Category Archives: Federalist

Disney is going all-out in joining leftists June celebration of Pride Month, making same-sex themes central to a new Toy Story feature film spin-off and adding more than 100 hours of LGBTQ titles to family-targeted streamer Disney Plus.

After advance screenings, critics say animated space adventure Lightyear opening in theaters on June 17 takes queer representation to infinity and beyond, to quote USA Today, highlighting that a lesbian couple at one point [greets] each other with a kiss on the lips.

Following backlash over Disney creative executives discussing their ongoing efforts at queering childrens entertainment, it seems Disney has decided to dismiss the concerns of many conservative parents. That collective shrug in Hollywood could be missing the big picture. A Harris Poll released in late May ranking the nations Top 100 brands found that The Walt Disney Company dropped from 37th to 65th place in reputation just since last year.

Disneys about-face shows the reputational hit that comes when the public perceives you as being calculating rather than clear in what you believe in and stand for, said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. Disney also recently reported less-than-stellar streaming subscription growth.

Entertainment critic for faith-based outlet Crosswalk Michael Foust says the clash of cultural mores between Hollywood and faith-driven families has been building for years. Disney does not operate from a biblical worldview, so it is no surprise that it keeps offering content that frustrates many in the faith community, he stated via email.

Melissa Jacobs and her husband, Jeremy, raising seven children in St. Louis, canceled Disney Plus this spring. While the family has enjoyed shows like Bluey, along with Star Wars and Marvel films, she stated that the direction Disney was leaning prompted their decision.

Many of their programs no longer have a traditional family and instead highlight and celebrate queer, transgender, and homosexual characters, she stated. In many shows, kids are openly disrespectful to their parents. Its all contrary to what we are trying to teach our children.

The first Pixar production to hit theaters in more than two years, Lightyear is tied loosely to beloved Toy Story films. Its billed as young Andys favorite movie, the one that compelled him to cast aside his cowboy Woody in the original 1995 film.

Reading between the lines of some critics effusive praise, families get the plots general drift.Sent on a peacekeeping mission, space ranger Buzz and his co-pilot Alisha face off against aliens on a strange planet. When subsequent damage to their ship maroons them for years, stranded Alisha meets a female romantic interest and the two start a family together.

For the Jacobs family, fans of past Toy Story films, Lightyear wont be a summer outing to the multiplex. The mother of seven is author of Livin the Dream, which includes their story of adopting a daughter. She says the Bible guides their views on sex, marriage, and family.

As a mom, I can see clearly that there are needs my children have that only I can fill, stated Melissa. Meanwhile, there are needs they have that only their dad can fill. She added that single-parent friends of their family seek out support so their kids have both a mother-type figure and father-type figure involved in their lives.

Similarly, Foust, who is raising four kids with his wife in rural Illinois, observed cultural trends run counter to Chrisitan theology on marriage and sexuality. Hollywood may consider us strange for even questioning the content of Lightyear, but that shouldnt surprise us, said Foust. After all, 2,000 years ago the Apostle Peter reminded us that we are strangers and temporary residents in this world.

Two of the filmmakers behind Lightyear director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman are Toy Story franchise veterans who say theyre eager to make something exciting and awesome. MacLane says they didnt want the LGBTQ plotline to be a superfluous thing but an accurate representation.

If anyone is puzzled by this being the flick supposedly referenced in 1995s Toy Story, while reflecting cultural mores far left of the mainstream in that era, producer Susman explained: Though its the film Andy saw, we were still making it for todays generation.

Will many families forgo a much-hyped movie featuring favorite spaceman Buzz? For those who are Disney Plus subscribers, its merely the start of new additions to navigate during Pride Month.

In June, six seasons of Glee, three seasons of Love, Victor, and LGBTQ-themed Trevor: The Musical will be added to the streamers Pride Collection. (Last year, Pixars short Out with similar themes premiered.) Such a deluge of titles involving same-sex romance among minors could prompt some to readjust parental controls or bail on Disney Plus altogether.

Foust, an evangelical Christian, says believers uphold the dignity and worth of every person. Its praising sin to children that is problematic. We are to love our neighbors unconditionally while not being conformed to this world by the entertainment we consume, he stated.

Disneys leftist drift seems to be accelerating. As part of an initiative called Reimagine Tomorrow, Disney outlines its association with LGBTQ advocacy groups like GLAAD. Reporting on this initiative, the Los Angeles Times linked to a letter by current Disney employees who have chosen to remain anonymous.

As much as diversity and inclusion are promoted, the tomorrow being reimagined doesnt seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company, state these Disney cast members. This politicization of our corporate culture is damaging morale and causing many of us to feel our days with [Disney] might be numbered.

Several players in family entertainment, such as Angel Studios and GAC Family, are working to produce and distribute films and shows that appeal to families who object to Disneys direction.

This all reflects how entertainment continues to splinter to reach varied audiences, said Foust. More and more, it is obvious that if the faith community wants entertainment framed within a biblical worldview, the faith community alone must produce it.

Josh Shepherd covers culture, faith, and public policy for several media outlets including The Stream. His articles have appeared in Christianity Today, Religion & Politics, Faithfully Magazine, Religion News Service, and Providence Magazine. A graduate of the University of Colorado, he previously worked on staff at The Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family. Josh and his wife live in the Washington, D.C. area with their two children.

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Disney Doubles Down On LGBTQ Focus With 'Lightyear,' Others - The Federalist

FAIRFAX, Va. Inside Courtroom 5J here in Fairfax County Circuit Court, actress Amber Heard walked out of the courtroom alone last week, grim and stone-faced, after a jury delivered a stinging verdict. In a statement posted on Instagram, her ex-husband Johnny Depp wrote: Veritas numquam perit. Truth never perishes.

The verdict wasnt just against Heard for defaming Depp. It was a searing indictment of a sorry chapter in American justice: the illogical, unjust Believe Her industry that made Heard a poster girl for a corrupt movement determined to crush men and stamp out a keystone of our civil liberties.

The movement has other names, such as Me Too, Believe Women, Believe All Women, Believe Survivors, and Times Up. The defamation verdict exposes this multimillion-dollar industry of nonprofits, lawyers, corporations, lobbyists, and publicists who have weaponized victimhood and pithy jingles to destroy the fundamental concept of due process and foment injustice by exploiting the noble cause of womens rights.

This trampling of the rights of the accused has been carried out with the complicity of irresponsible media outlets that have included the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Glamour. They have littered their pages with lopsided narratives, character assassinations, andnow a jury confirmslies.

