The National Archives in Washington D.C. (Credit: National Archives.gov)

“Biden’s lawyers discovered the materials in November and self-reported them, and some were classified at the top secret level, officials said.

The issue of handling of classified documents boomeranged Monday on President Joe Biden, just months after the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Florida home, as officials confirmed a small number of classified documents were found in a private office once used by the current president at his think tank.

A senior government official directly familiar with the discovery told Just the News that the National Archives asked the Justice Department to open an investigation in November after a small number of classified documents — some marked top secret — were found in a locked closet in the Penn Biden Center in Washington, where Biden worked after he left the Obama administration.

The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Attorney General Merrick Garland has asked a U.S. attorney in Illinois — a holdover from the Trump administration — to oversee the investigation with NARA and the FBI. The documents appear to be from the Obama administration.

The White House released a statement Monday evening confirming the discovery and the investigation, saying Biden’s lawyers self-disclosed the existence of the documents when the office previously used by the president was being vacated for another party.

“The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified markings,” White House special counsel Richard Sauber said in a statement after the discovery was reported by CBS and CNN. “The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.” (Read more: Just the News, 1/9/2023)  (Archive)

Joe Biden speaks at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. (Credit: New York Post)

“Classified documents from Joe Biden’s tenure as Vice President were found in early November at the Penn Biden Center in Washington,  CBS News reports, citing two sources with knowledge of an inquiry launched by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The investigation into the roughly 10 documents will be conducted by the US Attorney in Chicago (shocking!), according to the sources.

The classified material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, the day before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the classified documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets. -CBS News

Remember when the DOJ raided former President Trump and made a huge deal about classified documents having been commingled with not-classified documents? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

According to Sauber, the White House counsel’s office notified the National Archives on the same day the material was discovered, after which the Archives took possession the next morning.

“The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys,” said Sauber. “The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”

In charge of the investigation is John Lausch, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who will seek to determine how the classified material ended up at the Penn Biden Center (which received $54.6 million in Chinese donations after the Biden Center was announced in 2016). (Zero Hedge, 1/10/2023)  (Archive)

Dana Remus (Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP)

(…) At least 5 White House aides, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, were involved in Biden’s classified documents scandal.

(…) Joe Biden STOLE highly classified documents from a SCIF while he was a US Senator and Vice President. He had no right to store any classified material at his home or the Penn Biden Center.

Not only did Biden steal SCIF-designated documents and improperly scatter them everywhere, evidence shows he likely used them to provide classified briefings on Ukraine to his son/bagman Hunter Biden.

It also appears Biden is hiding documents from NARA.

According to investigative reporter Paul Sperry, records reveal Joe Biden had his personal lawyer send a FedEx driver to the Penn Biden Center to pick up his boxes of classified White House documents on November 2, 2022 – just ONE DAY BEFORE the National Archives (NARA) arrived to the center to seize the documents.

Did Joe Biden withhold classified documents from the National Archives?

BREAKING: Records reveal Biden had his personal lawyer send a FedEx driver to the Penn Biden Center to pick up boxes of WH docs on Nov 2, 2022–the day before (Nov 3) the National Archives arrived @ the Center to retrieve classified WH docs “discovered” there. Docs w/h from NARA?

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) November 22, 2023

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 11/22/2023)  (Archive)

Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), is expected to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if Republicans take the House. (Credit: yahoo!news)

“House Judiciary Republicans on Friday released a 1,000-plus page report on FBI whistleblower disclosures on “the politicization of the FBI And Justice Department.”

The members called the report “the first comprehensive accounting of the FBI’s problems to date, which undermine the FBI’s fundamental law-enforcement mission.”

They also say in an announcement about the report that the 1,050 document “primarily concerns FBI abuses, due to the experiences and roles of whistleblowers, but also examines the actions of the Justice Department where appropriate for context and explanation.”

(…) “The thousand-page report builds on various whistleblower disclosures describing the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as ‘rotted at its core’ with a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” the report also reads.

The House Judiciary Republicans list as some of the “key takeaways” in the report as:

• FBI leadership abusing its law-enforcement authority for political reasons.
• The FBI artificially inflating and manipulating domestic violent extremism statistics for political purposes.
• The FBI downplaying and reducing the spread of the serious allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Hunter Biden.
• The Justice Department and FBI using counterterrorism resources to target parents resisting a far-left educational curriculum.

