CBS NEWS reports:
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit organization and online database containing the most comprehensive archive of records pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, has sued President Biden and the National Archives and Records Administration for postponing the release of roughly 15,000 documents concerning the former president's murder.
The claim, filed in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, alleges that federal officials have acted outside the law in their failure to make those redactions available to the public, thereby "depriving" researchers and historians of opportunities to learn about the JFK assassination. Almost three years into his presidency, Kennedy was fatally shot on live television while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, in what is considered the most infamous and widely discussed political assassination of the 20th century.
A lengthy federal investigation found former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald solely responsible for the shooting, but murky details about the circumstances of JFK's death invited a number of conspiracy theories and ongoing conjecture from academics, authors and filmmakers as well as the general population. Rising public interest in the assassination records, plus speculation about a rumored government cover-up, prompted the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992, mandating the eventual publication of all unreleased documents.
That law, which was signed by former President George H.W. Bush, originally established an October 2017 deadline for the federal government to publish all remaining documents related to the assassination. That initial deadline was effectively pushed by then-President Donald Trump, who at the time ordered the release of about 2,800 previously unseen files but withheld thousands of others for national security reasons, saying they needed further review.
Then, in a memo issued last October, Mr. Biden announced another delay and set a new deadline for the records' release, which now falls on Dec. 15. The pandemic had prevented the national archivist from conducting its review as planned, according to the White House, and finishing the job would require more time than expected. Biden cited security concerns as the basis of his decision to support the archivist's request to postpone.
Excuses, excuses and lies.
As I like to point out, I was a college freshman when President John Kennedy was assassinated. Every record should have long ago been released.
Marc Caputo (NBC NEWS) adds:
“It’s high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,” said the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination and the CIA.
“This is about our history and our right to know it,” said Morley, the author of the JFK Facts blog.
Morley’s sentiment is shared by fellow historians, open government advocates and even some members of the Kennedy family, who usually don’t comment on the assassination.
“It was a momentous crime, a crime against American democracy. And the American people have the right to know,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., the son and namesake of JFK’s brother. “The law requires the records be released. It’s bizarre. It’s been almost 60 years since my uncle’s death. What are they hiding?”
And THE INDEPENDENT notes:
Former CIA agent Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who has lectured about the assassination at Harvard, is critical of his former employer. He believes that the agency had contact with Oswald before the death of Mr Kennedy and that the CIA covered it up.
“What I think happened, in a nutshell, is that Oswald was recruited into a rogue CIA plot,” Mr Mowatt-Larssen told NBC. “This group of three, four or five rogues decided their motive [was] to get rid of Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis because they thought it was their patriotic duty given the threat the country was under at the time and their views, which would be more hard-line or more radically anti-communist and very extreme politically.”
We are owed the truth about what happened.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot'' for today:
Wednesday, October 19, 2022. Is Wall Street hoping and pushing for massive unemployment, what's the latest in the Hunter Biden scandals and the stolen funds scandal in Iraq takes the spotlight off everything else including the prime minister-designate.
The editorial board of THE NEW YORK POST observed yesterday:
On Monday, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released information that Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden received $5 million from a Chinese energy firm called CEFC.
Just the News further reports that this payment took the form of a zero-interest, forgivable loan, and though it was paid in 2017, when Joe Biden was no longer vice president, it covered work done by his son and brother for the Chinese during his time in office.
Suspicious! A bombshell!
. . . and reported by The New York Post on Oct. 22, 2020.
We aren’t upset over credit; far from it. Kudos to Grassley for drawing attention again to this deal, and Just the News for pointing out the Bidens’ love of forgiving loans.
What does anger us is that it’s been over two years since The Post reported on Hunter Biden’s shady business deals, and the president — assisted by a compliant media — has never had to properly address the evidence.
Yes, e-mails on Hunter’s laptop show that the Chinese paid the Biden family at least $5 million, a fact confirmed by former business partner Tony Bobulinski. One of the messages The Post printed back then had another partner, James Gilliar, telling Bobulinski on May 20, 2017, “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.”
Don’t remember reading that? Perhaps because when this newspaper reported it, it was during a two-week period that Twitter banned us and Facebook prevented the sharing of our articles. And at the same time, 50 liberal former intelligence officials declared our reporting “likely Russian disinformation” based on no evidence — which the liberal media used as an excuse to either ignore or insult us.
Of course the laptop was real, a fact only “confirmed” by The New York Times, The Washington Post and others after Joe Biden was safely elected.
