Hunter Biden’s ‘Sugar Brother’ Confirms Multi-Million Loans in Impeachment Deposition

Luis Cornelio
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Hunter Biden’s ‘Sugar Brother’ Confirms Multi-Million Loans in Impeachment Deposition

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Kevin Morris, a multi-millionaire Hollywood producer, faced probing questions from members of Congress regarding his role as the primary financier and personal friend of Hunter Biden, the scandal-ridden son of President Joe Biden. 

On Thursday, Morris sat down with the House Oversight Committee, where Republicans, leading an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, grilled Morris about his knowledge of the Biden family affairs and his financial support for Hunter Biden’s legal troubles. 

Notably, Morris, often referred to as Hunter Biden’s “sugar brother,” personally loaned a multi-million sum to Hunter Biden to settle his tax bill, which is now the focal point of a federal indictment.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., stated in a press release that Morris acknowledged the multi-million-dollar loans, totaling at least $5 million. 

“Kevin Morris’s massive financial support to Hunter Biden raises ethical and campaign finance concerns for President Joe Biden,” Comer said. “Shortly after meeting Hunter Biden at a Joe Biden campaign event in 2019, Kevin Morris began paying Hunter Biden’s tax liability to insulate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from political liability.” 

Comer expressed concerns that Morris, who first met Hunter Biden at a 2019 Biden campaign event, has had access to the White House and has directly spoken to Joe Biden, raising potential ethics issues.

“This follows a familiar pattern where Hunter Biden’s associates have access to Joe Biden himself,” Comer added, highlighting concerns about an alleged influence-peddling scheme involving both Joe Biden and his son.

“As we continue more interviews this month and the next, we will continue to follow the facts to understand the full scope of President Biden and his family’s corruption,” Comer continued. 

According to a readout of the interview released by Republicans, Morris made the generous loan without a written agreement, only preparing an agreement after Hunter Biden received the funds. 

“Hunter Biden did not pay his tax liability for years; Kevin Morris paid them,” the readout alleged. “Hunter Biden has sold roughly $1.5 million dollars of art, and half of it was purchased by Kevin Morris to reduce the money Hunter owed him. Kevin Morris also bought two art pieces from Hunter Biden before he had a gallerist.” 

Moreover, the transcript highlighted that Morris has contributed between $500,000 to $700,000 to Democrats. Despite the substantial donations, Morris’ access to the presidency occurred following his friendship with Hunter Biden, Republicans said in the transcript. 

The interview comes amid a growing impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, stemming from evidence depicting an alleged influence-peddling scheme, including bribery. 

 Joe Biden has consistently dismissed the evidence, sometimes contradictorily. 

Woke Rep. Complains GOP Govs. Target ‘Communities of Color’ by Busing Illegals

Molly Bruns
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Woke Rep. Complains GOP Govs. Target ‘Communities of Color’ by Busing Illegals

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Woke Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, claimed that Republicans were targeting “communities of color” by busing illegal immigrants from the southern border to sanctuary cities.

The controversial opinion is not likely to win any support from the Fort Worth-area lawmaker’s own constituents, whom Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been looking out for by moving the flood of new dependents from his state.

However, it is likely to thwart Crockett’s own hopes of attaining higher office in the nation’s largest red state, which open-border activists have aggressively sought to flip blue in the past few election cycles to no avail.

If they were to succeed in doing so, it would all but assure permanent Democrat majorities in the Electoral College, which decides the presidency, as well as congressional elections.

Crockett not only denounced conservative politicians for harming the cities at a local level, but also accused them of racism because cities like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago are all run by black mayors, according to Twitchy.

“While they say it’s about Democrat-run cities, I do want to point out another similarity that they have: these are cities that are run by African Americans,” Crockett said. “So, while I know they love to pretend as if there are no racial undertones, it is just striking to me that we specifically are going after African-American-run cities.”

All three of the cities named by Crockett established “sanctuary” policies before or during the Trump presidency as a means of defying his efforts to enforce federal immigration law.

Chicago’s history as a sanctuary city arguably stretches back to 1985, when Mayor Harold Washington signed an executive order prohibiting enforcement of immigration laws within the boundary of the city.

Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously served as chief of staff during the Obama administration, reaffirmed the city’s sanctuary status days after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

As a mayoral candidate in 2021, current New York City Mayor Eric Adams wholeheartedly approved of its status as a sanctuary.

