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Bondi joins the presidential cancer cluster nobody’s allowed to notice; Carroll perjury indictment looms, Hoffman in the crosshairs; Biden sues to bury the Hur tapes; CIA ‘loses’ $40M in gold; more.
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Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup includes: how the same press corps that once chased ambulances now sits in silence while five cancer diagnoses pile up around a sitting president, refusing to even ask the question the rest of the country is already whispering; how E. Jean Carroll’s lawfare crusade — funded by a billionaire with Epstein ties — may finally meet a grand jury, because the moral arc of the universe really is bending the way Barack used to claim; how Joe Biden’s panicked lawsuit to bury the Hur tapes confirms exactly what every honest American already knew about who was really running the country; and how a twenty-year CIA officer walked off the Langley campus with forty million dollars in gold and a fabricated military pilot’s bio — exposing the rot inside the very agency Americans are forced to fund and trust.
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It’s been a minute since I did one of these ‘sudden and unexpected’ posts. I moved on not because of any lack of subject matter; but because the point had been made, the dead horse beaten, and dwelling on it is mindlessly morbid and depressingly repetitive. But certain examples are sojarring or significant they warrant an occasional exception. That happened yesterday, when CNN shocked social media by reporting, “Former Attorney General Pam Bondi diagnosed with thyroid cancer and recovering from treatment.”
During the pandemic, Pam Bondi —Florida’s former Attorney General— publicly backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the state’s Attorney General Ashley Moody in their bitter battle against Biden’s vaccine mandates and jab passports. Florida Politics, June, 2021:
Pam’s position was that everyone should be free to choose for themselves whether or not to take the vaccine. She chose the jab. On June 1st, while making the rounds supporting Florida’s cruise lines, which Biden was trying to sink, she told Fox Newsthat “I have been vaccinated, that was mychoice.”
Yesterday, adding another dimension to Bondi’s sudden and unexpected ‘transition’ from Attorney General to a new position, CNN reported that she “was diagnosed with thyroid cancer after leaving the Justice Department in April.” (Axios broke the story. It really has been punching above its weight lately.) The story said Bondi “underwent treatment and is recovering from surgery a few weeks ago,” whatever that means.
The good news is that the most common types of thyroid cancer are not aggressive and usually well managed with treatment, having five- and ten-year survival rates over 90%. It sounds like she is probably in that category. CNN reported that Bondi will soon join a White House task force related to AI, the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
And if that were all the news, the story wouldn’t be worth reporting again here, not amidst this exciting Annus Operum. But Bondi’s thyroid cancer is not the story. The story is the bizarre cancer cluster, every story reported this month (May), all within about 1-3 weeks:
I take that back. The cancer cluster isn’t the real story. The odds that this cluster could just be a random group misfortune, however improbable, isn’t the story, either. The real story is the even more baffling total silence about this astonishingly media-ripe string of cancerous coincidences. Nothing abou it —zero, zip, nada— in the New York Times, which loves a tasty story about bad luck befalling conservatives.
Instead, over the span of a couple of weeks, the trad-media curtly reported a string of cancer stories all tied, in one way or another, to President Trump’s inner circle. A former attorney general announces thyroid cancer weeks after being ‘pushed out’; the White House chief of staff discloses breast cancer; a senior intelligence official resigns citing a spouse’s cancer; a close family member of the president’s son is diagnosed with breast cancer. Each got its own appropriately somber write‑up, usually (but not always) with sympathetic quotes and reassuring language about treatment and recovery.
What’s missing is not information, but curiosity. Not one network connected these cancer dots together, not even Axios, HuffPo, or Mother Jones. No anchors asked cancer experts, even cautiously, “Is it unusual to see this many serious diagnoses in such a tight cluster?” No reporters even phoned an epidemiologist who’d say that it’s more common than you might think, which, at minimum, would at least have acknowledged that the question exists.
Instead, every case is hermetically sealed in a tight little bottle, each its own singular human‑interest vignette. It’s like the first commandment of post‑2020 journalism is, thou shalt not even hint that cancer patterns might be worth investigating.
We aren’t even allowed to ask the question. Social media has come a long way since the Biden censorship days, but the corporate media remains on rhetorical lockdown.
But, to grasp the story, you don’t even needto state the most obvious potential cause. The real news here is that a journalistic profession that once prided itself on “if it bleeds, it leads” now reflexively covers its eyes, stops its ears, and zips its mouth whenever a pattern emerges that might raise uncomfortable questions about powerful people, powerful products, or powerful agencies.
The proof is right there. This particular coincidence itself may or may not mean anything. But the media’s silence speaks volumes. Oh, how I long for the days before corporate media, as corrupt as they were. It was still better than this.
Apparently, we’ve learned nothing from the old fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes.
