Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Four of the highest ranking U.S. health officials—including Dr. Anthony Fauci—met in secret to discuss whether or not naturally immune people should be exempt from getting COVID-19 vaccines, The Epoch Times can reveal.

The officials brought in four outside experts to discuss whether the protection gained after recovering from COVID-19—known as natural immunity—should count as one or more vaccine doses.

“There was interest in several people in the administration in hearing basically the opinions of four immunologists in terms of what we thought about … natural infection as contributing to protection against moderate to severe disease, and to what extent that should influence dosing,” Dr. Paul Offit, one of the experts, told The Epoch Times.

Offit and another expert took the position that the naturally immune need fewer doses. The other two experts argued natural immunity shouldn’t count as anything.

The discussion did not lead to a change in U.S. vaccination policy, which has never acknowledged post-infection protection. Fauci and the other U.S. officials who heard from the experts have repeatedly downplayed that protection, claiming that it is inferior to vaccine-bestowed immunity. Most studies on the subject indicate the opposite.

The meeting, held in October 2021, was briefly discussed before on a podcast. The Epoch Times has independently confirmed the meeting took place, identified all of the participants, and uncovered other key details.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who did not participate in the meeting, criticized how such a consequential discussion took place behind closed doors with only a few people present.

“It was a really impactful decision that they made in private with a very small number of people involved. And they reached the wrong decision,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

The Participants

From the government:

• Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden until the end of 2022
• Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general
• Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Dr. Francis Collins, head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which includes the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, until December 2021
• Dr. Bechara Choucair, the White House vaccine coordinator until November 2021

From outside the government:

• Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on vaccines
• Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a former member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board
• Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University
• Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the Baylor College of Medicine’s School of Tropical Medicine

Fauci and Murthy decided to hold the meeting, according to emails The Epoch Times obtained.

“Would you be available tonight from 9-9:30 for a call with a few other scientific colleagues on infection-induced immunity? Tony and I just discussed and were hoping to do this sooner rather than later if possible,” Murthy wrote in one missive to Fauci, Walensky, and Collins.

All three quickly said they could make it.

Walensky asked who would be there.

Murthy listed the participants. “I think you know all of them right?” he said.

Walensky said she knew all but one person. “Sounds like a good crew,” she added.

‘Clear Benefit’

During the meeting, Offit put forth his position—that natural immunity should count as two doses.

At the time, the CDC recommended three shots—a two-dose primary series and a booster—for many Americans 18 and older, soon expanding that advice to all adults, even though trials of the boosters only analyzed immunogenicity and efficacy among those without evidence of prior infection.

Research indicated that natural immunity was long-lasting and superior to vaccination. On the other hand, the CDC published a paper in its quasi-journal that concluded vaccination was better.

Osterholm sided with Offit, but thought that having recovered from COVID-19 should only count as a single dose.

“I added my voice at the meeting to count an infection as equivalent to a dose of vaccine! I’ve always believed hybrid immunity likely provides the most protection,” Osterholm told The Epoch Times via email.

Hybrid immunity refers to getting a vaccine after recovering from COVID-19.

Some papers have found vaccination after recovery boosts antibodies, which are believed to be a correlate of protection. Other research has shown that the naturally immune have a higher risk of side effects than those who haven’t recovered from infection. Some experts believe the risk is worth the benefit but others do not.

Hotez and Iwasaki, meanwhile, made the case that natural immunity should not count as any dose—as has been the case in virtually the entire United States since the COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out.

Iwasaki referred to a British preprint study, soon after published in Nature, that concluded, based on survey data, that the protection from the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines was heightened among people with evidence of prior infection. She also noted a study she worked on that found the naturally immune had higher antibody titers than the vaccinated, but that the vaccinated “reached comparable levels of neutralization responses to the ancestral strain after the second vaccine dose.” The researchers also discovered T cells—thought to protect against severe illness—were boosted by vaccination.

