Judicial Watch Takes on “Cancel Culture”

[WEEKLY UPDATE]

OBAMA OFFICIAL NOTES RUSSIANS TROLLING JOE BIDEN ON SON HUNTER

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Americans weren’t generally aware of Joe and Hunter Biden’s
shenanigans in Ukraine, but Obama’s State Department certainly was,
as was Ukraine, its pro-Russian newspaper sardonically referring to
the soon to be then-Vice President Joe Biden showing up to protect his
son’s business in Ukraine.

We learned this from three pages
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of State Department records. They include a January 17, 2017, email
from George Kent, the Obama administration’s deputy assistant
secretary of state in charge of Ukraine policy, which was copied to
then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, highlighting
Russia-linked media “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s
business.”

We obtained the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit
[[link removed]]
filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S.
Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department
of State _
[[link removed].
1:20-cv-00229)). (The records had been separately released
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to Citizens United.)

An email
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was sent four days prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump
to a redacted recipient and CCd to Yovanovitch with the subject line
“medvedchuk-linked vesti trolls Biden.” Kent writes: “Burisma
– gift that keeps on giving. (With medvedchuk affiliated Vesti
pushing the troll like storyline on visit day)”

Medvedchuk refers to Viktor Medvedchuk
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a Ukrainian
politician, lawyer, business oligarch, and People's Deputy of Ukraine.
He’s considered a Putin ally. Vesti
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is the pro-Russian newspaper in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, served on the
board of directors
[[link removed]]
for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings despite having no previous
experience in the energy industry.

Kent includes a “Review of Ukrainian Printed Press” that includes
the Ukrainian newspaper _Vesti_, which described Biden’s visit to
Ukraine, saying: “Will J. Biden arrive to secure his son’s
business? According to experts, J. Biden, as the unofficial curator of
‘the Ukrainian question’, will give P. Poroshenko recommendations
about working with the new US administration. Another aspect is the
protection of his own business interests.”
On January 17, 2017, Biden was on his sixth visit
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in seven years to Ukraine. When Biden visited Ukraine in 2015
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he threatened to withhold $1 billion if the country’s top prosecutor
was not dismissed. Hunter Biden was under investigation by the
later-fired prosecutor general.

Kent and Yovanovitch were both star witnesses for Democrats in the
Trump impeachment hearings. Kent testified he warned
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the Obama administration about Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma:
“My concern was that there was the possibility of a perception of a
conflict of interest.” Kent answered the questions of Rep. Kathy
Castor (D-FL):

CASTOR: OK, but you know Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma’s board of
directors. At some point you testified in your deposition that you
expressed some concern to the Vice President’s Office. Is that
correct
KENT: That is correct.
CASTOR: And what did they do about that concern that you expressed?
KENT: I have no idea. I reported my concern to the Office of the Vice
President.

In April 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board
[[link removed]]
of the Ukrainian gas company. He served on the board until early 2019.
Burisma, which was under investigation by the Ukrainian government,
stated at the time
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of his hiring that Biden would be “in charge of the Holdings’
legal unit and will provide support for the Company among
international organizations.”

This email shows the Obama State Department had a longstanding concern
about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s Burisma
involvement – and how the Russians were using Biden’s conflicts of
interest to undermine U.S. policy.

WE’RE INVESTIGATING A UNIVERSITY’S ATTEMPT TO CANCEL A PROFESSOR

Our institutions of “higher learning” have become cesspits of
leftist madness. Students and professors are the immediate victims,
but in the end we all are.

We have joined with Legal Insurrection Foundation to file a Florida
public records request for communications at the University of Central
Florida (UCF) related to Professor Charles Negy, who was attacked by
campus leftists and the university administration after he raised
questions about systemic racism.

In August, Legal Insurrection wrote
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that, “After Negy questioned claims of ‘systemic racism’ and
asserted ‘black privilege is real,’ [referring to affirmative
action, etc.] there has been a university-wide pile-on, with Negy
alleging UCF is soliciting complaints against him and conducting an
abusive investigation in an effort to justify firing him.”