It’s not just Hans Christian Anderson. Mankind knows this classic story inside-out. It’s practically its own archetype: the dangers of ignoring inconvenient truths.
💉 In 1882, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote a now-famous play called “Enemy of the People.” It is set in a small coastal spa town in southern Norway, and centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the medical officer of the Municipal Baths. Dr. Stockmann discovers that the town’s famous “healing” baths —a major tourist attraction that supplies the community’s primary source of prosperity— are actually contaminated with dangerous pollutants from some nearby tanneries that have sickened several tourists.
When Stockman tries to publish his scientific findings, he faces fierce opposition from his own brother Peter, his father-in-law, the town’s mayor, local journalists, and angry townspeople, all of whom prioritize their personal economic interests over actual public health. The city council uses parliamentary maneuvers to prevent Stockman from presenting his findings at a public meeting.
Stockman’s character is complex; he’s not a particularly likable person. He is arrogant, antisocial, and sanctimonious. Ibsen created a more perfect example illustrating the point that the inconvenient truth is even easier to ignore when delivered by unsympathetic outsiders; but ironically, it is usually only unsympathetic outsiders who are able to deliver the bad news.
By the end of the play, Dr. Stockmann had refused to leave town or back down— despite losing everything. He gets evicted from his house, loses his medical practice (except for the poorest patients who had no choice), and his daughter Petra is fired from her job as a teacher. The baths remained contaminated and unfixed at the end of the play.
The town chose denial over truth. They simply said, We tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.
The 1882 play’s themes resonate across generations and cultures. Here in America, Arthur Miller adapted Ibsen’s play for Broadway, and it was made into a 1978 film starring Steve McQueen. (Despite strong reviews from audiences and critics, it was allowed only a limited theatrical run. Weird.)
💉 Ibsen’s play is a near-perfect metaphor for today’s epidemic of blind and deaf media. I could give you more examples. Cassandra prophetically warned the town in advance about the Trojan Horse, but the townspeople ignored her and dragged it inside anyway. The 1970s blockbuster shark movie that launched a toothy genre, Jaws, featured a sheriff who couldn’t convince the mayor and town council to close the beaches on a holiday weekend.
And of course, we must mention the theme’s most modern manifestation: the ubiquitous “everything is fine meme” with the crosseyed dog sitting peacefully in a burning house.
Mankind’s collective subconscious already knows this story. It is in our DNA. We also know how it always turns out: with bloody giblets of leftover tourist parts strewn all over the beach. But knowing it doesn’t, apparently, stop us from making the same mistake— again, and again, and again.
As I have said before, sooner or later, this thing will get too big for them to ignore. And then there will be hell to pay.
We pray for miraculous healing for Tulsi Gabbard (and her husband), Suzie Wiles, Vanessa Trump, and now Pam Bondi.
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Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story with the nearly incomprehensible headline, “Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll, Who Accused Trump of Rape.” (Why not just “Justice Dept. Opens Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll?” But never mind.)
According to ‘sources,’ the DOJ is preparing to indict Jean for perjury— the same way Congressman Richard Nixon finally nailed Soviet spymaster and State Department darling Alger Hiss. (Unfortunately, not before Hiss helped draft the UN Charter; but I digress.)
For my dear Portland readers: E. Jean Carroll famously sued President Trump during the lawfare years of the Biden interregnum. She claimed a 25+ years-before rape in the unlikely location of Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room. Her suit was filed long past the statute of limitations, but was resurrected by a brand-new New York law tailor-made to revive her claim. The circus-like trial was a travesty of a comedy.
The NYC jury ultimately rejected the rape charge, but awarded about $5 million in damages for assault. (Later she’d get another $83.3 million for defamation damages from a different Manhattan jury for Trump’s denials that he did anything wrong.)
Her perjury charge seems pretty airtight. Caroll initially denied under oath ever having been paid or funded by anyone to bring the rape case against President Trump. But later, her attorneys admitted in court that she had received money from Reid Hoffman, the corpulent billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn —and Democrat super-donor— who is also alleged to have funded the mostly peaceful protests at burned-down Tesla dealerships.
Trump’s former personal lawyer and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has recused himself from Caroll’s case to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.
There’s another story archetype here. It’s an ancient variant of ‘FAFO,’ perhaps best enunciated by another famous playwright, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He, in turn, attributed the line to famous Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and it goes like this: When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
Justice Holmes appears to have channeling Machiavelli, who in 1505 advised: “Never do an enemy a small injury. The injury that is to be done to a man ought to be such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”
Beyond goofy Ms. Carroll, her much more sinister billionaire funder Reid Hoffman has already been in the DOJ’s crosshairs since November, when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed the DOJ was investigating Hoffman for his many and substantial ties to Jeffrey Epstein. “He’s a sleazebag,” Trump explained at the time. ABC, November 19th, 2025:
Hoffman could also be implicated in Caroll’s perjury indictment, assuming it happens, if he encouraged or asked her to lie.