There’s a “clear benefit” to boosting regardless of prior infection, Iwasaki, who has since received more than $2 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told participants after the meeting in an email obtained by The Epoch Times. Hotez received $789,000 in grants from the NIH in fiscal year 2020, and has received other grants totaling millions in previous years. Offit, who co-invented the rotavirus vaccine, received $3.5 million in NIH grants from 1985 through 2004.

Hotez declined interview requests through a spokesperson. Iwasaki did not respond to requests for comment.

No participants represented experts like Bhattacharya who say that the naturally immune generally don’t need any doses at all.

Public Statements

In public, Hotez repeatedly portrayed natural immunity as worse than vaccination, including citing the widely criticized CDC paper, which drew from just two months of testing in a single state.

In one post on Twitter on Oct. 29, 2021, he referred to another CDC study, which concluded that the naturally immune were five times as likely to test positive compared to vaccinated people with no prior infection, and stated: “Still more evidence, this time from @CDCMMWR showing that vaccine-induced immunity is way better than infection and recovery, what some call weirdly ‘natural immunity’. The antivaccine and far right groups go ballistic, but it’s the reality.”

That same day, the CDC issued a “science brief” that detailed the agency’s position on natural immunity versus the protection from vaccines. The brief, which has never been updated, says that available evidence shows both the vaccinated and naturally immune “have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months” but that “the body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity.”

Evidence shows that vaccination after infection, or hybrid immunity, “significantly enhances protection and further reduces risk of reinfection” and is the foundation of the CDC’s recommendations, the agency said.

Several months later, the CDC acknowledged that natural immunity was superior to vaccination against the Delta variant, which was displaced in late 2021 by Omicron. The CDC, which has made misleading representations before on the evidence supporting vaccination of the naturally immune, did not respond to a request for comment regarding whether the agency will ever update the brief.

Iwasaki had initially been open to curbing the number of doses for the naturally immune—”I think this supports the idea of just giving one dose to people who had covid19,” she said in response to one Twitter post in early 2021, which is restricted from view—but later came to argue that each person who is infected has a different immune response, and that the natural immunity, even if strong initially, wanes over time.

Osterholm has knocked people who claim natural immunity is weak or non-existent, but has also claimed that vaccine-bestowed immunity is better. Osterholm also changed the stance he took in the meeting just several months later, saying in February 2022 that “we’ve got to make three doses the actual standard” while also “trying to understand what kind of immunity we get from a previous infection.”

Offit has been the leading critic on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which advises U.S. regulators on vaccines, over their authorizations of COVID-19 boosters. Offit has said boosters are unnecessary for the young and healthy because they don’t add much to the primary series. He also criticized regulators for authorizing updated shots without consulting the committee and absent clinical data. Two of the top U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials resigned over the booster push. No FDA officials were listed on invitations to the secret meeting on natural immunity.

Fauci and Walensky Downplay Natural Immunity

Fauci and Walensky, two of the most visible U.S. health officials during the pandemic, have repeatedly downplayed natural immunity.

Fauci, who said in an email in March 2020 that he assumed there would be “substantial immunity post infection,” would say later that natural immunity was real but that the durability was uncertain. He noted the studies finding higher antibody levels from hybrid immunity.

In September 2021, months after claiming that vaccinated people “can feel safe that they are not going to get infected,” Fauci said that he did not have “a really firm answer” on whether the naturally immune should get vaccinated.

“It is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected—but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time,” Fauci said on CNN when pressed on the issue. “So I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”

After the meeting, Fauci would say that natural immunity and vaccine-bestowed immunity both wane, and that people should get vaccinated regardless of prior infection to boost their protection.

Walensky, before she became CDC director, signed a document called the John Snow Memorandum in response to the Great Barrington Declaration, which Bhattacharya coauthored. The declaration called for focused protection of the elderly and otherwise infirm, stating, “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

The memorandum, in contrast, said there was “no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection” and supported the harsh lockdown measures that had been imposed in the United States and elsewhere.

In March 2021, after becoming director, Walensky released recommendations that the naturally immune get vaccinated, noting that there was “substantial durability” of protection six months after infection but that “rare cases of reinfection” had been reported.