In the third row of the spectator gallery last week, Italian-born producer Giuseppe Mercadante, a local father, said the principle of innocent until proven guilty won. Over the past few years, he told me, Something else has prevailed that took us back to pre-Medieval times when the law was a mob chasing the accused.

Media outlets, including NBCs Today Show, CNN and CBS, continued their complicity in Me Too injustice, however, giving the microphone to Heard attorney Elaine Bredehoft as she did a shameless media tour, smearing Depp and the jurors. In addition, media outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone pressed a narrative that the verdict is a chilling symbol of misogyny that sickened survivors of abuse. Heards publicity team didnt return a request for comment.

In trying to understand how we got here as a society, I analyzed how the American Civil Liberties Unions PR, legal, fundraising, and artist engagement staff and Washington Post editors functioned as co-conspirators with Heard, publishing the 2018 op-ed with Heards defamation. Then, after staying overnight to witness Day 20 of the courtroom dynamics and leaving convinced that Heard had defamed Depp, I followed the breadcrumbs that a Hollywood agent, Claire Best, tracked after she noticed an abuse of power by Believe Her advocates. People are finally waking up to the victim entrepreneurship industry, Best said after the jury verdict.

Here are four phases in the Believe Her industry that brought us to this point. You can see the phases in more detail on my Substack.

In 1981, as women were dismantling barriers in the workplace, the National Womens Law Center, started as an initiative a decade earlier, was reorganized as a 501(c)3 to fight sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Heard was born into this new era in 1986.

In 2012, the law center registered a political lobbying group and in 2018 it launched the Times Up Legal Defense Fund with a powerful Democratic public relations firm, SKDK, to offer legal representation and public relations assistance to survivors of harassment and abuse. It attracted big bucks: The law center and its affiliates had $64.7 million in revenues and $101.7 million in assets for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, according to its 2021 financial statement.

An SKDK official declined comment. The National Womens Law Center didnt provide comment.

In June 1990, then-Sen. Joe Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act, later described as a landmark piece of legislation. It may have been written with good intentions, but the legislationand billions of dollars doled out in grants by the U.S. Justice Departmentlaid the groundwork for the fundamental flaw that led to the Depp v. Heard defamation: the false binary of women as victims and men as abusers.

In 1991, in my first years in the newsroom, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, breaking new ground for accusing men without a legal finding.

While training in 2003 as a volunteer for a domestic violence shelter, I was shocked by the anti-male narrative of the work. As a feminist who has advocated for womens rights in my Muslim community, I know as a woman, a survivor of domestic violence, and mother of a son that humanity is not served if defeating sexism hinges on demonizing men and boys.

Influential people in powerful positions developed strong ideas about how womens rights could be parlayed for votes. In 1993, while Heard was riding horses outside Austin, Texas, Democratic operatives including a future Biden consultant Anita Dunn cofounded SKDK. It became a PR machine for multimillion-dollar enterprises like Times Up, Black Lives Matter, and LOral (which later made Heard an ambassador).

In 2009, when Heard met Depp filming The Rum Diary, NPR and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit (where I worked at the time), started publishing investigative pieces on college sexual assault. The project included a package on allegations of rape from a woman, Laura Dunn, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In April 2011, as The Rum Diary was released, the Biden administration issued a Dear Colleague letter with the support of the activists in the industry, including Dunn and Michele Dauber, a Stanford University law professor. The letter advocated for preferential treatment for women making accusations on campuses under Title IX of the national Education Amendments of 1972 law. Dauber didnt return a request for comment.

New nonprofits emerged, like Know Your IX, in 2013. That year, a PhD student, Holly Jacobs, started Cyber Civil Rights Initiative to fight nonconsensual porn. That year another woman, Andrea Pino, alleged sexual assault at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her claims covered the airwaves yet were years later noted to have included implausibilities and inconsistencies. Pino couldnt be reached for comment.

In 2014, the White House released a report, Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action, with one mention of men and boys as victims. That year, Laura Dunn founded nonprofit SurvJustice Inc.

In an interview, Dunn, now an attorney, recognized, The gender narrative is very harming. I feel deep pain for male survivors who feel like they have been ignored. I dont gender survivors. She noted: I do believe in the public policy of believing survivors because we have to take it seriously when we have reports of domestic violence and rape. Our system is broken.

She said: Im supportive of due process as an attorney. Sometimes, justice cannot be achieved through the legal process.

In January 2015, a shocking case grabbed the headlines when Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted a young woman, first called Emily Doe, then self-identifying as Chanel Miller, whose family friend was Dauber. Turner was convicted of felony sexual assault.

The next month, thousands of miles away, Depp married Heard.

By November 2015, the new mantra was becoming a political slogan, with Hillary Clinton posting a message on Twitter: Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. The issue would become a galvanizing theme in Clintons race against Donald Trump in the next year.

In 2017, feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers wrote a seminal article, The Media is Making College Rape Culture Worse, chronicling the sloppy narrative of serial predators roaming free on college campuses and the policy changes that had enabled this hysteria.

It was into this backdrop that Heards marriage with Depp was falling apart. At one point in a recording played in court, Heard told Depp, I did not deck you. I f-cking was hitting you.

In May 2016, Heard filed for a temporary restraining order against Depp. She catapulted to a new role as a darling of the Believe Her industry. Depps lawyer, Camille Vasquez, said: Amber Heard took on the role of a lifetime. That of a victim of domestic abuse.

Heard landed on the June 2016 cover of People magazine with her eyes downcast and alleged injuries to her face, behind this headline: INSIDE THEIR TOXIC MARRIAGE. Jealous fights & accusations of violence.

In mid-November 2016, Heard read the victim statement from Emily Doe at the Glamour Women of the Year awards, posing for a selfie with honoree Dauber, the Stanford law professor, and actress Lena Dunham, another future lightning rod in the Me Too movement. Days later, Heard released a public-service announcement against domestic abuse, with ENews writing that Heards abuse allegations against ex-husband Johnny Depp made headlines earlier this year.

There were skeptics of this new justice, with Sommers taping a video about the death of the due process. A high-profile case also raised Believe Her doubts: a jury ruled that Rolling Stone engaged in defamation with a 2014 article on an alleged rape victim at the University of Virginia, who fabricated her story.

But now the Believe Her industry had a new political enemy: Donald Trump. Then, in October 2017, a culprit emerged: producer Harvey Weinstein. Me Too took off.

With the start of 2018, the Times Up movement launched, with none other than SKDK and its bevy of Obama and Biden administration supporters aiding its PR. The National Womens Law Center Fund LLC announced it would run the Times Up Legal Defense Fund, with SKDK partner Hilary Rosen a cofounder.

