It’s Year 5 Of The Biden Crime Family Coverup

By Frank Miele for RealClearWire

A truism that came out of the Watergate scandal is that often the coverup is worse than the crime. But that is not the case in the unraveling Bidengate scandal. The alleged crime here is so bad that it is probably the worst ever committed by an American president.

Yet the coverup should be studied, too. It deserves superlatives for its longevity, inventiveness, and sheer audacity. The strategy has been simple: deny, deflect, destroy. Deny the facts. Deflect with distractions, and when all else fails, work tirelessly to destroy Trump, who was among the first to raise questions about the Biden family’s shady dealings. At Year 5, it may be the most successful coverup in modern history, especially since so many of the facts have been in plain sight for the entire time.

So what exactly is Bidengate? A decade-long influence-peddling scheme that saw Joe Biden, the former vice president, using his son Hunter as a conduit for millions of dollars in payoffs from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere in exchange for favorable treatment. The most famous instance of this scheme was the millions of dollars paid to Hunter Biden for his role as a board member of the corrupt Burisma energy company in Ukraine. Even Hunter acknowledged that his only qualification for being on the board was his last name.

Trading on one’s name to gain employment is not a crime in itself, but using your father’s public office to influence U.S. policy is definitely against the law – especially when the clout is used to protect your corrupt foreign employer.

That’s just what happened in March of 2016 when Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if prosecutor general Viktor Shokin were not immediately fired. Biden even bragged about this escapade a few years later when he told the story to the Council on Foreign Relations.

It’s hard to know whether Biden’s threat to withhold aid was approved by the State Department or whether it was “on the fly” diplomacy, but we do know that Shokin has publicly stated that he was fired because he was investigating Burisma’s alleged corruption, and that after he was fired there was no further substantial investigation of Burisma. Quid pro quo.

Another famous mantra from the Watergate era is “Follow the money.” It almost makes you think Biden was taunting his accusers, quipping to a reporter on June 8, “Where’s the money?” when asked about allegations of corruption.

“That’s what we want to know,” the reporter should have demanded, but of course there was no follow-up question. There never is.

Biden’s cheeky response suggests he had reason to think that he could count on the source of any ill-gotten wealth being kept private. And he may have had good reason for that belief.

On July 20, a little more than a month after Biden asked “Where’s the money?”, Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified FD-1023 FBI informant form alleging that Biden and his son Hunter had split a $10 million payment from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma. Among the many intriguing breadcrumbs in that document was the informant’s claim that the payment to the Bidens was so well disguised that it would take years to uncover:

Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which [the FBI source] understood was a reference to Joe Biden). [The source] asked Zlochevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).

So that’s one possible answer to Joe Biden’s taunt: “Where’s the money?” Perhaps it’s well-hidden.

Related: Jill Biden’s Ex-Husband Comes Back To Haunt Her – ‘I Can’t Let Them Do What They Did To Me To President Trump’

There are so many flashing red warning lights in the Biden scandal that a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming he was in Amsterdam. Case in point: The FBI informant reported in his June 2020 statement that Zlochevsky had called Joe Biden the “Big Guy” in 2019.

That’s the same gangster nickname that one of Hunter Biden’s business associates used to refer to Joe in an infamous email on the “Laptop from Hell” when discussing what percentage of capital equity was being held by Hunter for Joe in a Chinese investment scheme. The laptop was in FBI hands since December 2019, but the email in question wasn’t circulated in public until the New York Post published it on Oct. 15, 2020. The informant’s use of the phrase prior to that time is strong circumstantial evidence that the FBI’s trusted human source was indeed privy to confidential and damning information about Biden.

But what’s truly maddening about the Biden coverup is just how long it has lasted while more and more evidence has mounted. Recent congressional hearings unearthed a trove of detail about bank payments to Biden family members, and IRS whistleblowers have laid bare the protection racket that the FBI and DOJ have been running for the Bidens. Most of that is just confirmation of what we already knew.

Remember, the first time most Americans heard about the Bidens’ bribery schemes was in September 2019 when the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and then-new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was released. In it, Trump raised the issue of former Vice President Biden’s alleged corruption and asked Zelensky to cooperate with U.S. authorities by “looking into” rumors of criminal activity by the Bidens.

Imagine if Congress had opened an inquiry then into the question of Hunter Biden’s huge salary for sitting on the board of Burisma Energy, the company controlled by oligarch Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden might be in prison now, and his father would have retired to Delaware to live out his final years in shame.

Instead, Democrats in Congress put Trump on trial for daring to notice that which must not be named – the influence-peddling scheme run by Joe Biden and his kin. The impeachment was America’s crash course on Ukrainian corruption, but somehow the mainstream media missed the story and tried to convince the public that Biden was the victim. They hid the evidence then, just as they did last week when Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal fell apart.

Related: Hunter Biden Pleads Not Guilty After Plea Deal Falls Apart

The Democrat-adjacent media seem to have a hard time understanding the case against Hunter Biden – and Joe Biden – even after five years. It’s not uncommon to hear cable news anchors lamenting that the Republicans are persecuting Joe and that they haven’t proven the president did anything wrong.

Either they don’t understand the meaning of the word proven, or they don’t understand our system of justice. It is not the job of Congress or reporters to prove anything, but rather to investigate and unearth evidence. For anyone who has eyes to see, there is a mountain of evidence against both Hunter and Joe Biden. But what we are still waiting for – what the nation is waiting for – is justice. To get that, we need a prosecutor who will present the evidence to a jury and ask for a verdict. Then and only then will the president’s guilt be proven or unproven.

How many more years do we have to wait?

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post It’s Year 5 Of The Biden Crime Family Coverup appeared first on The Political Insider.

The RussiaGate Scandal Is Far From Over

By J. Peder Zane for RealClearWire

Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over. This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.

Rather it’s because Russiagate never ended. Unlike political scandals of the past – from the XYZ Affair to Watergate and Iran-Contra – it is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity.

A continuous thread connects the schemes to deny the results of the 2016 election, to cover up the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and the ongoing effort to tar President Biden’s opponents as extremists or racists.

Ironically, all of this is especially dangerous because it is out in the open. The profound misdeeds are not hidden in the dark web; they are part of the public record. And yet, none of the major malefactors – including Joe Biden, former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James B. Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan, among others – have been held to account. Rather, they are lionized, and in some cases employed, by leading media organizations.

The breadth of these machinations is so extensive that I would need a book, rather than a column, to detail it. But here is a brief recap that can serve as a reminder of key events of this dark period of our history.

On July 28, 2016, then CIA Director John Brennan informed President Obama about intelligence reports indicating Hillary Clinton’s campaign “plan” to tie Donald Trump to Russia in order to distract the public from the growing controversy over her use of a private email server while Secretary of State. Notes in the margin – “JC,” “Susan,” and “Denis” – almost certainly refer to then FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough.

On July 31, Comey’s FBI launched a counterintelligence probe into whether the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia to damage Clinton through the release of her emails.

On Jan. 3, 2017, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer warned the president-elect not to challenge the intelligence community’s claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

On Jan. 5, 2017, in his finals days in office, Obama held an Oval Office meeting with Brennan, Comey, Rice, Vice President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others to strategize responses to alleged Russian election interference and Trump’s victory.

On Jan. 6, Comey briefed President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier – a series of absurd and salacious memos paid for and disseminated by the Clinton campaign that sought to tarnish Trump’s character while tying him and his campaign associates to the Kremlin.

On Jan. 10, CNN used a leak it received about Comey’s briefing to broadcast the dossier’s smears, fueling a partisan feeding frenzy that led to the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump/Russia ties. Buzzfeed News published the entire dossier the same day.

On Jan. 28, after assuring Trump privately that he wasn’t under investigation, Comey wrote a memo recounting that he’d boasted to the new president, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.” He then went to his car and typed up his version of the conversations. When Trump fired him on May 9, Comey immediately leaked the memos, in violation of FBI rules, to a sympathetic college professor in hopes, he conceded later, of prompting the appointment of a special prosecutor. On May 17, Robert S. Mueller III, a longtime Comey friend and ally, was appointed special counsel to investigate potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Related: Durham Report on the FBI is So Damning That Chuck Todd is Calling For a Church Committee to Investigate

On April 18, 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign.” This work, much of which was based on leaks from anonymous government sources, was filled with “false and misleading claims” which, my RealClearInvestigations colleague Aaron Maté reported, the newspapers have still refused to correct.

On March 22, 2019, Mueller submitted a report on his investigation which “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller, however, claimed that the source of these falsehoods was beyond his mandate, so he did not look into the role Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Obama, and other high-ranking Democrats played in ginning up charges of treason against a duly elected U.S. president.

On May 13, it was reported that Attorney General William Barr had appointed John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia probe. Barr upgraded Durham to a Special Counsel role on Dec. 1, 2020. Durham’s final report, issued last month, detailed the Clinton campaign’s central role in the Russiagate conspiracy while concluding that “the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election” because it relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” Durham’s investigation also undermined the other pillar of the Russia hoax, endorsing earlier findings that there was no conclusive evidence that the Russians had hacked DNC servers. Like the Trump/Russia collusion theory, this claim also originated from associates of the Clinton campaign.