Walensky hyped the CDC study on natural immunity in August 2021, and the second study in October 2021. But when the third paper came out concluding natural immunity was superior, she did not issue a statement. Walensky later told a blog that the study found natural immunity provided strong protection, “perhaps even more so than those who had been vaccinated and not yet boosted.”

But, because it came before Omicron, she said, “it’s not entirely clear how that protection works in the context of Omicron and boosting.”

Walensky, Murthy, and Collins did not respond to requests for interviews. Fauci, who stepped down from his positions in late 2022, could not be reached.

Murthy and Collins also portrayed natural immunity as inferior. “From the studies about natural immunity, we are seeing more and more data that tells us that while you get some protection from natural infection, it’s not nearly as strong as what you get from the vaccine,” Murthy said on CNN about two months before the meeting. Collins, in a series of blog posts, highlighted the studies showing higher antibody levels after vaccination and urged people to get vaccinated. He also voiced support for vaccine mandates.

Read more here…

The US Air Force has warned that the construction of a Chinese-owned corn mill in North Dakota poses a “significant threat to national security.”

The company which owns the mill is Fufeng Group, an MSG and xantham gum manufacturer based in Shandong province, China, bought 370 acres of farmland in Grand Forks – along with the promise that the $700 million site would economically benefit the region.

According to GOP Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, however, the Air Force says: “the proposed project presents a significant threat to national security with both near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area,” though the military branch declined to state specific threats.

Thousands of residents have speculated that the corn mill might be used for spying, however.

In August of last year, at least 5,000 residents signed a petition aimed at preventing the mill’s construction.

Mayor Brandon Bochenski, while initially supportive of the mill, came out on Tuesday saying that it should be stopped.

“The federal government has requested the city’s help in stopping the project as geo-political tensions have greatly increased since the initial announcement of the project,” he said, adding that he would block construction by denying building permits and refusing to connect city infrastructure to the site, Yahoo News reports.

Fufeng USA’s Chief Operating Officer Eric Chutorash has since denied that the mill would be used to spy on or harm the U.S.

The corn mill was proposed to be built 12 miles away from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is home to U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance units, including its top-secret drone technology. -Yahoo!

In a Tuesday joint press release, Cramer and Hoeven called on Grand Forks officials to “discontinue” the project, and instead “work together to find an American company to develop the agriculture project.”

Authored by Dallas Woodhouse via RealClear Wire,

As Trump and Biden focus their attention on the early primary state of South Carolina, Palmetto State voters are thinking about the future, one that focuses on public policy solutions, not “gotcha” politics and controversies of the past. Voters are expressing a willingness to move on from both the former and current president if they can’t meet the moment with real solutions to the problems facing everyday voters.

South Carolinians are looking for concrete proposals to address inflation. 78% of SC voters are concerned with their family’s ability to pay their bills due to inflation, with nearly half (48.4%) saying they are very concerned, according to a new poll from the South Carolina Policy Council. Less than four in ten SC voters believe America on the right track, with 58% saying it is on the wrong track.

Voters across the board still believe that lower taxes help spur economic growth.

Nearly four in five (79%) likely SC voters said further tax reductions are important for creating new jobs and attracting business, with 54% saying they are very important.

85% of GOP voters said further tax cuts are important for economic growth, as did 68% of Democrat voters and 81% of independent voters.

South Carolina voters are also demanding more government transparency. 83% agreed that government bodies should be required to livestream their public meetings on the internet for greater transparency and accountability.

Critically, the survey data shows voters are highly interested in moving on from both Biden and Trump.

In fact, 54% of likely 2024 SC voters agreed that “the country would be better off if neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump is elected President in 2024.” Only 30% said they disagree.

