RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

August 3 to August 9

Featured Investigation:

Whistleblower Ties Clinton Campaign to Fake Russia Hack

Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that a whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that efforts by Hillary Clinton's campaign to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them. Sperry reports:

• A former deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues discovered suspicious data while investigating alleged Russian breaches of state election systems for the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). His analysis found minimal actual unauthorized access occurred, raising doubts about Russian attribution.
• When the whistleblower brought his findings to his supervisor, he was ordered to halt his investigation and exclude the findings from the final ICA. His boss pressured him to accept the ICA's conclusion of Russian preference for Trump and demanded he "trust" undisclosed evidence.
• The whistleblower later suspected some reported cyber activity may have been related to Clinton campaign contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax, in which tech executive Rodney Joffe and others allegedly manipulated internet records to create false evidence of Trump-Russia communications.
• Internal emails revealed contractors discussed "faking" Domain Name Service traffic and acknowledged their evidence wouldn't withstand public scrutiny, with one admitting their motivation was simply that they "do not like Trump."
• The name of the whistleblower is blacked out in the report. So, too, is that of his boss – though a RealClearInvestigations’ search of federal records shows Vinh Nguyen was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues.
• Nguyen had ties to Senator John McCain's operation. McCain actively promoted the debunked Steele dossier, personally delivering reports to FBI Director Comey and facilitating their publication by BuzzFeed.
• Despite the FBI closing the Alfa Bank case after debunking it, McCain's Senate Armed Services Committee commissioned a 687-page report that concluded there was "likely coordination" between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization, even though investigators found no evidence of secret communications.
• The whistleblower says he provided classified evidence of suspected manipulation to investigators working with Special Counsel John Durham but was never interviewed, despite claiming to have information relevant to ongoing criminal investigations.

Featured Investigation:

America’s Critical Mining Industry Finds Itself in a Deep Hole

The Trump administration recently touted the opening of America's first rare earth mine in 70 years as part of an ambitious effort to break Chinese dominance over critical minerals essential for smartphones, weapons systems, and green technology. But, James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations, regulatory hurdles, aging expertise, and China's stranglehold on processing make quick independence unlikely, with experts warning the timeline could stretch 10-15 years. Varney reports:

• China currently dominates 30 of 50 critical minerals and controls 90% of rare earth production, using this position to manipulate global markets and undercut potential competitors.
• The opening of Ramaco's Brook Mine in Wyoming marked the first domestic rare earth mining operation since the Eisenhower era.
• Regulatory obstacles create massive delays, with mining permits taking 7-10 years on average due to environmental impact statements, endangered species consultations, tribal negotiations, and lengthy review processes. The Brook Mine itself took nearly a decade from initial planning to production, illustrating the system's inefficiency.
• The Trump administration has invoked emergency powers through the Defense Production Act and streamlined permitting processes to accelerate domestic production. The Pentagon invested $400 million in California's Mountain Pass operation, expected to supply defense needs by 2028.
• America's rare earth potential remains largely unmapped, with geological surveys outdated and only 13 accredited mining engineering schools remaining. The industry faces a "gray tsunami" as experienced engineers retire without adequate replacements.
• Even optimistic projections suggest the U.S. cannot achieve mineral independence alone and will require partnerships with allied nations like Canada and Chile. Government investment in mining represents federal intervention similar to green energy subsidies, raising concerns about picking winners and losers.
• The challenge extends beyond extraction to processing capabilities, where China's downstream dominance in manufacturing magnets, batteries, and defense components maintains its strategic advantage despite potential American mining advances.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Senate Furniture Is Missing, RCI

Mass. AG Racks Up Travel Bills, RCI

No Effort to Claw Back Improper Grants, RCI

Hospital CEO Paid Herself on the Way Out, RCI

Throwback Thursday - Art Oddities, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

How Trump Is Reshaping Government Data, NBC News

Trump Ups Redistricting Fight with Call for New Census, The Hill

Flashback: Trump May Remove Noncitizens from Census, RCI

Biden Admin Pressured Companies to ‘Debank’ Trump, New York Post

Trump Openly Using Presidency to Enrich Trump Brand, Reason

DOJ Seeks Election Info From at Least 19 States, Associated Press

The Influential Leftist Clubs for Government Employees, Federalist

Laura Loomer’s Rise: ‘Obsessive’ Research, Oval Office Visits, Washington Post

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Study: Anti-Israel Activism ‘Highly Coordinated’ 

College Fix

In June 2024, Paul Sperry reported for RCI on Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian who inspired and helped engineer the anti-Israel protests that erupted at college campuses after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. This article reports that a new study by scholars at Indiana University has found that the anti-Israel activism that erupted on college campuses was “highly coordinated.”

The “central node” is the national Students for Justice in Palestine, “which functions as a strategic and narrative hub,” Professor Günther Jikeli wrote in the 61-page report. [Sperry reported that Bazian helped found the nation’s first SJP college chapter, at Berkeley]. … The researchers also wrote in their report that criticism of Israel is not always the same as antisemitism. “While political debate and student activism are vital to academic freedom, the rhetoric and actions of some groups now frequently cross the line into antisemitism, creating a hostile climate for many Jewish students and faculty,” the report stated. Many of the posts reflect Hamas messaging, the study alleges.

