[Radar Online] Leaked Photos Show Obamas Were 'Rage-tweeting' About 'Oppression' After the SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling While On Board a Mega-Luxury Yacht in Greece.
Former US President Barack Obama and actor Tom Hanks have recently been spotted enjoying a lavish vacation in Greece alongside their families when his wife was tweeting about "oppression," RadarOnline.com has learned.
The group was seen dining at a glamorous waterfront restaurant on the island of Sifnos earlier this month. Obama's wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, were also present for the meal.
Witnesses told the Daily Mail that the party arrived at the restaurant by dinghy, having come from a luxury yacht that was docked nearby. An anonymous onlooker described the group's presence as overwhelming, mentioning the excessive security measures that surrounded them.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/03/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
[WashingtonFreeBeacon] Joe Biden Says He Wants To Crack Down on 'Privilege' in Education. He Once Called UPenn's President To Get His Granddaughter In.
Of course he did.
Shortly after the Supreme Court declared affirmative action college admission policies unconstitutional, President Joe Biden said his administration would direct the Department of Education to scrutinize how "practices like legacy admissions … expand privilege instead of opportunity."
The department could start by examining how politically connected families like the Bidens get their children into Ivy League schools.
In 2018, Hunter Biden tapped his father and a number of Biden family connections to help get his daughter into the University of Pennsylvania. Text messages and emails from Hunter Biden's laptop, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, show how Joe and Hunter Biden worked behind the scenes to get a subpar family member into one of the most selective schools in the country.
Maisy Biden's college admissions process could raise a number of uncomfortable questions for the president. The saga highlights exactly the kind of "legacy admissions" Biden has slammed. The story also highlights the Biden family's occasionally shady dealings with the University of Pennsylvania just as congressional Republicans are probing alleged ethical misconduct by both Joe and Hunter Biden.
Maisy Biden was never much of a student. But she had her sights set on the University of Pennsylvania, whose 5.9 percent acceptance rate made it one of the most exclusive schools in the country.
"I applied early decision to Penn today!!" Maisy Biden texted Hunter Biden on October 31.
Just two days later, Maisy asked her father for an update on her application. In the coming months, Hunter and Joe Biden would mount a full-court press on university administrators to get Maisy's application over the finish line. The Bidens took their case directly to the top: University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann.
On December 13, 2018, the elder Biden texted Hunter that he was "going to try to see [University of Pennsylvania] Pres GUTMANN tomorrow." Two days later, Joe Biden told Hunter Biden that he "had a great talk with Guttman [sic]."
"Maisy still in the game for regular acceptance. But must do well in class this period. It's real," Joe Biden wrote on December 15. "We should talk about tutors etc starting tomorrow."
The next day, Hunter Biden told his daughter the good news—she had not been rejected. Hunter Biden said his father received some advice from Gutmann: Maisy needed to get her grades up in her senior year. Hunter also suggested that Maisy could see her chances improve if she expressed interest in playing lacrosse at Penn. Although it's unclear whether the lacrosse tip was from Joe Biden's conversations with the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Hunter was peeved that the counsel came so late.
"I also think it would help if you had lax coach talk to their lax coach," Hunter wrote. "Bottom line is that Guttman [sic] made clear that in order for her to explain the 11th grade you had to show improvement in 12th," Hunter wrote. "Which is something I think we would have all liked to know form [sic] the start, but in fairness we were much later in the app process than usual and made it look like we weren't 100% about Penn."
And so forth. Hunter Biden at one point pretended to want to teach a course a UPenn, and then the reward for his daughter’s acceptance and then graduation was:
In July 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Amy Gutmann to serve as his ambassador to Germany. The Senate confirmed Gutmann's nomination with a 54-42 vote in January 2022.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
07/03/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
Hunter Biden told his daughter the good news—she had not been rejected
#2
The next day, Hunter Biden told his daughter the good news—she had not been rejected.
Navy Joan? Not so much...
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2023 8:53 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Maisy went on to study fine art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her artistic eye is present in her fashion. For the evening celebrating Biden's inauguration, she chose a unique look by pairing a patterned red and white gown with black and white sneakers.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/03/2023 14:24 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"Maisy Biden's name filled headlines back in 2019 when her grandfather, President Joe Biden, skipped the Iowa Democrats Hall of Fame Dinner for her high school graduation, and again when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts in 2023. "
#2
COVID bio-weapons and Big Pharma meds didn't get us all. Nothing is too good for the elderly.
Crimping PEX fittings for the wife's new garden hydrant. Come get this old bastard, I'll snug up your nuts with this handy Apollo crimper. You look like 1/2 inchers.