In its 2020 IRS 990 filing, Times Up Foundation posted $18.4 million in revenue, spending $1.9 million on the legal defense fund. Former Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett served on its board and former Michelle Obama chief of staff Tina Tchen received $721,744 from the organization and related groups, according to the 990.

In September 2018, the Believe Her juggernaut found momentum with rape accusations by Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh. Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a former Joe Biden press secretary working at SKDK, advised Ford.

Ironically, Heard shared a column on Bidens disastrous Anita Hill hearing in 1991, with the message: and we wonder why victims choose to remain silent.. #BelieveWomen #BelieveSurvivors. Who showed up in D.C. for Kavanaugh protests? Heard, who shared a photo with the hashtag #BelieveWomen.

On Nov. 6, 2018, ACLU communications staffer Gerry Johnson pitched an op-ed to Heard and her publicist, Gottleib, about what else? How survivors of gender-based violence, or GBV, were less safe under the Trump administration. Among the talking points: the alleged evil of Trumps attacks on Ford, Trumps Title IX policies, Congresss failure to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and, of course, Heards personal story, saying how painful it is as a GBV survivor to witness these setbacks.

That month, Heard landed on the cover of Glamour, with the headline, Heard is Nobodys Victim. In one photo, Heard held the book White Fragility. Then, on Dec. 12, 2018, Heard PR man Sean Walsh wrote to her, clearing the op-ed: I say send it off and damn the torpedoes ahead!

Six days later, the Washington Post published the fateful op-ed, with comments on Title IX, the Violence Against Women Act, and, of course, Heard as a domestic violence survivor. The ACLU hyped the piece, By Amber Heard, ACLU Ambassador for Womens Rights. In its 2020 IRS 990 filing, ACLU Inc. reported $170.9 million in revenues.

The narrative was set. One detail was missing: a conviction. This Believe Her industry could only come tumbling down if someone emerged to challenge it boldly. Depp became that person.

The hypocrisy of the Believe Her industry emerged in summer 2021, when Times Up chairwoman Roberta Kaplan who had stepped down as Heards attorney in the Depp case resigned after the New York attorney general alleged that she assisted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as he faced sexual harassment charges. The National Womens Law Center announced it wouldnt be using SKDK any longer as its PR team.

Back in Courtroom 5J, after the court clerk read the verdict, the spectator gallery broke into audible support for Depp. The ethnically diverse jury revealed that in the pursuit of justice, due process cannot be suspended.

The Believe Her industry wont let go easily of its darling, however. After the verdict was announced, Stanford lawyer Dauber, who has mocked Depp as a drunken, drugged fake pirate, shared a photo from the 2016 Glamour awards that launched Heard in the #BelieveHer industry, writing: #istandwithamberheard and with all survivors, without exception, period@LeaveHeardAlone.

Of course, to the Believe Her industry, there is an exception: Depp and any who defy their presumption of guilt. Fortunately, the verdict is in. Believe Her lost. Due process wins.

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Johnny Depp's Victory Deflates The Massive 'Believe All Women' Industry - The Federalist

Democrats rhetoric on guns doesnt match reality. The common sense gun control policies they say they want would just tinker around the edges of the problem of gun violence in general, and not stop mass shootings in particular. Even giving a generous benefit of the doubt to proposals such as an assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole, they would at best marginally reduce the number of mass shootings and their casualties.

For all of their rhetorical Sturm und Drang, such as accusations that Republicans have childrens blood on their hands, Democrats proposals would do little to nothing to stop, or even slow down, most mass murderers. Thus, unless they are stupid or faking their moral outrage, the lefts actual gun control agenda is much more radical than they usually claim.

They will use whatever outrage they can gin up to take what they can get now, then push for more. They are not, of course, the only political movement to employ this sort of incremental approach, but they are especially dishonest about it.

Charles Blow of the New York Times recently took the gun control movement to task for this duplicity, along the way admitting what we all know, which is that Democrat efforts to sound moderate on guns are lies. He acknowledges that what they (and he) want is a nonstop parade of laws, with new ones passed as they are deemed necessary, ad infinitum.

So yes, theyre coming for your guns. Fortunately, they will likely fail because Americans know we cannot trust the left to protect our families and communities.

Gun control is all about displacement. It seeks to scapegoat rural conservatives for the violence that is overwhelmingly a problem of Democratic-supporting urban areas. As Kevin Williamson recently observed:

The gun-control debate is first and foremost a culture-war issue for Democrats. There is a great deal of violent crime in the United States, and that crime is concentrated in big cities over which Democrats enjoy an effective monopoly of political power. The people who commit most of the murders in the United States and the people who most often die in those murders check a lot of Democratic-voter demographic boxes.

Gun control is also about blaming the disorder, violence, and nihilism of American life on guns, rather than on a corrupt culture. Having encouraged almost every policy and cultural change that has made America less virtuous and more violent, the left has no idea how to make America peaceful, other than piling more restrictions on guns. Violent crime thrives in Democratic-run cities, and the seeds of nihilistic terrorism perpetrated by mass shooters are most commonly cultivated in the soil of family and social decay.

It is the left that is letting violent criminals out on low, or no, bail. It is the left that excused and even cheered the riots of 2020. It is the left that refuses to secure our borders as lethal rivers of drugs flow into our communities. It is the left that rejoices in the destruction of the traditional family, even as family breakdown leads to more children being poor and abused, and as fatherless boys turn to crime.

It is the left that has torn down the moral wisdom of the ages, and is now trying to build a new morality out of half-baked race and gender theories rooted in third-hand Marxism. It is the left that is more interested in teaching children about gender than geometry.

The obvious political response to this deliberate cultural and social destruction is to vote Republican, warts and all. Parents and working families of all races are indeed fleeing the Democratic Party, which has been captured by leftist ideologues.

The next practical personal response to rising crime and cultural disintegration is to prepare to protect yourself, your family, and your community. The 2020 riots sold a lot of guns to normal people who realized their government might not protect them. And many gun owners decided to become dedicated to training for the same reason.

The obvious step after that is to organize. It is possible, even likely, that we are going to see continued increases in both general crime and targeted political violence. Democrats have shown themselves unwilling or unable to restrain crime in general, and the 2020 carnage showed that Democratic leaders will permit rioting left-wing paramilitary groups to destroy neighborhoods and rule cities at night. One need only compare the aggressive prosecutions of those involved in the Capitol riot to the lenient catch-and-release treatment of Antifa thugs to see how the left uses the power of the state to punish its enemies and reward its friends.