The UCF student senate passed a resolution
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asking for Negy’s termination, and there were protests on campus
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and at Negy’s home
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UCF President Alexander Cartwright participated in a campus protest
and also took to social media, tweeting
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“we
do not tolerate hate speech and must be unequivocally anti-racist in
our words, actions and online behavior. Whenever we find
discrimination in our community, we will take decisive action to stamp
it out.”
Michael Johnson, the interim provost, told _The New York Times_
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that Negy’s views are “vile.”

Negy reportedly
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“has worked at UCF since 1998 and earned tenure in 2001, a status
that can make it harder to fire him.”

The public records request asks for records mentioning Negy,
Cartwright, and other university officials, as well as communications
with governmental and professional academic organizations regarding
Negy.

“The scourge of cancel culture won't be cured in a matter of days,
weeks, or even months. But sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we
are committed to shining a light on the Negy case and other cases as
well,” said William Jacobson, president, Legal Insurrection
Foundation
[[link removed]].

I’ll add that freedom of speech is under attack at the very
institutions that should be encouraging it. Intellectual discourse on
college campuses has now been replaced by angry mobs trying to silence
and end the careers of professors who dissent from left-wing ideology.

STATES, CITIES PLAY GAMES WITH POST 911 DRIVER’S LICENSE LAW

Following the example of the Obama administration, states and cities
– notably Washington DC -- have not taken seriously a 2005 law
designed to protect against terrorists using driver’s licenses to
attack us. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog has the details
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It took nearly two decades after the worst terrorist attack on U.S.
soil for every state to finally comply with a federal law requiring
minimum security standards for driver’s licenses and identification
cards. The measure, known as the REAL ID Act
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was
passed by Congress after 9/11 to establish a more secure national
system less prone to fraud after several of the hijackers exploited
loopholes to obtain dozens of driver’s licenses from various states.
The cards allowed them to take flight lessons and board planes to
carry out the 2001 attacks. At the recommendation of the 9/11
Commission
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Congress passed the
law in 2005 and states originally had until 2011 to comply, though the
Obama administration tried to drastically weaken the legislation.
Obama Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted a 20-month
extension on the deadline as she worked behind the scenes to undermine
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the Real ID Act, asserting that it violates civil liberties and
privacy.

The measure’s crucial verification process requires states to
certify the authenticity of every driver’s license applicant by
requiring that documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, be
submitted to get the card are legitimate and that the applicant is in
the United States legally. It also calls for a newly created federal
database to link all licensing information that must be checked before
states issue new cards. This will establish a much-needed standardized
national driver’s license system less vulnerable to fraud and will
prevent terrorists from abusing it as did September 11 hijackers. Once
the law is fully enforced, federal agencies will be prohibited from
accepting driver’s licenses or ID cards from noncompliant states for
official purposes, including boarding an aircraft, accessing a federal
facility, and entering a nuclear power plant.

Of interesting note is that about a dozen states—including Arkansas,
California, Maine, and Oregon—offer gender-neutral licenses and ID
cards in violation of the REAL ID Act. So does Washington D.C.’s
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famously corrupt local government. Nevertheless, Title II
[[link removed]]
of the act
specifically states that “features on each driver’s license and
identification card issued to a person by the State” must include:
The person’s full legal name; the person’s date of birth; the
person’s gender; the person’s driver’s license or identification
card number; a digital photograph of the person; the person’s
address of principle residence; the person’s signature; physical
security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting or
duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes; a common
machine-readable technology with defined minimum data elements.

It is not clear how the feds will handle the gender-neutral licenses,
which in most cases include choices such as “non-binary” and
“undesignated.” In D.C., depending on what option is chosen, an
“X” appears on the card in the place of an “M” for male or
“F” for female. Some states—including Georgia, Montana, New
Mexico, Washington, and Wyoming—resisted complying with the REAL ID
Act altogether and vowed to pass bills ordering officials to ignore
the measure. Other states, such as California, implemented legislation
to give special driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants who will not
meet the security standards under the federal law. Thankfully, the
Trump administration cemented a deadline for all states to comply with
the crucial anti-terrorism law enacted a decade and a half ago to
protect the nation from another attack. Incredibly, some federal
lawmakers are still trying to buy more time. Among them is Louisiana
Republican Senator John Kennedy, who wrote a letter to the president
earlier this year claiming that “Real America needs a REAL ID
extension
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to avoid disrupting “the lives or livelihoods of hardworking
citizens.”

