RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
January 5 to January 11, 2025

Featured Investigation:
FBI Is Still Hiding Details of Russiagate,
Newly Released Document Shows

In RealClearInvestigations, Aaron Maté reports that the FBI is still hiding critical details on the Russia conspiracy investigation that engulfed Donald Trump’s first term, citing a just-released -- but heavily redacted – document that opened a counterintelligence probe of the sitting president in 2017 as an agent of the Russian government:

• Obtained by RealClearInvestigations through a Freedom of Information request, the electronic communication, dated May 16, 2017, claimed the FBI had an “articulable factual basis” to suspect that Trump “wittingly or unwittingly” was illegally acting on behalf of Russia, and accordingly posing “threats to the national security of the United States.” 

• While the document records the FBI’s theory that then-President Trump might be guilty of illegal – and effectively treasonous – behavior, the “articulable factual basis” for this suspicion is redacted. Only a few paragraphs of the six-page document have not been hidden.

• By that point, Crossfire Hurricane, formally opened on July 31, 2016, had focused on members of Trump’s orbit. The May 2017 probe was specifically targeted at the president himself in his fourth month in office. 

• The investigation of Trump was undertaken at the behest of then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, one week after Trump had fired his former boss and mentor, James B. Comey. 

• McCabe, who now works as an on-air commentator at CNN, did not respond to RCI’s emailed questions by the time of publication.

Featured Investigation:
How Trump Plans to Take On Censors
– and They Plan to Take On Trump

In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten reports on Donald Trump's plan to take on what critics have called the Censorship Industrial Complex -- and the likely stiff resistance he will face:

• “There will be a visceral reaction from the bureaucratic state in permanent Washington,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri predicted to RealClearInvestigations. 

• Trump outlined the steps he might pursue in a December 2022 video – which, ironically, received little attention because YouTube had banned the former president. 

• Trump vowed to “dismantle and destroy” the “censorship cartel,” including through the use of vigorous executive action starting within hours of his inauguration.

• He also plans to bar federal dollars from being used to classify domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and from being lavished on nonprofits and colleges engaging in similar efforts.

• A big Trump goal is modifying  Section 230 of the Communications Act -- to extend its liability shield only to those large online platforms meeting high standards of “neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination”

• As RealClearInvestigations has covered extensively, a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs have formed a “whole-of-society” partnership aimed at combatting what its constituents consider dangerous “mis-, dis-, and mal-information,” particularly on social media.

• Such efforts are said to span 12 different government departments and 50 different government programs, costing an estimated $260 million in spending pertaining to “misinformation.”

• President Biden’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism codified such efforts in 2021.

Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Rappers Splurged on COVID Millions, RCI
Report Catalogs Waste of $1 Trillion+, RCI
Overtime Pay Leads to Scandal at NYPD, RCI
Harvard Classes on Taxpayers’ Dime, RCI
Texas 'Bait and Switch' Light Rail Back, RCI

Election 2024 and the Beltway

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Officials Warned of Extreme Fire Risk
Days Before Mayor Skipped Town
LeeFang.com

No one can control the weather, but Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is drawing heat for going on vacation even as her office was warned about the potential for high winds to lead to devastating fires – which is exactly what happened. Instead of being on the ground as her city burned, this article reports, Bass was in Ghana to attend the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama. On his Substack, Lee Fang presents a timeline:

• Last Thursday, January 2nd, the National Weather Service explicitly warned Los Angeles about “extreme fire conditions” over the next week. That day, Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service, spoke to officials and posted openly about the incoming threat. 

• O’Brien noted that weather models for Southern California showed a “strong-extreme Santa Ana wind event starting Tuesday 1/7.”

• The next day, on Friday, January 3rd, Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Los Angeles office in Oxnard, Calif., gave a briefing that warned that the lack of rain this winter season, coupled with forecasted strong wind, posed an imminent threat. Vegetation and brush throughout the region could easily transform into a serious fire. “With those fuels being so dry, we’re practically in September, October conditions,” said Schoenfeld.

• On Saturday, January 4th, as Bass was leaving for her trip to Africa, more warnings were broadcast openly about the imminent danger. “Fire Weather Watches & High Wind Watches are in effect Tuesday-Friday next week,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles noted.

Ohio: Police Bodycam Footage
Put Behind a Paywall
Intercept

Bodycam footage was supposed to allow government and the public hold the police accountable for their actions – and to exonerate cops from unfounded charges. With the new year, this article reports, Ohio has joined a handful states, including Arizona and Indiana, to allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage:

State and local law enforcement agencies can now charge steep fees for reviewing and redacting videos – up to $75 per hour of footage produced and a maximum of $750 per video. Police can require that the fees be paid in advance. … [Governor Mike]DeWine said House Bill 315 was “a workable compromise to balance the modern realities of preparing these public records and the cost it takes to prepare them.”

