At the time, the news was a game-changer for the public discourse about the origins of COVID. People who had been censored, deplatformed and derided as conspiracy theorists were validated by an “official” source.
However, a report on Tuesday revealed that the FBI knew about the origin of COVID since at least March 2020. That would mean that FBI Director Chris Wray and other officials likely kept that information from former President Donald Trump, as well as the wider public.
According to the report from journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag, a Chinese national from Wuhan, working as an FBI informant, told their handler at the bureau’s Chinese Intelligence Squad. The report cited unnamed sources who reportedly said it was probable that the whole squad of 25 people knew.
“A person working at the Virology Institute lab in Wuhan, China was infected, left the building, and spread the virus outside the lab in Wuhan,” the FBI informant said, according to a source. “It didn’t have anything to do with the wet market or the bat soup story they were going with.”
The sources also reportedly said that the FBI trusted the informant because the person’s information had been corroborated at least three times previously.
“The [informant] was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable,” an unnamed person told Shellenberger and Gutentag.
In an interview with Fox News last February, Director Wray said his bureau “has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
Wray reportedly said at the time that the FBI has a team of experts who focus specifically on the risk of biological threats that come into the “wrong hands,” including by a “hostile nation state.”
“You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans,” Wray told Fox.
Wray reportedly added that most details of the FBI’s investigation remain classified, and that it has been difficult to work with the Chinese government on investigating the pandemic’s origin.
“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here,” he reportedly said. “The work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody.”
(Headline USA) The New Hampshire attorney general’s office on Monday said it was investigating reports of an apparent robocall that used artificial intelligence to mimic President Joe Biden’s voice and discourage voters in the state from coming to the polls during Tuesday’s primary election.
A recording of the call reviewed by The Associated Press generates a voice similar to Biden’s and employs his often-used phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey.” It then tells the listener to “save your vote for the November election.”
“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the voice mimicking Biden says. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”
Attorney General John Formella said the recorded message, which was sent to multiple voters on Sunday, appears to be an illegal attempt to disrupt and suppress voting. He said voters “should disregard the contents of this message entirely.”
It’s not known who is behind the calls, though they showed up to recipients as coming from the personal cellphone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair who helps run Granite for America, a super-PAC supporting the Biden write-in campaign.
Sullivan said she alerted law enforcement and issued a complaint to the attorney general after multiple voters in the state reported receiving the call Sunday night.
“This call links back to my personal cell phone number without my permission,” she said in a statement. “It is outright election interference, and clearly an attempt to harass me and other New Hampshire voters who are planning to write-in Joe Biden on Tuesday.”
However, despite the write-in campaign on behalf of the incumbent president, the Biden campaign itself and the Democratic National Committee would seem to be the ones with the greatest motive for encouraging voters to boycott the primary.
The DNC already has signaled that it does not plan to include the votes of New Hampshire’s delegates during its convention after the state scoffed at its demand to yield to decades of tradition as the first-in-the-nation primary.
Democrats feared that Biden could potentially lose the race to one of his lesser-known competitors, including Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota or new-age author Marianne Williamson.
At least 19 other candidates are also listed on the Democrat ballot, such as Paperboy Love Prince and Vermin Supreme.
A lower turnout of Democrat voters would underscore the DNC’s influence over party politics versus and perhaps teach the maverick state a lesson, while also mitigating the risk of a humiliating defeat for Biden.
Meanwhile, it also offers the possibility of plausible deniability in the event that such an upset does occur, giving Biden and DNC gaslighters the opportunity to claim that election interference from the mysterious source was the culprit.
“We have been concerned that generative AI would be weaponized in the upcoming election and we are seeing what is surely a sign of things to come,” said Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics at the far-left University of California, Berkeley, who reviewed the call recording and confirmed it is a relatively low-quality AI fake.
The Federal Election Commission is weighing public comments on a petition for it to regulate AI deepfakes in campaign ads.
The Biden administration might further use the robocall, whether it is a false flag operation or not, as an opportunity to justify additional meddling by the Justice Department and other federal agencies in state-run elections, under the pretense that AI technology has made them impossible for the states alone to manage.
