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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Election Rig

A.F. BRANCO | on April 14, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-election-rig/

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives voted down an amendment that would have banned so-called “Zuckerbucks” from Minnesota elections. In Minnesota, many county election departments across the state received “Zuckerbucks” in the form of grants.

Democrats vote down amendment to ban ‘Zuckerbucks’ from Minnesota elections

By Luke Sprinkel – April 10, 2024

Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives voted down an amendment that would have banned so-called “Zuckerbucks” from Minnesota elections.

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and his wife donated $250 million to a nonprofit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). CTCL proceeded to hand out those millions of dollars to election departments across the country in the form of grants… CTCL’s grants went to these jurisdictions for the purpose of providing additional election administration funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local election departments used the grants during the 2020 election to pay for supplies, staffing, COVID-related “personal protection equipment,” and other expenses. READ MORE

A.F. Branco Cartoon – LGBTQ For Palestine

A.F. BRANCO | on April 15, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-lgbtq-for-palestine/

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The LGBTQ community boasts support for Palestine, who ruthlessly murdered over 1000 innocent Jews in Israel. Obviously, they’re clueless to the fact they would be killed if in Gaza for their lifestyles.

Rutgers Professor Claims it is ‘Homophobic’ to Point Out How Hamas Brutalizes LGBTQ People

By Margaret Flavin – April 6, 2024

Maya Mikdashi, an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a lecturer in the Program for Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, participated in a recent discussion where she claims accurately describing Hamas’ brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians should be labeled “homophobic violence.”

Mikdashi participated in a discussion titled “Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle,” where she pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens. READ MORE…

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Follow the Corruption

A.F. BRANCO | on April 3, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-follow-the-corruption/

The Biden Buck Stops Here — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

Crooked Joe Biden gives the ol’ Truman saying “the buck stops here” a completely different meaning. Not only is Biden totally corrupt, but also his minions in the DOJ and FBI that protect him while going after President Trump for frivolous charges that they know Biden has actually committed.

Hunter Biden’s Business Associates Hang Joe and Hunter Out to Dry! Biden Corruption is Real! (VIDEO)

By Grant Stinchfield – March 20, 2024

Biden family business associates testified before Congress today, and they did not hold back. It’s all part of the Biden Impeachment proceedings. The witnesses provided direct evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in the influence-peddling scheme. From text messages to conference calls, Joe Biden used his position of power to line his pockets.

The Biden associates laid out dates, times, and personal meetings that they insist prove Joe Biden is “The Big Guy.” … READ MORE...

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Biden’s Classified Documents Case Just Got Bigger

By: Kevin Jackson | March 21, 2024

After Joe Biden was declared mentally incompetent by the Special Prosecutor in the classified documents case, I asked myself a simple question: “Who is competent in this case?”

In other words, somebody had to do Biden’s dirty work, if Joey Demento wasn’t giving the orders.

Consider what happened to Trump satellites when Democrats wrongly targeted him for Russian collusion. Paul Manafort, George Pappadopoulos, General Mike Flynn and others were investigated and railroaded. But in the case of Joe Biden’s obvious crime of possessing classified materials as a Senator and VP, we have nobody being examined.

Further, Biden has definite ties to the Chinese, the Ukrainians, and many nefarious characters who benefitted from the closeness to the Bidens. Hunter Biden gave us all the evidence we need of this, as he left one laptop at a repair shop, and another may be in the hands of Russian pimps.

So, who was involved with Joe Biden’s criminal carelessness? I asked this question of the handling of the classified documents:

What Biden most often says he does not recall is who packed his documents or other personal items when he left the vice presidency in 2009 and in the aftermath. Could it have been Hunter’s Chinese assistant? Biden admits that chain of custody for the classified materials is unknown to him. He doesn’t recall reading them, then removing them from wherever he got them.

“My problem was I never knew where any of the documents or boxes were specifically coming from or who packed them,” Biden said, telling Hur he relied on staff to do that instead.

I suggest the congressional committee find out who had access to these documents. Who did pack them? Apparently, I’m not the only one who wondered this. Nick Arama of Red State wrote:

One of the things that has been most shameful about Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal was how he said he didn’t have any idea how the docs got all over his house and in his offices. He has tried to blame his staff, including during his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur’s team.

