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Joe Biden Met with Hunter’s Business Associates More Times Than with His Cabinet


By: M.D. Kittle | December 20, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/20/joe-biden-met-with-hunters-business-associates-more-times-than-with-his-cabinet/

President Joe Biden holds a rare cabinet meeting.
The WSJ reports Biden met infrequently with his cabinet, while emails show he interacted ‘countless’ times with his degenerate son’s clients.

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They say the U.S. presidency is the loneliest job in the world. Maybe the second-loneliest gig is that of Cabinet secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration. 

A piece published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal pulls from dozens of sources who say Biden’s inner circle of trusted aides increasingly kept contact with the president at a minimum, including the people he should have depended on most to consult and advise for the good of the nation. 

The president who has spent a good chunk of his term out of the office apparently was not all that keen on meetings with his Cabinet secretaries. In fact, Biden may have met more often with his criminal son’s sketchy clients than he has with his administration’s top managers.

‘Hide the President’s True Condition’

Joe Biden was such a political liability that his handlers hid him away during the 2020 presidential campaign. The man campaigned from his Delaware basement through the brunt of the election year. The cloistered strategy wasn’t as much about protecting the feeble geezer from Covid as it was designed to prevent American voters from seeing what a physical and mental mess Biden really was. 

Even the Pravda Press, which was openly rooting for — and covering for — the Democrat gaffe machine, was forced to report on Biden’s bunker campaign. 

“Over the past six weeks, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been running his campaign from his Delaware basement,” CBS News reported in April of 2020, showcasing a fluff piece from The New York Times about how team Biden was attempting to “keep his campaign relevant during the pandemic.”

The occasional programmed Zoom calls notwithstanding, keeping Biden “relevant” (or electable), meant keeping him hidden — literally underground. 

That limited contact strategy has defined the octogenarian’s presidential tenure. Biden has held the fewest number of press conferences and media interviews of any president since Ronald Reagan’s first term, and it isn’t close, Axios reported in late June. The publication at the time noted that Biden was about to sit for a “rare interview with ABC News” …  “amid growing concern about his age and acuity — and accusations that his inner circle has taken pains to hide the president’s true condition from public view.” 

Quaintly, back then Axios and its corporate media bedfellows were still trying to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes, that there were “two Bidens”: the 81-year-old who had recently froze up like so much freezer peas in his debate with former President Donald Trump, and the virile campaigning Joe. 

‘Wouldn’t be Welcome’

It turns out, Biden wasn’t just hiding from voters. He was ducking his own Cabinet. 

 “Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said,” reports The Wall Street Journal in a piece headlined, “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge.”

The story further noted that “cabinet members — including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen — were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”

Like other aging, cognitively diminished seniors, Biden had his “good days, and bad days,” one former aide told the publication. The president has routinely gotten a pass from fellow Democrats and corporate media on his memory lapses, mumbled and jumbled answers to questions, and outright lies. Remember, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report detailing Biden’s possession and mishandling of classified documents recommended the president not be prosecuted because a jury might well see him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Meeting with the ‘Big Guy’

But as The Federalist has reported, said “well-meaning elderly man” is alleged to have interacted with Hunter Biden’s suspect clients “countless times.” Devon Archer, the younger Biden’s former business associate, testified before a congressional committee last year that Hunter put his father, vice president at the time, on speakerphone nearly two dozen times while talking to overseas business contacts. Archer discussed Hunter’s involvement on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings and the hefty checks it wrote to a guy seemingly unqualified for the job. Archer and others have alleged Burisma and other “clients” were paying for the Biden “brand.” Aka, access to the vice president.

“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” the New York Post reported, quoting from a readout from panel Republicans.

“Archer talked about the ‘big guy’ and how Hunter Biden always said, ‘We need to talk to my guy,’ ‘We need to see when my guy is going to be here,’ and those types of things,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters as he left the deposition in July 2023. 

There were many more interactions between Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s other business associates, according to the laptop that the Deep State and the accomplice media long claimed did not exist. As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported:  

Biden reportedly met with Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazakhstani business partners at a famous D.C. establishment in 2015. The meeting, arranged by Hunter, took place at one of Georgetown’s most famous restaurants, Café Milano… Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanked Hunter for the introduction to his father.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote in an email released by the New York Post weeks before the 2020 election.

And visitor logs show Hunter Biden’s business pals paid a call on the White House at least 80 times while Biden was VP, Fox News reported. A meeting with the elder Biden at the time involved Chinese businessmen tied to a firm that Hunter Biden had invested in. 

