RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
June 2 to May June 8, 2024

Featured Investigation
Caucus Cash:
How Black and Hispanic Leaders
Raise Millions 

In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney reports on how the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute operate outside of normal campaign finance laws to raise millions of dollars each year from major corporations whose representatives also serve on their boards and advisory councils.

Varney reports:

• The two outfits stand out for the unparalleled fundraising they do through independent but closely aligned nonprofit arms -- distinct from other congressional caucuses that help lawmakers work on specific issues.

• The two nonprofits say they are designed to provide scholarships and opportunities to minority students and promising businesses. But records show they spend much less on that than on salaries, fundraising, and hosting conferences.

• In 2022, the black caucus foundation brought in $18.4 million, and of that total, it spent more than $16 million, or 86%, on staff salaries and benefits, management fees, fundraising, and conferences, records show.

• In 2022, the Hispanic institute raised $12.5 million. Of that it spent $7 million, or 56% of its revenue, paying staffers, holding an annual conference, and for travel, records show. The $4.4 million the institute paid its staff that year was more than it spent on fellowships and interns combined.

• In addition to many elected leaders, the foundation’s board of directors includes executives with Walgreens, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Fidelity Investments, and other blue-chip companies. 

• In some cases, corporations with an interest in specific issues are bankrolling people placed in the nonprofits. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation gave the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation between $300,000 and $500,000 in 2022, tax records show. Scotts, the fertilizer giant, sponsors two foundation fellows who are focused on “marijuana legislation.”

Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books

Delaware Hides Embezzlement, RCI
IRS Buys, Ignores Customer Service Tool, RCI
Anti-Israel Northwestern U. Rakes It In, RCI
Kentucky's Sideways Sidewalk Splurge, RCI
Frisco's Free Booze for Alcoholics, RCI

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

Behind Closed Doors,
Signs Biden Is Slipping
Wall Street Journal

Republicans appear to be pushing the narrative that Joe Biden is not physically or mentally equipped to be president – while Democrats are coming together to assert the commander-in-chief is, well, commanding. This article opens with a series of damning anecdotes that seem to come from the GOP:

When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out. In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy. Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.

The article reports that the White House kept close tabs on some of the Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers. After the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked, some of those lawmakers spoke to the Journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden’s strengths. “They just, you know, said that I should give you a call back,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, referring to the White House.

Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway

3 Lobbying Firms Close to Biden Cash In, Free Beacon
Files Point to FBI-Dem Collusion vs. Whistleblowers, Just the News
Smearing Disgruntled Democrats as Russian Proxies, Twitter Files
Biden’s Destructive Cannabis Reclassification, City Journal
13 Reversible Errors in Trump's Hush Money Case, American Mind
Pro-Trump Witnesses Received Significant Benefits, ProPublica
Proud Boys Are Back: Far-Right Group Rallies for Trump, Reuters
Trump Driver: J6 Panel Stifled Steering-Wheel Struggle Denial, Just the News

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Fauci Confesses He
'Made Up' COVID Rules
Daily Mail

In closed-door testimony last January, Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that some of the most consequential policies he advocated in response to COVID-19 – including the six-foot social distancing rule and masking of children – were not based on established science:

Speaking to counsel on behalf of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic earlier this year, Fauci told Republicans that the six-foot social distancing rule "sort of just appeared" and that he did not recall how it came about. "You know, I don't recall. It sort of just appeared," he said according to committee transcripts when pressed on how the rule came about. He added he "was not aware of studies" that supported the social distancing, conceding that such studies "would be very difficult" to do. In addition to not recalling any evidence supporting social distancing, Fauci also told the committee's counsel that he didn't remember reading anything to support that masking kids would prevent COVID. The pandemic patriarch also testified that he had not followed any studies after the fact regarding the impacts that forced mask wearing had on children, of which there have been many.

This article reports that kids' learning loss and social setbacks have been well documented, with one National Institutes of Health (NIH) study calling the impact of mask use on students' literacy and learning "very negative." And the impacts from social distancing caused "depression, generalized anxiety, acute stress, and intrusive thoughts," another NIH study found. 

NIH Scientists Tried to Hide
$710M in Pharma Royalties
New York Post

Government scientists made a killing off COVID-19, this article reports, as payments to the National Institutes of Health and its scientists skyrocketed from later 2021 through 2023. Adam Andrzejewski, who runs the watchdog group OpenTheBooks.com – and who writes RCI’s Waste of the Day feature – reports that those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined:

New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists. Almost all that cash – $690 million – went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists. Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions.

The article reports that it is unclear if any of the COVID vaccine royalties from Pfizer and Moderna, the latter of which settled with NIH by agreeing to pay $400 million, is even included in these new numbers. NIH isn’t saying.

Why 1,000 Homicides in St. Louis
Remain Unsolved
Marshall Project/APM Reports/St. Louis Public Radio

Early one December morning in 2017, a shooter in St. Louis murdered three women – none of whom had a criminal record – in cold blood. The case remains unsolved. It is not an outlier. This article reports that of the roughly 1,900 homicides committed in St. Louis from 2014 through 2023, more than 1,000 remain unsolved, according to an analysis of homicide data obtained by APM Reports and St. Louis Public Radio:

While the number of killings was rising, St. Louis officials reduced the homicide unit’s budget and supplemented it with increased spending on overtime. The city spent about $18,000 for each homicide investigation in fiscal year 2012. By fiscal year 2020, it was less than $12,000. It has since rebounded to about $15,000 per investigation in 2022. The city has also failed to invest in crime-fighting tools, and still has a DNA-evidence backlog of hundreds of samples from homicides. That forces detectives to wait for key evidence in their cases.

This article, the first part of a series on St. Louis police, is powerful. But it does not address why that funding has dropped, ignoring loud calls to “defund the police” during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. It also plays the race card by failing to provide any context to this statement:

Black people, who are about 44% of the city’s population, made up around 90% of those killed between 2014 and 2023. Police solved fewer than half of the killings involving Black victims. By contrast, police cleared nearly two-thirds of cases involving White victims. 

Nevada:
Republican Election Clerk
vs. Trump Die-Hards
New York Times

Donald Trump won 82 percent of Esmeralda County, Nevada’s voters during the last presidential election. But, this article reports, in the days after the election, some of the county’s 620 voters began to suspect that he should have won by even more. They claimed that election was stolen by voting software designed in Venezuela, or by election machines made in China; accused George Soros of manipulating Nevada’s voter rolls; and blamed “undercover activists” for stealing ballots out of machines with hot dog tongs. In the years since, they have also trained their anger on the longtime county clerk, Cindy Elgan, an elected Republican who she flew a flag at her own home that read: “Trump 2024 — Take America Back.” Quote:

When Elgan continued to stand up at each meeting to dispute and disprove those accusations by citing election laws and facts, they began to blame her, too … Lately some local Republicans had begun referring to her as “Luciferinda” or as the “clerk of the deep state cabal.” They accused her of being paid off by Dominion [voting machine representatives] and skimming votes away from Trump, and even though their allegations came with no evidence, they wanted her recalled from office before the next presidential election in November.

This article reports that about 130 people – including many Elgan has known for years – signed a petition to recall her. One was a woman she played cribbage with on Saturday nights. Another was a friend of her husband’s who had voted to re-elect Elgan several times. Another was the county sheriff. Another was her next-door neighbor of nearly 30 years. “It’s like talking to that wall right there,” Elgan said. “I’ve given them every fact and document known to mankind, and none of it matters. They’re too busy chanting their mantras to stop and listen.”