Free Republic

Earlier this month, journalist Matt Taibbi appeared before congress where he testified about the Twitter Files. Taibbi’s statement to congress included a summary of what he saw as the thrust of what he has learned from his investigation (along with help from Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss).The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere.What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine...

The Supreme Court will issue at least one opinion this week while it weighs a packed docket of cases, including a request by the IRS to allow its agents to secretly obtain financial records without the need to notify account holders. Wednesday will mark the day when the nine justices consider Polselli v. IRS, which is expected to have sweeping implications for Fourth Amendment right protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as it pertains to the federal tax collecting agency. This case comes just months after the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year injected $45 billion to ramp...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has reintroduced a bill that would force an audit of all military aid the United States has sent Ukraine since the Russian invasion one year ago. Greene’s legislation comes as the U.S. has committed tens of billions of dollars in military assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine last February. The Georgia Republican introduced the resolution of inquiry in the House on Friday, marking the one-year anniversary of the invasion. “It’s going to force Congress to give the American people an audit,” Greene told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday. “And that is exactly what the...

The VoterGA Fulton County counterfeit ballot case “is back,” according to Garland Favorito. Favorito told UncoverDC in November that an order from the Georgia Supreme court in the Sons of Confederate Veterans et al. v. Henry Cty. Bd of Commissioners would no doubt help his case. The Supreme Court confirmed what Garland already knew—that “citizens in the state have standing to sue government officials who violate the law.” During what he dubbed the “Georgia Supreme Court Victory” press conference on Thursday, Favorito said this “was something he had been saying all along for a year even after our case was...

White House argues that Inflation Reduction Act will increase audits against millionairesA study of 2022 IRS tax audit data found that a taxpayer in the lowest income bracket is five times more likely to face an audit that would a member of the highest income bracket. "The IRS correspondence audit process is structured to expend the least amount of resources to conduct the largest number of examinations – resulting in the lowest level of customer service to taxpayers having the greatest need for assistance," National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins said of the report during an annual report to Congress....

Critics are sounding the alarm on the Internal Revenue Service significantly lowering the threshold for transaction reporting through payment apps, warning the change signals a new level of government overreach that targets small businesses and middle-class Americans. The IRS issued a reminder last week to taxpayers who utilize third-party payment processors like Venmo and PayPal about changes to reporting income in an updated explainer on their website. These changes created by the American Rescue Act now require the platforms to report any transaction over $600.

Despite a 1996 law requiring all federal agencies to conduct regular spending audits, the Pentagon has so far failed to conduct a single one. While US lawmakers have pressed the DoD to comply by September of 2017, a new inspector general’s report indicates that meeting this deadline is highly unlikely. Army and Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis personnel did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter adjustments and $6.5 trillion in year-end adjustments made to Army General Fund (AGF) data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation," the report reads. In common language, the Pentagon has no idea how...

House Republicans recently introduced a measure that would audit the tens of billions of dollars in aid sent to Ukraine. The measure, which was led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), introduced a resolution, which was exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, to audit funds appropriated to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. Several House conservatives backed the measure, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Barry Moore (R-AL), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Greg Steube (R-FL), and Clay Higgins (R-LA). The proposal would audit all military,...

The U.S. Department of Defense has, once again, failed a comprehensive financial audit. The audit is the fifth comprehensive review the department has completed, and the fifth where auditors were unable to find sufficient record keeping for the DoD to pass off on a clean audit.This year’s DoD-wide audit report involved 27 smaller component audits, of which seven component audits received “unmodified opinions,” which mean that auditors determined the underlying military financial information was recorded fairly and in line with U.S. accounting standards. One component audit received a “qualified opinion,” meaning auditors found material accounting misstatements that were not pervasive.The...

The U.S. Department of Defense has, once again, failed a comprehensive financial audit. The audit is the fifth comprehensive review the department has completed, and the fifth where auditors were unable to find sufficient record keeping for the DoD to pass off on a clean audit. This year’s DoD-wide audit report involved 27 smaller component audits, of which seven component audits received “unmodified opinions,” which mean that auditors determined the underlying military financial information was recorded fairly and in line with U.S. accounting standards. One component audit received a “qualified opinion,” meaning auditors found material accounting misstatements that were not...