That’s just ridiculous as an excuse — the documents were all over his house and his offices, even his garage. Not to mention that he had material from when he was in the Senate. So this has been going on for decades. Plus, he had notes with some of the classified documents, and he told his ghostwriter about the classified documents in 2017. The common element there is Joe Biden. Not some staffer. But it’s typical Joe Biden who never wants to take responsibility for anything he does wrong and there were all kinds of problems with his actions here.

It turns out that within 24 hours of the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, Joe Biden promoted two of the aides whose names came up in regard to the classified documents. What a coincidence.

Two aides who helped in the movement and potential cover-up of this crime were promoted?

Aramas continues,

According to the House Oversight Committee, longtime Biden aide and director of Oval Office operations Annie Tomasini visited the Penn Biden Center “to take inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials” in March 2021. Classified documents were found there in Biden’s officer in November 2022.

Then, aide Kathy Chung told Congress that Richard Ruffner, another staffer, was involved, along with other people, in the transportation of the undiscovered classified materials from the General Services Administration facility.

Tomasini was promoted to deputy White House Chief of Staff on Feb. 8, and Richard Ruffner was promoted into Tomasini’s old job as director of Oval Office operations.

The plot thickens

The House Oversight Committee has been trying to get Tomasini in for a transcribed interview since November, but the White House has failed to cooperate. That should say a lot right there. What doesn’t the White House want her to say? They don’t cooperate, and then, on top of that, Biden gives her a promotion?

“The Department of Justice has failed to deliver accountability for President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and now Biden aides involved in the scandal are getting promotions,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky) told The Post.

“We’ve requested to interview Annie Tomasini about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents but the White House is blocking her testimony and instead has promoted her to a senior role. The American people expect consequences for mishandling of classified information, not rewards,” he continued.

When dealing with the corruption of the Biden White House, little surprise me anymore.

These people claim to want transparency, then continually do the opposite. One can only imagine what we would learn if Biden actually allowed true investigations into these things.

We might learn the truth. That Biden is mentally incapable of running his family, much less the country. We most certainly would learn that in his dementia Joe Biden assigned his crackhead son to run their criminal organization. And we would be able to track down every illicit dime they collected from the Chinese, Ukrainians, Romanians, and so on.

I suspect we might understand how the Chinese flew a spy balloon across America with no recourse. Or why they weren’t made to compensate America for release of Covid, and the resulting aftermath.

Many questions would be answered if we could get to the real truth. But too many Leftists get rich and powerful off the spreading of lies and protecting those who tell them.

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The Dripping Away of the Democratic Party: Sir Thomas More and the Biden Corruption Scandal

By: Jonathan Turley | March 22, 2024

Below is my column on Fox.com for the hearing this week on the corruption scandal involving the Biden family. For years, the Democrats have opposed any effort to investigate the Bidens, including as part of the current impeachment inquiry. Various members misrepresented my earlier testimony during the hearing on the basis for the impeachment inquiry. Members like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) stated that I joined other witnesses in saying that there was nothing that could remotely be impeachable in these allegations. That is demonstrably untrue. My testimony stated the opposite. I refused to pre-judge the evidence, but stated that there was ample basis for the inquiry and laid out various impeachable offenses that could be brought if ultimately supported by evidence. I also discussed those potential offenses in columns. The purpose of the hearing was not to declare an impeachment on the first day of the inquiry. Unlike the two prior impeachments by many of these same Democratic members, this impeachment inquiry sought to create a record of evidence and testimony to support any action that the House might take.

Here is the column:

In the 1966 movie “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More faces Richard Rich, an ambitious office seeker who would ultimately lie and betray him. In this British historical drama, More warns Rich that “when a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

This week, Democrats appear to have finally drained away what remained of themselves and their party. For years, Democratic members and the media have demanded any evidence of the direct involvement or knowledge of President Joe Biden of the influence-peddling operation of his son, Hunter, and his brothers, James and Frank.

In the hearing, witnesses testified under oath about specific meetings with Joe Biden discussing these foreign dealings and the family business interests. Bank records were introduced showing the transfers of millions going to Hunter and various Biden family members.