THE NEW YORK POST has the right to pat themselves on the back. The one element of the media story that I don't think gets enough attention all this time later? THE NEW YORK TIMES' attack on THE NEW YORK POST. They wouldn't investigate the story with their own reporters. They did, however, publish a piece of garbage (that we called out in real time) with baseless claims (because they were made up by THE TIMES) of the NEW YORK POST newsroom being in an uproar over what THE POST published. It was all make believe and everyone pretends now that it never happened, or maybe they weren't paying attention in real time. It had all the earmarks of the sort crap David Corn and others pulled on Gary Webb to try to discredit Webb.
Meanwhile Senator Chuck Grassley's office released the following:
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley is calling on the FBI to produce specific records in its possession indicating potential criminal activity in the Biden family’s foreign business deals. It remains unclear whether those FBI records, which have been reviewed by Grassley’s investigative staff, have been shared with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of its ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
“Notably, the Justice Department and FBI have not disputed the accuracy of the allegations that I have made public since May 31, 2022. The Justice Department’s and FBI’s continued silence on these matters is deafening and further erodes their credibility. Simply put, enough is enough – the Justice Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter Biden investigation,” Grassley wrote in a letterto FBI and Justice Department leadership as well as the Delaware U.S. attorney.
In the letter, Grassley attached a contract, signed by Hunter and James Biden and three other business associates. The contract was part of an arrangement designed to funnel $5 million from the Chinese communist government-connected CEFC to Hunter and James Biden to compensate them for work done while Joe Biden was vice president, according to an FBI interview summary of Tony Bobulinski. But other records held by the FBI reveal frustration by the Bidens about CEFC’s payment being delayed. Records previously released by Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) show James and Hunter Biden ultimately profited from a $5 million payment from a company connected to CEFC via a separate arrangement.
Other records held by the FBI shed light on Hunter Biden’s business and financial relationship with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. These documents include specific details about conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden. These documents also indicate that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in some of them. It remains unclear whether the FBI took appropriate steps to follow up on this information or passed it to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.
Whistleblowers
Grassley frequently hears from current and former government employees who come forward to shine a light on fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement in government agencies or by government contractors. He protects the identities of these sources and frequently promotes policies that shield whistleblowers from retaliation. Individuals wishing to call attention to mismanagement or misconduct within the Justice Department and its component agencies, such as the FBI, about the aforementioned allegations or other misconduct should contact Sen. Grassley’s investigations unit at (202) 224-3738 or email wb_reports@judiciary-rep.senate.gov.
Director Wray has personally committed to Senator Grassley that whistleblowers who have come forward will not face retaliation.
October 13, 2022
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The Honorable Merrick Garland
Attorney General
Department of Justice
The Honorable Christopher Wray
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Honorable David Weiss
U.S. Attorney
District of Delaware
Dear Attorney General Garland, Director Wray and U.S. Attorney Weiss:
Since May 31, 2022, I’ve written three letters to the Justice Department and FBI based on protected whistleblower disclosures that indicate a pattern and practice of political decisions being made at the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) and FBI Headquarters.[1] In those letters, I’ve noted that Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that the Executive Branch executes the law and uses taxpayer money appropriated to it in accordance with congressional intent. In furtherance of that constitutional responsibility, Congress has an obligation to investigate the Executive Branch for fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement – acts which undermine faith in the American people’s governmental institutions. Those constitutional and legislative responsibilities apply to this letter to you. My previous letters also invited individuals, including current and former government employees, to contact me and my office to confidentially report allegations of fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement by FBI and Justice Department officials. In response, my office has received a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers which have increased since my initial outreach to your offices.
Based on recent protected disclosures to my office, the FBI has within its possession significant, impactful and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden and James Biden.[2]
The evidence within the FBI’s possession that I am referencing is included, in part, in a summary of Tony Bobulinski’s October 23, 2020, interview with FBI agents. In that interview, Mr. Bobulinski stated that the arrangement Hunter Biden and James Biden created with foreign nationals connected to the communist Chinese government included assisting them with potential business deals and investments while Joe Biden was Vice President; however, that work remained intentionally uncompensated while Joe Biden was Vice President. After Joe Biden left the Vice Presidency, the summary makes clear that Hunter Biden and James Biden worked with CEFC and affiliated individuals to compensate them for that past work and the benefits they procured for CEFC. According to the summary, Hunter Biden, James Biden and their business associates created a joint venture that would serve as a vehicle to accomplish that financial compensation, and that arrangement was made sometime after a meeting in Miami between Hunter Biden and CEFC officials in February 2017. According to the summary, that vehicle was called SinoHawk, which was owned 50 percent by Oneida Holdings LLC (Oneida) and 50 percent by Hudson West IV. According to the summary, Oneida was made of five evenly divided LLCs, one for each business associate – including Hunter Biden and James Biden. However, according to the summary, 10 percent of Hunter Biden’s interest was to be held for Joe Biden. Attached to this letter is the Oneida Operating Agreement which lists Hunter Biden, James Biden and their business associates and the percentage of interest for each individual.[3] Included below is a copy of the signature block for the Oneida Operating Agreement which was signed on May 22, 2017.
