Category Archives: Whistleblower

A Very Bad Time for Facebook

Posted on by

Is Facebook Down? Facebook Goes Down | Black Box Social Media

First it was the comprehensive investigation by the Wall Street Journal for the inside corruption at the social media giant Facebook. Then, after that was exposed, the same whistleblower, Frances Haugen made a shocking appearance on 60 Minutes and explained further that Facebook was putting profits before public safety. Haugen is an algorithms expert, an engineer and a Masters Degree holder from Harvard and has worked at Facebook for many years. She disclosed tens of thousands of documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the Wall Street Journal in hopes of some legislative corrections and consequence and some major fixes within the social media organization. Facebook currently has 1.908 billion daily active users (DAUs) on average and those users communicate for thousands of difference reasons across the globe including family connections, transferring money and well even some more nefarious reasons like human trafficking.

Facebook whistleblower pushed data-mining boundaries in ...

So, could it be that the major outage across all Facebook platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp. What is even more interesting is the network is also down for the third party developers that are contracted by Facebook. Could Jack Dorsey at Twitter be gloating? Perhaps, but take caution Mr. Jack.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri likened a widespread outage affecting all Facebook-owned apps to a “snow day” in a recent tweet.

The tweet was written in response to one user’s post saying, “Instagram should stay offline forever.” Mosseri replied, “Them fighting words… but it does feel like a snow day.”

Sources told the New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac that “no one can do any work” at Facebook, which has caused internal declarations of a “snow day.”

Mac tweeted “or maybe it’s hydrofoil day” in response, referencing a viral video showing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg riding a hydrofoil surfboard on the Fourth of July.

Social-media managers outside Facebook have also called Monday a social-media “snow day” on Twitter, while apologizing for not being able to reach clients and customers.

Workplace, a communications tool owned by Facebook and used by 7 million paid subscribers, is also down. During a similar Facebook outage two years ago, small businesses lost thousands of dollars in revenue, according to a report by The Verge.

Downdetector has received more than 86,000 user reports of Facebook outages since 11:25 a.m. ET on Monday, according to its website. Of these issues, 79% were related to Facebook’s website, 12% were related to server connections, and 9% were related to the app.

Facebook said in a tweet, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Companies that maintain Facebook sign-ins for their customers such as Airbnb or Strava and suffering during the outage as well.

TechRadar reports in part:

The issue may affect other Facebook products, too: some users have also reported issues with the company’s Oculus virtual reality gaming services. Noted Facebook and Twitter data miner Jane Manchun Wong warned users via tweet not to restart their Oculus devices during the outage lest they lose their games

And the outage might have affected Facebook’s real-world infrastructure as well: according to a tweet by New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel, a Facebook employee reportedly can’t even enter company buildings due to malfunctioning badges.

Facebook outages: what’s going on?

None of the Facebook, Whatsapp, or Instagram accounts have explained what originally caused the outage, leading to speculation and analysis. At this point, most agree that this isn’t a hack or directed attack on Facebook’s infrastructure – instead, evidence shows the company’s network paths to the outside web just disappeared without explanation.

 

Is the U.S. Post Office Slow Service Because it is Becoming a Real Bank?

Posted on by

Slow mail service is on purpose.

WASHINGTON — Americans across the country could start seeing slowdowns in mail delivery as early as Friday, when the US Postal Service implements its new service standards.

The changes, which include longer first-class mail delivery times and cuts to post office hours, are part of embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan for the agency that he unveiled earlier this year.

'Tis the Season to Renew and Expand the US Postal Service ...
According to USPS spokesperson Kim Frum, the service changes won’t affect about 60% of first-class mail and nearly all periodicals. Within a local area, standard delivery time for single-piece, first-class mail will remain at two days.

However, mail traveling longer distances will take longer to arrive in some cases, due to the USPS increasing transit time.

“These changes would position us to leverage more cost-effective means to transport First-Class packages via ground rather than using costly air transportation, which is also less reliable due to weather, flight traffic, availability constraints, competition for space, and the added hand-offs involved,” Frum said.

Many Democrats have called for the ouster of DeJoy, a major donor to the GOP and former President Donald Trump.

