According to Schmidt, there is nothing wrong with the Russia collusion narrative at all—it just hasn’t been proven yet.

The Trump Administration has been declassifying documents related to the various Russia collusion probes of Donald Trump. Recently, the White House published the FBI’s opening and closing memos for Oxferd Comma, an investigation launched in May 2017 to examine Trump’s Russia ties and his possible obstruction of previous investigations. The disclosures indicate that rogue FBI agents opened the investigation with flimsy predication to get revenge for Trump’s firing of FBI Director Jim Comey a week earlier.

This poses a problem for disciples of the Trump-Russia collusion theory, who needed someone to do damage control, downplay the revelations, and create an alternative media narrative.

That’s where the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt stepped in. Having parlayed the Russia collusion narrative into national prominence, including a book deal and an MSNBC contributor gig, Schmidt’s credibility is on the line when the collusion narrative weakens. So he penned a story that cites the Oxferd Comma revelations to make the startling argument that Trump-Russia collusion has not been investigated enough.

Schmidt was among the Times’ top writers on Trump-Russia collusion, authoring or co-authoring dozens of stories on the topic. He wrote or co-wrote some of the Times’ seminal Trump-Russia pieces, and his work featured among the Times and Washington Post collusion stories awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. The issue was so crucial to the Times that its executive editor, Dean Baquet, once revealed that the paper built up its entire newsroom around this single story.

Schmidt’s collusion stories rely extremely heavily on anonymous sources. Trump and his associates’ alleged malfeasance is regularly conveyed by “two people with knowledge of the episode,” “four people told of the matter,”“former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation,” “two people who have heard his account,” “several people familiar with the discussion,” “four current and former American officials,” “five people familiar with the matter,” and other unknown actors.

Naturally, the risk of depending on unnamed, unaccountable sources is that they may be telling partial truths or outright falsehoods for self-serving or political purposes. Schmidt understands this intimately. In 2015, he co-authored an anonymously sourced story reporting that two inspectors general had asked the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton due to her use of a private email server. The story collapsed soon after publication, requiring extensive corrections revealing that the IGs had called for neither a criminal investigation nor any probe directly targeting Clinton.

Labeling the article a “mess,” the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, publicly warned about “the lack of accountability that comes with anonymous sources” and called for Times editors to address their reporters’ “rampant use of anonymous sources” and exercise more caution “before publishing a political blockbuster based on shadowy sources.”

Nevertheless, a few months later Schmidt co-wrote another anonymously sourced piece that crashed and burned. The story accused immigration authorities of having missed red-flag jihadist social media posts by an immigrant from Pakistan who later participated in a terror attack in San Bernardino, killing fourteen people. But it turned out the killer’s public social media posts were actually private messages.

Media outlets widely re-reported the false story before realizing the mistake. The blunder was so severe that the mainstream press blasted the Times, with the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple saying the story “set fire to the news system,” Esquire condemning the Times’ “source pollution,” Mother Jones insisting that Schmidt and one of his coauthors be “considered on probation,” and Salon calling it “an epic reporting fail.” Surveying the damage, Sullivan again decried the Times’ “overuse of unnamed government sources” in a column titled, “Systemic Change Needed After Faulty Times Article.”

Schmidt and the Times editors had little interest in Sullivan’s warnings, judging by their unbridled promotion of anonymous sources to propel the Russia collusion narrative. Fortunately for them, Sullivan left the Times in April 2016, and in an amazing coincidence of timing, the paper announced in May 2017 that it would abolish the entire position of public editor, allowing the bulk of its anonymously sourced Russia collusion reporting to emerge without any public complaints from a pesky internal watchdog.

With that history in mind, let’s look at Schmidt’s recent piece. Based on the recently declassified Oxferd Comma documents and interviews with an unspecified number of unnamed former federal law enforcement officials, Schmidt’s story begins with some throat-clearing to set the narrative:

For the last year, the Trump administration’s efforts to seek retribution against intelligence officials and FBI agents who investigated Russia’s 2016 election meddling have been spearheaded by federal prosecutors in South Florida trying to build a criminal case.

But in recent weeks, the White House has added a dimension to its push to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation, releasing a trove of previously classified FBI memos that it says back up President Donald Trump’s claims that a so-called deep state was out to get him.

Schmidt frames the Trump Administration’s efforts to declassify Russia collusion-related documents as a push to “seek retribution” and “rewrite the history of the Russia investigation.” It’s as if there was no malfeasance at all in federal Russia collusion investigations, meaning Trump’s declassifications must be solely aimed at retribution.

And in fact, there really isn’t much malfeasance to be found—aside from the conviction of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for lying about Trump associate Carter Page’s cooperation with U.S. intelligence against Russian spies, FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer declaring that the FBI had misled the court in Page-related submissions, the seventeen major errors and omissions identified by Inspector General Michael Horowitz in the FISA warrants to spy on Page, CIA Director John Brennan’s manipulation of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessmenton Russian election interference, the FBI assigning informants to spy on Trump Campaign associates, the Peter Strozk/Lisa Page text messages disparaging Trump and his supporters, the improper wiping of phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr’s transmission to the FBI of false allegations by Christopher Steele after the FBI had fired Steele as a source, the employment of Ohr’s wife to dig up dirt on Trump and his family, FBI Director Jim Comey leaking to the press to force the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump, Comey orchestrating an ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the FBI’s misuse of a defensive briefing to spy on Flynn, and other transgressions that clearly bore Schmidt.

