Month: August 2023

Yale University is rushing to reassure freshman students and parents after the school’s police union, which in the midst of contract negotiations, distributed flyers with stark warnings about high crime in New Haven, Connecticut — complete with a graphic of a grim reaper. They warned incoming students to avoid walking alone and avoid public transport. Forget night life: Student should stay in their dorms and “off the streets after 8 PM.” 

 

Presented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association as “A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University,” the flyers were distributed on freshman move-in day. “The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse,” the flyers warned. “During the seven month period ending July 23, 2023, murders have doubled, burglaries are up 33% and motor vehicle thefts are up 56%.”

A city spokesman confirmed the numbers are accurate. However, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker condemned the union, saying the flyers were “totally offensive” and cherry-picked data to create a “false and scary” impression. He countered that violent crime has decreased by 29.2% since 2020. However, it seems Elicker did his own cherry-picking: The New York Times notes New Haven homicides are up over that same span. 

The union is in the midst of renegotiating its contract, but its lawyer, Andrew Matthews, denied that the flyers were a negotiating tactic. “They have motor vehicles chasing each other down the streets of New Haven shooting at one another. If you or your children were to go to Yale, wouldn’t you want to know that?” asked Matthews.

Undermining Matthews’ denials about the intent, the flyers state that “the New Haven and Yale Police Departments are understaffed,” and suggests the situation puts students at risk: “Do not be mislead by ‘Blue Phone cameras.’ They are not monitored.” They warn students not to expect help after dark: “If you restrict your travel to daylight hours, police personnel are best able to provide adequate protection.” 

The flyer painted a grim picture of New Haven’s Union Train Station, noting that separate shootings and stabbing incidents occurred there just last month. The leaflet also says “theft has become so great a problem that Yale University is urging students to engrave identifying numbers on all property.” The school is giving out free steering-wheel locks to any Yalie who owns easily-stolen Kia or Hyundai vehicles. 

Yale police chief Anthony Campbell joined the condemnation. “We do not support this and, to be quite frank, I’m really disgusted that they have chosen to take this path,” he said at a press conference with the New Haven mayor. “Young people are coming to the city for the first time. That’s appalling. You don’t try to scare them into getting a better contract,” added New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobsen. 

While accurately describing bleak conditions in New Haven may not amount to fearmongering, the Yale union is guilty of an academic sin: plagiarism. Many passages in the flyer and the grim reaper graphic are directly copied from a notorious flyer handed out by a New York cop union in 1975.

Titled “Welcome to Fear City,” the New York flyers concluded, “The best advice we can give you is this: Until things change, stay away from New York City if you possibly can.” On an ostensibly cheerier note clearly not meant to be received that way, the Yale police flyer acknowledged that “some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property.” 

With freshmen and parents rattled by the reaper, we get to savor the spectacle of Yale University’s leftist administration condemning heavy-handed labor-union tactics. The school posted a statement noting the pending negotiations and accusing the union of using “disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric…aimed at creating fear among new students and their families.” Yale reprimanded the union for casting a pall over the school’s move-in day, which “has always been special and memorable for students and their families.”

Well, the cops certainly did their part to make it memorable. 

In yet another example of the nanny state’s intrusion into the private lives of its citizens, President Biden’s so-called ‘alcohol czar’ revealed to Daily Mail that the United States Department of Agriculture could soon revise its booze guidelines to a meager two drinks a week. 

George Koob, director of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said the current alcohol intake guidelines are up for review in 2025, which recommend women can have up to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of liquor per day while men can have two. 

Koob was asked in what direction would the current guidelines change. He responded, “I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure,” adding the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines, where people are advised to two drinks per week. 

While these new guidelines are being discussed, he said updated versions might not be published until 2025. 

“The debate about whether alcohol is good in low amounts has been around for decades, but increasingly studies show that even a small amount can harm your health,” Daily Mail said. 

Koob’s interview comes after a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found an increasing number of Americans are drinking themselves to death. 

… and it’s not just booze. Since Covid, middle-aged adults 35 to 50 (prime-age workers) have been consuming higher and higher amounts of marijuana and hallucinogens. 

Koob pointed out there were “no benefits” to drinking alcohol in terms of improving overall health. He said: 

“Most of the benefits people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating rather than what they’re drinking.

“So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet, socio-economic status, that makes you able to afford that kind of diet and make your own fresh food and so forth.

“With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side.”

Good luck getting the majority to comply with these guidelines since ‘Bidenomics’ has driven many working-class folks to the bottle.

 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Parents are not able to opt their children out of lessons featuring LGBT content, a federal judge has ruled.

Parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland over the lessons after officials revoked their opt-out policy over the large number of opt-out requests. Parents said the failure to provide opt-outs forced them to give up their religious beliefs or seek alternative schooling.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, though, said the parents had not shown the policy would “result in the indoctrination of their children or otherwise coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.”

“With or without an opt-out right, the parents remain free to pursue their sacred obligations to instruct their children in their faiths,” Judge Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said in a 60-page ruling denying a request for a preliminary injunction. “Even if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.”

Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest school systems in the country, with some 160,000 students.

Montgomery County officials said in a statement that the school district “remains committed to cultivating an inclusive and welcoming learning environment and creating opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.12 hours ago.”

“We also will continue to adhere to our responsibility to include instructional materials that reflect the diversity of the local and global community by exploring the aspirations, issues, and achievements of women and men, people with disabilities, people from diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, as well as those of diverse gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation,” officials said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who adhere to Islam or Christianity, said the ruling was wrong.

“The court’s decision is an assault on children’s right to be guided by their parents on complex and sensitive issues regarding human sexuality,” Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, and one of the lawyers, said in a statement. “The School Board should let kids be kids and let parents decide how and when to best educate their own children consistent with their religious beliefs.”

Plaintiffs plan to appeal Judge Boardman’s ruling and expect oral arguments to take place at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the fall.

Judge Boardman said that the appeals court has not yet addressed whether mandatory lessons in public schools might burden the religious exercise of students or parents, but that rulings from other courts support the idea that “the mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”

That includes Mozart v. Hawkins County Board of Education, a 1987 decision in which an appeals court found that students were compelled to violate their religious convictions but that they were not required to affirm their belief or disbelief in any of the ideas, like evolution, promoted in the curriculum.

More on Case

Montgomery County officials introduced 13 new books featuring LGBT characters at the start of the 2022–23 school year. They said the books were introduced because a review of its curriculum found it lacked representation of LGBT people.

The books have been used in lessons for children as young as 3, prompting concerns from parents, teachers, and principals.

“It is problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences,” a group of principals said in a memorandum to the district that was revealed in the litigation.

“Family life isn’t taught until fifth grade, but a second grade book uses terminology such as cisgender or transgender,” the memo also stated.

Teachers were also instructed to tell students that “when we’re born, people make a guess about our gender” and that sometimes, the guess is “wrong,” according to other documents made public in the case.

Judge Boardman acknowledged that the guidance document for teachers contained answers that “could be interpreted to promote a particular view as correct,” but added, “they are not required answers, and they are outliers among the suggested answers that do not promote a particular view.”

Parents were able to have their children excluded from lessons featuring the books initially, but officials informed them on March 23 that further requests would not be entertained “for any reason.”

The change stemmed from the large number of parents who requested opt-outs, Niki Hazel, a district official who oversees curriculum, said in a court filing.

“Individual principals and teachers could not accommodate the growing number of opt out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission,” Ms. Hazel said.

Other officials have said that children who are LGBT or have LGBT family members were hurt when other students left the classroom when the controversial materials were read.

Plaintiffs argued that revoking opt-outs violated state law and the U.S. Constitution and that hurt feelings were not an adequate reason to change the policy.

With the indictment and booking of Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, on election interference charges, a fourth criminal case against the former president is now active. Trump appeared in an Atlanta jail this week and famously had his mug shot taken.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the stream of litigation (flippant or not) just grows and grows and the Georgia case on election interference has sparked more public interest than previous ones.

As seen in Google Trends data, Trump’s first criminal indictment and arraignment in late March and early April at the Manhattan Criminal Court caused the biggest public interest so far. The former president is being accused in the case brought by the state of New York of falsifying business records in order to conceal crimes. Subsequent indictments – two by the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Jack Smith brought in Miami and Washington D.C. to do with Trump’s handling of classified documents and the January 6 Capitol riot – sparked less interest. Google search volume only reached 51-64 percent of the week of Trump’s first criminal indictment for the Miami case in early June and only 37 percent for the D.C. case in early August. As of the early morning of Aug. 25, search interest was predicted to rise sharply again this week in the aftermath of the Georgia booking.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In June and July, Special Counsel Jack Smith had in the name of the Justice Department also brought 40 felony counts against Trump and his former assistants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira in the case of classified documents found at Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago.

In early August, a second Justice Department indictment concerning Trump’s conduct in relation to the January 6 Capitol riots followed.

Another criminal case against Trump is pursued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which indicted and arraigned the candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential election in March and April on 30 fraud counts in connection with a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election.

