AG Garland is ‘senior’ Biden official in Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower claim

 Attorney General Merrick Garland is the unnamed official whose sworn testimony before Congress is being challenged in a bombshell letter from an IRS whistleblower’s attorney that also alleges a coverup in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation, The Post has learned.

Attorney Mark Lytle wrote Wednesday that the longtime IRS employee wants to provide information to congressional leaders to “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” — Garland —and also to detail “preferential treatment” in the criminal probe of the first son.

The whistleblower already made disclosures to the inspectors general of the Treasury and Justice departments.

However, due to a quirk of federal law, he needs congressional approval to more fully describe his allegations to his own lawyers, which he wants to do before testifying to lawmakers.

Garland has repeatedly claimed under oath that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, a Trump administration holdover recommended in 2017 by the state’s Democratic senators, is able to criminally charge Hunter Biden without the permission of other Justice Department leaders, despite Republicans challenging the factual accuracy of that claim.

Garland in April 2022 told Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) that “there will not be interference of any political or improper kind” in the investigation of Hunter Biden led by Weiss.

“He is the supervisor of this investigation,” Garland said of Weiss, adding “we put the investigation in the hands of a Trump appointee from the previous administration, who is the US attorney for the district of Delaware, and … you have me as the attorney general, who is committed to the independence of the Justice Department from any influence from the White House in criminal matters.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland is the unnamed official whose sworn testimony before Congress is being challenged in a bombshell letter from an IRS whistleblower’s attorney.

AP

In March, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed Garland over whether Weiss was truly able to bring charges without the approval of other Justice Department officials, specifically if the alleged crime occurred outside Delaware.

“In April 2022, you testified to Sen. Hagerty that the Hunter Biden investigation was insulated from political interference because it was assigned, as you just now told me, to the Delaware US attorney’s office,” Grassley said at the time.

“However, that could be misleading.

“Without special counsel authority, he could need permission of another US attorney in certain circumstances to bring charges outside the district of Delaware.

Attorney Mark Lytle wrote that the longtime IRS employee wants to provide information to congressional leaders to “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” which is Garland.

REUTERS

“I would like clarification from you with respect to these concerns.”

The 70-year-old Garland, a former federal judge, replied that Weiss is able to charge Hunter Biden even for crimes that occurred outside Delaware.

“The US attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority to make those kind of referrals that you’re talking about or to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary. And I will assure that if he does, he will be able to do that,” the AG said.

Grassley pressed: “Does the Delaware US Attorney lack independent charging authority over certain criminal allegations against the president’s son outside of the district of Delaware?”

“If it’s in another district, he would have to bring the case in another district, but as I said, I’ve promised to ensure he’s able to carry out his investigation and that he be able to run it and if he needs to bring it in another jurisdiction he will have full authority to do that,” Garland said.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman Representative James Comer (R-KY) attends the committee’s hearing about Twitter’s handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop, in Washington, DC.

REUTERS

During the back-and-forth, the Iowa senator said, “If Weiss … must seek permission from a [President] Biden-appointed US attorney to bring charges, then the Hunter Biden criminal investigation isn’t insulated from political interference, as you publicly proclaimed.”

Giving false testimony to Congress can be a crime punishable by up to five years in prison if it’s proven that the error was intentional.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The anonymous whistleblower has since early 2020 supervised the IRS’s investigation of Hunter Biden for alleged tax evasion and related crimes linked to the 53-year-old’s foreign income from countries including China and Ukraine.

Weiss’ office reportedly is considering related charges against the first son involving money laundering and unregistered foreign lobbying, plus lying about drug use on a gun-purchase form.

House Republicans are probing Joe Biden’s role in son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Hunter Biden reportedly borrowed about $2 million last year to pay off his tax bill in an effort to head off criminal charges, though doing so does not legally absolve him of his original non-payment.

House Republicans, meanwhile, are investigating Joe Biden’s role in Hunter and first brother James Biden’s international business dealings.

Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the board of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma while his vice president dad led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Hunter and James Biden also received at least $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018, beginning shortly after Joe Biden left office as VP, from an arrangement with CEFC China Energy, according to a Washington Post review of documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop.

Joe Biden allegedly met with his relatives’ associates from the Burisma and CEFC China Energy ventures — and met while still vice president with his family’s Mexican, Kazakhstani and Russian associates, as well as with the CEO of a Chinese investment fund cofounded by Hunter in 2013 after he hitched a ride aboard Air Force Two for an official trip to Beijing.

