Unredactions Reveal Early White House Involvement in Trump Documents Case

 Top Biden administration officials worked with the National Archives to develop Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump involving the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified material, according to recently unsealed court documents in the case pending in southern Florida.

More than 300 pages of newly unredacted exhibits, containing emails and other correspondence related to the early stages of the hunt for presidential papers, challenge public statements by Joe Biden about what he knew and when he knew it regarding the case against his political rival.

Jonathan Su, White House lawyer: In regular touch with National Archives.

LinkedIn

The new disclosures indicate the Department of Justice was in touch with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) during much of 2021, undermining the DOJ’s claims that it became involved in the matter only after the Archives sent it a criminal referral on February 9, 2022, based on the findings of records with “classified markings” in 15 boxes of materials Trump gave to the Archives a month prior.

The court exhibits, which were compiled by Trump’s defense lawyers and kept under seal until last week, also show that Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su regularly communicated with Archive officials.

Although Biden himself is not mentioned in the exhibits, the active participation of Su and other high-ranking White House officials raises questions about whether Biden was forthright when he told “60 Minutes” he wasn’t involved in the investigation.

“I have not asked for the specifics of those documents,” Biden told Scott Pelley in the Sept. 17 broadcast, “because I don't want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they could take. I agreed I would not tell them what to do and not, in fact, engage in telling them how to prosecute or not.”

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Trump’s lawyers first filed the heavily redacted material in a January motion, under a standing protective order issued by the court to initially conceal potentially sensitive information. His team then asked U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the matter in southern Florida, to remove many of those redactions based on her review.

Aileen Cannon, presiding judge: Unseal the files, she ruled..

Southern District of Florida/Wikimedia

A protracted battle ensued as Smith fought to keep large portions of the motion and accompanying exhibits from the public. Smith told Cannon that disclosing the material would jeopardize the investigation and expose potential witnesses and government employees to "significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment."

But Cannon, arguing the need for public transparency, authorized the unsealing of the files, which were posted in mostly unredacted form on April 22. A comparison of the redacted and unredacted material shows the Archives acted in concert with several Biden administration agencies to build the case -- coordination that included the DOJ, the Biden White House, and the intelligence community.

The Trump case prompted revelations that both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence had also retained classified documents – in Biden’s case for decades, stretching back to his time in the Senate. But while the Archives’ outreach to Biden and Pence consisted of requests, the agency took a more assertive stance with Trump. 

Gary Stern, National Archives lawyer: Some two dozen boxes of files missing.

National Archives

Within weeks of Trump’s leaving office in 2021, employees with Biden’s Office of Records Management and the Archives began coordinated demands to Trump’s transition team, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Gary Stern, the Archives general counsel, noting “several conversations” with records office employees to discuss “concerns” about material in Trump’s possession, emailed Trump’s team in May 2021 and asked them to account for “roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records [that] have not been transferred to NARA.”

Stern did not specify the files the Archives wanted beyond “original correspondence between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jung-un” and “the letter that President Obama left for President Trump on his first day in office.” An unsealed FBI report indicated the Archives also sought the so-called “Sharpiegate” map of Hurricane Dorian that the former president used during a 2018 televised briefing on the track of the storm.

Despite Trump’s cooperation, David Ferriero, the national archivist appointed by Barack Obama in 2009, warned the transition team a month later in June 2021 that he was running “out of patience.”

Before-and-after illustration 1: Unredactions on the National Archives’ early and aggressive focus.

Southern District of Florida

By August 2021, Ferriero and Stern were in contact with DOJ officials and at least one White House attorney to develop what initially appeared to be a records destruction case against Trump. According to White House visitor logs, Stern met with Su on August 12 at the White House.

David Ferriero, national archivist: In touch with Justice Department.

National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia

From that point on, the collaboration between the White House and Archives accelerated. On Aug. 30, 2021, Ferriero, making unfounded accusations that 24 boxes of materials were missing, warned Trump’s team, “At this point, I am assuming [the boxes] have been destroyed. In which case, I am obligated to report it to the Hill, the DOJ, and the White House.”

