Category Archives: FBI

Hunter is also in Violation of the Mann Act

Posted on by

Primer: The Mann Act (also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910) is a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” More here.

Hunter also used the prostitution expenses as deductions on his income tax filings…when EVER they got filed, if they did in the first place.

Primer #2: Chateau Marmont is a members only hotel

Chateau Marmont says 70% of its clientele are repeat guests.  Chateau Marmont says 70% of its clientele are repeat guests. Photo Credit: 4kclips/Shutterstock source

WT:

Hunter Biden once denied putting “a [expletive] hole in any wall” at the Chateau Marmont, a swanky California hotel where he was alleged to have been banned for drug-fueled antics.

An IRS agent said investigators retrieved the photos showing “the destruction” Mr. Biden wrought on the rooms.

Agents said they also obtained, through a search warrant, WhatsApp messages from Mr. Biden’s iCloud account. Among them is a striking instance in which he uses his father as a threat to a Chinese Communist Party member and business associate.

Agents said they interviewed prostitutes whom the younger Mr. Biden hired and flew out, sometimes paying for first-class tickets, to meet him and engage in sex — and then wrote off the payments as business expenses. Agents talked with the owner of a sex club to which Mr. Biden paid $10,000, which he then wrote off on his taxes as a golf club membership.

For a Washington that is often burned by too-good-to-be-true stories such as the Steele dossier, the revelations about Hunter Biden by two IRS criminal investigators may seem, well, too good to be true.

IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley and another agent, known in congressional committee documents as “Mr. X,” testified for hours, under oath, that they had the goods to back up what they were saying.

In some cases, they have already provided it to Congress, either in documents or by reading messages into the transcript of the testimony they delivered.

They spent years building a case against Hunter Biden on tax law violations. They said they interviewed 60 witnesses, issued subpoenas and followed the trail of his income, businesses and expenses, particularly those he tried to write off on his taxes.

That was why they were interested in the Chateau Marmont in the first place.

“So he deducted a lot for the Chateau Marmont, and he actually was blacklisted and thrown out of the Chateau Marmont. We actually have videos — or we have photos of the rooms and the destruction that was done to the rooms,” Mr. X told the House Ways and Means Committee on June 1.

Mr. Shapley said they were investigating Mr. Biden’s 2018 tax return, which he didn’t file until 2020, in which he was writing off business expenses such as $25,000 to a girlfriend and $10,000 for a “golf membership.”

“We’ve talked to the person that owned that sex club, and they confirmed that he was there,” said Mr. X. “And the guy has to pay $10,000, and the girl — whoever is referring him there doesn’t have to pay anything. So that was deducted on the tax return.”

One woman whom Mr. Biden labeled as his West Coast assistant was part of the sex club situation, the agent said.

“Some ended up being his girlfriends. So they all kind of morphed and changed. So I want to be accurate in how I represent them. But there were a lot of females that I believe he was having sexual relationships with that I ended up interviewing,” said Mr. X, adding that the women were being paid for sex.

He said the Justice Department had been compiling data on cases in which Mr. Biden had prostitutes cross state lines in violation of a federal law known as the Mann Act.

“I know there was an effort at some point to compile them, but I don’t know what ultimately happened with them,” Mr. X said.

The write-offs weren’t mistakes, the agents said. They saw Mr. Biden’s highlighting of his bank statements where he was picking what exactly he wanted to deduct and what he wouldn’t deduct.

It was so bad that his accountants, as if to distance themselves from the factual claims on the forms, made him sign a representation letter, in which he tells his tax preparers that all the income and deductions he is reporting are accurate.

“I’ve never seen that in my career,” Mr. X told Congress.

The IRS agents, in addition to the iCloud account, also gained access to QuickBooks accounts and a Dropbox account and retrieved data from the laptop that Mr. Biden left at a Delaware repair shop.

The agents revealed that the laptop was actually three pieces — a laptop, a hard drive and another external hard drive. They were in the FBI’s hands in 2019, and the bureau had verified that the data was Mr. Biden’s by November that year.