Gunita Singh, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is quoted as saying: “Public bodies should be in the business of making it easier – not harder – for the public and the press to access important government records like body worn camera footage. There’s no need to impose vast sums of money onto requesters doing their part to foster transparency and accountability.”

How Iran Shifts Sanctioned Oil
Around Globe
Reuters

Despite some of the West’s toughest sanctions, Iran has built a roaring global trade for its oil. This article reports that Iran has done it through a shadow fleet of tankers that conceal their activities to skirt sanctions, and willing buyers in Asia to keep its economy afloat and to finance anti-Western militias in the Middle East.  By analyzing a trove of more than 10,000 emails leaked by a hacking network, this Reuters investigation – which includes many interactive maps – shows how one Iranian company, Sahara Thunder, evaded Western sanctions to ship oil around the world from March 2022 to February 2024:

Extracts from emails between Sahara Thunder and its partners showed how they shifted their cargoes from vessel to vessel, forged documents, painted ships with new identities, faked tracking signals to disguise their locations, and took painstaking measures to avoid any trace of Iran. … Reuters pieced together the fleet of vessels run by Sahara Thunder and its business partners, and mapped out how much oil was transferred between each of the ships in the network. … Reuters mapped the key locations where vessels used by Sahara Thunder transferred oil, from Bandar Abbas in Iran and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, to Venezuela, Murmansk in northern Russia and a string of ports in China, the ultimate destination of the crude.

This article reports that the United States sanctioned Sahara Thunder in April, labelling it a “front company” for Iran’s government:

Sahara Thunder’s email addresses were no longer active when Reuters reached out for comment and the news agency was unable to determine whether it is still in business. Sahara Thunder’s website now brings up a Chinese sports gambling page. Emails to people and addresses associated with the company in the data leak did not get replies.

The Holidays at Amazon:
Swag, Prizes, Mandatory Overtime
Washington Post

Are Santa’s elves stuck in a sweatshop? This article suggests a dark answer as it reports that the Amazon workers who deliver millions of holiday goodies are reeling from the annual crush known internally as “peak,” which runs from November’s Black Friday discounts through the flood of returned gifts in January. Managers in one Ohio warehouse felt the need to post a notice reminding workers to shower and use deodorant. Season's greetings don't stop there:

To get those millions of holiday packages where they’re going on schedule, Amazon implements what the company calls Mandatory Extra Time. Employees can have an extra 45 minutes added to their usual shift, or in some cases be required to work five eleven-hour shifts rather than their usual four ten-hour shifts, workers said. In a November message to workers at one Amazon facility, management warned “peak season is just around the corner … there is a potential risk of working up to 60 hours per week.” Amazon said employees are paid overtime for any additional hours, and can’t be asked to work more than 60 hours in one week, 12 hours in a single day, or six days in a row.

This article reports that “Amazon tried to soften the impact of its extra demands in Charlotte [N.C.] this year with the gingerbread house contest, raffles, free T-shirts and a holiday meal catered by Golden Corral, said Aleasha Reese, 65. Around the country, workers also received incentive pay and free drinks from 7-Eleven, and won prizes like water bottles and stress balls.” But Aleasha Reese, who has worked at Amazon for seven years and won a TV during a previous peak season, said the perks have declined in quality. “The stuff they was giving out wasn’t worth it” this year, she said. “It’s like, y’all done made a billion dollars, and this is all you can offer for a prize?”

The Next Drug Epidemic
Is Blue-Raspberry Flavored
Intelligencer

Forget Joe Camel. The latest push to get kids on drugs is “toddler-size, candy-flavored, Day-Glo–colored tanks" of laughing gas. In the past few years, this article reports, as nitrous oxide has grown in popularity, distributors have inundated the market with bigger, brighter, and better-tasting tanks. This marketing has been especially effective among teens, who are already accustomed to inhaling flavored substances:

While it’s illegal to sell nitrous oxide explicitly for recreational use, companies can carry it if they say it’s a food-processing propellant for whipped cream and culinary products. Thanks to this loophole, it can be sold legally over the counter (to those 21 and over, depending on the state), online, and in bulk and delivered by head shops like Cloud 9 as well as large chains like Ace Hardware, Walmart, and Amazon. … Nitrous is a lot more dangerous than the vapes with which it shares shelf space. Heavy users report seizures, mouth lesions, paralysis, brain damage, psychosis, and spinal-cord degeneration. Pedestrians are being killed by drivers huffing in their cars. Those outcomes haven’t slowed the drug’s rise, and for those who got in on the nitrous market early – like Cloud 9 – the trade has been unfathomably lucrative.