Legal eagles swooped on PPP benefits

As usual, it is the lawyers that make out like bandits and rake in the big bucks.

This time for doing nothing.

Because when it came to extracting money from the U.S. Government for Paycheck Protection Program “loans” (free money) during COVID-19 lockdowns, it is the lawyers who had the expertise and wherewithal to cash in more efficiently than most others.

And they certainly did.

Because while numerous small business owners without access to expert advice were provided with little or nothing to replace their losses — and in many cases lost their businesses as a result of oppressive COVID-19 lockdowns — a total of 14,363 law firms nationwide reaped more than $4 billion in aid from the federal government.

$1.5 billion of this was in California alone, including five Santa Barbara law firms:

— Mullen & Henzell LLP:  $1,170,882 (40 employees).

— Price, Postel & Parma LLP:  $653,395.55 (26 employees).

— Ghitterman, Ghitterman & Feld LLP: $388,451 (20 employees).

— Rogers, Sheffield & Campbell LLP:  $367,400 (14 employees).

— Nie, Sterling, Hale & Miller LLP:  $199,017 (0 employees).

Does anyone audit these law firms to determine precisely in whose bank accounts these funds ultimately land?

The Small Business Administration was supposed to audit all “loans” in excess of $2 million and “spot check” those that received lesser amounts.

But guess what? Last July the SBA announced it will no longer conduct such loan reviews due to “money and time” concerns.

Which means these law firms are free and clear from scrutiny.

We reached out to the law partners at Santa Barbara law firms listed above with one simple question: “How were these funds allocated?”

Not one of them answered.

A local attorney who did not partake in The Big Grab told The Investigator, “Such BS. Who’s going to pay for all these free loans? Our kids.”

Another member of Santa Barbara’s legal community told The Investigator, “The legal system did not slow down here during COVID, only the judicial side of things had to be adjusted. Taking free loans may have been highly inappropriate and should be accounted for. The American Bar Association code includes ‘moral turpitude’ — and this may run contrary to that principle. The California Bar Association should provide oversight and take a good look at this with a view to disbarring those unwilling to account for why, precisely, the funds were needed and who actually received them.”

BEANIE BABY BLUES (CONTINUED)

In her Second Amended Complaint filed with Superior Court in Santa Barbara, Kathryn Zimmie accuses her former many-decade partner Ty Warner (along with his financial advisors) of fraud, and she seeks, as part of her Prayer for Relief, “to send this matter to the appropriate authorities for a criminal investigation.”

Ms. Zimmie alleges that Mr. Warner, the Montecito tycoon, and his team misappropriated her identity to create a fictitious entity that she apparently knew nothing about, the purpose of which was to funnel funds “to deceive Zimmie and others.”

These entity documents, Ms. Zimmie claims, contain her “inauthentic signature” — a euphemism, we gather, for forgery.

“The purposes of The Enterprise” — Cleveland Design Consultants, a Delaware-registered LLC — “were to provide tax benefits to Defendant Warner” in addition to deceiving Ms. Zimmie into believing that she was being properly compensated for her design work on Ty’s behalf, the lawsuit alleges.

PUTIN, POISED…

… to invade Ukraine.

The only hold-up, after diplomatic talks “non-started” (in fact, bombed), is the weather, which has been unseasonably warm, meaning a muddy battlefield for intruders. Although Russian tanks are lighter than those used by the U.S. Army (45-50 tons compared to 65-75 tons), tank commanders would still risk getting bogged down unless and until a deep-freeze hardens the ground.  

This will all change early this week, with sub-freezing temperatures forecast and 127,000 Russian troops (according to Ukrainian intelligence) now amassed at their border.

Consequently, the U.S. Intelligence community now anticipates an invasion at any moment — and British defense chiefs believe it will be full-blown with a Putin objective of taking the whole country, not just a slice (the Donbas region) as they did, in 2014, with Crimea.