Adams may regret that decision now, as the influx of millions of immigrants in the city has continually caused a myriad of problems for its residents.

Despite Adams’s very apparent struggle with the matter, other city officials have encouraged the arrival of more migrants, even going as far as publishing a “bill of rights” for the legal citizens of other countries that happen to inhabit the Big Apple.

Social media users flamed Crockett in response to her speech, pointing out that the mayors of sanctuary cities were suffering the consequences of policies they endorsed.

“They said all were welcome and that is why they are being sent there,” one user tweeted. “It has nothing to do with color, and everything to do with Democratic policy.”

“I was told diversity makes communities stronger,” another user quipped.

Some were struck by the leap of logic it took for Crockett to conclude that they were harming communities of color by sending more people of color—unless, of course, Crockett was signaling her own anti-immigrant biases.

Whitmer Cashed in Seven-Figure Pay for Book Amid VP Rumors

Luis Cornelio
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Whitmer Cashed in Seven-Figure Pay for Book Amid VP Rumors

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, clinched a substantial seven-figure book deal amid increasing rumors that she might be selected as a quick replacement for President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris in the event of a health emergency. 

According to Page Six, the deal with publishing giant Simon & Schuster amounts to a generous “seven-figure” total and took place during an auction. An insider informed Page Six that the book is expected to be “rushed out as soon as possible.”

Whitmer has gained prominence within the Democratic Party, particularly for her far-left politics and unbending support for Biden, who is currently embroiled in an impeachment inquiry and facing numerous scandals related to border chaos and global conflicts.

The Michigan governor was considered among the women to join Biden’s ticket during his successful presidential bid in 2020. 

As reported by the Detroit News, Whitmer eventually informed the Biden campaign that she was no longer interested in being considered for the vice-presidential role. Instead, she suggested he choose a black woman, advice that Biden listed to by selecting Harris, then-a California senator.

However, with critics highlighting Biden’s visibly declining health at the age of 81, Whitmer has once again emerged as a potential contender for the vice presidency or even the White House, according to Page Six.  

Moreover, the book places her as a potential Democratic favorite for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. 

“If Joe Biden croaked tomorrow, there are … people who would absolutely pave the runway for Gretchen to land in the Oval [Office] in either a presidential or VP role,” an individual with knowledge of the book deal told Page Six. 

The individual claimed that Whitmer is perceived as “the future” of the Democratic Party, “in a way that is less glossy and annoying compared to” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another rumored top contender in the event of a health emergency affecting Biden or Harris. 

Courts Rebuke Jack Smith for Violating Trump’s Rights

Jacob Bruns
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Courts Rebuke Jack Smith for Violating Trump’s Rights

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Four appellate court judges slammed special counsel Jack Smith for violating former President Donald Trump’s privacy rights after Smith was granted access to Trump’s now-defunct Twitter account information Tuesday, the Independent Sentinel reported.

U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote a joint statement, signed by Circuit judges Justin Walker, Gregory Katsas and Karen Henderson, condemning the ruling on the grounds that it recklessly undermined the presidential powers of executive privilege and thus threatened to upset the system of checks and balances among the coequal branches of government.

Smith surreptitiously sought the warrant to access Trump’s accounts without the knowledge of the former president or those with whom he may have privately corresponded on Twitter.

“This case turned on the First Amendment rights of a social media company, but looming in the background are consequential and novel questions about executive privilege and the balance of power between the President, Congress, and the courts,” the judges wrote.

The statement also rebuked far-left judges Beryl Howell and Florence Pan, the two who granted Smith permission to access Trump’s files.

“Seeking access to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter/X account, Special Counsel Jack Smith directed a search warrant at Twitter and obtained a nondisclosure order that prevented Twitter from informing President Trump about the search,” the judges noted.

According to Rao and her compatriots, the undermining of the executive branch’s power by way of a power play against Trump could have longstanding political consequences.

“Rather than follow established precedent, for the first time in American history, a court allowed access to presidential communications before any scrutiny of executive privilege,” they wrote.

“We should not have endorsed this gambit,” the judges added, calling it a mistake and an “unprecedented search” that completely defies both the Constitution and legal precedent.

Nonetheless, the reckless overreach by Smith and his partisan colleagues at the Justice Department may ultimately prove to be their undoing through a case in which Trump is not even one of the parties named, according to a Politico report.

