'If I can't do what I did as well as I did it, I'd rather relax and not do anything'

'Faulty information'

The drama and legal saga adjacent to Hunter Biden’s conduct isn’t over yet.  Lawyers for the two IRS whistleblowers in his tax evasion case contend it would be bad news for future whistleblowers if their defamation case against the prominent lawyer for President Joe Biden’s son is dismissed.  In what was likely a reference to the elder Biden’s recent pardon of his son, their 58-page response Wednesday to a motion to dismiss their $20 million defamation case says: “Plaintiffs seek no pardon because they committed no crimes. They merely seek to restore their reputations after Lowell so blithely tarnished them.” Biden pardoned his 54-year-old son in a surprise move Dec. 1 after he had been convicted, but not yet sentenced, on gun charges in Delaware and tax charges in California.   In mid-November, Abbe Lowell, the younger Biden’s lawyer, filed a motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Both Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, and Joe Ziegler, an IRS special agent, provided information to the House Ways and Means Committee about Biden’s tax case. “If the powerful can defame whistleblowers with impunity, who will feel safe coming forward?” Shapley and Ziegler ask in their court filing, adding: “Allowing such egregiously false attacks to go unchecked will send a chilling message to those who might one day be called to serve the public interest. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that whistleblowers can fulfill their role without fear of unjust retribution.” IRS Whistleblower ResponseeDownload Lowell, in news accounts and responses to the House committee, accused the two IRS agents of breaking the law by leaking confidential tax information and called for their prosecution. Their response, filed Wednesday, says that “Lowell’s defenses collapse under scrutiny.” “He declared that the plaintiffs’ actions were ‘clear-cut crimes,’ that their disclosures had ‘no justification or cognizable legal protection,’ and that they provided information ‘not already in the public domain,’” Shapley and Ziegler say of Lowell. “These unqualified assertions betray any claim to opinion, particularly given Lowell’s expertise as a white collar defense attorney.” Their response to the motion to dismiss the defamation case against Lowell continues:  Lowell’s claim of lack of malice fares no better. His own letter to Congress, in which he accused the House of using its investigation ‘to dump wholesale protected tax information about Mr. Biden on the public,’ demonstrates that Lowell knew Congress, not the plaintiffs, had already made the information at issue public.  Lowell is a partner in the Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn. His motion to dismiss asserted that Shapley and Ziegler made “unprecedented public comments on the strength of the evidence, even while charges [against Hunter Biden] were pending.” “Plaintiffs may feel very strongly that they acted lawfully, but Lowell holds very different views—and has every right to say so,” his lawyers told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in the motion to dismiss.  The IRS agents’ defamation complaint, filed in September, alleges that Lowell falsely accused the two whistleblowers of violating grand jury secrecy rules and laws to protect taxpayers. Their lawsuit alleges that Lowell made statements encouraging the elder Biden’s government to prosecute Shapley and Ziegler. Lowell’s office didn’t respond to email or voicemail inquiries seeking comment on this story by publication time.  The post IRS Whistleblowers Push Forward on Defamation Case Against Hunter Biden’s Lawyer appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Abigail “Gail” Slater to lead the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division last week, he expressed a return to his first administration’s policy of supporting innovation and rejecting support for predatory patent infringement by Big Tech companies. In his statement in support of Slater’s nomination, Trump recognized that, “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector” and that it has trampled on “the rights of … Little Tech!” As I have written about many times, Big Tech companies now regularly engage in predatory infringement of patents owned by individual inventors, startups, and universities—exemplars of Little Tech. Little Tech are key drivers of economic growth, new jobs, and flourishing living standards. Perhaps no company is a better (or worse?) example of a predatory infringer than Apple. Apple was called out by a British judge in 2022 for engaging in practices that qualify as “hold out,” a business strategy of infringing patents and refusing to pay for the use of someone else’s property in a negotiated contract—called a “license” in patent law—and forcing the patent owner through years of court litigation to just pay what a judge orders it to pay. Just ask Masimo, an American medical tech company that has been a victim of Apple’s predatory infringement policy for many years with no end in sight. Joe Kiani, the founder of Masimo, which has been in litigation with Apple for many years following Apple’s theft of Masimo’s technologies in the Apple Watch succinctly stated the point: “When Apple takes an interest in a company, it’s the kiss of death.