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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
MPs discuss Hezbollah arms, Israeli violations, and US intervention in plenary session — Naharnet
2025-07-17
[NAHARNET] Lawmakers convened Wednesday for the second day in Parliament to debate the government's policies. During the session, MPs mainly discussed Hezbollah's arms and Israeli violations and renewed confidence in the Lebanese government.

The no-confidence vote was proposed by Free Patriotic chief Jebran Bassil. Sixty-nine MPs gave a vote of confidence to the government, nine FPM MPs voted against it, and four MPs abstained.

Many MPs on Tuesday and Wednesday called for Hezbollah's disarmament while Hezbollah MP Ibrahim al-Moussawi said "We all know that the army is not allowed to have defensive weapons to protect the country against the enemy."

- AMAL MP SAYS GOV. NOT DOING ENOUGH TO PROTECT LEBANESE -

Amal MP Ali Hassan Khalil and Hezbollah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan criticized the government for not doing enough to prevent the Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement reached in late November.

"We haven't felt that the government is working responsibly and seriously to prevent the collapse of the ceasefire agreement," Khalil said, adding that "the open discussion about arms must continue, but responsibly" and that the government must also discuss the reconstruction of war-hit regions.

Khalil said in Hezbollah's defense that "the resistance was never an independent project but rather a reaction that emerged when the national defense system failed to protect illusory illusory sovereignty, especially in the south."

- HEZBOLLAH DISARMAMENT -

Lebanese Forces
A Christian political party founded by Bashir Gemayel, who was then bumped off when he was elected president of Leb...

MP George Adwan criticized Tuesday the government's lack of progress in restoring the state's authority and disarming Hezbollah, while Free Patriotic Movement
Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic...
leader MP Jebran Bassil said he supports Hezbollah's disarmament but not by force.

MP Fouad Makhzoumi called for Hezbollah's disarmament and proposed to discuss it in a cabinet session and independent MP Neemat Frem said Hezbollah's arms must not be destroyed or given to Israel, but handed over to the Lebanese army.

- US INTERVENTION -

Hajj Hassan for his part accused the U.S. of intervening in Lebanese affairs. He said that some Lebanese parties are serving the American and Israeli narratives and failing to see the Israeli threats.

MP Oussama Saad also said the American mediators are biased to Israel and pressuring Leb
. "We will not argue about the handover of weapons to the state," but "the Israeli occupation cannot be ignored."

On Tuesday, MP Jamil al-Sayyed criticized U.S. envoys Amos Hochstein, Morgan Ortagus, and Tom Barrack, who he said "threatened Leb
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....
with civil war". "It's as if we've become an experimental field for these envoys."

- NO FOREIGN DICTATIONS -


Prime Minister Nawaf Salam denied any foreign dictations and vowed to continue working on extending the state's authority north and south of the Litani River and to pressure Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territories and stop its aggressions.










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Government Corruption
Autopen-gate: Top Jill Biden aide takes the Fifth
2025-07-17
[X]



Anthony Bernal refused to answer when asked ‘Was Joe Biden fit to exercise the duties of the president?’

Bernal’s refusal to testify solidifies a pattern in the GOP probe: The former president’s White House doctor, Kevin O’Connor, also invoked his Fifth Amendment right as well as physician-patient privilege during a closed-door July 9 interview.

O’Connor gave Biden clean bills of health throughout his term, calling him "a healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the president" in November 2021. Four months before Biden’s debate with Trump, O’Connor declared the then-president "fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency," even though he had not administered "a cognitive test because he 'did not believe the science required him to,'" according to Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book Original Sin.

Bernal and O’Connor’s refusal to testify follows numerous reports that have shed light on Biden’s mental and physical decline.

