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April 8, 2021 - Epoch Times
18:43
Confirmed: Hunter Biden is Officially Under Federal Investigation; Laptop Statement | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
The son of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, has just published a new book, and he is currently on tour doing interviews in order to promote it.
And during one of these interviews, he acknowledged that the infamous laptop could in fact be his, although he also said that it might have been hacked by the Russians.
Meanwhile, over at the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas wrote this opinion piece, suggesting that platforms like Facebook and Twitter could very soon be regulated like utilities.
Now, over in Cuba, the military has just shut down Camp 7, which is a prison unit inside of Guantanamo Bay, which is so secretive that they once denied its very existence.
And lastly, yesterday, over in Arkansas, they passed this bill, which is the first in the entire country to outlaw gender reassignment surgeries as well as hormone therapies for children under the age of 18.
Let's go through these stories together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
Now let's start today's discussion by talking about the Supreme Court.
Two days ago, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from President Trump.
In that lawsuit, President Trump was seeking the ability to be allowed to block critics on Twitter.
However, the Department of Justice made the argument that since Joe Biden was sworn into office, the entire case has become moot.
And as of two days ago, the Supreme Court agreed, and they dismissed the entire thing.
Now, to give you a bit of background on this case, in case you forgot, you might remember that about two years ago, President Trump blocked some users on Twitter, which prevented them from either viewing or commenting on his Twitter posts.
This then prompted those users to file a lawsuit against President Trump, and eventually, a court of appeals, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, they agreed with them, and ruled in their favor, and determined that President Trump violated these people's First Amendment rights when he blocked them on Twitter.
Now, President Trump, he appealed that decision all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but as of two days ago, that case has been made moot and dismissed altogether.
Now, in that case, though, I would like to highlight something.
Justice Clarence Thomas, he agreed with the decision to dismiss the case, but he issued this opinion right here, and I think it's worth reading.
Here's what it said in part.
It was rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it.
The disparity between Twitter's control and Mr.
Trump's control is stark, to say the least.
Mr.
Trump blocked several people from interacting with his messages.
Twitter barred Mr.
Trump not only from interacting with a few users, but removed him from the entire platform, thus barring all Twitter users from interacting with his messages.
Under its terms of service, Twitter can remove any person from the platform, including the President of the United States, at any time, for any or no reason.
Now just to pause here for a moment, just in case you've been living under a rock, here Justice Thomas is referring to the fact that Twitter kicked President Trump off of their platform back in January while he was still in office as the sitting president of the United States of America.
So Clarence Thomas then continues.
The petitions highlight two important facts.
Today's digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors.
Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties.
Now, of course, people argue that these companies are not the only options out there and that a person can use other platforms if he so chooses.
However, Clarence Thomas says that it does not matter that Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter are not the only ways to distribute speech as long as their power to do so is unequaled.
Here's what he wrote.
A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail.
But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable.
For many of today's digital platforms, nothing is.
And the last part of the letter that I really want to highlight with you is sort of a glimpse at what might come in the near future.
Because in here, Clarence Thomas writes that, We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.
There are arguments suggesting digital platforms such as Twitter or Facebook are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated in this manner.
And so there, it looks like he might be alluding to the fact that, at least in his opinion, big tech firms could be regulated like utilities in the very near future.
If you'd like to read this opinion for yourself, I'll throw a link to it in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And by the way, that is that same little description box that is right below that like button that I hope you take a moment to smash.
Because it goes without saying that videos that are like this, talking honestly about what is happening in this world, are routinely censored, throttled, or outright removed by big tech giants like YouTube.
However, when you smash that like button that's below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
Now, before we move on over and talk about Hunter Biden's infamous laptop, I would like to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
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Now, let's talk a bit about Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden is currently on tour throughout America promoting his new book, which was just released yesterday.
The book is a memoir called Beautiful Things, and according to the publisher, it centers around Hunter Biden's personal struggles with substance abuse.
Now, I have not read the book myself yet, and so I cannot tell you whether the book makes any references to his controversial business dealings, such as his business dealings over in China or Ukraine.
However, five days ago, CBS released an interview with Hunter Biden, since he's on the book tour, and in that interview, Hunter acknowledged that the infamous laptop, the one with the messages, the photos, and the emails, could indeed have been his.
But he also suggested that it might have been hacked by the Russians.
Here's what he said.
There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me.
It could be that I was hacked.
It could be that it was the Russian intelligence.
But let's talk about the facts.