Other important takeaways include:

1. A majority (51%) of likely voters viewed Trump unfavorably, compared with 46% who viewed him favorably.
2. Biden is viewed unfavorably by 54% of likely voters, while only 45% viewed him favorably.
3. Of Republican primary voters, only 37% said the GOP should nominate Trump in 2024, while 47% said the GOP should nominate someone else.
4. In a head-to-head matchup, a majority of likely Republican voters favored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (52%) over former President Donald Trump (33%) by a whopping 19%.
5. Nearly half (46%) of Republican primary voters that viewed Trump very favorably said the GOP should nominate someone else.

Of the SC voters who viewed Biden very favorably, 38% still said America would be better off if neither Biden nor Trump were elected in 2024.

Of SC Democratic primary voters, only 43% said their party should nominate Joe Biden for re-election in 2024, while 38% answered someone else.  

A full 20% of Democrats were unsure of whom the party should nominate. Overall, more than half (58%) of likely Democrat voters indicated they are not sold on Biden in 2024.

While South Carolina is a reliable GOP state in the general election, data just to the north in purple North Carolina is shockingly similar, according to new polling conducted by Differentiator Data.

The results show that Trump is viewed favorably by just 38% of North Carolina’s likely voters. Only 42% of NC voters viewed President Biden favorably. Republican voters favored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (47%) over Trump (35%) by 12 points in a six person GOP field. Nearly half of GOP voters that viewed Trump favorably would still pick DeSantis or another candidate.

For Trump and Biden to win back the voters they have lost, they will have to turn the page on the past and deliver an optimistic, forward-looking agenda for the future – a herculean task for two men who have been on the earth for eight decades. Another nasty personal fight between the two of them might produce an electoral winner, but not one who can capture the hearts and minds of Americans and successfully lead the country.

South Carolinians will be key in deciding which Republican and which Democrat will become their party’s nominee.  North Carolina, decided by just 1.75% in 2020, will be a key swing state in the 2024 general election.

Yet across the Carolinas, voters are already sending signals. Voters are hungry for fresh, new policy ideas. They want competent leadership that can deliver real policy solutions to address real world problems.

The question is, can either party and its candidates deliver?

Dallas Woodhouse is the Executive Director of the South Carolina Policy Council.

The United States is now threatening Turkey with holding more American-made fighter jets captive, this time over the Erdogan government’s refusal to allow Sweden into NATO.

Turkey starting in 2021 issued a formal request purchase 40 F-16 jets and about 80 modernization kits from the US, but a group of over two dozen US senators has said they are ready to block the sale if Turkey doesn’t ratify Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession protocols. 

“Congress cannot consider future support for Türkiye, including the sale of F-16 fighter jets, until Türkiye completes ratification of the accession protocols,” the senators, led by Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), wrote in a letter to the president Thursday.

“Failure to ratify the protocols or present a timeline for ratification threatens the Alliance’s unity at a key moment in history, as Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” the lawmakers stressed.

The White House appears favorable to the Congressional members’ stance regarding getting tougher on Turkey while Ankara blocks Sweden’s NATO membership: 

“We have made the same point to our Turkish allies … that we need this Congress’s support moving forward for the security enhancements that we think that they need, as allies, F16s, some of them are old, but that this Congress is likely to look far more favorably on that after ratification,” [Victoria] Nuland said, urging senators to “keep making your points and we will too.”

But Turkey has never been easily pressured by Washington – and this is perhaps given the Turkish military remains the second largest in NATO, and the fact that Turkey plays host to American military bases.

With the F-16 hold-up now having dragged on a couple of years, Turkey has long flirted with the idea of acquiring Russian-made Su-35s and Su-57 fighter jets, causing alarm among NATO allies. Turkey has argued it’s a problem of Washington’s own making, given the 2019 decision to boot Turkey from the Lockheed F-35 program.

Lately, Erdogan has said Turkey looks favorably on Finland joining the alliance, while at the same time suspending accession talks with Swedish officials, especially after last month’s Quran-burning incident in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

Authored by Jarryd Jaeger via The Post Millennial,

A new report compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity has revealed that the number of households having their electricity disconnected by power companies as a result of not being able to pay soared between 2021 and 2022.

