In May of this year, a typical 30-year fixed-rate mortgage had an interest rate of about 6.4% according to Freddie Mac. If Fannie Mae’s predictions are correct, the same mortgage could have an interest rate of 5.7% by the end of the year.

And it gets better. Fannie Mae predicts the rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage to fall to 5.2% by the end of next year.

Lower mortgage rates could make selling a more attractive option to homeowners who may feel they need to stay with their current mortgages rather than risk paying a higher rate if they move — the mortgage rate lock-in effect. Between 2020 and 2022, rates from 2% to 3% were available for 30-year fixed mortgages. Homeowners who purchased at those rates may be reluctant to move since they would likely have a much higher rate on a new mortgage.

Should mortgage rates drop below 5%, more of those homeowners would be able to sell their homes and buy new ones. Lower rates also would make it easier for new buyers to purchase homes, driving up the demand for mortgages.

With more homeowners potentially upgrading, more affordable starter homes will be available, opening up new growth in the housing market. That potential for growth is reflected in Fannie Mae’s 2023 home sales forecast, which has been revised from 4.63 million to 4.84 million units.

Overall, Fannie Mae raised its projection for total residential loan origination volume from $1.55 trillion to $1.66 trillion for 2023 and increased its 2024 forecast from $1.89 trillion to $2.02 trillion. This is still significantly lower than the 2021 actual figure of $4.6 trillion.

When interest rates drop, I expect more buyers to be out, and that demand for homes will further increase the values of homes. If you are looking for a home, now is a great time to purchase with consideration of a lower rate with a 5/1 or 10/1 ARM and then refinance when rates hopefully come down as with that high demand we will see with lower interest rates, we will likely be seeing prices rise significantly again next year.

For more information on today’s real estate market, contact:

Kim Foemmel
Foemmel Fine Homes
1 Lumber Street, Suite 207C
Hopkinton, MA
(508) 808-1149

The inflation rate was out of control at 9 percent. The Federal Reserve’s goal was to raise the federal funds rate gradually to get above the inflation rate and get consumers to stop buying to bring down the inflation rate to 2 percent. In one year, the Fed raised it from 0.25 percent to 4.75 percent as of February 2023. As a result, banks also increased mortgage interest rates from about 3 percent in May to about 6.5 percent last year. Buyer activity slowed to a halt and homes started to sit on the market. Homeowners needing to sell dropped their prices to try to motivate buyers to act. The Fed’s strategy has been successful thus far, as the inflation rate quickly dropped from 9 percent in May to 6 percent in December. Currently, mortgage interest rates dropped and are at about 5.75 percent.

In January 2023, we started seeing a frenzy of buyers coming out. New buyers are entering the market, and existing shoppers are getting more acclimated with the current interest rates. Consumer confidence is increasing to the point where buyers are financing with 3/1, 5/1 and 10/1 adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) at reduced rates, betting/hoping that the rates will come down before their interest rate locks expire. A home at 5 Turnbridge Lane in Hopkinton welcomed over 75 parties for a viewing. Once again, when homes are priced right, we are seeing multiple offers and the houses flying off the market.

Low inventory and high demand equals multiple offers and home prices heading up. This spring market, expect home sales prices to increase over last year. We are in an eight-year housing shortage. Combine that with record high rent prices and continuous relocation, and more buyers are entering the home buying market. National Association of Realtors (NAR) economist Lawrence Yun predicts that in 2023, home prices will increase 5 percent, while Realtor.com is more optimistic, predicting a 10 percent increase in home values over 2022.

Spring homes coming to market that are priced right once again are receiving lines at the open house doors and selling over asking, which is a sign that we will have an exceptional spring market. Are you ready?

Contact Kim Foemmel at Foemmel Fine Homes to find out what your home is worth!

Kim Foemmel
Foemmel Fine Homes
1 Lumber Street, Suite 207C
Hopkinton, MA
(508) 808-1149
FoemmelFineHomes.com

WASHINGTON, July 4 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.

The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.

The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.

The litigation was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, used Twitter to welcome the injunction and called it a win for free speech.

A general view of the White House, where U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled his public schedule Monday after undergoing a root canal dental procedure at the White House in Washington, U.S. June 12, 2023.

Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.

The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.

Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.

U.S. officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about COVID vaccines to curb preventable deaths.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), Twitter, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Alistair Bell, Heather Timmons and Bill Berkrot

Credit: Reuters.

Sen. Tom Cotton wants more clarity after the Secret Service found cocaine inside the White House over the weekend – and is demanding Americans and Congress receive their well-deserved answers.