But as there is Federal government scrutiny on the private banking system(s), crypto-currency and all alternate forms of monetary exchange such as PayPal, Facebook, Venmo, Zelle or ApplePay…now it is the US. Postal System that is entering the industry.

The Postal Service Should Not Offer Banking Services | Op ...

The U.S. Postal Service has launched a pilot program to offer customers financial services, an unexpected first step toward realizing a longstanding progressive goal of postal banking.

USPS is testing the program at just four post offices on the East Coast. It will enable individuals to deposit payroll or business checks of up to $500 onto a single-use debit card for a flat fee of $5.95. The offering is far short of the much more comprehensive suite of financial services many advocates and left-leaning lawmakers have sought for years, but still takes USPS in a surprising direction under the leadership of embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Postal management worked with the American Postal Workers Union to set up the pilot. APWU has also long advocated for postal banking, including by negotiating it into a previous collective bargaining agreement.

The four sites, located in Washington, D.C.; Falls Church, Virginia; Baltimore; and the Bronx, New York, will not accept any checks larger than $500. The debit cards, to which USPS is referring as “gift cards,” will allow users to withdraw cash from an ATM for a fee or purchase goods online or at retail stores. The American Prospect first reported the pilot.

The initial sites and services are meant to be a “proof-of-concept” test for the Postal Service, APWU officials said. The union is hopeful that USPS will expand the pilot in early 2022, both in terms of services offered and locations where they are available. The easiest areas for expansion would be to allow for gift cards for checks of more than $500. Thousands of post offices already offer Visa gift cards, and management concluded there would be few legal hurdles to simply accepting another form of payment for them. The cards USPS currently has in stock are capped at $500, hence the current maximum. Management is looking to both raise the cap on those and allow for the bundling of multiple cards.

Other services in discussion are a bill pay product, making the cards branded to the Postal Service and reloadable, and wire transfers from one post office to another. USPS has expressed an openness to setting up its own ATMs, though that may require additional statutory authority and is therefore only expected much further down the road. USPS offered banking services for more than 50 years, but stopped in 1967.

Tatiana Roy, a USPS spokeswoman, said that offering “affordable, convenient and secure” services was aligned with DeJoy’s 10-year plan to fix the mailing agency’s finances. The Postal Service this month implemented another key element of DeJoy’s plan, slowing down delivery times for about 40% of First-Class mail while also raising prices above the normal inflation-based rate.

The banking pilot “is an example of how the Postal Service is leveraging its vast retail footprint and resources to innovate,” Roy said.

APWU renewed its push for banking services earlier this year and management took a serious interest. While the union sought a wider array of services in more locations, management told the labor group that “the best way to get started was to get started.”

“It’s a baby step but we’re thrilled to be moving in the right direction,” one union official said.

USPS and APWU have not set specific figures for the number of sites to which the pilot could expand, but those discussions are ongoing. Before Monday when the program gained attention in national media outlets, USPS only announced the availability of the check cashing service through signs in the four affected post offices. The Postal Service is in the midst of soliciting proposals from the private sector for check verification services.

Research from the University of Michigan has found that one-in-four U.S. Census tracts, which are home to 21 million people, do not have any banks within their borders. Advocates for postal banking have highlighted that the private sector often charges high fees for check cashing services and that historically disadvantaged communities are disproportionately impacted by them. APWU has suggested expanding the pilot to all of the Bronx, all of Puerto Rico or to an entire rural county.

Postal management has put together a training session for impacted employees to get them up to speed on the pilot. An APWU official said its members were excited by the new task and recognized it could play a vital role in the future of the Postal Service.

The push for postal banking has gained steam in recent years, even becoming a part of the official platform of the Democratic Party. A House-backed funding bill for fiscal 2022 would require USPS to implement a banking pilot in five rural and five urban ZIP codes. Democratic lawmakers have also put forward legislation to create a public banking system backed by the Federal Reserve, which users would access at post offices. Porter McConnell, co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition, praised USPS for launching the pilot but said it was “not enough.”

“Given that experts and elected officials have been calling on the USPS to pilot postal banking for years, these pilots are long overdue,” said McConnell, the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “They are late to this party, but they have at least rung the doorbell.”