#7
Arne Starkey Duncan (born November 6, 1964) served as United States Secretary of Education from 2009 to 2015 and as Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2008. Duncan is the founder of Create Real Economic Destiny (CRED), a non-profit aimed at reducing gun violence. Duncan was a key figure in the Obama administration's development of Common Core, a set of nationwide educational standards.
How many disadvantaged kids' loans have you paid off, Arne? C'mon, man, show us they way!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/03/2023 14:32 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I think what bugs me most about all this is that Biden's plan wasn't going to solve anything. Lots of $$$ would change hands, but indebted borrowers would still owe huge amounts. In fact, interest would quickly put them right back where they were. Oh yeah, and new loans are still issued every day.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/03/2023 18:14 Comments ||
Top||
#10
An incentive to get the college crowd to the polls.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/03/2023 19:34 Comments ||
Top||
#11
It was a payoff to supporters, nothing else.
I get that it was a payoff. But it was a payoff carefully designed to preserve the problem rather than fix it -- even just a little bit or for a small group of people.
[Breitbart] Based on newly revealed evidence, Republicans are now questioning the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s (DOD OIG) April 2020 finding that a former senior defense official — Sally Donnelly — did not engage in ethical misconduct by allegedly trying to steer a massive government contract to Amazon.
Now in control of the House, Republicans are reviewing the DOD OIG’s conclusion, which leaves the former official in a position to continue pursuing lucrative contracts for Amazon with the DOD, as well as to sit on a key DOD business advisory board.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) recently previewed their efforts in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. "There are a number of members that have been looking into this contract, how the contract was made — is there any illegal activity done within there — and I think more of that will come to light," he said in March.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who sits on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, is one of the members digging into the details of the investigation.
"The conflict of interest there is major," she told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview in May. "This is a ’what the f-ck’ moment."
BACKGROUND
The DOD OIG investigation concerned allegations that Donnelly and her allies as far back as 2017 improperly used their positions within the DOD to try to steer a multibillion-dollar information technology contract to Amazon.
Donnelly served as a top adviser to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis between 2017 and 2018. During that time, she arranged several meetings between Mattis and her former consulting firm clients, which included Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to emails obtained through FOIA litigation and previously reported by Breitbart News.
At the time, AWS was vying for a lucrative contract known as "Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure" (JEDI), which would provide DOD with a single cloud infrastructure and cloud services.
Donnelly’s activities, among others, raised suspicions of ethical misconduct, and after the contract appeared poised to be awarded to AWS, House Republicans requested for the DOD OIG look into the matter.
At the center of the DOD OIG’s investigation was whether or not Donnelly had followed federal ethics regulations.
One of those regulations requires government officials to recuse themselves for one year from "covered relationships," or relationships with people or companies who were sources of income. For Donnelly, that would have included her former consulting clients AWS and C5, a British-based venture capital firm owned by CEO and founder Andre Pienaar.
In March 2017 Donnelly arranged a private dinner with Mattis at an exclusive London venue that included Pienaar and an AWS executive named Theresa Carlson.
During that dinner, Carlson pitched a meeting with then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to Mattis. After the dinner, Donnelly approved a phone call between Mattis and Bezos. Donnelly would also later give AWS employees guidance on how to speak to Mattis about AWS cloud services during a visit by Mattis to Amazon’s headquarters in summer 2017. And she also organized a subsequent dinner between Mattis and Bezos.
These meetings occurred while AWS was seeking to land the lucrative DOD cloud contract.
At the time of the London dinner, Donnelly was late in filing her mandatory ethics disclosure form, known as OGE Form 278e. The form is critical to helping ethics officials identify covered relationships, and thus potential conflicts of interests. Although the form is due 30 days after entering government employment, she would not file this until May 17, 2017.
The DOD OIG ultimately concluded in a final investigative report on April 21, 2020, that Donnelly did not engage in any of the alleged wrongdoing. It said:
We did not substantiate any of the allegations regarding Ms. Donnelly. We did not find evidence that she failed to disclose payments from SBD Advisors on her OGE 278e, provided preferential treatment to Amazon, or improperly participated in the JEDI Cloud procurement because of her prior associations with Amazon, SBD Advisors, and C5 Capital.
It added: "We determined that Ms. Donnelly did not violate any ethical agreements and obligations regarding OGE financial disclosures, did not give preferential treatment to Amazon officials or restrict access to Secretary Mattis for other industry leaders..."
GRASSLEY PRESENTS NEW INFORMATION NOT CONSIDERED BY DOD OIG
However, last October, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said he discovered additional relevant information that the DOD OIG did not have during its investigation.