Lytle, the whistleblower’s attorney, wrote Wednesday to congressional committee leaders that “[d]espite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a non-partisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle.”

White House spokesman Ian Sams said Thursday that Biden had nothing to do with alleged malfeasance in the probe.

“Since he took office and consistent with his campaign promise that he would restore the independence of the Justice Department when it comes to decision-making in criminal investigations, President Biden has made clear that this matter would be handled independently by the Justice Department, under the leadership of a US Attorney appointed by former President Trump, free from any political interference by the White House,” he said.

“He has upheld that commitment.”

Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark attacked the whistleblower in a Thursday statement to NBC.

“It appears this IRS agent has committed a crime,” Clark said.

“It is a felony for an IRS agent to improperly disclose information about an ongoing tax investigation. The IRS has incredible power, and abusing that power by targeting, embarrassing, or disclosing information about a private citizen’s tax matters undermines Americans’ faith in the federal government. 

“Unfortunately, that is what has happened and is happening here in an attempt to harm my client.”

Lytle called the Clark statement “really unfortunate” in an interview on Fox News’ “Special Report” Thursday evening.

“My client wrestled with whether or not to come forward. He had a lot of sleepless nights about coming forward with this. At the end of the day, he decided that he could not live with himself if he stayed quiet and said nothing,” Lytle said.

Joe Biden allegedly met with his relatives’ associates from the Burisma and CEFC China Energy ventures.

AFP via Getty Images

“So he’s coming forward, but he knows that he’s gonna be attacked. And, you know, attacks like this are kind of what he was worried about. But he wants to come forward, tell the truth.”

Lytle said his whistleblower client “instructed us to reach out to both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill and let those statements — if they want to hear them — come into the Hill and talk to them and let those statements rest where they are.”

The attorney wrote to Congress on Wednesday that his client wants to ensure that he complies with all relevant laws before providing more detail on underlying tax issues — so much so that even his legal team remains in the dark about certain information.

“Out of an abundance of caution regarding taxpayer privacy laws, my client has refrained from sharing certain information even with me in the course of seeking legal advice,” Lytle wrote.

“Thus, it is challenging for me to make fully informed judgments about how best to proceed.”

“My goal is to ensure that my client can properly share his lawfully protected disclosures with congressional committees,” Lytle added.

“Thus, I respectfully request that your committees work with me to facilitate sharing this information with Congress legally and with the fully informed advice of counsel.

“With the appropriate legal protections and in the appropriate setting, I would be happy to meet with you and provide a more detailed proffer of the testimony my client could provide to Congress.”

Federal law requires congressional permission for the whistleblower to consult with their attorneys on the substance of tax issues before testifying to Congress, which he is seeking from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) or House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/merrick-garland-at-center-of-hunter-biden-whistleblower-claim/

Women Misuse Ulcer Drug to Cause Abortions, And it Could Kill Them

 The abortion industry plans to begin selling a ulcer drug off-label to abort unborn babies if federal courts block approval of the abortion drug mifepristone this spring.

A number of major news outlets have published articles about the plan, including The Atlantic, CBS News and Reuters, quoting pro-abortion researchers and activists who claim the ulcer drug, misoprostol, is safe to take on its own as an abortion drug.

Meanwhile, pro-life doctors’ warnings that numerous studies show the drug is not safe for mothers or unborn babies are being largely ignored.

“… evidence from around the globe demonstrates that misoprostol alone is a poor abortifacient and very likely to cause injury to women,” said Dr. Ingrid Skop, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “These recommendations by abortion advocates in the media demonstrate conclusively that their goal is not the safety and well-being of women, but merely the death of as many unborn humans as possible through expansion of abortion by any means.”

Reuters published one such report this week that failed to mention these safety concerns. The article quoted Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a pro-abortion researcher and professor at the University of California San Francisco, who asserted that the ulcer drug is safe – even while admitting the data shows it is not.

“If providers are forced to stop providing [the FDA-approved abortion drug] mifepristone, misoprostol alone is also safe and effective,” Upadhyay told the news outlet.

Currently, the two drugs are prescribed together to abort first-trimester unborn babies in the U.S. First, the pregnant mother takes mifepristone, which blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone and basically starves her unborn baby to death. A day or two later, she takes the second drug, misoprostol, to induce contractions and expel the baby’s body.