The Pandora Papers are Exposing Corruption of World Leaders

Posted on by

A HUGE hat tip to the investigative journalists over the intensive and dedicated work on exposing tax evaders and money laundering across the globe.The Big Picture: Real estate in some of the world’s most coveted neighborhoods is owned by anonymous companies registered in notoriously secretive jurisdictions, like the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

Behind many of these offshore firms are political elites — including heads of state — who are often trying to avoid taxes or, in some cases, launder money.

?? Dictator’s Family in London: Family and close associates of Azerbaijan’s president — including his teenage children — secretly purchased $700 million worth of London real estate. Read more.

?? Czech PM in France: Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš set up a British Virgin Islands company in 2009 that secretly loaned €15 million to other shell companies he owned in the U.S. and Monaco. The money was eventually used to buy luxury French real estate. Read More.

?? Zelensky’s Offshore Network: Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who won Ukraine’s presidency on an anti-corruption platform, was co-owner of an offshore network. Even now, his family appears to still be able to profit from one of the companies. Read More.

?? Russian Money in Croatia: The family of a wealthy Croatian tycoon with ties to Vladimir Putin secretly took over a real estate developer. The family then funnelled suspicious funds from a Russian pipeline company to this real estate firm, using an opaque trust. Read More.

?? Kazakh Oligarchs and a ‘Tokal’: Two oligarchs are linked to $30 million worth of transfers to the alleged unofficial third wife (or tokal) of Kazakhstan’s former president, who remains arguably the most powerful man in the country. Read More.

?? Serbian PEP’s Properties: When our Serbian colleagues reported that Siniša Mali, then the mayor of Belgrade, had bought 24 properties on Bulgaria’s coast, he denied the allegations and offered a challenge: “If you determine I’m the owner of these apartments, they’re all yours…”

Well, the Pandora Papers prove he is the properties’ owner, without a shadow of doubt. We’re still waiting for the keys. Read More.

Other finds in the data: ?? A Slovenian cosmetics fraudster.

PANDORA PAPERS FROM PARTNERS

OCCRP was one of 150 media outlets to investigate leaked documents from 14 service providers. Here are some highlights from our colleagues outside of the OCCRP network. 

?? Tony Blair’s Taxes: Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in property taxes when acquiring a London office building from an offshore company. Read more in the Guardian.

?? Kenyan Dynasty: The family of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta secretly owned a web of offshore companies in Panama and the BVI. Read more in Finance Uncovered. 

?? Pakistan PM’s Inner Circle: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has surrounded himself with people who have secret holdings hidden offshore. Read more in ICIJ. 

?? King of Jordan in the U.S. and U.K.: Jordan’s long-ruling monarch King Abdullah II has secretly owned 14 luxury homes in the U.K and the U.S., which he purchased through front companies registered in notorious tax havens. Read more in ICIJ.

? Latin American PEPs: One of Central America’s most prestigious law firms, Alcogal, set up offshore companies for 160 politicians and public officials — including some accused of looting their own countries. Read more at ICIJ.

IMPACT & RESPONSES

?? Pakistan: Prime Minister Khan welcomed the Pandora Papers in a tweet, vowing to investigate citizens named in the investigation.

?? Czech Republic: The Czech national police announced they will “act upon” the Pandora Papers’ revelations into the prime minister, who is up for reelection this week.

?? Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption commission will reportedly investigate the assets of any politician named in the Pandora Papers, which includes ex-minister Nirupama Rajapaksa.

Find more impact at ICIJ

The U.S. government has long condemned prominent offshore financial centers, where liberal rules and guarantees of discretion have drawn oligarchs, business tycoons and politicians.

But a burgeoning American trust industry is increasingly sheltering the assets of international millionaires and billionaires by promising levels of protection and secrecy that rival or surpass those offered in overseas tax havens. That shield, which is near-absolute, has insulated the industry from meaningful oversight and allowed it to forge new footholds in U.S. states.

Explore the latest stories in our groundbreaking Pandora Papers investigation:

Useful Details/Laws about the Migrant Chaos at the Southern Border

Posted on by

As a primer:

America’s Founders were concerned about invasion. It was mentioned it four times in the Constitution, though the term was never explicitly defined.

Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 15: The Congress shall have the Power (to) provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 2: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 3: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article IV, Section 4, Paragraph 1: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestics Violence.

So, as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Mayorkas admits at least 13,000 Haitians were admitted into the United States to clear Del Rio, no one can deny this is an invasion. Further, that number only refers to those under that bridge in Del Rio, it does not include the 1.2 million that already passed into the United States or the unknown number of ‘gotaways’. Miles and miles of other parts of the Southern border goes unprotected or managed due to the overwhelming volume.

In June of 2021, Congressman Jody Arrington (R-TX) introduced legislation that further explains the lawlessness that Congress must address.

H.J.Res.50 – Recognizing that Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution explicitly reserves to the States the sovereign power to repel an invasion and defend their citizenry from the overwhelming and “imminent danger” posed by paramilitary, narco-terrorist cartels who have seized control of our southern border.

Read the proposed legislation here. 

Of course under Speaker Nancy Pelosi there will be no movement to this legislation or others in the pipeline.

Even more crazy is the fact that the Haitians were already given residency status in several countries in Latin America going back to as far as 2010, directly after the earthquake.

After the earthquake of 2010, thousands of Haitians began migration to the country, in hopes of finding a new life. According to Atlanta Blackstar, the United Nations reported “an unprecedented number of people displaced from their homes—one in 113 people in the world—migration and asylum has once again come under the spotlight.”

In 2015, the Brazilian government granted residency to almost 44, 000 Haitians. source

Haitians Flee To Brazil To Escape Getty Images

In part from an NBC affiliate: Most of the Haitians already had refugee status in Chile or Brazil but were not seeking the same from Mexico, according to Mexico’s foreign relations secretary, Marcelo Ebrard. “What they are asking for is to be allowed to pass freely through Mexico to the United States,” Ebrard said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a stark warning during a news conference Monday. “If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life,” he said. The DHS says some who are being released are given legal documents summoning them to a court date.

“Individuals who are not immediately repatriated are either placed in Alternatives to Detention, detained in an ICE facility, or released with a legal document (either a Notice to Appear in court or a notice to report to an ICE office for further immigration processing),” DHS spokesman Eduardo Maia Silva told Sinclair Broadcast Group in an emailed statement. (this obviously has turned out to be a lie)

 

 

.

“The reason Haitian migrants discard their Chilean and Brazilian ID cards over here on the Mex side is to obscure from asylum reviewers that they were already safely and prosperously situated for years and years before coming for the American upgrades,” explained Bensman.

Fox News journalist Bill Melugin also published photographs of documents discarded by the migrants, and among the findings, he discovered that some of them had already been processed by the United States.

 

It should be recalled that according to the Daily Mail, a recent report by the DHS Office of Inspector General found that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not have the resources to assess the health of migrants entering its custody and relies on public health systems in surrounding cities to do so.

“Without stronger COVID-19 prevention measures in place, DHS is putting its workforce, support staff, communities, and migrants at greater risk of contracting the virus,” wrote the DHS Office of Inspector General. source

Now back to that pesky Constitution…right? Not for anyone part of the Biden administration.

Joe and Hunter Sought Deal in Libya Email Evidence Shows

Posted on by

Mohammed al Rahbani, an Obama donor was a member of the team in the plot to recover frozen assets of Muammar Gaddafi. The email evidence was obtain outside the scope of those found on the infamous Hunter laptop. The retainer was valued at $2 million plus a percentage of what assets were successfully recovered. (remember Hillary in this plot too)

Exactly what the FBI really has in possession has to be in volumes beyond imagination.

“Per phone conversation I met with #2 son, he wants $2 per year retainer… his dad is deciding to run or not,” wrote Jauhari.

He described Hunter’s “positives” as being chairman of the UN World Food Program and being a business partner of “SOS J. Forbes K.’s son”. Forbes is the middle name of John Kerry, and Hunter has been linked to Christopher Heinz, the former Massachusetts senator’s stepson-through-marriage to ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz-Kerry.

“Hillary Clinton had Muammar Qaddafi, the head of Libya, killed for reasons nobody ever explained… and then money from the [Tripoli] treasury was impounded.”