Furthermore, the response to the impending Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision has shown that Democrats are happy to sic mobs on their enemies, from Supreme Court justices to churches to crisis pregnancy centers. In response, conservatives should talk with friends and neighbors they can trust about how they might protect each other. Churches, I am sorry to have to say, need to step up their security plans. So do schools, crisis pregnancy centers, and other Christian ministries.

The more the left allows and encourages crime and social disintegration, the more the rest of us must prepare to defend ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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It's Past Time To Get A Gun And Prepare For Self-Defense - The Federalist

Ahead of Thursdays prime-time show-trial hearings for the Jan. 6 Committee, the panels vice chair, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, is soliciting campaign contributions from those subpoenaed by the witch hunt probe.

Megan Small, who was director of operations for the Trump campaign and was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee in September, published a Cheney campaign mailer on Twitter Monday requesting donations.

Hey [Liz Cheney], is it standard operating procedure on the Jan. 6 committee to ask subpoenaed witnesses for campaign contributions? Small wrote.

Small told The Federalist she received the mailer at her Florida address on May 21, calling the letter unsavory at best given the committees threats to refer those subpoenaed for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

[Cheney] has threatened to make criminal referrals to DOJ of those witnesses, Small said. So arguably the campaign contributions is being solicited not just from a witness, but from someone who may or may not be, at her discretion, referred to DOJ for criminal prosecution.

Former President Donald Trumps trade adviser Peter Navarro is the first among the more than 100 witnesses subpoenaed to face a DOJ indictment unsealed Friday. In April, the House of Representatives voted to hold Navarro in contempt of Congress for refusal to testify and turn over documents Navarro argues are protected by executive privilege. The House has also voted to hold a trio of other former Trump officials in contempt, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, and former adviser Steve Bannon. According to The New York Times, the DOJ has no plans to charge Meadows and Scavino, both of whom have similarly argued that compelled cooperation with the Jan. 6 Committee would violate executive privilege.

Small told The Federalist she spoke with the committee earlier this year.

Cheneys mailer sent to out-of-state residents comes as the three-term incumbent already possesses a major cash advantage in a competitive primary this summer. According to the latest data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Cheney still has more than $6.7 million in cash on hand of more than $10 million raised with less than three months left in the race. A Federalist analysis revealed a vast majority of her donations came from her true constituents in Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia rather than residents of Wyoming. Thousands have come from the same blue-dollar donors who bankrolled the Lincoln Project.

Cheneys Trump-endorsed primary challenger attorney Harriet Hageman, on the other hand, has just more than $1 million left in cash on hand out of more than $2 million raised, according to the FEC.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Liz Cheney Tries To Extract Campaign Cash From Subpoenaed J6 Witness - The Federalist

In just one week, The Washington Post publicly and spectacularly imploded. Instead of extinguishing the fire thats burning its already nonexistent credibility, the Bezos-owned media outlet is doubling down on its lie-ridden articles and supporting problematic staff like disgraced doxxer Taylor Lorenz, even as it goes down in flames.

The Washington Posts rough week started with a jury decision ordering Amber Heard, who described herself in a WaPo article manufactured by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a public figure representing domestic abuse, to pay her ex-husband some $15 million in damages for ruining his life.

Nearly four years after WaPo ran the defamatory article in which Heard insinuated accusations against Depp of sexual violence that the publication didnt bother to verify or ask Depp for comment about, there was no apology or a well-deserved retraction from WaPo for publishing lies. Instead, the paper that brags about being a light in a world where democracy dies in darkness half-heartedly added an editors note to the story simply stating what the jury found Heard liable for.

Shortly after the Depp-Heard trial implicated WaPo for publishing garbage masquerading as a win for Believe All Women, several Washington Post writers led by the publications unhinged national political reporter Felicia Sonmez, who essentially called for Kobe Bryant to be canceled shortly after his death, publicly dogpiled their colleague David Weigel for simply retweeting a joke about women being either bisexual or bipolar.

Weigel apologized for sharing the post but that didnt stop Sonmez from bombarding him and other WaPo reporters on Twitter and on a work Slack channel.

Sonmezs reaction prompted the publications leaders, who should have been focused on crafting an incredibly ashamed retraction for publishing Heards ACLU propaganda, to make an official call for peace within WaPos walls.

Sonmezs incessant blubbering on social media continued over the weekend, even after WaPo dropped everything to denounce harassment, discrimination or bias of any sort including what appears to be a retweet of an online quip.

At the same time Sonmez was trashing her employer, The Washington Posts disgraced doxxer Taylor Lorenz came under fire for lying about her attempts to contact two YouTubers known for covering the Depp-Heard trial for comment. Both YouTubers, LegalBytes host Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy, criticized Lorenz for refusing to do her job correctly but the editors at WaPo didnt bat an eye at her sleazy tactics until later.

Not only was the piece stealth-edited to hide Lorenzs journalistic failure, but the first attempt at fixing the piece wasnt even a sufficient correction. As a result, Lorenzs fireable offenses were couched with another, lengthier editors note appearing to endorse Lorenzs strategy of seeking comment after the article was published.

The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time, the editors note stated.

It was only towards the end of the note that WaPo admitted that secretly removing Lorenzs claim that she properly reached out for comment was a violation of our corrections policy.

Once again, WaPo failed to fully acknowledge how disastrous it was to publish such a story without following proper and nearly universal comment standards. Instead of chastising, demoting, or even firing their star internet columnist for her history of unethical coverage including doxxing the anonymous owner of LibsofTikTok, lying about being harassed by a Drudge Report editor, and falsely accusing people of using slurs WaPo keeps problematic reporters like Lorenz on board and on the front page.

Its a pattern that WaPo has gladly adhered to with their subpar editors and reporters who have published erroneous and shameful coverage and fact checks that are just a front for political propaganda.

Over and over, The Washington Post has lied about the Russia collusion hoax, guns, Democrats abortion goals, rising gas prices, and so much more. Without a moment of hesitation, WaPo has wrongfully smeared future Supreme Court justices with fake rape allegations, critical race theory opponents, schoolkids wearing MAGA hats, peaceful Trump supporters, and even Jesus.

When they get caught in their deceptions, WaPo simply stealth edits glaring misinformation out of its thorny articles and occasionally slaps an unapologetic statement at the top with hopes that everyone forgets their grave mistakes by tomorrow.