… [Y]ou realize that the long-term plan is to…take it all.” Other victims of Apple’s predatory infringement policy are owners of patents on the technologies used in our mobile devices, such as 5G and WiFi. In the first Trump administration, the DOJ issued a policy statement in 2019 that explicitly rejected the abuse of the antitrust laws by the Obama administration in supporting Big Tech companies’ theft of these patents (called “standard essential patents” in patent law parlance). Just as Big Tech companies like Apple and Google were a lobbying force behind the use of antitrust laws to attack patent owners in the Barack Obama years, Apple opposed the Trump administration’s 2019 policy statement. Apple also filed comments supporting the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed new policy reversing course on Trump’s 2019 policy statement. There is no question that Apple has engaged in a years-long campaign to devalue patents like those on 4G and 5G, crippling American innovators’ ability to invest, develop, and then deploy in the global innovation economy new technologies like 5G and 6G. In the 13 years since the loss of Steve Jobs, Apple has made it clear that its policy is to take a wait-and-see approach and pay only when ordered by a court. In one of the patent infringement trials against Apple, an internal company document stated its policy is to only “license as adjudicated”—this is patent-law talk for paying for the use of another’s patented technologies only when directed to do so by a court order after years of fighting through appeals all the way to the Supreme Court sometimes. This works well for Apple, but it is terrible for inventors. Apple has deep pockets and Little Tech finds itself accepting below-market payments instead of trying to fight Apple in years-long court battles. Since it has a longstanding practice, if not an explicit policy, of predatory infringement, Apple applies this strategy to all patented innovations that it uses in its devices from iPods to iPhones. For example, PanOptis is a company that owns patents covering 4G cellular technologies. It has become embroiled in a multi-year global legal battle with Apple over the unauthorized use of its patents. PanOptis only seeks to be paid properly for the use of its technologies. After years of drawn-out negotiations for a license, PanOptis finally felt compelled to sue Apple in many jurisdictions to seek its legitimate compensation for the use of its patented technology. Apple is using these fundamental technologies to facilitate mobile connectivity of its iPhone and other cellular-enabled devices. Apple’s infringement of PanOptis’s patents is not really in question—they have been using these inventions since the beginning of the iPhone. Over the past 15 years, courts around the world have been actively dealing with litigation arising from Apple’s and other companies’ uses of these patents on these foundational telecommunications technologies. Given the evisceration of U.S. patent rights in the years of the Obama and Biden-Harris administrations, prompting a significant patent reform movement, other countries are now leading the way in addressing the problem of predatory infringement. The United Kingdom has become one of the leading jurisdictions in resolving these worldwide disputes. At least two major U.K. court decisions have recognized the problem of predatory infringement and required payment of proper damages (royalties) by the infringing company: Unwired Planet v. Huawei and InterDigital v. Lenovo. As an aside, InterDigital is an American innovator in mobile telecommunications—it is a pure research and development company that makes all its revenues from licensing its patents. InterDigital is very successful now, but compared toLenovo, it is still the equivalent of Little Tech in a legal fight that has three times its market capitalization. The fact that InterDigital pursued its legal claims for compensation against Lenovo in the U.K., instead of in the U.S., is further confirmation of President-elect Trump’s observation that Big Tech companies have for too long trampled on “the rights of … Little Tech” through lobbying and years-long litigation tactics in their predatory infringement strategies in the U.S. The PanOptis v. Apple case is currently pending on appeal in the U.K. with a decision expected in 2025. Innovators in the U.S. and around the world are watching it closely. The question on appeal is what damages should be awarded for Apple’s use of PanOptis’s patented cellular technologies in its mobile devices like its iPhone. If the U.K. appeals court applies the proper legal rules set forth in prior decisions in Unwired Planet and InterDigital, it will overrule the trial court’s decision favoring Apple. PanOptis should win on appeal—as a matter of law and justice—and Apple should be held to account for billions of dollars in royalties that it owes to PanOptis. While PanOptis may not recover this full amount, it (and many other innovators) are still owed significant royalty payments from Apple. Instead of paying for its use of others’ inventions, Apple’s policy of waiting until it’s ordered to pay by a court