“If Hunter Biden was actually lobbying the U.S. government while his dad was vice president to get that money, that’s a very big deal. It’s probably a crime,” he said. source

And China is bigger than what has been reported.

“He wants to hire his own people – it can be close circle of people for confidentiality. His dad is deciding to run or not.”

Jauhari continued: “His positives are he is Chairman of UN World Food Program, son of #2 who has Libya file, access to State, Treasury, business partner SofS [Secretary of State] J. [John] Forbes K [Kerry] son and since he travels with dad he is connected everywhere in Europe and Asia where M. Q. [Muammar Qaddafi] and LIA [Libya Investment Authority] had money frozen. He said he has access to highest level in PRC [China], he can help there.” He added: “His negatives are that he is alcoholic, drug addict – kicked [out] of U.S. Army for cocaine, chasing low class hookers, constantly needs money-liquidity problems and many more headaches. We should meet in Gstraad or London to decide next steps.”

It should be noted Hunter Biden was discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve, not the Army.

The outlet cited “two people close to the negotiations” who said “$2” meant $2 million for Hunter Biden, though the report said it does not appear that a deal with Hunter was ever worked out. The report also said other documents showed Jauhari and his cohorts wanted to keep up to 5% of whatever Libyan funds they could unlock, which would have meant tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

HUNTER HOLDS STAKE IN CHINESE FIRM SANCTIONED BY U.S.

The Chinese government was apparently a longtime obstacle to unlocking Libya’s billions in frozen assets. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, then the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, said in 2011 that “China is obstructing the release of Libya’s frozen assets.” The Diplomat reported in 2019 that China “has not helped the Libyan government’s efforts to unfreeze financial assets.”

In his memoir, Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote that in 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden asked his son’s teenage daughter to join him on Air Force Two to Japan and then to Beijing, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hunter said he tagged along.

At the time, Hunter Biden worked with Devon Archer at Rosemont Seneca, and “our deal with the biggest potential was a partnership with a Chinese private equity fund seeking to invest Chinese capital in companies outside the country,” he wrote.“While we were in Beijing, Dad met one of Devon’s Chinese partners, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel, just long enough to say hello and shake hands.”

When Patrick Ho, one of Chinese energy tycoon Ye Jianming’s lieutenants, was charged by the Justice Department in 2017, the first call he reportedly made after his arrest was to Joe Biden’s brother James, who said he thought the call was meant for Hunter Biden.

Ho was indicted and convicted for his role in a global money laundering and bribery scheme. Ho, likely under FISA surveillance at one point, tried reaching out to Joe Biden’s son for help because he agreed to represent Ho as part of his efforts to work out a liquefied natural gas deal worth tens of millions of dollars with CEFC China Energy leader Ye, who has since disappeared in China.

In 2017, Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s, worked with him and others to create a business dubbed Sinohawk to establish a joint venture with CEFC. Bobulinski repeatedly expressed in 2017 messages that he expected the venture to get off the ground with $10 million in startup money from CEFC. A Senate GOP report concluded that millions of dollars were sent by CEFC to accounts linked to Hunter Biden instead.

Hunter Biden still holds a 10% equity stake in Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, according to Chinese business records.

The Chinese investment firm has invested in Chinese Communist Party-linked firms the United States has sanctioned, including a technology company accused of assisting in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and a nuclear company that allegedly conspired to acquire U.S. nuclear technology to benefit China’s military.

Jauhari’s LinkedIn states he is the manager of Gulf Facilities Contracting and Trading, which does business in places such as Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Libya. FEC records indicate he gave more than $80,000 to the Obama campaign in 2012, roughly $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee, tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic state parties and congressional campaigns, and $2,700 to Hillary for America in 2015.

Rahbani’s LinkedIn indicates he is the chairman at Safid, an air distribution systems company in Riyadh.

U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from donating to federal campaigns, but prosecutors said Rahbani and a business associate gave Imaad Zuberi $850,000 to donate to President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection inauguration. Zuberi only donated $97,500 of it to Obama before pocketing the rest for himself.

Rahbani spoke in the past about his support for Obama and pulled pictures of himself with the former president and Joe Biden at a 2013 inaugural event down from his website after Zuberi pleaded guilty.

