RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

December 7 to December 13

Featured Investigation:

DC Pipe Bomb Arrest Raises Questions

About Christopher’s Wray’s FBI

Julie Kelly reports for RealClearInvestigations that while one mystery appears to have been solved by the recent arrest of Brian Cole Jr. for allegedly planting pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC headquarters on January 5, 2021, another troubling question has emerged: why did it take the FBI five years to nab him? Concerns about whether political motivations might have played a role in the delay have been ignited by the very different version of events given by current and former leaders of the bureau.

• Deputy Director Dan Bongino revealed that a fresh investigative team assigned just two months ago quickly identified Cole using existing evidence – credit card records, cell phone data, and vehicle activity – raising questions about why previous teams failed to act.
• His version of events appears to be at odds with former FBI Director Christopher Wray repeated assurances to Congress through the years that the bureau was "aggressively investigating" the case.
• While evidence suggests a strong push by the bureau in the weeks after the pipe bombs were discovered, Congressional records suggest the FBI diverted resources away from the case as early as February 2021, contradicting Wray's public statements about an active, dedicated investigation.
• Key evidence discrepancies emerged: cell phone data former Washington FBI chief Steven D'Antuono claimed was "corrupted" proved crucial to Cole's arrest. The woman who discovered the RNC device worked for FirstNet – the same provider that allegedly told the FBI the data was unrecoverable.
• Security failures surrounded the discoveries: Secret Service swept DNC headquarters hours before a pipe bomb was found near where Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had entered. Bomb-sniffing dogs passed the location twice without detecting anything.
• Questions persist about witness testimony and device viability. The woman who found the RNC device gave contradictory statements about timing. A Quantico report determined the devices were nonoperational – potentially undermining the "mass casualty" narrative.
• Rep. Barry Loudermilk's select subcommittee is demanding answers from Wray, witnesses, and Secret Service agents about the investigation's apparent dormancy during the previous administration.

• The House Judiciary Committee says "everything is on the table" regarding potential hearings on whether Wray's FBI deliberately stalled the investigation for political reasons.

Featured Investigation:

Newsom's ‘National Model’ for Homeless Wracked by Fraud

Ana Kasparian reports for RealClearInvestigations that even as California Governor Gavin Newsom promotes his signature effort to fight homelessness as a “national model,” the $3.75 billion program called Project Homekey faces growing scrutiny over inflated costs, vacant units, lack of oversight, and multiple federal fraud investigations. Despite unprecedented spending, homelessness in California has surged during the five years Homekey has operated, raising questions about the program’s effectiveness as Newsom positions himself for a potential 2028 presidential run. Highlights include:

• Newsom calls Homekey “unprecedented,” citing nearly 16,000 housing units funded to serve more than 175,000 people. Yet a 2024 state audit found California does not track outcomes, making it impossible to know whether participants remain housed or return to the streets.
• Since Homekey began in 2020, homelessness in California has increased by more than 20%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
• Homekey started as a FEMA-funded emergency program renting hotel rooms—sometimes at more than $6,000 a month—to keep unhoused people out of COVID-vulnerable encampments. Newsom then converted it into a permanent housing initiative funded by state and federal dollars.
• Critics say Homekey units lack adequate mental-health and addiction treatment, despite high rates of mental illness and drug use among the homeless population. Overdose deaths became common in some sites, where residents were left alone without adequate support.
• The program has been marked by fraud and federal Investigations, including: Shangri-La Industries’ CFO allegedly falsified financials to obtain $26 million, later spending funds on personal luxuries; and The Weingart Center used $27.3 million for a property tied to a secretive, no-improvement $16.1 million markup. DOJ officials say more cases are forthcoming as they seek to recover misused funds.
• A state audit faulted California for failing to track financial or outcome data. Lawmakers unanimously passed a bill requiring annual evaluations; Newsom vetoed it as unnecessary.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

California Funds Hamas-Adjacent Group, RCI

Florida Gave Vouchers to Public School Students, RCI

Inmate Phone Calls Lead to More Criminal Activity, RCI

Throwback Thursday - Funding Fat-Filled Butter, RCI

Senators Earmarked Cash for Their Former Schools, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Ilhan Omar Enabled and Benefitted from Fraud, Substack

Trump's New Visa Fees Threaten Rural Medicine, Washington Post

As Trump Declares Peace, Congo Rebels Extend Power, Reuters

DHS to Buy Fleet of 737s for Deportations MSN, Washington Post

Why Biden Rejected Proposals to Fix Border, New York Times

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Ukraine Government Allowed Corruption to Fester 

New York Times

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, this article reports, Kyiv’s Western allies faced a dilemma: how to spend billions supporting a government fighting Russia without watching the money vanish into the pockets of corrupt managers and government officials? Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged its supporters’ oversight efforts, allowing graft to flourish.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kyiv even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around. Supervisory boards serve an essential oversight function, allowing independent experts, typically from other countries, to scrutinize major decisions inside Ukrainian state-owned companies. … [So far] Eight people, including Mr. Zelensky’s former business partner, are accused … [of] embezzlement, money laundering and illicit enrichment. Mr. Zelensky’s right-hand man quit after his home was raided, but he has not been charged. A former deputy prime minister was accused of pocketing more than $1.3 million.