The office has been investigating Trump’s finances since 2019, when three House committees had initially subpoenaed Trump’s banks and accounting office.

In early 2023, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was already sentenced to five months in jail for tax fraud and grand larceny, while the organization was ordered to pay $1.6 million for tax crimes in New York courts. Trump lost a second court case in May when we was found liable of sexual abuse and defamation of columnist E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million in damages. There have been repeated reports that the legal costs Trump is facing have diminished his campaign funds, while they don’t seem to have hurt his polling.

As seen in information by the Just Security Litigation Tracker, there are currently also 12 civil suits (some of which are being argued jointly) against Trump or his organizations, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act and of civil rights statutes as well as financial fraud, defamation, copyright infringement and once again Trump’s role in January 6, among others.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Trump is currently being sued by columnist E. Jean Carroll for repeated defamation, 12 D.C. police officers, 11 Democratic Congresspeople, the Michigan Welfare rights Organization, the New York attorney general, a group of plaintiffs pursuing a class action lawsuit and his former attorney Michael Cohen, who appealed the dismissal of his case.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has blocked off millions of acres of federal waters from a planned oil and gas lease sale after settling with environmental groups over habitat protections for a rare species of whale.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said in an Aug. 23 notice that, as part of Lease Sale 261, it will offer around 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.

That is around 9 percent, or 6.4 million acres, less than BOEM’s original proposal, following a settlement with environmental groups that pauses ongoing litigation over environmental protections in the Gulf of Mexico in exchange for excluding Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales.

Environmental groups praised the exclusions, while representatives of the oil and gas industry called the carveouts “unfounded” and said the restrictions would needlessly hamper domestic energy production.

Some lawmakers also objected to the exclusions, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“This Administration continues to kowtow to radical environmentalists at the expense of American energy security and costs to American families,” Mr. Manchin said in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.

Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered marine mammal species on the planet, with an estimated population of just 51 individuals, around 100 scientists told the Biden administration in an open letter (pdf) last year.

Arguing that the loss of even a single whale threatens the survival of the entire species, the scientists urged the Biden administration to disallow oil and gas drilling in and around the whale’s habitat.

Settlement With Environmental Groups

In order to proceed with the gas lease sale as required by provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden administration agreed to settle with environmental groups that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over what they said was a flawed biological opinion that failed to sufficiently protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2020, environmental law organization Earthjustice filed a lawsuit (pdf) against NMFS on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoration.

The lawsuit challenged a Trump-era biological opinion on oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, with the groups saying that the legally binding opinion failed to require sufficient safeguards for endangered species, including Rice’s whale (identified in the complaint as Bryde’s whale, an alternate name for the species).

Under a settlement agreement (pdf) that was approved on Aug. 24 in the U.S. District Court in Maryland, the groups agreed to pause their litigation. In exchange, BOEM said it will exclude Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales that occur during a 13-month period that the case is on hold while federal agencies reevaluate the 2020 biological opinion.

More Details

As the lawsuit made its way through the courts, BOEM said it decided to reinitiate consultation with the NMFS regarding an oil-spill risk analysis and ways to incorporate certain previously developed mitigation measures to protect Rice’s whale habitat.

On Aug. 23, BOEM said in a document that provides key information about the sale to potential bidders (pdf) that, as talks continue with the NMFS and as the agency awaits a new or amended biological opinion, it decided to add “certain interim measures to the ‘Protected Species’ Stipulation to provide additional protections for Rice’s whale while the reinitiated consultation is ongoing.”

The temporary measures include designating temporary whale-safe zones between 100 and 400 meters in depth across the northern Gulf of Mexico, eastward from the Mexican border with Texas, and westward from Rice’s whale core area (as identified in the biological opinion that is the subject of ongoing litigation).

These interim protective measures for Rice’s whales are basically what accounts for the 6 million or so fewer acres made available as part of BOEM’s lease sale.

At the same time, efforts are underway to permanently designate waters between 100 and 400 deep in the Gulf of Mexico as “critical habitat” zones that are “essential to the conservation of the Rice’s whale,” according to a July proposal by NOAA Fisheries. The proposal is open to public comment until Sept. 22, 2023.

In addition to the whale habitat zone exclusions, the settlement also includes a requirement for any oil and gas vessel to reduce its speed to 10 knots when traveling through the habitat area.

Reactions

BOEM’s announcement of the 6 million acre carveout for the oil and gas lease was lauded by environmental groups but met with disdain by the fossil fuel industry.