The Supreme Court is set to hear Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, in which the high court will decide whether or not the weaponized DOJ has improperly applied the charge for “obstruction of an official proceeding” in more than 150 cases related to Jan. 6.

Critics note that the statute, part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act that stemmed from the George W. Bush-era Enron scandal, had only ever been applied to financial disclosures

While the Fischer case has little to do with Trump directly, if the court rules in Fischer’s favor, a good portion of Smith’s case against Trump could be immediately jeopardized since two of the four counts Trump was indicted on are the obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to do so.

CNN: Some Who Embrace Climate-Change Narrative are ‘New Deniers’

Jacob Bruns
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CNN: Some Who Embrace Climate-Change Narrative are ‘New Deniers’

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Paranoid about losing the rhetorical debate over climate-change, leftist panic-mongers are expanding the definition of “climate deniers” to include those who agree with their overly broad contention that the climate is “changing” but question the dire and catastrophic consequences of it.

For decades, those who promoted climate alarmism have labeled skeptics as climate-change or science denialists.

Now, they have contrived another term, “new deniers,” to describe those who embrace the climate-change theory, but doubt climate-change “solutions” or claim that global warming might be a good thing, CNN reported.

Skeptics have never questioned that there are, indeed, changes in the weather patterns that may impact the Earth’s surface temperature—and, indeed, that man-made emissions, which account for a small fraction of all total greenhouse-gas emissions—may play a small part in the problem.

Yet, many have rejected the hysterical hyperbole, cherry-picking of data and constant goalpost-shifting of so-called climate scientists who have a vested financial interest in torquing up the sense of urgency.

Climate-change dogmatists’ refusal to engage in serious academic debate has led critics to begin dismantling the climate argument from a different angle, by pointing out the ways in which modern society has improved over the pre-industrial version that leftist yearn to return to.

The “new deniers” term was coined by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a pro-censorship non-government organization that does not disclose its donors. The group purports to protect human rights by slowing the spread of “online hate” and “disinformation” through research, public campaigns and policy advocacy.

According to the CCDH, “new deniers” have changed their strategy by accepting the premises of climate change, but rejecting the partisan “solutions.”

Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer and founder of CCDH, suggested that the report gives reason to believe that climate propaganda is working.

“The climate movement has won the argument that climate change is real, and that it is hurting our planet’s ecosystems,” he claimed. “As the impacts of the climate crisis—from scorching heat waves to fierce storms—affect a broader swath of the global population, narratives that deny the existence of climate change are becoming less effective.”

Still, Ahmed added, “new denial” is “no less insidious and could hold enormous influence over public opinion on climate action for decades to come.”

According to Charlie Cray, a senior strategist at Greenpeace, the internet has allowed for climate misinformation to spread rapidly.

“Climate deniers now have access to vast global audiences through digital platforms,” Cray noted, suggesting that new denial will “chip away at public support for climate action.”

EXCLUSIVE: Fmr. MAGA Wunderkind CJ Pearson Ready to Lead New Generation of GOP

Gwendolyn Sims
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EXCLUSIVE: Fmr. MAGA Wunderkind CJ Pearson Ready to Lead New Generation of GOP

(Gwendolyn Sims, Headline USA) Conservative influencer CJ Pearson has spent the past 13 years prepping for a political career—and at 21, he still has a bright future ahead.

Pearson launched his first campaign last week, to fill the vacant Georgia General Assembly seat of state Rep. Barry Fleming, who was recently appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to serve as a superior court judge.

“I just qualified for the special election to be Georgia’s next State Representative,” Pearson tweeted on Jan. 9. The announcement included a smiling photo of him filling out his Declaration of Candidacy & Affidavit paperwork—which he filed later that day—for Georgia’s District 125, just west of Augusta.

Early voting begins Jan. 22 for the Feb. 13 special election, with five candidates having qualified, including two other Republicans.

“It’s going to be a sprint,” Pearson wrote in a follow-up tweet, noting the short time frame for organizing while touting his grassroots support throughout the district—and at the state and national level.

The winner of the special election will have little time to rest, as the seat will come up again in the Nov. 5 general election.

In an exclusive phone interview with Headline USA, Pearson said he believes Georgia will be “Ground Zero” for the upcoming presidential election, so he’s eager “to bridge the gap between conservatives and America’s young people.”