Zuberi, a California venture capitalist and campaign fundraiser who worked to gain influence with prominent Republicans and Democrats, including former President Donald Trump and now-President Joe Biden, was sentenced to a dozen years in prison for illegal donations and foreign agent lobbying schemes in early 2021.

Zuberi pleaded guilty in November 2019 to charges of tax evasion, making nearly $1 million in illegal campaign contributions through straw donations and foreign funds, and falsifying records of his extensive work as a foreign agent. For years, Zuberi donated mostly to Democrats before throwing large sums at Trump’s inaugural committee after his win in 2016.

Zuberi is seen in multiple photographs with Obama in 2014. The convicted criminal is also pictured numerous times in 2014 with then-Vice President Joe Biden in records made public by the Justice Department.

The businessman tried to work his way closer to Biden through Fran Person, who had served as Biden’s body man for eight years before leaving in 2014, after which Zuberi began to cultivate a closer relationship with him. Zuberi also worked to unfreeze up to billions in Libyan government assets, and Zuberi’s WhatsApp messages from 2015 reveal lengthy discussions with a redacted associate as they talk about setting up meetings in Washington, D.C., and Paris to try to unlock the money.

Zuberi, Person, and others met at the Four Seasons Hotel in Paris in May 2015 with the alleged Libyan deputy prime minister to try to figure out how to unfreeze the billions.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The new report from Business Insider pointed to another email from the following year — Feb. 26, 2016 — where Washington lawyer John Sandweg, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2013 and 2014 under Obama, said he had talked to Hunter and his team about the Libya effort.

“I spoke with HB’s team yesterday. They are interested in the project, but emphasized that for them to get involved, the team (lobbyists, lawyers and PR) would need to be a small group of folks they have a tight relationship with. They do not want a large group involved and they only want people with whom they have a close relationship with due to the sensitivities surrounding their involvement,” he wrote.

Sandweg, now the head of the “Cross-Border Risks team” at Nixon Peabody law firm, confirmed to the outlet that he had been speaking with a business associate of Hunter’s about the Libyan project at the time, saying, “They indicated they would consider it and I passed the message back. Jauhari wound up hiring a different law firm instead.”

The outlet said neither Jauhari nor Hunter’s attorney responded to requests for comment, and the White House declined to comment. Rahbani attorney Martin Auerbach said the businessman “has no recollection of seeing those emails contemporaneously” and “knows to a certainty that he never spoke to and has no recollection of talking about Hunter Biden.”

Concerns about Hunter Biden gained broader attention in late 2020 after he confirmed he was under federal investigation. Multiple outlets reported he is being federally investigated in connection with his taxes and possible links between his overseas business and China and other countries. Hunter Biden said in April he was “cooperating completely” with the investigation and insisted he is “100% certain” he will be cleared of wrongdoing. source

In part:

That email, which was sent to fellow Democratic donor Sheikh Mohammed al-Rahbani, also flagged the “negatives” to enlisting Hunter’s help.

“He is alcoholic, drug addict – kicked [out] of U.S. Army for cocaine, chasing low-class hookers, constantly needs money-liquidity problems and many more headaches,” the email said. Hunter was actually discharged from the US Naval Reserve in 2014, not the Army as the email suggested.

Hunter and Heinz founded Rosemont Seneca Partners, a billion-dollar private equity firm, back in 2009. Their business dealings soured when Hunter opted in 2014 to join the board of a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

The second email was sent to the two business contacts by Washington lawyer John Sandweg on Feb. 26, 2016, regarding the same deal.

“I spoke with HB’s team yesterday. They are interested in the project, but emphasized that for them to get involved, the team (lobbyists, lawyers and PR) would need to be a small group of folks they have a tight relationship with,” Sandweg wrote.

“They do not want a large group involved and they only want people with whom they have a close relationship with due to the sensitivities surrounding their involvement.”

Asked about the email, Sandweg told Insider that Jauhari ended up hiring a different law firm.

Neither Hunter nor the White House has commented on the newly emerged emails.

The outlet said the emails, as well as other documents it had obtained, appeared to suggest the Libya deal did not go ahead.