That was nearly a year before high-level former intelligence officials, some from the FBI, along with Hunter’s father during a presidential debate, dismissed the laptop as Russian misinformation amid the heat of the 2020 campaign.

iPhone messages were on the hard drive, but they were encrypted. It wasn’t until agents found a business card with the password that they were able to gain access, Mr. Shapley said in a set of Oct. 22, 2020, notes detailing the timeline of the laptop.

The notes were entered into the committee’s transcript of his testimony.

After the testimony was taken by the committee but before its public release, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors and the prosecution agreed not to ask for prison time. Another charge, a gun felony, will be resolved with a diversion, which means that if Mr. Biden keeps his nose clean while on probation, the charge will be dropped.

The agents’ work can’t definitively answer whether Hunter Biden should be facing more serious criminal charges, but it does give the public an unparalleled look at some of the evidence prosecutors had in hand when they cut the deal.

Hunter Biden has a court date scheduled for late next month, when a federal judge will decide whether to bless the deal.

Dean Zerbe, a leading IRS whistleblower lawyer who is serving as Mr. X’s attorney and who used to serve as tax counsel for the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said it was striking to have two career agents with years of experience testify to essentially the same pattern of facts.

“We never had anyone of this stature coming forward from the IRS to speak to us about problems,” he said, citing his years on Capitol Hill. “That alone sets these guys apart.”

The testimony was released Thursday and set social media afire. President Biden’s defenders blasted the two agents for delivering a “fairy tale” or a fabrication. Some questioned the existence of the emails that the agents, under oath, had read to the committee.

Former MSNBC host turned podcaster Keith Olbermann opined that the agents had “no evidence” to back up their claim that Attorney General Merrick Garland hamstrung the investigation.

Christopher Clark, Mr. Biden’s attorney, issued a statement saying there were “serious questions” about the WhatsApp message where Hunter Biden used his father’s goodwill as a bargaining chip with a Chinese business associate.

The WhatsApp message may be the most explosive part of the testimony the Ways and Means Committee released last week. It suggests that Hunter Biden made a practice of using his father, at the time the former vice president was pondering his own presidential bid, as a threat.

Mr. Shapley said agents obtained it through a search warrant against Hunter Biden’s iCloud account.

The White House didn’t address whether President Biden was present when Hunter Biden sent the message but insisted he was not involved in his son’s transaction with Henry Zhang, the Chinese business associate.

“The president was not in business with his son,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Mr. Biden, asked Monday by reporters whether he had lied about any business dealings with his son, replied “No.”

Mr. X said Hunter Biden had tax issues dating to the early part of the century, including filing late and owing massive bills.

He said his investigation, which began in 2018, covered 2014 through 2019. He said charges should have been brought for each year. Those included failure to timely file or to pay taxes in 2016, 2017 and 2019; failure to timely pay in 2015; filing a false return and evasion of tax assessment in 2014; and failure to timely file and pay tax, filing a false return and evasion of tax assessment in 2018.

The 2014 and 2018 charges rose to the level of felonies, Mr. X said.

Hunter Biden did begin making $10,000 monthly payments on his delinquent taxes in 2017, in what the IRS investigators called an arrangement with his tax team. He stopped making the payments on March 5, 2018.

“There’s an actual email where he asked how long he can go without paying his taxes,” said Mr. X said, pointing out that Hunter Biden earned $2.4 million from Hudson West III, a firm with connections to Chinese money, but he “can’t make the $10,000 payment he was making on his taxes.”

The Hunter Case was Titled ‘Sportsman’

Posted on by

(this is long and complicated but keep going…)

FNC: The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the investigation of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden.

According to Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., that testimony “outlines misconduct and government abuse at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation of Hunter Biden.”

“The allegations point to a steady campaign of: unequal treatment of enforcing tax law; Department of Justice interference in the form of delays, divulgences, and denials, into the investigation of tax crimes that may have been committed by the President’s son; and finally, retaliation against IRS employees who blew the whistle on the misconduct,” the committee said Thursday.

“Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging, and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes,” Smith said.

According to testimony released by the committee, one whistleblower, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley Jr., said decisions in the case seemed to be “influenced by politics.”

“Whatever the motivations, at every stage decisions were made that had the effect of benefiting the subject of the investigation,” Shapley said.

“These decisions included slow-walking investigative steps, now allowing enforcement actions to be executed, limiting investigators’ line of questioning for witnesses, misleading investigators on charging authority, delaying any and all actions months before elections to ensure the investigation did not go overt well before policy memorandum mandated the pause. These are just only a few examples,” he added.

Shapley, who oversaw the IRS probe into the president’s son, said the IRS obtained a WhatsApp message dated July 30th, 2017, from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, who the New York Post previously reported is a Chinese Communist Party official and CEO of Harvest Fund Management.

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight” Biden wrote. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Shapley testified that communications like that message “made it clear we needed to search the guest house at the Bidens’ Delaware residence where Hunter Biden stayed for a time.”

However, Shapley testified that Assistant United States Attorney in Delaware, Lesley Wolf, told him “optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant.” Read more here.

There is also the New York Post item that includes:

*The first son was given the code name “Sportsman” by investigators.

*Delaware US Attorney David Weiss sought to bring federal charges against Hunter, 53, in the Central District of California and in Washington, DC, last year and was denied both times by Biden-appointed US attorneys Martin Estrada and Matthew Graves, respectively.

*According to the second whistleblower, who has remained anonymous, the investigation covered the years 2014 through 2019, during which Hunter and his “associates” received approximately $17.3 million from Ukraine, Romania and China — with the first son alone scooping $8.3 million. Keep reading here. 

But how about a storage unit?

 

Hey Merrick Garland, the American people are holding on line 3 asking why you lied…

The Clop Ransomware Gang Have Struck State, Federal Agencies and Hospitals

Posted on by

It was several days ago that the first reports started to surface and as CISA/FBI issued warnings, the target list/victims continues to expand.

All attributions so far point to an Russian entity with history on this and those attributions do  not come from the Federal government but rather outside cyber expert companies across the country.

Clop ransomware gang starts extorting MOVEit data-theft victims source and expanded details

So, anyone remember when President Biden gave a list of entities that were completely off limits to cyber attacks? Remember?

Well it was exactly a year ago this month…

There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof. Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21): Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience advances a national policy to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure. This directive supersedes Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7.

Click here for the full description of the list. 

Meanwhile, the victims of this cyber attack related to MoveIT and CLOT include:

Reported by TechTarget:

Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri state governments are among a growing list of organizations attacked via a critical flaw in Progress Software’s MoveIT Transfer product.

Progress Software on May 31 detailed an SQL injection bug in its managed file transfer (MFT) software MoveIt Transfer. Progress urged customers to immediately apply mitigations for the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-34362, while it worked on a patch, which was released later that day. But as security vendors reported soon after, the critical bug was already under active exploitation in the wild.

A wave of organizations have disclosed data breaches in the wake of CVE-2023-34362 coming to light. Some of the early major names affected by the MoveIT flaw included the government of Nova Scotia, Canada; HR software provider Zellis; the BBC; British Airways; and British retailer Boots.

Several other organizations have disclosed compromises since that initial wave, including U.K. broadcast regulator Ofcom and networking vendor Extreme Networks. Multinational accounting firm Ernst and Young was also reportedly breached via the critical flaw. Ernst and Young did not reply to TechTarget Editorial’s request for comment, but the BBC said it received confirmation of a data breach from the firm.

Additionally Johns Hopkins University Hospital got hit as well as British Airlines. 

CNN adds information to the report:

A Russian-speaking hacking group known as CLOP last week claimed credit for some of the hacks, which have also affected employees of the BBC, British Airways, oil giant Shell, and state governments in Minnesota and Illinois, among others.