A Trump staffer whose name remains redacted responded, “To my knowledge, nothing has been destroyed.”

The archives, with apparent guidance from top White House lawyers, pressed forward. On Sept. 1, Stern sent an email to Ferriero and deputy archivist Debra Wall with the subject line, “Draft Letter to AG re Missing Trump Records.” In the Sept. 1, 2021 email, Stern disclosed that he already had “reached out to DOJ counsel about this issue,” and that “WH Counsel is now aware of the issue.”

An attachment to the email included a draft letter from Ferriero to Attorney General Merrick Garland to notify him that presidential records “may have been unlawfully removed from U.S. government custody or possibly destroyed.”

On Sept. 2, presumably with the draft letter in hand, Ferriero met with White House Counsel Dana Remus in her office, according to visitor logs. The draft letter was not sent as the Archives and White House continued to advance the case behind the scenes.

.Before-and-after illustration 2: Unredactions suggest early coordination with the White House and DOJ.

Southern District of Florida

On Sept. 9, 2021, both Ferriero and Stern met again with Remus and possibly White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. (A Sept. 8, 2021, email from Stern referred to a meeting beforehand with “Ron and Dana,” possibly referencing Klain.) The same email indicated plans to also meet with Su.

Dana Remus, White House counsel: Met with national achivist Ferriero in her office.

White House/Wikipedia

An Oct. 2021 letter to Ferriero from Remus referred to a “notification on September 8” related to the January 6 Select Committee’s request for Trump’s records. In the letter, Remus denied Trump’s claims of privilege in preventing the committee from early access to his papers.

But the email chains do not reflect any mention of the January 6 Committee’s demands; to the contrary, emails between the White House and Archives repeatedly reference the “Trump boxes.”

In fact, a Sept. 15 email disclosed that Stern spoke to Su to “get him up to speed on the issue and the dispute whether there are 12 or 24 missing boxes.” A few weeks later, Stern told his colleagues that “WHCO [White House counsel] is ready to set up a call to discuss the Trump boxes.”

Before-and-after illustration 3: Unredactions on cooperation between the Archives and White House counsel.

Southern District of Florida

On Jan. 18, 2022, following roughly seven months of negotiations, Trump’s team delivered 15 boxes to the Archives. In a matter of hours, the Archives’ White House liaison director said he conducted what he described in an email to Ferriero, Wall, and three undisclosed recipients as a “high level overview” of the contents.

Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general: "Instructed" National Archives lawyer Stern on how to proceed.

Department of Justice

While admitting that most of the material consisted of “newspapers, magazines, and printed news articles,” the official claimed the boxes contained “lots of classified records.”

That assessment triggered deeper involvement by the DOJ. An unsealed FBI interview with an Archives official indicated that on Jan. 22 Su directed Stern to contact the office of Lisa Monaco, the current deputy attorney general and a longtime former adviser to Obama, to lay the groundwork for a criminal referral. It would represent the first time the Archives had ever sent a referral to the DOJ asking for an investigation into the retention of classified records.

Two days later, Monaco’s office “instructed” Stern on how to proceed. For guidance as to how a criminal investigation would proceed, two Monaco associates told Stern to notify the inspectors general for both the Archives and the intelligence community as well as DOJ National Security Division Chief Jay Bratt, now the lead prosecutor for Jack Smith in the classified documents case, and the chief of the DOJ’s public integrity unit.

According to the unredacted defense motion, Stern followed the DOJ’s guidance and sent information about the 15 boxes to the Archives’ inspector general, who then notified the intelligence community’s inspector general about a “very high level potential spillage and records management issue.”

The email chain then made its way to Thomas Windom, a prosecutor now tasked to Smith’s team on the Jan. 6 case against Trump, on Feb. 1. A criminal referral was officially sent to the DOJ on Feb. 9.

Two months after the archives received Trump’s boxes, which he produced voluntarily, the FBI opened on March 30, 2022, what it named the “Plasmic Echo” investigation, according to an unsealed FBI document. The probe centered on the “mishandling of classified or national defense information.”

Before-and-after illustration 4: Unredactions on top-level DOJ involvement before receiving criminal referral.