Cotton, the top Republican on the Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, wrote a letter to U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Director Kimberly Cheatle on Wednesday with six questions he wants answered.

He demanded that Cheatle schedule a briefing with his staff.

‘Congress and the American people deserve to know how cocaine got into the White House,’ he said in a tweet along with an image of the letter.

A uniformed Secret Service agent found on Sunday evening a white powder substance in the White House, which led to a hazmat situation and evacuation of the premises. President Joe Biden was not at the White House because he was in Camp David with his family for the long holiday weekend.

Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism Subcommittee Ranking Member Sen. Tom Cotton (pictured) is demanding answers from the U.S. Secret Service on finding cocaine in the West Wing as hunt ensures over who’s to blame for bringing illicit drug into the White House

Critics of the first family say President Joe Biden’s addict son Hunter (second from right) is to blame for the drugs in the White House. Pictured: President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Hunter Biden and son Beau, three, watch fireworks from the White House Truman Balcony on Tuesday, July 4, 2023

Washington DC Fire Department said preliminary testing found the substance to be cocaine, according to a dispatch call from July 2. This was later confirmed in follow-up laboratory testing on Wednesday.

While dispatch said the powder was found in the ‘library’ of the White House, USSS released a statement that the cocaine was actually found in a ‘West Wing work area.’ Later reports contradict both of these claims, saying now that the illicit drug was discovered in the cubby of a storage facility in a dime-sized, zippered bag where many White House staff and guests store their phones.

USSS has launched an investigation to find who brought cocaine into the White House and how it made it past any potential security screening. Biden critics and trolls online think they already cracked the case – so to speak – and are claiming Hunter Biden is the culprit.

Meanwhile, Cotton is demanding USSS Director Cheatle respond to his letter in nine days – by close of business on Friday, July 14.

‘According to public reports, the Secret Service has not yet confirmed where in the West Wing the cocaine was found,’ Cotton wrote in his Wednesday letter. ‘I urge you to release that information quickly, as the American people deserve to know whether illicit drugs were found in an area where confidential information is exchanged.’

‘If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws,’ the Arkansas senator added.

Along with gaining clarity on the situation at hand, Cotton also wants to know if this has happened in the past.

‘In the past five years, how often has the Secret Service encountered illegal drugs at the White House complex? How often were these drugs detected during security screenings, and how often were these drugs encountered inside secure areas?’ he questioned.

Speculators online have said that President Biden’s addict son Hunter, 52, is to blame for bringing drugs into the White House. But others speculate it could have been a number of people who traverse through the White House every day.

Hunter was at the White House on Friday, June 30 before heading to Camp David for the long Fourth of July weekend with his family. He returned to the White House with President Biden, first lady Jill Biden, wife Melissa Cohen and son Beau, three, on Tuesday for the Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn.

The White House has remained silent on the incident.

But Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was forced to face questions on the matter during the press briefing on Wednesday afternoon.

She wouldn’t go further than what was stated by USSS so far – but did imply that the area it was found is a ‘heavily traveled’ spot in the White House.

By Dan Peleschuk

Smoke rises following the explosion of a Russian tank after it was targetted by Ukrainian forces in Northwest Bakhmut, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, in this screengrab taken from a handout video released on June 30, 2023. SIRKO TEAM – 225TH BATTALION OF UKRAINE’S 127TH TERRITORIAL DEFENCE BRIGADE

A HMMWV (Humvee) vehicle moves along a road near a the recently retaken village of Novodarivka, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine July 2, 2023.

KYIV, July 4 (Reuters) – A Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces has been “particularly fruitful” in the past few days and Ukraine’s troops are fulfilling their main tasks, a senior security official said on Tuesday.

The comments by Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, were Kyiv’s latest positive assessment of the month-old counterattack although Moscow has not acknowledged Ukraine’s gains.

Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, still holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday his troops had made progress after a “difficult” week.

“At this stage of active hostilities, Ukraine’s Defense Forces are fulfilling the number one task – the maximum destruction of manpower, equipment, fuel depots, military vehicles, command posts, artillery and air defense forces of the russian army,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, wrote on Twitter.

“The last few days have been particularly fruitful,” he said, without providing any details from the battlefield.

Valeriy Shershen, spokesperson for the Tavria, or southern, military command, said Ukrainian troops had advanced by up to two km (1.2 miles) in the Berdiansk direction of southern Ukraine, despite fierce Russian resistance.