Related:
Anthony Bernal 07/07/2025 Miranda Devine: How the Biden admin ‘weaponized' the justice system against Trump aide Peter Navarro
Anthony Bernal 06/26/2025 Biden aide ditching House Oversight probe on his mental decline
Anthony Bernal 06/14/2025 Tim Walz Stuns Critics by Calling China the World's 'Moral Authority' Amid Rising Tensions Over Iran

Related:
Kevin O’Connor 07/09/2025 Former Biden doctor asks House panel to delay his testimony, citing doctor-patient privilege
Kevin O’Connor 05/25/2025 House Oversight Chair Wants To Question Biden Handlers Acting As ‘De Facto Presidents'
Kevin O’Connor 07/07/2024 What you need to know about Biden's White House doctor

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Home Front: WoT
Either These Guys Were Very, Very Lost, Or They Were Up to No Good
2025-07-16
[PJMedia] After the U.S. strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, there was considerable concern about sleeper cells within the U.S. being activated; now it is clear that they’re not the only threat from Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
that American officials have to be worried about. Are agents of the Islamic Theocratic Republic also taking advantage of the still-vulnerable northern border? A news item on Tuesday certainly suggested as much.

Fox News reported that "a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) front man confirmed Tuesday that five Iranians were arrested while attempting to illegally cross the U.S. northern border with Canada." CBP's Swanton Sector stated that "on July 1, Border Patrol Agents from the Champlain, New York Station, responded to suspicious activity near Mooers Forks, NY. Agents located a minivan occupied by five citizens of Iran and two citizens of Uzbekistan." Swanton, Vt., is a small town just south of the U.S.-Canadian border.

It's important not to jump to conclusions. Maybe these guys were really, really lost. Or maybe they were sneaking across the border in search of a better life, ready to do the jobs that Americans aren’t willing to do. It’s also a genuine possibility, however, that they were coming into the United States to try to make good on what by now are repeated threats from the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran to assassinate President Donald Trump
...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...
, along with members of his administration.

Increasing the suspicious aspect of this incident is the fact that "CBP said that all seven men had been previously arrested for attempting to cross the border illegally." Now, however, because Donald Trump is president rather than Old Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Old, boring, a plagiarist, fond of hair sniffing and grabbing the protruding parts of women, and not whatcha call brilliant....
’s autopen, "all seven aliens are detained and awaiting deportation." One hopes that none of them will ever see delightful Swanton ever again.

This comes amid concerns that the Islamic Theocratic Republic is bent on avenging the strikes on its nuclear program with strikes of its own inside the U.S. Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI special agent, explained: "Where these sleeper cells may be is in plain sight. And that's the real terrifying part of this is that putting people in place, as we've seen over the past four years, everyone's scrambling because certain amounts of people could come in here and get in here."

Old Joe Biden’s border free-for-all helped bring this situation about, as Gilliam noted: "They could even go to the border and say they [want to] seek asylum, and the Biden administration, instead of putting them into DHS housing or ICE housing and holding them there so they could have their first appearance, to be vetted and whether or not they get asylum," would allow them to walk freely into the country. Despite the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts, many of them are still here.

Their gratitude toward the U.S. for taking them in when they were in their hour of need cannot be taken for granted. Back in November 2024, an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps operative, Farhad Shakeri, was indicted for plotting to kill Trump. And in 2021, the Islamic Theocratic Republic mounted an audacious operation to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an Iranian dissident, in New York City and take her back to the Islamic Theocratic Republic, where she would have faced imprisonment, torture, and possibly even judicial murder.

Fox noted that the rogue regime in Tehran does this sort of thing in other countries as well: In 2023, "a United Kingdom court found a man guilty of attempting to collect information for terrorist purposes on the London-based Iran International, a media company that is critical of the Iranian regime." And "in recent years, Albania, Belgium, and the Netherlands have all either arrested, convicted, or expelled Iranian government officials implicated in various terrorist plots in their respective territories. Denmark similarly recalled its ambassador from Tehran after learning of an Iran-backed plot to kill an Iranian dissident in that country."
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Government Corruption
Dr. Fauci referred to top prosecutor for criminal charges after bombshell Biden autopen pardon revelation
2025-07-15
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Republican Rand Paul is redoubling his efforts in his investigation into the man who led America's COVID-19 response, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The Kentucky senator, who has grilled Fauci about the pandemic since 2021, is demanding that he be criminally prosecuted for lying to Congress in light of new shocking details about his presidential pardon.