Southern District of Florida

A grand jury and the FBI summoned Mar-a-Lago employees to testify. In May 2022, at the same time Biden officials were scouring Biden-related locations including the Penn-Biden Center in Washington for classified documents in advance of a potential GOP investigation into the same matter if Republicans won the House, the DOJ issued a subpoena for more classified records.

Not satisfied with the result – that Trump’s lawyers produced 38 more files to investigators in June 2022 – Garland authorized and the FBI executed a nine-hour raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. After seizing more than 13,000 pieces of evidence, prosecutors claimed agents found another 102 records with classified markings.

In June 2023, Smith, appointed in November 2022 to take over the existing investigation, charged Trump with 32 counts of “willfully” retaining national defense information, representing a shift from the premise of the original investigation into more serious Espionage Act crimes. (Visitor logs show that Stern met with Biden’s special counsel Richard Sauber at the White House the day before Smith announced the indictment.)

Smith has also indicted Waltine Nauta, Trump’s personal aide, with obstruction, for moving boxes within Mar-a-Lago in an alleged attempt to conceal materials from investigators, and another Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos DeOlivera, for allegedly attempting to erase security video at the property. All have pleaded not guilty.

Another Special Counsel, Robert Hur, was subsequently named to investigate Biden’s retention of classified material, dating as far back as 1977. Although Hur reported that Biden had willfully retained state secrets in unsecured locations and illegally shared them with a ghostwriter, he concluded that Biden should not be prosecuted for these violations.

Trump and his co-defendants have filed motions to dismiss based on selective and vindictive prosecution; Cannon has not yet ruled on those motions.

A May 2024 trial date in Florida has been postponed in light of Trump’s other legal entanglements, which the former president has described as a partisan witch hunt to interfere in the 2024 election.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/05/02/unredactions_reveal_early_white_house_involvement_in_trump_documents_case_1028630.html

Avoiding Victimhood: A Lesson From Our Jewish Peers

 More than six months have passed since the deadly attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Yet it seems like every day I wake up to new reports of antisemitic conduct, particularly among America’s most elite young adults, Ivy League students. The latest has been a series of violent protests at Columbia and Yale where Jewish students were harassed and even attacked. At Penn, I have been reporting on the ground while protesters chanted “Israelis are pigs,” and “Al-Qassam make us proud, take another soldier down.” Our famous Ben Franklin statue was even vandalized with the KKK slur “Zios get fuckt.” How did the generation that prided itself on inclusive language, safe spaces, and affirming one another’s identities end up being so hostile toward Jews?

The story is multifold. It starts, of course, with Gen Z’s selective and shallow supposed tolerance. Ninety percent of Gen Zers expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and less than 50% believe there are “just two genders,” statistics that would be lauded by progressives as surefire indicators of “tolerance.” However, this is paired with rapidly increasing rates of intolerance for people of different viewpoints among Gen Z.

None of this explains why Jews are exempt from this veil of tolerance. After all, they are a historically oppressed minority group. American Jews were crucial to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and supported gay marriage more than any other religious group. They also are the most reliable liberal voting coalition by faith, with 79% voting for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms. So why, then, did progressives not only refuse to rally behind those experiencing antisemitism but actively propagate it?

Here’s the short answer: It is inconsistent with the Jewish heritage to play the victim. Against all odds, a small ethnic group has retained its faith, traditions, and family lines despite every type of persecution imaginable. Whether it was by the Romans, the Ottomans, the Nazis, or the Soviets, efforts to shun and eradicate Jews have been countless. Despite this unparalleled persecution, the more than 15 million Jews worldwide have not only survived but thrived. Twenty-five percent of American Jews report household incomes of more than 200,000 dollars, and over 80% across ages and denominations of Judaism express life and community satisfaction. Approximately 16% of Penn undergraduates are Jewish, a number which is a relative median across the Ivy League. For a group that makes up only 2.4% of the United States and that has been targeted with such ferocity in every generation, these numbers defy all odds.