On Sept. 24, the Mueller report a bust, House Democrats began proceedings to make Trump just the third president in history to be impeached based on the claim that he sought foreign influence in America’s elections by holding up aid to Ukraine for a short period to pressure the country into looking into its potential connection to the Russiagate hoax and the Biden family’s work in Ukraine. The aid package was later delivered, and no investigation was undertaken. Nevertheless, the House approved two articles of impeachment on December 18, 2019, along party lines – all Republicans and three Democrats opposed the measure – and sent them to the GOP-controlled Senate, which acquitted Trump on Feb. 5, 2020, on another party-line vote (only Republican Mitt Romney crossed party lines to convict Trump on a single charge).

On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post reported “that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.” The article, based on email from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, suggested an influence-peddling scheme while flatly contradicting Joe Biden’s claim that he never discussed his son’s foreign business dealings.

On Oct. 17, Biden campaign official and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses the laptop with former acting CIA Director Mike Morell.

On Oct. 19, Politico reported that a letter signed by Morell and 51 other former intelligence officials – including Brennan and Clapper – claimed that allegations in the Post article had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Echoing the false Russiagate claims, the letter continued, “For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.” Major news outlets and social media companies relied on this letter to downplay and suppress the revelations. The FBI, which had taken possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, refused to comment on its authenticity.

On Oct. 22, Joe Biden invoked the letter in his final debate with Trump to dismiss the laptop as “a Russian plant.” On November 3, Biden became president through razor-thin margins in key swing states.

On March 30, 2022, the Washington Post reported that it had authenticated thousands of emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. CBS News subsequently verified almost all the contents of the laptop.

Related: Hawley Demands Prosecution of Democrats, Hillary Clinton After Durham Report Reveals FBI Used False Intelligence to Launch Trump-Russia Probe

On May 15, 2023, the New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service removed “the entire investigative team” in its years-long tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden at the behest of President Biden’s Department of Justice. This purge came after several whistleblowers stepped forward claiming the probe was being slow-walked. The move also came after a series of revelations showed how the Biden family used a series of shell companies to funnel millions of dollars from foreign sources to at least nine family members – including Joe Biden’s young grandchildren. As Andrew C. McCarthy recently noted in the National Review, it is still not clear what the Bidens provided in exchange for this money, other than access to Joe.

On June 4, former FBI Director Comey, noting the long string of cases being brought against Trump by Democratic officials, told MSNBC that “it’s a crazy world that Donald Trump has dragged this country into, but he could be wearing an ankle brace while accepting the nomination at the Republican convention.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post The RussiaGate Scandal Is Far From Over appeared first on The Political Insider.

$8 Billion in U.S. Funds May Have Gone to the Taliban

By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearInvestigations

Since the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, the U.S. has continued sending money to the country in the form of humanitarian aid. Now, a watchdog claims that the U.S. can’t be confident that our $8 billion of aid to Afghanistan isn’t funding the Taliban.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General to Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), recently testified before the House Oversight Committee, “Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban.”

OpentheBooks.com

RELATED: GOP Drafts Articles of Impeachment Against Defense Secretary Austin for Afghan Disaster

He continued “Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending from the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people.”

The U.S. has sent Afghanistan $8 billion in humanitarian aid since our military withdrawal in 2021, according to CNN. Biden Administration officials have repeatedly stressed this aid is strictly going toward humanitarian efforts via non-governmental organizations and other humanitarian aid organizations.

Sopko, however, admitted there is effectively no monitoring of these funds to ensure they are not going to the Taliban. The U.S. does not currently recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government.

No effective oversight means U.S. funds could end up in the wrong hands, “subjected to waste, fraud, and abuse,” SIGAR wrote.

The U.S. needs to seriously reevaluate its funding and monitoring processes to ensure taxpayer dollars are actually helping the Afghan people, and not ending up of in the hands of the brutal and barbaric Taliban government.

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

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Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer

By James Varney for RealClearInvestigations

In New York City, if the newcomers aren’t put up at the luxury cruise terminal that served the QE2, they could get $700-a-night midtown hotel accommodations with iconic Manhattan viewsIn Chicago, they found themselves whisked to suburban lodgings. In Denver, officials refer to them discreetly as “guests” and you needn’t bother inquiring about their inns or addresses.  

The people enjoying these free digs aren’t privacy-conscious jet-setters, but the secrecy surrounding them might be comparable: They’re some of the millions of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed most border controls.

RELATED: Nearly 270,000 Apprehensions, Gotaways at Southern Border in March

No one knows exactly how many people have poured across the southwestern U.S. border since President Biden took office, or where they’ve gone since. The official number of encounters by Customs and Border Patrol stands at 5.2 million people, logged over the last two full federal fiscal years and fiscal 2023 through March. But that number is imprecise because it includes repeat encounters with the same people and omits the many who slipped into the country unnoticed by border agents.  

Under President Biden, the U.S. smashed past the 200,000 monthly encounters mark for the first time in July 2021 and it has repeatedly topped that record in the months since. By comparison, in fiscal 2020, which ended a month before Biden’s defeat of President Trump, the U.S. averaged 38,174 monthly encounters at the border, according to CBP figures.  

Earlier: Why Hasn’t the GOP Impeached Mayorkas Yet? 

Because of an official lack of transparency, all those people and the circumstances by which they have arrived and remained have made it hard to take stock of the historic influx. Through midnight flights and buses from the border to far-flung locales, the administration has made it difficult to identify where the migrants are now living and receiving services. Also unclear are the costs associated with the arrivals.  

But flares have been sent up – especially over immigrant sanctuary cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, which have long promised to house migrants. While those cities are providing housing and other services for a small fraction of the recent migrants, the costs are significant for these budget-strapped metropolises.

Denver plans to spend $20 million in the first six months of this year to provide housing to migrants. Officials say this works out to between $800 and $1,000 per week per person.   

In January the state of Illinois turned down Chicago’s request for more funds, saying it had already spent close to $120 million on its “asylum seeker emergency response” – or roughly $33,000 per migrant.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has asked for more than $500 million in federal aid, while pegging the city’s spending at between $2 billion and $3 billion.     

Other data points of the opaque costs of Biden-era illegal immigration include Massachusetts’ estimate that it will need $28 million to launch a program to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. The state is seeking a share of the omnibus spending bill passed by Democrats in December 2022 when they controlled both houses of Congress, which included $800 million for cities grappling with the influx.  

RELATED: Biden to Open Up Medicaid, Obamacare to About 700,000 Illegal Immigrants

These numbers are incomplete in part because it is hard to separate the added cost of recent migrants from costs for the millions of undocumented immigrants who were in the country before the recent surge.  

A March study by the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that, after accounting for taxes paid by undocumented migrants, they cost taxpayers over $150 billion per year – a 30% increase since 2017.  

Yet FAIR acknowledges the problem of fixing costs has become more difficult, given the record-breaking numbers of illegal crossers in the past two and a half years and efforts by some government agencies to mask their spending.  

“We often had to grapple with a paucity of easily accessible official data,” the report notes. “Many state and federal entities do not publish detailed data that they collect, making it difficult to reliably separate illegal aliens from citizens of lawful immigrants. We have also encountered cases where the current administration has revoked or restricted documents published by previous administrations in order to reduce the visibility of data which shines a negative light on their immigration policy agenda.”

Those totals also involve far more than simple food and board. To arrive at its staggering sum, FAIR includes estimates of the costs in education, health care and law enforcement.  

“The irony is not only are these sanctuary jurisdictions turning to Washington with their hands out, but that they still refuse to join with governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis in demanding that the federal government take decisive steps to stanch the influx of new migrants,” FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman told RealClearInvestigations, referring to the Republican chief executives of Texas and Florida, respectively. “The obvious hypocrisy of declaring yourself a sanctuary jurisdiction while complaining about the costs and burdens associated with it are undeniable.”

Groups that favor more relaxed border security measures, such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the American Immigration Council, did not respond to RCI’s request for comment; the liberal Brookings Institution declined to comment. 

RELATED: Illegal Immigration is Surging… Across the Northern Border, Now

Cities housing many migrants have a hard time estimating costs. New York Mayor Adams has asked for more than $500 million in federal aid, while pegging the city’s spending one time at $2 billion and another time at $3 billion. Those are the sorts of bills New York has racked up putting what they call “asylum seekers” or “migrants” in hotels.

And Adams, whose requests sometimes include the claim “we are all in this together,” wants to spend even more. This month, he floated the idea of paying college tuition for illegal immigrants if they attend New York state schools outside the city.

Using Adams’ own number of some 40,000 illegal immigrants that New York City has foot the bills for, it means taxpayers are spending roughly $150,000 per person to host new arrivals. In March, City Hall scaled back its count of the number of its immigrants to 12,700, which meant the taxpayers’ were spending nearly $5 million a day to take care of them, according to a New York Post analysis.  

The Office of the New York City Public Advocate, which helps immigrants navigate the benefits available to them, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Adams declined to address questions about spending, pointing instead to various links the city maintains for immigrants and noting the city has expanded a New York County Supreme Court decision in 1981 regarding shelter for homeless people to cover immigrants.   

Whatever the current official number of illegal immigrants New York is dealing with it is but a fraction of those that have poured into various Texas communities along the border.   

Officials at El Paso’s City Hall, one of the ground zeroes in the illegal immigration crush, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on its spending. But Gov. Abbott said his Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021, has “allocated more than $4 billion to do the federal government’s job and secure the border,” Abbott’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said.   

It was Abbott who began busing illegal immigrants to some of the sanctuary cities that declare themselves so welcoming, such as New York, Denver and Chicago.

