Joe Biden just lost one of the last legal barriers standing between the public and a set of audio recordings he has fought to keep private. A divided federal appeals court rejected Biden’s emergency request to block the Justice Department from releasing redacted recordings and transcripts of conversations he had with memoir writer Mark Zwonitzer. The 2-1 decision did not open the files immediately. The court extended its temporary injunction through August 3, giving Biden a short window to seek further review. According to the ten-page order from the D.C. Circuit, Biden failed to satisfy the demanding standard required for an injunction while his appeal proceeds. The majority concluded that Biden had not shown he was likely to win his argument that federal privacy law and Freedom of Information Act exemptions require the Justice Department to keep the material under wraps. That is a major defeat, but it is not yet the last possible word. The court preserved the administrative injunction specifically so Biden can ask for more review before the recordings are released. The panel consisted of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judges Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan. Pan would have granted Biden’s request, while the other two judges denied it. BREAKING: An appeals court rejects Joe Biden's bid to withhold recordings and transcripts of pre-presidency interviews with a memoir ghostwriter. https://t.co/SamAhfU984 — The Associated Press (@AP) July 21, 2026 These are not the separate recordings of Biden’s 2023 interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The material at issue here comes from conversations Biden held at his home in 2016 and 2017 with Zwonitzer while preparing his 2017 memoir. Hur’s investigators later obtained those recordings during the classified-documents investigation and prepared transcripts. The Heritage Foundation and Mike Howell sued under the Freedom of Information Act in 2024 to obtain records Hur relied upon. The Justice Department initially withheld most of the material, then reversed course in February 2026 and decided to disclose redacted versions to the plaintiffs and the House Judiciary Committee. That change came under President Trump. The majority reviewed the department’s explanation and found that it acknowledged the reversal, made additional redactions and explained why the remaining public interest outweighed Biden’s reduced privacy interest. A detailed case summary from the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy shows how extensive those redactions are. After reviewing the material privately, the district court found that the proposed release contains no discussion of illness or death and no references to Biden’s family or other private individuals. What remains largely concerns foreign policy and Biden’s decision not to run for president in 2016. The district court also found that much of the remaining subject matter was already disclosed in Hur’s report or Biden’s memoir. Judge Dabney Friedrich therefore denied Biden’s request for a preliminary injunction in June, setting up the appeal he has now lost. The order does not dictate what form that further review may take. It only preserves the temporary protection through August 3 so Biden can make his next legal move. The majority’s central point was simple: the public has a substantial interest in examining evidence that shaped a special counsel’s investigation of a former vice president and sitting president, especially when that investigation ended without charges. Hur relied on the Zwonitzer material both when concluding that Biden had retained classified material and when deciding the evidence was not strong enough to prosecute. The majority said the public has an interest in examining that underlying evidence and judging the government’s decision for itself. The audio matters separately from the transcripts. Hur cited Biden’s tone and delivery in ways that a paper transcript cannot fully capture, and the appeals court rejected Biden’s separate claim that his voice itself carried enough additional privacy weight to stop release. The official report from the Justice Department explains why the recordings became so important. Hur reported that Biden told Zwonitzer in February 2017 that he had found “all the classified stuff downstairs.” Investigators later found marked Afghanistan documents in Biden’s Delaware garage, but Hur concluded the evidence would not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden willfully retained them. The report also said Biden read classified notebook passages aloud to Zwonitzer nearly verbatim on at least three occasions. Hur again declined charges, finding insufficient evidence that Biden knew those particular passages were classified and intended to disclose classified information. That is why the distinction between the two sets of recordings matters. The disputed 2016 and 2017 memoir conversations supplied evidence used inside Hur’s investigation. The separate 2023 interviews were Biden’s direct conversations with Hur’s team after the investigation began. JUST IN: A federal appeals court rejected Joe Biden’s bid to block the DOJ from releasing redacted transcripts and audio of his conversations with his biographer a decade ago. The ruling is stayed until Aug. 3 to give Biden time to appeal. pic.twitter.com/gMBU4knYxq — Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) July 21, 2026 Judge