has paid off for Apple, but at what cost to innovation? Such a policy causes irreparable harm to the high-tech sector of the U.S. innovation economy, undermining incentives for future R&D contributions for 6G and beyond. In a chapter titled “The Crisis of the American Patent System,” Ian Fletcher and Marc Fasteau state in their recent book, “Industrial Policy for the United States”: “[Apple has] sorely tested our intellectual property system by incenting their producers and others into assaults on the patent system that have ramifications far beyond their own products.” The president-elect’s statement last week is encouraging to American innovators. It signals his intent to return to the historical protection of reliable and effective patent rights. It is this unique American approach to securing patents as property rights on par with any other property right that made the U.S. the land of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers—and the land of the personal computer revolution with patented technologies on everything from the first Apple computer to the iPhone. Jobs even bragged at the product launch of the iPhone in 2007 about the patents on his new smartphone invention. The U.S. and its democratic allies like the U.K. should send a strong signal that the intellectual property rights of innovators and creators will be respected and protected. Meaningful protection of patent rights in the U.S., including protection of patents on foundational cellular technologies in mobile devices, will set the stage for the U.S. to serve as a leader again in the global recognition of the importance of reliable and effective patent rights. It is heartening to read President-elect Trump signal that he understands that intellectual property rights are a key part of the American innovation engine—creating its unprecedent growth in its innovation economy and its status as a global tech leader. The post Trump Administration Nomination Signals Return to Respect for Effective Patent Rights appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Earlier this month, I descended upon the southern Arizona city of Tucson and then drove to the border town of Sierra Vista in Cochise County, one hour south of the city. The path to Sierra Vista is covered by the arid, venomous desert, mostly unconquered and home to man’s natural enemies, the snake and scorpion. For our southernmost communities, the desert’s venom not only endangers residents from snake bites, but from the sore openness of their communities’ border with Mexico posing daily threats from illegal crossings. The most familiar form of illegal border crossing involves individuals and families crossing and immediately surrendering to local or federal law enforcement to receive initial documentation and a court date for a hearing for an asylum claim to permanently remain in the United States. A migrant crossing in 2024 will receive a hearing in 2032. During President Donald Trump’s first term, he required these individuals to remain in Mexico while they awaited their hearing date. President Joe Biden instead permits their release into the United States and gives them free plane tickets, often to the American cities of their choice. The Arizona-Mexico border is the second longest of the four state borders with Mexico, at 372 miles. Texas’ is the longest at 1,241 miles. The border in Cochise County is 84 miles long and contains miles worth of border fencing built by the Obama and Trump administrations. However, much of the county’s border is without any fencing or regular patrol, due to a lack of Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol agents. Unknown to most Americans, including many of our politicians, are the sort of crossings that occur daily in Cochise County. These are different from the norm. Here, almost no migrant comes seeking asylum and most who cross attempt to avoid law enforcement at all costs so their activity cannot be tracked. Those who cross are either cartel members or their accessories, and their day mimics that of anyone commuting from the suburbs to a job in some city. They come to the U.S. to smuggle humans and narcotics during the day and then they return to Mexico that evening. Coronado National Park trail warning sign. (National Park Service) The border portion most easily crossed, adjacent to Coronado National Park, contains border technology built by Presidents Obama and Trump. In Trumpian style, Trump’s is 15 feet taller, as the Army Corps of Engineers concluded that a fence 30 feet or higher imposes a psychological doubt in someone attempting to climb such a wall and then jump or repel down the other side. Our escort to the border was the Cochise County Sheriff’s special operations unit, the Southeastern Arizona Border Region Enforcement Team, or SABRE. Upon one’s arrival at this section of the border, one can see that the area around the border is lined with millions of dollars’ worth of unused fencing materials left there following Biden’s decommissioning of border wall construction when he came into office in 2021. What remains is wasted taxpayer money and an unfinished wall easily crossed by the cartels. On the right are materials to build additional border wall during the first Trump administration that were left unused