IG Michael Horowitz

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</div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2659315967"><div class="body-description"><a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Robert+Durham" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Special counsel Robert Durham</a>, appointed by then-<a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Bill+Barr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Attorney General Bill Barr</a>, uncovered possible financial crimes by <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Donald+Trump" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Donald Trump</a> but made no attempt to prosecute them, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/durham-trump-russia-barr.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">The New York Times</a> reveals in massive, bombshell report published Thursday after a months-long investigation.“Mr.

Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the

fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a

criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr.

Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation

remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it,” The Times’

Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman, and Katie Benner report.The

“potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected

financial crimes” came during a trip Barr and Durham, his special

counsel, took together. They “decided that the tip was too serious and

credible to ignore.”

But, “Mr. Durham never filed charges, and

it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he

took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found

out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal

investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.”That’s just one aspect of The Times’ extensive and disturbing report.

It

also reveals that there was little justification for Barr to install

Durham as a special counsel to investigate what Trump wrongly maintained

was an unjustifiable investigation into his ties to Russia.In

fact, The Times “found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was

marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained

justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy

theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim

characterized the Russia investigation.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/10/failed-spectacularly-top-legal-experts-call-for-ethics-probe-into-bill-barrs-handpicked-special-counsel-john-durham/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">‘Failed Spectacularly’: Top Legal Experts Call for Ethics Probe Into Bill Barr’s Handpicked Special Counsel John Durham</a>

In

another shocking revelation, The Times reports Durham “used Russian

intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing

disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros,

the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the

American right and Russian state media.”The Times does not explain how Durham obtained the Russian disinformation.“Mr.

Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a

judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded

no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.”Attorneys on Durham’s team apparently had significant qualms with his actions, leading at least two to resign.

“There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known,” The Times reports. “The publicly unexplained <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/us/politics/nora-dannehy-durham-russia-investigation.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">resignation in 2020</a>

of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of

a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year

later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/politics/michael-sussmann-indictment-durham-investigation.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">indict a lawyer</a>

with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they

warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s

decision to proceed anyway. (A jury <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/us/politics/michael-sussmann-durham-fbi.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">swiftly acquitted</a> the lawyer.)”BARR THREATENED NSAThe

Times also reports that Attorney General Barr bought into Trump’s false

claims that there had been “no collusion” between the Trump camp and

Russia.READ MORE: <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/01/republicans-claiming-censorship-threaten-to-haul-att-and-directv-into-congress-for-dropping-far-right-newsmax/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Republicans Claiming ‘Censorship’ Threaten to Haul AT&T and DirecTV Into Congress for Dropping Far-Right Newsmax</a>
Importantly, The Times states point-blank that the Mueller Report “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-document.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">detailed ‘numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,’</a>

and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and

how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign

interference.”According to The Times’ account, “soon after giving

Mr. Durham his assignment,” in May of 2019, “Mr. Barr summoned the head

of the National Security Agency, Paul M. Nakasone, to his office. In

front of several aides, Mr. Barr demanded that the N.S.A. cooperate with

the Durham inquiry.”The NSA is a wholly separate entity from the

Dept. of Justice. It is an agency under the Dept. of Defense and

reports to the powerful Director of National Intelligence (DNI).Barr

apparently did not care, and, “repeating a sexual vulgarity, he warned

that if the N.S.A. wronged him by not doing all it could to help Mr.

Durham, Mr. Barr would do the same to the agency.”DURHAM TRIED TO SCUTTLE A REPORT’S FINDING THAT TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION WAS WARRANTED“Mr.

Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no

way to support the allegation” that the investigation into Trump and

Russia was the result of some anti-Trump deep state operation.Barr

and Durham actually “traveled abroad together to press British and

Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about

the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied

governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British

intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts

about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.”The Dept.

of Justice’s Inspector General’s investigation found there was, in

fact, sufficient cause for the DOJ to have opened up the Trump-Russia

investigation, contrary to Barr’s personal beliefs.So he tried to have that finding removed from the final report.READ MORE: <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/01/big-no-no-santos-may-or-may-not-have-a-campaign-treasurer-prompting-questions-about-whose-signature-that-is/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">‘Big No-No’: Santos May or May Not Have a Campaign Treasurer Prompting Questions About Whose Signature That Is</a>The

Times reports that “the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s

accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry,” which should

have shut down what ultimately became Durham’s four-year long

investigation that netted almost nothing.The DOJ Inspector

General, Michael Horowitz, “found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were

politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis —

an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">Australian diplomat’s tip</a>

that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge

that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient

to lawfully open it.”So Barr tried to discredit Horowitz’s report.“Minutes

before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a

statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the

F.B.I. opened the investigation “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-william-p-barr-inspector-generals-report-review-four-fisa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">on the thinnest of suspicions</a> that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/politics/barr-inspector-general-firing.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">without any basis</a>,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.”Read the entire Times report <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/durham-trump-russia-barr.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">here</a>.</div>