On Monday, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said fighting had surged around the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russian forces in May. She said the Ukrainian military had taken back 37.4 square kilometres (14.4 square miles) of territory overall in heavy fighting in the past week.

Military spokesperson Andriy Kovalev said on Tuesday Ukraine was continuing to put pressure on Russian forces north and south of Bakhmut, and had enjoyed “partial success” in heavy combat.

He said the Ukrainian military was managing to hold back an attempted advance by Russian forces in the Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka directions in eastern Ukraine.

Reuters is unable to verify the situation on the battlefield, where each side says the other is suffering heavy losses.

Russia said on Tuesday Ukraine had attacked Moscow with at least five drones that were all either shot down or jammed, though one of the capital’s main airports had to reroute flights for several hours.

Russian shelling on Tuesday morning killed a man and a woman in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, the local prosecutor’s office said.

Credit Reuters, 2023

President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and members of the first family arrived back at a White House mired in controversy on Tuesday after cocaine found by Secret Service agents sparked an evacuation and Hazmat situation.

A dispatch call reviewed by DailyMail.com reveals a preliminary test found that the white powder discovered on Sunday tested positive for cocaine – and led to emergency services shutting down 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Secret Service has now launched an investigation to track down how the substance got there and who was responsible for the breach.

The discovery came two days after recovering drug addict Hunter, 52, was last seen at the White House as he headed to Camp David with his father for the long holiday weekend.

Trolls are speculating that the president’s addict son is the source of the illegal substance.

However, The White House library is part of the public tour experienced by hundreds daily, meaning there could be multiple suspects. It is also two floors below the first family’s living quarters.

While the dispatch recording clearly says ‘library,’ a source familiar with the incident told DailyMail.com that the substance was not found inside the executive mansion but was discovered in a ‘work area’ in the west wing of the White House.

HAZMAT crew gather behind the gates of the White House outside the entrance to the West Wing on Sunday evening. The White House was briefly evacuated Sunday following discovery of the white powder substance that was confirmed to be cocaine

Hunter Biden was at the White House Friday before departing for a long holiday weekend to Camp David with President Joe Biden. Pictured: Hunter arrived back at Fort McNair before heading to the White House for Independence Day celebrations. Hunter’s son Beau Biden, 3, was in tow but was clearly unhappy

A Secret Service statement confirms this.

‘On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service Uniformed Division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,’ the statement reads.

‘The DC Fire Department was called to evaluate and quickly determined the item to be non-hazardous,’ it continues. ‘The item was sent for further evaluation and an investigation into the cause and manner of how it entered the White House is pending.’

Hunter arrived back in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday for the annual Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn. In tow was wife Melissa Cohen and their unhappy son Beau, 3, who was crying as his father carried him to the car at Fort McNair to head back to the White House.

U.S. Secret Service is conducting further testing to confirm if the substance is the illegal drug.

He also said that President Joe Biden was not in the executive mansion when the substance was discovered.

Authorities are investigating how the cocaine got into the White House.

Pro-Trump Republican Rep. Jim Banks tweeted: ‘They never found cocaine in the Trump White House!’

‘The Bidens are unfit to live in the White House!’ he wrote in a follow-up tweet with a link to a story on the cocaine found in the mansion.

Meanwhile, far-right Newsmax host Robb Schmitt said during a report on the cocaine discovery: ‘It wouldn’t be a thumpin’ July 4th weekend without Hunter Biden ripping lines off of a bust of Teddy Roosevelt.’

‘Cocaine was found at the White House and Hunter Biden currently lives at the White House. FBI has no clue who it belongs to. Anyone want to help them?’ a Twitter journalist with nearly 200k followers wrote.

A uniformed member of the USSS found the white powder substance while conducting a routine round through the White House.

Discovery of the illegal drug led to a brief evacuation of the White House.

The D.C. fire department team that responded to the call determined the substance did not pose a threat – and the recording of a dispatch from the fire crew confirmed testing found it was cocaine.

‘We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride,’ a firefighter with the D.C. department of hazardous materials radioed at 8:49 on Sunday, according to the Post.

‘Bag it up and take it out,’ the firefighter instructed.

The library where the cocaine was found is right off the White House visitor entrance and is part of the tour of the mansion, which means the room sees a lot of foot traffic from members of the public. It is also located two levels below the first family’s residential quarters

Some Republicans on Twitter are questioning whether the cocaine really did come from Hunter – noting possible other sources.

‘I am not ruling out possible members of the White House press,’ conservative radio host Mark Levin tweeted in response to the discovery of cocaine.