Leading the way among states who report such data is Illinois, whose main electricity providers shut down power for nearly 300,000 households between January and October 2022, a massive increase over the previous year. 

According to the report, disconnects in Illinois rose 26 percent from 2021 to 284,720 in the first ten months of 2022. The state’s two largest electricity providers, Exelon’s Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and Amaren, accounted for the vast majority of shut-offs.

Both companies are investor-owned and have been criticized for increasing executives’ salaries while working to make electricity more expensive for customers.

As the report states, ComEd imposed a 26 percent rate hike in October 2021, and gained permission from regulators in November 2022 to raise prices yet again by $199 million. All the while, customers were having their lights turned off for non-payment.

During this time, ComEd was also embroiled in a corruption scandal, in which it was accused of “using ratepayer funds as part of a bribery scheme” to secure the passage of 2011 legislation that implemented a “formula rate” system. The system subjected customers to hundreds of millions of dollars in rate hikes over the last decade, but ComEd benefited to the tune of nearly $4.7 billion.

At the onset of Covid-19, a moratorium on shutoffs due to nonpayment was imposed across the nation, however, Illinois was one of the states that ended the policy as soon as it possibly could. By late 2021, no such forgiveness was offered.

“The preventable practice of disconnections keeps millions of Americans in poverty and narrows their avenues of escape,” the report lamented. “By giving utility companies the power to penalize poverty, we license them to perpetuate it.”

Losses in Gautam Adani’s corporate empire surged to $108 billion on Thursday, sparking fears of a potential systemic implosion one day after the Indian conglomerate’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. scrapped a 200 billion-rupee ($2.4 billion) stock offering. 

The suddenness of the equity offering withdrawal reverberated across markets, politics, and business circles. One dealmaker told Bloomberg that he has never seen an equity offering canceled so quickly in his two-decade career.

Indian lawmakers are questioning and requesting a broader probe into the plunge in Adani Enterprises shares. Even the Reserve Bank of India is checking on banking exposure to ensure there’s no systemic threat. 

In a separate report, Bloomberg said Credit Suisse and Citigroup have stopped accepting some bonds issued by Adani’s companies as collateral for margin loans to high-net-worth clients. However, Goldman Sachs told investors Adani bond prices have likely hit a floor. 

A crisis in confidence plagues Adani and his corporate empire, and he is racing to plug the holes in his sinking ship.

A person familiar with the situation said Adani is in discussions with lenders to prepay and release pledged shares as he seeks to restore confidence,. 

Adani nor his companies have faced margin calls on these pledges and aiming for quick prepayment, the person said, adding the move is to dismiss concerns about margin calls. 

They noted Adani officials would address investors about the prepayment in the coming days.

This turmoil comes in the wake of Hindenburg Research’s short-seller report. The US firm alleges Adani oversees a sprawling empire built on market manipulation and accounting fraud — allegations he and his conglomerate have repeatedly denied.

Simultaneously, Adani’s personal wealth has taken a massive hit. In just six trading sessions, the billionaire, but no longer Asia’s richest person, has lost $52 billion in personal wealth. 

Adani’s primary goal in the short term is to remove concerns about a wave of potential margin calls concerns and default risk as dollar bonds plunge to very distressed levels. 

There is no clear messaging (yet) from India’s government if they will get involved in the fight between Hindenburg and Adani. 

“Adani and his officials are trying their best to paint it as a foreign conspiracy against the rise of India as an economic power,” said Ashok Swain, head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. 

However, fund managers aren’t buying that messaging: veteran emerging-markets investor Mark Mobius told Bloomberg that Adani Enterprises’ massive debt load “scared us away” from participating in the share offering.

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will allow two chief border patrol agents to testify before a Congressional hearing on the U.S. border crisis, after initially trying to “muzzle” them, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).

In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Comer highlighted how DHS leadership sought to prevent the chief border agents from testifying at the Feb. 7 hearing, but later reversed its stance after Comer threatened to use subpoenas.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability plans to hold the hearing to gather facts from U.S. Border Patrol witnesses. The hearing is titled “On the Front Lines of the Border Crisis: A Hearing with Chief Patrol Agents.”