RELATED: Cruz to Mayorkas: ‘If You Had Integrity, You Would Resign’

“Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities last April to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities,” Mahaleris said. “Mayors Adams, [Muriel] Bowser and [Lori] Lightfoot were all too happy to tout their sanctuary city statuses until Texas bused over 16,900 migrants, collectively, to their self-declared sanctuary. Instead of complaining about dealing with a fraction of the border crisis Texas communities see every day, these hypocrites should call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border – something the president continues failing to do.”  

Lightfoot, departing as mayor of Chicago after her defeat in February, first turned to Illinois for millions to help the Windy City cope with its several thousand illegal immigrants Texas provided. In January, however, the state turned her down, saying it had already spent close to $120 million on its “asylum seeker emergency response.”  

That response came last September when Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued an “emergency disaster proclamation.” His proclamation and the words of other state leaders presented a schizophrenic picture in which they portray Illinois as a “welcoming beacon of hope” and complain they weren’t given “official advance warning.”

Most of the money Illinois spent – more than $61.5 million, or roughly $31,000 per immigrant – went to contracts with organizations or staff “who provided on site case management and other services at multiple locations.”  

Illinois dropped another $8 million on “interim housing,” nearly $4 million on “health screenings for asylum seekers, and more than $29 million on “hotel, transportation and housing costs,” according to their breakdown.  

Nowhere did Pritzker or Lightfoot question the wisdom of the Biden administration ‘s border policies, and there was no indication they understood the burdens that had been put on border cities and states. Instead, the unmistakable message was that if illegal immigrants were going to be sent where the “welcoming beacon” shone, other people should pay for it.

RELATED: Rio Grande Border Patrol Agents Assaulted While Apprehending Illegal Aliens

“They can say all that is for free, but now they’re finding out they can’t have a welfare society and an open border,” said Lora Reis, the director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Denver held a budget “transparency and equity” meeting earlier this month at which Chief Financial Officer Margaret Danuser said the city will have spent between $17 and $20 million on housing and other services for between 5,000 and 6,000 illegal immigrants between Dec. 2022 and this June. The city hoped to get federal taxpayers to reimburse it for $2.8 million, and a Colorado state fund for another $3.5 million.

Those figures show Denver spent about the same as Chicago at roughly $33,000 per immigrant, costs that are still far below New York City’s. 

“None of these sanctuary mayors or governors have ever asked for a secure border, it was always just, ‘feds, give us money!’” said Reis. “They can say all that for free, but they are finding out you can’t have a welfare system and an open border.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer appeared first on The Political Insider.

With Assist From Manhattan DA, Trump Once Again Enjoys United GOP Support

By Philip Wegmann for RealClearPolitics

Donald Trump again made history Thursday evening, this time by becoming the first former president of the United States to be indicted, stemming from charges related to illegal hush money payments made to a porn star in 2016.

And yet even while in legal jeopardy, blindsided by an indictment he hoped to avoid, Trump has tightened his grip on the GOP. His wrongful persecution has become the defining cause of the right. At least that’s how many Republicans see it.

RELATED: Flashback: Presidential Candidate John Edwards Acquitted On Campaign Finance Charge, Hillary Clinton Only Paid Fine for Violation

“When our justice system is weaponized as a political tool, it endangers all of us,” said Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. “This is a blatant abuse of power from a DA focused on political vengeance instead of keeping people safe.”

Allies close to the former president previously cautioned him to avoid controversy and to move beyond personal politics to focus on the challenges facing the nation. If he could just do that, Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted in an interview last summer with RealClearPolitics, Trump had “a damn good chance of winning” not just the nomination but once again the White House.

“If it is a grievance campaign,” the South Carolina Republican almost sighed, “then he is gonna have a problem.” Less than a year later, Trump is a candidate again. And Trump is very much aggrieved. But this time, the grievance isn’t exactly by his own invitation. Graham now sees it central to his return to power.

“How does this end, Sean,” the senator told the host of Hannity on Fox News, “Trump wins in court. And he wins the election. That’s how this works.” A loyal surrogate for that presidential campaign, he urged viewers three different times to go donate to the former president because “he has spent more money on lawyers than most people spend on campaigns – they’re trying to bleed him dry.”

Graham isn’t wrong, not just about mounting legal expenses, but more broadly about Trump’s mounting lead in the polls since predicting nearly two weeks ago that he would soon be arrested. He was already the undisputed front runner in the polls before the indictment.

Now defense of the former president is the united cause of the Republican Party. It instantly shifted the 2024 landscape. The scope of the indictment is not known, though some early reporting suggests Trump could face more than 30 counts related to business fraud. Forthcoming legal details, however, were immediately eclipsed by political considerations Thursday evening.

RELATED: Mask Off Moment: Pelosi Shredded After Suggesting Trump Needs to ‘Prove Innocence’ at Trial

The indictment was just more of the same, Trump said in a statement, likening it to “Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.”

For Republicans, it was muscle memory to rally to Trump’s defense like they have done so many times before. “Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a statement echoed across all corners of the right from old Trump rivals, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who said the indictment signaled “the death of the rule of law,” and new Trump allies, like Ohio Sen. JD Vance who called it “political persecution.”

Trump loyalists seem to have been caught off guard Thursday by leaked news that a grand jury voted to indict the former president. Given that federal prosecutors declined previously to take up the issue of hush payments made ahead of the 2016 election, they had hoped that Bragg wouldn’t ultimately follow through.

Alina Habba, Trump’s attorney, said in an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News that she was “shocked” by the news. She confirmed that a booking at the New York City courthouse, complete with fingerprinting and a mug shot, was soon expected.

If the coming legal wrangling is unprecedented, the political fallout was somewhat familiar. Although Trump’s 2024 rivals were quick to condemn the looming indictment, either by accident or design, the Manhattan district attorney has shifted the national political landscape just 10 months before the Iowa caucuses.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is expected to make his own bid for the White House, said the treatment of his old boss was an “outrage” that amounted to “political persecution.” A representative for the Nikki Haley campaign pointed RCP to previous comments the former ambassador made condemning the then still rumored indictment as motivated by “revenge.”

But perhaps the most significant development came from another Florida Republican, the only other potential candidate polling within striking distance of Trump.

RELATED: President Donald Trump’s Lead Grows After Indictment

That state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, earlier incurred the wrath of Trump and many in his orbit for not speaking out sooner when the former president prematurely predicted his indictment. When first addressing the controversy, DeSantis pledged to avoid “the circus” altogether. Worse in the eyes of MAGA? DeSantis made reference to the underlying facts of the case.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “I just, I can’t speak to that.”

But the governor did not take any shots, veiled or otherwise, at Trump Thursday evening. Instead, DeSantis condemned the indictment as “un-American.” DeSantis vowed that Florida, if it came to that, would not cooperate with forcing the former president from his estate in Mar-a-Lago to face charges in New York.

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” he said in a statement.

And just like that, with an assist from a local Democratic district attorney in a state no Republican has carried since 1984, it seems that rather than revisiting old grievances, a newly aggrieved Trump has moved one step closer to the Republican nomination. Lindsey Graham seemingly spoke for the GOP, while making little distinction between opposing an allegedly politicized prosecution, supporting Trump, and defending America itself.

“This is the most irresponsible and dangerous decision by a prosecutor in the history of the country,” the South Carolina Republican said. “He’s opened up a Pandora’s box against the presidency itself.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

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Why Hasn’t the GOP Yet Walked the Walk on Its Mayorkas Impeachment Talk?

By James Varney for RealClearInvestigations

It’s almost an understatement to say that Republican candidates campaigned hawkishly on border control in the runup to the 2022 midterms: As they decried the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico, many vowed to impeach the man they largely blamed for the mess, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Republicans have continued hammering Mayorkas since taking control of the House. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who called the flooding of more than 5 million illegal immigrants across the southern border since President Biden took office an “intentional” policy, has made several visits to the U.S.-Mexico border with other Republicans, and the House has held multiple hearings on immigration. 

RELATED: Mayorkas Supports ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban But Can’t Define ‘Assault Weapons’

But as winter has turned to spring, the GOP has taken little action to remove Mayorkas. Republicans Andy Biggs of Arizona and Pat Fallon of Texas  have each filed bills, but the House Judiciary Committee, from which any impeachment move must come, has not taken up either resolution. 

Conservative groups focused on the southern border told RealClearInvestigations that impeachment did not come up during recent meetings in Washington. 

“I just came from the Hill and a bunch of meetings with staffers and they’re reporting the same thing; one said the conference is split, with a lot of GOP ‘George W. Bush types’ who love the cheap labor for American industry and agriculture,” said Todd Bensman of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies and author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”  

Bensman calls it an “old story,” but cheap labor is only part of it. Republicans aren’t united on this issue because some fear that following through on impeachment talk will alienate the moderate swing voters that the GOP needs to remain in control of the House.

Even Republicans who have publicly attacked Mayorkas are now reticent about discussing impeachment. RCI reached out to 16 GOP House members for comment. Neither Biggs nor Fallon responded. Virginia Rep. Bob Good, a member of the Freedom Caucus who is co-sponsor of both resolutions, declined to comment on the record. Other outspoken administration critics such as Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Tom McClintock of California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida did not respond. 

Only two of the 16 Republican House members agreed to speak on the record.

“I have repeatedly called for his impeachment and am confident that Chairman Jordan will hold true to his word of impeaching Mayorkas for overseeing an unprecedented surge of illegal activity at our southern border,” Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona said.  

RELATED: Cruz to Mayorkas: ‘If You Had Integrity, You Would Resign’

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said Biden administration officials have lied about what they have done at the border but was more circumspect on impeachment, suggesting a wait-and-see attitude may be behind the aggressive rhetoric. 