    </div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-response/?rs=182">https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-response/?rs=182</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">N<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ow that we're all unmasking and the economy seems set to roar into the 2020s, what will we remember about how disastrously, how malignantly, the Trump administration behaved as the pandemic took hold? And will anyone be held to account for it?</span></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The instinct to forget pandemics, as I've&nbsp;<a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-great-forgetting/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">pointed out</a>&nbsp;when it came to the 1918 "Spanish flu," has historically been strong indeed. In these years, the urge to forget official malfeasance and move on has, it turns out, been at least as strong. Washington's&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/379156-15-years-after-the-invasion-of-iraq-still-zero-accountability-for" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">failure</a>&nbsp;to investigate and bring to account those who led the nation and ultimately the world into the folly of the Iraq War may be the most egregious recent example of this.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In the end, that's why I wrote my new book&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1644211807/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><em>Virus</em></a>&nbsp;— to memorialize a clear and accessible historical record of the deliberate and deadly decision-making that swept us all into a kind of hell</b>. I had the urge to try to stop what happened to us from being instantly buried in the next round of daily reporting or, as appears likely now, relegated to the occasional voluminous government or foundation report on how to do things better.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early months of 2020, as rumors of distant death morphed into announcements of an imminent pandemic, followed by a patchwork of state and local lockdowns, most Americans were too stunned by daily events to absorb the bigger picture. Memories of those days still click by like surreal snapshots: prepper shopping, toilet-paper hoarders, forklifts moving bodies into refrigerated trucks, and a capricious leader on TV night after endless&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/white-house-considering-scaling-back-trump-s-daily-coronavirus-briefings-n1192671" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">night</a>&nbsp;talking about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">quack cures</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/2020/03/06/trump-cdc-visit-called-off-after-virus-infection-concern/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">his own ratings</a>, and how he "liked the numbers low." Meanwhile, he left desperate states&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-07/states-compete-in-global-jungle-for-personal-protective-equipment-amid-coronavirus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">to compete</a>&nbsp;with each other for badly needed protective gear.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">What looked like chaos or&nbsp;<em>ad hoc</em>&nbsp;decision-making by an improbably elected fraudster president was, in fact, deeply rooted in ideology; specifically, in the belief that the job of the government was neither to exercise leadership, nor activate government agencies to assist the American people. It was to promote private industry and its profits as&nbsp;<em>the</em>&nbsp;solution to anything and everything pandemic.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That ideology led to profiteering, politicized science, and mass death</b>. Now, as the pandemic wanes (at least for the time being, though&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2021/covid-rates-unvaccinated-people/?itid=hp-top-table-main-0430b" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">not necessarily</a>&nbsp;for the unvaccinated) in this country, it deserves an investigation. Somewhere between&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">almost 600,000</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/06/994287048/new-study-estimates-more-than-900-000-people-have-died-of-covid-19-in-u-s" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">more than 900,000</a>&nbsp;Americans have died so far from Covid-19, a significant number of those deaths unnecessary, as even the former administration's medical expert, Dr Deborah Birx, has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/28/deborah-birx-most-covid-19-deaths-after-first-100-000-were-avoidable/7037470002/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The virus arrived in America after the Trump administration — steered by right-wing Heritage Foundation policy wonks and their donor-class comrades — had already laid waste to key agencies like Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Contro</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">l.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Their instant response to the pandemic was to similarly sideline government emergency-management experts, put inexperienced 20-something volunteers in charge of finding and distributing protective gear, and circulate lists of possible suppliers — one of whom, typically enough, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with no medical contracting experience, snagged a cool $86-million contract from the state of New York for ventilators he would never deliver.[// kodak?]</span></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">While most of the country hunkered down in a state of stunned paralysis, a faction of Trumpworld recognized the pandemic not for what it took away — human lives and livelihoods — but for what it offered. The chaos of the moment allowed them to road-test their dream system, to prove once and for all that the forces of supply and demand, the instinct to make a buck, could do a better job managing a natural disaster than the government of the United States and its bureaucrats.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is any of this likely to be investigated? Will anyone be held accountable for what appears to have been a response deliberately mismanaged by religious zealots and crony capitalists, crews equally cynical about expertise, science, and the government's ability to prevent or ameliorate disaster?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What We Don't Know About the Trump Pandemic Disaster</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here, as a start, is a rundown of where inquiries into that disaster now stand.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Buried in the alphabet soup of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act is the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), established in March 2020 to keep track of the federal money (by now&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/news/articles/statement-prac-chair-michael-e-horowitz-olc-opinion-special-inspector-general" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">$5.5 trillion</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">) that was to be spent on the pandemic.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> It's a consortium of agency inspector generals, headed by&nbsp;Michael Horowitz, a career Department of Justice lawyer. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His name will be familiar to anyone who followed the Trump-Russia investigations. He produced a report in 2019 that — to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/11/horowitz-fbis-conduct-in-trump-russia-probe-doesnt-vindicate-anybody.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">dismay</a>&nbsp;of Trump's supporters — failed to conclude that the FBI had begun investigating connections between Vladimir Putin's Russia and the Trump campaign without legal cause and as a political dirty trick.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRAC is authorized to conduct oversight of pandemic-related emergency spending of any sort. Its inspector generals have already issued nearly 200 pandemic-related oversight reports and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/news/articles/fighting-covid-19-fraud" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">charged 474 people</a>&nbsp;with trying to steal more than $569 million. (Details in its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/oversight/reports" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">quarterly reports</a>&nbsp;are available online.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While PRAC has been genuinely nonpartisan in its acts, its focus so far has been on the small fry of the pandemic era, not the truly big fish. In its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/PRAC%20Semiannual%20Report%20102020%20to%20032021.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">most recent semi-annual report</a>, for example, it makes clear that 55% of its charges had to do with fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program and 40% were related to fraudulent unemployment assistance claims. Among the bigger PRAC successes: charging a Texas man in a $24-million Covid-relief fraudulent loan scheme last October and seven men in another fraud scheme in which they used their ill-gotten pandemic gains to buy, among other things, a Porsche and a Lamborghini.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CARES Act also authorized the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to monitor the federal response to the pandemic. Its most recent semi-annual report included 16 recommendations in selected public-health areas like testing, vaccines, and therapeutics, only one of which has so far been implemented. A source at the GAO told me that a report on some contracting irregularities can be expected this summer.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So far, such government self-assessments have shown little appetite for dealing with the true cronyism, profiteering, and disastrous politicization of the federal pandemic response by Trump's minions. Among the schemes begging for a deeper look is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/jared-kushner-backed-project-airbridge-be-largely-grounded-n1204646" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Operation Airbridge</a>. Led by the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, it was an attempt to use federal funds to underwrite the air-shipping costs of private companies in an effort to speed the delivery of the kinds of personal protective equipment that were in such short supply last spring. That unorthodox effort included large no-bid contracts granted to a small group of private health-care companies without restrictions on pricing or even on where the desperately needed products were to be delivered.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the spring of 2020, as hospital workers began popping up on social media and network news programs clad only in garbage bags and makeshift or reused face masks, sometimes in tears and pleading for help, the White House maintained its focus on private enterprise as the way out of the disaster. The administration called for volunteers to staff what would become another public/private bonanza, the&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">White House Covid-19 Supply Chain Task Force, also helmed by Trump family fixer, Jared Kushner.</span></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">We don't know what, if anything, Kushner's group actually accomplished. The audacity of the former administration's disregard for federal rules and regulations coupled with the scale of the no-bid contracts they issued certainly attracted political pushback at the time. Democrats and civil-society groups in Washington filed requests for more information about how such contracts had eluded federal guidelines, and where the supplies actually went.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's possible, however, that we may never know.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ventilating Money</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In April 2020, a group of Democratic senators led by Elizabeth Warren, citing the administration's secrecy, opened an investigation into the operation</b>. They sent a letter to the six Operation Airbridge beneficiary health-care giants — Cardinal Health, Concordance, Henry Schein, McKesson, Medline, and Owens & Minor — requesting explanations for reports of "political favoritism, cronyism, and price-gouging" in the ongoing supply effort. "Taxpayers have shelled out tens of millions of dollars on this secretive project and they deserve to know whether it actually helped get critical supplies to the areas most in need," Warren said that June.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Three of the six suppliers did, in the end, give the senators copies of memorandums of agreement (MOAs) indicating that they "had complete discretion about how to distribute supplies across hotspot counties"</b>&nbsp;and that "nothing in the MOAs appears to prevent a supplier from sending all of its supplies designated for hotspots to just a single customer in one of the hotspots." The government hadn't, in fact, put any kind of conditions on the cost for that protective equipment and the Trump Justice Department would insist that it was none of its business how suppliers arrived at the prices they charged for it.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Using taxpayer funds to grease private enrichment was, of course, a Trump family tradition, going back to the Eisenhower years when Donald's father, Fred, fleeced the government of millions of dollars in loans aimed at housing World War II veterans</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Hauled down to Capitol Hill to explain himself, the New York builder was unrepentant, arguing that a loophole in the law allowed for his private gain and, under such circumstances, only a fool would have left all that money on the table.</span></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">What, from the outside, came to look like White House-inspired chaos — of which Operation Airbridge was just one example — should, in fact, be seen as a deliberate effort to disengage the federal government and leave the blame and the logistics problems to Covid-afflicted states, at the time mostly run by Democrats.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On March 24, 2020, for instance, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo begged the federal government to help get more ventilators for what was clearly going to be a surge of coronavirus patients. (New York City's health-care system was already overwhelmed by then.) At the time, hooking patients up to ventilators seemed like the best way to go, though doctors later realized that, for many patients, the tricky disease could be foiled earlier with anticlotting and steroid medication.