Confirmed Biden’s Secret Chartered Migrant Flights

Who are these people and where are they exactly and what are they doing?

In part from the Daily Mail:

Aliens who cannot legally enter the U.S. use CBP One to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports.

Under this parole release, migrants are able to remain in the U.S. for two years without obtaining legal status and are eligible for work authorization.

The administration first said it would not reveal which airports the undocumented aliens were transported, citing a ‘law enforcement exception’ in the refusal to hand over information.

But new information from the Center for Immigration Studies lawsuit reveals the locations were not disclosed due to fear ‘bad actors’ would inflict harm on public safety or the information would create law enforcement vulnerabilities.

CBP lawyers wrote that revealing the airports would ‘reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports.’

That would in turn reveal ‘operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures.’

CIS said that the secretive flights are ‘legally dubious’ and claimed that since CBP will not disclose the locations for fear of ‘grave’ consequences, it is likely not a program that should continue.

Lawyers also did not disclose the locations of foreign airport departures, making it unclear where these migrants are coming from.

But those eligible for the CBP One applications are citizens from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Ecuador.

***
But it is actually a little worse as the Biden administration is actually loaning money to migrants…do they need to pay back the loans? Nah…
The International Office of Migration….yes with a budget paid out of the State Department at an estimate amount to be $2.4 billion….but read on…

The International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Travel Loan Program helps to provide penalty and interest-free loans to refugees arriving in the United States. Refugees who accept these travel loans are required to sign a promissory note prior to departure, committing themselves to repayment of the debt within a determined period after arrival.

IOM arranges travel for refugee using funds furnished by the Department of State and is mandated to subsequently receive refugees’ repayments on behalf of the Department of State. Repayments made are remitted to a revolving fund created between the Department of State and IOM for use by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) to defray the cost of future refugee travel.

A Travel Loan repayment is initially assigned either to IOM itself or to a resettlement agency.

The core belief of the Program is that refugees’ financial participation in making repayments against their debt will strengthen their determination to make a success of their migration. Furthermore, repayments are utilized by IOM and other receiving agencies to help establish the credit worthiness of the newly arriving refugees. Not only does that help refugees better integrate and contribute to the US economy, it also serves as a protection tool against abusive and predatory lending markets for those without credit worthiness.

The Bidens, a hospital chain and Americore

It is a LONNNNG read but necessary….What is worse is the Department of Justice knows full well the whole story as noted in part below.

Pennsylvania Seeking Medical Supplies From Hospital Driven Into Financial  Ruin by Venture Linked to Biden's Brother Free Beacon pretty much had the story back in 2020.

From Politico:

Biden’s brother used his name to promote a hospital chain. Then it collapsed.

Jim Biden played a major role in a company called Americore, which the government has accused of massive Medicare fraud.

The consultant, Jim Biden, had no experience running hospitals. But he did understand the federal government and had ties to labor unions. Perhaps more important, he was the younger brother of Joe Biden.

The email, obtained by POLITICO from a person close to the company, documents one of the many ways in which Jim Biden invoked his brother’s name and clout in the course of his work with Americore, whichhas since gone bankrupt, wreaking havoc in rural communities in the process.

Jim Biden spoke of plans to give his brother equity in Americore, according to one former Americore executive, and install him on its board, according to a second. He also said that if Americore could find a winning business model for rural health care, his brother could promote the company in a future presidential campaign, a third former executive told POLITICO. All were granted anonymity to discuss a company mired in legal and political controversy

In order to fund Americore’s expansion, Jim Biden offered to secure capital from investors in the Middle East, according to the emails and executives. When the expected money did not arrive, it aggravated Americore’s preexisting financial issues. The company collapsed, leaving behind unpaid bills and neglected patients.

The management failures took a human toll as hospital staff went unpaid, services dwindled, and authorities were forced to intervene. At Americore’s hospital in southeastern Kentucky — ravaged by staff departures and dwindling medical supplies — a patient died of cardiac arrest in late 2018 after receiving substandard care, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report obtained by POLITICO.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department found that Americore’s hospital in Pennsylvania entered into sham service agreements and paid kickbacks as part of a scheme that billed the government for medically unnecessary lab tests the hospital shipped out to be performed elsewhere.