Fauci was granted a preemptive pardon by ex-President Joe Biden as he left office, which could shield him from some consequences related to the pandemic.

But Biden admitted the pardon was signed by autopen, and not himself, raising questions about his mental state as he issued the sweeping relief for Fauci.

'If the President didn’t authorize this pardon personally, then the Department has a duty to investigate and prosecute as it would any ordinary citizen,' Paul wrote in a post on X made Monday afternoon, announcing his latest legal move against Fauci.

Paul told the Daily Mail last month that he was preparing to subpoena Fauci as part of an expanded Senate investigation into the origins of Covid-19 and US-funded research in Wuhan, China.

The goal: scrutinize Fauci's role in approving controversial virus experiments.

Paul announced earlier on Monday that he would 'reissue [his] criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!'
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Atlanta got its MLB All-Star Game back. But controversial laws 'haven't changed'
2025-07-15
[USAtoday] The 2021 All-Star Game was yanked after Georgia passed controversial voting laws. Why did MLB give it back?

ATLANTA — The All-Star Game is back on in Georgia. But the conditions that caused its removal in 2021 have not changed.

In fact, voting rights experts say, conditions have only worsened for potentially disenfranchised voters.
Stacey Abrams hardest hit. She was a big fat mouf pushing the removal of the ASG
The eyes of the baseball world will be on Truist Park in suburban Cobb County July 15, when Major League Baseball’s 95th All-Star Game is played, four years after the league moved the game in the wake of Georgia passing the Election Integrity Act. State Bill 202 rolled back voting by mail and other absentee ballot options and prohibited distribution of food and water to those standing in line to vote — actions that historically would have greatest impact on Black voters.

"I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft," commissioner Rob Manfred said then. "Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box."

Manfred’s action came three days after President Joe Biden said he’d support moving the game out of Atlanta. Given MLB’s actions to remove the term "diversity" from a careers page earlier this year in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order against such efforts, a charitable interpretation would suggest Manfred, as he’s stated, is most concerned with complying with federal law and the whims of the current chief executive.

Yet the game was returned to Atlanta in November 2023, two years after the Braves — who’d go on to win the 2021 World Series — and Georgia politicians blistered MLB’s decision, with Gov. Brian Kemp declaring that "cancel culture and woke political activists are coming for every aspect of your life, sports included."

Kemp struck a tone of appeasement when the game was returned, noting in a statement that "Georgia’s voting laws haven’t changed, but it’s good to see the MLB’s misguided understanding of them has."

In returning the game to Georgia, Manfred leaned into the host team’s chops, if you will, while striking an apolitical tone.

"I've said it before, we wanted to bring an All-Star Game back to Atlanta," Manfred said at the owners’ meetings in Arlington, Texas. "I made a decision in 2021 to move the event and I understand, believe me, that people had then and probably still have different views as to the merits of that decision.

"What's most important is that the Atlanta Braves are a great organization. Truist Park and The Battery are gems in terms of the facilities, and Atlanta and Georgia have been great markets for us for a very, very long time. Atlanta deserves an All-Star Game, and we're really looking forward to being there in 2025."
Related:
All-Star Game 08/24/2023 Thought Indicting Trump Was The Only Way The DOJ Interferes In Elections? Think Again
All-Star Game 09/27/2022 White House says it wants Atlanta Braves name change… on same day Biden hosts team
All-Star Game 09/01/2022 Report: 20 MLB Teams ‘Promote or Fund' Groups that Perform Child Sex Change Operations

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Science & Technology
NIH Director Bhattacharya warns U.S. taxpayers are funding science journals compromised by China
2025-07-14
[JustTheNews] Publisher behind 'Proximal Origin' paper that dismissed lab leak, covertly shaped by Collins and Fauci, reportedly flush with Chinese money. "What exact service is being provided" for massive publishing fees, Bhattacharya wonders.