Matt Wallace, who has 1.1 million followers asserted: ‘The Cocaine found at the White House is not from Hunter Biden.’

‘The real story is actually much worse than that! Many of Joe Biden’s Top Staff regularly use Cocaine and other Hardcore Drugs. The cleaning crews are tasked with hiding all traces but this weekend was especially bad!’

Hunter Biden, who is known to struggle with substance abuse, was at the White House on Friday before departing with his father to Camp David for the July 4 holiday weekend.

The president and his son maintain that he has kicked his addiction.

Most recently, the younger Biden reached a plea deal with Justice Department prosecutors to avoid jail time after lying on a federal form to purchase a firearm. He checked a box claiming that he did not use and was not addicted to illegal substances – a fact that would disqualify him from buying the gun.

The form contradicting the timelines and claims made in Hunter Biden’s own memoir.

Biden critics and conservative decried Hunter’s plea deal, claiming that anyone other than the president’s son would receive jail time for the same offense.

The deal also saw Hunter plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors.

Sixth night of riots sees fewer arrests, 300 cars torched
Macron due to meet leaders of parliament, town mayors
Grandmother of teenage victim calls for calm

PARIS, July 3 – Defiant gatherings were held outside town halls across France on Monday following a wave of rioting triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager of north African descent.

Police made fewer than 160 arrests overnight, offering some relief for President Emmanuel Macron in his fight to reimpose order, just months after rolling protests over an unpopular pension reform and a year out from hosting the Olympics.

The death of Nahel, a 17-year-old with Algerian and Moroccan parents, has tapped a deep vein of anti-police resentment in the poor and racially mixed suburbs of major French cities — known as banlieues — where Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.

Since he was shot last Tuesday, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls, state schools and state-owned properties. Paris suburbs and Marseille in the south have been flashpoints.

What started as an uprising in the banlieues’ high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state and opportunistic violence.

The unrest, though, has not prompted the kind of government soul-searching on race which followed turmoil over similar incidents in other Western countries, such as Black Lives Matter protests in the United States or race riots at times in Britain.

Instead, the French government points to underprivilege in low-income urban neighbourhoods and juvenile delinquency, a reflection of the state’s belief that citizens are united under a single French identity, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin took aim at families who had allowed children to wreak havoc on the streets, saying the average of those arrested was 17 with some as young as 12.

“It’s not up to the national police or the gendarmerie or the mayor or the state to solve the problem of a 12-year-old setting fire to a school. It’s a question of parental authority,” Darmanin said during a visit to Reims.

Some 45,000 police would be deployed for a fourth consecutive night, he said, to try to keep a lid on unrest which has seen more than 5,600 cars torched, 1,000 private properties burned down or damaged and 250 police stations attacked.

Relatives of Nahel have urged calm.

His grandmother said on Sunday the rioters were using his death as an excuse to cause mayhem: “We don’t want them to smash things up,” she told BFM TV. “Nahel is dead, that’s all there is.”

L’Hay-les-Roses mayor Vincent Jeanbrun, Ile-de-France Region President Valerie Pecresse, French Senate President Gerard Larcher, Member of parliament Eric Ciotti of the French conservative party Les Republicains (LR) sing the Marseillaise, French national anthem, during a march with French politicians, elected officials and residents in support L’Hay-les-Roses mayor, whose home was targeted by rioters, putting in danger his wife and two children, during unrests following the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager killed by a French police officer in Nanterre during a traffic stop, in L’Hay-les-Roses near Paris, France, July 3, 2023. Stephanie Lecocq

People attend a “citizens gathering” in support of elected officials in front of the town hall of Persan, which was partially burnt during night clashes, following the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager killed by a French police officer in Nanterre during a traffic stop, in Persan, near Paris, France, July 3, 2023. Yves Herman

Fatma Yaddaden, who has lived for 7 years in Persan, reacts during a “citizens gathering” in support of elected officials in front of the town hall of Persan, which was partially burnt during night clashes, following the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager killed by a French police officer in Nanterre during a traffic stop, in Persan, near Paris, France, July 3, 2023.

A crowdfunding campaign launched by a far-right polemicist for the police officer who fired the shot at the teenager had raised more than 1 million euros by Monday.

MEETING MAYORS
In the town of Persan south of Paris, where rioters smashed the town hall’s windows and damaged its facade in an arson attack, dozens of local residents denounced the unrest – one of scores of similar “citizens’ gatherings” nationwide on Monday.

“Let these wrongdoers hear it and let them know that hatred will never prevail,” Mayor Valentin Ratieuville told them.