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"How can you have New Yorkers possibly dying because they can't get a ventilator?" asked Cuomo. Three days later, Trump tweeted, "General Motors must… start making ventilators, now! Ford, get going on ventilators, fast!"</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer for tech firms like Google, tweeted back at the president, "We can supply ICU ventilators, invasive and non-invasive." Within days, he turned up on a list vetted by Kushner's team of volunteers and, at their recommendation, officials in New York closed a deal with him.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only problem: Oren-Pines had no ventilators and had never been in the medical supply business. When he failed to deliver on the $86 million deal, Wells Fargo&nbsp;<a href="https://abc7news.com/trump-ventilators-new-york-yaron-oren-pines-silicon-valley/6165621/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">froze</a>&nbsp;his account and New York canceled the order, demanding the money back, though by summer 2020, it had yet to collect a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/coronavirus-masks-trump-tweet-california" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">final $10 million</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Great Forgetting?</font></strong></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to making various large or politically well-connected health-care companies far wealthier, the administration also lavished&nbsp;<a href="https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/02/trump-administration-quietly-spent-billions-in-hospital-funds-on-operation-warp-speed/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">staggering billions</a>&nbsp;on a small group of Big Pharma firms for Operation Warp Speed,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;the project it backed to develop vaccines and medicines to treat Covid-19.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Those contracts, too, were written outside normal government channels and the companies themselves were&nbsp;<a href="https://khn.org/news/article/how-pharma-money-colors-operation-warp-speeds-quest-to-defeat-covid/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">chosen by a panel</a>&nbsp;of industry insiders without any oversight. Many of them stood to (and did) profit from the soaring stock prices of those firms when the news about clinical trial successes was released.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In November 2020, to launch an investigation into that situation, Senator Warren teamed up with Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-porter-request-all-federal-contracts-for-covid-19-therapeutics-and-vaccines" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">request</a>&nbsp;copies of all federal contracts for Covid-19 therapeutics and vaccines.</b>&nbsp;"The American people," they stated, "deserve to know that the federal government is using their tax dollars to develop Covid-19 medical products at the best possible price for the public — not to line the pockets of wealthy companies by cutting corners in consumer protection, pricing, and quality."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warren&nbsp;<a href="http://ct.symplicity.com/t/wrn/93be60c53dbde82600f207e1107eab8f/3769411739/realurl=https:/www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/lawmakers-criticize-trump-administration-deal-that-allowed-manufacturer-of-covid-19-antiviral-drug-remdesivir-to-charge-us-purchasers-the-highest-prices-in-the-world" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">raised questions</a>&nbsp;about a Department of Health and Human Services deal with Gilead Sciences for the pandemic therapeutic remdesivir (part of the "cocktail" of drugs administered to Donald Trump and other Republican insiders like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani when they got Covid). HHS had indeed acquired a large supply of remdesivir at an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ajmc.com/view/gilead-sciences-sets-us-price-for-covid19-drug-at-2340-to-3120-based-on-insurance" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">exorbitant cost</a>&nbsp;to American taxpayers and Gilead itself would&nbsp;<a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/lawmakers-criticize-trump-administration-deal-that-allowed-manufacturer-of-covid-19-antiviral-drug-remdesivir-to-charge-us-purchasers-the-highest-prices-in-the-world" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">charge</a>&nbsp;American hospitals $3,200 per treatment for it, $860 more than its price in other developed countries.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to Warren, who sent a&nbsp;<a href="http://ct.symplicity.com/t/wrn/93be60c53dbde82600f207e1107eab8f/3769411739/realurl=https:/www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.11.16.%20Letter%20to%20HHS%20re%20Remdesivir%20Pricing.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">letter</a>&nbsp;to the administration requesting information on HHS's pricing negotiations with Gilead for the drug, other people also stood up. Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), for instance, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Dr. Robert Kadlec, a Trump HHS political appointee, had engaged in multiple schemes to funnel contracts to politically connected companies — and that this had begun even before the pandemic was even a reality. According to Bright, Kadlec then pushed him out of the government, despite the fact that federal law officially protects whistleblowers.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his&nbsp;<a href="https://mkus3lurbh3lbztg254fzode-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/Bright-Complaint-Fact-Sheet-final.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">complaint</a>, among other things, Bright alleged that in 2017, a Kadlec friend and Big Pharma consultant pressured the agency to maintain a contract with a company owned by a friend of Jared Kushner's, even after an independent review determined it should be cancelled. Bright testified before Congress, and the fate of his whistleblower suit remains to be litigated.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for the rest of the inquiries, so far, money and power appear to have eluded the investigators. It's unclear whether Senator Warren's and Representative Porter's requests met with any response from the former administration, or even whether they've continued their inquiry into Big Pharma and no-bid contracting. They have made no further announcements and neither office replied to requests for updates.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>You won't be surprised to learn, I'm sure, that the name "Jared Kushner" is so far not to be found in GAO or PRAC reports.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The best chance for public accountability — if not legal liability — might be the House of Representatives, especially its Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, launched in April 2020.&nbsp;</b>The Trump administration blew off its subpoenas for former HHS Secretary Alex Azar and then-CDC Director Robert Redfield to testify in December 2020, and blocked documents and witnesses related to politicized data, testing, and supply shortages, among other areas of inquiry. But the subcommittee did manage to expose emails from Trump political appointees, revealing efforts to skew CDC data. It is also investigating some whopping no-bid or sole-contractor deals that the former administration cut with preferred businesses. One was a $354-million four-year contract awarded on a non-competitive basis to&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2020-07-14.Clyburn%20to%20Phlow%20contractor%20re%20PPE_.