Schmidt’s dismissive reference to the “so-called deep state” is also noteworthy. It’s hard enough to deny people are working inside the government to sabotage Trump’s agenda when key Russia collusion investigators like Strozk and Page explicitly vowed to stop Trump from being elected, when FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith responded to Trump’s election by declaring “Viva la resistance,” and when Schmidt’s own newspaper published the iconic, anonymous column, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” (sub-head: “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”)

But Schmidt’s ridicule is even more problematic considering he wrote an entire book praising the very deep state he denies exists. According to the publisher, Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President “chronicles the clash between a president and the officials of his own government who tried to stop him.” With a particular focus on Jim Comey and Don McGahn, the book “records the clash between an increasingly emboldened president and those around him, who find themselves trying to thwart the president they had pledged to serve, unsure whether he is acting in the interest of the country, his ego, his family business, or Russia.” This self-refuting argument, denying there is a deep state while extolling its bravery, is a strange habit among Russia collusion reporters.

As in Schmidt’s book, Jim Comey looms large in his collusion reporting. Schmidt has informed us that In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred, and Comey Memos Provide Intimate Look Into Trump Presidency, and Comey Defends Trump Campaign Surveillance: ‘I Have Never Thought of That as Spying’, and Comey’s Memos Were a Product of a Culture of Note-Keeping, and Comey Told Sessions: Don’t Leave Me Alone With Trump, and Comey Says Trump Pressured Him to ‘Lift the Cloud’ of Inquiry, among other heroic acts by the former FBI Director.

Unsurprisingly, we learned at a June 2017 congressional hearing that Comey was a source for Schmidt—Comey testified that he’d used a friend as a cut-out to pass one of his memos to a reporter in hopes (successfully, as it turned out) of ginning up pressure to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump. The resulting New York Times story, Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation, appeared under Schmidt’s solo byline.

Thus, it must have been particularly embarrassing for Schmidt when, during that same hearing, Comey denounced one of the pivotal collusion stories Schmidt co-wrote, Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence, as being “almost entirely wrong,” and Comey revealed that he’d informed senators of both parties that the story was false. It’s bad enough for a reporter to be denounced at a nationally televised hearing as a purveyor of fake news, but it’s even worse when you’re being condemned by your own source.

In his new piece, Schmidt asserts, “There is little new of substance in the documents, and nothing that fundamentally undercuts the FBI’s rationale for pursuing the Russia investigation.”

Of course, we don’t need new documents to undercut the rationale for the Russia collusion investigation because it’s already been demolished. The rationale was Australian diplomat Alexander Downer telling the FBI that a Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, had “suggested” that the Trump campaign had received “some kind of suggestion” from Russia that it could release thousands of emails that would embarrass Hillary Clinton. So there was a suggestion of a suggestion—and this was third-hand information that Papadopoulos heard not from anyone in the Trump campaign, but from a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud who, Papadopoulos asserted, claimed he had heard it from unspecified Russian officials.

So, like a kids’ game of Telephone, the chain of custody of this set of suggestions was the following: Unknown Russian officials →Mifsud→Papadopoulos→Downer→FBI. This is what’s commonly known as a rumor. Moreover, Mifsud denied to the FBI that he made this assertion at all. But for Schmidt, this is the unquestionable, unimpeachable basis for the FBI to investigate the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate for colluding with a foreign power.

Schmidt then discusses the recent revelations about the Russia collusion investigation. The probe, Schmidt comments, “was oddly code-named Oxferd Comma.” The FBI misspelling the name of its own investigation is odd, indeed. An inquisitive reporter might wonder whether, in an improper investigation motivated by FBI agents seeking revenge against a president who had just fired their boss, the odd name might reflect an attempt to sabotage Freedom of Information Act requests related to the probe. But Schmidt is satisfied simply to note theinexplicable curiosity and move on.

Without comment, Schmidt lists the remarkably weak justifications for Oxferd Comma cited by the FBI memo opening the investigation, including the Papadopoulos rumor, Trump’s explanation for firing Comey, media reports about Trump’s business ties to Russia, and Trump complaining to Comey about the previous Russia collusion investigation. Among the five listed justifications, the memo’s longest, most detailed justification is that the Trump campaign intervened to soften language in the 2016 Republican National Convention platform related to Ukraine, changing a demand for the provision to Ukraine of “lethal defensive weapons” to a call for rendering “appropriate assistance.”

This was a classic misreported Russia collusion story that illustrates the media-FBI feedback loop that drove much of the collusion narrative. The loop works like this:

1. The New York Times or Washington Post publishes a wildly distorted or outright false collusion story that is uncritically re-reported by hundreds of other media outlets. Often, the story is based on claims by anonymous “officials” or “law enforcement officials” who are probably FBI agents.

2. The FBI or Mueller probe investigates the Trump associates who are alleged to have done something terrible to help Putin.

3. The investigators leak to the media that they’re investigating the matter, creating another wave of media stories.

Indeed, the Oxferd Comma opening memo cites “multiple open source reports” concerning the 2016 RNC platform’s Ukraine language. Far from illustrating Trump’s affinity for Putin, however, the change actually strengthened the platform’s pro-Ukraine plank. After removing a specific commitment to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine, which only appeared in a proposed amendment and not in the platform’s operative language, the amendment’s final, approved language read, “We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning.” Astonishingly, this robust commitment to defend Ukraine against Russia, which was far stronger and more specific than the Ukraine planks in the Democratic National Committee’s platform, was cited by the FBI to help justify investigating whether Trump was a Russian agent.