That’s a role he knows well as the “leading voice among right-leaning youth in America.”

Pearson first became interested in politics at the age of 8 and burst onto the national scene at 13 years old when his YouTube video criticizing then-President Barack Obama went viral.

Unlike most young people testing their beliefs, his own exploration of his political values famously played out on a national stage, with leftist media smugly rejoicing after he briefly renounced conservatism and joined the Bernie Sanders campaign during the the 2016 campaign, saying he was tired of being pigeon-holed in a particular role.

“I don’t want to be the conservative wonder kid,” he told CNN.

But he soon found his kindred spirit in a new Republican champion who was equally ready to break the mold.

At 14, he became the national chairman of Teens for Trump, writing in an op-ed for Time magazine, “The independent streaks ingrained into the hearts and souls of America’s youth are the cornerstone of the billionaire’s youth appeal.”

Most recently, Pearson has worked at PragerU, where his work inclides PragerU’s 5-Minute Videos, The Wrap Up, Left vs. Right and “online content that reaches millions of young Americans,” he said.

Pearson plays a critical role not only due to his age, but also his racial identity, as one in a growing number of black conservatives who have rejected the longstanding preconception that African–Americans are obligated to vote lockstep with the Left.

He dismissed the notion that the GOP needed to modify its own platform to reach more minorities, suggesting that through outreach, messaging and more diverse representation within the party, black voters would begin identifying—and voting—as Republicans.

“The black community at its core is a conservative community,” Pearson told Headline USA. “I don’t think we have to capitulate, pander or dilute what we believe to get black voters and black conservative support.”

Republicans have to articulate that “there’s an alternative to what” black America has “been led to believe is the singular alternative,” Pearson said.

“I think we should try to go places we don’t typically go and talk to people about what we believe and why we believe it,” he continued. “But never do I think we should pander,” as the Left does.

Republicans often say, “We’ve got to turn black people into conservatives,” Pearson observed.

“I actually don’t agree with that,” he added. “I think we’ve got to remind the black community that they are conservative.”

Raised by grandparents whose political views were very different than his own, they nonetheless instilled in Pearson the conservative “values of loving God, loving America, knowing the value of a dollar, and appreciating the essence of hard work.”

Right now, Pearson’s America First campaign is focused on going across the district and talking to voters about their priorities. As he sees it, voters want someone to hold the George Soros-backed district attorneys “accountable for their choices to put politics over the rule of law.”

His run couldn’t come at a better time, with race-baiting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis facing a major ethics scandal that the state legislature may be called upon to address ahead of her lawfare prosecution against former President Donald Trump and 14 co-defendants on racketeering charges.

Just 10 days after the special election, Pearson is scheduled to join Trump, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson and renowned vocalist Mary Millben at a black-tie dinner in Columbia, S.C., sponsonred by the Black Conservative Federation, where he’ll be receiving the BCF’s Champion Award.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson)

An earlier photograph on Pearson’s Instagram account, captioned, “Always great to catch up with @realdonaldtrump,” shows him giving a thumbs up with Trump at a Columbus, Ga., event last summer.

In terms of his policies and campaign rhetoric, Pearson likewise seems closely aligned with the the GOP presidential frontrunner, framing his local run as a fight against the encroachment of aggressive overreach from both government and woke cultural institutions.

Voters want “bold and decisive action” to put “more money into the pockets and wallets of hardworking Georgians,” he said.

They also want “to keep all this wokeism out of our schools across the state” by banning Critical Race Theory, which Pearson said is “nothing more than taxpayer-funded racism.”

And theywant “to ensure that women’s sports are women’s sports” by allowing that “only biological women get to participate in them,” he added.

“The time for niceties is over,” Pearson said. “I’m not running to be just another Republican that’s going just to go along to get along. I’m going to be a fighter. I think the people of this district want a fighter.”

Follow Gwendolyn Sims at twitter.com/gwendolynmsims.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

BREAKING: Judge Allows FBI to Keep Aerial Footage of Kenosha Riots Secret

Ken Silva
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BREAKING: Judge Allows FBI to Keep Aerial Footage of Kenosha Riots Secret

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A federal judge has allowed the FBI to keep secret the aerial surveillance footage it took of the August 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin—where Kyle Rittenhouse shot three protestors who had attacked him, killing two of them.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s Thursday-afternoon decision stems from a lawsuit Gun Owners of America filed against the FBI in 2022, demanding footage of the Kenosha riots.