“The simple protective measures in this agreement recognize the first rule of holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging,” Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice managing attorney for Oceans, said in a statement. “If we’re going to save Rice’s whales, we need to first stop dropping more oil rigs and more ships in their habitat and making the problem worse.”

The American Petroleum Industry (API), a fossil fuel industry lobby, took a dim view of the settlement-related exclusions to the lease sale.

“While the Department of the Interior announced a much-needed offshore lease sale today, the Biden administration continues to throw up roadblock after roadblock to American energy production, prioritizing their campaign promise to stop American oil and natural gas development in federal waters over their duty to meet Americans’ energy needs,” Holly Hopkins, API vice president of Upstream Policy, said in a statement.

“This action defies Congress’s mandate in the Inflation Reduction Act, jeopardizes U.S. energy security and violates the Biden administration’s energy obligations to the American people,” Ms. Hopkins added.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes provisions that reinstate previously halted oil and gas lease sales.

Mr. Manchin, who fought for the oil and gas lease provisions in the legislation, denounced the Biden administration’s lease exclusions.

“Let me be clear, the exclusion of more than 6 million productive acres from the upcoming offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico based on a settlement reached in the name of protecting Rice’s whale while conveniently only targeting oil and gas is yet another example of this Administration’s intentional undermining of the strong energy security provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Mr. Manchin said.

“The IRA required lease sales to get oil and gas leasing back on track to reduce the cost for working families to cook, heat their homes and fill their gasoline tank,” Mr. Manchin added.

The Biden administration’s rapid push to decarbonize power grids with solar and wind while squeezing fossil fuel plants into early retirement could spark grid stability risks this winter as a new report sheds light on the possibility of “below average irradiance across most of North America” due to the impacts of El Niño producing more cloud coverage.

Solar-focused news publication PV Magazine said, “Solcast, a DNV company, predicts that El Niño will likely bring lower than normal solar power production through winter in the United States. Its analysis is based on data collected from previous El Niño events.” 

El Niño threatens US winter solar generation: In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, predicts that El Niño will likely bring lower than normal solar power production through winter in… #renewableenergy #solarenergy #sustainability https://t.co/C4fI1F0sis pic.twitter.com/dyAgaG1DAT

— pv magazine (@pvmagazine) August 25, 2023

Here’s more from the report:

This coming winter is more likely than not to see below average irradiance across most of North America, as the impacts of El Niño bring cloudier, wetter conditions across the continent. Analysis of Historical Time Series data from El Niño years using the Solcast API, shows that irradiance is significantly impacted in these years.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that we are in El Niño’s Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase, and that there is a 90-95% probability this will continue into the upcoming winter.

NOAA has further forecast a 60% chance that this will be a “strong event,” so solar producers across the continent should be anticipating this to change their expected performance through the winter.

Analysis of December-February months from previous El Niño events (2006-07, 2009-10, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2018-19) shows the historic impact on global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). This image shows a comparison of the average GHI in the El Niño episodes with the neutral and La Niña phases of the ENSO climate cycle.

The clear observation is that most of the Continental US experienced reduced irradiance during El Niño winters. California, the Midwest, Southern states, and Mexico in particular see higher precipitation, as well as cloudier conditions.

Conversely, the North-eastern USA and neighboring Canadian provinces depict the opposite. These regions experienced increased irradiance during El Niño intervals.

This trend correlates with decreased precipitation during such periods, another trend these regions might expect in the coming winter.

As the solar energy sector leads into the lower-producing winter months, El Niño is likely to bring even lower than normal production through winter. The increased rain may result in decreased dust soiling for panels that aren’t already being cleaned regularly.

Numerous power grids across the US have warned about the growth of power demand, while decarbonization policies have led to a mismatch between power sources due to the early retirement of fossil fuel power generation. We’ve pointed this out in America’s Largest Power Grid Faces Worsening Reliability Risks and A Crisis Is Looming For The US Energy Grid. 

Solar and wind are unreliable; these power sources are useless if the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. 

Meanwhile, a soaring number of Americans want reliable and clean nuclear power… 

Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

American cattlemen are readying for a fight to protect the definition of the word meat from producers of synthetic cellular-based beef alternatives.

“It’s a red line. It isn’t right that these factory-made products should be able to market and sell their products off the backs of the cattleman,” Justin Tupper, President of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, told The Epoch Times.

“We are talking about chemical-laced cell-cultured products that can in some ways simulate meat, but they aren’t meat, and the American consumer needs to understand that,” added Mr. Tupper.

The synthetic “meat” market has already arrived in America.

Last year, the USDA gave two producers the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown chicken-like products in the United States.