In his article titled, “On Not Being a Victim,”  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes about how Moses impresses personal accountability upon the Jews in the Book of Deuteronomy. He writes, “The choice, he says again and again, is yours alone: you as an individual, second person singular, and you as a people, second person plural. The result was that remarkably, Jews did not see themselves as victims.” As a Catholic, I was also brought up with this sense of personal accountability for my actions. It is through this, as Jews and Catholics both understand, that we can experience both real liberty and moral fulfillment. While this value was once universally understood by Americans it has now become counter-cultural. Therefore, it was second nature for me to see it targeted on Oct. 7th and grieve the attacks alongside my Jewish best friend, and advocate against antisemitism at Penn.

Fueled by this character, against all odds, Judaism and Zionism triumphed. A nation formed by repeated attempts at deadly ethnic cleansing over generations has gone on to thrive. Israel ranks highly on economic and educational measures of success and metrics of political and social freedom. Contrary to popular belief, Israel remains a highly tolerant and accepting place, a standout within the Middle East. It is therefore no surprise that the illiberal progressive ideologies that have captivated Gen Z would draw a target on the nation that refuses to be victimized as it remains strong and tolerant despite constant opposition.

While many pin the blame for this rise in antisemitism on the growth in “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies which center around dividing people into groups of “oppressor” and “oppressed,” this thesis seems to miss part of the story. Yes, this ideology has provided anti-Zionists with useful language like “colonizer” and “apartheid” to express their frustrations with the Jewish state. But people in leftist academic circles have launched these accusations at Jews and Israelis for decades. Why is it that now, among my generation, this virulent sentiment spreads like wildfire?

Though the viral Instagram graphic comparing Columbia’s student protests during Vietnam to those of late would suggest Gen Z is engaged in a storied tradition of student protest, our generation is different. As Abigail Shrier explains in her new best-selling book, Gen Z isn’t only hyper-polarized but also hyper-therapized. As “Bad Therapy” explains, we, and certainly the generation that will follow us, have been raised on “socio-emotional learning,” and “gentle” and “helicopter” parenting. We are shielded from personal accountability and hardship at every turn. After receiving participation awards instead of resiliency, it’s no surprise that belief in meritocracy and the American Dream is rapidly declining. The worst part? We are the most anxious, alienated, and depressed generation in history.

It should be unsurprising that antisemitism would take such a fierce hold among today’s youth. A worldview centered around tradition, community, success, and most importantly survival against all odds, represents everything this generation lacks. Judaism, Zionism, and the West as a whole are the perfect targets for their animus. But theirs is a different, more pervasive kind of progressive activism, fueled by jealousy. These are America’s best and brightest – filled with hatred and ripe for radicalization.

To be clear, peaceful protest is permissible and critique of Israel is not equivalent to antisemitism, but when protesters shout “intifada revolution” and “kill all the Jews,” we should take them seriously. More importantly, we should recognize what we can do better as a nation and a culture to prepare our young people to crave well-being rather than seek to destroy it.

Lexi Boccuzzi is a contributor at Young Voices and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written about higher education, antisemitism, and Gen Z in The Daily Pennsylvanian, and has just founded a new heterodox student publication, The Pennsylvania Post. Follow her on X @lexiboccuzzi.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/05/02/avoiding_victimhood_a_lesson_from_our_jewish_peers__150881.html

EPA’s Deceptive Climate Regulations Won’t Stand in Court

 The Environmental Protection Agency last week finalized a “suite of rules” governing electricity producers. The EPA first announced these air, soil and water regulations two years ago, as tools to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by forcing coal-fired power plants to close prematurely. The rules reflect the Biden administration’s “whole of government” approach to imposing its climate agenda, which puts ideological ambition above the limits of congressionally delegated authority.

Soon after the EPA announced this plan in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which also sought what the agency calls “generation shifting,” from fossil fuel to renewables. The court found no evidence that Congress had granted the EPA the sweeping power of “deciding how Americans will get their energy.” This signaled trouble ahead for the Biden strategy, which relied on what was already creative rulemaking in the express pursuit of precisely that goal.

Following that defeat, the EPA labored to shield these rules from that same constitutional challenge. But a standard employed by the Supreme Court against supposedly deceitful conduct during the Trump administration should doom the effort.