(Read more: JusttheNews, 11/4/2022)  (Archive)

“The FBI took possession of the Biden Laptop—via grand jury subpoena—on December 9, 2019. The two agents from the Wilmington Resident Agency of the Baltimore Field Office who delivered that subpoena to the laptop repair shop owner (Mac Isaac) were Josh Wilson and Mike Dzielak.

Wilson and Dzielak have since attempted to scrub their online footprint, but Wilson is still featured in several articles. Locating a picture of Dzielak, however, proved somewhat difficult—and now we know why. In his soon-to-be-released book, Mac Isaac recounts how Dzielak told Mac Isaac the following—in a serious tone—after delivering the grand jury subpoena: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.” Well, Mac Isaac did “talk about these things” after Dzielak and Wilson (& the FBI HQ) slow-walked the investigation into the Bidens.”

(Credit: Marco Polo)

(Read more: Marco Polo/Substack, 11/05/2022)  (Archive)

Alexander Vindman testifies before a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump on November 19, 2019. (Credit: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)

“A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by star impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) against Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and two Trump White House staffers for supposed “witness intimidation” during Trump’s impeachment hearings.

Vindman filed his suit in February, just over a year after he had enjoyed fifteen minutes of infamy before Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee, as Democrats sought to impeach and remove Trump for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate allegations of corruption against Joe Biden, his leading rival in the 2020 election.

(…) Vindman alerted a contact in the intelligence committee — whom he refused to name under oath — about a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, triggering the investigation into Trump. Schiff would not allow Vindman to be questioned about the so-called “whistleblower” who first approached the House Intelligence Committee with his second-hand concerns about the call. Vindman did admit, however, that the Ukrainians felt no “pressure” to investigate Biden.

(…) U.S. District Court James Boasberg of the District of Columbia, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a 29-page ruling, The Hill reported, concluding that even if “Defendants leveled harsh, meanspirited, and at times misleading attacks” against Vindman, “political hackery alone does not violate [the law at issue].” White House staffers Dan Scavino and Julia Hahn, a former reporter for Breitbart News, were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.” (Read more: Breitbart, 11/8/2022)  (Archive)

Patrick Moore (l, bottom) and his law office in Boston, Massachusetts. Moore was appointed as the First Assistant Attorney General by the newly elected Massachusetts Attorney General, Andrea Campbell, in December 2022. (Credit: MSN)

 Nine boxes of documents were taken from President Biden’s attorney Patrick Moore’s Boston office, but have yet to be reviewed, the National Archives disclosed in a response letter to Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, this week first obtained by Fox News Digital.

The Archives had not previously publicly disclosed the number of boxes taken from Boston. It had been reported that Moore had shipped boxes of documents from the Penn Biden Center to his Boston office before discovering the initial trove of classified documents at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

In response to questions by Johnson and Grassley in a Feb. 24 letter asking how and when the archives learned that records were transported to Boston, Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall responded the agency learned about it on Nov. 3, 2022.

“When NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] contacted President Biden’s personal counsel on November 3, 2022, to arrange to pick up boxes from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., they informed NARA that Mr. Moore had moved other boxes from the Penn Biden Center to Mr. Moore’s law firm in Boston,” the letter states.

In addition, the archives notified the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Nov. 4 that the documents had been moved. The documents were then picked up on Nov. 9 and were secured in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

“NARA staff retrieved nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s Boston office,” Wall continued, which had not been previously known.

Despite having possession of the documents since November, the Archives has not yet reviewed the boxes’ content to determine whether additional classified materials are inside.