Notably, the FDA never approved misoprostol as an abortion drug; the federal agency approved it in 1988 to treat gastric ulcers.

However, abortion groups plan to use it anyway if the U.S. Supreme Court blocks the FDA’s approval of the first abortion drug. These include many mail-order abortion businesses as well as the nation’s largest abortion chain, Planned Parenthood. Some pro-abortion Democrat governors also have used taxpayers’ money to buy stockpiles of the ulcer drug to be used for elective abortions if the court rules against the abortion pill.

Speaking with Reuters, Upadhyay admitted the ulcer drug taken on its own to produce an abortion is less effective than the two-drug abortion regimen, with as many as 13 percent of women requiring surgery to complete the abortion.

The pro-abortion researcher pointed out that the World Health Organization says the ulcer drug can be taken on its own to abort unborn babies, and it’s “used alone all over the world because it is much cheaper, less regulated, and more easily available than mifepristone due to its use in treating many other issues, including to induce labor.”

But Skop with the Charlotte Lozier Institute said misoprostol has a higher complication rate than the two-drug abortion method, and more lives will be endangered by the abortion industry’s contingency plans.

In a September article, Skop cited three different studies that show “how poorly misoprostol alone functions.” One 2010 study found that the ulcer drug also can cause birth defects when it does not kill the unborn baby.

She wrote:

… a 2010 study comparing standard mifepristone/misoprostol with misoprostol alone documented that using misoprostol only to induce an abortion led to a 23.8% failure rate requiring surgery. The embryo/fetus continued to survive in 16.6% of the pregnancies, and misoprostol is known to produce birth defects such as Moebius Sequence, associated with craniofacial and limb abnormalities, leaving these children at risk if the pregnancy continued to birth.[7] In contrast, there were 3.5% failures and 1.5% continuing pregnancies in the mifepristone/misoprostol group.[8] Similarly, a 2013 study demonstrated a failure rate of 38.8% when misoprostol alone was used vaginally and 29.8% when used sublingually (under the tongue).[9] Finally, a worldwide systematic review of more than 12,000 misoprostol abortions, performed by abortion advocacy researchers, found 22% (nearly one in four) required surgical completion because misoprostol failed to completely empty the uterus of the remains of the child.[10]

Another study that Skop pointed to exposed the dangers of online abortion drug sellers, finding that some sell doses much lower than the recommended amount to unsuspecting women.

An OB-GYN, she asked what will happen to rural women and girls who take the abortion drug at home without any medical supervision and suffer complications.

“[They] may not have immediate access to emergency care if the misoprostol fails,” Skop wrote. “How have we fallen so far from ‘safe, legal and rare’ to ‘illegal, necessary for every unintended pregnancy, and we really don’t care if it is safe as long as it kills the unborn’?”

A case before the U.S. Supreme Court, filed by doctors with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenges the FDA’s approval and later expansion of the abortion drug mifepristone under Democrat presidential administrations.

The doctors said the FDA failed to study the safety of mifepristone and ignored federal law when it began allowing the drug to be sold through the mail without direct medical oversight. As emergency room physicians and OB-GYNs, the doctors said they have witnessed “the enormous pressure and stress caused by emergency treatment from chemical abortion [abortion drugs] gone wrong.”

If the high court sides with the doctors, dangerous mail-order abortions could be prohibited in the U.S. as soon as the end of this week. Other regulations that were in effect for many years also would be reinstated.

The abortion drug mifepristone now is used for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Studies indicate abortion risks are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with about one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment.

Along with millions of unborn babies’ deaths, the FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 28 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the pro-abortion movement has been pushing abortion drugs even more heavily, and some groups send the drugs to women in pro-life states illegally.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been trying to expand the life-destroying drugs even further, first by allowing mifepristone to be sold through the mail without any direct medical supervision, and, more recently, by allowing pharmacies like Walgreens, CVS and RiteAid to sell them.

https://www.lifenews.com/2023/04/20/feminists-are-telling-women-to-misuse-an-ulcer-drug-to-cause-abortions-and-it-could-kill-them/

Marshall introduces vote of no confidence resolution for Mayorkas

 Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on Thursday introduced a vote of no confidence resolution for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the first effort in the Senate to mirror impeachment efforts percolating in the House.

The resolution comes after Marshall said during an exchange with Mayorkas in a Senate appearance on Tuesday that the secretary was derelict in his duties and, “I would be derelict to not do something about this.”