According to a lawsuit which was filed by the computer shop owner over in Delaware, here's what allegedly took place.
Two years ago, this laptop was dropped off at this computer shop, and the owner said that Hunter Biden asked him to recover content on it because the laptop was damaged.
As proof that this actually happened, take a look.
The computer shop owner submitted these documents to the court.
The first one is a signed authorization from Hunter Biden to work on the computer, and the second document is an invoice for that work.
Now, even though the legacy media outlets in this country by and large ignored it, the laptop contained very explosive messages as well as emails between Hunter Biden regarding his various business dealings which took place in countries like Ukraine and China, as well as many photos that are, well, unsavory.
Now when these business dealings and photos were first revealed, Joe Biden denied that he knew about them, and he called the entire thing a smear campaign.
Although, if you've been following the story for the past six months, you might have noticed that Joe Biden has never come out and given a detailed explanation regarding the anomalies which surround, for instance, the China and Ukraine business dealings.
Regardless, luckily, both the legacy media outlets as well as social media platforms seem to be suppressing the story fairly successfully, such as when Twitter actually banned the sharing of the New York Post expose about the story altogether.
Regardless, at this moment, it's been confirmed that Hunter Biden is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice.
They are looking into his taxes right now.
And Hunter says that he is fully cooperating with them.
Here's what he told CBS News.
I can say this.
I am cooperating completely, and I'm absolutely certain, I'm 100% certain, that at the end of the investigation, that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.
All I can do is cooperate and trust in the process.
Now, if you would like to read more about Hunter Biden's new book, The Investigation into His Taxes, or about what we know regarding his business dealings in general in places like China and Ukraine, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And actually, just as an aside on this topic, I will mention that during the 2020 election, NPR, National Public Radio, they made a concerted effort to not cover this topic, to not cover Hunter Biden's laptop.
In fact, last year, leading up to the election, here is what NPR's managing editor wrote to their readers.
Furthermore, NPR recently wrote a review of Hunter Biden's book, and in that review, they wrote that the idea that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden...
was discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations.
However, they actually had to come out and issue a correction, because it has not been discredited by U.S. intelligence, and so they had to issue this correction.
A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story.
U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect.
And now, when you go to that story today, the sentence in that article reads this.
Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to the author of that NPR article for comment, but have yet to hear back.
Regardless, again, all those links will be in the description box below this video, available to anyone who smashes that like button.
And now let's talk a bit about Cuba.
Specifically about Guantanamo Bay.
Now even though for a very long time the military refused to acknowledge its existence and journalists have never been allowed inside of it, there is something called Camp 7 at Guantanamo Bay.
Camp 7 opened back in December of 2006, and it was made for prisoners who were previously being held in a network of secret CIA facilities, often referred to as black sites.
And so the military ran this Camp 7 under an agreement with the CIA, and allegedly, prisoners there were subjected to brutal interrogation methods.
And to give you an idea of the types of people that are being held in Camp 7, out of the approximately 14 prisoners who were being kept there, five of them were charged with helping to plan and provide support for the 9-11 attacks.
And so these were pretty much the highest-level anti-American criminals.
Now, three days ago, the U.S. military announced that Camp 7 will be closing, and that the prisoners there will be moved to another facility still within Guantanamo Bay.
The reason that it was cited by the U.S. military was that the facility had fallen into disrepair, had major structural issues, and that since it was never really designed to be permanent in the first place, instead of requiring or rather requesting the funds to fix it up, they just shut it down.
Now, this move does align with Joe Biden's stated goal of shutting down Guantanamo Bay altogether.
But in order to make that actually happen, he would need approval from Congress in order to move the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba over to the United States for either trial or imprisonment.
And we'll have to wait and see if that actually ever happens.
If you'd like to read more about Camp 7, or if you would actually like to read more about the long and complicated history of why we have an American prison in Cuba in the first place, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now let's talk a bit about Arkansas.
Yesterday, Arkansas became the first state in the entire country to outlaw gender reassignment surgeries, as well as hormone treatments for children under the age of 18.
Now, this process of getting the law passed had a bit of a hiccup, though.
What happened was that the measure passed both chambers of Congress in Arkansas, and it was sent to the governor's desk to be signed.
However, the governor of Arkansas vetoed the bill, sending it back to Congress.
At that point, they voted again, and a supermajority in both the House and the Senate of Arkansas voted to override the veto and push the bill into law.
This bill, by the way, is called the Arkansas SAFE Act, and SAFE stands for the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act.