Those actions are at the center of a federal prosecution of a $100 million conspiracy to defraud Medicare that has netted a guilty plea from the recipient of the kickbacks, and, according to a person familiar with the case, remains ongoing.

Now, House Republicans pursuing an impeachment inquiry focused on the relationship between the president and his relatives’ business dealings have also homed in on Americore. The House Oversight Committee is set to interview Jim Biden on Feb. 21 as part of the inquiry.

The investigation also reveals that Joe Biden’s name and inner circle were more involved with the company than has been understood: In addition to the accounts provided by former executives, investor materials described Jim Biden as an adviser to his older brother. And on top of Joe Biden’s own previously reported encounter with the firm’s CEO, at least three of Joe Biden’s relatives did work with Americore. They include Jim Biden’s wife, Sara, and his son, Jamie. The president’s son, Hunter Biden also met with its CEO, and his personal doctor — current White House physician Kevin O’Connor — joined a meeting with Jim Biden and the president of a hospital being acquired by Americore, according to a former executive and emails obtained by POLITICO.

While the extent to which Joe Biden’s relatives have invoked their ties to him to advance their business careers has been a subject of ongoing controversy, the documents obtained by POLITICO demonstrate that Joe Biden was a central element of Jim Biden’s pitch to potential partners and investors during this period.

Read it all for yourself….in full here

MAGA Supporters are the Hunted per the FBI

In full disclosure, I have followed William Arkin’s work for many years and he has been on my radio show twice, although not recently. But, he did an investigation on domestic violence tapping information from several agencies especially the FBI….MAGA supporters are the hunted.

Perhaps after you read through this summary, you will have some of the same questions I do which include:

  1. why nothing about ANTIFA?
  2. why nothing about BLM?
  3. who exactly does not want to make America great again>
  4. When local, state and the Federal government makes regulations or policy that infringes on our protected liberties, should there be anger, which of course is to say that should never lead to any kind of violence?
  5. I have also watched countless hearings held both in the House and Senate and the Left and President Biden find a way to shame or to expand the pervasive threat of MAGA extremists and just recently Congressman Jamal Bowman went to far as to use Nazi in the description.
  6. Anything about the violence of those weird tree people protesting the police training center in the Atlanta suburb? nah
  7. Anything about the threats to the pro-life centers or of the Supreme Court Justices protests?
  8. why no mention of the climate change activists that block public spaces and roads so people cannot get to work or to a hospital?

But read on…your thoughts and comments are invited.

***

Newsweek:

The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump‘s army of MAGA followers.

The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current “anti-government” investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.

“The FBI is in an almost impossible position,” says a current FBI official, who requested anonymity to discuss highly sensitive internal matters. The official said that the FBI is intent on stopping domestic terrorism and any repeat of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. But the Bureau must also preserve the Constitutional right of all Americans to campaign, speak freely and protest the government. By focusing on former president Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters, the official said, the Bureau runs the risk of provoking the very anti-government activists that the terrorism agencies hope to counter.

“Especially at a time when the White House is facing Congressional Republican opposition claiming that the Biden administration has ‘weaponized’ the Bureau against the right wing, it has to tread very carefully,” says the official.

Newsweek spoke to over a dozen current or former government officials who specialize in terrorism in a three-month investigation to understand the current domestic-security landscape and to evaluate what President Joe Biden‘s administration is doing about what it calls domestic terrorism. Most requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly, were reluctant to stray into partisan politics or feared the repercussions of speaking frankly.

Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether “terrorism” is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.

“The current political environment is not something that the FBI is necessarily responsible for, nor should it be,” says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of the world’s leading terrorism experts and senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation.

In a statement to Newsweek, the FBI said: “The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI’s goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI’s top threat priorities.” The FBI further said, “We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person’s political beliefs or affiliations.”

The White House declined to comment. The Trump campaign was given an opportunity to comment but did not do so.

What the FBI Data Shows

From the president down, the Biden administration has presented Trump and MAGA as an existential threat to American democracy and talked up the risk of domestic terrorism and violence associated with the 2024 election campaign.

“Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country,” President Biden tweeted last September, the first time that he explicitly singled out the former president. “MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections but elections being held now and into the future,” Biden said.

Biden’s Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said: “The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security…it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy.”