The Washington Posts credibility was already long gone, but if this week has shown its readers anything, its that you cant trust the corrupt corporate press to protect democracy. After all, democracy dies at the hands of publications like WaPo who are willing to sacrifice truth, lie, cheat, and scam their way through a news cycle to accomplish partisan goals.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Democracy Dies At The Hands Of The Washington Post - The Federalist

The Biden administrations commitment to dismantling southern border protections and Trump-era policies, most recently Title 42, has exacerbated the devastating border crisis. Last March, 172,331 illegal immigrants were encountered by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This April, CBP encountered a staggering 221,303 illegal immigrants on the southern border, reaching an unprecedented 1.06 million encounters for the first half of the 2022 fiscal year. DHS released 80,000 of those migrants into the interior of the United States.

This influx of undocumented immigrants has had drastic effects. Gov. Greg Abbotts Operation Lone Star program, created to fill the gaps created by the federal governments failures, has resulted in nearly 14,000 criminal arrests, 3,800 firearms apprehended, and more than 300 million lethal doses of fentanyl seized at the border. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reported in 2021 that Texas taxpayers paid more than $850 million annually to support services for illegal immigrants.

Rep. Chip Roy, who represents the 21st District of Texas, which includes a part of San Antonio, a leading hub for human trafficking, exemplified the increasing dangers for citizens as well migrants when he testified for the House Committee on General Investigating, explaining a recent San Antonio 911 call. The Bexar County Sheriffs office, Homeland Security Investigations, Texas DPS, and San Antonio Police Department all worked to search for a large tanker truck after a distressed migrant pled with a 911 dispatcher for help, explaining in Spanish that the passengers were trapped in the vehicle and dying, as they ran out of air. The immigrant reported 80 trafficking victims, none of which were located or saved.

Last year Border Patrol found 383 dead migrants, the highest toll in a decade. Texas ranchers, many of whom request to remain unidentified for fear of retribution by the Mexican cartels, have discovered an increasing number of dead migrants scattered around their properties.

Texas, along with the state of Missouri, has filed suit against the Biden administrations suspension of the MPP, Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly referred to as the Remain in Mexico policy. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 26 but even if the suspension is reversed, it will be too little, too late, to adequately protect and provide for Texans.

The Texas House Committee on General Investigating, chaired by Rep. Matt Krause, has proposed a creative route to resolve the border crisis plaguing our nation. Writing to Paxton, the chairman has requested Texas explore the legality of utilizing the State Self Defense or Invasion Clause of the U.S. Constitution to facilitate Texas to independently secure the border, as the Biden administration has undeniably failed to do so.

Prior to this appeal, the committee received testimony from many of Texas key players. Tracy Norris, major general of the Texas Army National Guard, explained that the federal government has provided no support for this mission [protection of the border] and even the Office of the Attorney General acknowledged the crisis immediately endangers our citizens and law enforcement personnel as the Biden administrations refusal to acknowledge the severity of the crisis has overburdened agents and staff, forcing the state to stand alone against this influx. The overwhelming consensus is the increasing necessity to act.

Krauses inquiry referenced the recent opinion by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, in which he claims the crisis at Arizonas southern border, inflamed by cartel and gang violence, satisfies a series of constitutional requirements that empower states to act autonomously.

Article I, Section X of the U.S. Constitution, known as the State Self Defense Clause, dictates that a state may not defend itself, without the Consent of Congress unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Justice Scalia postulated this clause leaves intact [States] inherent power to protect their territory.

Additionally, the Invasion Clause, Article IV Section IV ensures that The United States shall guarantee to protect each of them [each State] against Invasion. The contestation lies in whether the border crisis, thousands of migrants flooding into southern states daily, qualifies as an invasion.

Those who view constitutional jurisprudence with an originalist lens may turn to Johnsons 1785 English dictionary, which was widely popular as the Constitution was drafted; defining invasion as a hostile entrance upon the rights or possessions of another; hostile encroachment. Contrarily, the Cambridge Dictionary modernly defines an invasion as an occasion when a large number of people or things come to a place in an annoying and unwanted way. In Federalist No. 43 James Madison wrote that protection against invasion is not only against foreign hostility but against ambitious or vindictive enterprises.

Section IV contains no explicit limitation on the interpretation of invasion. Invasion can therefore be applied broadly to hostile non-state actors such as cartels and gangs.

Members of MS-13 have been arrested at the border in the past year, charged with crimes from drug possession to aggravated homicide. According to Customs and Border Protection data, the agency had arrested 2,424 criminal aliens by March of this year, coming just 14 arrests shy of the total arrests in 2020; crimes of those arrested include homicides, rapes, robberies, and deaths caused by driving under the influence, evidently qualifying as unwanted and a hostile encroachment.

Much of the uncertainty moving forward comes from the lack of precedent set by the courts, previously ruling in Barber v. United States that the Invasion Clause was a nonjusticiable political question. However, in Boyd v. United States Justice Joseph Bradley articulated the essence of the offence, an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment, was an invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property.

By delineating invasion of privacy as multifaceted, the southern border crisis can be applied. With Texans having their personal safety threatened, land and property burglarized, and ability to defend themselves limited, are they not facing a similar persecution?

As the court explained, the principles laid down in this opinion affect the very essence of constitutional liberty. Expressed in California v. United States, the situation involves matters of foreign policy and defense which are issues the courts have been reluctant to consider. The time for disinclination is over.

Lastly, The Import-Export clause of Article I Section X, Clause II, recognizes states sovereign authority when absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws. Abbott has directed DPS to conduct enhanced inspections of vehicles as they cross ports of entry into Texas, mitigating the transport of illegal goods; however, without the full ability to detain or deport, state agents are limited.

A team of Heritage Foundation experts has urged states to use all lawful tools to address the incalculable suffering caused by the southern border crisis. It is evident the atrocities occurring at the border constitute an invasion, threatening the safety, security, and prosperity of the American people. With the Biden administration failing to fulfill its duty to the American people, it is evident that the state of Texas must pull itself up by its bootstraps and utilize its constitutionally vested ability to defend its citizens.

Jordan Lamb is a government major at the University of Texas at Austin who has worked in conservative politics.

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Border States Need To Override Biden And Secure Their Own Borders - The Federalist

In an op-ed in last weeks Wall Street Journal, President Bidens ghostwriters outlined what the title of his column called a plan for fighting inflation. After reading the article, five simple words come to mind: Hold on to your wallet.

At best, the political messaging behind Bidens plan would do little to solve Americans pain. More likely, it would make the problem worse. Here are the major components of his agenda.

The column began with a series of statistics to claim that our economy faces these challenges [i.e., inflation] from a position of strength:

In January 2021, when I took office, the recovery had stalled and Covid was out of control. In less than a year and a half, my administrations economic and vaccination plans helped achieve the most robust recovery in modern history. The job market is the strongest since the post-World War II era, with8.3 million new jobs, the fastest decline in unemployment on record, and millions of Americans getting jobs with better pay.

