Biden’s Connection to no-bid Contract for Endeavor

Posted on June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 by Denise Simon

Hat tip: On January 20th, 2021, the very day President Joe Biden took the oath of office, Endeavors put out a news release announcing the hiring of Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official who also served as a Biden transition advisor on Homeland Security issues.

Andrew Lorenzen-Strait landed his job at Endeavors (formerly Family Endeavors) in January straight off the Biden transition team following a stint with one regional Lutheran refugee contractor, and a little over six months at LIRS, the national organization.

He had spent years in the federal government, at ICE in fact, before hitting on this likely lucrative gig.

FranchiseBlast works with nonprofit Endeavors to enhance ...

EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office is evaluating a multi-million dollar contract awarded to a Texas company that employs a former Biden transition official, multiple sources with the probe confirm to Fox News.

A DHS IG official tells Fox News the contract, with the San Antonio-based nonprofit Endeavors, is the subject of an ongoing evaluation to look at how “ICE plans to house migrant families in hotels, and how ICE selected a contractor to implement these plans.” The Formal title of the probe is, “ICE’s Contract to House Migrants in Hotels.”

Tens of thousands of migrants are crossing the southern border every month, with nearly 180,000 encountered by Customs and Border Patrol along the Southwestern Border in April 2021.

Thousands of those migrants are now being housed in hotels, thanks to Endeavors. The company recently landed a couple of massive government contracts worth upwards of a half-billion dollars.

On January 20th, 2021, the very day President Joe Biden took the oath of office, Endeavors put out a news release announcing the hiring of Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official who also served as a Biden transition advisor on Homeland Security issues.

STEPHEN MILLER CALLS OUT BIDEN FOR $87M MIGRANT HOTEL CONTRACT: THIS ‘LOOKS CORRUPT’

Less than two months after Lorenzen-Strait’s arrival, federal records show endeavors entered into a no-bid contract with the Department of Health and Human Services for up to $579 million and another no-bid with Homeland Security for $87 million.

“This is a no-bid contract, and those should be used in only the most extraordinary circumstances,” said Tom Jones of the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative-leaning watchdog organization. “It’s typical and it’s terrible. Both sides do it. It’s why we have a massive budget deficit and a debt going through the roof…There’s scumminess and swampiness on both sides of this but we need to root that out.”

Endeavors declined to answer questions about the contracts but in a statement to Fox News called Lorenzen-Strait “a valued leader on the Endeavors team. He is a recognized expert in migrant child and family welfare who consulted with a variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations after he left his career in federal government in May 2019”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to answer our specific questions about the scope of its contract with Endeavors but wrote: “The border is not open, and individuals continue to be expelled under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) public health authority. The families that come into ICE custody will be housed in a manner consistent with legal requirements for the safety and well-being of children and their parents or guardians.”

The Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra over concerns about the no-bid nature of the contract, for Endeavors, which is sometimes referred to as Family Endeavors.

Zuckerberg Infected Voting Integrity

Posted on June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 by Denise Simon

Founderscode wrote about this December of 2020 in detail.

RCP, in part: In the months leading up to November’s election, voting officials in major cities and counties worked with a progressive group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its allies to create ballots, strategically target voters and develop “cure” letters in situations where mail-in ballots were in danger of being tossed out.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, provided millions of dollars in private funding for the elections that came from a $350 million donation from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The CTCL gave “COVID-19 response” grants of varying amounts to 2,500 municipalities in 49 states.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg pledges $300M to support 'safe ...

In exchange for the money, elections divisions agreed to conduct their elections according to conditions set out by the CTCL, which is led by former members of the New Organizing Institute, a training center for progressive groups and Democratic campaigns.

A CTCL partner, the Center for Civic Design, helped design absentee ballot forms and instructions, crafted voter registration letters for felons and tested automatic voter registration systems in several states, working alongside progressive activist groups in Michigan and directly with elections offices in Georgia and Utah.

Still other groups with a progressive leaning, including the Main Street Alliance, The Elections Group and the National Vote at Home Institute, provided support for some elections offices.

“COVID-19 response” grants of varying amounts to 2,500 municipalities in 49 states.

