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DC Spends $270k to Repaint ‘Black Lives Matter’ Sign

Joe Biden Email Shows Hunter Was Copied on Ukraine President
Information

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We received five pages
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of
records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
that show then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a
May 26, 2016, email detailing a scheduled “8:45 am prep for a 9 am
phone call with Pres Poroshenko,” who was the president of Ukraine.

This is another smoking gun. It blows out of the water the notion that
there was any distance between Joe and Hunter Biden on the Burisma
influence-peddling scandal.

In this email Joe Biden’s address is the alias
[email protected] and Hunter Biden’s email account is
disclosed as [email protected]. (Hunter was on the board of
the controversial Ukrainian firm Burisma at the time.)

The email
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has
the subject line “Friday Schedule Cards” and was sent by John S.
Flynn, who was Joe Biden’s assistant:

> Boss--8:45am prep for 9am phone call with Pres Poroshenko. Then
> we're off to Rhode Island for infrastructure event and then
> Wilmington for UDel commencement. Nate will have your draft remarks
> delivered later tonight or with your press clips in the morning.
>
> Respectfully,
> John
The email also contains information on U.S. military troops under the
heading “Daily US Troops Update:”

> # US Troops Died in Iraq/Afghanistan: 6,745
>
> # US Troops Wounded in Iraq/Afghanistan: 52,392
>
> US Troop Levels:
> Afghanistan (Security Assistance, Advisory and CT): 10,000
> Iraq (Security Assistance): 4,000
The email was obtained as a result of our lawsuit
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against
the National Archives for Biden family records and communications
regarding travel and finance transactions, as well as communications
between the Bidens and several known business associates (_Judicial
Watch, Inc. v. National Archives_
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(No. 1:23-cv-01432).

In August 2023, James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight
Committee called on
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the National Archives to provide then-Vice President Joe Biden’s
records regarding his duties that overlapped with his son’s
activities in Ukraine. Chairman Comer is pursuing communications in
which Joe Biden used a pseudonym, as well as those in which Hunter
Biden, Eric Schwerin, or Devon Archer are copied.

We have nearly a dozen FOIA lawsuits regarding records concerning
Biden corruption issues, including:

In March 2023, the Archives had released
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only 1,276 pages
of over 8,000
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records about the unprecedented document dispute and raid on the home
of former President Trump.

In October 2022, we sued
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the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) for all communications between the Secret
Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the search
warrant which precipitated the raid on former President Donald
Trump’s Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.

Also in October, we sued
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the Barack
Obama Presidential Library for Obama White House records about the
2016 “Russia Collusion Hoax.” The records, which by law were not
available under FOIA until five years after President Obama left
office, are held at the Library, which is part of the National
Archives system.


DC SPENDS $270,000 TO REPAINT ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ ON STREET NEAR
WHITE HOUSE

Crime in Washington, DC, is out of control but local leaders are
spending $270,000 in tax money to promote the Black Lives Matter
movement that is racist, anti-police, anti-American, and often violent
– and doing so in the heart of our nation’s capital.

We received 25 pages
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of records in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the
Washington, DC, Department of Transportation that show the cost to
taxpayers to repaint the Black Lives Matter slogan on a street in the
nation’s capital was over $270,000.

The repainting seems to have taken place shortly before Black Lives
Matter groups began defending Hamas terrorist murders of Jews in
Israel.

On June 5, 2020, after days of protests and riots in DC led by the
Black Lives Matter movement, a team of artists, residents, District
employees, and demonstrators painted “Black Lives Matter” in
50-foot-tall yellow capital letters and the District’s crest, which
resembles three stars above an “equals” sign, on 16th Street NW
near the White House. The following day demonstrators painted
“Defund the Police,” a key demand of the Black Lives Matter
movement, alongside the “Black Lives Matter” message.

The total price tag of $271,231 for the repainting includes $53,551
for paint and supplies, and $217,680 for labor.

In a purchase order
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dated September 15, 2023, with the description “Black Lives Matter
Plaza Redo,” a vendor charged DC-based Equus Striping a total of
$53,551.20 for supplies for “BLMRedo2023.” These supplies included
“StreetBond 250 Yellow-BLM (MMA),” “StreetBond 250 Catalyst,”
and “StreetBond Primer,” plus shipping.