Since I took office, families have increased their savings and have less debt The U.S. is in a better economic position than almost any country.

When taking credit for vaccine campaign birthed by the Trump administration, Biden should look to the words of Barack Obama: You didnt build that. As to the rest of the statistics, it stands to reason that restarting an economy that was shut down in spring 2020 would have resulted in job growth and prosperity, regardless of the president in the White House.

More to the point: At a time voters are already abandoning Democrats in droves over inflation, telling the American people they should quit whining about sticker shock every time they visit the gas station or the grocery store because other economic measures look fine seems both presumptuous (big surprise) and politically risky.

Homer Simpson famously ran for Sanitation Commissioner on the platform Cant Someone Else Do It? The slogan mirrors whom Biden thinks should lead the charge to tame inflation:

The Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation.

Congress could help right away by passing clean energy tax credits and investments that I have proposed.

Ive done what I can on my own to help working families during this challenging timeand will keep acting to lower costs where I canbut now Congress needs to act too.

So much for The Buck Stops Here.

In fairness, Biden has a point about the Federal Reserves responsibilities. He also has a point in highlighting the fact that his predecessor wrongly badgered the Federal Reserve in 2019 to cut interest rates, which would have overheated the economy while stoking inflation.

But, after re-nominating Jay Powell to a second term as Federal Reserve Board chairman, Biden shouldnt escape responsibility either. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently admitted that Powell and the Fed made a mistake by not acting sooner to curb inflation. So why on earth did Biden re-nominateand for that matter, why did the Senate re-confirmone of the key people who helped cause the inflation problem in the first place?

Biden also claims other solutions will curb inflation: We can lower the cost of child and elder care to help parents get back to work. He dare not say the name, but this and other references in the column allude to the $5 trillion Build Back Bankrupt bill.

But that legislation would raise, not lower, inflation, on two levels. First, subsidizing programs like elder care and health insurance only encourages companies to raise their prices to capitalize on government subsidies.

Second, the legislation the House passed last November used 10 years worth of tax increases to pay for spending programs that would last for only a few years. Because the bill front-loaded all its spending, the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the legislation would increase the deficit by roughly $276 billion this fiscal year, and another $217 billion next yearadditional stimulus that would only stoke the inflation fires further.

At a time when fighting inflationto say nothing of our $30 trillion in debtmeans Washington should cut federal spending, Biden keeps pushing his multi-trillion-dollar spending spree. That fact alone illustrates why Bidens plan will not succeed any time soon.

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Why Joe Biden's Inflation 'Plan' Will Only Make Americans More Miserable - The Federalist

Less than one week ago, a Washington D.C. jury acquitted former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann of lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker. Since then, pundits on both the left and the right have painted the verdict as an indictment of Special Counsel John Durham, suggesting his investigation into the perpetrators of Spygate is a bust.

This myopic view of the prosecution, however, ignores the many revelations exposed since the special counsel indicted Sussmann last September. Here are nine significant details learned from the Sussmann prosecution.

The special counsels indictment against Sussmann alleged he lied to Baker when presenting Baker data and whitepapers purporting to show a secret communication network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. While the trial focused on whether Sussmann had told Baker he was bringing the FBI that material on his own, when he was really representing the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe, the indictment and various court filings exposed the birth and nature of the Alfa Bank hoax.

The Alfa Bank hoax originated when cybersecurity expert April Lorenzen shared supposedly suspicious data with another tech expert, Joffe. Joffe then told his attorney, Sussmann, about the data, claiming it showed a back-door communications network between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Sussmann shared that information with lead Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias and employees of the investigative firm Fusion GPS.

Joffe then exploited both his relationship with other tech experts and his access to proprietary and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President. Among other things, Joffe pressured an executive at another tech company and a researcher at Georgia Tech to search broadly for data purporting to connect Trump to Russia. Not only was no connection found, but in emails disclosed in the case, Georgia Techs Manos Antonakakis told the others they needed to regroup and rethink their theory, noting hatred of Trump was their motivating factor.

Instead, Joffe forged ahead, drafting a whitepaper that hid the fallacies of the theories. Sussmann then peddled that data and whitepaper, along with two others, to the FBI and later the CIA. Meanwhile, Fusion GPS pushed the Alfa Bank hoax to the media, with the assistance of Georgia Techs David Dagon, whom Fusion GPS connected with reporters to supposedly authenticate the research and the conclusion.

While Joffe and his crew thought the whitepaper adequately masked the problems with the Alfa Bank theory, trial testimony revealed that the FBI quickly concluded the data did not support the existence of a secret communications network. In fact, after reviewing one whitepaper an agent noted it sounded 5150ishcrazy. According to prosecutors, one CIA agent went further, believing that the underlying data had been created.

In total, this evidence revealed not just that the Alfa Bank theory was wrong, but that those pushing it knew or should have known it was a hoax. And many individuals were involved in both the crafting and peddling of the hoax.

Many players took part in crafting and peddling the Alfa Bank hoax, but the bottom line proven during the Sussmann trial was that Hillary Clinton both paid for and personally okayed her campaign minions giving the press the fake story about a Trump-Russia secret communication network. Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified that Clinton personally greenlighted the pushing of that Alfa-Bank hoax, and Sussmanns acquittal cannot erase that fact.

Further, given that her campaign team sought Clintons personal approval to peddle the Alfa-Bank hoax to the media, logically one would expect that Mook or others close to Hillary likewise sought her permission to push other angles of the Russia collusion conspiracy, such as those emanating from the Christopher Steele dossier.

Clintons full involvement in the Russia collusion hoax, either directly or through her various Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS agents, remains shrouded from view, in part, because of the former presidential candidates abuse of the attorney-client privilege. The Sussmann trial exposed this reality when prosecutors moved for access to 38 documents of some 1,500 withheld from the grand jury based on claims of attorney-client privilege.

The court in the Sussmann case ruled that the Clinton campaign had improperly secreted numerous documents from prosecutors, and ordered Fusion GPS to turn the unprotected material over to the special counsel. But the courts order only addressed the wrongly withheld documents from the batch of 38 at issue. The court did not rule on how many of the approximately 1,500 remaining documents had likewise been withheld based on a misplaced reliance on attorney-client privilege. Hopefully, the special counsel will force production of those documents soon.

While the Sussmann prosecution focused on the Alfa Bank hoax, the prosecution also revealed a second crazy conspiracy theory pushed by Sussmann and Joffethis one to the CIA. In court filings, the special counsel detailed how, in February 2017, Sussmann used his connections to obtain a meeting with CIA agents.