For Attorney General Merrick Garland: “Attacks by domestic terrorists are attacks on all of us collectively, aimed at rending the fabric of our democratic society and driving us apart.”

Though the FBI’s data shows a dip in the number of investigations since the slew of January 6 cases ended, FBI Director Christopher Wray still says that the breach of the Capitol building was “not an isolated event” and the threat is “not going away anytime soon.” In a joint report to Congress this June, the Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security say that “Threats from…DVEs [domestic violent extremists] have increased in the last two years, and any further increases in threats likely will correspond to potential flashpoints, such as high-profile elections and campaigns or contentious current events.”

The FBI and DHS report concludes: “Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence.”

The threats listed in that paragraph are all clearly associated with America’s right and in particular with Trump’s MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report (“Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond”) in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE (“anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”) from “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.

It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan. This shifted subtly days after the events of January 6 when it comes to what the Bureau calls AGAAVE.

“We cannot and do not investigate ideology,” a senior FBI official reassured the press after January 6. “We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence or criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.”

But the FBI went further in October 2022 when it created a new subcategory—”AGAAVE-Other”—of those who were a threat but do not fit into its anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen groups. Introduced without any announcement, and reported here for the first time, the new classification is officially defined as “domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined, such as individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party.”

Though Trump and MAGA are never mentioned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president’s supporters.

“What other name could we use?” asks one FBI officer who spoke with Newsweek, and who defends what he says is merely a record-keeping change in response to Congressional pressure to track things better. “Obviously if Democratic Party supporters resort to violence, it [AGAAVE-Other] would apply to them as well. It doesn’t matter that there is a low likelihood of that. So yes, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan.”

In its statement to Newsweek, the FBI said that the AGAAVE threat “includes anarchist violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, and other violent extremists—some of whom are motivated by a desire to harm those with a real or perceived association with a political party or faction.”

Another senior intelligence official who requested anonymity told Newsweek, “We’ve crossed the Rubicon.” In emailed responses to questions, he said, “Trump’s army constitutes the greatest threat of violence domestically…politically…that’s the reality and the problem set. That’s what the FBI, as a law enforcement agency, has to deal with. But whether Trump and his supporters are a threat to national security, to the country, whether they represent a threat of civil war? That’s a trickier question. And that’s for the country to deal with, not the FBI.”

The revelations that some Trump supporters are being specifically targeted by the FBI fits with accusations from among them that the Bureau has them in its sights and is the political tool of a repressive deep state in Washington, D.C., bent on preserving the hold of the political establishment at the cost of democracy.

Such views are not only from the furthest fringe. Some of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have called for the FBI to be defunded over such accusations and the prosecution of Trump supporters over the January 6 attack. The fight over the FBI is in itself helping to stoke the political temperature ahead of the 2024 election.

“For perhaps the first time in our history, the FBI’s counterterrorism operational tempo remains high for international terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and domestic terrorism, simultaneously,” FBI director Wray declared at Texas A&M University this summer.

A senior intelligence official who works at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it is hard to digest all the evidence. “When you are used to hearing that the sky is falling every day, when that’s the nature of the cable news and Twitter worlds we live where everything is overstated, there’s a lot of room for doubt,” he says.

“But I say this as a citizen as much as a government analyst,” the senior official says. “We are in a unique moment and the numbers are daunting.”

The FBI official says that those who are charged with upholding the law see numbers that are worrying but that there is also a struggle to characterize the specific threat to America—and whether it really should be called terrorism—as well as the proper response.

“This is not media hype. But it’s also not easily quantifiable,” the FBI official says. “Are we talking just a few thousand Proud Boy types or are we talking 30 percent of the country that are core Trump voters? Are we talking extremists bent on political violence or just a lot of disgruntled and frustrated citizens? I don’t know the answer, and I can assure you the answer isn’t in any secret intelligence that the government possesses.”

The FBI and the other intelligence agencies responsible for domestic matters track the number of terrorist-related disruptions, arrests and investigations, based on its caseloads and its various characterizations. According to the FBI, the number of domestic terrorism-related open cases grew by 357 percent from 1,981 in fiscal year 2013 to 9,049 in fiscal year 2021, a number that has been widely quoted in the media as evidence of a widespread domestic terror threat. The FBI also says the number of FBI domestic violent extremism and domestic terrorism investigations has more than doubled since the spring of 2020—to approximately 2,700 investigations at the end of fiscal year 2022, another marker that’s been widely quoted.