The president signaled as much in October, when he hinted at the possibility that AI could be used as a way to cover up his frequent gaffes and offensive statements.
“With AI, fraudsters can take three seconds recording of your voice,” he said while announcing new regulations to protect consumers. “I’ve watched one of me a couple of times—I said, ‘When the hell did I say that?’”
It was unclear how many people received the New Hampshire robocall, but a spokesperson for Sullivan said she heard from at least a dozen people who received it.
The attorney general’s office encouraged anyone who had received the call to email the state Justice Department’s election law unit.
Gail Huntley, a 73-year-old Democrat in Hancock, New Hampshire, who planned to write in Biden’s name on Tuesday, said she received the call at about 6:25 p.m. on Sunday.
She instantly recognized the voice as belonging to Biden but quickly realized it was a scam because what he was saying didn’t make sense. Initially, she figured his words were taken out of context.
“I didn’t think about it at the time that it wasn’t his real voice. That’s how convincing it was,” she said, adding that she is appalled but not surprised that AI-generated fakes like this were spreading in her state.
White House press secretary Karine Jean–Pierre maintained Monday that the call “was indeed fake and not recorded by the president.”
The Biden campaign was “actively discussing additional actions to take immediately,” campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
“Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign,” she claimed.
It was hard to determine whether the main intent of the New Hampshire calls was to suppress voting or simply to “continue the process of getting Americans to untether themselves from fact and truth regarding our democracy,” Becker claimed.
“They don’t need to convince us that what they’re saying, the lies they’re telling, are true,” he said. “They just need to convince us that there is no truth, that you can’t believe anything you’re told.”
Katie Dolan, a spokeswoman for the Phillips campaign, said his team was not involved and only found out about the deepfake attempt when a reporter called seeking comment.
“Any effort to discourage voters is disgraceful and an unacceptable affront to democracy,” Dolan said in a statement. “The potential use of AI to manipulate voters is deeply disturbing.”
The Trump campaign said it had nothing to do with the recording.
Though the whistleblower didn’t provide any physical evidence, his allegations launched a congressional investigation that continues to this day. Several hearings have taken place, and untold time and resources have been spent on the investigation.
But according to Sean Kirkpatrick, who once led the Pentagon’s search for UFOs, the entire alien investigation is based on a hoax.
Kirkpatrick was the former head of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was established by Congress in 2022 to investigate credible observations of unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UFOs.
In a recent editorial, Kirkpatrick said AARO has found no evidence of aliens or alien technology.
“During a full-scale, year-long investigation of this story (which has been told and retold by a small group of interconnected believers and others with possibly less than honest intentions—none of whom have firsthand accounts of any of this), AARO discovered a few things, and none were about aliens,” he said.
Kirkpatrick said he stepped down from his position last month because officials and members of Congress were ignoring his conclusions.
In a separate interview, he reportedly said the belief in aliens is pushed by a “a small group of people inside the US government, or with close ties to it.” Kirkpatrick said the belief in aliens is “basically a religion” for those people.
In the same interview, Kirkpatrick debunked one of the common cases mentioned by alien believers: pilots’ sightings of mysterious giant spheres. Kirkpatrick said these giant spheres are advanced drone technology.
🚨CUBE / SPHERE UFO DEBUNKED?🚨
Former Pentagon UFO head Sean Kirkpatrick, on @peterbergencnn podcast, says the infamous "cube inside a sphere" UFO touted by Ryan Graves (@uncertainvector) is actually a "spherical drone".
In his editorial, Kirkpatrick chastised government officials, media and members of Congress for not approaching the subject with more scrutiny.
“Some members of Congress prefer to opine about aliens to the press rather than get an evidence-based briefing on the matter. Members have a responsibility to exhibit critical thinking skills instead of seeking the spotlight,” he said.
“As of the time of my departure, none, let me repeat, none of the conspiracy-minded ‘whistleblowers’ in the public eye had elected to come to AARO to provide their ‘evidence’ and statement for the record despite numerous invitations,” he said.
