RealClearInvestigations Original Articles

Just eight days before the 2024 election, a lawyer claiming to represent an anonymous FBI whistleblower sent a politically explosive letter to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee alleging former FBI Director James Comey first began investigating Donald Trump shortly after he announced his run for president in June 2015, and did so without foundation. James Comey, former FBI director: Accused of running a “honeypot” sting operation against Trump in 2015. AP Donald Trump: He was the target of one FBI probe in 2016, so a probe the year before has the ring of...

Fresh off its decision to claw back $20 billion in “greenhouse gas reduction” money the Biden Environmental Protection Agency parked at Citibank, the Trump administration is setting its sights on another massive chunk of planned green spending receiving less attention. Environmental Protection Agency The $7 billion Solar for All program – part of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund -- is meant to “enable over 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from distributed solar energy,” according to the EPA’s...

By Ana Kasparian, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 19, 2025 VENICE, Calif. – Francesca Padilla was awakened by the sound of screaming people and breaking glass. Soon she could hear the tortured howls of her neighbor’s dog Togo as the bungalow right next to her Venice home was engulfed in flames.   Gigi Graciette, TV reporter: Says fire officials have been advised by higher-ups to evade questions about homeless fires from local journalists. gigigraciette.com "It was yelping so loud--the sound isn't the usual dog sound--it was suffering,” another neighbor told...

Can a single judge unilaterally thwart the president of the United States? That’s the contentious question the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve last week in response to court orders blocking its effort to curtail birthright citizenship, and after a slew of decrees requiring the president do everything from halting major actions on DEI and domestic spending to disbursing billions in foreign aid.  The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee makes his feelings known about a new judicial injunction over the weekend. X At issue is a legal remedy,...

When the Biden administration announced $27 billion in environmental grants last April, it set the clock ticking on a predicament: how to get the unprecedented sums for the President's envisioned NetZero future out the door before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30? Lee Zeldin, Trump EPA Administrator: Sees "a deeply entrenched pattern of political favoritism" in Biden grant awards. AP The task was complicated by the fact most of the money – $20 billion – would go to just eight nonprofits that, like the Environmental Protection Agency itself, had never handled such...

A lobbyist for the College Board delivered a sharp warning to William Slater last month. She was not happy that the Tennessee Republican lawmaker had recently introduced a bill to allow the state’s public universities to accept the Classic Learning Test, an upstart competitor to the College Board’s famed SAT, as an admissions exam. Jeremy Tate, pioneer of the Classic Learning Test: “Absolutely the College Board is trying to undermine the CLT,” he says. Classic Learning Initiatives The lobbyist aimed to kill the bill.  “She let me know that the...

By Paul D. Thacker, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 4, 2025 Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was losing sleep and weight, not because of the COVID-19 virus but in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford University and the larger medical community to shut down his research, which questioned much of the government’s response to the pandemic.  Jay Bhattacharya: Goes before the Senate this week. Hoover Institution Some of his Stanford colleagues leaked false and damaging information to reporters. The university’s head of...

By Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 3, 2025 To crack down on Pentagon spending, the Defense Department adopted a program in 2015 to track spending on lodging and entertainment. But so few officials used the Visa government travel charge card that nearly 4 million card transactions worth $1.2 billion couldn’t be reviewed in enough detail to check for misuse, abuse, and fraud, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General said last month.  Beetle Bailey: Goldbricker of the past -- and icon of Pentagon incompetence and...

As Elon Musk and his tech team urge their fellow Americans to become “domestic auditors” to help rein in federal spending, people have been encouraged to use the Treasury Department’s usaspending.gov website to identify and track government finance. Your go-to source? Guess again, say experts. usaspending.gov But usaspending.gov is wrong on the biggest picture, RealClearInvestigations found.  The total amount of spending across “all agencies,” as recorded at usaspending.gov, appears to be 50% higher than most experts interviewed...

The smoke from fire-ravaged Los Angeles has cleared, but a thick pall clouds the funding for fire recovery efforts. While insurance companies, landowners and taxpayers will surely foot most of the bill, it is likely that money solicited by Mayor Karen Bass through a campaign finance loophole will play a role. This wildfire is in the past, but a political firestorm arose soon after, over "behested payments." AP Questions regarding these funds, called behested payments, arose during fierce backlash over Bass’ decision earlier this month to appoint former L.A. Police Commissioner...