As Barack H. Obama loved to say, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Tick, tock, Barry. I mean Reid.
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This morning, the Times ran a pair of perfectly awful Biden headlines, not coincidentally side-by-side, on its home page. The first was headlined, “Jill Biden’s Reaction to Biden’s 2024 Debate: ‘He’s Having a Stroke’” The second, just under the first: “Biden Sues Justice Dept. to Block Release of Tapes.”
The first story was just an excuse to platform Jill’s dumb remarks on a Sunday news show, trying to cover up Biden’s long slide into dementia and her witlessness. “I don’t know what happened,” the former first lady unconvincingly told CBS News Sunday Morning. “As I watched the debate,” she explained, “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.” Uh huh.
The gist of the story appears to be that, if Biden did stroke out during the debate, that’s fine. Nothing to see here. That’s why Jill kept encouraging him to stay in the presidential race. It was “just” a stroke. No sharks in Amity Bay. The beaches will remain open.
The second article —the reason the Times first platformed the moronic Jill Biden stroke story— reported that yesterday, Joe Biden filed an emergency lawsuit to block the DOJ from releasing to Congress the various audio tapes of his interviews.
The audio includes interviews between Biden and his “biographer” that were collected by Biden’s DOJ while it was investigating him for retaining roughly 1,000 times as many classified documents as Trump was alleged to have. Merrick Garland’s hand-picked special prosecutor, Robert K. Hur, cleared Biden of wrongdoing by concluding the human Autopen was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Now, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee has asked the DOJ for the tapes, as part of its broader investigation into then-Senator Biden’s handling of classified documents and other Biden crime family shenanigans.
Setting the politics aside, Biden’s case is flimsy. He’s arguing the tapes should be protected for his privacy, and because Revenge! (He claims the request is a political hit job and not any legitimate Congressional business.)
But federal courts are usually highlydeferential when Congress articulates anyplausible legislative purpose, such as oversight of DOJ, classified documents handling, or presidential conduct. The House can easily frame this as informing potential legislation on records handling, special‑counsel rules, or criminal‑justice transparency.
Plus, the requested audio sits in DOJ’s files, not in Biden’s personal possession, and it was created voluntarily and handed over in response to investigative demands, so the Cabbage’s privacy claim runs counter to both FOIA‑style disclosure norms and congressional oversight doctrine.
My best guess is the judge will delay or condition the release, but not completely block it. This is a narrative play more than a legal one. That audio will be a must-listen.
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I promise I am not making this next story up. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a Bablyon Bee-style headline: “F.B.I. Arrests C.I.A. Official With $40 Million in Gold Bars in His Home.”
Actually, I wish I were making this up, because if I had the kind of imagination required to invent this story, I would not be lawyering for a living. I would be a Senior Executive Service-level official at the Central Intelligence Agency, which is apparently a job where you can walk up to the supply room and ask for forty million dollars in solid gold bars for “work-related expenses,” and the supply clerk will just hand them to you, possibly along with a complimentary box of diamond-crusted paperclips from Saddam Hussein’s palace.
But let me explain this heartwarming tale of American initiative, bureaucratic competence, and extremely heavy luggage.
According to federal court filings, a 20-year CIA veteran named David J. Rush was recently arrested in Virginia. The FBI raided his home and, after some light digging, uncovered:
- 303 gold bars, each weighing about a kilogram (2.2 lbs), with a total value of over $40 million.
- Roughly $2 million in cash (the kind of walking-around money you need for Nigerian toll booths).
- Thirty-five luxury watches, mostly Rolexes, because when you have $40 million in gold bars stashed next to the hot water heater, you really need to know what time it is in thirty-five different time zones simultaneously, and it needs to be accurate.
Now, you’re probably wondering: How, exactly, did Mr. Rush acquire this modest off-book retirement nest egg?
According to the FBI’s indictment, Dave simply asked for the gold.
Between November and March, Rush —who held a Top Secret/SCI clearance— asked the CIA for tens of millions of dollars in gold bars and foreign currency for “work-related expenses.” That is a direct quote. And the CIA, being a highly efficient, laser-focused national security apparatus funded by your tax dollars, said, “Sure, Dave! Do you need a receipt, or should we just write ‘Gold and stuff’ on the ledger?”
The mind boggles at what these “work-related expenses” could possibly be. What kind of espionage operation requires physical gold bars? Are we bribing medieval warlords? Are we playing a very high-stakes game of geopolitical Tetris where the blocks are made of precious metals? Did Dave tell them he needed to gold-plate his home-office microwave because the hot pockets weren’t heating evenly?
We don’t know. Officially, the CIA says it is “unable to locate” the gold. (Spoiler alert: It was at Dave’s house). So much for the ledger.