The Russian hackers were the first to exploit the vulnerability, but experts say other groups may now have access to software code needed to conduct attacks.

The ransomware group had given victims until Wednesday to contact them about paying a ransom, after which they began listing more alleged victims from the hack on their extortion site on the dark web. As of Thursday morning, the dark website did not list any US federal agencies.

The episode shows the widespread impact that a single software flaw can have if exploited by skilled criminals.

The hackers – a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 – in late May began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion.

Progress, the US firm that owns the MOVEit software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

The 1023 Redactions Show 17 Audio Tapes of Joe and Burisma

Posted on by

Primer:Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the “foreign national” involved in the alleged “criminal bribery scheme” detailed in the FBI form, and Zlochevsky referred to Joe Biden as the “big guy” during a conversation several years before the June 2020 date of the bureau document, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner.

Hoorah again for Senator Grassley. The Director of the FBI continues to remember that Senator Grassley has seen the whole 1023 form, yes the un-redacted version. So, it appears the Republicans are going on the offense and Grassley took to the Senate floor to announce for the official record the 17 tapes that were used by the top executive at Burisma as an insurance policy. What kind of policy is unclear but for sure there was a lack of trust from the outset.

But read on…

JTN:

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday announced that the foreign national who allegedly bribed then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter kept recordings of his conversations with each as an “insurance policy.”

“The 1023 produced to that House Committee redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings,” Grassley said on the Senate floor. Fifteen audio recordings include conversations between him and Hunter Biden while two include conversations between him and Joe Biden.

“These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot. The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden,” he continued.

A source familiar with the matter told Just the News that the FD-1023 memorializes the conversation between the Burisma executive and the FBI’s confidential human source in which he told the source he was in possession of the recordings. Those recordings are not included in the record, however.

In his remarks, Grassley pointed to the FD-1023 form that members of the House Oversight Committee were recently permitted to view by the FBI, but noted that the bureau still redacted parts of the unclassified document.

“More than that, the FBI made Congress review a redacted unclassified document in a classified facility. That goes to show you the disrespect the FBI has for Congress,” he added (emphasis original).

The FD-1023 includes allegations from a confidential human source that the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board in order to use his father’s influence to stifle an investigation from then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin into the firm. Shokin was removed from his post in 2016 and the FD-1023 indicates that two Biden family members received $5 million each for their trouble.

***

The contents of the form last week, the FD-1023 form, dated June 30, 2020, is the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, starting in 2015. (Obama knew since Biden was tasked with the Ukraine portfolio)

Grassley said the recordings were “allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot.”

“The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden,” Grassley said.

Grassley demanded answers on “what, if anything has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?”

“The Justice Department and FBI must show their work,” Grassley said. “They no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

The FBI brought the document to Capitol Hill last week after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed it last month. The FBI briefed Comer and committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., on the form in a SCIF on Capitol Hill, but did not turn over the document. Comer threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress.

Antiquities Bust Highlights Trafficking of Cultural Heritage

Posted on by

Low risk and high profits…

From Interpol in part:

Every June and December, we highlight the most wanted works of art through a poster that is distributed to countries.

50b_WOA-poster

The Soufan Center:

Police in Italy recently broke up a major international antiquities trafficking ring, seizing more than 3,500 ancient artifacts and arresting 21 people across multiple locations, in late May. The 21 detained suspects – 30 more remain at large – face charges that include criminal conspiracy, theft, and the illegal export of goods, according to a special unit dedicated to combatting the illicit trafficking of cultural property. The investigation by the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, also known as the Carabinieri “Art Squad,” began last fall and uncovered several sites in southern Italy associated with the trafficking ring, including illegal dig sites and operational bases. During raids on the locations, police found ancient ceramics, jewelry, miniatures, and hundreds of bronze, gold, and silver coins dating from the 4th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. According to the police, the items have “inestimable historical, artistic, and commercial value.” Authorities also recovered excavation tools as well as documentation of illicit transactions in Italy and abroad. The criminal operation involved illicit actors at almost every stage of the process, including grave diggers, “fencers” (individuals who knowingly buy the stolen art to resell for a profit), and exporters (who facilitate sales of illegally sourced relics to auction houses and buyers abroad). Italy has taken a leading role on the issue of cultural heritage trafficking in the United Nations and more broadly.