“I’m not on the Judiciary Committee and it would have to come from there,” he said. “My hope is that at least some information will come from hearings because some members legitimately have some questions.” 

Perry and others said they would like to see the Judiciary Committee make the case for impeachment, a process Jordan appears to be favoring. For the moment, however, the only concrete step Republicans have taken is a symbolic gesture by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to try to cut Mayorkas’ salary from the DHS budget. 

The bills filed by Reps. Biggs and Fallon contend that Mayorkas’s conduct meets the constitutional threshold for impeachment, “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Fallon’s bill, H. Res. 8, alleges that the secretary has violated the oath all cabinet members take to “faithfully uphold” the laws of the United States by failing to enforce: 

  • The Secure the Fence Act of 2006 that requires the DHS secretary to “maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”
  • The Immigration and Nationality Act that requires the DHS secretary to “detain inadmissible aliens arriving in the United States or aliens who are present in the United States without inspection until processed.” Instead, it claims, Mayorkas’ “catch and release” approach has allowed more than “1,000,000 illegal aliens” into the country. 

While referencing those two laws, the Biggs resolution, H. Res. 582, also accuses Mayorkas of violating the Public Health Services Act by failing to protect U.S. citizens from “risk and exposure to and contracting Covid-19 by refusing to take necessary steps to prevent contagious illegal aliens from entering the United States.”  

In sum, the Biggs resolution concludes Mayorkas should be impeached because “his actions have subverted the will of Congress and the core tenets of the Constitution.” 
RCI reached out repeatedly to a dozen Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee seeking comment on a possible impeachment of Mayorkas and their reaction. None of them responded.

RELATED: Mayorkas Falsely Claimed Border is ‘Closed’ Ahead of Biden Trip to El Paso

Mayorkas has stated repeatedly he has no intention of resigning, a suggestion Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas made again Tuesday when Mayorkas appeared at a Senate committee hearing. “If you had any integrity you would resign,” Cruz said.

The volley came after the two got into a verbal spat over how truthful the administration has been about the border. Cruz cited comments by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that people are “not walking across the border” along with photographs of people doing just that. “You claim you care, Mr. Secretary –– that is a lie,” Cruz said. 

Cruz again accused Mayorkas of dissembling after the DHS chief would not answer a question about whether Jean-Pierre lied. Mayorkas called Cruz’s accusation “revolting.”

Nevertheless, the department is bracing for a possible impeachment and taking steps for Mayorkas’ defense. A government contract was signed with the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton to provide legal assistance to the secretary; that contract would kick in only if the Judiciary Committee moved an impeachment motion to the House floor.

Debevoise & Plimpton did not respond to a request for comment about the arrangement. Biden administration officials familiar with it said it was necessary because the impeachment of a cabinet secretary is so rare none of its legal staff has any relevant experience. 

The terms of the contract were not disclosed, although officials pointed to examples in the past where House Republicans hired outside legal counsel to assist it on legislation that proved legally fraught.

A DHS spokesperson said the contract was necessary to “ensure the Department’s vital mission is not interrupted by the unprecedented, unjustified and partisan impeachment efforts of some members of Congress, who have already taken steps to initiate proceedings.”

History shows the House can move swiftly on impeachment if members choose to. The Democratic majority, along with a handful of Republicans, voted to impeach departing President Trump just one week after the post-election riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  

RELATED: New U.S. Border Data: 284 Suspected Terrorists Apprehended So Far in Fiscal 2023

Defenders of the government’s current border policies say that the conservatives’ argument is flawed. The Biden administration’s approach is basically a relaxation of the Trump administration’s more stringent strategy. As such, they amount to policy differences between the two major political parties and fall far short of any “crimes and misdemeanors” that would justify impeachment.  

But, as RCI has previously reported, President Biden’s policies have marked a sharp break from his predecessor’s, since Biden’s first day in office, when he signed seven executive orders on immigration that, among other things, suspended deportations. 

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who co-authored the February report, “The Case for Impeachment of Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas Secretary of Homeland Security,” defended the impeachment argument from liberals who deride it as purely political. 

“It inaccurately and incorrectly asserts that we are confusing the requirements of the Immigration and Naturalization Act with the Trump administration policies,” he said. “Our analysis is based not on disagreeing with the policies implemented by Mayorkas, but with his violation of federal immigration law.” 

“I think we have laid out in our paper what we think the basis is for impeachment,” von Spakovsky told RCI. They include the claims that Mayorkas:  

  • “deliberately defied and contravened the laws he is charged with faithfully executing.” 
  • “repeatedly abused the authority of his office, including by, among other conduct, enticing a flood of aliens to cross the U.S. southern border with his policies and Statements.” 
  • “betrayed the trust of the people by lying to Congress and withholding information and misleading the public in an effort to hide and suppress the nature and consequence of his abominable policies.” 

Von Spakovsky added that “the misguided priorities of Mayorkas have resulted in a huge backlog in the adjudication system that unfairly hurts the many thousands of U.S. citizens and lawful applicants whose immigration matters are delayed many months.” 

RELATED: There Have Already Been 1.6 Million Known Illegal Border Crossings This Fiscal Year

Although von Spakovsky and others argue impeachment is warranted “consistent with U.S. history and constitutional traditions,” it would also be a highly unusual move. Only one cabinet member has ever been impeached, President Ulysses S. Grant’s War Secretary William Belknap in 1876, but he resigned the same day the House voted unanimously against him.  

Attorney General Harry Daugherty in 1922 and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon in 1932 also faced possible impeachment proceedings by the House, but the former resigned in 1924 and the latter left the cabinet and became U.S. ambassador to England. 

Impeachment supporters also point to the dangers the Biden administration’s porous border have created. In addition to the humanitarian issues of hundreds of thousands of people migrating through Mexico to the U.S., and the money they have paid to Mexican cartels to facilitate their passage, the southern border has become the main conduit for deadly illicit fentanyl.

Scott Perry said his constituents would like to see the Republicans do more than simply talk about the border crisis, though he noted that Mayorkas is the agent who carries out policies set by President Biden. 

“It’s chaos down there with the fentanyl and the cartels making millions of dollars,” he said. 

“Most of our constituents are distraught about that and want it fixed, and many would like accountability for how it occurred. Ultimately, the president is responsible so why not impeach him?” 

But as to what might actually happen with Mayorkas, Perry acknowledged he wasn’t sure. 

“My sense is that with the Judicial Committee holding hearings we are working toward those kind of things,” he said. “That will go to the fact-finding we need to have to convince some of our skeptical members.” 

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post Why Hasn’t the GOP Yet Walked the Walk on Its Mayorkas Impeachment Talk? appeared first on The Political Insider.

The FBI Is Now The Federal Bureau Of Intimidation

By Frank Miele for RealClearPolitics

Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.

And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.

Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that’s like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.

RELATED: FBI Now Warning About ‘Dirty Bomb’ Threats, Calls for ‘Civil War’ Following Mar-a-Lago Raid

The evidence is overwhelming. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. Or more appropriately, the Federal Intimidation Bureau, whose acronym would spell out FIB, as in the Big Lie. Face it, nothing the FBI has said for the last six years since they joined with the Democratic Party to invent the Russia collusion hoax can be taken seriously.

Is there any need to go through the whole laundry list of lies and fabrications that the FBI, with the aid and comfort of the Justice Department, has foisted on the American public?

You can start with the extraordinary 2016 press conference when FBI Director James Comey detailed crimes committed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton related to her improper use of a private email account to store classified material. Moments after saying she had broken the law, Comey announced with a straight face that “no reasonable prosecutor” would ever bring a case against her. Yeah, because she was a Democrat!

A couple months later, Comey set up President Trump’s National Security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, by sending agents to interview him about his supposed contacts with Russians.

“What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” wrote Bill Priestap in a memo before the interview. Priestap was counterintelligence director at the FBI, and it became evident later that the agency’s goal was indeed to get him fired – and more importantly to get Trump impeached, fired, humiliated, you name it.

Comey himself admitted that the FBI targeted Flynn and chose not to approach him through the White House legal counsel, but informally with a direct phone call to arrange an interview. As Comey later told a reporter, it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”

What about the FBI’s abuse of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos? The agency made up evidence in support of subpoenas, FISA warrants, whatever it took to get the desired result. What about the FBI and Department of Justice targeting parents at school boards as “domestic terrorists” because they demanded that their elected representatives actually represent them? What about the unilateral rescission of executive privilege and attorney-client privilege wherever it would have protected President Trump and his advisers?

RELATED: Republicans Demand Garland Brief Homeland Security On Trump FBI Raid, Slam ‘Politically Motivated Witch Hunt’

The purpose of all of this activity, along with the raid at Mar-a-Lago, was to intimidate not just Trump, but also his supporters. Anyone other than Donald Trump would have given up long ago. Who could possibly withstand the power of the state marshaled against you for six long years – through multiple FBI investigations, through two impeachments, through relentless persecution of your children and your friends and family?

Finally, what about the double standard that allows Democrats and their government allies to go unpunished for a multitude of sins? Notwithstanding Attorney General Merrick Garland’s feigned indignation on behalf of the bureau, what about the FBI agents who lied repeatedly during the Trump-Russia investigation, sometimes under oath.

Even more stunning has been the FBI’s monumental failure to investigate presidential son Hunter Biden, even though it received his laptop with extensive incriminating evidence of criminal activity in 2019.