Breezing straight past these inconveniences, Schmidt gets to his main point: Trump-Russia collusion hasn’t been investigated enough. He explains that Oxferd Comma was opened as a dual investigation—a criminal probe of whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey and a counterintelligence probe of Trump’s ties to Russia. Schmidt argues, however, that when Mueller took over the probes, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein only allowed Mueller to focus on the criminal prong, not the counterintelligence prong. Therefore, says Schmidt, counterintelligence concerns like Trump’s personal and business ties to Russia, and whether Russia had compromised him, remain unexamined to this day.

Without acknowledging it was, in fact, a counterintelligence investigation, Schmidt waves away the nearly year-long Crossfire Hurricane probe of Russia collusion that preceded Mueller’s appointment, claiming it did not look “directly at Trump’s personal conduct or his ties to Russia.”

The Oxferd Comma counterintelligence investigation is of long-standing interest to Schmidt. He coauthored the January 11, 2019 Times article revealing the probe’s existence (though not its name). Furthermore, his claim that Rosenstein stopped Mueller from running a counterintelligence investigation is nothing new. In August 2020, the Times published an excerpt from his book making that precise argument—which Mueller’s top investigator, Andrew Weissmann, promptly denounced as “wrong.”

Overall, there is hardly any information in Schmidt’s piece, aside from the investigation’s name, that he hadn’t already reported. But Schmidt has a vested interest in defending the narrative around Russia collusion generally and around the Oxferd Comma investigation specifically. So he responded to the revelations of the probe’s weak predication by simply recycling his old narrative.

Since he’s spent years bemoaning the insufficient counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia, it’s worth considering what are the damning indicators that Schmidt believes need to be probed. In his three pieces on this topic, he lists numerous allegations related to Trump’s personal or business ties to Russia raised either by the FBI or Schmidt himself:

• Unverified rumors that the Russian government had compromising material on Trump connected to sexual affairs he purportedly had in Moscow in 1996 and/or 2013.(The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that the committee “did not establish” that such material existed.)

• Trump publicly joking that he hoped Russia finds Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

• The false reports on the Ukraine language in the 2016 RNC platform.

• Christopher Steele’s discredited allegations that Russian officials were blackmailing and bribing Trump.

• Press reports that Trump did business with Russians

• Trump showing “an openness to Russia” and refusing to criticize Russian aggression (thus elevating disagreement with Trump’s foreign policy into a potential act of treason by Trump.)

• Trump rejecting the intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. (The assessment was debunked by a House Intelligence Committee report showing how CIA Director John Brennan corruptly manufactured this pre-determined conclusion.)

• Trump’s unsuccessful effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. (This was investigated by Mueller, who found no criminal conspiracy and did not cite any direct contact between Trump and Russian officials, though Michael Cohen was convicted of making a false statement about the project’s timing.)

Schmidt’s argument relies on his refusal to acknowledge a mountain of evidence refuting all his points while stringing together conspiracy theories, debunked allegations, and clinically paranoid speculation. Schmidt inadvertently captures the delusional mindset of collusion conspiracists in a quote he got from FBI official Andrew McCabe, the instigator of the Oxferd Comma counterintelligence investigation, who described what the probe was meant to discover: “Could the president actually be the point of coordination between the campaign and the Russian government?”

Granted, Comey didn’t sound much more sane when he blurted out, “I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It’s possible, but I don’t know.”

Despite the nearly year-long Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the nearly two-year-long Mueller probe, and every major media outlet in America spending almost three years chasing down every preposterous collusion allegation, there’s still no evidence of collusion. Yet according to Schmidt, there is nothing wrong with the Russia collusion narrative at all—it just hasn’t been proven yet.

At this point, Michael Schmidt is a Japanese soldier hiding in the Philippine jungle in 1970, refusing to acknowledge the war was lost. He is a guy standing next to Geraldo as he opens Al Capone’s empty vault, insisting it’s full of invisible treasure. He is an organizer of the Fyre Festival raving about the great concert as malnourished, dehydrated, disheveled concertgoers are being evacuated. He is Kevin Bacon in Animal House, screaming “all is well” as the town descends into chaos around him.

At least that’s what I was told by three officials familiar with the matter.

By – https://lyceumnow.com/real-russiagate-has-never-been-tried/

Newly declassified NSA emails are raising disturbing questions about whether politics infected America’s intelligence agencies — and whether Communist China benefited. According to documents released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, NSA analysts spent months trying to publish intelligence about Chinese efforts to target U.S. elections, only to see officials delay or block distribution.

One analyst wrote that the information had been held up for 16 months, while another account said the NSA deputy director feared releasing it during the Trump administration would damage the agency’s credibility and make it appear part of the so-called “deep state.”

The emails indicate the concern was not that the intelligence was false. Instead, officials worried about the political environment surrounding President Trump and his battles with the intelligence community. That should alarm every American citizen today.

Intelligence agencies exist to give presidents and lawmakers the unvarnished truth about foreign threats — not to filter intelligence based on Washington politics, reputational concerns, or fear of how elected leaders might react. And the chief beneficiary in this case was Beijing.

Their malignant behavior was shielded from the President because the NSA cared more about protecting their own prestige than doing the right thing. China acquired American voter data while U.S. officials failed to brief the president, Congress, and other policymakers. This is a scandal regardless of whether China’s interference changed the outcome of the 2020 election.