The nine-page resolution lays out a series of complaints about the state of the border, blaming Mayorkas for everything from increased migration, including attempts to clear a camp of some 15,000 Haitians near the Texas border, to drug flows and overdoses.

“There isn’t one American who believes our southern border is secure,” Marshall said in a release. 

“In the real world, if you fail at your job, you get fired — the federal government should be no different.”

The resolution would have little effect if passed — an uphill battle in the Democrat-led Senate, and it would not have any bearing on impeachment efforts in the House, which have still not formally taken shape. 

The resolution also points to an argument building in the House that Mayorkas was dishonest before Congress — a case built on the secretary asserting in prior appearances that he has maintained control of the border.

The GOP argues that Mayorkas is failing to meet the definition of operational control laid out under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which says the standard has only been met if the country prohibits “all unlawful entries” of both migrants and drugs.

Mayorkas recently told lawmakers that the standard of perfection laid out under the law has never been met, but it encourages the secretary to use all resources at their disposal to improve security.

“The Secure Fence Act provides that operational control means that not a single individual crosses the border illegally. And it’s for that reason that prior secretaries and myself have said that under that definition, no administration has had operational control,” Mayorkas said.

“As I have testified under oath multiple times, we use a lens of reasonableness in defining operational control. Are we maximizing the resources that we have to deliver the most effective results? And under that definition, we are doing so very much to gain operational control.”

With escalating impeachment discussions, the Department of Homeland Security has also called on Congress to do more to address problems with the U.S. immigration system that exacerbate efforts to enter and remain in the country illegally.

“Instead of pointing fingers and pursuing baseless attacks, Congress should work with the Department and pass legislation to fix our broken immigration system, which has not been updated in over 40 years,” the agency said in a statement.

While numerous House lawmakers have expressed an interest in impeaching Mayorkas, the process has not yet begun. If successful, an impeachment resolution would be forwarded to the Democrat-led Senate.

https://thehill.com/homenews/3961707-marshall-senate-vote-no-confidence-resolution-mayorkas/

2nd UFO/UAP Senate hearing highlighted the need for better data

 This week, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Sean M. Kirkpatrick was the sole witness in a public hearing at the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, chaired by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). This was the second in two public hearings on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs also referred to as UFOs), held merely a year apart over the past half-century.

UAPs cannot be ignored by the U.S. government because they may represent advanced technological capabilities of adversaries that pose national security threats. This was evident from Kirkpatrick’s presentation, which revolved around these concerns. He noted that 650 reports are being studied by two teams within AARO: one led by intelligence experts and the other by scientists and engineers. For each UAP report, the inferences from the two teams are compared and vetted, with the goal of transforming UAP to SEP (“Someone Else’s Problem”), namely an item to be handled by other government agencies. The reporting procedures and filters for cataloging data will improve over time, as more UAP are reported and studied. Half of the existing reports involve nearly spherical objects, which could potentially be balloons.

AARO studies anecdotal data that was obtained during the routine operation of military and intelligence sensors, but not through a systematic scientific study of the sky. Moreover, the best quality data will remain classified because the government sensors used to collect them are classified.

But UAPs should not be ignored also for scientific reasons, in case some of them have an extraterrestrial origin. Kirkpatrick showed two video snippets of objects that were not particularly likely to be candidates for extraterrestrial devices. He said, “I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”

To find out if one of a thousand UAPs or interstellar objects represents an extraterrestrial technology, we must observe it with state-of-the-art cameras and telescopes that are fully calibrated and understood. Only exquisite scientific data will allow us to test whether humanity is the most technologically advanced species in the Milky Way galaxy.

For example, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope could detect the heat emitted by the next weird interstellar object, like `Oumuamua observed in 2017, and infer its surface area and albedo — given that its surface temperature is dictated by its distance from the sun. Simultaneous observations from Earth and the Webb telescope will accurately constrain any meaningful level of non-gravitational propulsion. New interstellar objects will likely be discovered in the coming years by the 3.2-billion-pixel camera of the forthcoming  Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

The best path forward on the scientific front is not to focus on past anecdotal data by classified government sensors — as that pursued by AARO and the Senate subcommittee — but instead to collect new data.