During that meeting, in addition to providing the CIA with updated Alfa Bank allegations, the special counsel said Sussmann provided the agency thumb drives with separate data files for the YotaPhone by the location of the domain name system or DNS lookups, including one for Trumps Central Park apartment, one for the EOP, one for Spectrum Health Care, and one for the Trump Tower.

Sussmann told the CIA that the DNS data indicat[ed] that a Russian-made Yota-phone had been seen by [Sussmanns contacts] connecting to the WiFi from the Trump Tower in New York, as well as a from a location in Michigan, at the same time that then-candidate Trump was believed to be at these locations.

But the special counsels investigation revealed that Joffe and his crew had obtained more complete data about the Yota phones and that data showed the DNS lookups involving the EOP began at least as early as 2014, meaning before Trump came on the scene. The data provided to the CIA, however, omitted those DNS lookups from the material given to the CIA, misleading the agency.

Other court filings suggest an even more scandalous reality: that Trumps enemies were tracking his physical movements. This scenario seems likely given a CIA memorandum included in a filing by the special counsel. That stated Sussmann claimed, the phone was never noticed in two places at once, only around the Presidents Movements.

Sussmanns acquittal does nothing to lessen the significance of him peddling to the CIA fraudulent-by-omission data to prompt an investigation into the sitting president of the United States.

The special counsels prosecution of Sussmann, by necessity, revealed Joffes involvement in curating the Alfa Bank data and crafting the hoax. But the many pre-trial filings and subsequent testimony during the two-week Sussmann trial exposed Joffes involvement in several additional suspicious schemes.

First, in addition to working on the Alfa Bank hoax, Joffe took a lead role in devising the Yota phone conspiracy theory. Sussmann purportedly went to the CIA on Joffes behalf, albeit without naming Joffe as the client behind the intel. To cull the Yota phone data, Joffe also exploited his access to the data of the Executive Office of the President and pressured other cyber-experts to mine proprietary information to frame Trump.

A second significant revelation came during trial, when witnesses testified that Joffe had served as a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI during the relevant time period and until 2021, when he was terminated. Although Joffe was a CHS, instead of presenting his handler the supposedly suspicious Alfa Bank data, he used Sussmann to feed it to the upper echelons of the FBI. Simultaneously, Joffe provided another FBI contactagain, not his handlera similar warning about the supposed Alfa Bank-Trump connection, resulting in circular reporting of the hoax.

Joffe also bypassed his handler a third time, in March 2017. Thats when he used Sussmann to provide the Department of Justices inspector general information that a specific OIG employees computer was seen publicly in Internet traffic and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.

Given that Joffe used Sussmann on two prior occasions to directly feed the government misinformation about Trump and those connected to Trump, it would not be shocking to find that Joffe repeated the process when he had Sussmann approach the OIG on his behalf. For now, however, the public knows little more than those basics, although the special counsel also knows that Joffe remains a subject of investigation and there are still crimes for which the statute of limitations has yet to expire.

As noted, little is known about the details of the tip Sussmann conveyed to the DOJs OIG in March of 2017 on behalf of Joffe. What is known, however, is that the OIGs office withheld information from the special counsel about that meeting.

From various filings in the Sussmann case, Durhams team revealed that the DOJs OIG did not inform prosecutors that Sussmann had actually met with the inspector general about Joffes tip. The OIG also originally withheld some documents related to Sussmanns meeting with the IG about Joffes tip, only providing the material to the special counsel after Sussmann had told prosecutors of his meeting with the IG.

In addition to withholding information about Sussmanns meeting with the IG, during the proceedings in the Sussmann case, the special counsel discovered the DOJs OIG had two of Bakers cell phones, as well as other cell phones of individuals connected to the Russia collusion probe, but had not provided those to Durhams team. From this, the public learned that the DOJs OIG is not a team player.

The prosecution of Sussmann also exposed that the FBI is not our FBI, but the swamps. Bakers trial testimony made that clear when he was pushed by prosecutors on why he had only recently discovered an old email from Sussmann in which Sussmann texted that he wanted to meet on his own behalf. Baker told the special counsels team, Im not out to get Michael. This is not my investigation. This is your investigation. If you ask me a question, I answer it. You asked me to look for something, I go look for it.

Thats a shocking attitude for the former general counsel of the FBI to take, given that Baker alsotestifiedhe was 100 percent confident Sussmann said during their September 19, 2016 meeting that he was not representing a client. Baker also told the jury he likely wouldnt have taken the meeting if he knew Sussmann represented the Clinton campaign.

Rather than condemn Sussmann, Baker blamed himself for throwing Sussmann into a maelstrom and expressed outrage at how the congressmen investigating the investigation into Trump and his campaign behaved when they questioned Baker about his meeting with Sussmann. Baker displayed not even a sliver of the same distress over his friend lying to him.

Bill Priestap, another high-level FBI official during the relevant time frame, seemed similarly reticent in assisting the government in its prosecution of Sussmann.

And these are just those who testified at Sussmanns trial. The Crossfire Hurricane team, up to and including its leadersthen-FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andy McCabeas well as many of the FBI agents working for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller likewise proved themselves not out to find the truth, but out to get Trump.

The Sussmann trial revealed that Trump may be gone, but the FBI still belongs to the swamp.

The Sussmann prosecution also proved that the legacy media swims in the swamp. Emails exchanged between Fusion GPSs co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch exposed the symbiotic relationship between the Clinton campaign and reporters working for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, ABC News, Reuters, and more.

While anyone paying attention already knew the media was in on the Russia-collusion hoax, seeing the tag-team effort to destroy Trump in the black-and-white of emails provided indisputable proof of the corruption of the supposed standard-bearers of journalism. If those emails werent enough, the corrupt medias failure to cover the Sussmann trial until his acquittal provides a repeat of the lesson, teaching Americans that journalistic integrity no longer exists at major corporate outlets.

The next revelation discovered as a result of the Sussmann prosecution came unwittingly from the defense team when they disclosed three sets of handwritten notes taken during a March 6, 2017 meeting in which high-ranking FBI officials briefed acting Attorney General Dana Boente. (Boente stood in at the meeting for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had recently recused himself from the investigation.)

The FBIs McCabe, Priestap, and Counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok updated Boente and his staff during that meeting. As part of the discovery in the Sussmann case, the special counsel team provided Sussmann with notes taken by DOJ officials Tashina Gauhar, Mary McCord, and Scott Schools.