Faced with the evidence that the president lied about his lack of any knowledge or involvement in the influence peddling, the Democrats opened their fingers wider.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D., N.Y., captured the problem for Democrats in even addressing any of the mounting evidence contradicting the president. Yet, Goldman has long shown a willingness to rush in where angels fear to tread.

In previous attacks, Goldman repeatedly hit the Bidens with friendly fire when eliciting damaging answers from witnesses. Goldman has a habit of raising the worst evidence that his colleagues have avoided. In one hearing, he stumbled badly in raising the WhatsApp message where Hunter told a Chinese businessman that his father was sitting next to him and would not be pleased unless he sent him money. On another occasion, he prompted an IRS whistleblower to note that an email Goldman read into the record was actually a direct contradiction of the denials of the president.

In the latest misstep, Goldman pressed former Biden partner Tony Bobulinski on a proposal shared with Hunter and others to reserve 10% for “the Big Guy.” In other emails, Bobulinski was told to use such codes to avoid mentioning Joe Biden’s name. He was expressly identified as “the Big Guy.” Video

Goldman snapped at Bobulinski, “Did anyone ever respond to that email?”

Bobulinski responded “Yes, they did numerous times. Hunter himself did.”

Goldman blurted out “you’re right” before angrily reclaiming his time to cut him off.

Things did not prove any easier for other members. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D., N.Y., imploded by mocking Bobulinski and challenging him “It is simple, you name the crime. Did you watch him steal something?”

Bobulinski proceeded to rattle off a series of possible criminal acts and Ocasio-Cortez cut him off. She then bizarrely pretended that he did not just list the crimes and barked “What is the crime, sir? Specifically?”

Bobulinski was not the only one confused and noted “you ask and answer the question, I answered the question, RICO, you’re obviously not familiar with…”

That is when Ocasio-Cortez again cut him off with “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. RICO is not a crime, it is a category. What is the crime?”

With that, it appears that Trump has now been cleared of charges in Atlanta by no one other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Racketeering is a crime and some of the crimes referenced by Bobulinski are commonly part of such conspiracies.

The exchange captured the lunacy of the hearing as Democrats demanded evidence and then ignored it when it was repeatedly offered by witnesses and members.

Yet, Ocasio-Cortez was illuminating on one point. Neither she nor her colleagues were willing to admit the obvious. Few people now disagree that Hunter was openly engaging in influence peddling, which is a form of corruption that the government has long fought around the world. It is also clear that Joe Biden knew of that influence peddling not just from his son but newspaper accounts. He had knowledge of the corruption and facilitated it. However, Ocasio-Cortez wanted to ignore the millions of dollars acquired in influence peddling to press a witness on whether he saw the president steal something like a purse or a hubcap.

The Democrats have allowed their very identity to drip through their open fingers. They have become a party that calls for censorship, ballot cleansing, and court packing. Now they are dismissing allegations of raw influence peddling after opposing every effort to investigate it.

Those who raise free speech or free press concerns now face a McCarthy-like mantra from Democratic members that they are nothing more than fellow travelers of Russia as we head into yet another election. Some Democratic members have called for criminal charges against reporters or demanded the names of sources. MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill even attacked former and current members testifying in favor of free speech as “Putin apologists” and Putin lovers.

As a lifelong Democrat from a politically active Chicago family, I can no longer recognize the party from my youth. We once stood for something other than the next election or hating others.

By the end of the hearing, virtually every Democratic member had attacked the witnesses and denied the obvious corruption surrounding the Biden family. They had become a party of Richard Riches. Of course, this unified effort to deny the obvious left little time to look down at what remained in their hands. They had owned the moment when the party fought to shield one of the most extensive and lucrative influence peddling operations in history.

After that ignoble effort, there was little reason to look down since they “needn’t hope to find [themselves] again.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Business Partners Confirm Joe Biden Was Part of Family’s Influence-Selling

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE AND JORDAN BOYD | MARCH 20, 2024

TRISTAN JUSTICE AND JORDAN BOYD

House Republicans heard explosive testimony from President Joe Biden’s family business partners Wednesday in a public hearing that confirmed the president’s personal involvement in global schemes to sell influence over American government.

