RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week}

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
May 1 to May 7, 2022

Featured Investigation:
To Spy On Trump Aide, FBI Pursued
a Dossier Rumor the Press Shot Down As 'Bullshit'

The FBI decision to spy on ex-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page -- a core abuse of Russiagate, one of the worst political smears in American history -- hinged on an unsubstantiated rumor from a Hillary Clinton campaign-paid dossier that the Washington Post's Moscow sources had quickly shot down as “bullshit” and “impossible,” Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations.

Sperry writes that the episode emerges in emails disclosed to a D.C. court hearing the criminal case of a Clinton lawyer accused of lying to the FBI:

The dossier innuendo, peddled by Clinton campaign oppo research firm Fusion GPS, claimed that during a July 2016 trip to Moscow, Page met clandestinely to collude with Vladimir Putin cronies.
The FBI pounced on the tip, immediately using it to secure court approval to wiretap Page as a suspected Russian agent.
But some journalists were skeptical of the tip from their ex-colleagues at Fusion GPS -- at least for a time. Washington Post reporter Tom Hamburger backed off, saying sources in Moscow dismissed it as “Bullshit. Impossible.”
The documents suggest that some journalists, keen as they were to report dirt on Trump, were nevertheless more cautious than the FBI about embracing suspect hearsay information.
The new material also offers a look at the lengths Clinton-paid operatives went to in order to seed the government with unverified Trump-Russia rumors – including powerful Democrats in Congress such as Rep. Adam Schiff.

Featured Investigation:
All the Biden Border Policies That Have Illegals
Packing Up and Heading North

While a court has stayed the Biden administration’s attempt to lift pandemic-prompted restrictions on immigrants, that’s just one setback in a largely successful push to make it easier for migrants to enter, live and work in the U.S., James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations. He recounts numerous ways, well-publicized and not, President Biden is working to realize “an unending desire to bring more and more people into our country,” as one critic puts it.

Since taking office, Varney reports, Biden’s administration has:

Suspended deportations.
Ended the Trump “Remain in Mexico” program that had eased the crush of those awaiting asylum hearings
Ordered an end to work on President Trump’s border wall.
Revived the Obama-era policy known as “catch and release.”
Expanded the “paroling” of illegal border crossers.
Authorized resettling migrants in secret flights around the country.
Ended the “no match” policy that had helped the government identify people using fraudulent credentials to find work.
Ended ICE’s practice of taking custody of immigrants released from local or state jails.
Scrubbed Trump agreements with Mexico and Central American countries designed to constrict the flow of immigrants.
Lifted travel bans on countries that were upheld by the Supreme Court.
Expanded countries whose residents can be granted “Temporary Protected Status” – because those countries are deemed unsafe.
A border sheriff’s advocate says would-be migrants around the world aren’t missing the message: “There is a widespread idea among them that the border is open.”

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

Secretive Soros-Backed Group Influencing Biden's Policies Fox News
Docs: Journalist Sent Russiagate Story Draft to Fusion GPS Vice
Ex-Defense Sec'y Says Trump Asked About Shooting Protesters Axios
FBI Allegedly Retaliated Against Agents Protesting on Jan. 6 Fox News
New Adviser to Disinfo Board Pushed Biden Laptop Disinfo Free Beacon
Biden Team's 'The Alien Always Wins' Rule Revealed Just the News
Biden Laptop Repairman Sues Schiff, Media Over Smears NY Post
Oligarch Linked to Hunter Biden 3X Escapes U.S. Sanctions Daily Mail
CIA's Venture Capital Gets Into Wall Street's 'SPAC' Game Intercept

Leak: Draft Opinion Overturning Roe
Politico

In a massive breach of tradition almost certainly intended to pressure the Supreme Court, a copy of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press. Written in February by Justice Samuel Alito ...

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The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
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While confirming the authenticity of the document first published by Politico, Chief Justice John Roberts described its leak as “a singular and egregious breach” of trust. The document certainly suggests that Roe will likely be reversed, but a Supreme Court press release noted that “it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal reports on the Supreme Court marshal tasked with finding the leaker of the draft opinion. According to a source, the marshal overseeing the Supreme Court Police Department -- retired Army colonel Gail Curley -- has never conducted such a leak investigation. The decision by Roberts to deputize the marshal to probe the leak suggests the court wants to keep the controversy in-house, court observers say.