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">PHLOW</a>, which was incorporated in January 2020 to manufacture generic medicines to fight Covid. It's the largest contract ever awarded by BARDA and includes a 10-year option worth $812 million.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the House has continued to seek transparency. According to a Brookings&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/03/25/early-oversight-in-the-117th-congress-three-takeaways/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">House Oversight Tracker</a>, as of March 2021, 30% of congressional oversight letters and 40% of its hearings were related to the federal government's pandemic response. But there are signs that the Biden administration, while more cooperative, is not eager to force agencies to comply with requests the previous administration ignored.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My sense is that the emergency created by the insurrection at the Capitol last January and the desperate need of the new Biden administration to have palpable policy achievements in order to do well in election 2022 has taken the steam out of any inclination to dig deeper into the profiteering, cronyism, political scheming, and chaos with which the Trump administration met the Covid-19 virus. It went far deeper than an article like this can possibly indicate, leaving so many hundreds of thousands of potentially unnecessary deaths in its wake.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Think of it as a memory hole, still brimming with schemes and money.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Copyright 2021 Nina Burleigh</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Follow TomDispatch on&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/TomDispatch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Twitter</a>&nbsp;and join us on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Facebook</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608469484/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Frostlands</a>&nbsp;(the second in the Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky's novel&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608469077/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Every Body Has a Story</a>, and Tom Engelhardt's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608469018/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">A Nation Unmade by War</a>, as well as Alfred McCoy's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power</a>&nbsp;and John Dower's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467236/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II</a>.</font></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://tomdispatch.com/authors/ninaburleigh/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="See articles by " style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /></font></h4><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://tomdispatch.com/authors/ninaburleigh/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="See articles by " style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Nina Burleigh</strong>, a&nbsp;</font></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-great-forgetting/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">TomDispatch regular</a>, is a journalist of American politics and the author of six previous books. Her seventh,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1644211807/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America's Response to the Pandemic</a>&nbsp;(just published by Seven Stories Press) is a real-life thriller that delves into the official malfeasance behind America's pandemic chaos and the triumph of science in an era of conspiracy theories and contempt for experts.</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-site__headline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><ul class="around-the-web__list" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="from-your-site__item"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/under-donald-trump-covid-19-is-accelerating-the-republican-partys-descent-into-authoritarianism/" class="from-your-site__link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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Kamala Harris (D-CA) elicited an important and revealing response from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Wednesday when she raised the prospect of Attorney General Bill Barr’s potential wrongdoing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harris noted that one of Barr’s ongoing investigations was “launched to do the bidding of President Trump, [and] has two objectives: One, to undermine the integrity of our intelligence community; the goal, to cast doubt on the finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to benefit the Trump campaign. And two: to intimidate the men and women of our intelligence committee by suggesting that our national security professionals will face serious consequences if they investigate wrongdoing on the part of this president or his operatives.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She said that Horowitz has an obligation “to investigate misconduct committed by the attorney general of the United States, who is doing the bidding of the president to undermine our intelligence community. I trust you take that duty seriously.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz said that he takes it seriously but that he’s legally prevented from looking at the misconduct of DOJ lawyers, which includes the attorney general himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The law has to change, senator,” Horowitz said. ”</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><p class="yiv6170692647headline3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/olzmlcqsqvfdflnndkjqqdqnnkdnswrpmvqfjtcjjfkw_rccrclwlpcgtvjtwnwv.html?a=&b=3212&c=21989&d=2" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">OJ IG report debunked Trump’s claims — but found anti-Hillary bias among FBI agents</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I didn’t want a criminal to be in the White…</font></p></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1219</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">l<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/lindsey-graham-explodes-in-anger-demands-to-know-why-fbi-didnt-tell-trump-his-campaign-was-under-investigation/" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" color="color" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" inline="inline" important="important" font-size="font-size" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" line-height="line-height" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">indsey Graham explodes in anger — demands to know why FBI ‘didn’t tell Trump’ his campaign was under investigation</a></font></div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-badash/" title="Posts by David Badash" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Badash</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-new-civil-rights-movement/" title="Posts by The New Civil Rights Movement" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The New Civil Rights Movement</a></font></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham&nbsp;exploded in anger as he questioned Inspector General Michael Horowitz, demanding to know why the FBI did not notify then-candidate Donald Trump about the investigation into his campaign.</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div></div>