Thus far, the FBI has only released an 83-second clip of the aerial surveillance video also played at the Rittenhouse’s trial. The FBI has withheld the rest of the footage on the grounds that the Freedom of Information Act allows government to withhold records if producing them “would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”

During the FOIA litigation against Gun Owners of America, an FBI official insisted that releasing aerial surveillance would jeopardize details about the FBI’s surveillance program unknown to the public—including the “dates, times and locations chosen for surveillance” and the specific areas where the FBI chose to focus and zoom in on.

The FBI official claimed that non-public video could also be combined with publicly available information to identify FBI surveillance aircraft, thus allowing “adversaries to ascertain the fuel capacities of the aircraft” and the “surveillance camera capabilities.”

“Disclosure of the FBI surveillance-program practices, moreover, would be reasonably expected to risk circumvention of the law. Criminal and national-security adversaries could use the non-public information to adjust their behaviors and avoid aerial surveillance,” the judge added.

“They could also use aircraft tail numbers and information about fuel capacities and surveillance-camera capabilities to track FBI surveillance and avoid detection.”

Accordingly, Judge Boasberg granted the FBI a summary judgment against Gun Owners of America and allowed the bureau to keep its Kenosha surveillance footage secret.

The FBI’s Kenosha surveillance arose as an issue in November 2021 during Rittenhouse’s murder trial, in which he was exonerated. At the time, the Daily Caller reported on allegations that the FBI had withheld high quality footage of the Kenosha riots from Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel also reported at the time that FBI technician Brandon Cramin testified he was “in an airplane 8,500 feet above downtown Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020 taking video with a special infrared camera.”

The Sentinel also reported that defense attorney Mark Richards complained in court that the FBI had “rebuffed [the defense’s] attempts to access the rest of the video, at one point telling them it no longer exists.”

According to the New York Post, jurors in Rittenhouse’s trial were finally “shown new FBI drone footage of the close-range shooting” after prosecutors, who “had previously obtained a low resolution copy of the footage,” received “the enhanced version” last week.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

The Goldilocks Economy Is a Fairytale

Money Metals News Service
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The Goldilocks Economy Is a Fairytale

(Money Metals News Service) The mainstream psyche has latched onto a Goldilocks scenario where inflation dies, interest rates fall, and the economy glides to a soft landing.

People should probably read the end of the story because Goldilocks dies.

Also – it’s a fairytale.

When they hear the name Goldilocks, most people think of porridge and a little girl’s quest for the “just right” bowl. As a result, Goldilocks is generally associated with the ideal.

In the Goldilocks economic scenario, the Federal Reserve wins the inflation fight. It cuts interest rates and eases pressure on corporations, consumers, and governments all buried in debt, and the economy never dips into a recession.

The Fed is the hero in this story.

In a recent interview, economic commentator Jim Grant said he thinks Jerome Powell and other members of the Federal Reserve look in the mirror and see themselves as Captain Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger who landed a crippled U.S. Airways jet on the Hudson River.

The Fed has arrogated to itself the role of central planning agency. … It’s going to try to balance economic growth with the stability and integrity of the currency. How do they do that? I don’t think it’s given to mortal man and woman to do these things.

And as Grant said in an interview last summer, “He’s a nice guy, Jay Powell, but I think he is not Sully.”

And as I’ve already mentioned in the original Goldilocks story written by Eleanor Mure in 1831, the bears throw Goldilocks in a fire, then douse her with water and finally impale her on the church steeple.

All of this is to say maybe the mainstream should give up on the Goldilocks fairytale.

An Economic Reality Check

Occasionally, the mainstream gets a dose of reality.

On Wednesday (Jan. 17) gold was pressured to a one-month-plus low when, as a ZeroHedge headline put it, “Goldilocks Reality-Check Wrecks Dovish Dreams.”

The reality check was stronger than expected economic data, including better-than-expected retail sales report, unexpected homebuilder optimism, and higher than projected industrial production.

We live in an upside-down world where good economic data is bad news. That’s because the mainstream wants the Federal Reserve to think the economy is slowing so it will pull back interest rates.

Why?

Because everybody knows deep down that easy money is the mother’s milk of the economy.