Tony Bobulinski, a former family business partner turned whistleblower who told lawmakers President Biden was the “brand” sold to foreign governments, doubled down on accusations of corruption with sworn testimony in public.

“I want to be crystal clear: from my direct personal experience and what I have subsequently come to learn, it is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ being sold by the Biden family,” Bobulinski told lawmakers. “His family’s foreign influence peddling operation — from China to Ukraine and elsewhere — sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government.”

Lawmakers featured Bobulinski alongside Jason Galanis after closed-door depositions with the two witnesses. Devon Archer, another former business partner, and Hunter Biden also sat for closed-door depositions with House committees, but turned down congressional invites to testify in public.

His attorneys previously demanded a public hearing in exchange for Hunter Biden’s cooperation with congressional subpoenas. Then Biden attorney Abbe Lowell suddenly demanded lawmakers hold a public hearing to probe the business practices of his former client, Jared Kushner, potentially violating legal ethics rules. If House Republicans held a public hearing with Kushner, Lowell wrote in a letter last week, “Mr. Biden would consider an invitation for that event.”

House Republicans are probing whether to draw up articles of impeachment against President Biden for selling the use of his political positions to foreign oligarchs. House investigators have discovered more than 20 shell companies established by the Biden family to funnel tens of millions of dollars from corporate leaders from adversarial nations. Witnesses testified Wednesday that President Biden was at the center of the family’s efforts to rake in foreign profits.

🚨 🚨🚨

Witnesses CONFIRM Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling 👇 pic.twitter.com/gjlioRavAD
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) March 20, 2024

“The Bidens sell Joe Biden. That is their business,” said James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee at the beginning of the hearing on “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office.”

"The Bidens don't sell a product or service or a set of skills. The Bidens sell Joe Biden. That is their business."

— James Comer, House Oversight Committee Chair@RepJamesComer pic.twitter.com/JRdc2FXABp
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 20, 2024

Testifying from prison, Galanis said the Bidens aimed to make “billions, not millions” from selling political favors to oligarchs in China and Russia. Galanis is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence for securities fraud, which Galanis told lawmakers last month also involved Archer and Hunter Biden.

Biden business associate Jason Galanis, from incarceration, testifies to Oversight Committee about Joe Biden's direct involvement in building an empire of "billions not millions" from work with a Russian oligarch and a Chinese Communist Party linked firm. pic.twitter.com/BBuVrpAxsm
— Fred Lucas (@FredLucasWH) March 20, 2024

Democrat Obstruction

Democrats spent Wednesday’s hearing attempting to obstruct the impeachment proceedings with repeated interruptions to insist Republicans have no proof of influence peddling claims they have “exonerated” the president. Their handpicked witness Lev Parnas, also a convicted criminal, even went so far as to claim he “found precisely zero evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine.”

House Oversight Committee hearing goes off the rails when Hunter Biden's former business partner Tony Bobulinski calls out Reps. Jamie Raskin and Dan Goldman for lying on behalf of the Biden Crime Family. pic.twitter.com/Xny4VTbhVc
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 20, 2024

“I found precisely zero evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine … The only information ever pushed on the Bidens in Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents.”

— Lev Parnas testifies at House Oversight hearing on Biden family pic.twitter.com/0bhFXmv2bF
— The Recount (@therecount) March 20, 2024

On the contrary, House and Senate investigators have uncovered bank receipts, White House visitor logs, testimonies from Biden business partners, text messages, and other documents indicating the Biden family sold their patriarch’s name and position to foreign oligarchs including several in Ukraine. Yet Democrats pressed forward with a stunt campaign to delay, disrupt, and dismiss the hearing. When members heard about text messages about the Biden family business on Bobulinski’s cracked Blackberry phone, Democrats, led by Raskin, introduced a motion to subpoena the device.

Bobulinski previously offered to show the text messages to members who wanted to see them, so Jordan quickly countered with a motion to table. Comer agreed but was forced to wait for a clerk to record a formal vote before proceeding.

To Democrats’ dismay, members’ recorded votes tallied up in favor of tabling.