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According to the interview summary, the money transferred to Oneida as part of the venture to compensate the Bidens was supposed to consist of an unsecured $5 million loan, intended to be forgivable, from CEFC in 2017. Similarly, the FBI has within its possession a different document, dated in October 2020, but referencing events that occurred years before. That document indicates that in May 2017 – approximately three months after the joint venture was hatched in Miami and the same month it was officially formed – Hunter Biden yelled at CEFC officials at a meeting for failing to fund the joint venture. That same document notes that as of July 2017 the money still had not been transferred and James Biden considered calling CEFC officials and threatening to withdraw Biden family support from future deals. Notably, my September 2020 report with Senator Johnson and our floor speeches from this year made public bank records and financial data that showed that Hunter Biden and James Biden profited from a $5 million wire from a company connected to CEFC in August of 2017, indicating that it could have been the money originally intended for SinoHawk. However, based on records, that money was not transmitted to the SinoHawk joint venture, rather it was transmitted to Hudson West III which could partially explain SinoHawk’s eventual failure.[4] As noted in our report and our floor speeches, the money from the wire was transferred from Hudson West III to Hunter Biden’s firm, Owasco, and James Biden’s firm, Lion Hall Group, apparently circumventing SinoHawk.[5]
Based on allegations provided to my office, the information provided by Mr. Bobulinski formed a sufficient basis to open a full field investigation on pay-to-play grounds; however, it is unclear whether the FBI did so and whether the information is part of the ongoing criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney Weiss.
The FBI also has a document within its possession that notes that then former Vice President Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden and his business associates at a conference in Los Angeles on May 2, 2017, and May 3, 2017. The meetings have been publicly disclosed; however, the fact that the FBI maintains documents referencing these data points has not been made public before.
Lastly, the FBI has within its possession a series of documents relating to information on Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and his business and financial associations with Hunter Biden. The documents in the FBI’s possession include specific details with respect to conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden. These documents also indicate that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in some of them. Based on allegations, it is unclear whether the FBI followed normal investigative procedure to determine the truth and accuracy of the information or shut down investigative activity based on improper disinformation claims in advance of the 2020 election, just as it did with Hunter Biden information that I wrote to you about on July 25, 2022.[6] It is also unclear whether U.S. Attorney Weiss has performed his own due diligence on these and related allegations.
These new whistleblower disclosures beg the question: in light of the allegations that I have brought to your attention, what have the FBI and Justice Department, to include U.S. Attorney Weiss, done to investigate?
Notably, the Justice Department and FBI have not disputed the accuracy of the allegations that I have made public since May 31, 2022. The Justice Department’s and FBI’s continued silence on these matters is deafening and further erodes their credibility. Simply put, enough is enough – the Justice Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter Biden investigation. With respect to the new – and numerous – legally protected disclosures that have been made to my office, please provide the following no later than October 27, 2022, so that Congress can perform an independent and objective review:
1. The full and unredacted FBI summary of Tony Bobulinski’s October 23, 2020, interview.
2. Was Tony Bobulinski’s interview summary placed within Guardian? Was it placed within an investigative case file?
3. The full and unredacted October 2020 document that lists a timeline of events associated with Hunter Biden’s business associates, foreign and domestic.