“NARA has not reviewed the contents of the boxes found at Mr. Moore’s Boston office,” Wall states in the letter dated Tuesday. (Read more: Fox News, 3/08/2023)  (Archive)

FoiaFan@15poundstogo highlights a few of the released documents:

Wow. From the latest Crooked Hillary FBI foia drop. "Bad guy within" "Put ___ up to it" "determined not to prosecute" "all handled quietly" pic.twitter.com/qgf9i31Uwn

— FoiaFan (@15poundstogo) November 11, 2022

Funny how the FBI quickly announced before Election Day '16 that the Weiner Laptop offered nothing new on the Hillary investigation. But they DIDN'T INTERVIEW the laptop's OWNER until 2 MONTHS AFTER the election. Isn't that special?!?
AND, they made the agents sign NDAs!!! pic.twitter.com/Dc8gLdTJTu

— FoiaFan (@15poundstogo) November 11, 2022

Clinton testifies to House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015. (Credit: public domain)

Jonathan Turley

“In the shift of the left against free speech principles, there is no figure more actively or openly pushing for censorship than Hillary Clinton. Now, reports indicate that Clinton has unleashed her allies in the corporate world to coerce Musk to restore censorship policies or face bankruptcy. The effort of the Clinton-linked “Accountable Tech” reveals the level of panic in Democratic circles that free speech could be restored on one social media platform. The group was open about how losing control over Twitter could result in a loss of control over social media generally. For Clinton, it is an “all-hands on deck” call for censorship. She previously called upon foreign governments to crackdown on the free speech of Americans on Twitter.

We have been discussing how Clinton and others have called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. It seems that, after years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.

Accountable Tech led an effort to send a letter to top Twitter advertisers to force Musk to accept “non-negotiable” requirements for censorship.

General Motors was one of the first to pull its advertising funds to stop free speech restoration on the site.

Of course, the company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese-owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

The letter is open about the potential cascading effect if free speech is restored on one platform: “While the company is hardly a poster child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit.”

The letter insists that free speech will only invite “disinformation, hate, and harassment” and that “[u]nder the guise of ‘free speech,’ [Musk’s] vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”

Among other things, the letter demands “algorithmic accountability,”  a notable inclusion in light of Democratic politicians demanding enlightened algorithms to protect citizens from their own bad choices or thoughts.

This is a copy of the letter posted in Turley’s article. The original letter was posted on Scribd and has since been removed.)

General Motors was one of the first to pull its advertising funds to stop free speech restoration on the site.

Of course, the company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

The letter is open about the potential cascading effect if free speech is restored on one platform: “While the company is hardly a poster-child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit.”

The letter insists that free speech will only invite “disinformation, hate, and harassment” and that “[u]nder the guise of ‘free speech,’ [Musk’s] vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”

Among other things, the letter demands “algorithmic accountability,”  a notable inclusion in light of Democratic politicians demanding enlightened algorithms to protect citizens from their own bad choices or thoughts.

In addition to Accountable Tech, twenty-five other groups signed the letter to demand the restoration of censorship policies, including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Accountable Tech has partnered in the past with Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together nonprofit group.

I have no objection to boycotts, which are an important form of free speech. However, this boycott action is directed at restoring censorship and preventing others from being able to post or to read opposing viewpoints.

If consistent with their past records, these companies will likely cave to these demands. While the public has clearly shown that they want more (not less) free speech, these executives are likely to yield to the pressure of Clinton and other powerful figures to coerce Musk into limiting the speech of others on his platform.

These campaigns only add support to Musk’s push for alternative revenue sources, including verification fees.  As I previously wrote, we can show that there is a market for free speech by supporting Twitter in trying to reduce the dependence on corporate sponsors. If Musk remains faithful to free speech, many customers are likely to join his platform and support his effort to reduce censorship on social media. (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 11/17/2022)  (Archive)

Breaking news from the Wall Street Journal:

“Attorney General Merrick Garland will appoint a special counsel to determine whether former President Donald Trump should face charges stemming from Justice Department probes, according to a person familiar with the matter.”

Updates as they come through:

Jack Smith (Credit: public domain)

1. AG Garland named former federal prosecutor Jack Smith as Special Counsel. Smith most recently worked at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. From 2010 to 2015, Smith served as Chief of the Public Integrity Section of the US Department of Justice, where he oversaw complex public corruption cases across the US. Further information on Smith can be found here.
2. The scope of Smith’s appointment includes January 6 and the ongoing classified/national security documents investigation. As to January 6, Smith is tasked to “conduct the ongoing investigation into

What of Jack Smith’s past? Here’s some background on his connections to Lois Lerner and his involvement in the IRS targeting scandal back in the early 2010s:

In their letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee said, “The Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits. This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

As to January 6, Smith is tasked to “conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.”