Some bystanders engaged in animated debate over who was to blame for the unrest, revealing the divisions over identity that run deep through French society.

“We should cut everything, family allowances, everything related to welfare subsidies. Come on! If they are not happy, they return home to their country,” one pensioner who gave his name as Alain said.

“Yes, sir, but let me tell you something. They might have foreign origins, foreign ancestors, but these kids are French,” responded Fatma, her head covered in an Islamic headscarf.

In mid-April, Macron gave himself 100 days to bring reconciliation and unity to a divided country after rolling strikes and sometimes-violent protests over his raising of the retirement age, which he had promised in his election campaign.

Macron postponed a state visit to Germany to deal with the crisis. He was due to meet the leaders of parliament on Monday and more than 220 mayors of towns and cities that have been affected by riots on Tuesday.

Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of the Paris suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses, whose home was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday, on Monday described the situation as “a real nightmare”.

“I myself grew up in L’Hay-les-Roses in these large housing blocks,” Jeanbrun, a member of the centre-right Les Republicains party, told BFM TV. “Our life was modest, we didn’t have much, but we wanted to overcome it, we had hope that we would make it with hard work.”

In Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris, flowers and other tributes mark the spot where Nahel was shot almost a week ago. Graffiti calls for revenge.

The police officer involved has acknowledged firing a lethal shot. His lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard has said he did not intend to kill the teenager.

A prosecutor who signed off on the documents charging Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes previously worked with one of the First Son’s business partners, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss officially filed charges against the president’s son last Tuesday after a near five-year probe into his alleged tax crimes and foreign financial dealings.

Weiss’s deputy, Assistant United States Attorney Derek Hines, signed off on the charging documents alongside his boss and two other assistant US attorneys – indicating he has a central role in Hunter’s criminal prosecution.

According to Hines’s LinkedIn account, he previously worked as Special Counsel to ex-FBI director Louis Freeh at his private company, Freeh Group International Solutions, a lobbying and ‘risk management’ consultancy that teamed up with Hunter on overseas business currently under scrutiny by lawmakers.

Hunter Biden last week reached a deal with prosecutors that would see him plead guilty to tax crimes and dispense with a gun charge but likely avoid jail time

Assistant United States Attorney Derek Hines (left) who was one of the prosecutors to sign off on Hunter’s charges, previously worked under ex-FBI director Louis Freeh, a business partner of Hunter and a close friend of the Bidens

Freeh worked with Hunter on a $3million job consulting for a Romanian criminal, a deal that is allegedly now part of his federal criminal investigation and is being investigated by Congress.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson told DailyMail.com the link between the prosecutor and Hunter’s business associate ‘calls into question the integrity of their entire investigation’ – after GOP lawmakers slammed the relatively minor charges filed by the Delaware prosecutor this week as a mere ‘slap on the wrist’.

DailyMail.com has previously revealed that Freeh and his firm worked closely with Hunter Biden trying to get the US State Department to help limit the prosecution of Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu, who was on the brink of a bribery conviction in 2015.

Freeh proposed setting up a private consultancy with Hunter and Joe Biden when he ended his vice presidential term, offering ‘lucrative future work options’ including working for overseas clients such as corrupt former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

He also sent $100,000 to a private trust for Joe’s grandchildren – though he wrote an email to Hunter saying it was intended for a charity instead.

Hines’s LinkedIn says he worked as ‘Special Counsel’ for the ex-FBI director at his company Freeh Group in New Orleans, Louisiana, between August 2013 and February 2015. It is unclear what projects he counseled Freeh on.

It wasn’t until 2016 that Hunter started working with Freeh consulting for Popoviciu.

But emails on his laptop show the Biden family had a close relationship with Freeh – – who headed the FBI from 1993-2001 – dating back to when Hines worked for him.

Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu was on the brink of a bribery conviction in 2015 when Freeh and his firm, working closely with Hunter, got a $3million job consulting for him

DailyMail.com previously published emails that showed Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh to use his U.S. law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu’s advantage, and was offered a referral fee as a result

In a 2014 press release, Freeh described Joe Biden and his son Beau as ‘dear friends’, and in a May 2010 email to a colleague Hunter said Freeh was ‘a close friend.’

In December 2014, Freeh was described with others as a ‘strong contact for possible referral/collaboration’ with Hunter and his brother Beau in an email laying out their plans for a ‘Biden Law Group’, written by Beau’s former Delaware Attorney General deputy Ian McConnel.