As Hans Mahncke and Stephen McIntyre previously detailed at The Federalist, those notes indicate that the FBI lied to the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting in numerous ways. For instance, the notes reference CROWN reporting, implying that the dossier was an official United States intelligence product when it was actually made-up stories and gossip and paid for by the Clinton campaigna fact the FBI knew from their [Igor Danchenko] interview.

Significantly, as Mahncke and McIntyre stress, the FBI had interviewed Danchenko in January 2017 and at that time Danchenko disavowed much of the intelligence Steele attributed to Danchenko in the dossier under the moniker Primary Sub-Source. Yet the March 6, 2017 notes omit any mention of Danchenko, suggesting the FBI concealed the crumbling of Steeles reporting from the DOJ.

The notes from the March 6, 2017 meeting, while discussing the Alfa Bank data, also omitted any reference to the fact that the FBIs cyber analysts who investigated the data Sussmann provided had concluded soon after receiving the data that it did not suggest any covert communications between Trump and Russia. Instead, the FBIs analyst concluded the whitepaper pushing the theory sounded delusional.

The FBI agents handling the Crossfire Hurricane investigation withheld these details and others from the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting. The notes further indicate Strzok lied to DOJ officials about the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, telling them that Trumps request for Russia to find Clintons missing 30,000 emails prompted the Australian diplomat to provide his tip about Trump aide George Papadopoulos to the U.S. embassy in London. But the Australian diplomat provided his tip before Trump made the joke.

Not only were these details either omitted or misrepresented during the March 6, 2017 briefing to the DOJ, the fourth and final FISA application to surveil Carter Page, dated June 29, 2017, continued to rely on the disavowed portions of the Steele dossier. And from the notes of the March 6, 2017 meeting, it now appears that the FBI agents in charge hold responsibility for the material omissions, as they either lied to, misrepresented, or withheld key facts from the DOJ.

What remains unclear, however, is what Durham intends to do about it. So, while we have learned much from the Sussmann prosecution, we still dont know whether Durham intends to hold the Crossfire Hurricane team responsible for their role in the scandal. However, with the five-year statute of limitations set to expire later this month on any lies that made their way into the final FISA application, we should know soon if the special counsel sees crimes in play that prosecutors can prove.

If not, justice may still come, just without jail. The Sussmann prosecution proved that, because even an acquittal cannot erase the historic record of the complicity of those involved in the worst political scandal of our countrys history.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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9 Big Things We Learned From The Michael Sussmann Prosecution - The Federalist

Gas prices are now more than double what they were when President Joe Biden took office just 18 months ago.

According to AAA travel agencys gas tracker, the nationwide average for a gallon of regular unleaded fuel reached a new record of $4.87 on Monday, a 101 percent increase from the $2.42 when Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. Prices for diesel also hit a new high on Monday at $5.65 per gallon.

Speaking in Japan last month, President Biden celebrated the high prices as an incredible transition while increasing his push for the Democrats energy agenda that prioritizes the suppression of oil and gas production.

When its over, well be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels, Biden said.

While gas prices approach a nationwide average of $5 per gallon, which could happen within days, analysts at JPMorgan Chase expect an average of $6.20 per gallon by August. California residents are already there, paying an average of $6.34 per gallon to fill up their tanks.

At the same time, Americans are coping with the fastest pace of inflation increases in four decades. According to the Department of Labor, overall prices are up 8.3 percent from last year, and energy prices are up more than 30 percent. Prices are only expected to keep rising as high energy costs, particularly for diesel, translate into higher prices across the economy due to the increased expenses of transportation and production.

Last week, Gallup revealed that Americans confidence in the economy is at its lowest point since 2009 after they have been shocked by daily record gas prices for nearly the entire month of May. The trend has only continued throughout June, with price leaps far higher post-Memorial Day than seen last month.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that coal prices are now on the rise after the capital-intensive industry has faced similar investment hurdles as oil and natural gas by virtue of their being fossil fuels. As electricity demand roars during dry summer heats waves, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that Americans across the country will face rolling blackouts.

Despite soaring energy prices, which are in large part a consequence of the administrations enthusiastic forfeiture of the energy dominance inherited from the Trump White House, Biden announced a major push to promote unreliable solar power to replace coal, oil, and natural gas on the power grid. The president invoked the Defense Production Act to manufacture new panels while waiving import tariffs on solar supplies for 24 months. Last month, CBS News revealed that Biden canceled more oil and gas projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Gas Prices Have More Than Doubled Since Biden Took Office - The Federalist

Despite previously claiming it has a standing process for reviewing questions about past awards, under the guidelines of which complaints are considered by an appointed committee, the Pulitzer Prize Board wont say if it is still reviewing the awards it granted to corporate media outlets guilty of promoting the Russia collusion hoax.

In his most recent letter, former President Donald Trump threatened to sue the board unless it discloses whether it plans to rescind the awards given to blatantly fake, derogatory, and defamatory news.

You have an obligation to share with me the status of that supposedly appointed committees review following its alleged standing process, Trump wrote on May 27.

Trump also said the board worked with the publications that have obsessively promulgated disgustingly false attacks against me and done all you can to destroy my reputation.

[H]ow can I get my reputation back? Trump asked.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for amplifying claims that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. Despite years of evidence proving that Hillary Clintons campaign paid for and peddled the narrative in an attempt to sic the government on her political enemy Trump, the Pulitzer Prize Board has yet to rescind any of its prizes for reporting that was based on the debunked Steele dossier.

As a matter of fact, the Pulitzer webpage still legitimizes the false reporting implicating Trump in a conspiracy to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections.

For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nations understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elects transition team and his eventual administration, says the page for the winning work.

The Pulitzer Board did not immediately respond to The Federalists request for comment.

Trump previously sent letters in October and November demanding that the board retract its awards for both The New York Times and The Washington Post, citing plenty of proof that the corporate media outlets claims of collusion were baseless then and are outrageous now.

For one, Igor Danchenko,one of the prime Steele dossier contributors, was charged with lying to the FBI about working with Clintons campaign. Clintons lawyer Michael Sussmann was also charged and later acquitted of similar crimes, but his trial uncovered definitive proof that Clinton agreed with the decision tofeedthe unverified and quickly debunked theory that Trump was communicating secretly with Russia through a back-door Alfa Bank channel.

The Washington Post deletedportions of two of its collusion hoax articles, slapped them with corrections, and completely changed the headlines to reflect the truth. The publication said it could no longer stand by the accuracy of those elements of the story.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Pulitzer Board Still Won't Rescind Prizes For Russia Collusion Hoaxing - The Federalist