Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Federal officials forgave $809 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans handed out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to more than 100 of the nation’s top law firms and another $635 million given to hundreds of elite accounting offices, according to a new analysis of government spending to be made public on Dec. 2.

As described by the Department of Treasury, the PPP was established in 2020 to provide “small businesses with the resources they need to maintain their payroll, hire back employees who may have been laid off, and cover applicable overhead.”

The program was administered by the federal Small Business Administration, which made $787 billion in federal loans to companies and firms spanning all industries. The vast majority of the “loans” were subsequently turned into grants, which didn’t require repayment.

An investigation by Open the Books found that hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars went to top law and accounting firms even though most of them didn’t qualify as small businesses and didn’t have to lay off employees.

Open the Books is a nonprofit watchdog that uses public information laws such as the federal Freedom of Information Act to make government spending public, including “every dime online, in real time.”

The Epoch Times obtained an advance copy of the investigative report.

Auditors “found an astonishing $1.4 billion in forgiven PPP loans that flowed to the largest and most successful law and accounting firms across America,” the report stated.

“Today, it is an open question whether many of the firms needed a taxpayer subsidy to ‘save’ any jobs during the Covid-pandemic. Many racked up record revenues while their equity partners made millions of dollars.

“For example, in the years 2020 and 2021, we found equity partners individually received $7 million in profits while their law firms received $10 million in forgiven PPP ‘loans.’ The Guam office of Ernst & Young, a Big Three accounting firm with 365,000 employees, took a $750,000 forgiven loan.

“In 2020, millions of mom and pop businesses on Main Street had to shut down during the forced economic lockdown [occasioned by the pandemic]. So, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) to compensate those businesses for their economic losses.

“Firms with 500 employees or fewer met eligibility requirements. However, Congress didn’t anticipate that Biglaw and the largest accounting firms would cash in so profitably.”

Among the biggest winners was Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, the New York City-based law firm of Democratic superlawyer David Boies, which received a forgiven $10.14 million PPP loan.

Boies first came into national prominence in 2000, when he headed Vice President Al Gore’s legal team during the Florida presidential election recount. The election wasn’t decided until the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision, which put Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Boies also gained national notoriety by representing the Department of Justice in its successful prosecution of Microsoft, and he headed a legal team that challenged California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages. The proposition was approved in 2008 by voters, but the Supreme Court effectively nullified it in a 2013 decision.

His firm’s PPP debt was forgiven in October 2021 under the Biden administration, even though during the period covered by the loan “the firm’s equity partners earned $4.5 million each in profit compensation—receiving $2.219 million (2021) and $2.283 million (2020). The firm billed clients $480 million during this two-year period,” Open the Books found.

The second-biggest law firm beneficiary of PPP loans was the Birmingham, Alabama-based Maynard Cooper & Gale, which received $10.13 million under the pandemic relief program. Even so, the firm’s workforce increased from 247 in 2019 before the pandemic, to 260 in 2020 during the pandemic, and 283 in 2021.

No. 3 among the white-shoe law firms getting tax dollars via the PPP program was the New York-based Kasowitz Benson Torres. The firm’s “revenues grew from $216.8 million (2019), to $219.4 million (2020) and then $238.4 million (2021). In April 2020, the firm received a $10.13 million PPP loan that was forgiven in July 2021—while profit per equity partner averaged $2.418 million (2021),” according to Open the Books.

Among the big accounting firms getting tax dollars, Prager Metis CPAs in New York City received $10.2 million, which was forgiven in June. Revenues for 2021 reached $139 million, an increase from 2020’s total of $123.9 million.

Withum’s of Princeton, New Jersey, was next, getting a PPP loan worth $10.1 million that was forgiven in June 2021. Withum’s revenues were $425.3 million in 2021, up significantly from its 2020 total of $257 million, according to Open the Books.

As Nancy Pelosi and other aged House Democrats seem to be backing away from the political stage, a new crop of Dems are trying to make their mark by one-upping the ideological insanity of their predecessors. 

Incoming House Democrat Whip Katherine Clark claims in a recent interview with NBC that she is politically inspired because she remembers her middle child “waking up with nightmares” about climate change, and her family going to movie theaters with the expectation and fear that a mass shooter would appear.

One’s immediate reaction to these claims, if one has common sense, is to laugh. 

Children don’t have nightmares about climate change or worry about mass shooters unless their parents or other adults have conditioned them to obsess over such things. 

Climate change is a non-issue, with the Earth’s overall temperature increasing by less than 1°C in the past 100 years.