Comer wrote that he invited the agents’ testimony on Jan. 19 and that DHS “initially sought to prevent Congress from hearing invaluable testimony from Chief Patrol Agents, believing that DHS’s internal protocols superseded Congressional oversight prerogatives.”

“I am pleased that the DHS is no longer taking such a position, and will make available as witnesses Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez, Rio Grande Valley Sector and Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin, Tucson Sector,” Comer wrote (pdf). “These two law enforcement professionals also serve as Lead Field Coordinators for the border regions that collectively include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.”

In a statement, Comer described the Biden administration’s “radical open borders policies” as the cause of the “worst border crisis in American history.”

“Starting on day one in office, President [Joe] Biden and his administration rolled back deterrent-focused policies, halted the construction of the border wall, gutted interior enforcement, pushed amnesty for illegal immigrants—all of which have made it difficult for U.S. Border Patrol agents to secure the border,” Comer said in a statement.

“Next week, we will hear firsthand from the Border Patrol about this humanitarian and national security crisis,” he continued, adding the Republicans on the panel were committed to holding the Biden administration accountable.

Republicans Move to Impeach Mayorkas

Republicans have been critical of Mayorkas’s handling of the crisis at the southern U.S. border, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) repeatedly calling on him to resign last year, and declaring his intention to investigate and impeach Mayorkas.

On Monday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told Fox News that he intends to file articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.

Read more here…

A 66-year-old woman was charged with stealing over $1.5 million worth of food – primarily chicken wings, while working as the Director of Food Services for a school district within a suburb of Chicago.

Bond was set at $150,000 Thursday for Vera Lidell, who began working for Harvey School District 152 in July 2020, placed hundreds of unauthorized orders for items between July 2020 and February 2022 – which included 11,000 cases of chicken wings through the school’s primary supplier, Gordon Food Service.

Liddell is accused of placing the orders alongside legitimate orders for the district.

“The massive fraud began at the height of COVID during a time when students were not allowed to be physically present in school. Even though the children were learning remotely, the school district continued to provide meals for the students that their families could pick up,” according to prosecutors.

“The food was never brought to the school or provided to the students,” reads the proffer.

Believing the orders were genuine, Gordon Food Service billed Harvey School District 152, which then paid for the food items, according to court records. Lidell would then allegedly use one of the school district’s cargo vans to pick up and transport the stolen food.

A routine mid-year audit conducted by the district’s business manager in January 2022 showed the food service department had exceeded its annual budget by over $300,000 despite only being halfway through the school year, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Lidell was the only person responsible for placing food orders on behalf of the district. –Fox5NY

“Upon closer review, she discovered individual invoices signed by Liddell for massive quantities of chicken wings, an item that was never served to students because they contain bones,” the proffer continues.

Gordon Food Service employees got to know Lidell “due to the massive amount of chicken wings she would purchase,” while surveillance footage from the facility revealed that she would often arrive prior to them opening to pick up orders.

Lidell, whose bail is set at $150,000, is currently being held at Cook County Jail until she’s scheduled to appear in court again on Feb. 22.

Update 6:00pm:  Apple has staged a remarkable reversal after hours, and erased almost the entire loss after the company said that it expects a 5% impact from FX rates in Q2, and also expects iPhone revenue growth to accelerate in Q2. CEO Tim Cook was also asked whether the move to higher ASPs for the iPhone is sustainable in light of the sharp decline in sales, and whether this will continue in a worsening economy. Cook said the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max did extremely well until the supply-chain constraints. He says this is definitely a “strong Pro cycle” and credits the new features in the device. He says he’s happy that Apple is now shipping to the demand.

Tim Cook also said that AI is critical to Apple and mentions features like crash-and-fall detection and the use of AI in features like EKG on the Apple Watch. He says AI will effect everything the company does, including all products and services.