Even when the laptop was made public during the 2020 presidential election, the FBI stood silent and thus gave tacit approval to the cynical Democratic Party talking point that the laptop was somehow a GOP dirty trick.

It would be interesting to know if the FBI had anything to do with the letter signed by 51 national security experts, falsely claiming that the laptop was “Russian disinformation”! Maybe, like Comey before him, FBI Director Chris Wray thought he could “get away with it.”

That is certainly the only explanation for the raid on the president’s personal residence. It was not appropriate. It was not reasonable. It had no precedent. The FBI claims that the pre-dawn raid by more than 30 armed agents was for the purpose of collecting presidential papers that the National Archive wanted.

The Washington Post says that Trump reportedly had documents with nuclear secrets on them, and the legacy media went ballistic with the story. But wait a minute, isn’t that the same Washington Post that won a Pulitzer Prize for collaborating with the FBI to invent the Russia collusion hoax?

RELATED: Judge Who Signed Mar-a-Lago Warrant Defended Jeffrey Epstein Employees, Donated To Obama

Don’t believe a word from either the Washington Post or the FBI. Trump had been cooperating with the National Archive and had already turned over 15 boxes of documents, all of which he could have made a claim to legally possess. If they wanted papers turned over, they could have gone through Trump’s lawyers. No, they wanted the spectacle. They wanted the sizzle. They wanted the headlines.

This wasn’t about the rule of law; it was about the rule of the schoolyard. Bullies get what they want through force and intimidation, and there is no reason for any of us to believe that the raid had any purpose other than to intimidate Donald Trump into backing down from his plans to run for president in 2024.

Essentially what the FBI was saying is “We know where you live, and we aren’t afraid to come for you.” They even rifled through Melania Trump’s closet, as if she might have been hiding top-secret documents in her hat box. When do we find out they also spent an hour sorting through her lingerie?

This is sickening, no matter how much MSNBC and the Washington Post want you to think you can still trust the FBI. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over and over again, and I must be a Democrat.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book, “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends,” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

The post The FBI Is Now The Federal Bureau Of Intimidation appeared first on The Political Insider.

Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill

By Mark Hemingway and Ben Weingarten  for RealClearInvestigations

The historic surge of illegal immigrants across America’s southern border is fueling a hidden crime spree few in Washington seem willing or able to address: widespread identity theft by migrants who need U.S. credentials to work.

An extensive review of government reports, think-tank research, news accounts, and interviews with policymakers and scholars suggests the problem involves millions of people – though measuring it with precision is difficult because of the lack of data provided by authorities.

A telling indication of the scope of the criminality is provided by a little-known government accounting book, the Social Security Administration’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF). It reflects the earnings of employees whose W-2 wage and tax statements have names and Social Security numbers that do not match official records. The total has increased tenfold from $188.9 billion at the dawn of the millennium to $1.9 trillion in 2021.

Officials have historically ascribed a “high proportion” of the file’s growth to wages reported by illegal immigrants, and it has swelled alongside their population, which stands at a conservatively estimated 11.5 million today, 7 million of whom are employed. Among those doing so on the books, federal authorities have found that well over 1 million are using Social Security numbers belonging to someone else – i.e. stolen or “shared” with a relative or acquaintance – or that are fabricated.

The data held in the ESF would enable authorities to pursue many of the fraudsters, but the IRS and other agencies responsible for enforcing the law have been reluctant to investigate, and regulations have prevented meaningful information-sharing among them. This identity-related crime is providing a windfall for the U.S. government.

A 2017 study from the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the federal government collects about $22 billion annually in tax receipts from illegal aliens, with the bulk going toward Social Security ($12.6 billion) and Medicare ($5.9 billion) – programs from which noncitizens are ineligible to receive benefits. FAIR estimated that illegal migrants also paid $3.3 billion in federal income tax – a smaller proportion primarily due to illegal aliens’ lower wage levels – and another $1 billion in state income taxes.

RELATED: After Giving Democrats Enough Gun Control Votes, Cornyn Reportedly Says Immigration Is Next

In other words, the fraud has the effect of bolstering financially shaky federal programs. In one of the agency’s rare direct statements on the issue, Social Security Administration Chief Actuary Stephen Goss told CNN in 2014 that without “undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009.

” Leading progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal echoed this observation in 2018, arguing that a “complication of [then-president] Trump’s plans to limit immigration is the effect to our Social Security Earnings Suspense File – money that keeps our Social Security system afloat,” including that provided by “undocumented immigrants.”

Given Washington’s bipartisan willingness to tolerate illegal immigration – whether driven by the multicultural left or businesses interests seeking cheap labor – authorities have focused on this apparent windfall to the U.S. Treasury. But they have largely ignored the costs. These include the significant strain illegal immigrant households place on public finances, which FAIR and others estimate vastly outweigh their tax contributions, their impacts on crime and the job market – and on the victims of identity theft.

Reports dating back over a decade show that hundreds of thousands of Americans are unknowingly “sharing” their Social Security numbers with illegal immigrants. Such victims may face tax bills for income they didn’t earn or depleted benefits.

Worse, some may experience the burden of bad credit histories and criminal records inaccurately attributed to themselves after being issued SSNs that illegal aliens had previously invented and used. The overall impact on American citizens is largely unknown because federal, state, and local governments as well as financial institutions have generally failed to notify them even when fraud is suspected.

The relevant agencies were largely non-responsive to RealClearInvestigation’s requests for updated figures on the size, scope, and extent of the fraud. Nor have lawmakers recently given voice to the victims.

Congress seems to have last held a hearing spotlighting the defrauded over a decade ago. Related legislation aimed at reducing Social Security number fraud in employment has typically languished, and many lawmakers RCI contacted indicated only a passing knowledge of the issue.

One thing experts do agree on is that the problem is likely to get worse as more illegal immigrants cross the border and seek work.

Immigration Reform Spurs Fraud

The growth in illegal immigrant identity fraud, reflected in part by the booming Earnings Suspense File, serves as an ironic instance of regulation becoming the mother of criminal innovation.

In 1986, Congress for the first time made it explicitly unlawful for employers to hire illegal immigrants. The Immigration Reform and Control Act required those seeking employment to fill out I-9 forms attesting to citizenship or work-authorized immigrant status, and provide corroborating documentation and a valid Social Security number.

The law, signed by President Reagan amid great fanfare, was supposed to end the problem of illegal immigration, and as part of the grand bargain nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were granted U.S. citizenship. But the law did not slow the pipeline of immigration as it was intended to do, and it would drive many illegal aliens – not only those crossing the border under cover but also those not allowed to work while awaiting court hearings that can take months or even years to take place – to fraud.

According to the libertarian CATO Institute, the 1986 law spurred the “creation of a large‐​scale black market for legal documents in the United States. The value of document fraud increased after ICRA because false documents became necessary for illegal immigrants to fill out an I-9 form to work.”

RELATED: Texas Launches Operations Center To Oversee 15-Agency Effort To Thwart Illegal Immigration

Aliens can procure SSNs in several ways: Some simply conjure a nine-digit SSN out of thin air. Others use the numbers of their children who were born in the U.S. Still others steal them directly from individuals, purchase them from dealers for $80 to $200 along with a green card as can be done in Los Angeles, or via the dark web for as little as $4.

In a rare instance of enforcement, in June the Department of Justice announced that a joint operation between the IRS Cyber Crimes Unit and the FBI had seized the “SSNDOB marketplace” – a series of lucrative websites touted on the dark web that sold illegally obtained Social Security numbers of more than 20 million Americans. But “synthetic identity fraud” persists – the most common form of ID theft, where fraudsters create an entirely new identity by stealing the Social Security numbers of children or poor adults with little credit history.

While some illegal immigrants work off the books, the Social Security Administration has previously said that 75% are using fake or stolen numbers. By doing so, they gain access to broader employment opportunities. There is another powerful incentive for paying taxes as well.

By dint of their generally low income levels, illegals can receive reimbursements through making use of deductions and exemptions, as well as rebates via refundable credits – leaving many with tax liabilities of zero or even as net recipients of government largesse. Immigration proponents contend that many do so in the hope that paying their taxes through employer withholding will weigh in their favor in a future amnesty, reflecting good behavior.

Their fraud can be detected each year when employers submit W-2s. The Social Security Administration analyzes the W-2s to detect inaccuracies, such as mismatched names to the numbers it has on file.

This is where the Earnings Suspense File comes into play. ESF, established in 1937, was long an accounting for wayward tax and Social Security payments – for instance when a newly married woman changed her name but forgot to notify the SSA. Should a legitimate taxpayer find he didn’t get tax refunds or Social Security benefits because of a mix-up with his Social Security number, ESF records ideally would help him get what he was owed. Unreconciled filings would remain in the ESF.

For decades relatively little money was recorded in the file. According to the Government Accountability Office, in the three decades between 1950 and 1980 just $33 billion in uncredited earnings were recorded.

Contributions to the ESF exploded after passage of the ICRA in 1986, as a Social Security Administration inspector general report providing a chart showing annual contributions to the fund makes clear:

The Earnings Suspense File exploded after passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Uncredited earnings rose to $77.3 billion in the 1980s, would double in the 1990s to $188.9 billion, and then grow by a factor of 10 over the next two decades to an accumulated $1.9 trillion today – surging by $409 billion between the years 2012 and 2016 alone, according to documents obtained by the mass migration-skeptical Immigration Reform Law Institute via FOIA request.