While mass shootings are highly publicized by the media (unless they end up involving an ethnic minority or a member of the LGBT community and then the story disappears), such events make up only 0.4% to 0.8% of all gun related deaths in the US according to RAND Corporation.

This kind of commentary is built on agenda and exaggeration, to be sure, but it tells us a lot about the Democrats in that their political and social policies are rooted in a foundation of irrational fear.  Everything they do is motivated by a need to quell these fears in themselves or to inspire those same fears in the public (and our children) in order to gain more power. 

Clark goes on to suggest that the GOP is going to “take down the economy” by opposing budget initiatives.  She does not explain why a constantly growing federal budget should have anything to do with the overall economy, likely because she does not understand the basics of the issue.  Massive government spending (and Federal Reserve money printing) is in fact a key trigger for the ongoing inflationary crisis. 

The national debt doubled in the eight years Barack Obama was in the White House, with the central bank creating tens of trillions in fiat to artificially prop up “too big to fail” banks.  Inflation in the US today is a direct result of this historic spending blitz, along with the $8 trillion in covid money injected into the system over the past two years.  The Democrat solution to the problem is even more spending.

Another interesting new narrative is also touched on in terms of the DNC being tied up with the FTX scandal, including over $40 million donated to the party in preparation for the 2022 mid-term elections.  The latest argument from Democrats is a direct parallel to the argument used by central banks and globalist institutions, which is that the fall of FTX should be used as a springboard for government regulation of the crypto space (leading to CBDCs).  Clark ignores the fact that money stolen by FTX flooded into Democrat campaign coffers and distracts from the bigger question.

The outgoing Dem House is seeking to pass as many bills as possible before they exit in January, with even more funding for Ukraine and the passage of the NDAA at the top of their list.  The NDAA in particular is about to become a central House issue with Republicans saying they will not provide more military funding until the Pentagon abandons their covid vaccine mandates for soldiers.  The Dems will be a House minority after a number of losses in the mid-terms, making Clark and her cohorts a political footnote for at least the next two years.      

After nearly a week’s delay on the second installment of “THE TWITTER FILES” – Twitter’s internal correspondence surrounding their decision to censor the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story – Journalist Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) has begun releasing more information via Twitter.

The second installment – which was released days after Musk fired former deputy General Counsel James Baker for ‘filtering’ the first release, is titled: “Twitter’s Secret Blacklists“

1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.

3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending.

 

4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.”

5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.”

 

7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.

 

8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.

 

9. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches.

 

10. All without users’ knowledge.

 

11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.

 

12. The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.

 

13. But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”

 

14. This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.

 

15. This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”

 

16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was

@libsoftiktok

—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.”

17. The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.

18. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”

19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” See here:

20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”

21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.

22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up.

23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021:

24. Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.”

25. Roth wrote: “The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.”

26. He added: “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”

27. There is more to come on this story, which was reported by @abigailshrier @shellenbergermd  @nelliebowles @isaacgrafstein and the team The Free Press @thefp. Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website: http://thefp.com.

 

/Fin

And some replies:

Gotta love seeing a “direct messages” tab on this screenshot where I’m assuming any staffer could read your DM’s 🤣🤣

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) December 9, 2022

I’ll just leave this here @jack @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/49dnI1Ik9h

— TONY™️ (@T0NY_X2) December 9, 2022

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Texas federal judge has ordered Southwest Airlines to reinstate Charlene Carter, the flight attendant who made headlines after a jury ruled that she was unlawfully fired for expressing pro-life views and for criticizing her union.

In a decision filed on Dec. 5, five months after a jury decided in Carter’s favor, Judge Brantley Starr remarked, “Bags fly free with Southwest. But free speech didn’t fly at all with Southwest in this case.”

Starr granted Carter $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from Southwest; $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from the flight attendants’ union, Transport Workers Union of America Local 556; $150,000 in back pay, and $60,180.82 in prejudgment interest.

Although the jury voted that Carter deserved more than $5 million, laws and rules limit the amount that can be awarded in such cases.

Is this the hill that leftists have chosen to die on?

Progressives and SJWs claim that there is no LGBT grooming agenda aimed at underage children, but all the evidence suggests otherwise. 

Project Veritas has released another discomforting hidden camera interview that essentially dashes any arguments that leftists have in defense of LGBT propaganda in schools, with blatant sexualization of kids being used in Chicago.

