RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
July 5 to July 11, 2020

Featured Investigation:
FBI Man at Heart of Surveillance Abuses 
Teaches ... the Ethics of Spying

The FBI's fabled motto – Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity – rings ever more hollow in the still-unfolding Trump-Russia scandal. A striking new illustration of why comes from Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations. He has found that a senior official at the heart of FBI surveillance abuses teaches a class on the ethics of spying at a small Washington-area college. What's more, this official has been a major figure in Russiagate, overlooked in part because his identity has been hidden -- until now.

Sperry reports:

• The senior FBI analyst, Brian J. Auten, identified by Sperry through congressional sources, has taught the spy ethics course at Patrick Henry College since 2010, records show.
• This includes the period when Auten and a counterintelligence team electronically monitored Trump campaign adviser Carter Page based on false rumors from the so-called Steele dossier and forged evidence.
• Auten, responsible for vetting FBI warrant applications to spy on Page, never confirmed the most explosive allegations in the dossier from the sources who provided information to ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
• Auten even came across exculpatory evidence indicating that Page was not the Russian asset the dossier alleged, but was in fact a CIA asset.
• Perhaps most disturbing, the analyst withheld the fact that Steele’s main source disavowed key dossier allegations.
• Yet Auten told a team of inspectors that he did not have any “pains or heartburn” over the accuracy of the Steele reports, the Justice Department Inspector General reported.
• According to the IG, Auten also wasn’t concerned about Steele’s anti-Trump bias or that his work was commissioned by Donald Trump’s political opponent, Hillary Clinton. He called that “immaterial.”
• Further, Auten appears to have violated his own stated “golden rule” for spying. He has written that he teaches his students that the FBI applies “the least intrusive standard” when it considers spying on U.S. citizens to avoid harm to “a subject’s reputation, dignity and privacy.”
• At least three Senate oversight committees are seeking to question Auten. 

Featured Investigation: 
Tropic of Separation: A Child Custody Dispute
at the Bitter Extreme

To fine art photographer Adam Fuss, the ordeal is like being turned into a ghastly film negative in a recurring legal nightmare worthy of Kafka. After being cleared of horrific child sex abuse charges and awarded custody of his son in New York, he finds himself once again defending his life, reputation and freedom in Costa Rica -- on the mother's same charges.

Richard Bernstein unpacks for RealClearInvestigations what surely must be a case for the annals of bitter child custody disputes, in an era of seemingly boundless legal options and venues for those able to pursue them:

• Arden’s American mother, Aleidria Lichau, an environmentalist, absconded with the boy to Central America during a long-simmering custody dispute in the U.S.
• When Fuss came to visit his son, 7-year-old Arden, the father was arrested and charged.
• Ever since, in what could be an example of the believe-all-women movement gone to excess – in Costa Rica, not the U.S. -- Fuss has been prevented from leaving the country while he faces trial.
• The catch: The grave charges against Fuss were painstakingly investigated in New York and found to be “unsubstantiated” or “unfounded” -- with the mother herself determined to be the child abuser.
• Expert witnesses said the child's readily provided account of forced oral sex sounded scripted and likely due to what one called “coaching” by his mother.
• Is this case a grotesque miscarriage of justice, as Fuss and his supporters see it?
• Or is it less black and white, given the widely acknowledged hidden frequency and vagaries child sexual abuse? Are the mother's actions a morally justified act of rescue of a boy in danger?

Such are the questions, already decided in the U.S., that will now be taken up in a Costa Rican courtroom, with three lives again at stake. 

Trump-Russia/2020 Election News

Durham Could 'Punt' His Probe to After Vote, Source Says, Fox News
Steele Ordered to Pay Damages Over Bogus Dossier Claims, Just the News
How Biden's Foreign-Policy Team Got Rich, American Prospect
Hunter Biden Still Owns 10% of Chinese Private Equity Firm, Daily Caller
FBI Probes Chinese Exile, Including Work With Bannon, Wall Street Journal
Mary Trump Book: 'Sociopath' Dad Begat Donald the Bully, New York Times
Effort Afoot to Clean Up Kamala Harris's Wikipedia Page, The Intercept 

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Gun Violence Surges in Cities Across U.S: A Post-July 4 Reader 
Daily Mail et al.
Gun violence has been surging in many Americans cities, as documented by this sampling of post-July 4 coverage.

• Nightmare in New York: City a No-Go Zone as Murders Soar Mail on Sunday
• Children Among Victims of July 4 Weekend Gun Violence Across U.S. CNN
• Kids 7, 8, and 14 Killed Over Holiday Weekend in Chicago, Atlanta ABC News
• Chicago Gun Violence Spikes and Increasingly Finds the Youngest Victims NY Times
• 11 and Fatally Shot in Southeast D.C. After Anti-Violence Cookout Washington Post
• Deadly Night in New York City as Gun Violence Surge Continues FOX 5 NY
• LAPD Reports Los Angeles Homicides Up 250% for First Week of June Axios
• Shootings a Glaring Exception to the Coronavirus Crime Drop The Trace

In a separate article, PJ Media reports that at least 21 people have been killed – some by the police – in the riots following George Floyd’s death. 