2015 audit from SSA’s IG reports that in a given year as many as one in 25 American workers supplied their employers with false information – “each year, SSA posts to the ESF 3 to 4 percent of the total W-2s and 1.4 to 1.8 percent of the total wages received from employers.”

A 2018 Treasury inspector general report documented more than 1.3 million cases of employment-related identity theft from 2011-2016, and 1.2 million cases in which illegal aliens used Social Security numbers that belonged to someone else or were fabricated in 2017 alone. The Social Security Administration projects this number will rise to 2.9 by 2040.

Private estimates of Social Security number theft have ranged substantially higher.

A 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud identified more than 2.9 million Social Security numbers with “risk characteristics associated with SSN misuse.”

“There’s massive amounts of fraud, the SSA knows it’s happening, and they know it’s your Social Security numbers…being used. These IG reports make it explicitly clear,” said Jon Feere, a former Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official now with the “pro-immigrant, low immigration” Center for Immigration Studies. “And they basically say that they believe that one of the main reasons for this fraud is because of the employment of illegal aliens.”

Known Fraud, Little Enforcement

The existence of the ESF means the Social Security Administration and the IRS, with which it coordinates, are sitting on a database containing a substantial population of fraudsters against American citizens. For the better part of two decades, government watchdogs have encouraged these agencies to put the data to use, but they have been reticent.

A 2005 Social Security Administration IG report stated: “Although SSA continues to coordinate with DHS on immigration issues, it does not routinely share information regarding egregious employers who submit inaccurate SSNs. In our opinion, any serious plan to address SSN misuse and growth of the ESF must allow SSA to share such information with DHS,” reads the report.

A 2006 GAO report similarly recommended that the SSA, IRS, and DHS share data to address this problem. However, federal law severely limits the SSA and IRS from sharing information from tax forms, in part on privacy grounds. The ACLU called attempts to coordinate information-sharing between the SSA and immigration enforcement authorities during the Trump administration an “all-out assault on our legal rights and our immigrant communities.”

Since SSA lacks enforcement authority, the George W. Bush-led Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency proposed a rule setting forth potential penalties for employers who did not respond to SSA “no match letters” – notifications sent to employers informing them of employees whose SSNs don’t match government records.

The proposed rule kicked off a firestorm of opposition from immigrant advocates. In 2008, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated 33 employees who had been fired by their employer after receiving a no match letter. The court ruled a no match letter alone wasn’t sufficient to determine whether employees were in violation of the law.

The Obama administration put an end to no match letters altogether. Jason Hopkins, the investigations manager for the IRLI, told RCI that the Obama administration did so in service of its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“Dreamers”) program, which allowed illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children exemption from deportation and eligibility for work permits.

“If they went in [and] applied for a DACA application, and they had to actually admit they put in fake social security numbers, they’d be essentially admitting to perjury,” Hopkins says. “So that would have scared them off, and Obama wanted them to apply for this program.”

In 2019, the Trump administration-led Social Security Administration resumed sending out no match letters, delivering 1.6 million notices across 2019 and 2020. The Biden administration again discontinued the practice.

RELATED: Americans More Concerned As Illegal Immigration Soars To Highest In Two Decades

The SSA did not respond to RCI’s multiple attempts to contact it regarding related policies.

The IRS has enforcement powers the SSA lacks, but has historically disavowed responsibility for dealing with illegal alien ID theft. In 2016 then-IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who faced impeachment hearings for defying congressional subpoenas and the destruction of evidence, told Congress, “We have Social Security and immigration authorities and others who enforce that part of the law, and if we start looking behind the system and doing their job for them, we’re going to discourage a lot of people from paying the taxes they owe.”

Consistent with this view, a 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud found that the IRS was not tracking numerous forms of employment-related identity fraud.

The IRS’ Internal Revenue Manual, which governs employees’ policies and practices, refers to those engaged in ID fraud as “borrowers,” defending this language as neutral, given that some may be “borrowing” an SSN from another family member to work, rather than engaging in “actual identity theft.”

When CNS News asked the IRS in 2018 how many taxpayer accounts it had referred for criminal prosecution, of the 1.3 million Treasury’s inspector general had flagged for identity fraud, the agency said “We do not have this information.” Similarly, the IG report recommended that the IRS notify the 458,658 victims of ID theft identified in 2017 – and the IRS does not appear to have notified anyone.

When RCI asked the IRS about its policies for handling ID theft, the agency did not confirm it had done anything in response to the IG’s findings or identity fraud specifically related to illegal immigration. A spokesman said that “in recent years, we’ve referred people” – that is, from the general U.S. population – “for prosecution all the time, and where appropriate, we work with other law-enforcement agencies.”

The IRS’s guide to employment-related identity theft highlights notices it might send to taxpayers indicating potential fraud, but it is not clear how many such letters it sends out, and the burden overwhelmingly falls on the victims to be vigilant and take steps to clear their names.

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has curtailed worksite enforcement. Between halting no match letters and DHS’ leniency, Spencer Raley, a researcher with FAIR, told RCI, “From a strictly immigration-enforcement standpoint, nothing is being done to combat the issue of illegal aliens committing document fraud in order to obtain employment.”

RCI asked a series of questions of ICE, which leads criminal investigations into both document fraud and worksite enforcement, on the nature and extent of its targeting of those engaging in ID theft/fraud in employment, and whether and to what end it coordinated with other agencies on identifying such individuals for investigation. As of the time of publication, it had not responded to the questions.

Law enforcement agencies have periodically made illegal alien ID fraud busts in recent years, but not at meaningful levels relative to the previously reported number of fraudsters.

Given that Medicare is a beneficiary of the fraud, RCI posed a series of questions to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pertaining to ESF, and whether it was aware of, or did anything to contact those whose SSNs might have been fraudulently used associated with Medicare contributions. A CMS spokesperson referred RCI to the Social Security Administration.

RCI posed similar questions to tax authorities in both California and Texas – states dominated by opposing political parties but each with substantial illegal alien populations – to ascertain whether they, like the federal government, were tracking taxes paid by those potentially using fraudulent IDs, including illegal aliens, and doing anything to pursue them.

California’s Franchise Tax Board told RCI that it does not have a state Earnings Suspense File, nor does it track how much tax revenue annually is attributable to individuals misrepresenting themselves on filings. It did note, If we suspect identity theft on an individual tax return, we send a notice to the taxpayer to let them know they may be a victim and how to verify the authenticity of the tax return on file.” With respect to enforcement, the board indicated “Fraudulent claims and suspected ID theft cases may be sent to” its Criminal Investigations Bureau, which partners with other state law enforcement authorities. The board emphasized that California further partners with “state, city, federal and industry partners” to “protect the entire tax ecosystem,” with a focus on “widespread fraudulent schemes and threat groups,” rather than those filing and paying taxes.

As of the time of publication, Texas had not responded to RCI’s inquiries.

Banks and credit agencies also have their own extensive “sub-files” for people who share the same Social Security number, but privacy laws make it impossible to get information on someone who has stolen one’s SSN from a third party, even though the behavior of the person stealing one’s number may end up affecting one’s ability to get government benefits or credit.

Credit rating agencies Equifax, Experian, and Transunion did not respond to RCI’s queries around illegal alien identity fraud.

What Victims Face

Marcus Calvillo, a father of six from Grand Prairie, Texas, experienced one of the more harrowing episodes of identity fraud on record, at least in the eyes of the prosecutor who helped bring him justice. Calvillo’s life was upended after an illegal immigrant named Fernando Neave-Ceniceros was first arrested on drug trafficking charges in Kansas in 1993, then a slew of other ones, including a sex crime involving a minor, and his twice failing to register as a sex offender.

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The criminal activity was recorded under Calvillo’s stolen identity – Neave-Ceniceros’ fingerprints were linked to Calvillo’s name in national criminal databases – making it difficult for the innocent Calvillo to pass the cursory background checks required to hold a job and support his family.

At one point, Calvillo was working as a cable installer when he was abruptly fired. When asked why, he told the Associated Press he was only told, “You know what you did.” Calvillo also had disputes with the IRS over taxes on wages that had been paid to Neave-Ceniceros but recorded under his name.

After years of struggling to get help – a struggle similarly encountered by other victims – Calvillo contacted Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson, who had been pursuing another identity theft case, who helped him get justice. In 2016, Neave-Ceniceros was convicted on a series of charges including aggravated identity theft and misuse of a Social Security number. “I don’t know of a case where the theft of an identity had a more devastating impact than this one,” Anderson told the Associated Press.

Despite wreaking havoc on Calvillo’s life, Neave-Ceniceros was only sentenced to one year and a day in prison for his crimes.

Horror stories such as Calvillo’s still abound. “I’ve been fired from jobs and have been accused of crimes I didn’t commit because my identity was stolen,” identity theft victim Adrian Gonzalez told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last year. “I don’t know what to do anymore, I think I might need to change my name.”

Linda Trevino, a Chicago suburb resident, was another victim, one of the hundreds of thousands NBC News cited in a report from over a decade ago. She had been denied a job at a local Target because someone using her SSN also worked there. Her number, in fact, had been used to obtain employment at 37 other employers, leaving her haunted by the IRS with letters asking her to pay others’ taxes, and facing creditors.

Children are victims of fraud too, and in fact may be prime targets given the clean records their IDs provide for thieves, and that conduct engaged in in their names may go undetected for years. Former California congressman Elton Gallegly wrote in The Hill in 2012 of a number of child victims of illegal immigrant fraud, including among them:

  • A 3-year-old issued an SSN already in use for years by a twice-arrested illegal alien, impacting the child’s credit, medical, and work history.
  • A 9-year-old denied Medicaid due to wages reported on his SSN.
  • A 13-year-old denied as a dependent on her family’s return for supposedly making too much money.