In speeches and congressional testimony, EPA officials described this coming “suite of rules” as using “all of the tools in our toolbox” to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. They cited a variety of statutory regimes, including some with no plausible claim to being vehicles for reducing airborne emissions, like the Clean Water Act and a solid-waste law known as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

While the Clean Power Plan’s constitutionality was still pending before the Supreme Court, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the new rules would finish the job the plan began. In saying that the regulatory blitz was synchronized to shut down politically disfavored coal-fired generation plants, Mr. Regan described coerced retirements as “the best tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

That is, the laws were enacted for one purpose, and the agency admitted it planned to use them to achieve a different purpose.

Our system of government frowns on regulators’ lying about their reason for doing something. Supreme Court precedent is clear that “an agency must ‘disclose the basis’ of its action.” In 2019 in Department of Commerce v. New York, the court addressed allegations that the Trump administration included a citizenship question in the 2020 census for reasons beyond those acknowledged in the administrative record. The majority agreed that to determine the real factors driving inclusion of the citizenship question, depositions of senior agency officials were appropriate. Georgetown Adjunct Law Professor Jack Thorlin has described the case as formally unveiling the “rule against pretext.”

Then the court ruled in West Virginia, finding that the Clean Power Plan’s generation-shifting goal presented a “major question.” That changes the inquiry from whether an agency is lawfully exercising a delegated power to whether Congress delegated such a power to the agency at all. The majority specifically ruled that before employing regulations to compel plant closings, the EPA must show a clear grant of authority from Congress, which the agency failed to establish and, the court noted, it is unlikely any agency possesses.

Like the Clean Power Plan, the EPA’s newly finalized replacement rule requires adoption of technology that doesn’t exist. More remarkably, the agency simultaneously published the rules governing mercury, water emissions and solid-waste storage, all of which it had clumsily promised would drive plants to close and thereby reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

EPA officials apparently grasp that the opinion in West Virginia prohibits the practice that admirers call “law whispering” or “teaching old laws new tricks”—particularly on major questions like contriving changes in our energy mix. Gone are paeans to inventive ways of coercing plants to retire. With a newfound modesty, the administrative record published for these non-greenhouse-gas emissions rules disputes claims of causing “a significant number of retirements” and attributes any generation shifting to Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.

This ploy to dodge constitutional analysis need not succeed. The previously admitted pretext behind the EPA’s “suite of rules,” individually and collectively, is to achieve the outcome that the court in West Virginia declared the agency has no authority to pursue. The doctrine against pretext debuted in Department of Commerce should trigger review under the major-questions doctrine; the disingenuous effort to avoid it presents another basis for review. Courts can take Mr. Regan’s word for it or, as in the Trump-era census case, order discovery to determine what factors truly drove the agency’s decisions.

The group Government Accountability and Oversight has argued exactly this to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in an amicus brief I co-authored in a challenge to one of the suite of rules (Kentucky v. EPA). This argument should ensure Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of Mr. Biden’s “whole of government” approach and specifically the “suite of rules” the EPA assembled to skirt major-questions review.

Bureaucratic workarounds of agencies’ limited delegations of power are an affront to the judiciary and to “our democracy.” The Biden backdoor climate gambit is a good place to draw the line.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-climate-deception-wont-stand-in-court-suite-west-virginia-pretext-regan-0fae5111

Biden White House meeting on voter registration with left-wing activists: Docs

 In the summer of 2021, the White House convened a meeting over Zoom with outside groups to plan on implementing an executive order from the president granting them historic new tools to register voters. The Biden administration has insisted attendees and the operation at large are “nonpartisan,” though internal documents provide a glimpse into how the July 12, 2021, meeting appears to have overwhelmingly been a key platform for left-wing activist hubs to suggest sweeping election policy changes.