Florence Pan dissented. She argued that disclosure would permanently destroy Biden’s claimed privacy rights, potentially make the litigation moot and expose private conversations recorded inside his home after an investigation that produced no indictment. The majority saw the balance differently because of the redactions, the official reliance on the material and the extraordinary public interest surrounding Hur’s decision not to charge. August 3 is not a guaranteed release date. Another court could grant Biden additional relief, or his effort could fail and allow the Justice Department to move forward with the redacted disclosure. Either way, the fight has reached a decisive point. Biden now has days, not months, to win additional relief if he wants to keep the underlying evidence behind one of the most consequential special-counsel decisions in recent memory from disclosure. The post Joe Biden Has Until August 3 To Keep These Recordings From Going Public appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Nearly nine years after Hurricanes Irma and Maria tore through the U.S. Virgin Islands, families are still waiting for homes to be repaired and critical infrastructure to be rebuilt. Now President Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development has stopped new federal business with the agency entrusted with almost $2 billion for that recovery. The numbers explain why. HUD announced Monday that it had immediately suspended the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority from future federal procurement and nonprocurement transactions. The action is pending an inspector general investigation and any proceedings that follow. It is not a final debarment, and it does not mean that every dollar already obligated to an active project has been clawed back. It does mean the authority cannot keep approaching the federal government for new money as if the record below never happened. Working with @WHFraudTF, HUD has cut off funding for another corrupt organization. Effective immediately, new grants for the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority are suspended. VIHFA officials have prioritized kickbacks over helping families recover from disasters.… — Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) July 20, 2026 Congress provided $1,917,330,884 in Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery and mitigation money. According to HUD, the authority had spent $571,239,436 through May, or 29 percent. That leaves roughly $1.3 billion unspent while Virgin Islanders continue living with the consequences of two Category 5 storms. A child who entered elementary school when the storms struck could be approaching high school while many promised home repairs remain unfinished today. A spreadsheet cannot show the human cost. Every unfinished line represents a roof, an apartment, a power connection or a family that was promised help. The authority projected that its single-family rental rehabilitation program would finish 95 homes. It completed two. It projected 440 homeowner rehabilitations. It completed 72. Its multifamily rental program projected 1,643 units and completed 319. A separate mitigation housing program projected work on 329 single-family and multifamily homes and completed zero. The same table recorded zero completed economic-development projects out of 18 projected. Meanwhile, the authority had spent more than $52.6 million from the money set aside for administration. HUD’s table shows something broader than one stalled contractor or one delayed grant. Several distinct housing, economic-development and grid programs are all years behind at the same time. What has VIHFA done with their nearly $2 billion budget? Their program have pitiful completion rates. For example: Single Family Rental Rehab: 2% Homeowner Rehab: 16% Multifamily Rental: 19% — Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) July 20, 2026 The electrical-grid record is just as grim. Of a $67.7 million grid budget, approximately $1.1 million had been spent through May. That is about 2 percent. To be fair, not every program was frozen in place. The authority reported completing 477 of 572 projected public-facility projects, an 83 percent completion rate. But repaired public facilities do not erase two rehabilitated rental homes out of 95. They do not turn zero mitigation homes into places where people can live. And they do not make a 2 percent grid-spending rate acceptable after almost nine years. There is another number that should make every taxpayer stop: $52,657,309. That is how much HUD says had been spent from money set aside for administrative costs. It equals 55 percent of the administrative allotment. It is not 55 percent of the full $1.9 billion award. Even with that denominator stated correctly, administrative money was moving much faster than relief for many of the people the program existed to serve. The concerns go beyond delay. A March 2026 review by HUD’s inspector general rated the authority’s fraud-risk management practices at or below the lowest desired level. HUD’s notice also alleges that the authority sought approximately $6.2 million in disaster funds for costs FEMA had already paid. That request goes straight to the authority’s assurance that the same costs would not be paid twice. That figure should be described carefully. HUD’s inspector general found duplicate-benefit and overpayment concerns, but said weak records prevented auditors