Immigration advocates downplay the criminality involved. “Most workers are buying documents they believe to be false,” a representative of the National Immigration Law Center told the Los Angeles Times. “There isn’t really any intention of stealing someone’s identity.” But even when immigration-related identity theft lacks specific criminal intent, the confusion that ID theft creates when dealing with tax bills, receiving government benefits, facing ruined credit, and other problems can upend a person’s life.

Citizens who discover someone else is using their Social Security number will quickly learn there’s little they can do about it. According to the Social Security Administration, proof that one’s SSN has been stolen and is being used by someone else isn’t sufficient reason to change one’s Social Security number. One must prove significant harm as a result, and the process is onerous – in 2014 the agency only permitted a total of 250 people to change their Social Security number. The Federal Trade Commission details the numerous steps those who believe they might have been defrauded should take to get their lives back.

The problem is so extensive that Mike Chapple, a professor of information technology at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, told Forbes, “It’s totally reasonable to assume that your Social Security number has been compromised at least once, if not many times.”

Little Legislative Relief

One of the seminal victories for proponents of ID integrity in the workplace was the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, which launched the E-Verify system.

That its author, Rep. Ken Calvert, another California Republican, was still struggling 15 years later to move legislation making the program mandatory, illustrates the uphill battle the limited number of immigration hawks in Washington face.

The DHS-run program, which compares employment eligibility information from I-9 forms to government records, remains required solely of federal contractors. Only a small minority of states have mandated its use by employers. Republican senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton tried to pass a federal law that would simultaneously mandate E-Verify and raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, but with the Senate controlled by Democrats, that legislation died.

On the House side, Georgia Republican Buddy Carter has sought to pass legislation multiple times that would require the IRS to produce a report on whether it could use proprietary information to identify illegal aliens fraudulently working in the U.S., to no avail.

At the state level, even Republican red Texas, mired in problems pertaining to illegal immigration, has had difficulty finding the political will to police the workplace. “At least 30 bills mandating E-Verify have been introduced in Texas in the past decade,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last year. “Only one has passed, and none addressed undocumented workers, employers or temporary employment agencies using fraudulently obtained identities.”

Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether states even had the authority to prosecute identity theft by illegal immigrants. In March of 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that at least in some circumstances, they do, overturning a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that had voided the convictions of three illegal immigrants under the state’s identity theft law who had used stolen SSNs to obtain jobs.

The rapidly changing political landscape may be the only thing that could impact the broader trajectory of illegal immigration from which the fraud springs. The populist turn of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party is appealing to working class voters with a strong interest curbing illegal immigration to put upward pressure on wages.

Recent elections also show Hispanics voting for Republicans in significantly higher numbers, in part because of the Democrats’ more liberal border policies.

In the meantime, the illegal immigrant population continues to swell. The Biden administration has released over one million illegal immigrants into the U.S., in addition to the more than 700,000 “got-aways” who evaded apprehension, and over 190,000 unaccompanied minors released into the interior – for a total of nearly two million people. “To put it bluntly, the Biden administration, and other Democratic administrations, they just don’t care,” says Jason Hopkins.

Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.

The post Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill appeared first on The Political Insider.

The Senate Seats Most Likely To Flip In 2022

By Sean Trende for RCP Staff

The 2022 United States Senate elections can best be thought of as the classic battle between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The irresistible force is the playing field. President Joe Biden’s job approval in the RCP Average is currently 39.7%, the lowest of his presidency. That’s about 3.5 points lower than Barack Obama’s job approval was on (midterm) Election Day 2010.

President Obama’s job approval only dipped to 40% briefly, in the immediate aftermath of the botched Obamacare rollout, and it never dropped below 40%. President Donald Trump’s job approval spent much of 2017 below this mark, but in the terrible Republican election year of 2018, it never fell this low.

In other words, this is shaping up to be a worse environment than either of the last three midterms, all of which were nightmares for the party in power.

But the immovable object is real as well: To say that the GOP has failed to field its top team is an understatement. It failed to recruit its preferred candidates in almost every marquee race, including significant failures in New Hampshire, Maryland, Colorado, and Arizona. This deficiency intersects with a reasonably unfavorable map for Republicans; Democrats aren’t defending a single seat in a state that Joe Biden lost, and they have opportunities against Republicans in two states that went for the president in 2020.

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Twenty years ago, it would have made more sense to emphasize the immovable object when high quality candidates routinely won in states whose underlying political orientation heavily favored the other party. But that isn’t really how elections work right now. Although candidates matter, they rarely outrun their president’s job approval by more than a handful of points.

Almost all polling in the swing states has shown President Joe Biden’s job approval languishing in the high 30s or low 40s. It’s one thing to ask candidates to run five points ahead of their president’s job approval. But 10 points or more? If their name isn’t Joe Manchin or Susan Collins, it probably isn’t happening .

With that background, here are the Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022.

Honorable Mention, Alaska (Lisa Murkowski): Democrats have effectively conceded this seat, but Murkowski might still be the most vulnerable incumbent up for reelection this year. Probably the only thing keeping her in the game as a fairly moderate senator from a decidedly red state is that the state’s ranked-choice voting procedures in the general election will give strategic-minded Democrats an opportunity to vote for her as their second choice against the more conservative Kelly Tshibaka. While this gives her a path to victory that she probably lacks in a closed primary, it also creates headaches for her; the more she does to court Democrats, the more she alienates the more numerous Republicans in the state.

Tier III Races

11. Washington (Patty Murray): This could rise up the ratings by the end of the cycle depending on how things play out. Republicans are high on their likely nominee, Tiffany Smiley, and Sen. Murray’s polling has been wobbly enough that she bought television time. This is still a very Democratic state, and Murray survived in 2010 when it was more Republican.

At the same time, it is closer to the center than Missouri, and only a point or two further out from the center than Ohio. If former Gov. Eric Greitens loses the Missouri primary, this race probably goes into the top 10, but for now it’s on the outskirts of competitiveness.

10. Ohio (Open seat): Ohio certainly isn’t a recruiting failure for Democrats – Rep. Tim Ryan has perennially been on the recruiting list for Democrats and is probably the strongest they could field. Republicans have nominated author J.D. Vance. The “Hillbilly Elegy” author is well-known but untested, and in the right year this seat could be vulnerable for the GOP. But this is not the right year.

9. Missouri (Open seat): Twenty years ago Missouri was a classic swing state, but with the “Missouruh” portion of the state moving solidly into the GOP column over the past two decades, that tradition is a thing of the past. This is now a Republican state. At the same time, Republicans are locked in a competitive primary, with a potentially problematic candidate waiting in the wings with Eric Greitens leading narrowly in polls.

Greitens has been dogged by a variety of allegations of sexual improprieties and spousal abuse, and he was facing likely impeachment and removal before resigning in 2018. Democrats would definitely choose to face off against him, and if he wins the nomination this race could move up the ratings. But he isn’t the nominee yet, and even if he is, the potential Democratic nominees are probably too far to the left for the state. Overall, the environment and lean of the state would probably leave the race as a tossup at best.

8. Colorado (Michael Bennet): Colorado is one of those states that elections analysts regularly overlook, mostly because of its notable failures for Republicans over the course of the past decade. But the state only leans toward Democrats by a handful of points, and many Republican failures in the past decade are classic “own goals,” as with Ken Buck’s repeated gaffes and Scott McInnis’ decision to plagiarize an article.

This is still a state that Donald Trump lost by only five points in 2016, and where an obscure GOP challenger came within six points of defeating Sen. Michael Bennet the same year. To be sure, 2020 was much worse for Republicans there. We can debate how much of that is Trump-specific but the point is moot; the GOP failed to lure a top-tier challenger into the race, and it is likely only flipping if the bottom truly falls out for Democrats. A missed opportunity for Republicans.

RELATED: Nearly 70% Of Republicans Want Biden Impeached After 2022 Midterm Elections

Tier II Races

7. North Carolina (Open seat): While Democrats have continued to have success in the Tar Heel state at the state level, at the federal level it has been a series of near misses for them: Since Barack Obama carried the state in 2008, Republicans have won every presidential and Senate race in the state by less than six points.

With Richard Burr retiring, North Carolina would theoretically be a great pickup opportunity for Democrats, but Republicans have a legitimate candidate in Rep. Ted Budd, and the environment is likely too toxic for former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley (who lost a state Supreme Court race in a much more favorable environment in 2020) to have much of a chance.

6. New Hampshire (Maggie Hassan): Republicans had hoped that Gov. Chris Sununu would run against Hassan, a former governor serving her first term in the Senate. Had he done so, this would probably be the most likely seat to flip. But he didn’t, and Republicans have a crowded primary where no candidate has yet raised a million dollars, against a fixture in New Hampshire politics for the past decade who has raised $21 million. But Hassan’s polling has been weak, even against relatively unknown challengers. This could still be a top-tier race by November.

5. Wisconsin (Ron Johnson): We can debate which tier this race belongs in, although Johnson certainly seems intent on doing his level best to make this a top-tier race. But Democrats face a crowded primary and Wisconsin is a swing state now, where the Democratic slate barely prevailed in a great Democratic environment in 2018. This could turn out to be close, but it doesn’t look that way now.