Bobulinski hearing grinds to a halt when Jamie Raskin threatens to subpoena for his Blackberry pic.twitter.com/wG7c2fCrm1
— Dylan Housman (@Dylan_Housman) March 20, 2024

After the minutes-long delay, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia asked Bobulinski whether he would turn over his phone to the committee.

“I’m willing to sit in a room with the chairman and the ranking member with my phone and their staff and we can go through each and every text message,” Bobulinski said.

New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez later asked Bobulinski whether he witnessed the president commit a crime, to which Bobulinski answered with an emphatic “Yes.”

“What crime?” Cortez pressed.

“Well, how much time do I have to go through?” Bobulinski answered.

AOC: "Did you witness the president [Joe Biden] commit a crime? "

Hunter Biden’s business partner: "YES!"

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/1gNvb7FHoS
— Rep. Tom Tiffany (@RepTiffany) March 20, 2024

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour.

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The Hunted and the Hunter: How the Menendez Superseding Indictment Shatters Hunter Biden’s Claim of Selective Prosecution

Below is my column in Fox.com on the superseding indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), who faces new charges after the cooperation of a former associate. The new charges only magnified the striking similarities between the corruption scandals involving Menendez and Hunter Biden. The timing could not be more interesting given filings the same week by Hunter Biden claiming selective prosecution.

Here is the column:

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was in court this week for another superseding indictment brought by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Rather than the four original counts, he now faces 18 counts with his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, and alleged co-conspirators Wael Hana and Fred Daibes.

What is most notable is not the proliferation of counts but the lack of comparative charges in the pending case against Hunter Biden. Some of us have long raised concerns over the striking similarity in the alleged conduct in both cases, but the absence of similar charges against the president’s son. That contrast just got even greater.

The allegations in the two cases draw obvious comparisons.

Menendez is accused of accepting a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz as part of the corrupt practices. In Hunter’s case, it was a $142,000 Fisker sports car. For Menendez, there were gold bars worth up to $120,000. For Biden, there was the diamond allegedly worth $80,000. Underlying both cases are core allegations of influence peddling and corruption. However, the Justice Department threw the book at Menendez while minimizing the charges against Biden. That includes charging Menendez as an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Many of us have said for years that the treatment of Hunter under FARA departs significantly from the treatment of various Trump figures like former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort as well as Menendez.

Now, there is a new layer of troubling comparisons to be drawn in the two cases.

The superseding indictment incorporates new charges after the plea and cooperation of Menendez’s former co-defendant and businessman Jose Uribe.

Uribe appears to have supplied the basis for some of the new charges, including a telling account with Nadine Menendez. She allegedly asked Uribe what he would say to law enforcement about the payments used for a Mercedes-Benz convertible and Uribe said that he could say that the payment were a “loan.” Nadine Menendez responded that “sounded good.”

The loan discussion hit a familiar cord with those of us who have written about the Biden corruption scandal. The Bidens have repeatedly referred to payment from foreign sources as “loans.” That most notoriously included millions given by his counsel Kevin Morris. In some cases, foreign money was received by President Joe Biden’s brother James and then immediately sent to the president’s personal account marked as a loan repayment. James admitted that the $40,000 was coming from the Chinese.

The Justice Department in the Menendez case dismissed the claim of loans as merely a transparent effort to hide influence peddling. That includes not just the convertible payment but more than $23,000 that one businessman made toward the senator’s wife’s mortgage.

Menendez and Biden share the array of luxury gifts, cars, and loans. However, the most important common denominator was the underlying corruption. Both cases are classic examples of influence peddling, which has long been a cottage industry in Washington, D.C. What they do not share is the same level of prosecution or press support. Menendez is a pariah in Washington and Hunter is the president’s son.

Menendez is blamed by many inside the Beltway not for being corrupt but for being open about it. The fact that others have been prosecuted for conduct similar to his own has not stopped Hunter from claiming victim status. He has told courts that even the few charges brought against him are evidence of selective prosecution.

In the most recent filing, Special Counsel David Weiss dismissed many of Hunter’s claims as “patently false” and noted that Hunter Biden virtually flaunted his violations and engaged in obvious efforts to evade taxes and hide his crimes. Weiss further noted that other defendants did not write “a memoir in which they made countless statements proving their crimes and drawing further attention to their criminal conduct.” It was a devastating take-down of Hunter’s claims, but it did not address the conspicuous omission of charges brought against Menendez, including FARA charges.