Joseph Bruno, Dean of Students at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, is caught on camera bragging about inviting representatives from a local LGBT Health Center to the school to talk to students ages 14-18 during pride month. 

He admits that the students were given sex toys to “play with” while teaching the kids about “queer sex”.  Bruno appears excessively excited while talking about the event, and suggests that it’s a “cool part of his job” ostensibly because he doesn’t have to worry about oversight.

The school also engages in drag queen story hour events for very young children. 

While the Parker School is a private school, the Dean hints that parents are not specifically notified of these LGBT sex education events and neither are the trustees.

While drag queen events have been caught on numerous occasions crossing the line of what is legal in terms of child exposure and sexualization, the classes described by Bruno enter a whole other realm of grooming. 

Is it really “bigoted” or “extreme” to argue that this is unacceptable behavior to expose children to in schools?  Can’t we all agree to “leave those kids alone” until they are competent adults?  

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Loudoun County School Board members voted to fire embattled superintendent Scott Ziegler after a special grand jury report said he lied about a rape committed by a transgender student.

The board voted unanimously on Dec. 6 to fire Ziegler without cause, the Virginia school district’s spokesman, Wayde Byard, told The Epoch Times.

The move came after a special grand jury in Loudoun County released a 91-page report on Dec. 5 condemning Ziegler and other school officials for displaying a “stunning lack of openness” about the incidents.

The grand jury, made up of randomly selected Loudoun County residents, said Ziegler lied when he said there were no records of assault occurring in school bathrooms.

ABC7News reported on Dec. 7 that Ziegler will receive 12 months of severance pay per his contract. Byard did not confirm to The Epoch Times whether a severance package had been promised.

The Virginia school district made national headlines last year after a father accused the district at a board meeting of covering up his 15-year-old daughter’s rape by a skirt-wearing biological boy.

While he was speaking, the man was tackled by police, knocked to the ground, dragged out, and charged with disorderly conduct.

After the incident, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the state’s attorney general, Jason Miyares, to conduct a full investigation into the school district following accusations a transgender student sexually assaulted two different girls.

The 15-year-old victim’s family and officials said a “gender-fluid” boy sexually assaulted her on May 28, 2021 at Stone Bridge High School in the girls’ restroom.

Five months later, the same transgender student was accused of assaulting a second female student on Oct. 6, 2021, at Broad Run High School, after the district transferred him there.

In that incident, the transgender student was accused of forcing a female student into an empty classroom, holding her against her will, and touching her inappropriately.

In October of 2021, a Virginia judge found the transgender student guilty of sexual assault charges involving the 15-year-old.

The following month, the transgender student pleaded no contest to sexual battery in the second incident. He was sentenced to probation at a residential treatment facility until his 18th birthday in June 2024.

As part of the sentence, he was ordered to register as a sex offender, but a judge reversed that decision.

In their report, the special grand jury said Ziegler denied the first sexual assault during a school board meeting in June 2021.

At the meeting, according to the report, a board member asked Ziegler, “Do we have assaults in our bathrooms or in our locker rooms, regularly? I would hope not but I’d like clarification.”

The superintendent responded that there were no records of assault occurring in the school bathrooms, the report said.

Another witness testified the superintendent’s statement was a “bald-faced lie.” In response to that testimony, the grand jury wrote in the report, “We agree.”

The report also noted that Stone Bridge High School principal Tim Flynn failed to mention the first sexual assault in an email to the school community on the day it happened. Ziegler signed off on the email, the report indicated.

Ziegler said at the time he misunderstood the question from the board member.

He said that he had interpreted the question to be about whether the school had records of assaults happening in restrooms involving transgender and gender-fluid students, according to the report.

The report said there were several “decision points” for senior school administrators—up to and including the superintendent—to be “transparent” and step in and alter the sequence of events leading up to the second sexual assault on Oct. 6.

“They failed at every juncture,” the report said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday announced that the Florida Disaster Fund has raised $59.2 million for Hurricane Ian emergency relief, after claiming that the Biden administration denied funding assistance.

$25 million came from the state of Florida, while donors provided $35.2 million, DeSantis’ office said in a press release. The state funds will be used to acquire building materials, while donations will enable “verified nonprofit organizations to conduct critical temporary repairs on homes damaged by Hurricane Ian,” according to the press release, and reported by the Daily Caller.

With the support of First Lady @CaseyDeSantis, the Florida Disaster Fund has raised more than $59 million, and her announcement of $10.2 million for 17 non-profits to help meet the needs of Floridians with building supplies, food, and shelter will continue to help those in need. https://t.co/9GXy79kWvN

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) December 6, 2022

The disaster funding will also address “unmet needs such as transportation, food assistance, housing aid, clothing, and household goods,” according to the release.