Tier I Races

4. Pennsylvania (Open seat): Distinguishing among the remaining races is tricky; all have a decent claim to the top spot, and all have solid reasons why they belong nearer to the second tier than the top. Pennsylvania has turned out to be something of a worst-case scenario for Republicans.

The party failed to attract a top-tier candidate, leaving Dr. Mehmet Oz (of Oprah Winfrey fame) and hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick as the leading GOP candidates. Oz then emerged from the primary as the leader by just 910 votes. Making matters worse for Republicans, they nominated Doug Mastriano as their gubernatorial candidate, whose erratic behavior threatens to doom the entire GOP ticket.

But Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, has problems of his own, including potentially serious health issues and claims that he stopped a black jogger at gunpoint. This is also a state where, absent a turnaround in national politics, the Democratic nominee is likely going to have to win around 20% of voters who disapprove of the president’s job performance. This is a Herculean task, and it isn’t clear Fetterman is the right candidate to pull it off.

3. Georgia (Raphael Warnock): Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee, is not the candidate most Republicans wanted leading the charge against Sen. Raphael Warnock, the charismatic pastor who won a special election to give Democrats control of the Senate in 2021. Walker is a political novice who faces a flurry of stalking allegations and other claims of violence toward women, as well as embellishing his resume.

But Walker, a star University of Georgia football player in the 1980s, is a legend in much of the state, and has managed to stay on message for most of the cycle so far. Moreover, with Warnock and Stacey Abrams on the Democratic ticket, this is one state where Democrats definitely don’t have to worry about a drop-off in African American turnout.

Georgia has been trending toward Democrats, but some of the swing in 2020 was likely Trump-specific and it was still a couple points to the right of the country as a whole. Warnock already trails in the polls, and in this environment it will be difficult for Warnock to hold on to the seat.

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2. Arizona (Mark Kelly): Arizona has trended sharply toward Democrats the past few cycles. Mitt Romney carried the Grand Canyon State by nine points in 2012, but Donald Trump won by just three points in 2016 before losing it by a fraction of a point in 2020. During this time, Republicans lost both Senate seats as well, also narrowly. Arizona is largely a suburban state, and with the suburbs swinging against the GOP nationally, the impact of perceived Democratic Party shortcomings is felt more here.

The Republican frontrunner is unclear, but all of the contenders have been outraised by Sen. Kelly, a popular former astronaut, who picked up the seat in 2020 and now has to defend it just two years later. Kelly is a solid incumbent who has most other things going for him except for the overall political environment. If Biden’s job approval were to rise, or if the GOP were to nominate a problematic candidate, this race would probably move down the rankings quickly. For now, however, Kelly is in deep danger.

1. Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto): After moving sharply toward Democrats during the 2000s, Nevada has swung back toward the GOP over the past few cycles. Cortez Masto defeated Congressman Joe Heck by just 2.5 percentage points, and Biden beat Trump by a similar margin in 2020, despite winning by almost double that margin nationally. While Adam Laxalt isn’t necessarily the GOP’s top choice, he has a famous family name, and no trouble fundraising.

In the terrible Republican year of 2018, he lost by only four points. The polling has generally shown Cortez Masto languishing in the low-to-mid 40s, which is a dangerous place for an incumbent to dwell. Overall, the incumbent is weaker and the challenger stronger than in Georgia, and the state (for now) lacks the internecine feuds that beset the state parties in the other top-tier races. That’s ultimately what earns this race top billing. Were Laxalt to lose to his main primary opponent, disabled Afghanistan war veteran Sam Brown, this race could tighten.

Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.

Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He is a co-author of the 2014 Almanac of American Politics and author of The Lost Majority

The post The Senate Seats Most Likely To Flip In 2022 appeared first on The Political Insider.

Tuesday Was A Huge Night For Trump – And J.D. Vance

By Susan Crabtree for RealClearPolitics

In his 2016 bestselling autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance thanks his grandparents – his “Mamaw” and “Remember in 2019 when workers were doing well in this country, not struggling terribly. Thanks [to] the president for everything, for endorsing me.”

Tuesday night, as Vance stepped closer to his goal of joining the most exclusive club in the country – the U.S. Senate – he thanked his grandparents again, along with President Trump.

“I absolutely gotta thank the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, for providing, ladies and gentlemen, an example of what could be in this country,” Vance, 37, said in his primary victory speech. “Remember in 2019 when workers doing well in this county, not struggling terribly, thanks for the president for everything, for endorsing me.”

RELATED: Trump Endorsement Vaults J.D. Vance To Top Of Contentious Ohio GOP Senate Primary Race

Vance then pulled a trademark Trump maneuver, slamming the “fake news media” for wanting to write a story that “this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s America First agenda … Ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t the death of the America First agenda.”

It’s been a heady, evolutionary six years for Vance, the Yale law school graduate and venture capitalist who burst on the scene with his book about growing up “dirt poor’ in Appalachia. Coastal elites immediately embraced his life story as a way to understand Trump’s appeal among the white working class.

During the 2016 campaign, though, Vance declared himself a Never Trumper, dubbing the casino-developer-turned-reality-TV-star-turned-politician “cultural heroin” for the masses, and argued he was leading working-class voters into a dark place.

However, during the Trump presidency, Vance shifted sharply to become an avid Trump supporter, citing the tumultuous Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a significant turning point. (His wife, Usha Chilukuri, had clerked for Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge.)

Meanwhile, Ohio transformed from a Republican-leaning swing state to a solidly red GOP bastion, supporting Trump by nine percentage points in 2016 and double digits in 2020.

Vance’s win brings to a close a crowded and contentious Republican contest to fill the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman, a respected moderate. It also marks a major victory night for Trump, who has taken the unusual step for a former president of picking sides in primaries – a way to solidify his role as party kingmaker while he weighs another White House run in 2024.

Trump undoubtedly tilted the race in Vance’s favor. Before his endorsement, Vance was trailing former Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel, another Trump acolyte, 28%-23%, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average of polls. Meanwhile, State Sen. Matt Dolan faded in the final stretch.

With more than 95% of the vote reporting late Tuesday night, Vance won 32.2% compared to Mandel’s 23.9% and Dolan’s 23.3%.

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Before and after Trump endorsed Vance, his GOP opponents spent millions of advertising dollars reminding voters that Vance had called himself a “Never Trumper” just a few years ago. The conservative Club for Growth’s sister PAC, which backed Mandel, funded an ad that Factcheck.org labeled “misleading” for suggesting that Vance had said some Trump supporters were motivated to back him because they are racist. In fact, the full Vance quote said most of Trump’s voters were inspired by his economic policies or “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, channeled $13.5 million into a political action committee backing Vance in the race. Vance had worked for Theil as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley before moving back to Ohio. Thiel, along with Trump, influenced Vance’s politics, especially when it comes to opposing China and placing stricter limits on immigration. Despite the infusion, Vance continued to run behind in the polls until Trump’s endorsement.

“The question presented in this primary was, ‘Do we want a border that protects our citizens? Do we want to ship our jobs to China or keep them right here in America for American workers? Do we want a Republican Party who stands for the donors who write checks to the Club for Growth or do we want the Republican Party for the people right here in Ohio?” he asked the crowd Tuesday evening.

Even though Trump’s endorsement inevitably boosted Vance’s candidacy, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Just two days before the primary, Trump appeared to flub J.D. Vance’s name when citing his endorsement, seemingly merging it with Vance’s opponent’s last name. A Newsmax host claimed that it wasn’t a gaffe by Trump but a way to hedge his bets in the race.

“We’ve endorsed … J.P? Right?” Trump asked during his Ohio stumping on Vance’s part Sunday. “J.D. Mandel – and he’s doing great.”

On Monday, Vance minimized the gaffe, saying Trump speaks with such enthusiasm and so often that he was bound to “misspeak” sometimes. Vance now faces Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan, who handily won his party’s primary with 69.7%, with approximately 96.1 of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press.

Another big boon for Trump in Ohio Tuesday was the primary victory of Max Miller, a former Trump campaign and White House aide, who won the Republican nomination for the newly written 7th Congressional District in Northeast Ohio. Miller led the pack as of late Tuesday night despite abuse allegations from his ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. Miller has denied it.

Miller was initially recruited to challenge Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, one of 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment. But Gonzalez opted to retire instead.

J.R. Majewski, an Air Force veteran who painted a giant “Trump 2020” sign on his front lawn ahead of the last presidential election, won a crowded GOP nomination and this fall will face Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the history of the House of Representatives. (Kaptur was first elected in 1982.) Majewski defeated Theresa Gavarone, Craig Riedel, and Beth Decker.

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And in a close contest in Ohio’s 13th district, southeast of Cleveland, Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a lawyer, political commentator, and former Miss Ohio whom Trump endorsed, is projected to win her crowded GOP primary, defeating six other Republicans. She will face Emilia Sykes, the former House minority leader, who ran unopposed in her primary.

At the top of the Ohio state ticket, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine also survived the primary even though he is considered a moderate who does not back Trump. Still, the crowded primary kept DeWine’s showing under 50% even though he has served in some elected capacity in the state for more than 40 years.

DeWine was widely criticized by Republicans over the state’s COVID shutdowns, drawing three Republican opponents, including U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, former state Rep. Ron Hood, and farmer Joe Blyston. The three, however, split the Trump vote, leaving DeWine to pick up a solid 48.1% compared to Renacci’s 28%, Joe Blyston’s 21.8%, and Ron Hood’s 2.1%. DeWine will face Democrat Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton in the general election.

Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

The post Tuesday Was A Huge Night For Trump – And J.D. Vance appeared first on The Political Insider.