The recent run of “strong” data along with recent comments by Federal Reserve Governor Chris Waller dampened rate cut hopes. As ZeroHedge put it, “Nothing there screams ‘six rate-cuts or we all die’ as the issue remains: the current growth trajectory of the economy does not suggest that rates need to come down at all.”

The December CPI report showing price inflation remains well above the 2 percent target reinforces this reality check.

Indeed, the market expectation of a quick rate-cutting cycle has dropped precipitously this week.

Waller reinforced market fears on Tuesday when he delivered a speech at The Brookings Institution, and it was widely perceived to be a bit hawkish. Hawkish means that the Fed might not deliver the desperately sought-after rate cuts as quickly as hoped. That prospect sends traders into a panic.

Waller said he does not see the need for aggressive cuts priced into the market. In other words, he was cautioning that you probably shouldn’t be banking on cuts right now.

When the time is right to begin lowering rates, he said, I believe it can and should be lowered methodically and carefully. With economic activity and labor markets in good shape and inflation coming down gradually to 2 percent, I see no reason to move as quickly or cut as rapidly as in the past.

All of this put upward pressure on bond yields and the dollar. 10-year Treasuries crept higher up four basis points to 4.10 percent on Wednesday.

The prospect of higher-for-longer interest rates pressured gold down to close to $2,000 per ounce. It also drove a stock market selloff with the Dow Jones falling 94 points and the NASDAQ shedding .59 percent.

A Reality Check for the Reality Check

The market is panicking needlessly. It’s going to get its rate cuts.

But it’s not going to get the Goldilocks fairytale.

The Federal Reserve isn’t going to cut rates because inflation is beat. (Although it will probably try to spin it that way.) The Fed is going to cut rates because something breaks in the economy due to the high interest rates. I’m talking about an economic collapse or a financial crisis.

You’re probably thinking, but Mike, you just said the economic data looks good. How can you be talking about an economic collapse or a financial crisis? Everything is fine.

Yes. The economic data looks fine now. But the central bank broke things a long time ago. It just hasn’t reared its ugly head – yet.

History serves as an excellent teacher.

Interest rates are at the same levels as they were in 2006. That led to the Great Recession. After more than a decade of zero percent interest rates and trillions of dollars in money creation, there is even more debt and malinvestment in the economy now than there was then. If rising rates broke the economy and led to the Great Recession then, what makes anybody think things will be different this time around? Why should we expect a “soft landing?”

But it’s important to remember the economy doesn’t manifest the impacts of monetary policy in a day. It’s not like the Fed throws some rate hikes in the microwave and boom, out pops a fully cooked meal.

The Fed maxed out its hiking cycle prior to the Great Recession in 2006. Everything was fine. It started cutting interest rates in 2007. Everybody said everything was fine. Sure, there were some issues in the subprime housing market. But those problems were “contained.”

The financial crisis didn’t pop off until the end of 2008.

Now the fact is, the economy wasn’t fine in 2006. It was broken thanks to the previous run of artificially low interest rates.

And the economy isn’t fine today – no matter what the data indicates.

The ugly truth is the Fed broke this economy starting way back in 2008 when it kicked off more than a decade of zero percent interest rates. (You could argue it happened even earlier leading up to the dot-com crash.)

If (when) the economy does crash and there is some kind of financial crisis, the Fed will cut rates back to zero and it will relaunch quantitative easing. In other words, it will go right back to creating inflation. That’s the fork the Fed knows. History tells us it won’t hold the line against inflation during an economic crisis.

So, the mainstream will get its cuts.

But it won’t get the happy Goldilocks ending it imagines.

Grant summed up the likelihood that the Fed can get things “just right” in that interview over the summer.

It won’t.

I confess that is partly my temperament. I’m just not equipped to conceive the Fed might, in all of its error-laden ways, finally stick it. … I think that the distortions created by these rates, and by the expectation of Fed intervention, have been so widespread and so deep that its highly unlikely that this is the extent of the correction for those things.

House Judiciary Passes a Crucial Reform to the FBI

Ken Silva
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House Judiciary Passes a Crucial Reform to the FBI

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill Thursday that would require the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to electronically record its interviews of U.S. citizens suspected of having committed crimes.

The FBI’s standard practice is to take notes during an interview, and then summarize them in a report known as a Form 302.

Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisc., who sponsored the reform legislation, noted the flaws in this process.