Critical intelligence about a hostile foreign power was suppressed inside agencies that Americans are supposed to trust to protect national security. The lesson here is unmistakable: when intelligence becomes politicized, national security suffers — and America’s enemies win.

This is just another reason why the intelligence community needs to be dismantled, and the bureaucracy replaced with an alternative that is leaner, more efficient, more effective and not held hostage to internal pressure.

Hunter Biden is attempting yet another reinvention.

Hunter Biden is attempting yet another reinvention. Fresh from securing a $1.7 million punitive damages judgment against former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who lost the case by default after failing to appear for trial, the former first son has launched a coordinated publicity campaign involving podcasts, frequent posts on X, a new Substack, live appearances, and an upcoming documentary financed by his Hollywood benefactor Kevin Morris.

As Miranda Devine has reported in the New York Post, this is not an organic redemption story. It is a deliberate effort to rehabilitate Hunter Biden’s image, monetize his notoriety, and recast the history of the laptop that exposed his conduct, financial dealings, and proximity to his father’s political power. Hunter now portrays himself as a misunderstood addict whose every failure should be excused as the product of crack cocaine. His addiction was real and destructive, but it does not explain years of foreign business arrangements, complex corporate structures, unpaid taxes, suspicious financial transfers, or repeated invocation of the Biden name while seeking money and influence.

Addiction may explain chaos. It does not erase evidence. The laptop documented Hunter’s dealings in China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and elsewhere. It contained emails, messages, photographs, financial records, and recordings that directly contradicted Joe Biden’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about his son’s business affairs. References to the “Big Guy,” proposed equity splits, meetings with foreign associates, and Hunter’s own complaints about paying his father’s expenses raised serious questions that much of the media refused to examine honestly.

Instead of addressing those questions, Hunter and Kevin Morris have advanced an increasingly elaborate narrative involving Rudy Giuliani, Russian operatives, manipulated databases, fabricated recordings, Hunter’s former psychiatrist Keith Ablow, me, and others. It is an attempt to recast those who exposed the material as participants in a conspiracy against him.

As I have stated emphatically in the past I must now reiterate that I never possessed, nor saw the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until I read about it in the New York Post. His claim that I was somehow involved with the exposure of his laptop, are the delusions of a crackhead.

The origin of the laptop is not a mystery. A man identifying himself as Hunter Biden brought three damaged MacBook Pro computers to John Paul Mac Isaac’s repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019. Hunter’s signature appears on the repair authorization. He never paid the bill and never retrieved the devices. Mac Isaac later provided the original computer to the FBI, which seized it under federal subpoena in December 2019.

Federal prosecutors later introduced material from the laptop during Hunter’s gun trial. An FBI agent testified that the device was authenticated through its serial number and that investigators found no evidence of tampering or file insertion. The laptop was not just a media story; it became courtroom evidence.

Independent analysts also verified large portions of the data. Some emails were confirmed through cryptographic signatures, others through recipients and contemporaneous records. Hunter has gradually retreated from blanket denials, acknowledging that much of the material is genuine while still suggesting that unspecified portions may have been altered.

This is a familiar pattern. Deny everything until denial becomes impossible, then concede selectively while casting doubt on the remainder.

When the New York Post first reported the laptop in October 2020, the Biden campaign did not disprove the contents. Instead, 51 former intelligence officials issued a letter claiming the story had the “classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation, despite offering no evidence of Russian involvement. That claim provided justification for social media companies and major outlets to suppress the story during a presidential election.

Twitter blocked the Post’s reporting. Facebook limited its distribution. Major news organizations treated authenticated material as suspect while amplifying the unproven Russian narrative. Only after the election did many acknowledge the authenticity of the material they had previously dismissed.

Hunter now argues the laptop proves only drug use and addiction. That claim is false. The device contained a detailed record of income, spending, foreign relationships, tax issues, firearm purchase, and business negotiations. It helped establish conduct that later resulted in multiple federal convictions.

In June 2024, a federal jury convicted Hunter Biden of three felonies related to the purchase and possession of a Colt revolver. The jury found he lied on federal forms about drug use, made false statements required for firearm purchase records, and possessed a firearm while unlawfully using controlled substances. These were not political accusations. They were criminal convictions reached unanimously by a jury.

Three months later, Hunter pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors. Federal prosecutors alleged he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes, evaded assessments, and filed false returns over a four-year period while spending heavily on drugs, escorts, luxury travel, cars, clothing, and other personal expenses.

He was not a destitute addict. He received millions through foreign business arrangements while ignoring tax obligations. Addiction may explain some behavior, but it does not excuse deliberate tax violations or false filings. The laptop was central to this record. It contained financial data and communications from the same period covered by the tax case, helping establish timelines and corroborate evidence later used in court.

The public also had legitimate questions about why foreign companies and politically connected figures paid large sums to Hunter Biden. He had no background in Ukrainian energy policy when he joined Burisma’s board. He lacked the experience typically required for such compensation. His primary asset was his last name.

Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, and Hunter monetized proximity to him. Burisma appointed Hunter while its owner faced scrutiny in Ukraine, and while U.S. policy toward that country was under the vice president’s influence. Hunter has never provided a convincing explanation for why his role was necessary beyond access and prestige.

A similar pattern emerged in China. Hunter traveled with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two in 2013 and introduced him to Chinese businessman Jonathan Li. Hunter later obtained a 10 percent equity interest in Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company Limited, a Chinese private equity firm backed in part by state-connected financial institutions. He held that interest through his wholly owned company, Skaneateles LLC.