Earlier this month, the president issued a sweeping, unprecedented pardon of his multi-felon son, not merely for the serious crimes for which he was found guilty but for crimes that he may have committed during his salad days with Burisma and the other business associates seeking access to the “Big Guy.” 

The Disaster of Absence 

As president, Biden has held just nine full Cabinet meetings, the Wall Street Journal reported. The numbers include three such sessions in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and only one this year. By comparison, President Barack Obama led 19 Cabinet meetings and President Donald Trump called 25 in their first terms, the Journal noted, using data obtained by former CBS News reporter Mark Knoller.

While White House officials have disputed Biden’s distance and decline, the cloistering of the cognitively slipping president appears to have contributed to some disastrous consequences. 

Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who chaired the House Armed Services Committee in 2021, told the Wall Street Journal that he was shut out of conversations with the president leading up to the administration’s debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“I was begging them to set expectations low,” Smith, who had misgivings about how the operation would go, told the publication. 

The Journal reported that “[f]ormer administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.” Many of us have often been left wondering if the president has had a pulse at all. 

Witness accounts and his degenerate son’s own emails suggest Biden had plenty of vim and vigor when it was time to talk about corrupt financial deals. It was the business of protecting and leading America that he seemed disinterested in during his historically awful presidential term. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

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Adam Schiff and the Chamber of Secrets: Inside the Impeachment Dungeon


Authored by Kristina Wong | 

URL of the original posting site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/24/adam-schiff-and-the-chamber-of-secrets-inside-the-impeachment-dungeon/

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 15: (L-R) Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence Committee returns to a closed session before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees October 15, 2019 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Kent was …Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Talk of the impeachment inquiry is everywhere in America, but Americans have no idea what it actually looks like.

That’s because House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has so far conducted the entire impeachment inquiry in a secret room in the basement of the Capitol building that is not accessible by the general public.

Just to the south of the Capitol Visitor Center underneath the dome and down one spiral staircase is a room hidden behind two heavy wooden doors. On the doors are red signs with white letters that say: “Restricted Area. No public or media access. Cameras and recording devices prohibited without proper authorization.” Behind those doors is a hallway, which leads to the secret room where Schiff is conducting the impeachment inquiry of President Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee has a huge hearing room in the Longworth House Office Building where they can hold hearings that do not concern classified material, which members of the public and journalists can attend. But the impeachment inquiry is taking place in the committee’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) — a room for members to use when discussing and viewing classified material.

Republicans say the impeachment inquiry is not an intelligence matter that needs to be in the SCIF, but its location gives Schiff the ability to tightly control everything — and everyone — going in and out.

Security guards stand in front of the two wooden doors to make sure reporters and other unauthorized members of the public stay out. But inside the hallway, there are security officers who make sure unauthorized members of Congress and staffers stay out of the SCIF. Schiff and the Democrats control who is allowed in.

“You can’t go in unless you’re on the list,” a congressional source with knowledge of the impeachment inquiry told Breitbart News. “[They] have like a list, so you can’t sneak into the SCIF or try to get an extra staffer in there or something like that.”

Under Schiff’s rules for the impeachment inquiry, only members of the three committees involved in the inquiry — House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Government Reform Committees — are allowed in. The House Intelligence Committee can have as many staffers as they want in the SCIF, but the other two committees can only have two staffers each.

The SCIF is a small windowless room that has a long rectangular table in the middle, sources said. Democrats sit on one side, Republicans sit on the other, and the witness sits at the head of the table.

Although the room is intended to seat 30 to 40 people, during the recent deposition of Amb. Gordon Sondland there were as many as 70 to 80 people crammed inside, forcing lawmakers to stand and sit on the floor, according to a Republican source on a committee involved in impeachment. With so many bodies packed in there, it quickly got too hot, requiring the blasting of air conditioning, which then made it too cold, the source said.

Having so many people inside the room and dozens of reporters loitering outside is a security hazard and potentially a fire hazard, the Republican source said.

“The SCIF is supposed to be a secure location for safe-holding of classified information, but there are real concerns about having so many people wandering around,” said the source.

The depositions typically start with opening statements, then Democrats have about an hour to ask the witness questions, and then Republicans have about an hour. There is usually a break before Democrats begin another round of questioning, and then Republicans, and so on, until there are no more questions left. The recent depositions have lasted as many as ten hours.

Inside that secret room, Schiff has lorded his power over the process, Republicans say.

“He will remind you early and often that he is in charge,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), who has attended every deposition and transcribed interview.