The labor
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for the repainting was provided by a subcontractor called Dewberry and
totaled $217,680.

A memorandum
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of negotiations for the project dated April 13, 2023 indicates that
the project required a foreman, operator, laborer, carpenter, and
mason. Equipment included a backhoe/loader, portable air compressor,
Bobcat, dump truck, pick-up truck, and service truck.

The memorandum also indicates that the hourly rates submitted by the
contractor on March 9, 2023, were rejected. After negotiation, the
contractor submitted lower hourly rates and were accepted on April 13,
2023. The negotiated pricing was signed off on by DC Department of
Transportation officials Dr. Eloka Kingsley Achebe (deputy program
manager), Jaswant Matharu (project manager-local paving), and Gaiyath
Naanou (resident engineer-local paving).

We obtained the records in a November 6, 2023, FOIA request for:

* All budget records, invoices, work orders, authorizations,
agreements and contracts involved in repainting the Black Lives Matter
logo on Black Lives Matter Plaza in November 2023.

* All emails sent to and from the following DC Department of
Transportation officials: Interim Director Sharon Kershbaum, General
Counsel Frank Seales Jr, Chief of Staff Matthew Marcou, Chief of
External Affairs Olivia Dedner, Chief Project Delivery Officer Sandra
Marks, Interim Chief Operating Officer Neelima Ghanta, Chief
Information Officer Khaled Falah, Chief Performance Officer John
Thomas and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer Nana Bailey-Thomas
identified using the following search queries:

* BLM+Hamas
* BLM+terrorism
* BLM+Palestinian
* BLM+Palestinians

* All emails sent between any of the officials identified in Bullet
2 and any representative and/or employee of Black Lives Grassroots
organization and/or with an email account ending in the domain
@blmgrassroots.org.

Here is the history of this story.

On July 1, 2020, we filed a civil rights lawsuit
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against
Mayor Bowser and other officials for First Amendment violations over
their refusal to allow us to paint the message “Because No One Is
Above the Law!” on a DC street.

In August 2020, we filed a FOIA lawsuit
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against
Bowser, the District of Columbia Department of Transportation and the
District of Columbia Department of Public Works for records about the
painting of “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” on a
DC street in front of the White House.

In September 2020, we filed a FOIA lawsuit
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against the U.S.
Department of Transportation for records of communication between the
Federal Highway Administration and the District of Columbia’s
Department of Transportation about the painting Black Lives Matter on
16th Street NW near the White House.

CONGRESS INCHES FORWARD ON BIDEN CORRUPTION INQUIRIES

We’ve been probing the suspicious activities of Hunter and Joe Biden
in Ukraine and China for years, and Congressional investigators have
been at it as well. Our chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison
updates
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us
in _Investigative Bulletin_ on what senators and representatives are
learning.