Hunter’s lawyer subsequently announced publicly that Hunter had divested himself of his interest in the Chinese firm. What was not disclosed at the time was that the divestment consisted of selling Skaneateles, and therefore its 10 percent interest in Bohai Harvest RST, to his sugar daddy Kevin Morris. Hunter later confirmed the transaction in sworn congressional testimony. Morris separately acknowledged that his purchase of Skaneateles gave him control of Hunter’s Chinese equity interest and that he continued to hold it.

Hunter did not simply relinquish the investment or walk away empty-handed. He sold the company holding the equity to the same wealthy patron who paid his delinquent taxes, purchased his artwork, covered personal expenses, financed his legal defense, and is now bankrolling a documentary intended to rehabilitate him. Morris also assumed responsibility for a loan associated with Hunter’s acquisition of the Chinese equity. The arrangement further entwined Hunter’s foreign business interests with the man who became his lawyer, financier, purchaser, and public relations impresario.

Hunter also pursued a separate series of deals with the Chinese energy conglomerate China Energy Company Limited. One email related to that venture referenced dividing equity among the participants, including “10 held by H for the big guy.” Business partner Tony Bobulinski identified the “big guy” as Joe Biden. Whether or not that particular deal was completed, the language reflected how participants discussed the vice president’s role.

Hunter also sent a message to a Chinese associate stating he was with his father and demanding payment. Shortly afterward, millions of dollars moved into accounts tied to his business network. He now claims this reference to his father was meaningless. That explanation strains credibility.

Congressional investigators traced more than $24 million from foreign sources to Biden family members and associates. The money moved through multiple entities before reaching individuals connected to the family. While not every transaction is criminal, the structure warranted serious scrutiny.

Banks filed more than 150 suspicious activity reports (SARs) involving Hunter Biden and related accounts. Routinely a SAR is always reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). These reports are not proof of wrongdoing, but they are indicators that financial activity may require investigation. A politically connected family receiving repeated foreign transfers should not be shielded from scrutiny.

Romania added another example. Funds linked to businessman Gabriel Popoviciu moved through intermediaries before reaching Biden-associated accounts while Popoviciu faced corruption allegations. Hunter was paid despite lacking any official role.

Joe Biden repeatedly denied discussing business with his son. That claim was undermined by testimony and records showing calls, meetings, and shared appearances with foreign associates. Devon Archer testified that Joe Biden was placed on speakerphone during business meetings. Hunter arranged dinners where his father met foreign partners.

Joe Biden’s presence itself was the product being sold. Access, not policy, was the commodity.

The defense offered by the Bidens relied on a narrow definition of corruption: that no specific policy change was directly exchanged for payment. Influence operations rarely work that way. They depend on access, expectation, and implied leverage rather than explicit contracts.

Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden were part of a broader financial network. Money moved through associates and entities before reaching family members. Joe Biden received payments labeled as loan repayments from his brother after business-related transactions. These arrangements demanded scrutiny rather than dismissal.

A House impeachment inquiry concluded that Joe Biden engaged in conduct involving influence peddling that benefited his family. While not a criminal conviction, the findings were based on records, testimony, and financial data that cannot be ignored.

Whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler testified that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation into Hunter Biden was obstructed, delayed, and limited. They alleged investigators were restricted from pursuing leads that could implicate Joe Biden and that key steps were blocked or slowed. They also stated that statute-of-limitations issues were allowed to expire on potential charges and that investigative tools were withheld. Their testimony helped expose irregularities in the handling of the case.

A plea agreement initially offered to Hunter would have resolved charges with minimal consequences. It collapsed in court when a judge questioned its scope and unusual immunity provisions. Only after that collapse, and after whistleblower disclosures, were felony charges pursued.

Joe Biden later issued a sweeping pardon covering federal offenses from 2014 through 2024. That period includes Hunter’s foreign business activity, tax issues, and firearm conviction. The pardon effectively shielded him from further federal prosecution across a decade of conduct. The timing and scope of the pardon raised serious questions about its purpose.

Hunter’s current media campaign depends on selective memory. He wants the public to forget prior denials, prior statements, and prior reporting. He seeks to replace documented history with personal narrative shaped by addiction, recovery, and grievance. But the record remains unchanged.

His judgment against Byrne does not validate his broader claims. The case was decided by default and did not address the laptop’s authenticity or the wider evidence. Addiction does not erase responsibility. Many Americans struggle with substance abuse without engaging in foreign business dealings, tax evasion, firearm violations, or relying on presidential pardons. Hunter Biden is entitled to recovery. He is not entitled to rewrite history.

Kevin Morris can fund documentaries. Media figures can provide platforms. None of it alters emails, financial records, testimony, or court findings.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Hunter repeated claims that the laptop data was stolen from cloud storage by unknown actors. He offered no evidence. Carlson acknowledged familiarity with some material but did not press sufficiently on the physical device, its chain of custody, or its use in court.

Hunter’s claim remains unsupported speculation. His strategy is consistent. Question the origin of the laptop, concede partial authenticity, and attribute remaining material to manipulation. Deny foreign payments are connected to influence. Reframe legal outcomes as persecution. Present addiction as universal explanation. Each step narrows responsibility while expanding ambiguity. A forthcoming documentary will likely emphasize personal struggle, family hardship, and recovery. These elements may be real, but they also serve to obscure documented financial and legal issues.

Compassion for addiction does not require acceptance of revisionist history. The chronology is clear. Foreign payments flowed to Biden-linked entities. Taxes went unpaid. A firearm was purchased illegally. A laptop containing extensive records was abandoned. Federal convictions followed. A presidential pardon closed the legal consequences. These are facts, not interpretations.