And what it does is it prohibits physicians as well as health care professionals from providing gender transition procedures to people under the age of 18.
The measure also prohibits the use of public funds for transition procedures in general.
Here's what the bill says in part.
It is of grave concern to the General Assembly that the medical community is allowing individuals who experience distress and identifying with their biological sex to be subjects of irreversible and drastic non-genital gender reassignment surgery and irreversible permanently sterilizing genital gender reassignment surgery, despite the lack of studies showing that the benefits of such extreme interventions outweigh the risks.
Now, the fact that the governor of Arkansas vetoed this bill came as a surprise to many people, because Asa Hutchinson, who is the governor, is a Republican and he is known to be fairly conservative.
In explaining why he vetoed the bill, here's what the governor said.
This is a government overreach.
You are starting to let lawmakers interfere with health care and set a standard for legislation overriding health care.
The state should not presume to jump into every ethical health decision.
If this was just to ban gender reassignment, then I would support it.
But those who are taking treatment are not grandfathered in, and this is not the right path to put them on.
During an interview with Fox News, he further argued that the conservative position is for the government to not get involved in the decisions of parents and doctors in regards to their children.
Regardless of his reasoning, though, his veto was overridden, and the bill has now become law.
Family Council, which is an Arkansas-based conservative group, they welcomed this new law, and they released this in a statement.
This is really good news.
Gender reassignment surgeries can leave children sterilized and scarred for life.
Medical researchers do not know the long-term effects these procedures and therapies can have on kids.
That is why many people equate them with experimenting on children.
On the other hand, though, pro-transgender organizations oppose the passage of this bill.
For instance, the deputy director for transgender justice over at the ACLU said this, As a trans person, as a parent, I can't stress enough how devastating the consequences would be.
Furthermore, the ACLU has actually now announced that it will be filing a lawsuit to prevent this law from being enforced.
The executive director of the ACLU's Arkansas chapter said this in a statement.
This fight is not over.
We will be filing a lawsuit to challenge this law in court.
If you'd like to read more about this new law for yourself, that link will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And actually, while we're on the topic of transgender law, let's discuss what's happening over in California.
Since the start of this year, of 2021, over 261 prison inmates have requested to be transferred to a prison facility that aligns with their gender identity.
Out of those, 255 are asking to be sent to a female facility, while only 6 are asking to be transferred to a male facility.
Now this development comes on the heels of a new law, which was just signed by Governor Gavin Newsom back in January, which requires the California prison system to ask every individual who's coming in to specify their pronouns, their gender identity, and whether they identify as transgender, non-binary, or intersex.
According to this law, the prison staff is then required to use the gender pronouns that the individual requested, and it also requires that all prisons must house the individual in a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual's preference.
Now, since this law came into effect, here is what the deputy press secretary for the California prison system said has happened.
255 are from transgender women and non-binary incarcerated people who are requesting to be housed in a female institution, and 6 are from transgender men and non-binary incarcerated people who are requesting to be housed in a male institution.
Now you might be wondering, how do female prisoners feel about this new policy?
Well, female inmates over in Chowchilla, which is a city in California, they were interviewed by the LA Times, and here's what one of them said.
Men are coming.
That if we think it's bad now, be prepared for the worst.
That it's going to be off the hook.
It's going to be jumping.
They say we're going to need a facility that's going to be like a maternity ward.
They say we're going to have an inmate program where inmates become nannies.
In that same report, the female prisoners expressed a fear that inmates who were requesting transfers were lying about their gender identity in order to be transferred to women's prisons.
As to how this policy will ultimately play out, well, we'll just have to wait and see.
And by the way, similar legislation has also been passed in Connecticut and Massachusetts, so it's not just in California.
If you'd like to read more about this new offer yourself, that link will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now lastly, as we already discussed in several other episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program, to demonetize Facts Matter.
We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
That is essentially an act of trying to snuff out our independent reporting.
However, I will throw a link into the description box below this video to a page where you can subscribe to The Epoch Times.
By subscribing, it only costs a few dollars every month, but by subscribing, you will be supporting independent journalism, and also you will get unfettered access to all of our reporting, all of our investigations, all of our interviews, our video documentaries, our opinion content, And if anything ever happens here on YouTube, you'll have continuous access to all of our video programs, like Facts Matter, Crossroads, American Thought Leaders, and all the rest.
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I hope you click on it, I hope you subscribe, and I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
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Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while you still can.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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