Though Trump and MAGA are never mentioned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president’s supporters.

“What other name could we use?” asks one FBI officer who spoke with Newsweek, and who defends what he says is merely a record-keeping change in response to Congressional pressure to track things better. “Obviously if Democratic Party supporters resort to violence, it [AGAAVE-Other] would apply to them as well. It doesn’t matter that there is a low likelihood of that. So yes, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan.”

In its statement to Newsweek, the FBI said that the AGAAVE threat “includes anarchist violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, and other violent extremists—some of whom are motivated by a desire to harm those with a real or perceived association with a political party or faction.

This is hardly the end of the article…so for consumption of the wh0le piece, click here. 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is Now Complaining about the Policies

Reposting in full:

As the Biden administration continues to expand ways for immigrants to legally enter and remain in the United States, the agency tasked with overseeing and implementing those efforts is suffering under the strain of its ever-growing workload. U.S. Immigration Courts' Backlog Exceeds One Million Cases - WSJ

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is struggling to keep pace with its new and growing responsibilities, according to watchdogs and agency employees, and some of its backlogs have grown to unprecedented heights. The 842,000 pending asylum cases are at an all-time high and the number is expected to exceed 1 million in 2024. The higher-than-usual number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, coupled with global events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the U.S. military’s withdrawal there, has created dueling priorities that have exacerbated longstanding capacity concerns.

President Biden has expanded the use of “humanitarian parole,” which allows various groups temporarily enter the country, to Central and South Americans fleeing persecution, Ukrainians escaping the dangers of war, Afghanis evacuated out of their home nation and others. He has offered Temporary Protected Status to 700,000 people from 16 countries. The administration has ramped up efforts to slash the wait time for those seeking naturalization or employment status. Most recently, it deployed employees overseas to conduct asylum screenings abroad and created new opportunities for family members of U.S. residents to enter the country.

Despite successes in some areas, the agency is not meeting its targets.

Many USCIS employees are also taking on new responsibilities, as they are more heavily involved in determining up front whether newly arriving migrants can remain in the country and regularly face deployments to the border to help process and screen those individuals.

“2022 brought with it significant new tasks for the agency that would create their own processing and operational challenges—challenges that the agency continues to grapple with in 2023 and which will impact future workloads,” according to a recent report from the USCIS ombudsman.

The watchdog predicted the various emergency responses by the Biden administration will “continue to present operational challenges to USCIS in the coming years.” Even before much of the new programs went into effect, the agency was experiencing a surge of new work. According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, USCIS’ caseload increased by 85% between 2015 and 2020. Now, the impacts of the agency’s efforts are compounding and many processing times have grown significantly.

“We’ve dealt with backlogs before but not like this, and not with some many other competing priorities,” said Michael Knowles, a long-time asylum officer who represents his colleagues in the Washington, D.C. area as part of the American Federation of Government Employees.

‘Came at a price’ 

USCIS’ successes have come with a heavy toll. It doubled the normal number of completed employment-based visas in fiscal 2022, which the ombudsman said was not without a cost.

“By prioritizing this adjudication, others were further delayed, at a time when backlogs have never been more severe,” the watchdog said.

The agency reduced the naturalization backlog by 62% in fiscal 2022, but led to “lesser priorities” being worked at a slower pace, with fewer completed adjudications and backlogs growing.

“These decisions, however necessary, came at a price,” the ombudsman said. “USCIS is a fee-based agency with finite resources. The determinations to prioritize certain applications and petitions meant that other workloads could not be addressed as robustly as the priority programs.”

Biden issued or extended Temporary Protected Status for 11 countries in 2022 alone. The ombudsman called processing work authorization for those populations “a never-ending task for the agency.”

Shev Dalal-Dheini, the government relations director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said USCIS employees are being pulled from their normal workloads to address the new humanitarian pathways.

“Obviously it has an impact on adjudications across the board because there’s only a certain amount of staff and only a certain amount of funding from their fees,” Dalal-Sheini said. “When something is prioritized, that necessarily means other things are deprioritized.”