The National Institutes of Health isn't just concerned about how much taxpayers are spending to read scientific and medical journals where the published research has already been funded by taxpayers. It wants to know more about publishers' possible ties to hostile powers.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a cap starting this fall on how much journals can charge "NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible" and told investigative journalist Paul Thacker the fees prop up Germany-based publisher Springer Nature, which has a "tremendous investment and interest in the Chinese scientific establishment."

The 3,000-journal publishing behemoth declined to confirm to Fox News last month the Trump administration terminated one contract and didn't renew three others, claiming there was "no material change" to its "global business."

One of its journals is Nature Medicine, which published the "Proximal Origin" paper dismissing a COVID-19 lab leak from China after forcing the coauthors to completely rule out the plausibility of a leak as a condition of publishing it.

The paper was covertly shaped by Bhattacharya predecessor Francis Collins and then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who funded the research that may have unleashed the pandemic with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sought information from Nature Medicine this spring, suggesting it committed a quid pro quo with Collins and Fauci, who soon after gave coauthor Kristian Andersen federal grants, by leaving their names off "Proximal Origin."

Springer Nature also publishes Scientific American and Nature, which both endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020. The former tried to quash the Chinese lab-leak theory as "xenophobia."

ESTIMATED $2.5 BILLION IN OPEN-ACCESS FEES IN 2023
Bhattacharya's announcement Tuesday, two months after rushing a new policy to immediately make public NIH-funded research, said major publishers charge up to $13,000 per article for "immediate open access" on top of subscription fees, apparently referring to Nature's "gold open access" option.

He said "one publishing group reportedly" got more than $2 million from NIH subscriptions, not including "tens of millions more through exclusive article processing charges." A Canadian study estimated the six largest publishers charged more than $2.5 billion in open-access fees in 2023, nearly triple the spending from 2019.

Bhattacharya said he once pulled his own "self-funded" paper from a journal after realizing it charged an "exorbitant" publishing fee.

"Big publishers – Springer Nature, Elsevier – have effective monopoly power" over scientific publishing, and it's "crazy" to charge so much for just "putting it out there on the internet" when most journals don't pay scientific reviewers and pay their editors "very little," Bhattacharya told Thacker. "So what exact service is being provided?"

The new cap will keep publication fees "reasonable across the research ecosystem," NIH said. Asked for a more specific figure, Bhattacharya told Just the News "we're still working that out … No firm number yet."

'ESSENTIALLY TAKING THE CHINESE AT THEIR WORD'
Bhattacharya called out Springer Nature as tainted by Chinese government influence when Thacker asked how "Proximal Origin" had still not been corrected to note the participation of Fauci, Collins and World Health Organization chief scientist Jeremy Farrar, who convened the authors and made a key change to the paper.

"Essentially taking the Chinese at their word," the paper was published "very early in the pandemic and somehow concluded on the basis of very, very flimsy if any evidence" that SARS-CoV-2 must have come from a wet market, he said.

Thacker noted 2017 reporting by the Financial Times that Springer Nature blocked at least a thousand academic articles in China mentioning "sensitive" subjects to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and 2021 Unherd reporting that Chinese institutions paid Springer Nature an estimated $10 million in sponsorship agreements the previous year.

HHS sources told Thacker, a former Senate pharmaceutical corruption investigator, the agency is looking at CCP influence on U.S. science agencies and universities as well, he said.

"I don't want to paint with too broad a brush" about scientists in China and Chinese scientists in the U.S., Bhattacharya said. "But we are in a competition with the Chinese establishment for the preeminent position of biomedical sciences in the 21st century" and "have to think carefully and strategically about our links with the Chinese government."

The NIH director declined to comment on "any ongoing investigations" when Thacker noted in his reporting last month that the Justice Department is investigating a federal grant to a viral "spillover" research program that includes "Proximal Origin" coauthor Andersen.