4. All records relating to the May 2, 2017, and May 3, 2017, meetings between Tony Bobulinski and Joe Biden.
5. All records,[7]including FD-71, FD-209a, FD-302, FD-794b, FD-1023, FD-1040a, FD-1057 and Guardian leads, from January 1, 2014 to the date of this letter that reference Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden and Joe Biden.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley
Ranking Member
Committee on the Judiciary
cc:
The Honorable Richard Durbin
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General
Department of Justice
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[2] At my direction, my staff have reviewed the unclassified records. [4] Chairman Charles Grassley, S. Comm. on Fin., and Chairman Ron Johnson, S. Comm. on Homeland Sec. and Governmental Aff. Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns 78 (Sept. 23, 2020) https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC%20-%20Finance%20Joint%20Report%202020.09.23.pdf; Floor Speech, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson Discuss Investigation into Biden Family Foreign Financial Entanglements - Part 1 (Mar. 28, 2022) https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/remarks/grassley-johnson-discuss-investigation-into-biden-family-foreign-financial-entanglements_-part-1; see also Floor Speech, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson Release Bank Records Tying Biden Family to CCP-Linked Individuals & Companies (Mar. 29, 2022), https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/remarks/grassley-johnson-release-bank-records-tying-biden-family-to-ccp-linked-individuals-and-companies; Floor Speech, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, The Biden Family Investigation – Part III: James Biden (Apr. 5, 2022) https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/remarks/the-biden-family-investigation_part-iii-james-biden. [7]“Records” include any written, recorded, or graphic material of any kind, including letters, memoranda, reports, notes, electronic data (e-mails, email attachments, and any other electronically-created or stored information),
calendar entries, inter-office communications, meeting minutes, phone/voice mail or recordings/records of verbal
communications, and drafts (whether or not they resulted in final documents). This definition applies to all requests for records in the questions for the record.
In other scandals, some are cheering on a deeper recession. Nick Beams (WSWS) explains:
An event took place yesterday which encapsulates the essential class dynamic at work in the deepening crisis of the global capitalist economy as inflation surges to its highest levels in four decades, interest rate hikes by the US Fed and other central banks continue, and the danger of world recession looms ever larger.
Following a Bloomberg report that a US recession is virtually certain in the next twelve months, according to its economic model projections, stocks on Wall Street surged for the second day in a row after taking a battering in the recent period.
The financial speculators are salivating at the prospect of a recession, knowing full well that the Fed’s policies are aimed not at curbing corporate price gouging and bumper profits, but at slashing workers’ wages.
The class content of the so-called “fight against inflation,” which is the mantra of the Fed and other central banks, was spelled out by former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn.
“We’re going to have to see job destruction if we’re really going to see inflation be curtailed,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Monday.
Cohn let the cat out of the bag so far as the “fight against inflation” is concerned, making clear it has nothing to do with the price hikes ripping apart living standards and that its central focus is only on one price: that of labour power, wages.
“We now have a smaller labour force population in the United States so businesses are having to pay workers more to attract them into the labour force which is inflationary. Wages go up and so this is inflationary,” he said.
This claim is a total falsification. As every economic report indicates, including the World Economic Outlook issued by the International Monetary Fund last week, wages have not kept pace with inflation, either in the US or the rest of the world.
The inflationary spiral is the outcome of the actions of the capitalist ruling classes. The refusal of governments around the world to undertake public health safety measures to eliminate COVID-19 from the human population, lest they adversely impacted on the stock market, set off the supply chain crisis.
The price hikes have been exacerbated by the US-NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine, the major increases in military spending by all governments and the speculative bubble created by the flow of ultra-cheap money into the financial system over the past decade and a half.
On top of this, there is rampant profit gouging by the food and energy giants and speculation by hedge funds and others in food, metals, energy and other basic commodities as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) made clear in a report issued earlier this month.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the big scandal continues to be the theft of money.
Henry Pope (OCCRP) reports:
An investigation by Iraq’s finance ministry discovered Sunday that US$2.5 billion dollars were stolen from a government tax commission account by five companies, in what amounts to one of the largest corruption scandals in the country’s history.
All together, taxpayer revenue totaling 3.7 trillion Iraqi dinars was embezzled from a government account at Baghdad’s Rafidain Bank—a state-owned bank and the largest in Iraq—between September 2021 and August 2022.
During this time, 247 cheques were cashed by five companies, three of which were formed just over a month before the scheme began, reported Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst.
The account’s intended purpose was to hold funds for “companies who held contracts with the public sector, to be repaid once projects are completed,” Jiyad explained.
“These amounts have been stolen by the companies through the cheques issued by the General Commission of Taxes instead of going to the real beneficiaries,” the internal probe concluded.
AFP notes:
An Iraqi investigative judge has questioned five senior tax officials over $2.5 billion in public funds that have gone missing, and more arrest warrants have been issued, authorities said on Tuesday.
An internal probe by the Finance Ministry in oil-rich Iraq has found that the money was withdrawn from the tax authority’s account at state-owned Rafidain Bank, the state news agency INA reported on Saturday.
Local media published a tax authority document showing the funds were withdrawn between September 2021 and August this year, transferred to the accounts of five companies using 247 checks, and then immediately withdrawn.
The Baghdad judge summoned five tax office officials, including the director-general, his deputy and a supervisor at the finance and control department, the supreme judicial council said in a statement Tuesday.
This scandal emerged days after Mohammed shia al-Sudani had been named prime miniser-designate and tasked with forming a government in 30 days.
The following sites updated:
