RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: The IRS has appointed a new “taxpayer experience officer,” whose salary is paid by – who else – taxpayers themselves. The agency hasn’t publicly announced Fumi Tamaki’s salary, but her predecessor earned nearly $200,000 in 2022, according to payroll records obtained by OpenTheBooks through an open records request. Key facts: Current Deputy Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer Courtney Kay-Decker earned $187,000 in 2022. Adding in estimated benefits of 25%, that means the soon-to-be-two-person office costs taxpayers over $483,000 each year. Takami and...

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson blasted journalists in Washington, D.C. for failing to “hold power accountable” — and participating in a “massive cover-up” with the White House to shield President Biden’s “decline.” “It is our duty to poke through White House smoke screens and find out the truth,” Abramson told Semafor.  “The Biden White House clearly succeeded in a massive cover-up of the degree of the President’s feebleness and his serious physical decline, which may be simply the result...

Not long after Jeremy Gober started running a sleep center, he quit treating patients for narcolepsy and sleep apnea and went full-time submitting bogus insurance claims. According to Gober’s 2022 indictment, he committed at least one especially sloppy error: One of his make-believe billings included a Medicare claim for treatment in March 2018 for a patient who’d died in December 2017. Before Gober was caught, Medicare and California’s healthcare system, Medi-Cal, ended up paying him a total of $587,000 for claims that turned out to be fiction. It's your money. But, hey,...

Topline: It’s a bit difficult to run for reelection with only $95,000 in campaign cash on hand, but Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) found a way around that issue. He billed taxpayers $335,000 last year to mail out “constituent communications” showcasing his own accomplishments, according to The Tennessean. Key facts: Ogles published 63 different mailers and digital ads approved by an oversight committee since January 2023, The Tennessean reported. The mail expense included in Congressional office budgets is technically supposed to be for spreading important information about town...

It’s impossible to reconcile big-government dreams with the reality of the clowns who rule us: Most coverage of last week's geriatric cage match of a debate focuses on the impact of Joe Biden's obvious cognitive and physical decline on his prospects as the Democratic presidential candidate. More important though, is that he is currently the U.S. president, supposedly exercising the (excessive) responsibilities of that office, including reacting to firestorms foreign and domestic in an increasingly crisis-rich environment. That he's clearly incapable of doing anything of the...

Topline: Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies paid a total of $710 million in third-party royalties to the National Institutes of Health in 2022 and 2023, according to records obtained through federal litigation by OpenTheBooks. Out of the $710 million, there was $690 million paid to one part of the NIH, The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), formerly run by Dr. Anthony Fauci. There were 260 of its scientists who received a payment; however, the dollar figure paid to individual scientists is still hidden and redacted in the disclosures. Third-party royalties...

Rarely are so many lies dispelled in a single moment. Rarely are so many people exposed as liars and sycophants. Last night’s debate was a watershed on both counts. The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever. But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine. Read...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the WeekJune 23 to 29, 2024 Featured InvestigationJames Clapper, Mr. October Surprise: How Obama's Intel Czar Rigged 2016 and 2020 Debates Against Trump With the week's news framed by liberal Nobel economists' curious warning just before the presidential debate about inflation under Donald Trump, Paul Sperry offers some startling historical context in RealClearInvestigations: The pre-debate smear is looking like an old Democrat trick. Sperry recounts how intelligence official James Clapper orchestrated well-timed pseudo-intelligence just before...

Topline: Under new rules passed with bipartisan support last July, federal lawmakers can charge their food and housing to taxpayers based on self-reported numbers. What could go wrong? House members reimbursed themselves $5.2 million last year under the rules that critics say rely on the “honor system” instead of receipts, according to a new report from The Washington Post. Key facts: Federal politicians are now “strongly encouraged,” but not required, to keep receipts of their reimbursable expenses. This helps to “reduce burdens” on the lawmakers,...

The New York Times drew sharp criticism Friday after their print edition hit the stands with no mention at all of Joe Biden's disastrous presidential debate performance against Donald Trump.  On Friday, readers of the self-described 'newspaper of record' instead woke up to headlines concerning Iran intensifying nuclear work and an analysis on Julian Assange.  Unlike other major print dailies - including the similarly left-leaning Washington Post, and the more conservative Wall Street Journal and tabloid New York Post - the true-blue Times failed...

Topline: Government lobbying and Congressional earmarks often lead to wasted money, but in 2008 they combined to create a scenario where U.S. troops could have potentially lost their lives. Campaign donations helped convince Congress members to earmark $7.6 million to buy an outdated powder that protects soldiers from chemical weapons. A newly-invented lotion had already been found to be seven times more effective at preventing burns. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot...

Topline: Ever hop the turnstile at the subway station? Ethics aside, it’s not such a head-scratching decision. Those who do, want to save a few bucks when they can. But the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority is apparently baffled by the practice, and it’s spending up to $1 million to figure out why commuters dodge subway fares, according to a new procurement notice. Waste of the Day 6.26.24 Open the Books Key facts: The MTA will hire behavioral scientists to write a report on the “personas” of subway and bus riders, categorized by the different...

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigationsJune 26, 2024 Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that "the Russian government" was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign’s email system. Trump and Biden, who debate again on Thursday with the impartiality of CNN moderators again in...

A letter signed by 16 top economists warning of the economic dangers of electing former President Trump, which is being amplified by the Biden campaign and other Biden surrogates, is littered with signatories who have either donated to Biden or supported him politically in the past.  "While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden's economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump," the economists wrote in a letter first reported on by Axios this week that has been promoted by various members of the Biden...

Topline: EcoHealth Alliance — the nonprofit that sent taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab researching bat coronaviruses before the pandemic — has received $94.3 million from the U.S. government since 2008, according to Fox News. The Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding to EcoHealth this May. Key facts: EcoHealth received $8 million from HHS to study coronaviruses between 2014 and 2021 and sent some of the funds to labs including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A previous audit found that HHS did not properly monitor the grants. EcoHealth is accused of spending...

SAN FRANCISCO—Vice President Kamala Harris has long cast herself as a fearless pioneer of efforts to fight for social and environmental justice. “When I was elected DA of San Francisco,” Harris told a gathering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta last year, “I started the first environmental justice unit of any DA’s office in the country.” In her telling, the San Francisco District Attorney formed the special environmental justice unit in the early 2000s especially to protect the long-neglected community of Bayview Hunters Point, a...

The plea deal Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has reached with prosecutors is bad for American press freedoms. But the outcome also could have been worse. The deal, which was finalized on Wednesday in a courtroom in a remote U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, cleared the way for him to walk free after more than five years in British custody, most of which he spent fighting extradition to the United States. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act. ... The agreement means that for the first time in American history,...

Our latest Charlottesville occurred this weekend, when a mob of pro-Hamas goons showed up in front of a synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood in LA — because it’s all about being “critical of Israel,” right? They wore terror apparel, called for violence against Jews, allegedly beat up a Jewish woman, and impeded people from worshipping. Unlike in November, when a 69-year-old Los Angeles Jewish man was killed after a pro-Hamas “protester” threw a megaphone at his head, no one died. If reports are...

Topline: A councilwoman in Louisville, Kentucky was found guilty of defamation this April, but not before she billed city taxpayers $108,000 for her legal defense. Key facts: Receipts obtained by Louisville Public Media showed that Louisville Metro Council Member Donna Purvis used public funds to defend herself in a lawsuit filed by her former legislative aide Denise Bentley. The lawyers billed Louisville Metro $96,840 and the city also paid $11,455 for court reporter fees and other expenses. Louisville Public Media says the city will likely also be billed for expenses from the five-day trial...