“Anyone that would rather be sensationalist in the public eye than bring their evidence to the one organization established in law with all of the legal process and security framework established to protect them, their privacy, and the information and to investigate and report out findings is suspect.”
(Headline USA) A man suspected of shooting and killing eight people in suburban Chicago fatally shot himself after a confrontation with law enforcement officials at a gas station in Texas, where he had no known ties, authorities said.
Police in Joliet, Illinois, said on Facebook that at about 8:30 p.m. Monday, U.S. Marshals located Romeo Nance, 23, near Natalia, Texas, about 30 miles southwest of San Antonio, and that Nance shot himself.
His death was announced just hours after Illinois authorities used social media and a news conference to share initial details of the killings there.
Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown said the sheriff’s office received a call Monday about a person suspected in the Chicago-area killings heading into the county on Interstate 35. Brown said he believes the suspect was trying to reach Mexico.
“It seems like they [criminal suspects] all head to Mexico,” which is about 120 miles south of Natalia along Interstate 35, Brown said Tuesday.
Nonetheless, the irony of a Chicago murderer fleeing to Texas and being neutralized by authorities there en route to Mexico provided an ironic counterpoint to the recent immigration crisis, which has seen Chicago’s far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson regularly point the finger at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for busing illegal immigrants to the crime-ridden sanctuary city.
Officers from multiple agencies confronted Nance, Brown said. Brown said his office’s only role in the standoff near Natalia was to support other law enforcement agencies at the scene and referred other questions to U.S. Marshals and Joliet police.
Natalia is more than 1,000 miles from Joliet, where Nance is suspected of fatally shooting eight people at three locations in the Chicago suburbs. The police search for him left neighbors on edge for several hours Monday after police warned he was still on the loose and should be considered armed and dangerous.
Authorities in Illinois previously said they did not know of a motive for the killings, but said Nance knew the victims. The FBI’s fugitive task force had been assisting local police in the search for the suspect, Joliet Police Chief William Evans said.
The victims were found Sunday and Monday at three separate homes, authorities told reporters at a news conference earlier Monday evening.
One of the people killed was found with an apparent gunshot wound Sunday outside of apartments in Will County and pronounced dead at a hospital. He was identified by the Will County Sheriff’s Office as a 28-year-old man originally from Nigeria who had been living in the U.S. for about three years.
Seven other bodies were found Monday at two homes on the same block in Joliet, located about about 6 miles northwest of the scene police discovered first.
Will County Chief Deputy Dan Jungles said he did not have any indication yet of how long the people in the houses had been dead. Autopsies were pending, he said.
“I’ve been a policeman 29 years and this is probably the worst crime scene I’ve ever been associated with,” Evans said during a news conference outside the Joliet homes Monday evening.
Authorities said they also believed Nance was connected to another shooting in Joliet that wounded a man Sunday but would not discuss their evidence.
Curtis Ellis said he lives next door to the man wounded in that shooting and captured it on a surveillance camera aimed at their street.
The footage showed the driver of a red car speaking briefly to Ellis’s neighbor, driving to the end of the block before making a U-turn then stopping and firing nine times.
Ellis said he was watching the Detroit Lions play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in an NFL playoff game when he heard the shots, saw his hurt neighbor outside and called police.
“That could have been me or my wife in the front yard, which is scary,” Ellis, 56, said. “You haven’t done nothing to anybody, why would somebody just target to shoot you?”
Evans said the victims found Monday in the houses were family members. Asked if the victims were members of the suspect’s family, Jungles said he could not comment except to say the suspect knew them.
Teresa Smart lives about a block away from where seven of the victims were found and had said she was worried she and her family would not be able to sleep Monday night.
“This is way too close to home,” she said, adding that police cars had been blocking streets throughout the neighborhood.
(Headline USA) Another untimely death has been linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton after the pilot of a small plane was killed when it crashed at Clinton National Airport in Little Rock.
Local news reports and social media described a fiery scene at the airport, which closed for roughly an hour following the tragic mishap.
🚨 ✈️ Plane crash at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas
Only one person on board the plane has died after the Cirrus SR22 crashed during takeoff
The Cirrus SR 22 took off from the airport Sunday afternoon, airport officials said in a statement.