To that end, Russia is believed to be contriving a fake news social media campaign along with a “false flag” attack on its own proxy troops (within Ukraine) for fabricating the “provocation” they desire to “justify” invasion. 

That’s in addition to Russia recently situating two short-range ballistic missile delivery systems at the border and directing armored divisions to Belarus (within striking distance of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv) while ordering families of diplomats stationed in Ukraine home to Russia.

This conflict isn’t about reunification, former UK MI6 official Ian McCredie told The Investigator, but about Russian President Vladmir Putin trying to save “his own skin and personal fortune,” now estimated at $200 billion, due to internal Russian “failures that have led to into economic and national decline. 

“Russia’s GDP is about $1.7 trillion,” adds Mr. McCredie, “lower than Italy’s and minuscule compared to the U.S. at over $20 trillion. There is not one single Russian company that has any sort of global presence to rival the likes of Coca-Cola, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Volkswagen, Samsung or Rolls Royce. Putin is an opportunist, a kleptomaniac, a thug and a mafia boss… preferring killing, poisoning and imprisoning anyone who dares to stand against him. Vladimir Putin is motivated only by survival.”

Which is why Putin adversary Alexei Navalny, currently jailed (as a political prisoner) by the Putin regime (after they tried to assassinate him), urged President Joe Biden, in a letter to TIME magazine, to go after Mr. Putin’s personal wealth. “It’s really simple. You want to influence Putin, then influence his personal wealth. It’s right under your backside.”

Instead, President Biden, at his self-delusional press conference four days ago in which he claimed to have “outperformed” every U.S. president, recklessly provided Mr. Putin a greenlight for a minor incursion, infuriating the Ukrainians and necessitating an egg-faced correction from White House functionaries.

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy summed it up this way: “Long before this…  and his humiliating Afghan surrender, and his (refusal to impede) Putin’s Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, the Russian dictator knew what Americans are still learning to their horror: This President is no match for ruthless tyrants — and not just Ukraine, but the world, is likely soon to suffer greatly as a result.” 

POOR PRINCESS CHARLENE OF MONACO…

… remains captive in a Swiss asylum, committed to The Kusnacht Practice in Zurich two months ago by her husband, Prince Albert, to deal with “physical and psychological issues” stemming from Albert’s infidelities and illegitimate children (and an ongoing lawsuit in Italy pertaining to the latest such claim, over which the prince has chosen to hide behind “Sovereign Immunity” instead of manning up, taking a paternity test and contesting the merits of the case).

Charlene is still “months away” from recovery, Monaco’s Palace announced recently. (Donald Trump’s mantra “lock her up” appears to have made an impression on Albert.)

It should come as no surprise that Albert’s only friend and contact-point within the British Royal Family is the now-disgraced Prince Andrew, whose interests, pursuits and prevarications are similar to Albert’s own. Or, as Prince Andrew himself whined in August 2019, “Albert gets to do whatever he wants but I get in trouble …”.

A reader wrote asking our opinion on “the level of intelligence that has been used by the folks on Prince Andrew’s team.”

Having operated intimately for five-and-a-half years within a royal court (Albert’s), I could answer without hesitation: The more lies he gets away with, the easier it becomes for him to lie about everything, large and small. Who among the sycophants that enrich themselves around Andrew and Albert have the courage to catch either prince in a lie and confront him with it? Not a one, not even lawyers. And without truth, intelligence is out the window.

AND SPEAKING OF ROYALTY STRIPPED OF THEIR TITLES

It has been reported in recent days that a) Prince Harry and Meghan desire to sell their $14.7 million Montecito estate (now priced at $27 million) and b) Harry misses his old lifestyle back in Blighty.

We gather that the bureaucrats at Buckingham Palace have not yet explained to the petulant pair that exile is a one-way street, as it was a century ago with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Though, who knows, maybe the palace will relent — and permit Harry to come home and share new digs (perhaps a large doghouse) with his Uncle Andrew.

