Three Giant Lies

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, May 23, 2024

 

On the menu today: Not exactly a slow news day! Former secretary of state John Kerry and the State Department blocked the U.S. Justice Department from arresting Iranians on the terrorist watch list in order to preserve the Iran deal; a top aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci used his personal email to conduct government business with Fauci and avoid FOIA requests, and warned “Tony” “really is concerned” about the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance; and the House Ways and Means Committee released evidence indicating that Hunter Biden lied under oath at least three times.

 

It adds up to three giant lies that will get check-the-box journalism from most of the mainstream media, while the New York Times is offering “flood the zone” coverage — three correspondents! — of Samuel Alito flying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag above his beach house. As our Dan McLaughlin observes, “The Pine Tree Flag, which features a pine tree against a white backdrop over the phrase ‘An Appeal to Heaven,’ is associated with that notorious insurrectionist . . . George Washington. To the Times, this is a ‘provocative symbol.’ Maybe to diehard British royalists.” Since October 7, the Palestinian flag has been so ubiquitous on the streets of America’s cities you would think it was the new logo for Starbucks, but this is the flag that the Times deems scandalous.

 

In the Times’ defense, George Washington was the last man to successfully overthrow the government in America.

 

On to the news. . . .

 

Under-Covered Scandal One: John Kerry Helped Iranians Escape the FBI

 

A bombshell accusation, with supporting documentary evidence, from Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin:

 

The records provided to our offices show that the Obama/Biden administration’s State Department, under the leadership of John Kerry, actively and persistently interfered with FBI operations pertaining to lawful arrests of known terrorists, members of Iranian proliferation networks, and other criminals providing material support for Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

 

The FBI had a bunch of dangerous Iranians square in its sights, but the U.S. State Department insisted those figures were untouchable:

 

For example, unclassified FBI email records from August 25, 2017, detailed at least eight instances connected to the Iran deal where the “FBI/DOJ/USG could have moved forward with the cases but the State Department chose to block them.” According to the records, in six of these instances, the FBI lost the opportunity to arrest the main subject. The email says that one of the lost main subjects was noted to be “on the Terrorism Watch List” and another “returned to Iran.” The email further says that in another instance the State Department “blocked [FBI’s] plan to arrest while the subject was mid-flight and the subject was forced to leave the US immediately upon arrival.” The email also provides that at least two targets were arrested only after “State lifted their block . . . since the new [Trump] Administration took office. . . .”

 

According to FBI records, nothing changed the next year. An unclassified FBI email from April 28, 2016, stated that, “State has been blocking FBI actions where State has had a role for approval or concurrence — visas, lure ops primarily. We have prepared a package of several cases blocked by State and have been working it up the FBI/DOJ/State chain over the past 6 months.” The email also noted, “DOJ was surprised by this a bit because extraditions are ministerial functions and not something State would/should block.” Additional unclassified FBI emails indicate that the State Department’s alleged interference into ongoing FBI investigations became such an issue, that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had to discuss the matter with Secretary Kerry. An unclassified email from April 29, 2016, described a meeting between the two as: “[t]he Thursday meeting between Secretary Kerry and the AG didn’t go well for us . . . the read-out is that now is not a ‘good time’ to be requesting approvals for extraditions or lures on Iran CP cases.” Another email from May 3, 2016, describes the tension between the AG and Secretary Kerry as “when the PC [Principals Committee] ended, Kerry packed up his stuff and rushed out without engaging with the AG at all. The issues remain unresolved.”

 

You can find images of the emails in a letter from the senators to Secretary of State Blinken here, and similar letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray.

 

This kind of shortsighted, reckless prioritizing of a warm relationship with a hostile regime over stopping terrorists is exactly the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from John Kerry over the decades.

 

This is the man who shared an intimate dinner with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and shared laughs and handshakes with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. This is the man who insisted the world would “feel better” about the Russian invasion of Ukraine if Moscow would just “make a greater effort to reduce emissions now.” This is the man who refused to call Xi Jinping a dictator, contradicting the president who appointed him. When asked about Beijing’s use of forced labor and other human-rights issues in Xinjiang, Kerry shrugged, “That’s not my lane.” And Kerry reportedly leaked classified information to Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

 

Under-Covered Scandal Two: Fauci and His Team Broke FOIA Laws

 

Meanwhile, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released new evidence indicating that one of the top advisers to Dr. Anthony Fauci conducted official government business from his private email account and then solicited help from the National Institutes of Health’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to evade record requests. And most of his desire for secrecy revolved around his interactions with Fauci:

 

“[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d [sic] but before the search starts,” Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail [sic].”