Shortly thereafter, the pilot declared an emergency, and then crashed north of the airport’s cargo building, authorities said. The pilot was the only person on board.
Little Rock Police on Monday identified the pilot as William Cope, 62, the Arkansas Democrat–Gazettereported. Cope was pronounced dead at the scene.
“It is important to note that NTSB does not determine cause in the early part of the investigative process,” an official from the safety board said in an email, according to local news station KATV. “This is considered the fact gathering phase of the investigation.”
There is no indication, pending the investigation, that the Clintons were directly involved in the crash or were connected to Cope.
Cope, of Greenbriar, was employed as chief pilot for Simmons Bank and had posted recently on LinkedIn that his new granddaughter was “getting her resume in order for the application process.”
(Headline USA) An elite cabal of six registered voters in an exclusive New Hampshire resort town catapulted GOP dark horse Nikki Haley into an early lead during a midnight vote ahead of Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary.
The residents of tiny Dixville Notch all cast their ballots for Haley, giving her a clean sweep over former President Donald Trump and all the other candidates who have since dropped out, with many of them endorsing the former president and several joining him on the campaign trail.
Because Iowa’s caucuses do not actually involve casting ballots, the New Hampshire hamlet—which caters to snowmobilers and Nordic skiers in the winter, and golfers and hikers in the summer—was the first place in the nation to vote in the 2024 primaries.
With such a tiny sample of voters, the results are not typically indicative of how an election will end up. But they do provide for an early curiosity.
Like the Swiss ski resort of Davos—notorious for its annual globalist summit each January, where business and political leaders meet to discuss world domination—Dixville Notch is now synonymous for many U.S. politicos with its quadrennial midnight-voting ceremony, which dates back to the 1960s.
It voted against the eventual nominee Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, opting, respectively, for John Kasich and megabillionaire Michael Bloomberg—a far-left Democratic candidate at the time, who was a write-in for Dixville Notch’s GOP nominating contest in 2020.
For the 2024 primary, the town had four registered Republicans and two undeclared voters, with the results announced just a few minutes after midnight.
The voters were outnumbered more than 10-to-1 by reporters from every corner of the globe—not to mention by a pile of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and an 11-month-old golden retriever named Maxine greeting media and voters.
In some previous elections, a couple of other tiny New Hampshire towns have also voted at midnight, but this year Dixville Notch went it alone.
The voting took place in a new location, the living room of Tillotson House, with the Balsams Resort undergoing renovations.
Les Otten, the principal owner and developer of the Balsams Resort, said he was excited to cast his ballot for Haley, who has been slammed as a neocon warmonger bought and sold by the military–industrial complex.
Nikki’s Haley was previously a well paid board member to Boeing, the company that makes the F-15 and profits handsomely from foreign weapon sales to foreign countries and forever wars. https://t.co/2o7SJ7piPU
“It’s what ought to happen in every community in the United States, where there is 100% participation, everybody votes,” he continued. “None of the six of us can complain about the outcome of the election, because we’ve participated.”
The residents of Dixville Notch used a paper-ballot system involving a fully transparent hand count of the final tally, something that election-integrity advocates have pushed for since the 2020 debacle, when several other states’ wee-hours ballot tabulations produced highly suspicious results in the Nov. 3 general election.
Some have voiced concern that New Hampshire’s aging equipment could lead to possible breakdowns and delays on Tuesday, potentially delivering an upset for Haley at a critical moment as Trump appears to be on the verge of gaining the momentum needed to clinch the nomination in historic fashion.
On the Democrat side, suspicions were raised after a robocall went out to voters with Joe Biden’s voice telling them not to vote on Tuesday. While some claimed it was generated by artificial intelligence, it may well be a false-flag operation by the Biden campaign or his supporters, since the president is not actually on the ballot.
The Democratic National Committee fought with New Hampshire after fearing that Biden could face an embarassing loss to one of his lesser-known competitors there, and ultimately decided to begin its formal election season with the more politically favorable South Carolina.
New Hampshire Democrats are attempting, however, to organize a write-in campaign for the incumbent president, despite his having written them off.
