If you only listen to one of the Rev’s podcasts this year, make it this one.
This is why Erik Raser-Schramm is one of my favorite people of all-time. Check it out.
Biden Finalized Prisoner Swap While Withdrawing From Presidential Race. A truly great accomplishment, quite an example of compartmentalization:
For a president who pledged to bring all wrongly detained Americans home and is an outspoken cheerleader for the benefits of U.S. alliances abroad, there was a lasting impression as he watched joyful parents, siblings and friends greet the returnees.
“There’s nothing beyond our capacity when we act together,” Biden told reporters when asked if he had a message for America.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was a go-between with hostages’ families and worked closely with CIA Director William Burns, who was back in Turkey to discuss the swap details last week, as well as U.S. hostage negotiator Roger Carstens.
An emotional Sullivan, briefing reporters at the White House, described years of twists and turns to get the Americans released and the joy of bringing good news to families of the Americans who spent so long in Russian detention. “If you hadn’t had Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, I don’t think this would have happened,” he said.
Yawn. Just Another Trump Scandal That Was Buried:
Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.
Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.
Since receiving the intelligence about Sisi, the Justice Department had been examining whether money moved from Cairo to Trump,potentially violating federal law that bans U.S. candidates from taking foreign funds. Investigators had also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House toinject his campaign with $10 million of his own money.
Those questions, at least in the view of several investigators on the case, would never be answered,The Post found.
Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probeof Trump.
When everything you do is crooked, what’s just another corrupt grain of sand? Nothing, once Bill Barr sweeps it up and dumps it in the trash. (Yeah yeah, too many mixed metaphors wrapped up in those last two sentences. Deal with it.)
Another ‘Dog Bites Man’: JD Vance Invested In Far-Right Propaganda Platform:
(A)long with extreme comments, Vance has some extreme investments.
Vance has had a six-figure stake in Rumble, an online video platform. The company has played host to Russian propaganda and to far-right personalities like Stew Peters and Tim Pool. It has also featured even more extreme content, including explicitly neo-Nazi images and themes like this song touting the “Reich” and calling for Jews to be placed in ovens from a “dissident rapper” with a dedicated page on the site. The site features a plethora of channels and videos dedicated to the concept of “white genocide,” which is a core belief for white supremacists. It also hosts channels for explicitly white supremacist organizations including VDare and Patriot Front, which has led masked demonstrations around the country.
The stake is notable because it represents a direct financial link between Vance and a key outlet for some of the most extreme elements of the far right. Vance’s stake in Rumble was the subject of a New York Times piece during his Senate race in 2022. That story focused on Rumble hosting the Kremlin-backed propaganda network RT, but gave less attention to the extensive hate speech on the site.
BTW, guess who got a seven-figure podcast deal from the company?:
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, signed a seven-figure podcast deal with the company last year. Trump Jr. reportedly played a “pivotal role” in persuading his father to bring Vance onto the Republican presidential ticket. Trump Jr. did not respond to questions about the extremist content on Rumble and about whether his financial relationships influenced his support for Vance.
Representatives for Vance and the Trump campaign also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Coincidence? I think not.
Carney Administration Buries Report On DOJ Embezzlement: Come to think of it, yet another ‘Dog Bites Man’ story, with all the notable omissions in the report we’ve come to expect from this misbegotten administration:
A 20-page report on Delaware’s Unemployment Insurance fund and what transpired in the months following the discovery of more than $181,000 embezzled from it was quietly released to state lawmakers on July 30.
The report from the state’s departments of Labor and Finance outlines how the embezzlement was discovered last year, and the steps Delaware has taken since to address the systemic problems with managing the nearly $350 million fund.
The report released this week outlines the sequence of events from the embezzlement discovery to present day, steps that have been taken to strengthen controls and more efforts that are underway, but it neglects to explain why the fraud was never disclosed to the public until media outlets began asking questions.
Coalition board member John Flaherty said Wednesday the report “is not satisfactory.” He said they are left wondering why the state failed to disclose the fraud sooner, and whether there are other instances they’ve failed to disclose.
“It does not address the concerns we expressed publicly about the lack of notification by the Division of Accounting and the Auditor of Accounts,” he said. “There is always a double standard – state agencies telling the public what to do. They themselves do not comply with their own rules and regulations, in this case a statute.”
BTW, lest you need more insight into the retribution that Carney exacts on those he doesn’t consider ‘team players’, go back and listen to the Rev’s interview with Erik Schramm. Carney really is the dirt worst.
What do you want to talk about?