut Roberts off from the company’s health insurance. Biden told her to go ahead. "I thought you said [Roberts] decidedly dint [sic] want to work and didn’t need health insurance anyway. Remember that conversation?" wrote Biden.

"No. I do not remember that conversation," responded Dodge. "Maybe she told you that but I wasn’t involved."

Biden shot back that he hadn’t "talked to Lunden in 7 months" and told Dodge to "take whatever I pay Lunden and get my shit straightened out." In a follow-up in December, Biden asked Dodge to confirm she "took what’s her name off" of the company payroll. Dodge confirmed that Roberts had been removed.

Five months later, Roberts filed a petition for child support against Biden in Arkansas. She was living back in her hometown of Batesville and working at her family’s local business, earning what the court judge estimated was "less than minimum wage." She said her parents helped her out with "petty cash," but Biden had "provided no support for this child" since the baby was born.

Hunter Biden "has had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth" and "could not identify the child out of a photo lineup," Roberts’s attorneys said in a filing.

Hunter Biden, who told the court he was unemployed, eventually agreed in March of 2020—a few weeks before his father Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee—to pay Roberts $20,000-per-month in child support.

Now Hunter Biden is taking a more aggressive approach. In September, he asked the court to reduce his monthly payments, saying there had been "a substantial material change in [his] financial circumstances, including but not limited to his income." He also ramped up his legal team, hiring D.C. power-lawyer Abbe Lowell, who attended the most recent hearing in Arkansas last month.

But he is also facing orders from the court to turn over financial records—including information on his businesses, investments, and financial gifts that could be relevant to an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into his taxes and a congressional probe into potential influence-peddling by the Biden family.

Hunter Biden’s move to reopen the case has surprised some legal experts.

"I'm really astonished that Hunter Biden, given that he has a pending criminal investigation, and given that there are pending congressional investigations, would go back into this court and try to reopen this Pandora's Box," former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN in March.

That risk seemed to grow this week, after Arkansas Circuit Court judge Holly Meyer ordered Biden to appear on July 10 to defend himself against potential contempt charges. Roberts’s lawyers have asked the court to hold Biden in contempt for allegedly failing to turn over complete financial records.

Judge Meyer said Biden’s "ability to pay" child support "is or may become a critical issue in the contempt proceeding," opening him up to questions about his financial condition in court.

Hunter Biden "will have an opportunity at the hearing to respond to statements and questions about his financial status" and "is subject to an express finding by the court that he has the ability to pay," the judge said.

The post Hunter Biden Ghosted Baby Mama During Pregnancy, Texts Show appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing on Tuesday she was "given the sign-off to use that terminology" by other White House officials last year—and she didn’t rule out using it again in the future. She added that the White House counsel’s office is "reviewing the opinion" from the watchdog agency, the Office of Special Counsel.

Her defense comes days after the Office of Special Counsel announced that Jean-Pierre violated the Hatch Act by using the White House podium to denounce "mega MAGA Republican officials who don’t believe in the rule of law" during the midterm elections last year.

The office said Jean-Pierre "made the statements while acting in her official capacity" and "violated the Hatch Act prohibition against using her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." The agency said it would not take action against Jean-Pierre for the violation.

"We did not know their opinion when we were given the green light to actually say the comments that I made," said Jean-Pierre. "The White House counsel certainly is reviewing the opinion and they will have routine conversation with the OSC as they should."

Jean-Pierre said White House officials have "used this term many times before, there’s nothing new, the way we use it is in the context of talking about [Republican] policies and talking about their values." She argued that Republican legislators often use the term "MAGA" to refer to their policies, as opposed to a partisan political context.

Jean-Pierre is one of several high-profile administration officials found to have violated the Hatch Act since Biden took office. Others include former White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The OSC investigated Jean-Pierre’s comments in response to a complaint filed by Protect the Public's Trust, an ethics watchdog group.

The post Biden's Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Suggests Special Counsel Got Hatch Act Ruling Wrong appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.