This is precisely the mission of the Galileo Project observatories, the first of which is currently recording continuous data on the entire sky from Harvard University. The Galileo research team, which I lead, plans to build multiple copies of this observatory and place them in different geographical locations within the coming year. The vast output of infrared, optical, radio and audio data will be analyzed systematically by artificial intelligence classification algorithms in search for anything other than natural or human-made objects that AARO aims to transition to the SEP category. This scientific mission complements the analysis of anecdotal data from past UAP reports, discussed during the Senate hearing.

Within the coming years, the new data will contain more information than all past UAP reports combined. Rather than attend to compromised or crowdsourced data from cell phones, it makes most sense to expand our scientific knowledge by using well-calibrated instruments under the control of experienced scientists.

Kirkpatrick noted that NASA is conducting a parallel study that analyzes data from its climate-monitoring satellites around Earth. However, these satellites cannot resolve UAPs that are a few meters in size. The Galileo Project is currently analyzing higher-resolution data obtained through a partnership with Planet Labs, that allows to image UAPs of interest.

Kirkpatrick reiterated the need for evidence-based, rigorous scientific analysis. Along these lines, I co-authored a joint paper with him last month that discusses the path forward to using known physics in constraining the properties of UAPs. In the introduction of our paper, we discussed hypothetical scenarios by which UAPs might represent small probes from an extraterrestrial technological origin. Humanity launched five probes to interstellar space in 50 years and could send tens of billions of them in the next 50 years by allocating all military budget to space exploration. That we do not have any conclusive data to support the possibility that another technological civilization did that already, is the rationale for researching the topic (and the rationale behind Galileo Project). It would be arrogant for us to ignore this possibility based on prejudice.

Since Fritz Zwicky’s discovery 90 years ago, astronomers are aware of the fact that most of the matter in the Universe is composed of a different substance than the ordinary matter that we see in the Solar system. To find the nature of dark matter, particle physicists are smashing protons at yet higher energies in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Similarly, astronomers learned over the past decade that three out of the first four interstellar objects from outside our solar system, have anomalous characteristics relative to solar system rocks. To figure out the nature of these objects and UAP, researchers are collecting new data.Beyond any clutter from national security threats, the latter quest for interstellar objects has much broader implications to the future of humanity than the former for dark matter.

The scientific process takes much more time and effort than the speculations of believers, skeptics, bloggers or science-fiction writers. But this hard work required is worth the wait. Our current assets in space would never reach their destinations if we relied merely on popular views from four centuries ago and kept avoiding the scientific method pioneered by Galileo Galilei.

Avi Loeb is the head of Harvard University’s Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, as well as the former chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy (2011-2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and he is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos,” both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar,” is scheduled for publication in August 2023.

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3961839-second-uap-senate-hearing-highlighted-the-need-for-better-data/

Emergent aims to price over-the-counter Narcan at about $50

 Contract drugmaker Emergent BioSolutions Inc said on Thursday it is aiming to price the over-the-counter (OTC) version of its opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan at around $50 per carton.

The OTC version will become available at U.S. stores and online retailers later this summer, while the currently available prescription nasal spray carries a wholesale price tag of $125 per carton.

Emergent's statement comes nearly a month after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed Narcan to be sold over-the-counter, allowing for easier availability of the life-saving medication.

The approval paved the way for expanded access to the drug in areas that have concentrated overdose problems and a few pharmacies, but uncertainty remains around Narcan's final price and whether insurers will offer coverage.

Emergent has not disclosed the final price for OTC Narcan yet.

"A goal for the out-of-pocket retailer price is to be consistent with our public interest pricing for one carton of two 4 milligram doses," the company said in its statement, adding that current price for public interest groups averages less than $50.

Customers will pay the out-of-pocket retailer price, which is set by individual retailers for Narcan once it becomes available in the United States.

Prescription Narcan is currently covered under commercial- and government-backed insurance plans, which allows people to get the drug for free from the pharmacy or for a nominal co-pay.

Government-backed Medicare health insurance plans do not cover OTC products, but have previously made exceptions such as in the case of COVID-19 tests.

Naloxone-based Narcan rapidly reverses or blocks the effects of opioids, restoring normal respiration, especially when given within minutes of the first signs of an overdose.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/emergent-aims-price-over-counter-154103587.html

Blackstone is in talks to help regional banks with lending

 Blackstone Inc, the biggest manager of private equity and real estate assets, said on Thursday it was discussing partnerships with U.S. regional banks to help them with constraints in areas such as car loans and home improvement financing.

The New York-based firm, which is one of the world's biggest non-bank lenders, said this was a "golden moment" to expand its credit business after banks retrenched in the wake of last month's regional banking crisis.