'WE NEED A PROFESSIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATION'
Andersen was "in the process of fleeing" the U.S. amid the DOJ investigation, and Norwegian molecular biologist Sigrid Bratlie claimed "several sources" told her that University of Oslo scientists were trying to recruit Andersen, according to Thacker.

A public records production to public health watchdog U.S. Right to Know revealed that Andersen was one of the scientists cited in an unclassified State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research report, obtained by Thacker, that came out a week after "Proximal Origin."

Those scientists gave a briefing to the department that claimed "available genomic evidence" shows SARS-CoV-2 "probably emerged naturally in an animal," the unclassified report said.

A Dec. 4, 2020, email from State official David Feith, whom President Trump fired this April, relayed that Andersen sai in the briefing his initial doubts about SARS-CoV-2 being fully natural were "put to rest by more detailed analysis," which contradicted what Andersen told his coauthors a month after the briefing.

While Andersen, who claims to hold dual Danish and U.S. citizenship, told the San Diego Union-Tribune he has "considered leaving the United States" following NIH's ban on foreign subawards and NIAID cutting the spigot to his spillover research as "unsafe for Americans," he denied he had accepted a post at the University of Oslo.

“Did we have a foreign national parading into the intel agencies and convincing senior officials to not look into a matter?” an unnamed State official told Thacker. "That’s a counter-intelligence matter. We need a professional law enforcement investigation."
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Home Front: Politix
Trump Calls 'Epstein List' Democrats' Fabrication Against Him
2025-07-14
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
See also here.
[Regnum] Supporters of the American Democratic Party have invented documents related to financier Jeffrey Epstein. This was stated by US President Donald Trump.

"For years, Epstein, over and over again. Why release documents written by [former US President Barack ] Obama, corrupt [former Secretary of State] Hillary [ Clinton ]... They created the Epstein dossier, like they created the Hillary Clinton fake and the [former British intelligence officer] Christopher Steele dossier that they used against me," he wrote on the social network Truth Social.

The head of the White House clarified that the Democrats invented the Epstein dossier together with the former heads of the CIA and FBI and representatives of the administration of former President Joe Biden. According to him, if there was anything in the documents, they would have been published.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, the US Justice Department and the FBI had previously concluded that there was no evidence that Epstein, who was convicted of sexual crimes against minors, blackmailed influential people and kept a so-called client list. On July 8, the White House denied the existence of Epstein's "compromising list."

However, American entrepreneur Elon Musk expressed doubt and said that Americans would not be able to trust the US president if he refused to publish documents on the case.

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Government Corruption
John Brennan's Checkered Past Comes Back to Haunt Him Amid DOJ Investigation
2025-07-12
[Self Reliance Central] Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Trump Department of Justice have said they are running an investigation into James Comey’s and John Brennan’s careers as the respective FBI director and the CIA head during the Obama administration and, in the case of Comey, the first year of the Trump administration.

They are very angry about this, but let’s just review why there might be some culpability.

Take John Brennan. He was a big proponent of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation under President George W. Bush’s administration and the things that went on in Guantanamo. I’m not gonna comment on whether they were right or wrong. But he flipped to condition himself to go into the Obama administration, and then he attacked the very president that he had served, George Bush.

Then he began sounding off about Islam—"Religion of Peace"; "Jihadism is not a violent act"—to condition himself further to be appointed by President Barack Obama, which he was, eventually, a CIA director. But then he started lying. I mean, he always probably lied, but I mean, flagrantly so.

He said before Congress and the media there wasn’t one civilian killed by Obama’s targeted assassination program via Predators on the Afghan or Pakistan border. Actually, there were 50 or 75 innocent people we killed. He was caught in that lie.

Three years later, he went before the Congress and there was information that he had been tapping, his CIA, the staffers for the Senate to get into their computers. He not only lied about it, he did so emphatically—"Oh, we would never do that. That’s horrible." Then he was forced to say, "Yes, I lied." In both cases, there were no perjury charges, nothing.