After Beau’s death in May 2015, Freeh became a board member of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children.

In August that year a charity executive thanked Freeh for donating to Joe Biden’s potential 2016 presidential run.

The link between Hines, one of four top prosecutors in Hunter’s criminal case, and his former employer Freeh, could create a conflict for the Department of Justice attorney.

Title 28, Section 45.2 of the Code of Federal Regulations says: ‘no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation if he has a personal or political relationship with […] any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation’.

Hunter’s $3million from Popoviciu was part of a total $17.3million income investigated by the IRS in their Hunter Biden tax crime probe, which formed the basis for this week’s criminal charges, according to Congressional testimony by an IRS whistleblower who led the investigation.

The IRS special agent’s claims suggest Hunter’s work with Freeh in Romania were likely part of the Delaware probe.

The House Oversight Committee documented the same $3million flowing from Popoviciu’s accounts to the Biden family, via intermediaries, using bank records lawmakers obtained with subpoenas.

Weiss asked a judge to schedule hearing for Hunter Biden for two tax offenses and a gun charge, following a years-long investigation into the president’s son

Hunter connected political heavyweight Freeh with Popoviciu in May 2016 to use his US law enforcement contacts for the Romanian businessman’s advantage.

In May 2021 DailyMail.com published emails in which Freeh promised to contact FBI legal attaches in Romania as well as State Department officials to help smooth over the Romanian tycoon’s clash with the country’s prosecutors.

Wisconsin Sen. Johnson, who spent four years investigating the Bidens with his colleague Chuck Grassley, said Hines’s relationship with Freeh ‘calls into question the integrity of their entire investigation’.

‘These types of connections to the Biden family pose significant conflicts that must not be ignored,’ he told DailyMail.com.

The Oversight Committee is also investigating another of Freeh’s connections to allegations of corruption by the Biden family.

Whistleblower and alleged Israeli arms dealer, Dr. Gal Luft, claims around 2017 Hunter used a current or former senior FBI official dubbed ‘One-Eye’ to get sensitive bureau information and pass it to his Chinese business partners at oil giant CEFC, which was under federal investigation at the time.

The Committee is investigating Luft’s claims, and believes that Freeh may have information to help with its probe, though they have not yet subpoenaed or requested an interview with the ex-FBI chief.

Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White House staffer and founder of right-wing nonprofit Marco Polo investigating the Bidens, claimed in a report last year that Freeh and Hunter had committed Foreign Agents Registration Act violations by lobbying US officials for Popoviciu without notifying the Department of Justice.

A photo of a firearm application triggered an investigation after it showed Hunter lied on the form when he attested that he did not abuse drugs

Hunter has admitted owning a gun while a drug user and pictures found on the laptop he abandoned at a repair shop show him holding it

‘The charges filed against Hunter Biden are a limited hangout in the superlative,’ Ziegler told DailyMail.com, referring to an intelligence community technique to use a minor admission to cover a greater wrongdoing.

‘In fact, those charges are filed by somebody who was a special counsel to Louis Freeh, who himself is implicated in crimes in the Biden Laptop. It is a full court suppression campaign, even today.’

Hines is not the only DoJ official to investigate Hunter while having links to his business associates.

Senators Grassley and Johnson, who ran a four-year investigation into Hunter’s shady overseas dealings, wrote to the DoJ in 2021 asking that criminal division chief Nicholas McQuaid recuse himself over links to Hunter.

Prior to working as acting head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, McQuaid worked directly with Hunter’s criminal defense attorney Chris Clark at law firm Latham and Watkins.

‘Since Feb. 2021, Sen. Grassley and I sent multiple letters to DOJ demanding assurances that Nicholas McQuaid, the former head of DOJ’s criminal division, who had a Hunter Biden connection, had recused himself from the Hunter Biden investigation.

‘The DOJ refused to provide a clear answer,’ Johnson told DailyMail.com.

‘DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to remove any doubt about conflicts in the Hunter Biden case calls into question the integrity of their entire investigation.’

The Delaware federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Bryan Fogel wears a wry grin as he recalls his first face-to-face meeting with Grigory Rodchenkov. It was July 2014, at the University of Oregon, where Rodchenkov, then the head of Moscow’s anti-doping lab, was giving a guest lecture on keeping sport clean.

‘I asked Grigory: “Do you think it’s possible to win an Olympic gold medal without doping?”, And he replied: “No. I want to believe that. I’d like to believe. But no. Maybe I’m a bad man”.’