"As regional banks experienced outflows of deposits, we are seeing real-time opportunities to partner with them at scale," Blackstone President Jonathan Gray said on the firm's first-quarter earnings call.

Gray said some banks which have good relationships with borrowers are struggling to maintain them because of their eroding capital base, and that Blackstone could help them with some of the lending flow.

"The regional banks generally play a very large role in home improvement loans, auto loans and equipment finance. Those are all areas of opportunities... We're in a number of discussions," Gray said. He did not identify the banks Blackstone is speaking to.

Gray's comments came as Blackstone sought to reassure investors on Thursday it would continue to grow despite a slowdown in many pockets of the real estate market, which close to half the firm's earnings have exposure to.

Distributable earnings, which represent the cash used for shareholder dividends, fell to $1.25 billion in the first quarter from $1.94 billion a year earlier, Blackstone reported. That translated to distributable earnings per share of 97 cents, slightly over the average analyst estimate of 96 cents, according to financial data provider Refinitiv.

Blackstone shares were down 0.6% at $91.91 in New York on Thursday morning.

Blackstone has been grappling with redemptions at its flagship real estate income trust (BREIT), prompting it to exercise its right to block investor withdrawals at 5% of the quarterly net asset value of the fund every month since November.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackstones-first-quarter-earnings-plunge-110715524.html

Bank Bailout Facility Usage Rises First Time Since SVB, MM Fund Outflows Soar

 After last week saw The Fed's balance sheet shrink significantly back from its bank-bailout resurgence, all eyes will be back on H.4.1. report this evening to see if things have continued to 'improve' or re-worsened amid regional bank shares unable to bounce above post-SVB lows ahead of earnings.

In a big surprise, this week saw a $68 billion OUTFLOW from Money Market funds - the largest since July 2020 (after $380 billion of INFLOWS over the previous five weeks)...

Source: Bloomberg

The breakdown was $58.9 billion from Institutional funds and $9.72 billion from retail funds.

That pulled assets from their $5.277 trillion record high and suggests last week's deposit INFLOWS may be about to accelerate - good news for banks?

Source: Bloomberg

Added to last week's deposit inflows, this suggests - in the short-term - the banking crisis is easing (at least in the minds of investors).

However, it's never that easy, as BofA noted earlier, it's that time of year again when corporations pull cash from MM funds to pay taxes.

In 2022, the 3rd week of April saw $41.6bn of institutional outflows from MM funds. In 2021, the same period was institutional outflows of around $19.6 billion. 2020 was a COVID shitshow, but 2019 saw a $42.3 billion withdrawal.

So this year's $59.8 billion institutional outflow is significant in its size compared to the last few years (but the seasonal tax-driven nature of the outflow should counter any over-excitement for now).

Though not wanting to piss all over those hopeful fireworks, we note that reverse repo continues to rise...

Source: Bloomberg

The most anticipated financial update of the week - the infamous H.4.1. showed the world's most important balance sheet shrank for the 4th straight week last week, by $21.5 billion, slightly more than last week's tumble (helped by a $17bn QT)...

Source: Bloomberg

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings ACTUALLY ROSE last week from $139 billion to $144 billion (still massively higher than the $4.5 billion pre-SVB)...

Source: Bloomberg

...but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window rose by $1.6 billion to $69.9 billion (upper pane below) along with a $2.1 billion increase in usage of the Fed's brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, to $73.98 billion (middle pane) from $79.0 billion last week. Meanwhile, other credit extensions - consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the FDIC to resolve SVB and Signature Bank were unchanged at $173BN (lower pane)...

Scanning down the H.4.1, we note that Foreign repo was down $10BN to $20BN (though it is still troubling that some bank still needs this much USD) and Other Fed Assets rose $2.2 billion (after falling last month)...

With the MM outflows, deposit inflows, and Fed balance sheet shrinking again, it appears the 'banking crisis' is over... and with it goes the hopes for equity bulls that The Fed will ease away from its inflation mandate... be careful what you wish for here as with clarity comes fortitude and The FedSpeak recently has almost all sung from the same hymnal - higher for longer, inflation still too high... not the massive loosening-fest the market is hoping for in H2 2023.

We will simply have to wait and see to know if these outflows are "real" of simply the usual tax-driven withdrawals.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-balance-sheet-shrinks-4th-week-money-market-funds-see-largest-outflows-almost-2-years