American Nationalist: Rise of Tucker Carlson (Pts. 1-3)
New York Times

For its almost 20,000-word, three-part series on the Fox News personality, the New York Times interviewed “dozens of friends and former colleagues,” and analyzed “more than 1,100 episodes of his Fox program.” All that effort produced a cherry-picked piece of ratification journalism for liberal Times readers, reaffirming perceptions of Carlson and conservatives as racist. A bulleted sampler of quotes:

'Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. '
'Since the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Carlson has become the most visible and voluble defender of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Donald J. Trump in office, playing down the presence of white nationalists in the crowd and claiming the attack “barely rates as a footnote.” '
'At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. To channel their fear into ratings, Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists, who have watched gleefully from the fringes of public life as he popularizes their ideas. '
'In February, as Western pundits and politicians lined up to condemn the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, for his impending invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Carlson invited his viewers to shift focus back to the true enemy at home. “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist?” Mr. Carlson asked. “Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”'

These hit pieces will not change any minds. Those who watch the show will recognize its gross mischaracterizations – while also acknowledging that Carlson often utters strong and controversial views. Those who have never watched his program but still choose to believe the Times plays it straight will be able repeat misinformation because it appeared in the "paper of record."

In a separate article of a similar genre and tenor, the New York Times reports on Elon Musk’s life growing up in apartheid South Africa. The piece strains to draw inferences about how Musk would govern matters pertaining to free speech at Twitter, based on his “upbringing in elite, segregated white communities that were littered with anti-Black government propaganda, and detached from the atrocities that white political leaders inflicted on the Black majority.” Quote:

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Mr. Musk has heralded his purchase of Twitter as a victory for free speech, having criticized the platform for removing posts and banning users. It is unclear what role his childhood — coming up in a time and place in which there was hardly a free exchange of ideas and where government misinformation was used to demonize Black South Africans — may have played in that decision.
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In contrast with its dark implications, the article seems to absolve Musk of sin, noting his attendance at a high school, Pretoria Boys, with a “socially progressive undercurrent” among anti-apartheid classmates. Further, the article suggests that at Pretoria, Musk was exposed to classically liberal ideas on free speech, which may inform his current views. The article also cites a biography that claims Musk did not wish to participate in South Africa’s mandatory military service because it would force him to participate in the apartheid regime.

In a related article, Bloomberg’s BQ Prime reports on the background and doings of Elon Musk’s right hand man, Jared Birchall – described as his “fixer.”

Last but not least on the Musk beat, the Daily Mail reports on the ties between George Soros, and various Clinton and Obama staffers to the push to get corporations to boycott Twitter if Musk is to enact free speech reforms, as he has intimated.

PayPal Suspends Journalists and Threatens Their Cash
TK News

In recent days, the online payment platform PayPal has, without explanation, suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alternative media sites Consortium News and MintPress, Matt Taibbi reports. The sites challenge prevailing orthodoxies regarding U.S. national security and foreign policy, and other “mainstream” positions. Last year, Taibbi reports, PayPal announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to “fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities,” and to gather intelligence on “how extremist and hate movements … are attempting to leverage financial platforms to fund criminal activity.” Neither PayPal nor the ADL responded to the journalist’s questions on whether there was a nexus between their partnership and the account suspensions. Taibbi writes:

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This episode ups the ante again on the content moderation movement, toward the world hinted at in the response to the Canadian trucker protests, where having the wrong opinions can result in your money being frozen or seized. Going after cash is a big jump from simply deleting speech, with a much bigger chilling effect. This is especially true in the alternative media world, where money has long been notoriously tight, and the loss of a few thousand dollars here or there can have a major effect on a site, podcast, or paper.
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Afghanistan Has a New Drug: Meth
Washington Post

Afghanistan’s poppy fields have long been a major global source for heroin. Now, this article reports, the ephedra plants that grow wild in its mountain regions are fueling the rise of another drug industry in this impoverished nation: methamphetamine.

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Hundreds of meth labs have appeared in Afghanistan over the past six years, according to independent experts, former government officials and drug traders. And more are being built each month as the country’s economic crisis forces Afghans to find new sources of income. The vast majority of meth produced is for export, but an increasing number of Afghans are turning to it as their drug of choice. … Cooking meth with harvested ephedra in Afghanistan – while labor-intensive and dangerous – costs a fraction of the price as making the same drug with ephedra extracted from pharmaceuticals, the process used to produce the vast majority of the world’s meth.
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Coronavirus Investigations

CDC Tracked Phones of Millions
for Lockdown Compliance
Vice

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought access to location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the United States to perform analysis of compliance with curfews and track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, this article reports.

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The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence among its investors. Google banned the company from the Play Store in June. The CDC used the data for monitoring curfews, with the documents saying that SafeGraph’s data “has been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.” The documents date from 2021.
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Other Coronavirus Investigations

COVID Mutations Are Not Slowing Washington Post

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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week