“Schiff likes to interject himself during the Republican questioning and we always have to point out to him we obviously don’t do the same thing during their questioning, but he just can’t help himself,” he said.

Since the House has not formally voted on beginning an impeachment inquiry — which would give Republicans certain rights and the Trump administration due process, Republicans are not able to subpoena witnesses and the White House is not able to have a counsel present. Zeldin said Schiff is taking full advantage of that and forcing witnesses to answer questions they are not sure they can answer.

“He’ll tell the witness to speak even if the witness isn’t sure and there may be an outstanding question about executive privilege or something else,” he said.

“So inside the super secret bunker of the Capitol, the basement where the impeachment inquiry charade depositions are taking place, he is the grand jury, the judge, and the prosecutor,” he said.

Zeldin said Democrats have been petty about sharing materials as well.

“If a person asks for an additional copy of the exhibit, the sick smile that will be on some people’s faces as if somehow being in the majority means that we should make a petty moment of what might be a genuine ask,” he said.

Republicans say Democrats are keeping transcripts from members of Congress who will ultimately vote on any articles of impeachment, and even from Republican members involved in the inquiry.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes said Republican members involved in the inquiry cannot even view transcripts without having “minders” looking over their shoulder. “That is unprecedented,” Nunes told Fox News on Wednesday. Staffers of the committees say the environment inside and outside the SCIF is tense.

“It is so, so tense. I mean, it is like what you see in movies tense. It’s weird,” said the congressional source.

“It is just crazy. No one talking to anybody. Everyone being real quiet, because you just don’t know who’s standing around you,” the source said. “You’re dealing with three committees and you don’t know who everyone is.”

Republicans say the depositions and interviews are unclassified and there is no need for them to take place behind closed doors.

Schiff has defended the secrecy of the hearings by comparing it to a “grand jury,” claiming he does not want potential witnesses to be able to compare stories. But Republicans argue that his claim is undercut by the numerous leaks from Democrats to reporters about what is being said during the closed-door interviews, despite House ethics rules gagging both sides.

“Unfortunately, this process of cherry-picking leaks withholding key facts and outright lying is a formula of Adam Schiff that many in the media are playing along with, and many people who were part of the enraged liberal activist base eat up,” Zeldin said.
“This whole project, is Schiff’s desire to write the world’s worst parody to take down a sitting president,” he said, referring to Schiff reading a fake conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a hearing and later justifying it as a “parody.”

Republicans suspect that Democrats instructed the “whistleblower” to file his complaint with the intelligence community inspector general instead of the State or Justice Department inspector general so that the matter could be handled by Schiff behind closed doors.

“It’s all about shaping the narrative,” the Republican source said. “There’s a whole leaking apparatus in place.”

The source characterized that apparatus as the same as during the FBI’s collusion investigation — selective leaks to reporters that are then blown out of context with no countervailing narrative. 

More than two dozen House Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stormed the SCIF on Wednesday morning, demanding access to an impeachment inquiry that could reverse the 2016 election.

“So far, Adam Schiff’s impeachment inquiry has been marked by secret interviews, selective leaks, weird theatrical performances of transcripts that never happened, and lies about contacts with the whistleblower,” Gaetz said at a press conference before the storming.
“We’re going to try to go in there and we’re going to try to figure out what’s going on, on behalf of the millions of Americans that we represent that want to see this Congress working for them, and not obsessed with attacking a president who we believe has not done anything wrong,” he said.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) added, “Adam Schiff is trying to impeach a president of the United States behind closed doors, literally trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election a year before Americans get to go to the polls and decide who’s going to be the president.”
“The American people deserve better, we will demand better,” Scalise said.
“This is being held behind closed doors for a reason — because they don’t want you to see what the witnesses are like,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ), citing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s faltering testimony.
“This is a Soviet-style impeachment process, this is closed doors, it is unfair in every way,” Biggs added. “We’re going to go in there and demand we get our rights as members of Congress.”

House Democrats have suggested that they would open the hearings up to the public, but have not stated exactly when.

“That’s obviously a step after this. But right now we’re concentrating on getting as many people as we can,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) said, according to the Hill.

The pace is already beginning to take a toll on staffers and even reporters, sources said.

“This is a marathon. And we’re on mile nine and we’re severely out of shape. Even the reporters who are there, they’re tired, everyone’s kind of gassed,”the congressional source said.

“This is the long slog with not a lot of certainty on when it’s going to end. We’ve been flying through people. They supposedly want to get it done between Christmas and Thanksgiving. There are staffers who have worked for 20 days. They have not taken a single day off and work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” the source said.

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