But the story gets better. It turns out that Dave Rush’s entire career was built on a foundation of lies so magnificent, so breathtakingly bold, that they deserve their own exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution of Audacity.
When Dave applied to the CIA over twenty years ago, he claimed he had a bachelor’s degree from Clemson University and a master’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. To top that off, he also claimed he was a decorated Navy Reserve captain, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, and the director of a top-secret joint weapons test organization commanding 18 aircraft.
In reality, Dave never attended Clemson. He never attended RPI. He never flew a plane. He did not hold an FAA pilot’s license. His actual Navy career consisted of working as an I.T. tech, and he had been discharged a decade earlier as a lieutenant, not a captain.
Yet, the CIA —the premier intelligence-gathering organization on the planet, whose literal job is finding out secrets— hired him anyway. Not only did they hire him, but they also promoted him to the Senior Executive Service. For nearly twenty years, Dave strolled around Langley’s campus with Top Secret clearance, pretending to be Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, while the CIA’s highly touted “continuous vetting” system apparently consisted of a supervisor occasionally asking, “Hey Dave, nice flight suit. Did you leave your F-14 in the double-parked lane again?”
Even more impressive was Dave’s side hustle. A full ten years after being discharged from the Navy, Dave was still claiming paid military leave from the CIA, pocketing $77,000 for 744 hours of “service” as a Navy Reserve captain. You have to admire his work ethic. Most people are content to fake a sick day to go to the dentist; Dave faked being a naval commander commanding a fleet of imaginary battleships.
But, as unbelievable as Dave’s golden adventure is, it is matched only by the sheer, majestic, face-palming solemnity with which The New York Times reported it. 🤦
🔥 If you read the Times account, you will find yourself entering the interdimensional Twilight Zone realm of utter journalistic incuriosity, which is usually reserved for burying high-profile cancer-cluster stories. The Times reported this alarming story with a completely straight face, like they were covering a routine subcommittee meeting on soybean subsidies or Pacific Island harbor rights.
My favorite part of the Times’ ridiculously credulous coverage was when it solemnly quoted the FBI affidavit explaining whyDave’s fake degrees were bad: “Based on my training and experience, I know that federal employee salaries are determined by a number of factors, including the employee’s education level. An employee with higher education levels, such as a Master’s degree, would generally be expected to receive a higher pay scale.”
Thank goodness we have highly trained FBI agents to crack these kinds of cases. Obviously, the real tragedy here isn’t that a guy with a fake resume walked out of Langley with forty million dollars in bullion stashed in his Honda Odyssey. No! The real issue is that he fraudulently inflated his pay grade from GS-13 to GS-15.
If only he had actually finished his master’s degree, those gold bars in his basement would have been perfectly ethical!
The Times also devoted considerable ink to discussing the “Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency’s continuous vetting program” and how this incident “exposes a troubling gap in how the U.S. government screens employees.”
A “troubling gap?” Really, Times? That’s it?
🔥 That is just like saying the iceberg exposed a “troubling gap” in the hull of the Titanic. A guy faked being a military pilot and two college degrees for twenty years, stole enough gold to buy a small Caribbean island, and the country’s paper of record treats it like a minor administrative oversight in the CIA’s employee handbook.
The Times didn’t ask any of the painfully obvious questions:
- Where does the CIA keep $40 million in physical gold bars? Is there a giant, Scrooge McDuck-style vault at Langley where officers can go swimming in currency during lunch?
- Does the Agency routinely hand valuable specie over to employees upon request and then report it as “lost?”
- Why is the CIA hoarding gold??
- How does one physically transport 300 kilograms (about 700 pounds) of gold out of a secure federal facility? Did Dave use a mobility scooter with a trailer attachment? Did they carry it to his car for him? Did he tell security he was just taking some very heavy paperweights home to work over the weekend?
- Why did the CIA’s internal vetting fail to verify a Clemson degree? Did they even try? Did they call the registrar, get a busy signal, and decide, “Well, Dave seems like a nice guy, and he wears a lot of Rolexes, so he must be legit?”
Given the agency’s supremely secretive nature, we normal humans may never get any answers. But we do know one thing: the next time you are filling out a job application for a well-paid federal position at one of our top intelligence agencies, do not be modest. YOLO it. Go ahead and list your degree from Harvard, your PhD from Oxford, and your experience as an astronaut who personally landed on Planet Krypton.
If anyone asks questions, just tell them you need a few pallets of gold bars to cover your “work-related expenses.”
If they hesitate, just tell them Dave sent you. He’s currently residing in a federal holding facility in Virginia, but I’m sure his watch is still keeping perfect time.
Have a terrific Thursday! C&C will return tomorrow morning with even more essential news and caffeinated commentary.
Rose Rambles... 