Center for Tech and Civic Life

Facebook, with the CTCL, was also part of the effort, providing a guide and webinar for election officials on how to engage voters. Included were directions to report “voter interference” to Facebook authorities. The company also provided designated employees in six regions of the U.S. to handle questions. Together, the groups strategically targeted voters and waged a voter assistance campaign aimed at low-income and minority residents who typically shun election participation, helping Democratic candidates win key spots all over the U.S.

The little-explored roles of CTCL and other such groups emerged in emails and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations and public documents secured by conservative litigants and groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has filed more than 800 public records requests with elections offices accepting the grants.

Previously, the Zuckerberg-funded effort has been described in generally positive terms, notably when NPR reported in December on “How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election” — in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s doubts about the legitimacy of the process and “Congress’ neglect.”

In 2018, RCI reported that a New York University School of Law program funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg had placed environmentally minded lawyers in the offices of Democratic state attorneys general to challenge Trump administration policies. And examples of private efforts to steer cash-strapped public education are numerous, from the Koch charities on the right to more recent race-conscious programs on the left emphasizing the legacy and centrality of white racism in society.

Zuckerberg did not respond to an emailed request from RCI for comment. In a post-election interview, he praised Facebook’s security work during the election and singled out its policing of “misinformation.” He noted working with polling officials to watch for information that might lead to “voter suppression” and said Facebook had strengthened its enforcement “against militias and conspiracy networks like Q-Anon.”

Facebook has banned Trump from its platform and has delisted individuals – many of them conservatives — for espousing views about the election that it insists are “misinformation.”

***

All of this and more is the reason Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis and other governors are reworking voter integrity law. Texas is the most recent to address the issue and may call a special legislative session to establish new voting laws.

Beware of Russian Influence on Vaccine Disinformation

Posted on June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 by Denise Simon

It is additional definition of the cyber war…

Operatives at the behest of Moscow have never passed up the opportunity to exploit a crisis in the Western world. It has gone on for years, back to the days of the KGB, now know as the SVR.

Opinion | Operation Infektion: A three-part video series ... Yet, does media keep making the same mistakes?

Readers and researchers must validate the sources, all of them and check them often. Big media has fallen victim as well and some make corrections while others don’t bother.

Even CNN has admitted as much –>

Washington (CNN)Online platforms directed by Russian intelligence are spreading disinformation about two of the coronavirus vaccines being used in the US, a State Department spokesperson confirmed to CNN on Sunday.

The agency’s Global Engagement Center identified three Russian outlets — News Front, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review — that are spreading not only misinformation about the virus, but also regarding “international organizations, military conflicts, protests; and any divisive issue that they can exploit,” according to the spokesperson.

“These sites all vary in their reach, tone, and audience — but they all are spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation. The State Department’s finding of a link between these sites and Russian Intelligence is a result of a joint interagency conclusion,” the spokesperson said.

In part:

French and German YouTubers, bloggers and influencers have been offered money by a supposedly UK-based PR agency with apparent Russian connections to falsely tell their followers the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is responsible for hundreds of deaths.

Fazze, an “influencer marketing platform … connecting bloggers and advertisers”, claimed to be based at 5 Percy Street in London but is not registered there. On Tuesday, it temporarily closed its website and made its Instagram account private.

The agency contacted several French health and science YouTubers last week and asked them, in poor English, to “explain … the death rate among the vaccinated with Pfizer is almost 3x higher than the vaccinated by AstraZeneca”.

The influencers were told to publish links on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok to reports in Le Monde, on Reddit and on the Ethical Hacker website about a leaked report containing data that supposedly substantiates the claim.

The article in Le Monde is about data reportedly stolen by Russian hackers from the European Medicines Agency and later published on the Dark Web. It contains no information on mortality rates. The pages on the other two sites have been deleted.

The influencers were asked to tell their subscribers that “the mainstream media ignores this theme”, and to ask: “Why some governments actively purchasing Pfizer vaccine, which is dangerous to the health of the people?”

The brief also included requests to “act like you have the passion and interest in this topic”, and to avoid using the words “advertising” or “sponsored” in posts or videos because “the material should be presented as your own independent view”.