 

“’I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],’ he emphasized again in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak.” The EcoHealth Alliance funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s research on coronaviruses in bats in partnership with the Chinese government. Daszak was the only American citizen whom the Chinese would allow to visit Wuhan as part of the WHO investigation team. Daszak is also the guy who did an interview with a Chinese state-run newspaper in early 2021, echoing the supremely implausible claim of the Chinese government that SARS-CoV-2 originated in another country and was somehow imported into Wuhan.

 

On May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

Why? There is a very limited set of reasons why the government can exempt documents from FOIA requests. At the top of the list is “information that is classified to protect national security.”

 

Was someone within NIH arguing that “anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/Wuhan Institute of Virology/” was a matter of national security?

 

Morens also wrote that he communicated with Fauci over private emails to avoid FOIA scrutiny:

 

“[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021 email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

 

On June 16, 2020, Morens wrote to Daszak and others, “We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them.”

 

If everything going on was on the up-and-up, legal, and wise, why were these guys worried about “smoking guns”?

 

Here’s something revealing: Morens wrote in an April 22, 2021, email, “If i [sic] had to bet, i [sic] would guess that beneath Tony’s macho I-am-not-worried reaction he really is concerned,”

 

The “Tony” in question is Fauci.

At one point, Morens told the committee, “I don’t consider telling them ‘don’t send me things because they could get FOIAed’ as intentionally avoiding FOIA.”

 

If the NIH, in partnership with EcoHealth Alliance, had been funding gain-of-function research on coronaviruses found in bats in a Chinese government-run lab that had “no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber]” and then in November 2019, the lab experienced “some sort of biosafety emergency,” wouldn’t there be an extraordinary desire to hide those past funding decisions?

 

Under-Covered Scandal Three: Hunter Biden Lied to Congress While under Oath

 

Yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee released more than 100 pages of newly obtained evidence indicating that Hunter Biden lied during his sworn testimony before Congress on February 28. Go figure, the president’s son is exactly the kind of person who would think he could BS Congress while under oath, but fail to remember that everything he said could be checked against phone records, text messages, legal documents, and emails.

 

The committee’s release points to at least three lies that Hunter Biden told under oath:

 

Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony: “The Zhao that this is sent to is not the Zhao that was connected to CEFC” and he “had no understanding or even remotely knew what the hell I was even G**d*** talking about.”

 

The Truth: According to phone records of Hunter Biden’s WhatsApp messages released by the Ways and Means Committee today, the President’s son communicated with only one “Zhao” — Raymond Zhao — in that exchange. Not only did the same Zhao respond, but his message indicates he knew exactly what Hunter Biden was talking about, and that Hunter Biden continued to communicate with the same “Zhao” phone number for an additional three months regarding matters related to CEFC.

 

Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony: Neither Rosemont Seneca Bohai, nor its associated bank accounts, were “under my control nor affiliated with me” and Hunter, “didn’t even know that there was such a thing” in reference to a corporate secretary of the entity.

 

The Truth: Evidence obtained by the Committee and released today from IRS investigator Joseph Ziegler shows otherwise. Not only is there documentation that Hunter Biden was the beneficial owner of a bank account in the name of Rosemont Seneca Bohai,  but the Committee has obtained a signed document where Hunter Biden affirms, “I, Robert Hunter Biden, hereby certify that I am the duly elected, qualified and acting Secretary of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC” in order to enter into a contract on behalf of the entity with Porsche Financial Services.

 

Hunter Bidens’ Sworn Testimony: Hunter Biden stated he was unwilling to provide “any work as it related to visas that they needed.” In fact, he stated unequivocally that he’d “never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.”

 

The Truth: The Committee has obtained and made public today an email communication between Devon Archer, Hunter Biden, and Ukrainian associates in which, in response to concerns about the revocation of Nikolay Zlochevsky’s, the CEO of Burisma, U.S. visa and the resulting limitations on his foreign travel, Archer stated, “Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa.” “Kola” being Nikolay Zlochevsky. Archer also tells Vadim Pozharskyi to “please send Hunter an email with all Kola’s passport and visa documents and evidence and copy me. We’ll take it from there.” These documents show that Hunter Biden did in fact do work on visa issues. [All emphasis in original.]

 

Now, I know you’re going to be less than flabbergasted to know that Hunter Biden, a walking scandal magnet, is a shameless liar. The question is whether there will be any legal consequence for his lying under oath to Congress.

 

Hey, what is former Trump trade-policy adviser Peter Navarro doing these days? Oh, that’s right, he’s serving a four-month sentence in the Miami Federal Detention Center after being convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating January 6.

 

Now, if a 74-year-old White House staffer can get sent to federal prison for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena, why would the son of a president get a pass for lying under oath?

 

In 24 hours, we learned that the former secretary of state protected Iranian terrorists from the FBI; Fauci and his top aides were trying to illegally hide their communications from FOIA requests; and the president’s son lied under oath at least three times.

 

And Democrats wonder why so many people are willing to give Trump a pass for allegedly sending hush money to a porn star?