But not for the moment, it seems. Because Harry is reportedly boycotting Britain due to the U.K. government’s stance over not providing him — ever since he bailed in 2020 — with Royalty and Special Protection officers when visiting his homeland (even though he has offered to pay the cost himself).

“Harry cannot pick and choose,” says former royal protection chief, Dai Davies. “It was his prerogative to go to America.”

But even after disavowing royal obligations, Harry apparently believes he has a legal right to insist on royal trappings — and to that end has initiated legal action against the U.K. government to change their bodyguard policy in his favor, bringing new embarrassment to his grandmother, the long-suffering Queen Elizabeth II, who is said to be in “despair” over Andrew’s legal predicament and Harry’s ongoing recalcitrance.

This, of course, has caused a media uproar inside the U.K., with Harry’s fiercest critic, Piers Morgan, labeling him a “shameless, deluded, woefully entitled hypocrite.”

THE RAFTER OF TURKEYS…

… at the White House Wattle aren’t the only crooks with family members enjoying leadership positions inside The Swamp.

Enter Paul Pelosi Jr. onto the Rolls of Dishonor for his widespread business connections to “a slew of fraudsters and convicted criminals,” according to an in-depth (U.K.) Daily Mail investigation into Mr. Pelosi’s get-rich-off-his-family-name shenanigans. 

It details at least five companies with which Mr. Pelosi is associated that were or are currently under investigation by federal or state agencies. One of them, Info U.S.A., is a data merchant that packaged a contact list specifically tailored to target “the gullible elderly” and marketed to scam artists who duly parted such folks from their money.

Another entity, Natural Blue Resources, Inc., co-founded by Paul Jr, was run by James. E. Cohen and Joseph Corazzi, two convicted fraudsters.

The Mail’s findings are substantial — and include the huge financial fortune ($100 million) amassed by the Pelosi family while House Speaker Nancy sits on committees to regulate the corporate world, from which she made millions from high-tech stocks during COVID.  

On another side of The Swamp, there is news of an upcoming memoir by Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, due to appear in June at a bookstore near you.

“If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing” by Katherine Buhle is being touted by Crown Publishing Group as “a page-turning and heartbreaking account” of her ex-husband’s booze, drug and prostitute addictions. “I was the sicko,” Hunter wrote in a text to his deceased brother’s widow, discovered by Katherine on an iPad, “sleeping with my brother’s wife.”

EMBATTLED BORIS

As foretold to us by Britain’s longest-serving lobby correspondent and our old friend Nigel Nelson (and reported in our November column from London), British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is fending off a vicious mutiny and possible replacement by his own Tory ministers and “Red Wall” members of Parliament.

An authoritative source in London updated us with this: “You and Nigel were spot on. The current chaos has obviously been long-planned, and Jeremy Hunt” (a British MP and chair of the Select Committee on Health & Social Care) “is slowly, amidst sharp elbows, beginning to surface” (as a successor to Boris),” which Mr. Nelson also predicted.

And now, exclusively, from Mr. Nelson himself: “Boris is still on his way out. But the attempts to oust him went a bit wobbly Wednesday when Tory MP Christian Wakeford defected to Labour. Treachery has a way of uniting the betrayed, and several letters of no confidence in the PM were withdrawn as a result. 

“The so-called pork pie plot by over-excitable newbie Tory MPs also backfired, as there’s no point getting the required 54 letters if you still do not have the numbers to oust the PM out in a confidence vote. 

“Most Tory MPs who want rid of Boris are now holding their fire until the Sue Gray report (on whether he misled Parliament about parties at No. 10 Downing Street when everyone was supposed to be under lockdown) is released. If that is devastating then they will move against him. If not, they will hold off on the basis that Boris gaffes are like buses — there will always be another along in a minute.”

COVID CHICANERY (UPDATE)

What killed Bob Saget at age 65?

Orange County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office: “No signs of foul play or drug use in this case. His death is a mystery.”

Bob Saget’s Dec. 13 clip on YouTube: “I got my booster shot… and I was hurting.”

And what happens next?