“Without a verbatim record of what was said during an interview, prosecutors, defendants and judges are often left with a 302 report that merely summarizes the FBI agent’s characterizations and memories of the interview—or worse, Form 302 mischaracterizes what was said,” Tiffany said during a markup of the bill.

“We’ve seen these Form 302s be weaponized against Republicans,” he added, referencing the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. In that case, “irregular handling and editing” of FBI 302s transpired, according to a 2020 report from RealClearInvestigations.

Tiffany, who introduced the bill, further noted that the Justice Department has a policy in place that presumes that custodial interviews be electronically recorded. But without a law in place that requires interviews to be recorded, DOJ agents and officers are free to ignore the policy without any consequences, the congressman said.

The issue of FBI’s fudging 302 reports long proceeds the Flynn case. In fact, FBI officials facing investigation have expressed fears about their fellow agents mischaracterizing what they said during interviews.

Indeed, former top FBI agent Danny Coulson, who spearheaded the creation of the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, said in his autobiography that he insisted on submitting a sworn affidavit when he was under investigation for his role in the Ruby Ridge massacre in 1992.

At the time, the DOJ was probing the decisions that led to FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shooting and killing Vicki Weaver as she stood in the cabin door holding their 10-month-old baby. Coulson was one of the officials who signed off on the “rules of engagement” for Ruby Ridge, which stated: “If any adult in the area around the cabin is observed with a weapon after the surrender announcement had been made, deadly force could and should be used to neutralize the individual.”

Coulson said in his book, No Heroes, that he agreed to be interviewed about the matter, but he insisted on submitting a sworn affidavit as well.

“I had seen too many criminal investigations in which FBI agents conducted interviews and then paraphrased their subjects inaccurately because they were unfamiliar with the complicated subject matter or had their own spin on the case already,” said Coulson, who was not charged over the Ruby Ridge massacre.

Tiffany’s bill now heads to the House floor for consideration.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Shop at Dick’s? Gov’t Warned Banks That You May be a ‘MAGA’ Extremist

Ken Silva
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Shop at Dick’s? Gov’t Warned Banks That You May be a ‘MAGA’ Extremist

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Weaponization Subcommittee revealed Wednesday that the U.S. government told banks to pore through private financial transactions in search of potential domestic extremists in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.

The Weaponization Subcommittee showed that the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN—created to combat issues such as international money laundering—urged banks to search their databases for terms such as “MAGA” and “Trump” to find potential domestic extremists.

FinCEN also warned banks that indicators of extremism include “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” as well as “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”

Additionally, FinCEN told banks that they could spot potential “lone wolf” mass shooters by flagging purchases from stores such as Dick’s Sporting Goods.

“FinCEN distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution, explaining how other financial institutions can use MCC codes to detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters, [and] who may include dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists / Homegrown Violent Extremists (‘Lone Wolves’),” Weaponization Subcommittee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in a letter to former FinCEN official Noah Bishoff.

“For example, the slides instruct financial institutions to query for transactions using certain MCC codes such as ‘3484: Small Arms,’ ‘5091: Sporting and Recreational Goods and Supplies,’ and the keywords ‘Cabela’s,’ and ‘Dick’s Sporting Goods,’ among several others.”

Jordan noted that the above transactions would be protected by the Second Amendment, and have no apparent nexus to criminality.

Jordan requested that Bishoff participate in a transcribed interview with his committee about the matter by the end of this month.

Wednesday’s document dump from the Weaponization Subcommittee follow revelations last year about Bank of America providing a trove of data about January 6 protestors to the FBI—voluntarily and without a warrant.

That information came from  an FBI whistleblower, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill, who said that the financial institution “voluntarily and without any legal process” funneled to the agency “a list of individuals who had made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021.”

Hill also indicated that the bank investigated customers who bought weapons during that time frame. “This information appears to have had no individualized nexus to particularized criminal conduct, but was rather a data dump of BoA customers’ transactions over a three-day period,” Hill said, who was joined by his former supervisor, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Boston Field Office Joseph Bonavolonta.

The FinCEN and Bank of America issues both relate to an ongoing Weaponization Subcommittee investigation into federal law enforcement using private institutions as a proxy to conduct surveillance.

“This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the FBI’s respect for fundamental civil liberties,” Jordan said Wednesday.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

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