The pièce de résistance for John Brennan was in October 2020, on the eve of the second and critical presidential debate, Joe Biden was in trouble. People were furious about this laptop. There was pornography on it. There was drug use. There were references to Joe Biden as "Mr. Big Guy." Ten percent that he’d been giving money. He was crooked. People wanted to hear, he had no excuse.

So, what happened? Antony Blinken, his future secretary of state, campaign aid, called Michael Morell, interim CIA director at one point, said, "Round them up."

So, 51 "intelligence authorities" swore the laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian information. Notice the words: All the hallmarks, escape clause, of Russian information. Not disinformation, but that’s what they meant.

So, what happened in the debate? Donald Trump went right after Biden and said, "That laptop is real. It shows that you’re a crook. It shows your son is a miscreant."

And Joe Biden’s, "How dare you? Fifty-one Intelligence authorities swear that it’s a product of Russian espionage. Only you and Rudy Giuliani believe that." And it was effective.
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Economy
American Economic Optimism Rises to Highest Levels in Years
2025-07-12
[Breitbart] You would never know it scrolling through the gloomy headlines of the financial press or listening to the nabobs natter negatively on the business television channels. Even the better-than-expected news on the labor market released last week was presented as not really all that good, with liberal analysts and pundits somehow complaining with a straight face that there were too many government jobs cluttering up the employment report. More jobs going to Americans than foreigners? They’re calling that a labor shortage. Any good news is transitory or illusory or merely a headfake.

In a way, it is the photographic negative of the vibecession narrative pushed relentlessly during the Biden administration. The cable networks and financial news outlets insisted that the economy was much better under Joe Biden than the public was willing to admit. People were not happy about the economy because of the "vibes" rather than any actual facts about the economy, the story went.

If the vibecession ever existed, it is now definitively over. The latest polling shows that Americans are now feeling good vibrations about the U.S. economy. Civiqs, a daily online tracking poll that measures public opinion with demographic weighting and trend smoothing, is showing some of the best numbers in years.

MORE PEOPLE ARE HAPPIER ABOUT THEIR FAMILY FINANCES AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY
Let’s start with the question of personal finances. When asked how a family’s financial situation has developed over the last year, 19 percent say it has gotten better. While that’s not overwhelmingly positive, it is the highest share saying things have improved since 2021. In other words, Americans haven’t felt this much improvement since we were coming out of the pandemic.
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Home Front: Politix
Inside longtime Biden aide's marathon closed-door grilling in House GOP cover-up probe
2025-07-12
[FoxNews] Ashley Williams said she could not recall things 'an untold number of times,' a source said

Ashley Williams, a longtime ally of former President Joe Biden, met with House investigators behind closed doors for nearly six hours Friday as Republicans probe allegations the Democrat's top aides hid his mental decline.

A source familiar with the transcribed interview told Fox News Digital Williams said she did not "recall" various things "an untold number of times."

"Examples include she could not recall if she spoke with President Biden in the last week, if teleprompters were used for Cabinet meetings, if there were discussions about President Biden using a wheelchair, if there were discussions about a cognitive test, if she discussed a mental or physical decline of President Biden, if she ever had to wake President Biden up and how she got involved with his 2020 campaign," the source said.

Williams told House investigators Biden is fit to be president today, the source said.
The lady does not sound competent to work in the White House. White House aides need to be sharp, and with such a poor memory and lack of insight she can’t possibly be.
In addition to whether senior aides covered up Biden's alleged decline, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is looking into whether any presidential orders were signed via autopen without the former commander in chief's knowledge.

Any allegations of wrongdoing so far have been denied by the ex-president's allies.

But Republican investigators have pointed to Biden's disastrous June 2024 debate and subsequent revelations in the media that there were more concerns from Biden's inner circle about his fitness for office than previously known.

Williams, however, argued he was in command of himself during that debate, the source said.

The former White House aide said nothing to reporters when entering or leaving the committee meeting room for her voluntary interview.