Screen shots of the emails were posted on Twitter by Léo Grasset, a popular French science YouTuber with nearly 1.2m subscribers. Grasset said the campaign had a “colossal budget” but that the agency refused to identify its client.

The French investigative news site Numerama also published extracts from the exchanges, including Fazze’s exhortation to “encourage viewers to draw their own conclusions, take care of themselves and their loved ones”.

Mirko Drotschman, a German YouTuber and podcaster with 1.5 million subscribers, also posted a screenshot of an email asking him to take part in an “information campaign” about “a significant number of deaths” after the Pfizer shot.

“Please send us statistics on the age of your subscribers … and how much it would cost,” the mail concluded. The French investigative website Fact&Furious posted a mail describing Fazze’s budget as “considerable” and the fee as “the rate you wish”.

According to LinkedIn, Fazze’s management come from Moscow and have worked for an agency reportedly founded by a Russian entrepreneur.

French media have pointed to the similarities between Fazze’s message and the official Twitter account of Russia’s Sputnik V – a viral vector vaccine like AstraZeneca – which has repeatedly claimed “real world data” shows they are “safer and more efficient” than mRNA vaccines.

An EU study last month accused Russian and Chinese media of “state-sponsored disinformation” aimed at sowing mistrust in western vaccines by sensationalising safety concerns, making “unfounded links between shots and deaths in Europe”, and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior.

Drug Cartels 1 Biden Administration 0

Posted on June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 by Denise Simon

Primer: Secretary of State, Tony Blinken is traveling to Costa Rica to meet with several country leaders from Central America.It is said he will discuss regional issues including economic growth, the pandemic and climate change impacts. But wait, what about VP Kamala Harris, where is she? Furthermore, what about the issue of immigration, narcotics trafficking or human smuggling?

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is feckless when it comes to the real issues and solutions, especially the cartels….so read on.

Graphic: Bodies of drug runners, human traffickers ... source

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The notoriously violent Jalisco cartel has responded to Mexico’s “hugs, not bullets” policy with a policy of its own: The cartel kidnapped several members of an elite police force in the state of Guanajuato, tortured them to obtain names and addresses of fellow officers and is now hunting down and killing police at their homes, on their days off, in front of their families.

It is a type of direct attack on officers seldom seen outside of the most gang-plagued nations of Central America and poses the most direct challenge yet to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding violence and rejecting any war on the cartels.

But the cartel has already declared war on the government, aiming to eradicate an elite state force known as the Tactical Group which the gang accuses of treating its members unfairly.

“If you want war, you’ll get a war. We have already shown that we know where you are. We are coming for all of you,” reads a professionally printed banner signed by the cartel and hung on a building in Guanajuato in May. Read more here.

***

Organized crime involving even the police is an integral part of the worsening immigration crisis. Criminal organizations are involved at every stage of the migration process, from motivating migrant departures for the United States to security along human smuggling routes through Mexico, to the mechanisms for entering the United States undetected.

There are two kinds of criminal groups at work here — transnational gangs and transnational criminal organizations. The brutal violence and unchecked extortion perpetrated by transnational gangs in the Northern Triangle (the nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala), targeting both civilian populations and rival gang members, motivate Central Americans to uproot their lives and families in the hope of a better, safer life in America.

Transnational criminal organizations control, regulate, and tax every land port along the southern border. They also control smuggling routes through Mexico and impose a tax, called a piso, on the smugglers and migrants who use them. These groups control the flow of migrant caravans, strategically diverting Border Patrol resources from sectors of the border that are used to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States.

For those who choose to leave the Northern Triangle for a better life in America, the escape from territory controlled by transnational gangs leads them into territory controlled by the transnational criminal organizations.

In most cases, they use coyotes — human smugglers and traffickers who charge them thousands of dollars. Human smugglers range from independent operators and loose networks to subsidiaries of the transnational criminal organizations themselves.

Beyond what migrants pay up front, as the Associated Press reports, many are kidnapped and tortured “until they reveal the phone numbers of relatives in the United States and holding them for ransom.”

If they can’t pay — or if their families can’t — they’re killed. As one analyst points out, “It’s a long trail of extortions, and it’s a very dangerous journey for all of them.”