The Biden family’s survival strategy has long relied on denial, delay, and institutional protection. Hunter’s current campaign is a continuation of that pattern, now repackaged for media consumption. The laptop remains. The evidence remains. The record remains. No amount of publicity can change that.

President Trump has done more to reorder the Western Hemisphere in eighteen months than his predecessors managed in twenty years. The Shield of the Americas coalition, launched in March, turned a decade of hollow summit language into actual intelligence sharing and joint operations against the cartels, with governments that want to use it. Major trafficking organizations have been designated as terrorist entities and treated accordingly. Secretary Rubio has assembled a working coalition of roughly a dozen friendly capitals. Tariff leverage has been applied where it produces results and relaxed where partners deliver. And the June ambassadorial slate was a statement of seriousness, sending Daniel Perez to Brazil, Mark Abreu to El Salvador, Peter Snyder to Ecuador, Nate Morris to Colombia, and Paul Kalmbach to Paraguay. Those are consequential posts filled with people who carry weight.

The results include an election almost no one in Washington expected to break the right way. In the final stretch of the Honduran presidential race, with polling tight and the outcome genuinely uncertain, President Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura. Asfura won by a razor thin margin and took office in January. The endorsement was decisive.

In six months Asfura has preserved the extradition treaty his predecessor moved to terminate, an instrument that has already delivered more than fifty Hondurans into American custody on narcotics charges. He suspended roughly twenty cooperation agreements signed with Beijing under the previous government, including a free trade deal that had been under negotiation for two years, and has left his ambassadorship in Beijing unfilled since January. Senior officials have said the 2023 break with Taipei is under review. He came to Mar a Lago in February to talk migration, tariffs, and security. No other government in Central America has moved that far that fast on Washington’s agenda.

I have a personal stake in getting this right. I grew up in Tegucigalpa and went to school there, and my family’s ties to Honduras go back decades and continue today through missionary work. For most of my life I have watched Washington discover Honduras in the middle of a crisis, commit loudly, and drift once the cameras leave, and I have watched Honduran leaders learn to plan around that pattern. It is legible from Beijing as well. What is different now is that the drift has stopped, and there is an administration in Washington and a government in Tegucigalpa that want the same things at the same time. That does not happen often, and it does not last long.

What remains to be done in Honduras is substantial, and all of it is time sensitive.

On energy, the Honduran Congress is in the final stage of negotiating a reform of the state utility, which loses close to two million dollars a day. Asfura went public this month asking legislators to pass it. Behind that vote sits the largest power procurement in Central American history, an international tender for 1,500 megawatts of firm capacity contracting supply out to 2030 under a sovereign guarantee. When those bid documents were first circulated, one of the audiences briefed was a forum of Chinese investors. The European Union has already positioned itself with an eight million euro grant engineered to unlock as much as five hundred million euros in European Investment Bank lending. The Development Finance Corporation has signaled it will move in once the legal framework is repaired. The reform text itself decides whether American capital can participate at all, because it governs collateral, the treatment of existing power contracts, and whether long dated agreements survive a change of government.

On logistics, Puerto Cortés is the only port in the CA-4 that can receive the largest container ships crossing the Atlantic. Its operator is investing a hundred million dollars this year in nine additional hectares of yard, twelve gantry cranes, and two quay cranes, taking capacity to 1.4 million TEUs by early 2027 against 816,000 handled last year. Industrial investment in the surrounding corridor is projected to create eight to ten thousand jobs. This is the nearshoring infrastructure the administration has been asking the hemisphere to build, already under construction, a short sail from the American market.

On the cartels, Honduras sits astride the principal cocaine corridor to the southern border, and its north coast and Bay Islands are where interdiction either happens or does not. A government in Tegucigalpa that wants to be a Shield of the Americas partner is worth a great deal, and partnerships of that kind are built by people with standing, not by cables.

The reflexive objection is that Honduras is too dangerous to do business in. That reputation is now well behind the data. Honduran police recorded a 2025 homicide rate of 15.3 per hundred thousand, down from 26.07 the year before, which puts the national figure below what Baltimore and New Orleans reported over the same period. What holds capital back is uncertainty about contract enforcement, not violence, and reducing that uncertainty is diplomatic work.

Which leaves one gap in an otherwise commanding hemispheric record. Of the seven countries in Central America, six have a confirmed ambassador at post or a name before the Senate. Costa Rica and Panama are filled. Belize received a nominee in April, El Salvador in June, and Nicaragua on August 7. Guatemala’s nominee withdrew in July, but a name at least went forward. Honduras has not appeared in a single nomination message of this administration, and it has not had a Senate confirmed American ambassador appointed under either Trump term. Nicaragua, run by a regime this administration has rightly treated as hostile, has a nominee pending. Honduras, which voted the way the President asked it to, does not.

The United States has just finished a $429 million embassy in Tegucigalpa, nine acres and an eight-story chancery, opened last year. A country does not build that for a relationship it intends to manage at arm’s length. What that building needs now is a chief of mission who carries the President’s personal confidence. The June slate reflected that judgment, sending political appointees with standing to Brazil, Colombia, and Paraguay rather than treating those capitals as rotational assignments. Rank and proximity are operational variables in Honduran politics rather than formalities. They determine who sits with a congressional bloc leader before a floor vote rather than after, and whether the Honduran across the table believes he is hearing the President or hearing a readout.

