America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
OBAMA - BIDEN CRONY CAPITALISM - DEMS RIG IT ALL! - Biden Admin Gives $6.6 Billion to Project Run By Ex-Solyndra CEO
Lifelong Democrats Are Turning to Trump. Roseanne Barr Explains Why
It certainly worked for Biden in 2020, and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, arguably the most corrupt and weaponized in history—that’s saying something with Obama’s “wingman,” Eric Holder in the running—is working hard to keep that organization up and running:
Biden Admin Gives $6.6 Billion to Project Run By Ex-Solyndra CEO
Brian Harrison led green energy company to bankruptcy after receiving $500 million in Obama admin loans
The Biden administration is giving $6.6 billion to a semiconductor project run by the former CEO of Solyndra, the failed solar energy company at the center of an Obama-era scandal over government misspending.
Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC’s Arizona subsidiary, whose president is former Solyndra head Brian Harrison, will receive $6.6 billion to build a factory in Phoenix, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced Monday.
Harrison was CEO of Solyndra when it declared bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving over $500 million in loans from the Obama administration.
The funding could fuel criticism from Republicans over the Biden administration’s energy spending. The Department of Energy’s loan office has poured billions into companies with an array of financial and legal problems, leading to investigations by GOP lawmakers.
President Joe Biden touted the funding to TSMC in a press statement on Monday. The company said it will invest an additional $65 million into its manufacturing compound in Arizona, where it already has two factories and is building a third.
"Thanks to this investment, TSMC will also build a third chip factory in Phoenix, increasing its total investment in Arizona to $65 million and creating over 25,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs, along with thousands of indirect jobs," Biden said.
The funding comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed by Biden in 2022 and is intended to boost U.S. chip manufacturing and counter China’s dominance of the semiconductor industry.
Harrison, who is overseeing TSMC’s projects in Arizona, said he was involved in securing the federal financing in a media interview last August.
"We’re in the process of applications for the CHIPS Act funding," he told CNBC.
Harrison joined TSMC Arizona in 2021 and has served as president since last April, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was CEO of Solyndra from 2010 to 2011.
Solyndra received over $500 million in loans from the Obama administration under a 2009 stimulus program. During Harrison’s tenure, the company declared bankruptcy and defaulted on the loans. Federal investigators also reportedly seized Solyndra records from Harrison in 2011, but no charges were ever brought against him or other executives at the company.
An inspector general investigation found that Solyndra executives provided misleading information to Department of Energy officials during the loan negotiations in 2009 and later "while drawing down loan proceeds." The IG report said the "actions of certain Solyndra officials were, at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the Department."
Republicans held up Solyndra as an example of reckless government spending. In 2012, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney held a press conference outside the company’s headquarters, calling it a "symbol" of "failure."
In the wake of the scandal, the Obama administration scaled down the operations of the Department of Energy’s loan programs office, which had issued the funding.
But now the Biden administration has revived and expanded the office—giving it a massive $400 billion budget for green energy loans.
The spending has come under fire from Republicans, who have noted that the loan office’s director, Jigar Shah, appears to have conflicts of interest with some of the loan recipients.
"Solyndra is going to look like chump change compared to the amount of money that’s been wasted by this administration," Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) warned in December.
The Department of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.
The DOJ sued DISH network for $3.3 billion but dismissed the suit after its chair donated to Biden
Two sayings are pertinent to this essay. The first is that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two events seem connected doesn’t mean they are. The second is that timing is everything. Think about both as you consider the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss a massive corporate fraud lawsuit a short time after the corporation’s founder made a sizable donation to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
DISH Network is an American satellite network. In 2015, the DOJ sued DISH under the False Claims Act. The suit was based on Whistleblower Vermont National Telephone Company, Inc.’s allegation that DISH and its affiliates were allegedly using fraud to get small business discounts for wireless spectrum licenses. As recently as November 2023, a federal judge kept the case alive in the face of DISH’s motion for a judgment on the pleadings (i.e., DISH contended that the DOJ’s complaint contained within it the seeds of its own destruction).
On December 15, 2023, less than one month after the federal court refused to dismiss the DOJ’s suit, one of DISH’s founders, Charlie Ergen, along with his wife, Candy, donated a total of $113,200 to keep Biden in the White House…and, inevitably, to keep his currently constituted Department of Justice in power.