Grassley revealed in a letter dated October 24, 2022, that the DOD OIG admitted to him that it did not know who the purchaser of Donnelly’s firm was, arguing it was "not relevant" to its investigation. According to Grassley, Donnelly’s counsel had provided the DOD OIG with the Purchase and Sale Agreement for her firm, but had redacted the name of the purchaser.
Grassley said he later obtained an unredacted Purchase and Sale Agreement, which revealed that Pienaar, CEO of C5 Capital and Donnelly’s former client, and a C5 Capital investor named Vincent Mai, created an entity called "VMAP Investor LLC" that purchased Donnelly’s firm for $1,560,000. Pienaar signed as the "authorized person" for VMAP on the agreement.
Grassley discovered that VMAP made one payment of $390,000 to Donnelly before she entered the DOD in January 2017, but made three more payments of $390,000 to her while she served at the DOD, in March 2017, July 2017, and March 2018. Donnelly resigned from the DOD just days after she received her last payment, according to the DOD OIG report.
This meant that VMAP, a C5-linked entity set up by Pienaar and Mai, paid Donnelly during her time at the Pentagon, including when she set up the London dinner with Mattis and Pienaar.
In addition, as Grassley noted in his letter, AWS and Pienaar’s C5 Capital also had its own business relationship. Around 2017 and 2018, AWS supported two C5 Capital startup accelerator programs.
This meant that AWS was supporting Pienaar’s C5 Capital while Pienaar’s VMAP was paying Donnelly, as she set up calls and meetings between Mattis and AWS representatives.
There was another tie between C5 Capital and AWS — Pienaar, CEO of C5 Capital, at the time was engaged to Carlson, the AWS executive in charge of the company’s bid for the DOD cloud contract.
Given these ties, Grassley argued that Pienaar’s involvement in the purchase of Donnelly’s firm was indeed relevant to the DOD OIG’s investigation of alleged ethical misconduct and has pressed for the DOD OIG to reopen its investigation.
He wrote in his letter:
Knowledge of the entity that purchased her firm is relevant and central to the question of whether a conflict of interest existed and could have substantively affected the protocols required to wall off Sally Donnelly from potential and actual conflicts of interest while employed at DoD.
He added that the new information contradicts the DOD OIG’s finding that there was "no evidence that [Ms. Donnelly] had an ongoing or undisclosed financial relationship with C5 or Amazon and its affiliates" during her employment at the DOD.
"[N]ot only did the DoD OIG fail to acquire an unredacted version of the Purchase and Sale Agreement, it never even interviewed Andre Pienaar, Chief Executive and Founder of C5 Capital, during its review of DoD’s JEDI cloud procurement program," Grassley wrote.
He added, "Taken together, while in government service, Ms. Donnelly received payments from VMAP Investor LLC—an entity directly linked to two senior C5 officials, a company connected to Amazon. These facts were not included in DoD or DoD OIG’s conflicts analysis."
The DOD OIG report did mention in a footnote: "Ms. Donnelly and Mr. Pienaar co-owned SBD Advisors. Ms. Donnelly sold her share of ownership of SBD Advisors to Mr. Pienaar in January 2017, prior to entering on duty with the DoD."
However, that footnote did not reflect that Pienaar co-created an entity named VMAP that purchased her firm, and that VMAP was linked to C5 Capital and paying Donnelly while C5 Capital was working with AWS on at least two projects.
Donnelly in her testimony to the DOD OIG also seemed to downplay Pienaar’s role in purchasing her firm, calling him the "organizer" of the sale of her firm. And an SBD Advisors spokesperson and former Obama administration official, Price Floyd, also told the Daily Caller in August 2018 that SBD Advisors was sold to a "group of investors" in January 2017.
Floyd also claimed to another outlet that none of the investors had any commercial relationships with AWS. That statement appears to be false, since at least one investor — Pienaar — had a commercial relationship with AWS.
Given the subsequently discovered information not considered — or perhaps dismissed — during the initial DOD OIG investigation, Grassley and other Republicans say the investigation should be reopened.
"It looks bad," Mace said of Donnelly’s failure to disclose that an entity created in part by Pienaar paid her over a million dollars during her tenure at the Pentagon as she helped coordinate meals with Mattis. "There was a huge conflict of interest."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2023 06:43 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Radar Online] Leaked Photos Show Obamas Were 'Rage-tweeting' About 'Oppression' After the SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling While On Board a Mega-Luxury Yacht in Greece.
[Breitbart] Based on newly revealed evidence, Republicans are now questioning the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s (DOD OIG) April 2020 finding that a former senior defense official — Sally Donnelly — did not engage in ethical misconduct by allegedly trying to steer a massive government contract to Amazon.