The documents, which have not been reported on until now, are a window into how nonprofit organizations have coordinated with the highest levels of the government on bringing President Joe Biden‘s executive order to fruition. Republican lawmakers and conservative groups have heavily scrutinized the legality and constitutionality of the March 2021 order, which calls for “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

And following the 2020 election, which drew GOP-led investigations in Congress over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wiring hundreds of millions of dollars to a progressive-left group that boosted Democrats, Republicans are concerned the 2021 “Bidenbucks” order will unlawfully appropriate federal funds in 2024 to promote Democratic voter turnout. The order, lawmakers say, may violate the Antideficiency Act, a law barring federal agencies from spending funds beyond those approved through Congress, and the Hatch Act, which restricts government employees from engaging in certain political activities, among other laws.

“The Biden administration continues to spend taxpayer dollars on partisan voter registration initiatives,” said Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), chairman of the House Administration Committee, which oversees elections. “Not only is this shady, but it does not instill trust in our elections.”

Biden’s March 2021 order mandates federal agencies develop plans to provide the public access to voter registration services with the help of “approved” outside groups, as well as assist the public in filling out these forms and mail-in-ballot applications. Concerned GOP lawmakers have since sent letters to the Biden administration asking it to turn over any potential criteria for approved entities.

At the same time, internal meeting notes reveal some of the topics left-wing organizations discussed during a July 12, 2021, “listening session” for the March order. Previously released records revealed a snippet of the agenda of the virtual meeting, which was attended by representatives from the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Justice, and other agencies.

One 2021 meeting attendee, for instance, was Jose Morales, a former Biden-Harris transition team staffer who is listed on the 2021 meeting notes as a representative for the left-wing Fair Fight Action. Morales, ex-chief of staff for the failed 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams campaign, urged federal agencies in the meeting to make sure they’re “prioritizing opportunities for helping people to fill out voting forms” and to vote by mail. He also stressed that federal employees should receive a day off to vote and assist election workers, who Morales said are under “assault.”

Then there’s Laura Williamson, a then-employee at the left-wing Demos think tank who now works for the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the 2021 meeting, Williamson told agencies they shouldn’t “stop at registration.”

“It’s just the first hurdle,” said the then-employee at Demos, which GOP lawmakers say crafted a document in 2020 that ended up appearing “nearly identical” to the Biden order. Demos notably counted Barack Obama in 2001 as a founding board member, according to tax forms.

At the meeting, Williamson offered that the Department of Housing and Urban Development should “consider integrating voter registration into public housing” as a requirement under federal law, the notes say.

It’s a proposal that Stewart Whitson, an attorney who works for the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability, said is evidence of a coordinated effort between the White House and activists to target vulnerable populations seen as likely Biden voters through the unlawful order. FGA and the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project separately obtained the same meeting notes through records requests to the Department of Justice.

Another 2021 meeting participant was Nikolas Youngsmith, then an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which appears to support illegal immigration and also awards scholarships to undocumented students. Youngsmith, now a Democratic congressional aide, said at the meeting that his group backed voter registration efforts for “immigrants and noncitizens,” meeting notes show.

“We also want to make sure that they are done in a careful way,” Youngsmith said, according to the unearthed documents. “All fed[eral] employees must be well-trained in this. Need to trust people are acting in bounds of the law. Especially when there are language issues. Federal employees need to know who should be properly registered and not. Don’t want someone to face charges based on bad info[rmation].”

Meanwhile, the “nonpartisan” 2021 meeting fielded presentations from staffers from the League of Women Voters, including registered lobbyist Jessica Jones Capparell. Meeting notes say Capparell, a former campaign aide to ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill, urged agencies to register people to vote at citizen and naturalization ceremonies run by federal courts.

Capparell lobbied in 2023 on behalf of the League of Women Voters against appropriations bills seeking to prohibit agencies from using funding in connection to Biden’s 2021 executive order, congressional filings show.

So did her lobbyist colleague, Celina Stewart, who attended the meeting that year, according to meeting notes.

“Agencies need more funding to make sure this happens,” Stewart, who discussed voter registration, said at the meeting.

Two presenters were also Keeda Haynes of the Sentencing Project, a left-wing group that supports defunding prisons, and Dana Paikowsky, then at the left-wing Campaign Legal Center watchdog. Both discussed reforms to the Bureau of Prisons, according to meeting notes.

“Felony disenfranchisement is voter suppression,” Haynes, a recent Democratic congressional candidate, said at the 2021 meeting. She called for the use of federal resources to register inmates to vote in prisons.