“We are providing building materials and supporting nonprofit organizations to provide repairs so impacted residents can move back into their own homes,” said DeSantis, adding “Floridians are resilient, and the state stands by them every step of the way as they continue their recovery.

Biden admin denied?

On Monday, DeSantis said that Florida was denied $25 million in emergency funds by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

(Perhaps Florida should change its name to Ukraine?)

Following the FEMA denial, DeSantis said “we’re not going to take no for an answer,” adding “we want to cut bureaucracy.”

“We’re not just gonna sit there and take no for an answer […] We’re gonna figure out what we can do […] We wanna cut through bureaucracy.” pic.twitter.com/NmgwV9RGnc

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) December 5, 2022

According to the Caller:

FEMA denied the request because of its “limited authority” and “our inability to confirm that authorizing this policy expansion would achieve the intended outcomes for disaster survivors,” the agency said in a letter to Kevin Guthrie, Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. 

The agency has provided $3.3 billion in federal support to Florida and households for Hurricane Ian relief, according to a Monday press release.

FEMA and the White House both did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Daily Caller. Gov. DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment as well.

The Florida Disaster Fund – spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis is the state’s private fund, which was established to provide financial assistance to communities throughout the state during emergencies.

Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

The Texas legislature has subpoenaed investment firm BlackRock, together with its subsidiaries and affiliate entities in the state, for documents related to the institution’s promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.

The subpoena was issued by the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs last month and asks the sergeant-at-arms for the committee or any peace officer of the state to summon BlackRock and associated entities to appear before the committee on Dec. 15. The summoned entities are expected to produce for committee inspection “books, papers, documents, or other tangible things in the said corporation’s possession, custody, or control” which are related to “ESG factors” or “ESG integration practices,” the subpoena stated.

“The reason the committee is requesting the production of documents is to evaluate the investment practices of a financial services firm with a presence in Texas and how those practices affect the state’s public pensions,” it said.

In a statement to Fox, Texas Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, chairman of the committee on state affairs, said that the subpoenaed documents are necessary to “uncover” the extent to which investment entities like BlackRock have been “playing politics using Texans’ hard-earned money.”

Back in August, the committee sent letters to BlackRock, as well as other investment firms like State Street, Vanguard, and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), to provide documents related to their ESG decision-making.

Hughes said that while each firm has produced documents, some have submitted “more than others.” But when it comes to BlackRock, the firm has “refused” to submit documents it deems as confidential or internal.

As a result, the committee had to issue a subpoena to BlackRock. “They have a legal duty to put their investors’ interests first, and we intend to make sure they do,” Hughes added.

The Epoch Times has reached out to BlackRock.

What’s ESG?

ESG investing advocates stakeholder capitalism instead of the conventional shareholder variant. Proponents of the ideology argue that traditional investments focus merely on maximizing profits, whereas stakeholder-centric ESG investing takes into consideration social advocacy, environment, and other progressive ideals which they claim will benefit society, and the company, in the long run.

ESG investing is one of the main reasons why many companies have drastically evolved in recent times. When previously businesses followed customer demand, nowadays they have mostly pivoted toward alternate goals and sacrificed profits for “green” and politically correct objectives.

Action Against BlackRock, ESG Investing Perils

BlackRock has been facing a series of actions from state authorities over its ESG investing practices. On Dec. 1, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced that his state will begin pulling out $2 billion in assets from the investment firm.

The state intends to completely divest its investments from BlackRock and relocate them to other fund management firms beginning next year.

In October, Missouri announced plans to remove $500 million worth of pension fund investments in BlackRock.

Earlier, Louisiana had announced a pending removal of $794 million from the company, while Utah and Arkansas declared their intentions to remove $100 million and $125 million, respectively.

In a recent interview with Breitbart, Missouri Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick equated ESG with leftist activism and pointed out that people’s money is being used by money managers to advance political and social causes that might not even be in the investors’ financial interests.

“ESG is just the latest acronym to describe what people want them to believe for good, well-intentioned advocacy [when] it’s really just political advocacy for things that the Democrats cannot get passed through the democratic process, and they’re using your money to do it,” he said.

President Biden on Wednesday renewed a push to ban so-called ‘assault weapons’ during remarks at the 10th Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence.