from determining the complete extent of improper payments across the reviewed projects. The formal notice says the authority certified that it had systems to prevent duplicate payments and detect fraud. HUD now argues those assurances were false or unreliable. The concern is larger than one reimbursement request. Without dependable records and controls, officials cannot know whether the next bad claim will be stopped before more federal money goes out the door. An agency responsible for nearly $2 billion should be able to produce records that let auditors calculate the exposure. One case has already produced a conviction. Former authority chief operating officer Darin Richardson was sentenced in March to 36 months in federal prison. The Department of Justice said trial evidence showed that Richardson helped award a multimillion-dollar contract to a company whose owner later gave him $107,000 disguised as a business investment. He was convicted of criminal conflict of interest, bank fraud, false statements and money laundering. Prosecutors said the lumber contract grew from roughly $3 million to $4.5 million. According to HUD’s notice, much of that lumber later deteriorated before it could be used in the recovery effort. Richardson’s conviction does not prove every allegation against the authority or its current leaders. HUD’s notice says that, to the department’s knowledge, neither the authority nor any other senior employee had been criminally charged, convicted or found civilly liable over the alleged false statements at issue. Governor Albert Bryan Jr. says the territory will fight the suspension. As reported by the Virgin Islands Consortium, Bryan called HUD’s action an overreach and argued that several cited problems were years old and had already been corrected. He questioned the timing, said the territory received no advance warning and promised an appeal. Bryan acknowledged that the authority has fallen short, while insisting that its record includes real progress Washington’s announcement failed to credit. He said the suspension could slow active recovery work and hurt the residents the federal programs are supposed to help. Bryan also pointed to unusually high construction costs, federal matching requirements and the difficulty of coordinating HUD and FEMA reimbursement rules. He said enforcement should not interrupt housing and recovery projects that families still need. Those arguments deserve to be heard. The formal notice gives the authority 30 days after receipt to request a hearing, identify disputed facts and submit evidence. If it contests the action, HUD must make a final decision on the record presented by both sides. But an appeal cannot make these completion rates disappear. The people of the Virgin Islands should not be forced to choose between federal accountability and finally getting the recovery they were promised. They deserve both. HUD should move quickly, follow the evidence and protect any legitimate project that is delivering results. The territory should open its books, answer every allegation and show where every dollar went. The worst outcome would be another long bureaucratic standoff while storm victims wait. Nearly nine years was already far too long. The post HUD Froze New Money After Nearly Nine Years. The Numbers Explain Why appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

For five years, Americans who asked hard questions about Wuhan were told to sit down, stop speculating, and trust the people in charge. Sen. Rand Paul just released a 23-page federal file showing that U.S. border agents were ready to question one of the most important figures in the COVID-origins story when he returned from China. They had built the targeting package. They had scheduled the inspection. They had written the questions. They never got to ask them. According to the newly released records, the FBI’s New York Field Office asked Customs and Border Protection not to stop Peter Daszak when he arrived at JFK Airport in February 2021. Paul is now putting the file in front of the American people: CBP Had Built The Whole Operation The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee says CBP’s National Targeting Center flagged Daszak as an “extremely high person of interest” before his February 5, 2021, arrival in New York. At the time, Daszak was president of EcoHealth Alliance and had just taken part in the World Health Organization’s mission investigating the origins of COVID-19 in China. The committee says the targeting package cited Daszak’s more than 15 years of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It also cited his role as principal investigator on National Institutes of Health grants that funded bat-coronavirus research in China. This was not a casual airport conversation. CBP had scheduled a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination and planned to determine whether Daszak was carrying electronic media or biological samples when he entered the country. Agents had prepared questions about where he went in China, whom he met at the Wuhan lab, which areas of the facility the WHO team inspected, whether he remained in contact with lab personnel, and whether any samples or other materials had been collected, transported, or mailed back to the United States. Bill Melugin published images from the file and laid out the sequence: Then Came The Stand-Down Paul’s new Reading Room links directly to the federal records. One