The groups also sometimes use migrants as drug mules. They will coerce migrants traveling through their territory into carrying large bags, or mochilas, filled with illegal drugs. Not only does this perpetuate the stream of narcotics into the U.S., it also victimizes migrants, making them desperate to unlawfully enter and remain in the U.S. — even if imprisoned on drug charges — for fear of being killed if they are sent home.

The bottom line is that throwing open our borders — as President Biden has effectively done — only serves to empower these transnational criminal enterprises. His immigration policies aren’t humanitarian; they’re creating more victims.

Biden’s Covid Relief: Waste, Fraud and Abuse Globally

Posted on May 24, 2021May 24, 2021 by Denise Simon

Hair on FIRE!

FNC/Chaffetz: President Biden’s COVID relief is quickly devolving into shocking stories of waste, fraud and abuse, along with a dose of misdirection and political spin.

Biden bellowed on COVID relief, “This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation, working people, middle-class folks, people who built the country, a fighting chance.” That was the promise, but that is not the reality.

What Biden didn’t tell Americans is their money is actually being sent overseas for projects bearing little relation to the public health crisis. Scuba gear in Uruguay, gas turbine engines in Canada, HIV research in Ukraine, and management consulting services in Fiji are all part of what Democrats consider urgent emergency relief. Even “Disinformation and fake news, TV, radio and multimedia project for PD” in South America via the Department of State.

These are just some of the grants listed at pandemicoversight.gov, where the government’s independent inspectors general have created an important resource for Americans to monitor government aid.

In just a few minutes, I was able to learn that Democrats have budgeted to build two gazebos at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The budget for the 20-foot by 30-foot and 16-foot by 20-foot structures, ordered from The Cedar Store, is $600,000 for two gazebos.

Roughly $5 million went to Russia for “civil society” grants. $24 million went to Syria to encourage them to wash their hands.

In Gabon, the U.S. Department of Defense received more than $180,000 for ejection seat repairs on a T-38C airplane.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), chaired by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, created the website to reveal “who received pandemic funding, how much they received, and how they’re spending the money.” The PRAC urges Americans to use the site to report fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement of the funding going forward.

Sifting through the data, I repeatedly find expenses that should be part of our regular budget disguised as COVID relief.

There was $363 million for the planning of the building of the USS Boise (evidently they appear to have received $11 million more than the modified existing contract). Paying the full bill for an attack submarine for the Department of Defense is hardly what the Democrats promised was COVID relief.

source

Though government waste is a sad fact of life – and a reason many of us prefer to keep the role of government limited – the unprecedented volume of COVID relief aid makes it a prime target for fraud.

Already we’ve seen multiple cases of fraud prosecuted with regard to CARES Act funding. A man in Massachusetts recently pled guilty to filing four fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applications worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A Florida couple has been charged in federal court in a scheme to collect $4 million from the Economic Impact Disaster Loan program. These are likely the tip of the iceberg.

In March the Department of Justice reported it had charged nearly 500 people in criminal schemes to collect pandemic aid money. And that’s the low-hanging fruit. Those are the people here in the United States who are applying for funds. What happens when that money is being scattered abroad in countries over which American law enforcement has no jurisdiction?

Fiji is seeing daily cases in the single digits, yet they’re getting $61 million in emergency relief funding. What is that really for? Particularly when you consider that India, which has seen a massive spike since April, originally got just $17 million in emergency aid.

It’s as if the pandemic is nothing more than a pretext to spend money Democrats can’t justify through the regular (such as it is) budget process. Who knows what else we’ll find relief funds buying in the coming years.

Transparency is going to be more important than ever. Horowitz and his fellow inspectors general have a huge job to do if they want to trace how budgeted money ultimately got spent. The job is made even bigger by the fact that so many media outlets, who would normally be counted on to report waste, fraud and abuse, have become cheerleaders for the party in power.

It is incumbent upon American citizens and responsible media to watch closely where these emergency dollars end up and to hold accountable those who perpetuate waste, fraud and abuse because what we are being told is not what is actually happening.

Jason Chaffetz is a Fox News contributor who was the chairman of the U.S. House Oversight Committee when he served as a Republican representative from Utah. He is the author of the upcoming book “They Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: The Truth About Disaster Liberalism.”

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