On January 10, 2024, only three-and-a-half weeks after Ergen sent his money to Biden, and while the fraud suit was still pending, DISH received $50 million in taxpayer funds when the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced an $80 million round of five grants. The other four grantees divided the remaining $30 million in grant money.
A mere two days after the $50 million grant, the attorney for Vermont Telephone, which had triggered the DOJ’s initial action against DISH, complained that the DOJ was putting pressure on Vermont Telephone to enter into “an unethical settlement” or it would dismiss the suit:
The move to dismiss the case scrapped plans to depose the Ergens about their knowledge of the allegedly fraudulent scheme, prompting Vermont Telephone’s attorneys to accuse the Justice Department of political interference.
“[I]t appears that the effect — if not the purpose — of the DOJ’s rush to seek dismissal of this case is to protect Mr. Ergen from being questioned under oath,” Ross wrote in a Feb. 8 letter to the lead DOJ attorneys handling the case, according to a copy reviewed by The Post.
“We do not believe it is a coincidence that Mr. Ergen, his wife (who also is scheduled to be deposed next week), and DISH’s Political Action Committee collectively contributed in excess of $5 million to Democratic candidates and causes between 2008 and 2022,” he added.
“With the upcoming election, this case looks like just the latest example of the DOJ’s two-tiered justice system under which the well-heeled, politically connected are treated one way, while everyone else is treated differently.”
The last item in this chronology is that on March 8, the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. You can read more details about the whole case, from its inception to the motion to dismiss, in this New York Post article. Indeed, the article is worth reading as an expose about how corporate money and politics work in D.C., with most money flowing to Democrats but surprisingly large sums keeping individual Republicans afloat.
As I noted at the start of this post, just because there seems to be a connection between things, that doesn’t mean there is a connection. The chronology suggests that, once Ergen started throwing large sums of money at a sitting president whose re-election campaign is in trouble, that same president told his Department of Justice to lay off his good friend. It could just be, though, that the case has been kicking about for years so that the DOJ decided it was time to unload it because it was hogging resources without any discernable benefit to the American people.
But as always, timing is everything, and the appearance of impropriety can be just as powerful as actual impropriety. We’ve long known that Garland’s DOJ is driven by politics, not principle. Now, we have the strong suggestion that it can be bought, too.
demented. In the process, they’re insulting America’s poor and black citizens, branding them too stupid to obtain identification necessary for daily life. Reasonable people might call that racist.
Reasonable people might also think our republic is better off if people who can’t get identification, and can’t be bothered to get to the polls on election day, don’t vote. Obviously, people who have legitimate reasons for being unable to be present on election day, like our military serving overseas and the handicapped, must be allowed absentee ballots, but with effective safeguards and verification.
Using taxpayer resources and the power of the federal government to violate Supreme Court decisions and enable vote fraud on a never before imagined scale is among the most un-American, anti-republican acts of a thoroughly corrupt administration. Reasonable people might call that tyrannical. And they’d be right, and consistent. They’re absolutely perpetuating “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
That’s great for “our democracy—a permanent, one-party, Democrat/socialist/communist state, but terrible for our constitutional, representative republic. I wonder if Garland has heard about that?
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
Graphic: X screenshot
The DOJ sued DISH network for $3.3 billion but dismissed the suit after its chair donated to Biden
Merrick Garland Risks Contempt Proceedings After Stonewalling Biden/Hur Interview Audio
Attorney General Merrick Garland risks being held in contempt of Congress after he refused on Monday to divulge the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Biden’s Justice Department offered to provide the transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden’s book ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, Axios reported, but Republicans say Biden’s transcript and audio are needed to conduct oversight of the president’s classified document scandal.
“The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch,” the House Oversight Committee told reporters.
“It’s curious the Biden Administration is refusing to release the audio of President Biden’s interview with the Special Counsel after releasing the transcript,” it continued. “Why shouldn’t the American people be able to hear the actual audio of his answers? The American people demand transparency from their leaders, not obstruction.”
Further responses to Garland’s stonewalling are reportedly forthcoming. Republicans previously threatened to brand Garland in contempt for not producing the audio.
During the president’s interview with Hur, Biden, 81, experienced mental lapses and “poor memory” at least seven times, according to a transcript obtained by Breitbart News.
Hur’s investigation, which concluded in February, found Biden “willfully” retained classified documents but declined to prosecute him, citing “insufficient evidence.” Hur characterized Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.