RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
November 16 to November 22
Featured Investigation:
EXCLUSIVE: How Trump’s Own Appointees
Aided Russiagate Plot Against Him
Drawing on recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with informed sources, Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that during Trump’s first term several of his own high-ranking officials and appointees helped shield – rather than expose – flawed intelligence manufactured in the final days of the Obama administration that falsely linked the president to Russian election interference.
- The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), drafted by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, claimed Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win in 2016. A 2018 review found its central assertions relied on unverified or falsified intelligence, including material from the Clinton-funded Steele dossier.
- According to investigators, Trump officials – including Special Counsel John Durham, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and CIA Director Gina Haspel — buried or dismissed evidence undermining the ICA, contributing to the persistence of the Russia-collusion narrative through the 2020 election.
- Bolton was reportedly briefed on a classified House Intelligence Committee report showing the ICA’s key claims were based on faulty intelligence, yet he did not inform Trump.
- Pompeo and especially Haspel allegedly obstructed House investigators, restricting access to documents, monitoring their work, and limiting interviews with ICA authors. Haspel locked drafts of the investigative report in a CIA vault and urged DOJ officials not to release it.
- As Durham prepared his inquiry into the origins of the Russia probe, he blocked declassification of a 44-page report debunking the ICA before the 2020 election, then largely ignored the ICA in his final 316-page report.
- Former Trump advisers argue these actions protected Obama-era officials and suppressed exculpatory information that could have lifted suspicion from Trump during his presidency.
- The now-declassified ICA is central to ongoing DOJ investigations targeting Brennan, Clapper, and others accused of manipulating intelligence to portray Trump as Putin’s preferred candidate.
Featured Investigation:
How the Avalanche of Academic Papers
Threatens Scientific Research
In the third part of his series on the crisis in academic publishing, Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations that the Big Five publishers of top journals—Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Sage—are generating massive profits by overwhelming the scholarly system with an unprecedented surge in published papers, many of questionable quality.
- When Wiley demanded Philosophy & Public Affairs increase output from 14 to 35 articles in 60 days, Editor-in-Chief Anna Stilz led the entire editorial staff and board in a mass resignation rather than compromise peer review standards.
- The Big Five control over 50% of indexed papers and generate $12 billion annually with profit margins of 30-40% – matching Microsoft and Alphabet – largely funded by taxpayers through university budgets and federal grants.
- Publishers collect an average of $2,900 per article in processing charges, with costs reaching $11,700 for prestigious journals. Yet actual publication costs average only $400 per paper, with editors and peer reviewers working for free.
- Article processing charges paid to six major publishers tripled from 2019 to 2023, reaching $2.5 billion. Almost 90% of journals increased fees, often above inflation, while universities now spend an average of $11 million annually – about a third of library budgets.
- The total number of indexed articles soared 47% between 2016 and 2022 to 2.8 billion. The pay-per-article model incentivizes maximizing production over quality, enabling paper mills to flood journals with fraudulent research featuring fake data and AI-generated text.
- Wiley purchased Hindawi for $298 million in 2020, only to discover massive paper mill infiltration three years later, forcing the retraction of 8,000 suspect articles and ending the brand.
- NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya called article processing charges "unreasonably high" and announced price caps starting in January to protect taxpayers. The Big Five oppose restrictions, claiming fees reflect necessary publishing costs.
- A Cambridge University Press survey of 3,000 researchers concluded that the industry should prioritize quality over quantity. Some journals are breaking away to establish nonprofit "diamond open access" alternatives where neither authors nor readers pay fees.
Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books
Houston Chose Expensive Gas Stations, RCI
Hate-Filled Mamdani Allies Get Public Funding, RCI
Alleged Thief Hired at Maryland School, RCI
U.S. Pays to Study Hookah, RCI
California’s Clean Energy Doesn’t Pay, RCI
Trump 2.0 and the Beltway
How Thomas Massie Outmaneuvered Trump on Epstein , Politico
Trump-Marjorie Taylor Greene Breakup Shakes MAGA, Washington Post
Why Trump Couldn’t Stop the Electric Vehicle Dream, Politico
Epstein Advised House Democrat During Trump Hearing , Washington Post
Flashback: Epstein’s Ties to Virgin Islands Democrats, RCI
Trump's Eye-Popping Post-Election Windfall, Atlantic
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Inmates Enlisted as Enforcers in Brutal Mississippi Jail
New York Times
For years, this article reports, guards in a Rankin County jail outside Jackson, Miss., terrorized inmates, according to dozens of people who say they endured, witnessed or participated in violent assaults.
More than a dozen former inmates recounted being beaten for nonviolent infractions, like talking back to guards or getting caught with contraband. Many said a special group of inmates, known as trusties, helped guards beat troublemakers, lending fists whenever needed. Sometimes, the jail’s highest-ranking officials instigated the punishments or handed them down themselves, according to former guards and inmates. Guards dragged inmates into blind corners, where cameras couldn’t capture acts of violence. They beat people behind closed doors. And they encouraged favored inmates to join in on the brutality.
This article reports that while four former guards aid they had witnessed unjustified beatings by other guards and trusties on a regular basis, an attorney representing the corrections department called the reporting “baseless,” describing the Rankin County jail as “one of the cleanest and best-run jails in Mississippi, with jailers never having been found to use excessive force in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
In a separate article, the Marshall Project reports that “at least 46 people have died in Mississippi’s county jails since 2020, according to lawsuits, news reports and law enforcement records reviewed by The Marshall Project - Jackson. But those lost lives do not appear in any official statistics or records. Mississippi has long failed to count and report all deaths in local jails that serve the state’s 82 counties, despite a federal requirement to do so. These often-dangerous facilities operate virtually free of any state oversight.”
Government Punishes Charlie Kirk Critics
Reuters
Two months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a government-backed campaign has led to firings, suspensions, investigations and other action against more than 600 people. Republican officials have endorsed the punishments, saying that those who glorify violence should be removed from positions of trust.
Americans sometimes lose their jobs after speaking out in heated political moments. Twenty-two academics were dismissed in 2020, the year George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, most for comments deemed insensitive, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group. In 2024, the first full year following the outbreak of the latest Israel-Gaza war, more than 160 people were fired in connection with their pro-Palestinian advocacy, according to Palestine Legal, an organization that protects the civil rights of American supporters of the Palestinian cause. The backlash over comments about Kirk’s shooting stands apart because of its reach and its public backing from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top government officials. It represents a striking about-face for Republicans, who for years castigated the left for what they called “cancel culture” – the ostracism or punishment of those whose views were deemed unacceptable.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “President Trump and the entire Administration will not hesitate to speak the truth – for years, radical leftists have slandered their political opponents as Nazis and Fascists, inspiring left-wing violence. It must end.” She added: “no one understands the dangers of political violence more than President Trump” after he survived two assassination attempts.
AI-Generated Evidence
Showing Up in Court Alarms Judges
NBC News
The judge was suspicious. Video testimony showed a witness whose voice was disjointed and monotone, her face fuzzy and lacking emotion. Every few seconds, the witness would twitch and repeat her expressions. Although the video claimed to feature a real witness – who had appeared in another, authentic piece of evidence offered by the plaintiff – the judge concluded it was an AI “deepfake,” and dismissed the case. This article reports that advances in technology could transform an emerging problem into a crisis.
With the rise of powerful AI tools, AI-generated content is increasingly finding its way into courts, and some judges are worried that hyperrealistic fake evidence will soon flood their courtrooms and threaten their fact-finding mission. … “My wife and I have been together for over 30 years, and she has my voice everywhere,” [Judge Scott] Schlegel said. “She could easily clone my voice on free or inexpensive software to create a threatening message that sounds like it’s from me and walk into any courthouse around the country with that recording.” “The judge will sign that restraining order. They will sign every single time,” said Schlegel, referring to the hypothetical recording. “So you lose your cat, dog, guns, house, you lose everything.