Apple is quite bullish on India and other emerging markets, with CEO Tim Cook saying the company will soon open its first retail stores in India. He also said Apple saw marked improvement in China in December (versus November) after another round of Covid re-openings.

As Bloomberg notes, the company also stuck to a line that revenue and sales of individual product categories would have been higher if not for supply-chain constraints and issues stemming from the macroeconomic environment.

* * *

With both Amazon and Google sliding after reporting disappointing earnings and mixed guidance, it was all up to the world’s biggest company, AAPL, to provide some hail mary for the tech earnings season which for better or worse is concentrated in a one hour stretch this afternoon. Alas, it was not meant to be and after missing on the top and bottom line, AAPL has joined the parade of selling and tumbled after hours due to numbers which the market was clearly not impressed with.

• EPS $1.88 vs. $2.10 y/y, missing estimate $1.94
• Gross margin $50.33 billion, -7.2% y/y, missing estimate $52.03 billion
• Revenue $117.15 billion, -5.5% y/y, missing estimate $121.14 billion
  • Products revenue $96.39 billion, -7.7% y/y, missing estimate $98.98 billion
  • IPhone revenue $65.78 billion, -8.2% y/y, missing estimate $68.3 billion
  • Mac revenue $7.74 billion, -29% y/y, missing estimate $9.72 billion
  • IPad revenue $9.40 billion, +30% y/y, beating estimate $7.78 billion
  • Wearables, home and accessories $13.48 billion, -8.3% y/y, missing estimate $15.32 billion
  • Service revenue $20.77 billion, +6.4% y/y, beating estimate $20.47 billion
  • Greater China rev. $23.91 billion, -7.3% y/y, beating estimate $21.8 billion
• Cash and cash equivalents $20.54 billion, -45% y/y, estimate $29.91 billion

And here is AAPL’s diluted EPS in context: needless to say, could have been better.

Commenting on the quarter, Tim Cook said that “during the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion active devices as part of our growing installed base.”

CFO Luca Maester chimed in: “our record September quarter results continue to demonstrate our ability to execute effectively in spite of a challenging and volatile macroeconomic backdrop. We continued to invest in our long-term growth plans, generated over $24 billion in operating cash flow, and returned over $29 billion to our shareholders during the quarter. The strength of our ecosystem, unmatched customer loyalty, and record sales spurred our active installed base of devices to a new all-time high. This quarter capped another record-breaking year for Apple, with revenue growing over $28 billion and operating cash flow up $18 billion versus last year.”

Going back to the results, Apple missed consensus revenue in most product categories, with the exception of iPads, to wit:

• IPhone revenue $65.78 billion, missing estimate $68.3 billion
• Mac revenue $7.74 billion, missing estimate $9.72 billion
• Wearables, home and accessories $13.48 billion, missing estimate $15.32 billion
• IPad revenue $9.40 billion, beating estimate $7.78 billion

Of note: Apple recorded its first decline in iPhone revenue since the third quarter of 2020; yet in context, the 8% drop was still less than the 20% decrease reported by Samsung. Other major smartphone providers that have yet to report are expecting to see double-digit losses. Ironically, Apple may have fared comparatively well on smartphone revenue.

The silver lining: service revenue $20.77 billion, +6.4% y/y, beating estimates of $20.47 billion…

… and rose 6.5% Y/Y, an improvement from last quarter’s 5.0%

One other place where investors were pleasantly surprised was China sales, which at $23.91 billion, beat the estimate of $21.8 billion by more than $2 billion.

None of that changes the fact that AAPL’s sales by region were uniformly negative across the board.

And another potential problem: AAPL’s gross cash continues to slide, dropping to $165 billion, the lowest since June 2014…

… while cash net of debt rebounded modestly from $49 billion to $54 billion, just above a 12 year low with the company having spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks. Let’s hope that Apple doesn’t actually need to use that cash.

Commenting on the results, Bloomberg writes that the results show that Apple hasn’t been able to dodge the tech slowdown afflicting many of its competitors. Demand for smartphones and computers has slumped in the past year, and Covid-19 restrictions in China added to Apple’s woes during the holiday sales period. Timing was another issue: The company didn’t launch new Macs and HomePods until recent weeks, missing the end of the first quarter.