Otten said he didn’t agree with those saying the New Hampshire primary had fallen flat this year, with President Joe Biden not on the ballot and Republican contender Ron DeSantis withdrawing at the last minute.
“It always does boil down to just a couple of people at the end of the day,” Otten said. “We’ve got two viable candidates on the Republican side.”
Sure, you’re probably making more money than you were three years ago. But you can’t buy nearly as much stuff.
Price inflation has eaten up your paycheck.
After a stimulus-fueled peak during the pandemic, real hourly wages adjusted for price inflation as calculated by the CPI plummeted. They fell month after month for nearly two straight years.
For instance, from September 2021 to September 2022, workers got a 5.2 percent raise as nominal wages increased. That sounds good, doesn’t it?
But when you factor in price inflation, real wages declined by 3 percent. In effect, you got a 3 percent pay during that 12-month period.
And the reality is even worse. These numbers are based on a government-rigged Consumer Price Index. Price inflation would be at least double the official rate if the Bureau of Labor Statistics used an honest CPI formula. That means the decline in real wages is close to double what they’re telling you as well.
It wasn’t until Q2 2022 that real wages started to play catch up with soaring costs. But even today, real wages have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Pause and think about what that means for your family. You’re working just as hard as you were in 2019. You probably got “rewarded” with a pay raise. But you can’t afford as many goods or services today as you did then.
Gaslighting You on Inflation
This undercuts a popular narrative when it comes to price inflation.
The powers-that-be claim rising prices don’t actually hurt the average person because wages rise along with prices. Yes – you have to pay more for everything. But ostensibly you’re earning more, so it’s a wash. You’re no worse off.
Of course, you know you’re worse off because you’re living it.
And the data proves it.
The truth is earnings rarely rise at the same pace as prices. Wages almost always lag significantly. That means price inflation puts a significant squeeze on your pocketbook, at least in the short term until (if) your earnings catch up.
And if you happen to be somebody living on a fixed income or savings, you’re really screwed, as inflation rapidly eats away your purchasing power, and your income streams don’t increase at all. Price inflation always causes the most pain for the poor and elderly.
But the government people and their supporting cast in the media and academia need the inflation tax so, they try to tell you everything is fine.
You’ve probably noticed that the Federal Reserve operates with a stated policy to maintain price inflation at 2 percent. This is supposedly the Goldilocks CPI rate. By the way, nobody can tell you why 2 percent is the magic number. Just take their word for it.
Regardless, your purchasing power is supposed to decrease by 2 percent every year. That might not sound like a lot, but consider it becomes a 10 percent in purchasing power every decade.
And of course, it’s much worse than this during inflationary cycles like the one we just experienced.
But even though American wages continue to chase prices, economists keep telling us that American consumers are “healthy.” After all, they continue to spend. Retail sales have generally increased. How is this possible?
As prices skyrocketed in 2021 and 2022, Americans blew through their savings to make ends meet. Aggregate savings peaked at $2.1 trillion in August 2021. As of June, the San Francisco Fed estimated that aggregate savings had dropped to $190 billion.
In other words, Americans ran through $1.9 trillion in savings in just two years.
Then they turned to credit cards.
Credit card spending slowed through the fall, but Americans burned the plastic in November with a vengeance. Revolving credit, primarily made up of credit card debt, rose by $19.1 billion, a whopping 17.7 percent increase.
To put the percentage increase into perspective, the annual increase in 2019, before the pandemic, was 3.6 percent.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to realize that this does not scream “healthy” consumers.
This Is What Government Has Done to Your Money
You hear a lot of economists and talking heads on financial news networks claiming that wages heating up could cause the economy to relapse into an inflationary period. This is just silly. You don’t cause price inflation by working. The Fed and the government cause price inflation by creating money out of thin air.
They did it with a vengeance while most of America was home playing video games during the pandemic. We felt the results in 2022. But it’s important to remember that the Fed and the government play the money creation game constantly. It just got away from there for a bit, and you noticed.
The reality is declining real wages are indicative of what the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have done to your money. And it’s inevitable when you have a fiat currency detached from real money – gold and silver.