The state senator behind the push to carry out an Arizona-style “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election on Friday accused Senate Republican leadership of stonewalling his efforts. During an interview aired Friday on One American News Network, Doug Mastriano, a Franklin County Republican, blasted Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre County, for trying to shut down his pursuit of an election audit. He added that Mr. Corman has threatened to strip him of his chairmanship of the Senate Intergovernmental Committee and fire his staff if he moves ahead with the audit. “This is the kind of games that...

Key points: 1. Musk has ordered a freeze on changes to Twitter code as of noon Thursday, October 27, per Twitter employees. No code checkins are allowed. 2. On Thursday, October 27, Twitter product leaders showed Tesla software engineers (brought in by Musk) the company code. These Tesla engineers are reviewing the code in preparation for a confidential briefing for Musk early next week. 3. Twitter software engineers are locked out of the code, other than a few exceptions personally approved by Musk.

An audit of the primary results in Torrance County, New Mexico uncovered numerous material items from the election. CD Media reports: "Torrance County, NM recently held an audit of their primary election and the results showed a stunning 25% difference between machine and hand count results. Torrance is a small county but the significance is huge for the 2022 general election on Nov 8." ... The errors appeared to be in the Republican block of votes!

Yesterday it was reported that experts in Wisconsin determined that the voting machines used in the 2020 election in the state were shared with a nongovernment entity (NGO) in real-time. This may be the most shocking piece of information on fraudulent election activities to date. ... The voting machines were connected to an unofficial IP address belonging to an NGO called WiscNet. Election results were transferred on November 3rd, 2020. What was really going on?

To do a full forensic audit of an election many things must be investigated and studied. Not just recounting the ballots and issuing a recount figure to check official results. No. The entire thing must be taken apart, and all the different facets carefully examined. As a reference, a forensic examination of a dead body requires it to be cut into and every minute part examined and tested to determine the resulting death. Now an election has many aspects. And each must be examined. So a legislature must order the investigation, according to law. Each state has its own legislature....

As you're getting ready to file your tax return, you may be wondering about the chances that the IRS will audit your return. Most people can breathe easily because the vast majority of individual returns escape the audit machine. In recent years, the IRS has been auditing significantly less than 1% of all individual tax returns – and the trend has been towards fewer audits from one year to the next. Plus, most audits are handled solely by mail, meaning taxpayers selected for an audit typically never actually met with an IRS agent in person. But this doesn't mean it's...

Per a press release out this morning, more than 37,000 affidavits were delivered to the Gwinnett Country, Georgia Election Board challenging voter rolls and the handling of the 2020 Election. These affidavits included 20,000 from the 2020 Election. These affidavits prove that the 2020 Election never should have been certified in Georgia. Per a press release from moments ago: A stunning total of 37,500 affidavits are delivered to the Gwinnett County Board of Elections office in challenge of the voter rolls and handling of the 2020 Election. These affidavits include 20,000 challenges to actual votes that were certified just after...

President Biden recently signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping energy, tax, and healthcare law that is partly designed to reduce the deficit. The legislation includes $80 billion in increased IRS funding over ten years. The idea is that the funds could help improve tax compliance, which in turn, could bring in an estimated $203 billion in increased revenue. It’s too early to know what the impacts will be. But you may have heard some lawmakers say that because of the new law, an “army” of 87,000 new IRS agents will be coming to audit ordinary taxpayers. As is often...

"I direct that any additional resources… shall not be used to increase the share of small businesses or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Treasury Secretary Yellen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig. That directive has been used by media "fact checkers" to deny that the massive increase in IRS personnel under Biden’s Inflation Increase Act will also increase audits of the middle class. Yellen’s statement initially seems reassuring until you look closely at its curious language. Treasury Department spokeswoman Julia Krieger used the same phrasing when claiming that "audit rates relative to historical...

The Georgia Record was contacted earlier this month by Kevin Moncla, an independent analyst in Dallas, TX who has been submitting open records requests to Fulton County, GA regarding the 2020 election. Moncla recently filed a complaint with the Georgia State Election Board highlighting inconsistencies found in vote totals on the night of November 8th, 2020 and the following recount in December. You can read the entire complaint on the PDF below. Essentially, the vote totals from the general to the recount didn’t match. The recount tally was off by approximately 17,000 votes. After being ordered to ‘reconcile’ the data...