This article reports that the researchers were able to construct the network by reviewing Instagram posts with tagged collaborators. “The most frequent external collaborator is the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which frequently partners with National SJP and other campus groups,” the authors wrote. Other “top collaborators” include Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and DISSENTERS.

Hamas Orders Starving Hostage to Dig His Own Grave 

Telegraph

A picture is a worth a thousand words. In recent weeks the world has been shocked by photos of children allegedly starving to death in Gaza – though it turns out that some of those shots were misleading as they failed to note that the children were suffering from other maladies. But no one is disputing the veracity of the video Hamas released of an emaciated Israeli hostage digging his own grave inside a small tunnel in Gaza. In the video, this article reports, Evayatar David says: “This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in. Time is running out. You are the only ones who can end this.”

It is the third time Hamas and affiliated groups have released videos of what appear to be starving hostages in recent days. On Sunday morning the EU called the videos appalling and barbaric and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said he had met families of hostages to express his “profound shock.” … Mr. David, 24, shows a calendar of the month of July that he himself made, explaining which days he ate, mostly lentils and beans. At the end of the video Mr. David, bare chested, pale and weak, is shown digging his own grave. His brother, Ilay, accused Hamas of using him in “one of the most horrific and calculated campaigns of cruelty imaginable – a live hunger experiment.”

This article reports that Hamas’ armed wing says it is ready to deliver Red Cross aid to the hostages it is holding in Gaza if Israel opens humanitarian corridors permanently so that more food can be distributed to Gazans.

Kennedy Targets Vaccination Injury Program 

The Hill

In July 2022, RCI reported on an online database co-administered by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control – the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System – that had, at that time, compiled more than 1.3 million unverified reports of COVID-19 vaccine-implicated  “adverse events” running the gamut from mild to severe, including 29,000 deaths. While the federal government has mechanisms in place to compensate people injured by other vaccines, COVID-19 was not among them. This article reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that the compensation program “is broken, and I intend to fix it.”

Attorneys and other experts say Kennedy is right that the program, which was created in 1986 in order to give quick payouts to families who can prove a child was injured from a vaccine, is badly in need of modernization. It has too few staff available to handle a massive caseload, leaving patients waiting for years just to have their cases heard. It covers almost three times as many vaccines as when it was first created, but the number of “special masters” who hear cases has stayed the same.

This article reports that Kennedy’s reforms are not yet clear, but adding COVID-19 vaccines to the list of shots eligible for the program would be a massive and expensive change.

Migrants Can Be Hard to Find in Opaque ICE Detention System 

Wall Street Journal

Frequent transfers of illegal aliens between detention centers – across the country or to multiple locations in a few days – have become more common as the Trump administration tries to aggressively identify people in the country illegally while avoiding dangerous overcrowding at detention centers. This article reports that the high transfer rate is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s strategy to release as few detainees as possible as they await deportation. With a near-record 58,000 in ICE detention, some need to be transferred to keep up with space constraints.

Many immigrant advocates say the transfers amount to denying a Constitutional right to due process, as they often place detainees far from their families and legal counsel, sometimes where they cannot access mandatory court hearings or even be located. … They describe a trend where their clients are disappearing into an opaque and labyrinthine system that is obstructing their ability to defend themselves in court. … The Trump administration says such concerns are overblown. “ICE does not ‘disappear’ people,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “The appropriate process due to an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple,” she said, adding, “That said, DHS has a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the U.S. Constitution.”

This article reports that “many of the transfers have been from liberal states, where judges have been more lenient, to states where judges have more frequently denied bond, lawyers said. 

Those states, including Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, are also home to 14 of the country’s 20 largest detention centers.”

Mystery of the L.A. Mansion Filled With Surrogate Children

Wall Street Journal

After a baby was hospitalized with possible signs of child abuse, this article reports that police showed up at a nine-bedroom mansion in this Los Angeles suburb where they found 15 more children, none older than 3, living under the care of nannies. The investigative trail led them to six more children at other homes in the area. A Chinese-born man and woman living in the mansion said they were the parents of all the children – as well as six others found in other homes. They may well be telling the truth.

The mansion, it turned out, was listed as the headquarters of Mark Surrogacy, which had arranged many of the children’s births and was managed by Silvia Zhang, the woman living there. Zhang said she was the mother of all the children. The surrogates who carried some of the children said in interviews with The Wall Street Journal that Zhang deceived them about the family she was trying to have, and that they had spoken with federal agents in recent weeks. The investigation is focusing, they were told, on whether the couple was selling babies whose births the agency had arranged. Zhang denied that in an interview with the Journal, saying that she and a man she described as her husband just wanted to have as many children as they could. “We never sell our babies,” she said. “We take care of them very well.”

The article raises concerns about the "lightly regulated" commercial surrogacy industry and its ties to Chinese nationals. Forty-one percent foreign-born surrogate parents from 2014-2020 are from China, according to researchers at Emory University.