The operation, which has been heralded by the Carabinieri and Italy’s Minister of Culture as a resounding success, starkly displays not only the vulnerability of ancient Italian artifacts to traffickers, but also the financial incentives that drive illicit actors to exploit cultural heritage more broadly. The estimated worth of the transnational trade in cultural heritage trafficking ranges from several hundred million to billions of dollars annually, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. Confidentiality, challenges in documenting provenance, the use of intermediaries, and inconsistent due diligence practices all contribute to the illegal trade. Moreover, archaeological sites and artifacts in countries with armed conflict, such as Iraq and Syria, are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, as the chaos of war can enable illicit actors, including terrorists, to illegally obtain, circumvent due diligence practices, and, ultimately, profit from the sale of antiquities abroad. Islamic State’s exploitation of cultural heritage has helped finance the group’s activities and strengthened its ties with transnational organized crime. In response to this threat, the UN Security Council unanimously voted to adopt Resolution 2347 in 2017, warning that any trade involving ISIS, Al Nusra Front, or Al-Qaeda affiliates could cons­­­titute financial support for sanctioned entities.

Beyond the financial incentive, illicit actors have targeted and exploited cultural heritage to further their agendas – either by validating their narratives or providing financial gain – and to marginalize and stigmatize communities. The 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban, the 2014 destruction of the Sukur cultural landscape in Nigeria by Boko Haram, Islamic State’s destruction of historical and cultural sites and works of art in Palmyra, Syria, and the destruction of mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali, by Ansar Dine and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb all exemplify how terrorist groups target cultural heritage to strengthen their narratives. In doing so, these groups may seek to destroy a community’s collective cultural identity by targeting sites that the attackers might deem idolatrous to validate their own narrative, or they may target sites that are an integral part of the cultural or religious life of the community to subjugate their victims. Under the Rome Statute, these actions constitute war crimes. They have been prosecuted as such by the International Criminal Court. In 2016­­, a case was brought against a member of Ansar Dine for intentionally directing attack against religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu. In post-conflict contexts, the destruction of cultural heritage can hinder post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding efforts.

Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine highlights the role that state actors can play in the destruction of cultural heritage, and how the tactic can be used to obliterate a community’s collective identity. As of May 31, 2023, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had verified that over 250 sites in Ukraine had been damaged, with over 150 partially or totally destroyed, since the beginning of the invasion. These sites include religious sites, museums, monuments, libraries, and an archive. A 2022 New York Times investigation previously identified 339 cultural sites that sustained substantial damage, both as collateral damage and as a result of intentional targeting by Russian soldiers or pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine’s minister of culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, told reporters last fall that almost 40 museums in Ukraine have been looted of artifacts by Russian soldiers. One of the looted items, a 1,500-year-old tiara dating back to the rule of Attila the Hun, is one of the world’s rarest and most valuable artifacts. By targeting cultural heritage in the conflict, Moscow appears to be intentionally working to eliminate Ukrainian cultural identity. According to the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Alexandra Xanthaki, the invasion’s aim has been not merely the capture of territory, but “a gradual destruction of a whole cultural life.” She also said that “one of the justifications of the war is that Ukrainians don’t have a distinct cultural identity.” Particularly since the lead-up to the war and in the year since, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly called Ukrainian nationhood and culture a fiction, claiming the country is rightful Russian territory that was improperly given statehood during the Soviet era. Russian state media has published propaganda calling for Ukraine’s total elimination. The role of state actors in the destruction of cultural heritage further complicates protection efforts, as states have often facilitated prevention, advocacy, documentation, and transitional justice efforts, and, as UN Security Council Resolution 2347 stresses, have the primary responsibility to protect their cultural heritage.