After determining Mr. Saget died of a heart attack (he was discovered with his left arm over his chest) or stroke — classic consequences of myocarditis, a CDC-declared potential side effect of the vaccine — official-dumb speculates that poor Bob … fell victim to COVID! (Which in a sense is true, if with an Orwellian newspeak spin…)

The question that begs to be asked is this: What kind of country are we living in?        

SURVEYS FROM HELL

Poll question in Calgary, Canada: “Should Alberta implement a tax on adults who are unvaccinated from COVID-19?”

And speaking of surveys: We confirmed (as reported in our COVID column two Sundays ago) that Rasmussen, indeed, ran a survey with a slew of incendiary questions, including …

Would you favor having state or federal governments confine citizens to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine? (A third of respondents — mostly Democrats — “strongly” or “somewhat” favored this.)

Other questions dealt with confining the non-vaccinated to “designated facilities” and to imposing financial penalties or imprisoning people who merely question the vaccine’s veracity! (In other words, if ever implemented, this columnist could be jailed.)         

And this one: Should we remove parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine?

Dare we say, this survey stuff is sicker than COVID itself.

STATE OF DIS-UNION

It is speculated that Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address (delayed until March 1), will do with COVID as he did with Afghanistan: Declare it over and move on as if victorious.
This would be political, of course, but the pandemic has indeed mutated into something with which humanity can co-exist without oppressive lockdowns (which were not necessary) and social distancing. And the fools among us need to hear that from an authoritative proponent of the illogical mainstream narrative (assuming “authoritative” even applies to the cognitively-confused Biden).

Because the truth about the omicron variant is seeping out, even among those charged with keeping the false narrative alive: Almost all hospitalizations and deaths supposedly caused by omicron were in reality for other health reasons and pinned on COVID-19 as part of the so-called “pandemic of the unvaccinated” scare story that itself does not hold water because the vaccinated and boostered suffered most from omicron.

An email from Hesu: “Your reporting is a breath of unmasked fresh air.”

An email from Erin: “Thank you!! Thank you!! I got the vaccine and almost died within hours of it … insane heart palpitations, couldn’t breathe, shingles, severe gut pain, weird bleeding, migraines, blue feet and hands, 105 fever, unreal trauma to my body. When I got the vaccine, I felt acid running from my left arm where I was shot to my chest over and over. It was like fire was burning in my arm to my chest for three days. This is why I am 100 percent sure this is from the vaccine. I am a very healthy 41-year-old who played division 1 basketball in college and I am still struggling from this vaccine. I got my shot in May. I am healing very slowly… and the worst part is I had COVID before this and lost my sense of smell for a day. I was forced to get this vaccine by my employer. This article from a regular media outlet is a huge step in healing for me… thank you soooo much!!!” 

This leaves us in no doubt our column has found the right home — kudos to this newspaper’s publishers and editor for being willing to stand up to the powers that (shouldn’t) be.

The ranks of those unafraid to speak and write the truth are growing as the falsehoods and propaganda implode on those who demand total submission to their blathering nonsense, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a civil servant who — according to his own financial disclosure forms — has amassed a fortune of over $10 million, including investments in China.

NATIONAL SANCTITY OF LIFE DAY…

… was yesterday.

It is a little known spiritual day if one with momentous meaning.

In March 2012, my 18-year-old daughter found herself 4-months pregnant.

Her obstetrician scribbled the name and number of a late-term abortion clinic onto a notepad and handed the notation to my daughter with encouragement to go there.

We did not go there.

Five months later my daughter gave birth to a beautiful boy.

I cannot imagine how life would be without “The Dude” because I love him so much.

I cannot imagine how I would feel today if I’d paid, to scratch from my daughter, from this world, my own flesh and blood.

This happy boy.

This affectionate soul adored by dogs.

My very precious grandson.

Please think twice, maybe three times, before scratching out a real living, breathing human soul.

Robert Eringer is a longtime Montecito author with vast experience in investigative journalism. He welcomes questions or comments at reringer@gmail.com.