My parents still live in Tegucigalpa. I have watched three American administrations pass through that relationship without leaving much behind. This one could be different, and the window for it is measured in months.

Honduras is not a problem to be managed. It is a country that voted the way this President asked it to, has governed the way he hoped it would, and is making decisions this month that will bind for a decade. The administration has put the right people in the right posts across the hemisphere. Honduras belongs on the list.

Nick Raineri is a partner at TSG Advocates in Washington, D.C. He previously served as a political appointee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and helped stand up the Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital. Born in Chicago, IL, he grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where his parents currently reside, and graduated from Academia Los Pinares.

Ed. Note: An abbreviated version of this article originally appeared in The Washington Times

The argument over what that decision ultimately cost has never really ended.

Domestic inflation, already rising from the mid-1960s, was being exported through the fixed-rate system and intensifying pressure on the dollar.

The final trigger came in early August when Britain requested roughly $3 billion in gold “cover” for its dollar holdings, following earlier French conversions.

On the weekend of August 13–15, Nixon and a small group of advisers met in secret at Camp David and chose to act.

Closing the gold window was necessary. It ended the Bretton Woods system that had governed international money since the end of World War II and launched the modern era of pure fiat currency.

A brief attempt to restore modified fixed rates followed in the December 1971 Smithsonian Agreement, which raised the official gold price to $38 an ounce, but that arrangement collapsed within little more than a year, leading to generalized floating by early 1973.

The move was the only responsible response to an approaching crisis:

• It prevented an immediate crisis and gold drain. U.S. gold reserves had fallen sharply and could no longer cover outstanding foreign claims on the dollar. Continuing convertibility risked a disorderly run on gold, potential default on obligations, and a broader international financial panic. Convertibility had already been restricted since the 1968 collapse of the London Gold Pool, which left only official transactions at the $35 price. Ending convertibility removed that immediate threat.
• Corrected an overvalued dollar and improved competitiveness. The fixed $35-per-ounce rate made U.S. goods expensive abroad and imports artificially cheap. Ending convertibility, combined with a temporary 10% import surcharge, was intended to force other countries to revalue their currencies upward, effectively devalue the dollar in real terms, boost U.S. exports, and improve the trade balance and employment. The surcharge was dropped after the Smithsonian negotiations.
• Gave greater policy flexibility. Under a pure gold-linked system, domestic monetary and fiscal policy was constrained by the need to defend the gold parity. Severing the link allowed more active management of inflation, unemployment, and growth without automatic gold outflows or forced deflation. Supporters later noted that fiat money and floating (or managed) exchange rates give central banks tools to respond to recessions and shocks that a rigid commodity standard would limit.
• Political and short-term economic goals. The package included a 90-day wage-price freeze and tax measures aimed at cooling inflation while supporting jobs ahead of the 1972 election. Closing the gold window was framed as protecting the dollar from “speculators” and shifting focus to domestic priorities after Vietnam. Many contemporaries viewed the overall New Economic Policy as popular at the time. Markets initially responded positively, with the stock market rising in the days after the announcement.
• Exposed that Bretton Woods was already unsustainable. The system had been under strain for years (the London Gold Pool collapsed in 1968). It also suffered from the inherent “Triffin dilemma”: the United States had to run deficits to supply the world with dollar liquidity, yet those same deficits steadily undermined confidence in the dollar’s convertibility into gold. Unilateral action was seen by some as preferable to a drawn-out, potentially messier collapse or endless negotiations that might not succeed.

Yet the same step that averted an immediate crisis also carried lasting costs. The other side of the coin remains clear. In both books I have written on Richard Nixon, Nixon’s Secrets , the Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate and the Pardon and Tricky Dick – the Rise and Fall and Rise of Richard M. Nixon I have been critical of this decision.

• America lost its monetary anchor and higher inflation risk. Gold provided an external discipline that limited the ability of governments and central banks to expand the money supply excessively. Critics argued that ending convertibility removed this constraint, contributing to the high inflation and “stagflation” of the 1970s (though oil shocks and other factors also played major roles). Over the long term, the dollar has lost substantial purchasing power since 1971 under the fiat regime.
• Created currency volatility and uncertainty. The shift from fixed rates to floating, or managed floating exchange rates introduced greater short-term volatility in currency markets. This required new hedging instruments and complicated international trade and investment planning. Some preferred negotiated reform of Bretton Woods over a unilateral break.
• Damaged U.S. credibility and relations with allies. The action was unilateral and sudden, negotiated over a secret Camp David weekend. Allies holding large dollar reserves saw it as the United States defaulting on a core commitment. The episode strained relations and temporarily closed foreign exchange markets.
• Wage-price controls and other accompanying measures were flawed. The freeze, and later controls, distorted markets, suppressed rather than cured inflation, and created shortages or pent-up price pressures that erupted later. Fed Chairman Arthur Burns and others opposed closing the gold window, warning of the risks of pure paper money and potential loss of confidence.
• Undermined longer-term fiscal discipline. Without the gold constraint, governments faced fewer automatic checks on deficit spending and debt monetization. Critics, especially from free-market or gold-standard perspectives, argue this facilitated the large growth in federal debt and spending that followed.

On that Sunday evening the United States stepped out of the Bretton Woods system and into a different monetary order. The move was driven by necessity more than ideology, yet its consequences have proved lasting.

Nixon’s action averted a disorderly collapse of the postwar monetary system; it also removed the discipline that gold had imposed. Both statements are true, and both continue to shape how the episode is judged. The gold window was closed to protect the remaining reserves and to restore competitive balance. Once closed, it stayed closed.