18 Top Firms Give to BLM Group Seeking to Replace the 'Nuclear Family'
Daily Signal
Some of America’s top companies – including Amazon, Microsoft, Nabisco, Gatorade, Airbnb, and the Atlantic and Warner record labels – have pledged or donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the BLM Global Network Foundation. But what are they supporting? This article from the conservative site reports that while BLM is known for its demand to defund the police, less attention has been paid to its efforts to undermine the nuclear family. The BLM foundation website says one of its main goals is to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

Postal Service Delivery Trucks Keep Catching On Fire
Vice
Since May 2014, Vice reports, at least 407 of the U.S. Postal Service’s iconic delivery vehicles - featuring right-side driver seats so letter carriers can easily put mail into mailboxes - have been damaged or destroyed in fires. That's about one every five days. In 125 cases, the trucks were so thoroughly destroyed that investigators were unable to identify a probable  cause. Of the remaining 282 fires, the only pattern was that there was no pattern. Although one engineering report found occasional lax maintenance practices that may have resulted in an increase in fires, the most likely explanation is that the trucks are simply too old and falling apart on the road; most vehicles have been in service between 26 and 33 years. 

At Rehab Centers, Recovery Means Work Without Pay
Reveal
Many drug and alcohol recovery programs that claim to help the poor and the desperate are instead conscripting them into forms of indentured servitude, this article reports, requiring them to work without pay or for pennies on the dollar in exchange for their stay. The programs provide shared room and board. Some offer basic rehab services, such as drug counseling, classes and recreational activities; others offer only church services and Bible study. All of them require participants to work substantial hours without pay – often with little regard for their safety. Some work at rehab-run businesses, such as thrift stores or car washes. Others work at outside enterprises, including small businesses, temp agencies and some of the largest, most profitable corporations in the country – Exxon, Shell, Walmart and Tyson Foods. While they put in anywhere from 20 to 80 hours a week of often-backbreaking labor, the payment for their work goes to their rehab operators. The programs claim the work is treatment, often calling it “work therapy.” Former labor officials say failing to compensate workers is illegal. No government agency tracks these facilities. 

Coronavirus Investigations

Covid Contracts Overlook Fraud Claims
USA Today
Desperate for supplies and services to combat the pandemic, federal purchasers have rushed out more than $16 billion in coronavirus contracts ranging from masks and medical equipment to janitorial cleaning, video productions and ferryboat services. A USA Today investigation of 15 of the largest and hardest-hit states found hundreds of millions of dollars in single-sourced, non-competitive awards went to vendors that have been accused of defrauding taxpayers through the False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to bring fraud lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. government. For these firms, the accusations were no barrier to getting more lucrative federal contracting work. Nothing in federal law prohibits it as long as they are considered “responsible” and aren’t suspended or debarred from doing business with the government. A company with a scar in its background can resolve the government’s claims while denying wrongdoing. This echoes an April 30 article in RealClearInvestigations which reported that hundreds of schools on a federal watch list for financial or other management problems have received millions in federal funds as part of a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package. 

Comprehensive Look at Racial Disparities of Coronavirus
New York Times
This article reports that at least through the end of May – and before the recent surge of cases – COVID-19 took an especially grim toll on African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. Latino and African-American residents of the United States were three times as likely to become infected their white neighbors and nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people. The article also asserts that the cause of these disparities is clear: systemic racism. It never defines this term – which invokes the idea of racism as the one-size-fits-all explanation for all differences. The article reports that “experts point to circumstances that have made Black and Latino people more likely than white people to be exposed to the virus: Many of them have front-line jobs that keep them from working at home; rely on public transportation; or live in cramped apartments or multigenerational homes.” But, it does not point to any studies demonstrating a causal link. In fact, recent studies suggest concerns about public transportation, for example, are overblown.

Epidemiologists Confront Their Protest Double Standard
New York Times
Epidemiologists were against protests and other large gatherings, until they were for them, illustrating once more how politics often drives the “science” used to enforce policies regarding COVID-19 (not to mention push other cuases). This article notes that many of public health experts who decried the May protests demanding the economy be reopened not only celebrated but joined the much larger protests after the killing of George Floyd. That reaction, and the contrast with the epidemiologists’ earlier fervent support for the lockdown, gave rise to an uncomfortable question: Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, this article reports, “the answer seemed to be ‘yes.’ ”

Also Coronavirus-Related

239 Experts With 1 Big Claim: Coronavirus Is Airborne New York Times
Unhealthy One-Upmanship Drives Race for Vaccine Politico Magazone
Dems, Media to Blame for Deaths in Anti-Hydroxychloroquine Hysteria PJM
CDC Made Same Coronavirus Mistakes With Zika Washington Post
Florida Democrats Return PPP Cash Amid Scandal Politico
Airline Layoffs Despite Covid Aid ProPublica
Trapped Inside San Quentin During COVID-19 Mother Jones