entry in the file says Daszak was referred elsewhere and that the “FBI requested not to stop subject.” It ends with four words that should bother anyone who wants a complete accounting: “No further NTC action.” Another internal message says the National Targeting Center had rescinded its previous inspection request, while noting that Daszak might be of interest to the FBI. The committee says the New York Field Office’s request arrived three days before Daszak landed. The planned CBP examination did not take place. The questions about the Wuhan Institute, possible samples, travel contacts, and electronic media went unanswered at the border. What the released packet does not explain is why the FBI intervened. It does not say whether the bureau interviewed Daszak elsewhere, whether it was protecting a separate investigation, or whether another operational concern drove the request. The file establishes the intervention; it does not reveal the motive. That gap is the heart of the story. Why Peter Daszak Mattered A 2025 House Oversight Committee announcement says the Department of Health and Human Services later debarred both Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance from federal programs for five years. That action came after a separate congressional investigation into the organization’s handling of taxpayer-funded research and federal grant requirements. According to the committee, HHS cited failures to comply with oversight requests, report research developments on time, and satisfy requirements attached to an NIH grant involving work in Wuhan. EcoHealth’s board had already terminated Daszak as president and CEO, effective January 6, 2025. Those later findings do not prove why the FBI made its request in 2021, and they should not be used to fill a blank the documents themselves leave open. They do show why Daszak’s activities, federal funding, and relationship with the Wuhan Institute remained matters of intense congressional interest. CBP officers understood that importance in real time. Before Daszak’s plane landed, they had assembled a detailed plan focused on exactly the issues lawmakers would spend years trying to reconstruct. The FBI Still Owes An Answer Fox News reported that the documents were released Monday, summarized the questions agents had prepared at JFK before Daszak landed, and said it sought comment from both the FBI and Nature Health Global, the organization Daszak now leads. The report included no explanation from the bureau for the New York office’s request. There may be a legitimate operational reason. The FBI could have been pursuing its own inquiry, protecting a source, avoiding interference with another case, or planning to approach Daszak through a different channel. None of those possibilities appears in the file Paul released. That means the responsible conclusion is not that the documents prove the FBI “protected” Daszak or establish a criminal cover-up. They do not. The responsible conclusion is that a consequential federal intervention occurred, the planned inspection vanished, and the public still has not been told why. If agents questioned Daszak later, the bureau should say so. If the inspection threatened another investigation, it should provide Congress with the records that can substantiate that claim. And if no follow-up occurred, Americans deserve to know who made that decision and on what grounds. Paul says the Reading Room will be updated on a rolling basis as his investigation continues. The next release should include the FBI request behind this stand-down, the officials who approved it, and any record showing what happened after Daszak cleared the airport. Five years later, “do not stop the subject” is not an answer. It is the question. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post BREAKING: Rand Paul Releases Documents Showing Who Stopped Agents From Questioning Peter Daszak appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

President Trump’s Treasury just put the federal payment system through a check measured in the trillions. More than 885 million payments. Approximately $2.77 trillion. The new screen stopped more than 4,900 transactions before the money went out. The payees tied to those transactions were already listed as dead. Combined value: approximately $99 million. Treasury has delivered on a key promise of @POTUS’ mandate to stop improper payments and fraud before money leaves the Treasury and strengthen the integrity of the federal payment system. Together with the @VP’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, this new safeguard addresses a… — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) July 21, 2026 The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced Tuesday that its new verification process now screens federal payments across the government before disbursement, while a White House fact sheet shows President Trump’s March 2025 order required agencies to improve payee verification and share relevant data with Treasury. The legislative record at Congress.gov confirms that the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act became law on February 10, 2026, making Treasury’s access to Social Security death records permanent while the enrolled text adds safeguards for people who might be recorded as deceased in error. The $99 million did not leave Treasury. Each flagged payment went back to the federal agency that originated it, giving that agency a chance to