With respect to the Mar-a-Lago raid, Smith “is further authorized to conduct that investigation . . . and any matters that arise or may arise directly from that investigation.”

Here is the appointing document

If you’re concerned about new Special Counsel Jack Smith, here’s reason for further warning – an endorsement from corrupt Special Counsel Mueller member Andrew Weissmann:

Jack Smith, the new Special Counsel, is a very aggressive prosecutor who represents the best of the Department, who will bring cases if warranted be fact sand the law.

— Andrew Weissmann 🌻 (@AWeissmann_) November 18, 2022

For the Biden DOJ, this step is no surprise. They would have planned for it to take place once Trump announced his candidacy. And sure enough, here we are. While the special counsel is quasi-independent, allegedly, it will still be subject to the control of Attorney General Garland. (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 11/18/2022)  (Archive)

Elvis Chan (Credit: public domain)

“A Big Tech lawsuit has uncovered one of the most disturbing revelations yet about social media companies’ collusion with law enforcement agencies to police speech on the Internet. A former FBI agent, Elvis Chan, revealed during the court hearings that the bureau held weekly meetings with major social media companies prior to the 2020 and 2022 elections.

On Wednesday, the court transcript of former FBI agent Elvis Chan’s testimony was released and corroborated earlier reports.

“Mr. Chan, or Agent Chan, who do you recall on the social media platform side participating in these — in these working group meetings that you have been testifying about from 2020 and 2022?”

“The companies that I remember attending the meetings are Facebook; Microsoft; Google; Twitter; Yahoo!, which have been known as Verizon Media at the time; Wikimedia Foundation and Reddit,” Agent Chan said.

Chan was then asked why the FBI was participating in these meetings.

“And why are you included in particular?”

“The reason that I attend these meetings is because the way the FBI works is FBI field offices are responsible for maintaining day-t0-day relationships with the companies that are headquartered in their area of responsibility, which I may occasionally abbreviate AOR,” Chan responded. “And all of the companies that have been listed, with the exception of Microsoft, are all headquartered in San Francisco’s territory.”

Chan also testified that he was in regular contact with Facebook’s Steven Siegel and Twitter’s Yoel Roth, as reported by Lee Fang.

FBI agent Elvis Chan, at the San Francisco field office for the agency, testified that he was in regular contact with Facebook’s Steven Siegel and Twitter’s Yoel Roth. pic.twitter.com/oIoeRQ5STR

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 6, 2022

Yoel Roth, formerly Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, was recently terminated by Elon Musk, as was Twitter’s General Counsel Jim Baker, who was formerly the FBI’s General Counsel.

Chan also related the U.S. government is in regular correspondence with major social media platforms regarding elections; namely, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (or CISA).

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, one of the attorneys general that filed the lawsuit, earlier disclosed an overview of FBI agent Elvis Chan’s testimony on ‘weekly meetings’ about censoring Internet posts ahead of the 2020 election.

“In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to asks for account takedowns,” Schmitt wrote in a Twitter thread.

“Chan, the FBI’s FITF, and senior CISA officials had meetings with social media companies in the lead-up to the 2020 election, in which Chan personally told the social media companies that there could potentially be a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation shortly before the election,” he continued. “Those meetings were initially quarterly, then monthly, then weekly heading into the 2020 election.”

“Chan stated that the FBI regularly sent social media companies lists of URLs and social media accounts that should be taken down because they were disinformation from ‘malign foreign influence operations’,” Schmitt went on. “The FBI then inquired whether the platforms have taken down the content. On many occasions, the platforms took down the accounts flagged by the FBI.”

Chan testified because of the agent’s extensive knowledge of the FBI’s interaction with social media companies, the judge in the case stated.

“Chan had authority over cybersecurity issues for the FBI in the San Francisco, California region which includes the headquarters of major social-media platforms and played a critical role for the FBI in coordinating with social-media platforms related to censorship,” Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote in his court order.

“Even if Chan played no role in the Hunter Biden laptop communication issue, he may have knowledge of who did, and his deposition is nonetheless warranted,” the judge aded. “If Chan played no role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, then such information will be made clear in his deposition.” (Read more: Becker News, 12/07/2022)  (Archive)