> Congress is fitfully inching forward with investigations that could
> result in the impeachment of President Joseph R. Biden.
>
> In the House impeachment inquiry, Oversight Committee Chairman James
> Comer has subpoenaed
>
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> Hunter Biden, presidential brother James Biden, and key business
> associates. “The House Oversight Committee has followed the money
> and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was
> involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling
> schemes,” Comer said. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is
> going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates
> to question them on this record of evidence.” The committee
> already has produced a remarkable array
>
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of
> witnesses, testimony, and documents showing that Biden family
> members raked in over $24 million from foreign nationals and hid the
> profits in shell companies.
>
> In the Senate, Charles Grassley’s interrogation of Justice
> Department conduct and the Bidens grinds on. In October, Grassley
> released a letter
>
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> with the bombshell claim that the FBI “maintained over 40
> confidential human sources” with “criminal information” on the
> Bidens. Grassley’s letter includes a sweeping request for Justice
> Department documents related to “Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe
> Biden, and the Biden family,” as well as records of actions taken
> (and not taken) by Justice Department and FBI officials in matters
> related to the Bidens. He also indicates he plans to interview “25
> DOJ and FBI personnel” involved in the Biden cases.
>
> Judicial Watch presses on with its own investigations. In June, we
> filed a Freedom of Information Act petition for FBI documents tied
> to a Biden Ukraine corruption probe
>
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>
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And this
> isn’t our first rodeo. From as far back as 2020, we’ve been
> uncovering details of Ukraine corruption
>
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> tied to the Bidens. You can read more about JW’s investigations
> here
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>
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>
> In his latest moves, Comer appears to be zeroing in on the flow of
> funds between James Biden and Joseph Biden, including a personal
> check
>
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> from James Biden to his brother for $200,000. The White House has
> denied any impropriety involving the check, but it’s clear that
> James Biden is emerging as a major target of the House probe.
>
> The biggest paydays for James and Hunter Biden came from
> China—specifically from the energy conglomerate CEFC China
>
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> The total amount, flowing to Biden-connected entities, notes the
> Comer Committee, is “over $8 million.”
>
> In one gigantic payout, in August 2017, soon after Joe Biden left
> the vice presidency, CEFC wired $5 million to a new shell company
> formed by Hunter Biden. The new
>
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>
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>
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> would pursue energy and infrastructure deals. Hunter Biden would
> receive a $500,000 retainer and a $100,000 monthly payment. James
> Biden would be paid $65,000 per month. Hunter quickly got busy in
> Washington setting up a new office for himself and his CEFC
> partners. “Please have keys made available for new office
> mates,” he emailed building management. “Joe Biden, Jill Biden,
> Jim Biden, [and CEFC emissary] Gongwen Dong.”
>
> Was part of the plan also to pay Joe Biden? In an email
>
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> sent to Hunter Biden and others about percentages of profit-sharing
> from the CEFC deal, a key Biden business associate asks, in what
> appears to be a reference to a ten percent share for Joe Biden:
> “10 held by H for the big guy?”
>
> An IRS agent who worked on the Hunter Biden case was pressed about
> that email in July testimony before Congress. He told the House
> Oversight Committee that “all I can do is speak to the evidence
> there” and “that email, ‘ten held by H for the big guy’ and
> from what I understand that to be is his dad, President Biden.”
>
> With Comer focusing on possible crimes, over in the Senate, Chuck
> Grassley is pursuing evidence of the cover-up. In his latest letter
> to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher
> Wray, Grassley writes that “years of investigation…indicate
> there is—and has been—an effort among certain Justice Department
> and FBI officials to improperly delay and stop full and complete
> investigative activity into the Biden family.”
>
> Grassley added: “I’ve been made aware that at one point in time
> the FBI maintained over 40 Confidential Human Sources that provided
> criminal information related to Joe Biden, James Biden, and Hunter
> Biden. An essential question that must be answered is this: did the
> FBI investigate the information or shut it down?”
>
> One key figure on Grassley’s radar is Ukrainian oligarch Mykola
> Zlochevsky, head of the controversial energy company, Burisma.
> Zlochevsky is also a focus of the House impeachment inquiry. But
> while Comer is following the money, Grassley wants to know what the
> FBI did about stunning allegations from the embattled oligarch.
>
> Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma in May 2014 at a salary of
> $1 million per year. By the end of the year, according to a detailed
> Comer Committee timeline
>
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> Zlochevsky was complaining about U.S. “government pressure” and
> urged Biden to contact his father, the vice president. According to
> an interview
>
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> with a Biden business partner released by the committee, Hunter
> Biden did “call DC” after being pressured by Zlochevsky and his
> associates.
>
> Earlier this year, Grassley released a bombshell FBI informant
> report
>
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> of a 2016 meeting with Zlochevsky. In the report, Zlochevsky claimed
> he had been coerced into paying a $10 million bribe to Hunter and
> Joe Biden. It “cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million]
> to another Biden,” the FBI informant reported Zlochevsky saying.
>
> Grassley now wants to know if the FBI buried that report and related
> documents. In his new letter, Grassley notes that in December 2019
> the FBI’s Washington field office “closed” a case into
> “Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, which was opened in January
> 2016 by a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [FBI] squad.”
>
> How serious is the Grassley probe? “Based on the information
> provided to my office over a period of years by multiple credible
> whistleblowers,” the senator writes to Garland and Wray, “there
> appears to be an effort within the Justice Department and FBI to
> shut down investigative activity relating to the Biden family. Such
> decisions point to significant political bias infecting the
> decision-making of not only the Attorney General and FBI Director,
> but also line agents and prosecutors. Our Republic cannot survive
> such a political infection and you have an obligation to this
> country to clear the air.”