President Richard Nixon severed the dollar from its last connection to the gold standard in 1971 making it a pure fiat currency backed by nothing. When he announced the closing of the gold window, Nixon said, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promised, “Your dollar will be worth just as much as it is today.”
He lied.
Based on the CPI calculator, the dollar has lost more than 85 percent of its value since that fateful day. The purchasing power of a 1971 dollar equals about 13 cents today.
Meanwhile, the dollar value of gold increased from $35 an ounce to over $2,000 an ounce today. In percentage terms, that’s a 5,614 percent increase.
This underscores the importance of preserving your wealth with real money. If you just put dollars in the bank, your purchasing power will continue to erode day after day.
Again – this is a matter of policy.
So, don’t let them fool you. This is not OK. You are not fine. Inflation is not good for you.
But you can protect yourself by holding real money.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Biden administration officials were recently quoted by the New York Times as saying that the U.S. will go to war with Iran if a single U.S. troop is killed by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq or Syria.
At this rate, such a scenario looks highly likely.
According to the Times, Iranian-backed militias had already carried out 140 attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria as of Thursday, with nearly 70 U.S. personnel wounded, some of them suffering traumatic brain injuries.
“Biden administration officials have regularly debated the proper strategy. They do not want to let such attacks go without a response, but on the other hand do not want to go so far that the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly,” the Times reported Sunday.
“They privately say they may have no choice, however, if American troops are killed. That is a red line that has not been crossed, but if the Iranian-backed militias ever have a day of better aim or better luck, it easily could be.”
The escalating attacks are a part of an apparent chain reaction: The Iranian-backed militia attacks are in response to the U.S. bombing Yemen; the U.S. bombing of Yemen is in response to the Houthis attacking merchant and military vessels in the Red Sea; the Houthis’ operations in the Red Sea are in response to Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza; and Israel’s attack on Gaza is in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
War hawks on both sides of the political aisle are pushing Joe Biden to escalate the conflict in the name of deterrence.
However, America-First conservatives and libertarians have pointed out for years that the American troops in the Middle East are endangered due to the Defense Department sabotaging efforts by former President Donald Trump to withdraw troops from that region.
Trump’s orders to withdraw from Syria came in 2018 and again in 2019, and each time officials either resigned in protest or outright deceived the President.
In December 2018, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned over the matter, as did Syria envoy Brett McGurk. And according to DefenseOne.com, military officials lied to Trump about how many troops were there.
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” McGurk’s replacement, diplomat Jim Jeffrey, told the publication in November 2020.
Jeffrey added that the actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.
Trump is now warning that Biden has the country on the bring of World War 3.
“Joe Biden is an incompetent, mad man who will start WW3” — Trump.
Trump is right. The US bombing of Yemen/Houthis is just the beginning.
“Crooked Joe Biden is not only dumb and incompetent. I believe that he has gone mad. A stark raving lunatic,” Trump said earlier this month. “He is a mental catastrophe who’s leading our country to hell. We’ll end up in World War 3 because of this man, and for no reason whatsoever.”
Trump made similar comments on Monday.
“Now we’re getting involved in the Middle East. Look what’s happening… Here we go again with the Middle East! We spent $9 trillion dollars, killed millions of people… You know what we got? Nothing. You got death. You got blood. You got nothing.”
Trump discusses America’s re-engagement in the Middle East on behalf of Israel:
“Now we’re getting involved in the Middle East. Look what’s happening… Here we go again with the Middle East! We spent $9 trillion dollars, killed millions of people… You know what we got? Nothing.… pic.twitter.com/gQ1KYg6aBu
(Money Metals News Service) The Nebraska State Senate will consider a measure that explicitly states that Central Bank Digital Currencies are not money in the state of Nebraska, as well as eliminating capital gains taxes from gold and silver.
Senator Ben Hansen (R-16) has introduced LB 1305 in the 2024 legislative season. The anti-CBDC language is modeled after measures that have progressed through the Florida and North Carolina legislatures.