Fox News Digital reached out to Williams' lawyers for their account of events inside the room.

It was a staff-led meeting, but Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, briefly stopped in for just under 30 minutes to show "solidarity" with the witness, the progressive told reporters afterward.

"I do think that it is important that I show up because if they are going to make allegations about the former commander in chief, egregious allegations they continue to wage, I want to make sure that I'm in the room to correct the record because a lot of times they like to mischaracterize things," she said.

When asked by Fox News Digital if the interview was still ongoing as she exited, Crockett answered, "It's still going. I'm leaving early. I've got to get to another thing."

The source who spoke with Fox News Digital said Crockett had come in during the GOP's questioning session and did not ask any questions herself. Fox News Digital reached out to her office for a response.

Williams is a longtime Biden ally whose time with the Democrat goes back to assisting second lady Jill Biden during the Obama administration, according to a 2019 profile of Biden staffers.

Williams later worked for Biden’s 2020 campaign and presidential transition team. She served as his trip director before being hired by the White House as deputy director of Oval Office operations and a special assistant to the president.
Related:
Ashley Williams 05/26/2025 Confused, Starving Reporters Now Desperate for Food After Killing American Journalism
Ashley Williams 05/23/2025 The Walls Are Closing in on Biden's Inner Circle
Ashley Williams 04/30/2012 Sudan arrests foreigners in disputed Heglig

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Trump to Use Presidential Authority to Send Weapons to Ukraine
2025-07-11
[X]
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Nobel Prize Missed: Why Trump and Netanyahu Didn't Reach an Agreement
2025-07-11
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov

[REGNUM] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has completed a working visit to the United States. His July trip to Washington took place largely behind the cameras, and information about the results of the meetings was given to the press in extremely measured doses.

There were also no promising public statements, without which no major visit by an Israeli prime minister has taken place before. Netanyahu left Washington virtually incognito, without holding a major press approach on the White House lawn.

And while Israeli officials are calling the visit "historic and groundbreaking," both Washington and Tel Aviv appear to have remained unconvinced.

"GREAT VICTORY"
One of the main topics of the Israeli Prime Minister's conversation with US President Donald Trump and other high-ranking American officials was summing up the results of the June "Lion Force" operation against Iran.

Netanyahu expressed gratitude to the Republicans for their determination in the fight against the “Iranian threat” and, as a sign of gratitude for their contribution to the “great victory,” presented Trump with a symbolic gift: a mezuzah (a scroll with text from the Torah in a decorative case for hanging on a door frame. — Ed.) in the shape of a B-2 bomber, made from a fragment of an Iranian ballistic missile.

In addition, the Israeli Prime Minister announced his nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, with the wording “for his significant mediation efforts in resolving the conflict between Iran and Israel.”

This is already the third nomination for the Republican in his new term (previously, the Pakistani government and Republican member of the US House of Representatives Darrell Issa expressed similar intentions ) and the second on the Middle East track; the American leader is already among the favorites in the informal rating of candidates - at least, this is what the Western press is convinced of.

Tel Aviv has found an elegant way to thank the White House for its timely intervention in the recent conflict.

At the same time, Israel felt it necessary to convey its concerns to the United States: the rate of restoration of Iranian nuclear facilities damaged as a result of the joint bombings turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than initially predicted, which means that new preemptive actions may soon be required.

Here, Netanyahu tried to draw attention to himself, convincing Trump to allow Tel Aviv to act against Iran and its regional allies unilaterally, without coordinating new operations.

The US responded to the request in a very vague manner.

On the one hand, Trump praised the Israelis for their persistence and willingness to defend the existing balance of power, promising “full support” and protection.

On the other hand, Washington is well aware of the growth of revanchist sentiments in Iran - the growing public demand for nuclear weapons and attempts by individual clerics to legitimize the "vendetta" against the initiators of the June campaign. And therefore the White House has not made any specific promises to the public.