Although Hunter Biden got away with multiple crimes thanks to his father’s unprecedented pardon, he still faces punishment for his conduct before the District of Columbia Bar. Even presidential clemency cannot shield him from possible suspension of his law license. Hamilton "Phil" Fox, D.C. Bar Disciplinary Counsel: With Hunter's rap sheet wiped clean, probers have to "prove" crimes all over again. DC Bar/Facebook But former President Biden’s pardon has muddled – and delayed – the process of deciding Hunter’s professional fate, according to the D.C....

By John Murawski, RealClearInvestigstionsFebruary 19, 2025 In the plummy world of alumni relations, where distinguished graduates are awarded honorary degrees and major donors are fêted at the president’s mansion, it is virtually unheard of for former students to set up shop as a political counterweight to the university, challenging its modes of governance and day-to-day operations That was then: Silent Sam, standing. Yellowspacehopper/Wikipedia Alarmed by academia’s dominant ideological ethos of social justice activism – particularly the holy trinity of...

By Paul D. Thacker, RealClearInvestigationsFebruary 19, 2025 President Trump often trumpets American exceptionalism, but an executive order scheduled to take effect this week seeks to uproot a longstanding policy not found in much of the developed world: granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil. Under his order, the babies would, instead, inherit the immigration status of their parents.  The President's executive order. whitehouse.gov Attorneys general from 22 states have already sued in two federal district courts and won preliminary rulings...

Democrats have cast the Trump administration’s ouster of eight senior FBI leaders as a “purge” and act of “retribution” from a weaponized Justice Department, some likening it to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”  Jeffrey Veltri: Accused of retaliation. LinkedIn But former colleagues of the terminated “G-men” say this narrative is backward. FBI officials, past and present, have marshaled significant evidence via whistleblower complaints and testimony indicating that several terminated leaders...

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, convened a panel of civil rights leaders last month to assail President Donald Trump’s executive order on “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.” The so-called anti-DEI order, Morial claimed, was an effort to “reverse the gains of the last seventy years.”  Marc Morial: His National Urban League has adopted the very types of discriminatory racial practices that were once condemned by early civil rights leaders seeking a truly colorblind society -- notably Dr. Martin...

By Vince Bielski, RealClearInvestigationsFebruary 5, 2025 After nasty clashes involving character assassinations and a mass resignation, a showdown is drawing closer in Chicago between the most powerful local teachers’ union in the country and the most financially distressed school district.  Stacy Davis Gates, teacher union president: There’s unrest inside the union over her militant leadership. Chicago Teachers Union The growing possibility of a teachers’ strike in a city with a long history of labor upheavals highlights the troubles rocking public schools...

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigationsJanuary 30, 2025 Though even Donald Trump's harshest critics now concede he may not be the "Russian agent” they once speculated he was, the consensus among Washington’s elite remains that he's a beneficiary of Kremlin skullduggery.This persistent belief springs from a January 2017 U.S. intelligence document crafted by the Obama administration, which classified the sourcing behind it at the highest levels. Hillary Clinton, at the Trump inauguration last week, still blames her 2016 loss on Vladimir Putin. Pool Reuters Known...

Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as President Trump’s director of national intelligence hinges on questions about the judgment and patriotism of the former congresswoman and Army veteran, doubts that are expected to take center stage at her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. Echoing a charge first lodged by Hillary Clinton, Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Elizabeth Warren have spread innuendo that Gabbard is a “compromised” “Russian asset” who has been “in Putin’s pocket.” Former CIA Director John Brennan has speculated that Gabbard may...

By Ben Weingarten, RealClearInvestigationsJanuary 28, 2025 Flanked by some of the Big Tech executives whose companies had suppressed the views of his supporters throughout his predecessor’s term, President Trump on Jan. 20 declared the days of such speech policing over. President Trump's executive order. whitehouse.gov Hours later, the president put action behind his words, signing an executive order prohibiting the federal government from engaging in, facilitating, or funding “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American...