Nebraska was smart to stop charging sales taxes on these metals a while back. Now, they’re thinking about taking the next logical step by cutting out income taxes on transactions involving gold and silver. If the bill passes, Nebraska would join other states that have already said no to income taxes on the only type of money mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
Here are a few reasons why slapping an income tax on the monetary metals is wrong, and why these bills are good public policy:
-Current Nebraska law assesses taxes on imaginary gains. Under current law, a taxpayer who sells precious metals may end up with a capital “gain” in terms of Federal Reserve Notes. This capital “gain” is not necessarily a real gain, it’s often a nominal gain that results from the inflation created by the Federal Reserve and the attendant decline in the dollar’s purchasing power.
Yet this nominal gain is taxed at the federal level – and, because Nebraska uses federal adjusted gross income (AGI) as a starting point for Nebraska income calculations, this nominal gain is taxed again by the state.
-Inflation harms the poorest among us.
Inflation is a regressive tax. The hardest hit are wage earners, savers, and pensioners on fixed incomes – as well as those who own few or no tangible assets.
-LB 1305 is the next logical step for Nebraska to support sound money.
Investments in precious metals coins and bullion are rightly exempt from Nebraska’s sales tax. Neutralizing Nebraska’s income tax treatment of the monetary metals would remove the last major disincentive in the Cornhusker State that stands against the ownership and use of the monetary metals.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A judge unsealed scathing details about a case tied to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, her choice for prosecuting former President Donald Trump in the Georgia election case.
On a Monday hearing, Judge Henry R. Thompson suggested Willis might testify in the divorce proceedings between Nathan Wade and his estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, who seeks to subpoena Willis.
Previously confidential, these revelations cast a shadow over the ongoing criminal proceedings against Trump. Trump’s co-defendant, Michael Roman, argued that Willis and Nathan Wade’s affair is enough reason to dismiss the criminal case. Notably, Roman was first to raise the alarm about the allegations.
According to the New York Post, the scandal unfolded as Joycelyn Wade, seeking financial support, accused Nathan Wade of concealing nearly $700,000 in earnings (from Georgia taxpayers) related to his role as a prosecutor in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against Trump and 18 others in Georgia.
🚨 NATHAN WADE, Fani Willis’s “friend,” has made almost $700,000 since May 2022 alone.
All while working for the Fulton County DA’s Office.
Legal filings suggest that Nathan Wade paid for flights and vacations, during which Willis accompanied him. Allegedly, the special prosecutor used funds provided by Georgia taxpayers for these trips, prompting Joycelyn Wade to subpoena Willis.
This financial arrangement raises doubts about the prosecutors’ ethics in the Trump case (unrelated to the divorce proceedings), especially as Willis appeared to directly benefit from Nathan Wade’s contract.
In response to the Joycelyn Wade’s subpoena on Thursday, Willis claimed limited knowledge of the Wades’ marriage, stating her testimony is irrelevant. Simultaneously, she alleged that Joycelyn Wade cheated on Nathan Wade, leading to an irreconcilable marriage.
In her effort to resist the deposition, Willis accused Joycelyn Wade of trying to tarnish the Trump case. Willis directly claimed that Joycelyn Wade “conspired with interested parties in the criminal Election Interference Case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass, and oppress” her.
Willis’ claims about the couple’s marriage ultimately backfired. In a live broadcast from the divorce hearing on Monday, an attorney for Joycelyn Wade criticized Willis’ attempt to limit her testimony, directly calling out Willis’ assertions against the wife.
“The face of her pleading shows that she has unique knowledge with regards to this case. She could have filed a motion for protective order alleging all of the legal grounds for which she would like to not have to sit for a deposition and she believes she’s protected, but she didn’t stop there. She went further,” the attorney said, referring to Willis’ salacious claims.
Lol Fani Willis is such a rockstar attorney that she BUSTED HERSELF in a court filing related to knowledge of the Wade’s failed marriage.
“She asserted in her plea, in her motion for protective order to prevent herself from sitting for a deposition that she knows is the cause. She knows the cause of the separation of these people. She knows detailed facts allegedly about their relationship and we’ll deal with the falsity of those at a different hearing,” the attorney added.
The judge partially agreed, stating he would determine whether Willis’ testimony is needed after Nathan Wade testifies.