The question of whether Netanyahu secured Trump's consent behind the scenes also remains open.

FRIENDSHIP OUTLINE
It is noteworthy that during the extensive work program, the topic of normalizing Israel's relations with Arab countries was barely touched upon, although it was previously considered the "calling card" of the Trump administration. There was almost no talk about new expansions of the "club of friends", limiting themselves to pleasantries addressed to Morocco and the Arabian partners - Bahrain and the UAE.

Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv want to bring the issue to the forefront, since Syria is considered “first in line” for normalization.

The transitional government of Ahmed al-Sharaa is actively making contact with the Israeli authorities and, judging by the latest leaks, is even ready to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for stabilization of the situation.

In support of these aspirations, the US and EU countries have even loosened the sanctions noose around Damascus's neck. However, the general instability of the new Syrian regime and internal strife are preventing rapid progress in the negotiations.

Other potential candidates for a reset – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman – have maintained a marked neutrality and are in no hurry to get closer to Israel even under US pressure for fear of falling into Tehran’s crosshairs.

THE STUMBLING BLOCK CORRIDOR
The situation in the Gaza Strip was much more actively discussed: the parties were unable to finally agree on the outlines of a deal to cease fire in the enclave. Although the White House clearly expected to make a statement about the deal at the end of Netanyahu's visit.

The stumbling block, as expected, was the “Morag Corridor” – a strategic security strip built by Israeli troops along the Egyptian border south of the Palestinian Khan Yunis.

The US is convinced that the deployment of the army in close proximity to Palestinian areas hinders the delivery of humanitarian aid to the enclave and, moreover, endangers American NGO workers, who are now the majority in Gaza, and therefore Israel should leave Morag as a gesture of goodwill.

Tel Aviv does not want to repeat the mistakes of the “first deal,” which was concluded with the mediation of Joe Biden, and counters that “Hamas terrorist agents” will immediately flood into the abandoned security corridor.

The continued presence in the Gaza Strip is explained by the role of “volunteer gendarme” that the Israeli authorities have taken on: they will be ready to reduce the contingent only if the entire leadership of the Palestinian resistance leaves the enclave, and the new leaders undergo “preliminary filtration.”

For these purposes, Tel Aviv is even ready to build a “city within a city” in the Rafah area for interned Palestinians (there are currently about 600 thousand of them). Neither Washington nor its Arab partners from among the “trustees” of Gaza like this option, but no one has yet dared to present an alternative.

"HOME" QUESTIONS
However, some uncomfortable questions got to the Israeli prime minister even in Washington. For example, on the sidelines of a gala reception for leaders of Jewish and Evangelical communities, Netanyahu was asked several times whether the government was going to free the hostages remaining in Hamas captivity.

To which Netanyahu, in his usual manner, reported on “significant progress” and the “imminent release” of the remaining Israelis from captivity.

There is indeed hope for an exchange. American sources regularly announce the imminent trip of Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff to Qatar to give the necessary guarantees to Hamas and monitor the transparency of the deal.

However, given that Whitkoff's trip has already been postponed several times, the White House still has no confidence in the parties' ability to reach an agreement. And three meetings between Netanyahu and Trump (one of which was closed) have not changed the disposition.

A more pressing question was also asked - about the prospects for adjusting the law on the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Israelis (Haredi) into the army. Especially since the authorities announced increased penalties for those who dodge service, including a ban on leaving the country and administrative arrests.

This has increased unrest in the ranks of the conservative parties, which continue to threaten to break up the ruling coalition. The future of the Haredi law is unclear, and Netanyahu has failed to explain in detail how exactly Tel Aviv intends to emerge from the crisis.

Overall, it is noticeable that the Israeli Prime Minister is still more focused on the “external contour,” where he clearly understands the priorities and goals for the near future, while he is not yet ready to closely deal with issues of an internal nature.

This means that Tel Aviv will continue to actively promote stories related to foreign policy (primarily the confrontation with Iran) in order to distract the population’s attention from problems within the country.'

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