examine the record before any cash was released. Treasury has not labeled every one of the 4,900 transactions criminal fraud. A match involving a deceased payee can expose theft, stale agency data or an administrative mistake. The agencies now have to sort that out with the money still in government hands. An effective screen catches conflicting information before a questionable payment becomes a costly recovery case. In this run, the safeguard did exactly that on a massive scale. Here are the figures Treasury released: 885 million-plus federal payments screened Approximately $2.77 trillion in total payment value checked More than 4,900 payments associated with deceased payees Approximately $99 million returned to originating agencies before disbursement The system relies in part on Treasury’s Do Not Pay program and access to the Social Security Administration’s Full Death Master File. That access began as a three-year pilot under a 2021 spending law. Treasury says the pilot sharply expanded its ability to identify deceased payees and was projected to produce $330 million in net benefits from 2024 through 2026 by reducing improper payments. Congress chose to keep the data-sharing arrangement going. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., introduced the bill with Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., as its original cosponsor. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent, and the House approved it by voice vote before President Trump signed it. The law includes a meaningful protection for the living: Social Security may not record a death for these shared records unless it finds clear and convincing evidence that the person should be presumed deceased. If an error is discovered, agencies using the data must be notified. BREAKING: Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent has just found $100 MILLION IN FRAUDULENT PAYMENTS that would’ve otherwise gone to deceased people Bessent says there might be $500 BILLION in total fraud If the Biden admin were still in power, the $100M would’ve been PAID AND… pic.twitter.com/7hcLjRpooK — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 21, 2026 Against $2.77 trillion, $99 million is a sliver. It is still roughly $99 million in questionable payments that taxpayers were about to finance. Washington should have been running this kind of check at full strength years ago. The technology, the death records and the warning signs were already there. Now the verification happens before the transfer. Nobody should have to applaud the federal government for checking whether a payee is alive. We should absolutely notice when it finally does that job at scale — and keeps nearly $100 million from walking out the door. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post President Trump’s Treasury Checked $2.77 Trillion. What It Stopped Should Infuriate Every Taxpayer appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

For nearly four decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García built his power on a simple belief: he could outlast every badge, every indictment and every government hunting him. On Monday, an American courtroom reduced that legend to two numbers. Life. And $15 billion. The 76-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $15 billion in drug-trafficking profits. Co-Founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON and Ordered to Forfeit $15 Billion in Drug Trafficking Profits "Today, narco-trafficker El Mayo was sentenced to life in prison, marking the end of his reign over the Sinaloa Cartel,… pic.twitter.com/pWyPn2VJno — Criminal Division (@DOJCrimDiv) July 20, 2026 The Justice Department’s sentencing announcement describes a criminal enterprise that moved lethal quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the United States while sending billions in illegal proceeds back to Mexico. Prosecutors said Zambada used bribery to buy protection, intimidation to silence witnesses and murder to defend the cartel’s power. He pleaded guilty to serving as a principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and to a racketeering charge. The operation was not some street gang with a bigger budget. It had international transportation routes, chemical suppliers, money-laundering networks, corrupt officials and an enforcement arm willing to kill anyone who got in the way. That is why President Trump’s decision to treat the Sinaloa cartel as a foreign terrorist organization matters. These groups sell far more than contraband. They poison American communities, destabilize a neighboring country, corrupt governments and turn the border into a commercial artery for organized violence. Zambada’s arrest came in July 2024, before President Trump returned to office. The investigation itself stretched across administrations and depended on years of work by American and Mexican law enforcement. There is no need to rewrite that timeline. The real achievement is more durable: the government did not let a decades-old case fade away after the headlines moved on. Monday’s sentence was folded into the administration’s Homeland Security Task Force initiative, which brings federal agencies together against cartels, transnational gangs, trafficking rings and the financial systems that sustain them. That approach recognizes an uncomfortable truth. Arresting one kingpin is not enough if his money, suppliers, lieutenants and corrupt protectors remain untouched. #