This month the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delivered the
good news
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all 50 states are finally in full compliance with the REAL ID Act,
with most states becoming compliant in the last four years under
pressure from the Trump administration. “To date, the 50 states have
issued more than 105 million REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and
identification cards, representing 38 percent of all driver’s
licenses and identification card holders,” according to the
announcement issued by DHS. In less than a year full enforcement of
REAL ID will take effect at all federally regulated airports, federal
facilities and nuclear power plants, the bulletin further states. That
means federal agencies, such as the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA), will be prohibited from accepting licenses and
ID cards that do not meet the law’s standards. It only took 15 years
after Congress passed the legislation and nearly two decades since
Islamic terrorists attacked the nation.


SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY TO HOST TERRORISTS

I really don’t know how parents and their children decide on a
university today, given the anti-American leftist ideologues that
control too many college campuses. Even terrorists are raised up by
the campus radical. Our _Corruption Chronicles_ blog details
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the latest outrage.

A webinar event billed as “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, &
Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled
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is scheduled for September 23, 2020. San Francisco State University
Professor Rabab Abdulhadi and Professor Tomomi Kinukawa are hosting
the open classroom Internet event described as: a historic roundtable
conversation with Palestinian feminist, militant, and leader Leila
Khaled, followed by Q&A discussion with students, activists, and
scholars at 12:30-2:30 pm PST (3:30-5:30 pm New York, and
10:30pm-12:30 am in Palestine and Jordan).

While Leila Khaled is not a specially designated terrorist, the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a designated
organization – and Khaled is a member of the terrorist
organization’s politburo. Because it is an online event, there are
no issues related to her admissibility to the U.S. Khaled has spoken
in Europe several times (including at an EU conference in Brussels in
2017), but was denied entry to Italy the same year.

In 2018, the co-chair of the Portland Democratic Socialists of America
featured a famous photo of Khaled holding an AK-47 during the
hijacking of TWA 840 on her Twitter banner and tweeted that, “Khaled
never harmed a single human being
[[link removed].
She has recently tweeted support of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and
the Portland riots.

The event is also scheduled to feature South African politician Ronnie
Kasrils. He was the country’s Minister of Intelligence, an executive
committee member of the African National Congress, and a member of the
Central Committee of South Africa’s Communist Party. He was
previously an advisor to Hamas
[[link removed]].


Another speaker at the event, Sekou Odinga, is a Black Panthers
revolutionary who was convicted of six counts of attempted murder of a
police officer and RICO charges related to his role in breaking a
fellow Panther (who had been convicted of killing a New Jersey State
Trooper) out of prison. He was paroled in 2014
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Former Weather Underground and SDS member Laura Whitehorn is also
scheduled to participate. She was convicted for her role in the 1983
bombing of the U.S. Senate and sentenced to 20 years.

Event moderator Rahab Abdulhadi is a Professor and Director of the
Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas/Race and Resistance
initiative at SFSU. She has an extremely long history of
Palestinian/anti-Jewish activism, including establishing ties between
SFSU
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and
Hamas
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universities. In 2014, she led a university-funded delegation
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of academics to the Middle
East that met with Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of an
organization that supports Hamas.

Co-sponsors of the event include the Marxist Workers World Party and
leading BDS organization Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right to Return
Coalition, which has called for the elimination of Israel and
earlier this year had its GoFundMe account terminated
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on account of its anti-Semitic views.

SFSU President Lynn Mahoney seems to be a run-of-the-mill leftist
academic. Previously, Mahoney was Provost and V.P. at California State
University in Los Angeles and held various positions at CSU in Long
Beach.

San Francisco State describes
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itself as “a public urban university with a conscience.” It can
cost
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up to $30,652 a year to
attend. So tuition and tax dollars are used to promote terrorists at a
public university. We will continue to investigate…

Until next week,



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