RealClearInvestigations Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'

Picks of the Week

March 15 to March 21

RCI Podcast

On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with Nancy Rommelmann about her new article detailing how one man became a scapegoat for the MeToo era.

Featured Investigation:

FBI Misled Court To Spy on Second Trump Campaign Adviser

Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that wiretapping of advisers from Donald Trump’s first campaign was more extensive than previously known. Newly declassified FBI documents and exclusive interviews reveal that former Trump foreign policy adviser Walid Phares was secretly wiretapped under four separate FISA warrants between 2017 and 2018 as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Like the Carter Page case, the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence from the surveillance court while assuring Phares' lawyer he was only a "witness." Phares intends to sue the FBI and DOJ for damages.

• The lead FBI case agent acknowledged that nothing collected from Phares' phone messages and emails aided the investigation, and that agents found he was being "honest" – yet Mueller's team continued surveillance and sought a fourth FISA renewal.
• Senior FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith blocked corrections to the warrant applications that would have alerted the FISA court to exculpatory evidence – the same attorney who later pleaded guilty to altering evidence in the Carter Page case.
• The original allegations – that Phares accepted a $10 billion bribe from the Egyptian government – were disproven, yet surveillance continued under a Foreign Agents Registration Act investigation. He was never charged.
• Phares suffered severe consequences: he lost his university position, his Fox News contract, his bank accounts, and an anticipated senior administration role.
• The Phares surveillance appears absent from both Inspector General Horowitz's and Special Counsel Durham's investigative reports, raising fresh questions about the thoroughness of those reviews.
• Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, who released the documents, cited substantial evidence of misconduct and political bias within Mueller's office, and has demanded all related FISA applications from DOJ.

Featured Investigation:

The Scapegoat: How One Man’s Career

Was Ended by MeToo

For RealClearInvestigations, Nancy Rommelmann examines the case of former museum executive Joshua Helmer, whose career collapsed after a 2020 New York Times article highlighted complaints from women about his workplace behavior. The story raises broader questions about the peak years of the MeToo movement, media incentives, and whether some accusations – while concerning – resulted in consequences that permanently derailed careers without clear evidence of misconduct.

• Helmer, then CEO of the Erie Art Museum, resigned within days after a 2020 New York Times article reported allegations from nine women who said he made advances, behaved harshly, or made them uncomfortable while working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
• None of the accusations involved claims of sexual assault or explicit coercion, and Helmer never faced lawsuits. Some women said their relationships with him were consensual but later left them feeling undervalued or mistreated.
• Following the article, Erie’s board quickly concluded Helmer could not remain in his position. He resigned three days later and has not worked in the museum field since.
• The investigation notes that another publication reportedly declined to run the story because it could not verify key claims, while the Times published multiple follow-up articles linking Helmer to broader concerns about male dominance in the museum industry.
• The controversy unfolded amid growing activism within museums, including union organizing and demands for cultural reform. Some critics believe Helmer’s case became a symbol used in broader workplace battles.
• Now living quietly in rural Pennsylvania, Helmer says he accepts responsibility for poor personal decisions – such as dating multiple colleagues, some concurrently – but argues the coverage portrayed him as a sexual predator without sufficient evidence.
• The case highlights ongoing tensions over accountability, fairness, and the lasting reputational damage that can follow public accusations during periods of intense cultural reckoning.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Rep. Waters Charged Taxpayers for Limos, RCI

NC City Manager's Disastrous Decisions, RCI

GSA Doesn't Monitor Federal Consultants, RCI

Throwback Thursday - NSF Funded “Prom Week” Video Game, RCI

Failing TX School Paid Supt. $900K, RCI

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

Why (and How) Everyone's Cold-Calling the President 

Semafor

Donald Trump is not like previous presidents. To take the mildest example, this article reports that he often answers his own phone.

President Donald Trump’s iPhone won’t stop ringing because his Palm Beach number has become the ultimate status symbol in a town obsessed with proximity to power and influence. This has produced a curious new form of journalism. In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel began military operations in Iran, Trump has done more than 30 cell phone interviews. He has become the presidential version of a drive-time radio host, picking up without screening his callers and conducting brief conversations with the public — in this case, journalists from outlets from The New York Times to Washington Reporter. One day earlier this month, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl and Rachel Scott each got separate interviews with Trump, in which he told them each how well the Iranian operation was going.

This article reports that the broad knowledge of Trump’s cell number in Washington has led to new kinds of journalistic strategizing about how to get him on the phone and what to do if he picks up. The conventional wisdom shared by most people who spoke with Semafor was to try Trump late in the evenings when he is watching TV and chatting. It is also good to catch him after a round of golf. This prized access is already generating a backlash. One television insider called the breathless Trump phone exclusives “shameless.” Another said they thought it was “silly and doesn’t add much value.” Another said the interviews were “useless.”

