TOC Ready Room 23 March 2023: China, moles, and economic mischief (the non-TikTok kind)

There are always too many interesting new developments to try to cram very many of them into a single Ready Room.  This edition, like all the rest, will leave a number of promising nuggets on the cutting-room floor.

But here are a couple of standouts from this week’s haul so far.

“China mole” info from think-tank officer sheds light on DOJ stance on Bidens in 2019

Miranda Devine has a great piece at New York Post on Wednesday about the explosive information from a Washington, D.C. think-tank principal, Gal Luft, that in a period prior to early 2019, “Hunter Biden had an FBI mole named ‘One-Eye’ who tipped off his Chinese business partners that they were under investigation.”

Fascinating facts: Balloons, farmland, united fronts, shipping companies, military bases

So this happened:  in 2015, a Chinese balloon company, Kuangchi Science, launched a near-space balloon from a dairy farm in New Zealand.

But we’ll get to all that.  With plenty of links, because it’s a well-documented event.

First, we’ll take a detour on the path that led to this discovery.  I don’t think you’ll regret the time.

BREAKING:  This just in.  [Note: It was “just in” on Friday, when this “breaking news” entry was added. – J.E.]  On Friday morning (17 February), the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed U.S. officials had specifically disclosed that defense intelligence was tracking Chinese balloons over American territory during Donald Trump’s term, but didn’t inform Trump at the time because they weren’t sure what the balloons were doing.  They reportedly thought the balloons might be used

Two pings: On POTUSes with classified docs, and the riddle-wrapped mystery of George Santos

These are going to be short(-ish) pings.  OSINT research is all over the place right now – God bless us, every one – and my intention is to focus.  So I’m not going to do a comprehensive treatment.

Conservatives are justifiably disgusted with the media for double-standard coverage on the reportedly recent discovery of classified documents loosed upon the world by former Vice President Biden when he left office in January 2017.  The documents have been somewhere for the last six years; in November, we’re told, some of them turned up in a search by Biden’s “personal” lawyers of his one-time office at the digs of the Chinese-funded (U.) Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.  In December, more were found at a “separate location” where Biden had office space.  And In January, another discovery was made in Biden’s Wilmington garage, where his vintage Corvette lodges.

Update:  More material was reportedly (14 January) just found

TOC Ready Room 7 Jan 2023: Border disorder, Project Censorship, Church redux

Back from a Christmas “break,” and I’m still tired of politics.  What a silly method of dealing with human affairs.

A few random updates for the TOC squadron.

Readers probably won’t be surprised to learn that in December, the House Democrats adopted a rule that the J6 Committee materials they were going to send to the National Archives must be sequestered from release for 30 years.

Sourced from Yahoo report below.
Yahoo refs LAT rpt (scroll down) that house Dems rule of Dec 2022 wd prevent Archives release of most J6 docs for 30 yrs (extra-sensitive up to 50).
Democracy so important it requires hiding J6 matl for decades?https://t.co/N96MACCRC9 https://t.co/TvSXEXA311

— J.E. Dyer ☘️ (@OptimisticCon) January 6, 2023

It’s now being reported,

TOC Ready Room 28 December 2022: Grab bag – AZ election lawsuit; George Santos; illegal migrants

As readers have probably guessed, I’ve been taking a bit of a Christmas holiday and not posting much recently.  (As an update from several weeks ago, I continue to work on an extensive article about Chinese land holdings in the U.S., and some implications for national security.  That won’t be out until the New Year at this point.)

This Ready Room will be a little grab-bag of reflections on a few topics, the first of which is the Arizona judge’s ruling against gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit over the conduct of the 2022 general election in Maricopa County.  The evidence of irregularities is extensive, and a strong case was made that failures of preparation and operation on election day, including machines and back-up planning, ended up disenfranchising numerous voters.  In the opinion of legal experts who were tracking the lawsuit and the court filings by Kari Lake, the evidence also showed an unmistakable bias in the political demographics affected by the irregularities, which were overwhelmingly Republican precincts.

I want to focus on just one aspect of the issue, however.