SOCIAL SECURITY OVERPAYS BILLIONS UNDER LEADERSHIP OF RACIAL EQUITY
ACTIVIST

Your Social Security Administration is doling out your tax dollars
like they are free money and it’s overpaying people billions of
dollars. Our _Corruption Chronicles _blog has the details
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> Under the leadership of a noted racial equity activist the Social
> Security Administration (SSA) has mistakenly overpaid beneficiaries
> tens of billions of dollars, including a 65% spike in overpayments
> in one year. In 2023 the agency with a stated mission of ensuring
> equity and accessibility by addressing systemic barriers to
> participation and a commitment to providing services to underserved
> communities made a whopping $23 billion in overpayments, according
> to its latest Agency Financial Report
>
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The
> figure is a marked increase over the already stunning $11.1 billion
> in overpayments that SSA erroneously made in 2022.
>
> SSA’s dreadful habit of overpaying billions in benefits goes back
> years as American taxpayers get stuck with the hefty price because
> most of the money is never recovered. In the last few years, the
> agency has doled out between $6 billion and $7 billion in new
> overpayments annually, the new report reveals. It shows that most of
> the 2022 overpayments, around $6.5 billion, occurred within the
> Old-Age Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs which
> provide monthly benefits to qualified retired and disabled workers
> and their dependents and to survivors of insured workers.
> Eligibility and benefit amounts are determined by the worker’s
> contributions to Social Security. In prior years the problem was
> mainly in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program which helps
> low-income elderly and disabled adults as well as children. In 2022
> SSI distributed north of $4.6 billion in overpayments.
>
> At a congressional hearing earlier this year SSA Commissioner Kilolo
> Kijakazi told federal lawmakers that her agency is trying to recover
> the money by sending out millions of “overpayment notices
>
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> to those who erroneously got extra cash. Kijakazi said 1,028,389
> people got the notices in 2022 and 986,912 in fiscal 2023, which
> ended in September. Kijakazi is a renowned racial equity proponent
>
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with a storied career of
> researching—and tackling—structural racism and the racial wealth
> gap in both government and high-profile nonprofits. She has served
> as co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the
> Black-White Wealth Gap at the leftist Center for American Progress
> and on the Washington, D.C. Equitable Recovery Advisory Group. In
> mid-2021 President Joe Biden named Kijakazi acting SSA Commissioner
> after previously appointing her to a lower-level position of deputy
> commissioner for retirement and disability policy.
>
> In the new agency financial report Kijakazi reveals that in 2023 she
> began to rebuild the SSA workforce by adding nearly 4,000 employees,
> yet problems persist. “We made progress toward eliminating our
> hearings backlog,” the commissioner writes in the report’s
> opening message, adding that “we ended FY 2023 with 321,819 cases
> pending, the lowest level since 2000.” The commissioner proceeds
> to highlight all the great things her agency has accomplished,
> including working to eliminate a backlog, reducing wait times for
> claims and improving organizational efficiency. “As good stewards
> of our programs, we strive to reduce improper payments and combat
> waste, fraud and abuse through our quality reviews, cost-effective
> program integrity work, and payment accuracy efforts.” Kijakazi
> ends her opening message by writing that there are “no material
> weaknesses in our internal controls.”
>
> Nevertheless, buried deep in the exhaustive 216-page report the
> agency discloses the billions it has overpaid in the last few years
> despite establishing a special Improper Payment Prevention Team in
> 2019 tasked with developing strategies to determine the underlying
> cause of payment errors and developing corrective action plans. SSA
> issues over $1 trillion in benefit payments annually and preventing
> overpayments can be as simple as providing employees with a
> “comprehensive tool” when calculating benefits manually. In
> fact, SSA found that it could have avoided approximately 73,000
> overpayments totaling more than $368 million in 2022 if it had
> furnished a “comprehensive tool” for employees to do their job
> correctly. “Preventing improper payments is more advantageous than
> recovering them after they are made because SSA does not have to
> expend additional resources to recover the overpayments …” the
> report states.