at this location since Joe Biden ended construction in January 2021. On the left is the partially built border wall. December 2024. (Robert Norris) In military fashion, cartels dress in camouflage, blending into the desert’s environment to avoid detection, a similar tactic to an army planning an invasion of a neighboring country. Cartel members dressed in camouflage to avoid detection are caught on hidden cameras the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office placed in the desert. (Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.) Seemingly of little interest to our federal government, the open border location, just up a light hill, is a hot spot for cartels. As seen in the photo below, a ladder lay on the ground and is used to aid migrants climbing the fence. The ladder sat on the Mexico side of wall as I stuck my phone through the wall to photograph it.   A ladder used by cartel members to climb across the border fence is lying on the ground on the Mexican side. As seen from the American side base of the fence. December 2024. (Robert Norris) The most striking scene I witnessed was a cartel lookout just beyond the unfenced border where a young cartel member could be spotted with binoculars. He was positioned there to alert en route members when anyone was approaching from the U.S. side. His head could be seen emerging from rocks along the ridgeline along with the occasional puff of smoke, likely from electronic cigarette giving away his location. A cartel lookout is located beneath two trees on the hilltop seen in the distance. December 2024. (Robert Norris) The SABRE team uses hidden cameras powered by solar panels disguised as rocks to monitor the activity. The cameras are seldom detected by cartels. Once a cartel member or associate is detected on U.S. soil, the information is relayed to the Border Patrol so an arrest can be made. During the arrest of one cartel member, he told a SABRE agent, “F— Trump, I came here because Biden allows us to.”  The SABRE team said that many federal Border Patrol agents are often tied up in other matters and aren’t available. In those instances, Border Patrol’s advice is to release the individuals, and if they are picked up by a driver, to give the vehicle description and the direction they were heading to Border Patrol. If border agents pursue them, high-speed chases are common but can be called off if the high speeds pose a danger to other drivers. This doesn’t stop cartel members from escaping at high speeds well after the agents drop their pursuit. A few months before our arrival, a woman and her son were killed while headed to her birthday party when a cartel member collided with them head-on eight miles after agents disengaged. After the border visit, I rode along with the Cochise County deputies to see examples of the crime the county commonly experiences. I rode with a deputy who was a 20-year Marine veteran with five combat tours, a true defender of America and patriot, to say the least. A ride-along that was meant to be 90 minutes turned into three hours when a suspicious driver, with tags registered to Phoenix,  had been parked for five hours at a nearby auto parts store complaining of an overheated engine. Often, cartels hire drivers from Phoenix to pick up illegal aliens, so when an out-of-town driver acts suspiciously so close to the border, it sets off alarms. The deputies offered help, but he refused, so they left while keeping an eye on him. Nearing the end of the ride-along, we saw the same car drive away, so the officers in my car began slowly following him. Eventually, the car pulled over with its hazard lights flashing. At this point, Border Patrol has a drone overhead and records two individuals entering the vehicle. This alerts all ground patrol that the driver likely picked up two recent border crossers that Border Patrol had seen on camera earlier that day. As our patrol car began to pursue him, I pointed out that his windows looked very tinted, and the deputy agreed that was probable cause to stop him. The driver did not pull over, and what began as a slow pursuit became a chase that reached 100 miles an hour on a lonely Arizona road as dusk hit. A mile ahead, other deputies laid down a spike strip in case the driver refused to stop.  But before he reached the spike strip, he stopped his car, and the deputies surrounded his vehicle. The driver admitted he had been working for the cartels to aid in a crossing. He was arrested on a felony charge for facilitating human smuggling across an international border. A Cochise County Sheriff’s deputy questioning a suspected human smuggler after a car chase before he is arrested. December 2024. (Robert Norris) As the sun set, the community was safe for another day, but the heroes of the night receive no rest while the Biden administration recklessly refuses to fix some of the greatest dangers at our border. While America’s politicians in Washington will enjoy the upcoming holidays, Cochise County will spend Christmas with its back door open to cartels and the violence they bring, denying the peace that this American community so desperately deserves.   The post See How Easy Biden Made It for Cartels and Traffickers: My Trip to the Border in Pictures appeared first on The Daily Signal.