Trump 2.0 and the Beltway

How Trump’s DHS Pick Got a Lot Wealthier in Congress, New York Times

Some DHS Contractors Allege Trump Ally Kickback Scheme,. NBC

Education Department Sitting on Discrimination Complaints, College Fix

Flashback: School Bias Cases Doubled Under Biden, RCI

TSA Callout Rates Surge as Dems Stall Funding, NBC News

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Cesar Chavez Accused of Abusing Girls

New York Times

Cesar Chavez is a revered figure in the Latino civil rights movement because of his efforts to improve the lives of farm workers. This article reports that he was also a rapist who forced himself on teenage girls.

Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office. He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.” The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. 

Another victim, Debra Rojas, said she was 12 when Chavez first touched her inappropriately, groping her breasts. When she was 15, “he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a weekslong march through California, she said, and had sexual intercourse with her – rape, under state law, because she was not old enough to consent.”

The abuse allegations appear to be part of a larger pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Chavez, much of which has never been publicly revealed. The Times investigation found that Mr. Chavez also used many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification. His most prominent female ally in the movement, Dolores Huerta, said in an interview that he sexually assaulted her, a disclosure she has never before made publicly.

This article reports that a handful of Chavez’s relatives and former union leaders “have been aware for years about various allegations of sexual misconduct, but there is no evidence that they made efforts to fully investigate the accusations, acknowledge the victims or apologize to them. Instead, many of the women say they were discouraged from speaking out in order to preserve the public image of Chavez, who died in 1993.

Charts Show Day-by-Day Spending for the War On Iran 

Guardian

War is hell, and a very expensive one at that. During the first six days of the Iran war – which began on Feb. 28 – the U.S. spent some $12.7 billion on the campaign (that figure is now estimated to be north of $18 billion). This article, filled with easy-to-read charts, tries to answer the question: where has all the money gone?

A single Tomahawk missile, for example, costs about $3.5 million. During the first six days of the war, the U.S. launched 319 of them. Total cost: $1.2 billion.

Tomahawk missiles are far from the only munition. U.S. officials said, for example, that by the sixth day of the war, U.S. forces struck more than 2,500 targets. Those weapons cost an additional $4.3 billion. This brought the total cost of offensive strike munitions to $5.5 billion.

This article reports that the U.S. spent even more money protecting its forces and its allies from Iranian attacks. The military’s remarkable success intercepting Iran’s drones and missiles has come with a hefty price tag. Air defense cost an estimated $5.7 billion for interceptors like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense – an anti-ballistic system design first developed in response to scud missile attacks during the Gulf War in the 1990s.

Adding in U.S. combat losses of $1.4 billion and operations costs of $27 million, the first six days of the war is estimated to have cost $12.7 billion.

The Race To Cut Off Russia From the Global Internet 

Politico

Armies may have always marched on their bellies but nowadays they coordinate their movements in the clouds. This article reports that Russia’s ability to communicate with its soldiers in Ukraine is being compromised both from without and within. Last month Elon Musk’s Space X cut off access to Starlink terminals used by Russian forces. Days later, Russian authorities began slowing down access nationwide to the messaging app Telegram, the service that frontline troops use to coordinate directly with one another and bypass slower chains of command.

Kremlin policymakers have already blocked or limited access to WhatsApp, along with parent company Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Google’s YouTube, Apple’s FaceTime, Snapchat and X which, like SpaceX, is owned by Musk. Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Discord, as well as Japanese-owned Viber, have been inaccessible since 2024. Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access at the request of the Federal Security Service.

The reasons for these moves are not entirely clear. This article reports that Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian-born entrepreneur now based in the United Arab Emirates, says the throttling is being used as a pretext to push Russians toward a government-controlled messaging app – MAX – designed for surveillance and political censorship. If everyone must communicate through a single channel, the logic seems to be, everyone will be easier to monitor.

DNA Could Clear Dead Man — and Point To Serial Killer 

Washington Post

Over his 34 years in prison, Shawn Tanner always maintained he was not guilty of murder, insisting on his innocence right up until his death in 2022. Now, this article reports, a Massachusetts court may grant his final wish: DNA testing on the crucial evidence in his case.

The prosecutor’s office that obtained his conviction fought the testing, arguing that his death invalidated his request and that the results wouldn’t prove his innocence anyway. His advocates disagreed, arguing that the results could not only lead to his exoneration but also offer a clue in the unsolved case of an infamous serial killer. The result: A debate over whether the dead can clear their names that eventually reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, testing legal boundaries and fundamental notions of justice along the way.

This article reports that every state now has a legal avenue where people can request DNA testing of evidence after being convicted. But, in many cases, it’s not clear if those statutes apply once convicts have died. In 2022, after a hearing, a judge granted Tanner’s motion for DNA testing. But after Tanner died that September, the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office decided to fight the judge’s order, arguing that Tanner’s death made the order “null and void.” But Tanner’s family and the relatives of women who were victims in a notorious serial murder case in the same area that remains unsolved successfully pushed the court to demand the testing.