Paikowsky, who says on her LinkedIn profile that she now works at the Justice Department, said in the meeting that the Campaign Legal Center made recommendations to the Bureau of Prisons on certain issues.

The agency was “excited,” Paikowsky apparently said during the meeting.

The 2021 meeting was also attended by representatives from the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center, End Citizens United, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, Black Voters Matter, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and other major left-wing activist groups, documents show.

Ahead of the 2024 election, which will feature a rematch between Biden and Trump, various nonprofit organizations bankrolled by top Democratic dark money groups and linked to this 2021 meeting are launching “nonpartisan” campaigns to mobilize voters.

But to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior Heritage Foundation legal fellow, the reason the order is concerning isn’t solely because groups helping to shape it are partisan.

Fundamentally, the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of voter registration, von Spakovsky told the Washington Examiner.

“There’s too much risk of the party that controls the executive branch using that to manipulate who gets registered,” he said.

The White House did not reply to a request for comment.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/2986378/documents-biden-white-house-meeting-voter-registration-left-wing-activists/

'Companies may still buy consumer genetic information despite its modest predictive power'

 Genetics can be associated with one's behavior and health—from the willingness to take risks, and how long one stays in school, to chances of developing Alzheimer's disease and breast cancer. Although our fate is surely not written in our genes, corporations may still find genetic data valuable for risk assessment and business profits, according to a perspective published in The American Journal of Human Genetics. The researchers stress the need for policy safeguards to address ethics and policy concerns regarding collecting genetic data.

At-home DNA tests have provided millions with insights into their family history and health risk by simply spitting in a tube. Genetic risk screening of embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics is now available. These tests rely on polygenic scores—a tally of variations in human genes that influence a certain trait. However, while powerful at predicting traits in large populations, these scores are rather weak at an individual level.

"And for that reason, people have said, 'we don't need to worry about companies wanting to use this information at the individual level because it's not very informative,'" says economist and co-corresponding author Nicholas Papageorge of Johns Hopkins University. "Well, that's not exactly true. Firms operate under a lot of uncertainty and any little bit of information that they have about you is worthwhile."

Using an economic model, the researchers found that companies might be willing to pay for a consumer's polygenic score even if it's only marginally accurate as a predictor, because the information may raise profit and is relatively cheap. For example, knowing a person's polygenic score, such as risk of cognitive decline or risky behaviors, an insurance firm may tailor their offerings to individuals, decline insurance, or raise premiums.

The economic model shows that companies' willingness to pay for a type of genetic information called a polygenic score increases with expected profits. As the score becomes more informative, the dollar amount companies are willing to pay rises, potentially exceeding the $100 genotyping cost. Credit: Nick Papageorge/Johns Hopkins University

"And it might be counterintuitive, but there might be welfare-enhancing uses of such data," says co-corresponding author, legal scholar, and bioethicist Michelle Meyer of Geisinger College of Health Sciences.

For example, financial service companies may develop products that reduce financial decision-making burdens or offer error monitoring services for people at high polygenic risk of Alzheimer's. "But I do think it's fair to say the burden is on the firm to explicate and help develop appropriate guardrails to prevent nefarious uses."

The researchers argue that current laws and policies are inadequate to address the ethical, privacy, and legal concerns surrounding the potential corporate use of polygenic scores. While the US Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act prohibits discrimination in health coverage and employment based on genetic information, there are loopholes. The act only covers health insurance, excluding long-term, disability, life, and other insurances. It also doesn't apply to employers with fewer than 15 people, which accounts for 85% of US companies.

"This is a wake-up call to people and to those who are in a position to act," says Meyer. "We need to put things in place now—or yesterday."

"I don't think people realize that when they give up their genetic information today, they're not giving it up just for today; they're giving it up forever," says Papageorge. "When there's new science, they know a little bit more about you."

More information: Potential Corporate Uses of Polygenic Indexes: Starting a Conversation about the Associated Ethics and Policy Issues, The American Journal of Human Genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.03.010. www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(24)00083-1

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-companies-buy-consumer-genetic-modest.html