With Viewership Down, MSNBC Offers Joy Reid a Pay Cut

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Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a new 116-page continuing resolution on Thursday, which has earned President-elect Donald Trump's stamp of approval. The new CR is a dramatic reduction from the original 1,547-page funding bill Johnson proposed on Tuesday night. Within 24 hours, Johnson's first rendition became the focal point of scrutiny from Republicans, MAGA allies, and Trump himself. With just a day before the December 20 funding deadline, Johnson, with Trump's support, has presented a politically viable bill that could save Congress from the looming government shutdown. 'Now we can Make America Great Again, very quickly, which is what the People gave us a mandate to accomplish.'"SUCCESS in Washington!" Trump said in a statement on Thursday. "Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to a very good Deal for the American People.""The newly agreed to American Relief Act of 2024 will keep the Government open, fund our Great Farmers and others, and provide relief for those severely impacted by the devastating hurricanes," Trump said. "A VERY important piece, VITAL to the America First Agenda, was added as well - The date of the very unnecessary Debt Ceiling will be pushed out two years, to January 30, 2027." Trump came out against Johnson's original CR, which he deemed "ridiculous" and "extraordinarily expensive." Trump also threw in a last-minute demand from Johnson to resolve debt ceiling negotiations, which are set to expire in June, now before he took office in January.This time around, Johnson put forth a clean, three-month CR that extends to March 14 that got rid of many health care and farm aid provisions. The CR also includes a two-year suspension of the debt limit through January 2027 as well as disaster aid for hurricane victims. "Now we can Make America Great Again, very quickly, which is what the People gave us a mandate to accomplish," Trump said in the statement. "All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote 'YES' for this Bill, TONIGHT!"Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A vulgar and racist message found the campus of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, was actually a hoax, according to school officials. The message was found written on papers during Thanksgiving break in front of the National Pan-Hellenic Council Plaza, which is the only space erected to pay tribute to historically black fraternities and sororities, according to WMC-TV.'We are taking the appropriate steps to hold this individual accountable, including all legal avenues that may be available to us.' “They were vulgar,” said student to WREG-TV. “‘F N-word, Trump Rules,’ that’s what it said.”College officials investigated the incident with cooperation from Memphis Police, but they faced criticism for not identifying the threat more quickly. “We are a community that is firmly committed to diversity, inclusion, belonging, civility, and respect, and we do not tolerate racial bias or hate speech,” the college said at the time. Students immediately orchestrated a protest to decry the hatred of the message on Dec. 12. WMC reported that dozens of students sat in a silent protest holding signs demanding change at the campus. On Wednesday, officials said they had identified the person responsible and that they admitted it was a hoax. "Thanks to the tireless efforts of our Campus Safety officers and the Memphis Police Department, the investigation into the hate crime that occurred recently on our campus has ended with the identification of the perpetrator and the conclusion this incident was fabricated," the statement read. "This individual has admitted responsibility." They went on to suggest they will take legal action against the individual. “This matter has caused enormous pain to our community, and we are taking the appropriate steps to hold this individual accountable, including all legal avenues that may be available to us,” the college added. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Extreme Hakeem Jeffries Says the New 116-Page Spending Bill Is 'Laughable'