RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
October 6 to October 12 Featured Investigation: Trump’s Toughest Foe Could Be Kamala Harris’ Lawyer Marc Elias As both major parties increasingly turn to the courts to gain electoral edges, no one has loomed larger on the lawfare battlefield than Marc Elias. Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations that the Democrats’ longtime super-lawyer has not only been in the forefront of legal strategies to impact elections but also invited controversy through his partisan political activities. As general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, he helped lead the effort to manufacture and leak Christopher Steele’s spurious "dossier" claiming to reveal illicit ties between Donald Trump and Russia. Elias acted as a cutout for more than $1 million in campaign payments for the dossier. By laundering its payments through a law firm, the Clinton campaign and Elias were able to claim attorney-client confidentiality when Special Counsel John Durham sought their internal emails. In a parallel operation against Trump, Elias worked with his then-law partner Michael Sussmann and Clinton campaign officials – including Jake Sullivan, who is now President Biden's national security adviser – to develop misleading evidence of a “secret hotline” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a recent column for his Democracy Docket website, Elias attacked Trump as another “Hitler” who is “plotting to overthrow American democracy.” He even warned that a reelected Trump “is almost certain to convert the military into his personal domestic police force” and “seize voting machines [and] control ballot counting,” even though state laws govern elections. Elias is quietly working with immigrant advocacy groups that want to make it possible for noncitizens to vote. Elias has already filed more than 60 pre-election lawsuits to stop Trump from becoming president again by combatting what he calls Republican “voter suppression” efforts such as requiring voters to provide identification at the polls. If Trump is declared the winner, Elias has army of more than 75 lawyers who could sue for ballot recounts in several swing states. Featured Investigation: Global Crackdown: How Foreign Censorship Threatens American Free Speech The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” gained broad currency in 2020, as the COVID pandemic and the bitter race for the presidency led to public calls for the suppression of speech. The subsequent release of documents, including the “Twitter files,” showed that the U.S. government had actively pressured social media giants to censor news and information it found politically inconvenient. While those efforts have achieved wide attention, Ben Weingarten reports for RealClearInvestigations that a growing threat to free speech is coming from abroad. Free speech advocates warn that foreign demands that tech companies comply with their censorious legal and regulatory standards that violate the First Amendment’s protections will hamper the ability of Americans to communicate freely in the digital public square. Facebook’s Community Standards, for example, “apply to everyone, all around the world.” Academics have termed the tendency of companies to apply the strictest local guidelines globally as the “Brussels Effect,” after the EU capital. British police threatened extradition and jail time for Americans should they violate British speech laws concerning “incitement,” “stirring up racial hatred,” or other “terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material.” The U.S. government has used the FBI and the State Department, among other agencies, to coordinate counter-disinformation efforts globally with other nations. U.S. authorities and U.S.-supported NGOs that have sought greater restrictions on speech have, at minimum, indirectly supported these foreign efforts, creating a backdoor method to suppress protected speech at home. Critics say much of the censorship is aimed at populist voices on the right, including Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter (now X) while he was president. Brazil’s government recently took the extraordinary step of banning X over the platform’s refusal to comply with orders from its Supreme Court that it take down the accounts of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters in a sweeping effort to curtail the speech of the country’s populist-nationalist right. Last month, House Republicans introduced two bills – the No Censors on our Shores Act and No Funding or Enforcement of Censorship Abroad Act – to punish foreign individuals and entities that promote or engage in the censorship of American speech. Featured Investigation: Untapped Relief: FEMA is Sitting on Billions of Unused Disaster Funds Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency is warning Congress it may face a budget shortfall in the aftermath of recent hurricanes, the agency is sitting on billions of dollars of untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades. James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations that a government report recently estimated “that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.” Drilling down on that data, an August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 – the year of Superstorm Sandy – or earlier. These unspent dollars reflect a larger pattern in which FEMA has failed to close out specific grant programs within specific timeframes. Those projects now represent billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the DRF (Disaster Relief Fund). Action from Congress or the White House would not be required to tap those funds because FEMA is operating on the sort of continuing resolutions Congress routinely authorizes, said Brian Cavanaugh, who served as an appropriations manager at FEMA in the Trump administration. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could draw from the billions in untapped money to help the victims of Helene and then inform lawmakers he was compelled to do so, leaving elected officials facing charges they sought to pinch pennies when Americans were desperate. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said. But the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long ago crisis complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters. Although DHS could probably reach into such unliquidated obligations to help restore order in areas devastated by Helene, experts note that bureaucracies are loath to resort to such tactics when budget negotiations are near, as they are when the fiscal year ends this month. Waste of the Day by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books Ineligible Nev. Businesses Got COVID Aid, RCI San Antonio to Pay $500K on Trees for Apes, RCI Biden Set to Break Wrong Payments Record, RCI Expensive Super Bowl Ad Puzzled Viewers, RCI Convicted Cop Will Keep $60,000 Pension, RCI Election 2024 and the Beltway FEMA Pushed Out Millions for Equity Before Hurricane Season, Daily Caller How FEMA Got into the Illegal Immigrant Business, Just The News U.S. Research Dollars Helping China's Military, Washington Free Beacon Donald Trump Jr.: The Crown Prince of MAGA World, Wall Street Journal Democrats ‘Trump-Proofing’ Blue States Before Election, Washington Post Oklahoma’s Push for Trump Bibles in Every School, Reason Doug Emhoff Was Known as Rude 'Misogynist' at Law Firm, Daily Mail Battle Over Ballot Drop Boxes Rages on in Wisconsin, ProPublica These Evangelicals See Election as ‘Spiritual Warfare’, WSJ Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Hurricanes Overwhelming Flood Insurance Program Politico Massive damage from hurricanes Helene and Milton is poised to deplete the finances of the government’s chronically indebted National Flood Insurance Program. This article reports that key lawmakers believe that the storms – which includes areas where the NFIP has written two million policies – will likely exhaust the program’s nearly $5 billion in funds and force it to tap $9.9 billion in Treasury borrowing authority. The looming disaster is set to rekindle long-running political conflicts about how to shore up the program. Congress has struggled for years with how to revamp the NFIP, amid clashes over whether changes would drive up the cost of coverage and housing. The prospects for an emergency intervention to ensure claims are paid if such a move is necessary post-Milton are likewise looking fraught as opposing ideas emerge over how to bridge the gap. Among them: Whether to simply raise the NFIP’s borrowing authority, appropriate money to pay policyholders or cancel more of the NFIP’s debt, as Congress did with $16 billion in debt forgiveness to pay claims after 2017’s string of hurricanes. In a separate article, the Guardian reports that while Hurricane Helene is already spawning immediate health concerns in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina – including complications from injuries, a lack of clean water and safe food, and challenges accessing medical and treatments like insulin, oxygen and dialysis – its health effects will be felt for years. “In the longer term, the region will probably suffer from worse access to medical care and the lingering effects of stress and trauma,” according to new research published in Nature on Wednesday. In a separate article, the Intercept reports that more than 550 men incarcerated at the Mountain View Correctional Institution in the hard-hit town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina were trapped in their cells without lights or running water for almost week because of Hurricane Helene. Iran-Linked Murder and Kidnapping Plots Rise in the West Reuters As the Iran-Israel conflict intensifies, Tehran has been roiling the West with a wave of attempted hits and kidnappings against targets in Europe and the United States. This article reports: Washington and its allies have reported a sharp rise in such plots linked to the Islamic Republic, opens new tab in recent years. Since 2020, there have been at least 33 assassination or abduction attempts in the West in which local or Israeli authorities allege an Iran link, Reuters found in an examination of court documents and public statements by government officials. Among recent alleged targets: a building that houses a Jewish center and kosher restaurant in downtown Athens. … Targets of other recent alleged plots include senior U.S. officials as well as Iranian journalists and others in the diaspora. Former President Donald Trump was briefed by U.S. intelligence on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him,” his campaign recently said. Tehran has publicly denied involvement in some alleged plots in the U.S. This article reports that Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and prominent critic of the Islamic Republic, was the target of a failed, $30,000 murder-for-hire plot at her Brooklyn home. Alinejad, a vocal critic of Iran’s head-covering laws for women, was previously the target of what prosecutors say was a foiled Tehran-backed kidnapping plot. Iran has denied all such claims. China Hacked U.S. Government Wiretap Systems Wall Street Journal A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government may have penetrated systems of commercial carriers including Verizon and AT&T that the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. This article reports that the widespread compromise is considered a potentially catastrophic security breach and was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon. The surveillance systems believed to be at issue are used to cooperate with requests for domestic information related to criminal and national security investigations. Under federal law, telecommunications and broadband companies must allow authorities to intercept electronic information pursuant to a court order. It couldn’t be determined if systems that support foreign intelligence surveillance were also vulnerable in the breach. … The hackers appear to have engaged in a vast collection of internet traffic from internet service providers that count businesses large and small, and millions of Americans, as their customers. Additionally, there are indications that the hacking campaign targeted a small number of service providers outside the U.S., the people said. A person familiar with the attack said the U.S. government considered the intrusions to be historically significant and worrisome. Haitian Migrant Suge in Pennsylvania Town City Journal Springfield, Ohio is not alone. While the influx of thousands of Haitian migrant to that town has received national attention, this article reports that the tiny town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania has become a troubled place for the same reason. The town’s population, which recently stood at 4,000, has surged with the arrival of approximately 2,000 predominantly Haitian migrants. The municipal government has felt the strain. The town, already struggling with high rates of poverty and unemployment, has been forced to assimilate thousands of new arrivals. The schools now crowd with new Haitian pupils, and have had to hire translators and English teachers. Some of the old pipes downtown have started releasing the smell of sewage. And, according to a town councilman, there is a growing sense of trepidation about the alarming number of car crashes, with some vehicles reportedly slamming into buildings. Among the city’s old guard, frustrations are starting to boil over. Instead of being used to revitalize these communities, these residents argue, resources get redirected to the new arrivals, who undercut wages, drive rents up, and, so far, have failed to assimilate. Worst of all, these residents say, they had no choice – there was never a vote on the question of migration; it simply materialized. This article reports that the “basic pattern in Charleroi has been replicated in thousands of cities and towns across America: the federal government has opened the borders to all comers; a web of publicly funded NGOs has facilitated the flow of migrants within the country; local industries have welcomed the arrival of cheap, pliant labor. And, under these enormous pressures, places like Charleroi often revert to an older form: that of the company town, in which an open conspiracy of government, charity, and industry reshapes the society to its advantage – whether the citizens want it or not.” |