SOROS-TIED FACEBOOK CENSORS CONSIDER SUPPRESSING ANTI-IMMIGRATION
SPEECH

You may enjoy chatting with friends and looking at pictures of the
grandkids on Facebook without realizing that the “news” you see is
being controlled by left-leaning censors. Our _Corruption Chronicles_
blog reports
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> A few years after Facebook (now Meta) launched a censorship board to
> decide which posts get blocked an update on the panel, which is
> currently inviting public opinion
>
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> on whether to suppress anti-immigration speech, is in order. The
> original board—as well as new members—is stacked with leftists,
> including a close friend of leftwing billionaire George Soros who
> served on the board of directors of his Open Society Foundations
> (OSF). This is important because the oversight board
>
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as it is
> officially known, determines which posts get blocked from the
> world’s most popular social networking website which has an
> estimated 3 billion users.
>
> In a recent example, the Meta censorship board is considering
> whether ant-immigration posts fall under its hate speech policy
> which removes what the tech giant describes as direct attacks
> against people on the basis of protected characteristics such as
> race, ethnicity, national origin and religious affiliation.
> Refugees, migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers are protected
> against “the most severe attacks,” according to the oversight
> board, though “commentary and criticism of immigration policies”
> are reportedly allowed. Now the panel wants public comments
> involving how Meta should distinguish commentary and criticism of
> immigration policies from direct attacks on people based on
> protected characteristics, especially during elections. Board
> members will deliberate the case over the next few weeks, according
> to a statement posted on the Meta oversight website.
>
> Judicial Watch has gathered some important background on the
> characters who will ultimately issue the ruling. For starters the
> group of 22 is overwhelmingly leftist and likely to restrict
> conservative views. Nearly half of the members have ties to Soros,
> the wealthy philanthropist who dedicates huge sums to spreading a
> radical left agenda that includes targeting conservative
> politicians, erasing national borders and identities, financing
> civil unrest and orchestrating refugee crises for political gain.
> Some on the oversight board have made political contributions to top
> Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren
> and others have publicly expressed their disdain for former
> President Donald Trump. Among the panel’s standouts is András
> Sajó, the founding Dean of Legal Studies at Soros’ Central
> European University. Sajó was a judge at the European Court of
> Human Rights (ECHR) for nearly a decade. He also served on the board
> of directors of OSF’s Justice Initiative.
>
> Many on the board are connected to leftist groups tied to Soros that
> have benefitted from his generous donations, according to Judicial
> Watch’s research. Alan Rusbridger, a former British newspaper
> editor and principal at Oxford University, serves on the board of
> directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has
> received at least $750,000 from OSF. Rusbridger also served as a
> governor at a global think tank, Ditchley Foundation, that co-hosted
> a conference with OSF on change in the Middle East and North Africa
> and understanding political Islam. Afia Asantewaa Sariyev, a human
> rights attorney, is the program manager at Soros’ Open Society
> Initiative for West Africa. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, an Indian lawyer
> and civil society activist, runs a nonprofit called Centre for Law
> and Policy Research that focuses on transgender rights, gender
> equality and public health. The group is a grantee of a justice
> foundation that pocketed $1.4 million from OSF.
>
> The list of Meta judges connected to Soros and the organized left
> continues. Julie Owono is the executive director of a Paris-based
> nonprofit that advocates for privacy and freedom of expression
> online. The group is part of the Global Network Initiative, an
> internet oversight and policy consortium handsomely funded by Soros.
> Nighat Dad is a Pakistani attorney and the founder of the Digital
> Rights Foundation, a nonprofit based in Pakistan that has received
> $114,000 in grants from OSF. Civil rights activist Tawakkol Karman
> sits on the advisory board of Transparency International, which gets
> significant OSF funding. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s former
> prime minister, is on the board of the European Council of Foreign
> Relations, which has received millions from OSF. She is also a
> trustee at the International Crisis Group which has collected over
> $8.2 million from OSF and includes George and Alexander Soros on its
> board. Catalina Botero-Marino is the dean of a Colombian law school
> called Universidad de Los Andes that got over $1.3 million from OSF.
> Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, serves on the
> board of directors of the Brennan Center for Justice, which took in
> hundreds of thousands of dollars from OSF in 2021. Suzanne Nossel,
> an Obama administration official, is on the advisory board of the
> leftwing think tank Foreign Policy for America, which has received
> over $1.5 million from Soros in the last few years. Khaled Mansour,
> an Egyptian academic, is a director at the nonprofit Crisis Action,
> which has accepted $2.4 million from OSF since 2017.

Until next week,






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