This article reports that European leaders have privately criticized but reluctantly tolerated Ukrainian corruption for years, reasoning that supporting the fight against Russia’s invasion was paramount. So, even as Ukraine undermined outside oversight, European money kept flowing.

U.S. Gave Mexico List of Russian Spies -

It Let Them Stay 

New York Times

Mexico’s proximity to the United States and the cover provided by tourism for spies to operate has allowed Moscow to significantly ramp up espionage activities in the country in recent years, this article reports.

Moscow can fly spies and informants from the United States to beach destinations like Cancún, which millions of Americans visit every year – providing a convincing cover that raises few red flags. Spies and their handlers meet among tourists, sunbathers and surfers, officials say, handing off intelligence gathered in the United States while using Mexico to evade Washington’s sophisticated surveillance systems.

This article reports that Russia is also increasing disinformation efforts, especially online, to turn Mexicans against America and Europe, causing British and French officials to raise concerns with Mexico’s Foreign Ministry. Russia’s efforts may be working. After the C.I.A. gave Mexican officials a list of more than two dozen Russian spies posing as diplomats, they refused to kick them out of the country.

Children Recount Gang Rape, Sexual Slavery in Congo 

Reuters

Giulia Paravicini continues her string of deeply reported articles about the unfolding tragedies in sub-Saharan Africa with this disturbing look at how armed combatants are using sexual violence as a weapon of war in Congo. Based on interviews with 46 rape victims, nearly half of them children, she describes the harrowing violence that has long gripped that nation.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war through decades of strife between the DRC’s military, ethnic Hutu militias and Tutsi insurgents. That discord is rooted in the 1994 mass slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, a genocide that destabilized both nations and has kept them locked in conflict. Still, sexual assaults have soared since the Rwanda-backed rebels of M23 seized a large swathe of eastern Congo in a lightning offensive this year in their bid to topple the government in Kinshasa. A child is raped there every 30 minutes, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said earlier this year, in what it characterized as the world’s worst outbreak of such conflict-related atrocities in decades. … Through the first nine months of 2025, a reported 81,388 rapes occurred in eastern Congo, a 31.5% increase over the same period in 2024 … one-third of the victims were under the age of 18.

This article reports that while President Trump hailed the peace deal Rwanda and Congo signed on December 4, fierce fighting has continued in eastern Congo, with warring sides blaming each other.

Millions of Recalled Car Air Bags Still Not Fixed 

Wall Street Journal

Toyota recalled Brayan Garcia’s car in 2020 over a dangerous defect that prevented air bags from deploying. But Garcia never fixed his vehicle – and he died when his air bags failed to deploy after his Corolla slammed into the back of a Ram pickup truck that was stopping at an intersection in West Texas. A Wall Street Journal analysis identified 12 people, including Garcia, who died after crashes in Toyotas and other vehicles where a recalled air bag hadn’t been repaired and didn’t deploy.

From 2015 to 2024, about 12 million vehicles were recalled for safety defects that could result in air bags not deploying. These recalls – 37 in total – included models made by General Motors and Ford as well as luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi. About 2.6 million, or around 22%, of affected vehicles remain unfixed, according to an analysis of the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data by The Wall Street Journal. … The NHTSA data reveal a broader problem: Roughly one in three cars recalled for all reasons goes unfixed. The rate is roughly the same even for serious flaws such as failing brakes, engine fires or the air bag defects reviewed by the Journal.

This article reports that while federal regulators have the authority to force companies to issue recalls, they say they can’t force auto owners to participate, even with dangerous problems.

Congress Bows to Defense Contractors

on 'Right-to-Repair' 

Intercept

This article reports that lobbyists have succeeded in killing part of the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given service members the right to repair their equipment in the field without having to worry about military suppliers’ intellectual property. The provision struck from the bill would have required defense companies,

to supply the information needed for repairs – such as technical data, maintenance manuals, engineering drawings, and lists of replacement parts – as a condition of Pentagon contracts. The idea was that no service member would ever be left waiting on a contractor to fly in from Norway to repair a simple part – which once happened – or, in another real-life scenario, told by the manufacturer to buy a new CT scanner in a combat zone because one malfunctioned. Instead of worrying about voiding a warranty, military personnel in the field could use a 3D printer or elbow grease to fix a part. … For the defense industry, however, the proposal threatened a key profit stream. Once companies sell hardware and software to the Pentagon, they can keep making money by forcing the government to hire them for repairs.

This article reports that the decision to kill the popular proposal was made public after a closed-door conference of top congressional officials, including defense committee chairs, along with Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.