This article reports that some judges and legal experts are advocating for changes to judicial rules and guidelines on how attorneys verify their evidence. One proposal would require parties alleging that the opposition used deepfakes to thoroughly substantiate their arguments. Another would transfer the duty of deepfake identification from impressionable juries to judges. Those e proposals were considered by the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules when it conferred in May, but they were not approved.
The Crypto Industry’s $28 Billion in ‘Dirty Money’
New York Times
Even as cryptocurrency gains mainstream acceptance from Wall Street banks, online retailers and President Trump, who has started his own cryptocurrency business and vowed to make the United States the world’s “crypto capital,” at least $28 billion tied to illicit activity has flowed into crypto exchanges over the last two years, according to an examination by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The New York Times and 36 other news organizations around the world.
The money came from hackers, thieves and extortionists. It was traced to cybercriminals in North Korea and scammers whose schemes stretched from Minnesota to Myanmar. Over and over, the analysis showed, these groups have moved money onto the world’s largest exchanges, which are online marketplaces where people can convert U.S. dollars or euros into Bitcoin, Ether and other digital coins. … Binance [which participated in a $2 billion business deal with Mr. Trump’s crypto firm in May] pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and agreed to pay a $4.3 billion penalty to the U.S. government after processing transactions for terrorist groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda.
This article reports that whether the exchanges have broken the law is a nuanced question. Companies that process dirty money may still be fulfilling their legal responsibilities – by hiring compliance staff to root out fraud, for example. But in the United States, crypto firms have been prosecuted under the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to create robust internal systems to prevent money laundering.
Good Luck Actually Getting to See a Medicaid Doctor
Wall Street Journal
Insurers must show robust networks of contracted doctors to win and keep state Medicaid contracts that are collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue each year. A Wall Street Journal analysis of state and federal data shows many of the doctors insurers list in their networks do not provide much care to patients.
Some doctors are erroneously shown in states or cities where they don’t actually work. Others won’t book appointments for Medicaid patients, who typically are far less lucrative than those with employer coverage. Some medical practices limit slots allotted for Medicaid visits, or simply won’t take new Medicaid patients. … “It’s a fake system,” said Elisha Yaghmai, a Kansas doctor who runs a company that provides physicians to rural hospitals. “It doesn’t actually get them care.”
This article reports that the problem is especially acute when it comes to medical specialists who diagnose and treat some complex medical conditions. In certain specialties, including psychiatrists, eye doctors and dermatologists, nearly half of the providers listed as in-network did not treat a single enrollee of the Medicaid plan that listed them. States can fine insurers that regulators determine don’t offer enough doctors. But they often rely on what the insurers report. The result, industry critics said, is that giant companies have incentives to maintain what some researchers call “ghost networks.”
High Cigarette Taxes Costing States Billions in Lost Revenue
Reason
California charges $2.87 per pack in taxes, which rubs many state residents the wrong way. That is a big reason why, this article reports, that a little half of cigarettes sold in the state are smuggled from elsewhere. That makes California the leading destination for smuggled cigarettes in the U.S., bumping New York from its long position at the top of the list. In neighboring Arizona ($2.00 per pack) and Oregon ($3.33 per pack), over a quarter of all cigarettes sold are smuggled, while Nevada ($1.80 per pack) is a source of cigarettes sold out of state. State governments, of course. don't make money on cigarettes smuggled in from elsewhere.
"The cumulative impact of annual smuggling since 2007, the first year for which we have historical data, demonstrates the severity of the issue," excise-tax policy expert Jacob Macumber-Rosin wrote this week for the Tax Foundation. "Over this 17-year period from 2007 to 2023, the total loss from net cigarette smuggling exceeded $83.8 billion, which amounts to an annual average loss of $4.93 billion."
This article reports that high taxes have been a boon for low-tax states, such as New Hampshire, where about a third of smokes sold there are transported elsewhere, and illicit factories in Vietnam and other countries that manufacture counterfeit smokes.
