News of the World

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Republicans Flip Another House Seat, Expanding GOP Majority in Next Congress

Republicans have flipped a U.S. House of Representatives seat representing a central California district, expanding their majority in the next Congress.
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Duarte has 66,884 votes while Gray has 66,300, according to unofficial results from the California secretary of state’s office.

The win, for California’s 13th Congressional District, means Republicans have secured 221 House seats starting January, when new members are sworn in.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has represented the 13th district since 2013. Due to redistricting, she ran for California’s 12th Congressional District this year and won.

Secret Service Finds Hundreds of Pages on Hunter Biden Gun Incident

Hunter Biden’s sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, reportedly threw his handgun in a trash container in Delaware in 2020. Agents with Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) were reportedly involved.

Based on the reports, a transparency group called Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Secret Service asking for records related to the incident, including reports, telephone logs, and witness statements.

The Secret Service, in its initial April 2021 response, said it located records and would process them. But more than a year later, in October, it said the response was sent in error and that the agency had never actually located any responsive records.

The third change came in a recent court filing that was lodged after Judicial Watch sued over the matter. The Secret Service now says more than 100 records have been located.
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The Secret Service told The Epoch Times in September, in response to a FOIA request similar to the one from Judicial Watch, that it “searched all Program Offices that were likely to contain potentially responsive records, and no records were located.”
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The ATF has already acknowledged having records of the incident, but a judge ruled that the agency did not have to disclose them.
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The parties proposed to file their next joint report by Jan. 13, 2023.

The report would include how many pages had been processed, how many were given to Judicial Watch, how many had been sent to the Executive Branch, and how many had been withheld.

Edward Snowden Pledges Allegiance to Russia, Receives Russian Passport

Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, was cited by Russian state media TASS as saying that his client on Thursday received his Russian passport and pledged allegiance to his host country Russia, where he fled to from the United States in 2013 after making a series of explosive disclosures.

Kucherena told the outlet that he had seen Snowden a day earlier and he was doing well.

It comes around three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Snowden citizenship. Snowden is grateful that he’s a full-fledged Russian citizen, Kucherena was cited by Russia’s Interfax agency as saying, with the lawyer noting that now Snowden can no longer be extradited to a foreign country.

Snowden lives in Moscow with his American wife, Lindsey Mills. According to Kucherena, Mills has also applied to become a Russian citizen.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou Cleared of Fraud Charges in US

A federal judge in New York dismissed financial fraud charges against Huawei’s chief financial officer (CFO), Meng Wanzhou, four years after her arrest strained relations between the United States and China.
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Meng, the daughter of Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s founder, entered a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors last year, in which she admitted to misleading global institutions about Huawei’s Iran business.

Under the agreement, the government would put the prosecution on hold until December 2022 and drop the case altogether if the defendant complies with the specified conditions in the agreement.

U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny on Thursday submitted the request to dismiss the charges against Meng, claiming that there was no information that Meng had violated any terms of the agreement through Dec. 1.
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Huawei is still charged in the case, which is pending in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York. A status conference is scheduled for Feb. 7, but no trial date has been set yet.
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Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 on a U.S. warrant. She was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges for misleading global institutions about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.