In response to these disappointing earnings, the stock predictably slumped as much as 4% before recouping some losses, although even with the drop it is back to where it was… yesterday.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the New York Post on the latest developments in the Biden classified document investigation. The latest search occurred on the first day at the office for Robert Hur as Special Counsel. He may find that any potential criminal case has already been made more difficult by decisions by the FBI.

Here is the column:

The FBI issued the “all clear” on its latest search of one of President Biden’s residences. The announcement came with the first day of special counsel Robert Hur on the job at the Justice Department.

Hur may find that the Biden legal team feels that “all clear” extends beyond the latest search.

It could be challenging to make a criminal case after how the investigation has been handled.

At every stage, the FBI has adopted an approach that would compromise or complicate any criminal charge.

The FBI left the home untouched for over three months after classified documents were found in Biden’s former office in DC. While it was recently learned that the FBI did go to that office a couple weeks later, they reportedly elected to have personal counsel for the president conduct searches on the residences. Biden then spent weeks traveling to these residences after the FBI waited to search the premises.

The private searches clearly went through these documents and moved (and potentially organized) material. Despite being given the opportunity to conduct and record the initial searches, the FBI will now have to rely on the accounts of private counsel on how these documents were originally left, including any visible classification markings.

For example, to go through the papers, counsel had to handle them, sort them, and stack or box them. That means that the original conditions are lost in determining, for example, if anyone in the vicinity could have seen a telltale bordered classified jacket or whether a classified document was partially or fully outside of a jacket.

The FBI allowed uncleared private counsel to tread all over these scenes, creating a nightmare of chain of custody.

It then waited weeks to send its own agents to places like Rehoboth Beach as counsel and the Bidens frequented the property.

It is also not clear how the FBI conducted these searches. Reports recently indicated that Biden included classified information in notebooks that were seized in earlier searches. If true, that is a nightmare for investigators because it would require agents to do more than simply look for classified documents with markings at the beginning of paragraphs and tops of pages. They would have to actually read material to determine if Biden incorporated classified material.

In fairness to the FBI, the same hands-off approach was initially used with Trump as the FBI allowed for material to be collected and stored with additional security at Mar-a-Lago.

There are two differences.

First, Trump never denied having such material. He insisted that he was allowed to have the files because he considered them unclassified.

Second, while the Trump team insists that the FBI was given access to the documents, Trump resisted efforts to turn over all of the documents. Indeed, the FBI has raised a pattern of obstruction and false statements.

With Biden, the FBI did not know where documents might be located. The findings overlap with residential and office space used by Biden over the years. Moreover, they were reportedly told that they could search and seize any documents. They did not use that opportunity to search all of these locations, even after counsel erroneously stated that no more classified material was present at these locations.

The FBI is moving no more aggressively with other possible areas containing classified material. The FBI still has not reportedly searched the massive trove of Biden documents being stored at the University of Delaware. Reports indicate that Biden removed classified material as senator and these records cover that period. Looking for a few documents in Rehoboth Beach and not the university (roughly 80 miles away) with a truckload of documents is like driving past the ocean to go fishing in a wading pool.

The result for Hur is a case that is messier than Biden’s garage.

It is hard to see how this investigation would yield a solid criminal case absent confirmation that Biden worked off clearly classified material.

If so, he showed both intent and knowledge of unlawful possession during prior years. It would also make his categorical denials of any knowledge appear more sinister and incriminating.

Either way, none of this suggests “transparency,” as Biden likes to boast. The investigation has proceeded with a small fraction of the information leaked or released against Trump. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) also says that the National Archives were blocked from putting out a press release about the case — either by the Department of Justice or the White House. Combined with the fact that nothing was made public until after the midterms, it shows that Biden’s team wanted to keep this quiet.

In the end, both Biden and Trump come out looking bad but that is not nearly as bad a thing for Trump.