While discussing his meetings with the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, Biden said he was able to get “the most significant gun law passed in 30 years,” but that it was not enough.

“…Our work continues to limit the number of bullets that can be in a cartridge, the type of weapon that can be purchased and sold, the attempt to ban assault weapons, a whole range of things that are just common sense, just simple common sense,” he said. “But you know, we did it before, you may remember, in the nineties we did it…And guess what, it worked. The number of violent mass murders reduced were significant, a lot of people’s lives were saved. You know, we can do it again.”

President Joe Biden renews vows to secure a ban on assault weapons at a national vigil for victims of gun violence, as he turns up the heat on U.S. lawmakers https://t.co/l99MSDHuiQ pic.twitter.com/fxtfDpRwfe

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 8, 2022

Biden was referring to a 1994 ‘assault weapons ban’ authored by then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (C), who was a congressman from Brooklyn. Schumer argued that the banned rifles were not made for hunting or target practice – but instead “they are made simply to kill as many people, people, people as possible. As fast as possible.”

The impact of the assault weapons prohibition was mixed.

The federal assault weapons ban was originally in effect between 1994 and 2004 as part of former President Clinton’s crime bill. Since its expiration, Democrats have been actively pushing for the ban to be reinstated. –Fox News

A top GOP Senator, however, says Democrats’ gun-grabbing ambitions may fall to the wayside.

“I don’t think that’s on the table,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in a Wednesday statement to Fox News in response to a question about whether he thinks the assault weapon ban will gain any traction.

Seemingly confirming Cornyn’s comment was Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who told Fox News that the Senate “has a lot on our plate,” when asked about the last-minute gun bill – noting that as of today, there are “probably not 60 votes” for the bill – meaning Democrats are unlikely to find 10 GOP senators willing to break a filibuster to allow the law to pass.

On Wednesday Blumenthal joined fellow Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois and the anti-gun March Fourth Coalition, to host a press conference aimed at urging the Senate to pass an assault weapons ban in the lame-duck session.

As if a million merger arbs suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Just before 2pm ET, the US Federal Trade Commission confirmed earlier rumors when it announced that it had voted 3-1 to sue to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, saying the tie-up between the Xbox maker and popular gaming publisher would harm competition in the gaming market.

The commission voted to proceed with the complaint, which will be filed in its in-house court Thursday, in a closed-door meeting, said two BBG sources.

The full statement is below:

FTC Seeks to Block Microsoft Corp.’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Inc.

Agency alleges that maker of Xbox would gain control of top video game franchises, enabling it to harm competition in high-performance gaming consoles and subscription services by denying or degrading rivals’ access to its popular content

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block technology giant Microsoft Corp. from acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard, Inc. and its blockbuster gaming franchises such as Call of Duty, alleging that the $69 billion deal, Microsoft’s largest ever and the largest ever in the video gaming industry, would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.

In a complaint issued today, the FTC pointed to Microsoft’s record of acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles, including its acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks (a well-known game developer). Microsoft decided to make several of Bethesda’s titles including Starfield and Redfall Microsoft exclusives despite assurances it had given to European antitrust authorities that it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles.

“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals,” said Holly Vedova, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets.”

Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and Series X are one of only two types of high performance video game consoles. Importantly, Microsoft also offers a leading video game content subscription service called Xbox Game Pass, as well as a cutting-edge cloud-based video game streaming service, according to the complaint.

Activision is one of only a very small number of top video game developers in the world that create and publish high-quality video games for multiple devices, including video game consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. It produces some of the most iconic and popular video game titles, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, and has a combined 154 million monthly active users around the world, according to the FTC’s complaint. Activision currently has a strategy of offering its games on many devices regardless of producer.

But that could change if the deal is allowed to proceed. With control over Activision’s blockbuster franchises, Microsoft would have both the means and motive to harm competition by manipulating Activision’s pricing, degrading Activision’s game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision’s content, or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers.

The Commission vote to issue the complaint was 3-1, with Commissioner Christine S. Wilson voting no. A copy of the administrative complaint will be available shortly.

Having limped lower in recent weeks below where it had been trading around $80, already a wide discount to the $95 MSFT purchase price, ATVI stock slumped 2.5% to $74…

… while MSFT stock dropped about $2 from session highs some 2% higher on the session, to trade up just 0.9%.

The drop in MSFT promptly hammered the Nasdaq and sent shockwaves across the entire market, pushing spoos down more than 25 points to near session lows around 3950 having traded at session highs of 3975 just moments earlier.