Rodchenkov knows better than most about how illegal drugs can lead to Olympic medals. For years he helped Russian sportsmen and women cheat their way to glory, at London 2012, at Sochi 2014 and at the 2013 world athletics championships.

It was 10 years ago this weekend that The Mail on Sunday named Rodchenkov as a central figure in a Russian state doping plot. After a months-long investigation, it was the first expose of Russia’s industrial scale doping that had come to dominate sport across the world. Our story was ignored by all the major sports governing bodies, although the truth eventually came out.

Rodchenkov would become the central figure in Fogel’s movie, Icarus, which won Best Documentary Feature at the 2018 Academy Awards.

Mariya Savinova was one Russian exposed on TV, who was stripped of her Olympic medals

Ten years ago, the Mail on Sunday named Grigory Rodchenkov for his role in the doping racket

Fogel had wanted to chronicle whether, as a keen amateur cyclist, he could use banned drugs to win races and get away with it. One of America’s most revered anti-doping scientists, Don Catlin, agreed to be his cheating mentor, but pulled out. Catlin recommended Rodchenkov instead.

That pitched Fogel into the heart of one sport’s greatest scandals, one that Icarus captured from the inside.

Fogel and Rodchenkov’s initial communications had been via email in February 2014. ‘He wrote something to me along the lines of “It’s really busy in Sochi right now, and I’m doing a lot of late nights”,’ Fogel says. Rodchenkov’s ‘late nights’ were spent corrupting the 2014 Winter Olympics. He was swapping dirty Russian urine samples for clean ones with the help of the FSB, formerly known as the KGB.

Rodchenkov was only in Oregon that July thanks to an invitation from the head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart. ‘Grigory acquired his visa to the US because of Tygart,’ says Fogel. ‘It was open-ended to allow him to come to the US as necessary.’ When Rodchenkov fled Russia in fear for his life in late 2015, he used the same visa.

The greatest irony is that in July 2014, Rodchenkov was held up as one of the world’s pre-eminent anti-doping scientists. Hence his control of a lab accredited by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. In fact, he had taken performance-enhancing drugs for much of his adult life, and was key to Russia’s state-sponsored doping and cover-ups.

Multiple investigations commissioned by WADA and the International Olympic Committee found that Rodchenkov’s doping corruption was overseen by Yuri Nagornykh, then Russia’s deputy sports minister. Nagornykh was acting on the authority of sports minister Vitaly Mutko, who was backed by president Vladimir Putin.

Icarus makes the compelling case that one contributory factor to Russia invading Ukraine to annex Crimea in February 2014 — just four days after the Sochi closing ceremony — was Putin had become emboldened by hosting, and then corrupting those Games.

Fogel has made a sequel to Icarus called Icarus: The Aftermath, tracking Rodchenkov’s first few years in witness protection, always on the move, always with bodyguards.

‘There is no happy ending for Grigory, or for whistleblowers in general,’ says Fogel. ‘It’s likely he will never see his family again.’

Rodchenkov, 64, has not seen his wife Veronika or children Vasily and Marina in person since leaving Moscow in late 2015. Fogel says Rodchenkov’s family cannot travel to see him because of the near certainty ‘they would be tailed’ by an assassin.

‘If he hadn’t got to the United States, he’d already be dead.’ Jim Walden, Rodchenkov’s long-term lawyer, says. ‘Russia wanted him wiped out because Russia’s narrative that he was a lone wolf was just not true.’

Just as Fogel knows there will be no happy ending for Rodchenkov, he sees no happy ending for Olympic sport. He is flabbergasted Russia has never been properly punished, with various ‘bans’ rendered largely meaningless as hundreds of Russians have continued to participate in the Olympics.

‘It’s insanity that Russia has been able to continue competing,’ he says. ‘The IOC has shown itself to be so utterly corrupt. The Olympics have forever been tainted by this scandal. The ban was never a ban.’

The International Olympic Committee has been criticised for failing to deal with the issue

Richard McLaren, the Canadian law professor who compiled the definitive reports that proved Russia ran a state-sponsored doping programme, is also sceptical that sport is any cleaner. ‘In 2023, doping controls are still all about quantity not quality, only testing and not investigative work. No sport wants to see stars sanctioned for doping infractions.’

Walden lays the blame with the IOC. ’There was a moment when the IOC could have changed things for the better for clean athletes [by actually banning Russia] and they chose not to,’ he says. ‘And a lot of the same people who made those decisions are still there.’ Other governing bodies, Walden says, are ‘complicit, and want to make money’.