While a decision over the labeling of the product has yet to be announced, the cattle industry plans on being aggressively proactive in both discussions with the USDA and, if needed, litigation after having learned a valuable lesson from the dairy farmers.

“The milk industry really dropped the ball,” said Mr. Tupper. “They never believed that anyone would think that almond milk was actual milk, so they brushed it off at the time. Now there are hundreds of items with milk in the name but with no milk in the product, and it has really hurt the entire dairy industry.”

“In the same way that you can’t milk an almond, you can’t get meat from a lab, only an animal, and we are not going to allow them to use our name to promote their product.”

Synthetic meat-like products are created by taking cells acquired from animals and placing them in a warm, sterile area, usually, a metal vat, where they are then combined with a solution of chemicals that causes the cells to double once a day.

The demand for synthetic meat has been spurred largely by corporate entities and government agencies working in tandem with the environmental movement.

Bill Gates, an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the USDA, believes meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

In a 2021 interview with Technology Review, Mr. Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Mr. Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

A switch from animal meat to a laboratory-grown substitute would eliminate the need for animals to be bred and slaughtered—in the U.S. alone, around 9 billion chickens and 32 million cattle are killed every year.

However, beef cattle production constitutes only a small fraction of the gasses that many environmentalists claim have had a negative impact on the planet.

Just 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from beef cattle production, while energy production and transportation produce a combined 54 percent of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Italian Ban

American ranchers aren’t the only ones raising the alarm. After two million Italians signed a petition calling for a ban against synthetic meat products, the Italian Senate passed a bill earlier this week, becoming the first country to make it illegal to produce or market the food, highlighting health concerns as the primary reason.

Ettore Prandini, President of Coldiretti, the largest association representing Italian agriculture, touted the vote as a legislative victory for the Italian people over corporate powers, telling the media that “the products in the laboratory in the authorization processes are not equated to food but rather to products of a pharmaceutical nature.”

An April 2023 report by the United Nations on the safety of “cell-based food products” cited 53 potential health hazards, including “the potential for expression of novel toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens or a change in expression of toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens as a result of genomic instability.”

The report concluded with a call for additional research and funding in order to draw more definitive conclusions.

Transparency Needed

Mr. Tupper isn’t calling for a ban on synthetic foods, only transparency, and believes that despite the large push for meat alternatives coming from corporate leaders and government agencies, the American cow is here to stay.

“The simple truth is that the taste of real beef cannot be replicated and, more importantly, when people discover the chemical storm that is actually in this product they are trying to pass off as meat, consumers are going to come to the conclusion that beef should come from a cow, not from a laboratory.”

“Our hopes are that the USDA will label this product for what it is, a cellular-based derivative of chemicals,” added Mr. Tupper.

Victor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Biden family corruption (that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about) has spoken out for the first time since 2019 – and says the Bidens did it.

To review – Shokin had an active and ongoing investigation into Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, according to a 2020 US Senate Committee report.

Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to sit on his board, granted his own company (Burisma) permits to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine while he was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Shokin stated in a 2019 deposition that there were five criminal cases against Zlochevesky, including money laundering, corruption, illegal funds transfers, and profiteering through shell corporations while he was a sitting minister.

Now, Shokin tells Fox News that be believes the Bidens were taking bribes.

“I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,” Shokin told the outlet. “The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asks in another clip.

Viktor Shokin – The Ukrainian Prosecutor Joe Biden BRAGGED about getting FIRED speaks out

SHOKIN: “The fact that Joe Biden gave away one billion dollars – in exchange for my dismissal, my firing. – Is that alone a case of corruption?” pic.twitter.com/gy3VCc6JqE

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 25, 2023

The full interview with Shokin will air Saturday evening at 8pm ET with Brian Kilmeade.

According to the White House, Fox News is giving a “platform to lies” by airing the interview.

Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t letting this one go.

What skill did Hunter have to earn millions of dollars from the corrupt energy company Burisma?

Once Viktor Shokin started investigating Burisma, Biden made sure he was fired.

The evidence exists, and no spin from the Biden administration can change obvious facts. pic.twitter.com/vSohuVthGk

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) August 25, 2023

Earlier this week we noted that memos obtained by Just the News via FOIA request reveal that the Obama Administration was still actively communicating with Shokin after Biden’s December 2015 threat to withhold $1 billion in US aid unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired him.

The memos reveal:

• Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work.
• U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled.
• A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma.

Meanwhile, nobody else seems interested in what Shokin has to say.

Brian Kilmeade just said on Fox that Viktor Shokin told him in the interview that no one had asked him for an interview despite his central role in the alleged Biden corruption scandal…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 25, 2023