Knowles noted those being paroled into the country are only being provided residency in the U.S. for one or two years, after which time they, too, will be seeking alternative status. In other words, they will all be added to various backlogs. The administration, through Operation Allies Welcome, Uniting for Ukraine and programs modeled after it aimed at Venezuelans, Haitians, “Cubans, Nicaraguans and others, has paroled 500,000 individuals into the country.

“Even a streamlined adjudication of thousands of applications each month has added considerably to USCIS workloads,” the ombudsman said.

Competing priorities

Meanwhile, nearly 1 million immigrants already in the country are awaiting resolution on their “affirmative asylum cases,” which require lengthy investigations. The nation’s immigration courts, housed within the Justice Department, has a backlog of more than 2 million cases and individuals are waiting years to get before a judge. Dalal-Dheini noted wait times on applications for new Green Cards, lawful permanent residence, residence for those making investments in the U.S. and to petition for non-resident relatives have all spiked compared to historic averages.

The administration is simultaneously pursuing an “all hands on deck” strategy at the border, meaning most asylum officers have deployed at various points to conduct “credible fear” screenings of migrants. A federal court this week struck down Biden’s new rule that severely restricted migrants who cross the border from requesting asylum, potentially creating a new wave of arrivals that USCIS employees will have to help screen. USCIS simply does not have enough staff to complete the work, Knowles lamented.

Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Homeland Security Department, acknowledged the problem at a recent panel hosted by the Migration Policy Institute.

“Every time there’s a debate about what’s happening at the border, we see increases for [Customs and Border Protection], and they, to be clear, they need those resources,” Nuñez-Neto said. “But we also need to resource the rest of the system to keep pace with what we’re seeing at the border and we just simply haven’t over the last many, many years.”

He said that was starting to change as the Biden administration has attempted to dramatically increase resources for USCIS, but noted hiring in government is “a long and painful process.” The assistant secretary said the Biden administration will continue pushing for more asylum officers, Executive Office of Immigration Review personnel, U.S. Marshals and others to “help with the rest of the system.”

Dalal-Dheini said in order to sustain backlog reduction, Congress must similarly sustain a guaranteed appropriation for the agency that has historically been largely fee-funded. Doing so, she said, would enable USCIS to “shift resources without harming other folks who are in line.” She added, however, that there is “no appetite” in Congress for providing those resources this year.

‘Losing people constantly’ 

The ombudsman praised USCIS for prioritizing hiring, as it has looked to reverse the impacts of a longstanding hiring freeze. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, USCIS threatened to furlough most of its workers as normal funds collected through fees dried up. Congress eventually intervened, but not before a longstanding hiring freeze depleted the agency.

Still, Knowles noted the pressure, pace and unending nature of the growing workload—coupled with the uneasiness many employees feel about their new responsibilities—has led to high rates of burnout.

“We are hiring constantly, but we are losing people constantly,” Knowles said. A recent GAO report confirmed USCIS is experiencing unusually high levels of turnover.

The ombudsman also praised USCIS for taking steps to mitigate processing inefficiencies, digitizing some of its offerings and adjusting the frequency of employment forms so individuals had to reconfirm their status less often, though it suggested the agency still has a long way to go.

“While these steps addressed necessary issues to give the agency workforce sufficient breathing space to take on its backlogs, the majority of these actions address only the symptoms and not the root causes of backlogs themselves,” the watchdog said. “Prioritization steps are necessary, but the larger stumbling blocks of the underlying adjudications remain.”

The agency can expand the ways in which it eases the burdens for applicants looking to extend their stays, the ombudsman said, such as by reducing the number of instances in which they must provide biometric information. USCIS should further leverage new technologies and ask Congress for “some continuing form of appropriated funds” to support its vastly increased parole efforts.

Until the lawmakers and the agency find ways to fundamentally change the system, the situation may only worsen. Knowles noted backlogs have not grown due to laziness, as asylum and other USCIS workers have a “strong work ethic” and “take tremendous pride in their work.” He likened the work environment his colleagues face—regularly speaking with migrants who are “tired, hungry, scared and bewildered”—to first responders who absorb the trauma they constantly see.

“What happens when you can’t get them out of the burning building?” Knowles asked, pointing to the growing backlogs. “You gave it your best effort, but you lost them?”

 Post is for information and educational purposes

Hunter is also in Violation of the Mann Act

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.”