Many still point to the policy freedom that followed; while others still point to the inflation, volatility, and fiscal expansion that became easier once the link was severed.

Fifty-five years on, the world continues to operate inside the framework that night created, one of floating rates, pure fiat currency, and the permanent question of how far governments should be free to create money without an external limit. The argument over what that decision ultimately cost has never really ended.

Walk the crowded streets of Flushing, Queens, and you’ll pass a dense stretch of social adult daycare centers that have long raised questions about Medicaid scams, and billings that often appear phantom in nature.

A recent investigation by the New York Post turned up a conspicuous connection, revealing that the owner of one of the area’s most lucrative facilities has collected tens of millions from the program while also writing checks to Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign.

Baoli Zhang, a 69-year-old local powerbroker and accomplished erhu musician who has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Juilliard, remains at the center of the latest reporting.

Through Bao Kang Adult Day Care and related businesses, his operations have billed Medicaid at least $32 million since 2018 for services tied to tens of thousands of patients. Campaign records show Zhang personally gave Hochul $10,000 in 2022, with another $5,000 coming from Bao Kang itself.

While Zhang listed himself as the owner and manager of Bao Kang on campaign finance disclosures, local and federal Medicaid data list other individuals as the owners, a pattern that also appears with Empire Adult Day Care, another facility he has claimed.

Local politicians have long treated the centers as ready-made voting blocs. “If you get 100 people in there and you make them vote, it’s very powerful for a primary. Every politician goes to these daycares for help,” one industry source told the New York Post.

Hochul’s office claims the governor has rooted out waste and fraud, saving billions, reforming Medicaid, and prosecuting wrongdoers, adding that contributions do not influence decisions.

Rep. Grace Meng (D) welcomed good-faith investigations while rejecting what she described as political targeting of Asian American seniors. State Sen. John Liu (D) called Zhang a longtime respected community leader and said any suspected fraud should be fully investigated.

Zhang is not alone. Jiemin Shang runs Livingwell Day Care, which donated $5,000 to Hochul the same year it billed Medicaid $5.8 million, plus another $5,000 from Finest Adult Day Care, which he also operates.

Together, these two men account for nearly half of the roughly $55,000 that Flushing social adult daycares channeled to Hochul’s 2022 campaign.

Nine such centers overall gave more than $5,000 each that year, including American Adult Daycare, Big Apple Adult Daycare, and Greater New York Social and Health, and those same nine billed Medicaid a combined $49 million in 2022 alone.

When reporters stopped by the flagship locations last month, the picture looked quiet. Livingwell, which federal data link to about $27 million in billings from 2018 to 2024 for more than 26,500 unique patients, stood empty, with staff quickly asking the visitors to leave.

Bao Kang told a similar story: a worker said the place typically handles 100 to 200 people a day, yet the rooms appeared vacant and the $32 million figure drew only a shrug. Neither Zhang nor Shang has been accused of any wrongdoing, and both declined to comment.

A source familiar with the industry said, “In 2021, [social adult daycare centers] were dying due to COVID. Someone threw them a lifeline and must have said something like, ‘Take care of me, I’ll take care of you.’ They’re making more money than ever now.”

The money trail shows sharp growth after the pandemic. Livingwell’s Medicaid claims jumped from just $114,000 in 2018 to more than $8 million by 2024. Bao Kang climbed from $1.5 million to $7.22 million over the same stretch.

Across Flushing’s dense concentration of these centers; dozens packed into a one-mile radius that collectively bill more than $100 million a year, according to reporting and a July CBS News data analysis, monthly revenue has nearly doubled from pre-COVID levels.

Zhang’s reach extends further. He also owns Confucius Social Daycare in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which billed another $15.7 million over the six-year period, plus related management companies including Silver Arch Management and AA Plus Management Inc., the latter of which billed roughly $2.65 million as a point-of-service Medicaid provider.

That same building on Baxter Street in Chinatown that Zhang lists as a business address also houses Cathay Adult Daycare, which donated $5,000 to Hochul in 2022 while billing $8.4 million that year; Zhang is not listed as its owner and any connection remains unclear.

He founded the Asian American Adult Daycare Association in 2023, with Shang serving as secretary-general, and has given to other Democrats as well, including $7,800 to Rep. Grace Meng and nearly $5,000 to State Sen. John Liu.

In a 2022 Chinese-language report following earlier Flushing fraud cases, Zhang praised New York’s system, saying the state “is one of the states with the best welfare in the United States” while warning that “excessive consumption will only deprive their descendants of resources.”

Flushing has become one of the most prominent focal points for questions about New York’s social adult daycare program. Statewide, the centers have drawn 387 referrals for investigation since 2021, roughly one-third of which were elevated to the Attorney General.

Those referrals sit alongside earlier federal cases, including the February charges against two Flushing men in an alleged $120 million kickback scheme covered by Gothamist, and findings from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s February audit of questionable payments and capacity violations. Recent reporting has most fully connected the billing patterns, empty facilities, and political donations.

These centers are meant to offer socialization for frail seniors who need more support than regular senior centers, along with structured activities, and meals.

But, the combination of empty rooms on ordinary weekdays, sky-high billings, and steady political donations has left many wondering how tightly the system is being watched, and where the hardearned taxpayer money is really going.

As of now, no charges have been filed against Zhang, Shang, or any of the centers named in connection with the donations and high Medicaid billings, leaving the larger questions about oversight and accountability unresolved.