In our July 2013 investigation, we quoted a senior Russian official from a major winter sport saying that Russia would win the most medals at Sochi 2014 through doping — and get away with it.

‘Believe me, you won’t hear about a single doping scandal involving Russians during the Sochi Olympics,’ he told us, more than six months before those Games.

We shared our findings with the IAAF, now known as World Athletics. They were about to stage their world championships in Moscow, with Rodchenkov overseeing the drug tests. The IAAF did not respond to our multiple calls and emails.

We told the IOC, and offered evidence that Rodchenkov had been a drug dealer, then tried to kill himself after getting caught, then spent two months in a Moscow psychiatric hospital before being sent back to his work.

In July 2013, an IOC spokeswoman told us: ‘Thank you for sharing with us this information. We have passed it on internally to the relevant people.’

It was more than four years later, at the end of 2017, that the IOC finally admitted they took no action whatsoever following our story.

In December 2014, German TV station ARD aired their own investigation, focusing on athletics. This prompted WADA to commission an investigation by Dick Pound, assisted by McLaren.

A Russian official said that no doping cases involving their athletes would emerge from Sochi

This was published in November 2015, concluding Rodchenkov was a central figure. Fogel was stunned. He was by now friends with Rodchenkov. They had visited each other’s homes and workplaces, working on Fogel’s own doping experiment. Now Fogel helped Rodchenkov flee, buying him his air ticket to America.

‘When he got off the plane, all he had was one small carry-on bag, with a change of clothes, and two hard drives,’ Fogel says. ‘He told me to keep them in a safe place.’

Rodchenkov agonised over whether to become a whistleblower. In February 2016, one of his oldest friends, Nikita Kamaev, the former head of Russia’s anti-doping agency died, apparently of a massive heart attack. Rodchenkov was convinced he’d been murdered.

Rodchenkov ‘realised at this point that the best way out for him was to become a whistleblower’, Fogel says. It was crucial Rodchenkov was recognised as a whistleblower — who could enter witness protection — as opposed to a ‘person of interest’ in a US Department of Justice probe, that might lead to punishment, or being deported to Russia.

Fogel helped Rodchenkov put together an extensive dossier on Russia’s doping scheme, supported by mountains of documentary evidence and data. The hard drives were vital, as were Rodchenkov’s diaries, and his meticulous recollection of detail.

‘He is a savant,’ says Fogel. ‘I’ve never met anyone in my life with a memory as astonishing as Grigory’s. The challenge for us became “How can we help him to prove this was all true?”’

Rodchenkov faced a grand jury, a process which determines whether there is enough evidence for a prosecution. Before that Rodchenkov did an interview with The New York Times.

Walden recalls: ‘About a week after the NYT story, I was called by the FBI who said, “You’ve probably heard about an escaped Russian. The guy needs a lawyer”.’

Walden has now been Rodchenkov’s lawyer for seven years, assisting him on testimony in countless prosecutions, and in establishing the Rodchenkov Act, a law that allows criminal charges to be brought against dopers and their conspirators.

‘We have a strong bond,’ says Walden. ‘He is a force of nature, incredibly intelligent and his memory and capacity for detail is just extraordinary. Literally up to this day he’s still testifying in cases.’

McLaren was tasked in May 2016 with investigating whether Rodchenkov’s NYT claims about a pan-sport doping plot were true and could be backed by evidence. Two Russian scientists then resident in California, but with deep knowledge of the Moscow drug testing lab, were particularly helpful.

‘We had a lot of other sources of information, including downloads from the lab and electronic data,’ McLaren says. ‘Rodchenkov’s material was very important but we needed to verify it independently.’

McLaren concluded that more than 1,000 elite competitors across dozens of summer and winter sports had benefited from Russia’s state-run doping racket. That was ‘the minimum’ involved, as were 643 positive Russian drugs test that had been covered up, from athletics to weightlifting, cycling, swimming, football, rowing and at least 30 other sports.

McLaren placed thousands of pieces of evidence in the public domain on a website, ‘Evidence Disclosure Package’. That allowed other investigators, and journalists, to piece together wider elements of the scandal, including this newspaper’s 2017 exclusive that Russia’s 23-man squad at football’s 2014 World Cup had benefited from state protection from doping sanctions.

McLaren said: ‘The IOC, various athletes and lots of sports were trying to narrow the focus and attempt to make Russia’s cheating seem limited. It wasn’t. It was a lot of sports, and we had this evidence and felt it should be available.

‘I got the opportunity to expose what a lot of people suspected but nobody wanted to do anything about.’