It also does not address the fact that the Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter. It only fell apart when a judge decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, who admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant. Weiss noted in his filing that they filed new charges only after Hunter’s legal counsel refused to change the agreement and insisted that it remained fully enforceable.

As Hunter continues to claim to be the victim of selective prosecution in various courts, judges need only to look over the Menendez case to see the truth of the matter. Hunter is not the victim of selective prosecution but the beneficiary of special treatment in the legal system.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Biden Regime Ratchets Up Its Authoritarianism With Arrest Of Blaze Investigative Reporter

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | MARCH 01, 2024

Democrats’ targeting of political opponents entered its next phase Friday, when the FBI arrested Blaze Media investigative reporter Steve Baker over covering the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol.

“This is the most humiliated I’ve ever been in my life,” Baker told independent reporter Breanna Morello following his release. My arrest “is for things I said. … That’s what they’re after; they’re [trying] to suppress our speech.”

Just caught up with journalist Steve Baker just moments after being released from federal custody.@TPC4USA details what he’s had to endure at the hands of the corrupt DOJ.

Watch my FULL report tonight at 7pm ET on Rumble and @BreannaMShow. pic.twitter.com/mPIjzG7JPr
— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) March 1, 2024

As The Federalist reported, federal authorities informed Baker and his legal team on Tuesday of a signed warrant for his arrest and instructed him to self-surrender for “alleged J6 crimes” in Dallas, Texas, on Friday morning. Baker has been at the forefront of reporting on the more questionable aspects of the Jan. 6 demonstrations.

While told he was being charged with “non-violent misdemeanors,” federal authorities declined to disclose to Baker or his lawyers what specific crimes underlie the arrest. According to Blaze News, the feds refused to reveal the charges ahead of Friday’s arrest because “they believe[d] Baker [would] post them on social media.” The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees individuals accused of a crime a right to “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”

After being transported to the courthouse on Friday morning in shackles, Baker was charged on four counts related to reporting on the Jan. 6 demonstrations: Knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; Disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; Disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and Parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building.

Blaze Media Investigative Journalist @TPC4USA has now been taken into FBI custody for his J6 reporting

Watch: pic.twitter.com/OF9WVh26ER
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 1, 2024

While egregious, Baker’s arrest is sadly unsurprising. The Marxists running Biden’s Democrat administration have gone to extreme lengths to weaponize the powers of government to target and prosecute their political opponents.

Former President Donald Trump is facing 91 indictments from Democrat prosecutors across four different venues, two of which involve charges from the Biden DOJ. These efforts coincide with Democrat attempts to kick Trump — Biden’s primary political opponent — off the ballot ahead of the 2024 election.

The Biden regime has also targeted faithful Christians. Not only have federal authorities infiltrated Catholic churches to surveil Christians attending Latin Mass, they’ve also imprisoned pro-life Christians who peacefully protested outside of an abortion clinic.

Don’t forget the federal government’s censorship-industrial complex. This heavily funded system is strategically designed to censor and silence dissenting voices online — even if the information these users share is true.

.@TPC4USA's first interview since being taken in by federal authorities with @SteveDeaceShow: "All of this is about the suppression of speech and teaching those of us on the Right side of the political spectrum what we can and cannot say and what is allowed." pic.twitter.com/kl12Ol7zPN
— BlazeTV (@BlazeTV) March 1, 2024

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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5 Times the Biden Admin Persecuted Christians for Living Their Faith

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Author Tristan Justice profile

TRISTAN JUSTICE

VISIT ON TWITTER@JUSTICETRISTAN

Former President Donald Trump charged the incumbent administration of targeting Christians Thursday night with a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention.

“Remember, every communist regime throughout history has tried to stamp out churches, just like every fascist regime has tried to co-opt them and control them. And in America, the radical left is trying to do both,” Trump said in Nashville. “They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags.”

President Joe Biden, himself, is the second Catholic to hold the Oval Office. The far-left administration, however, has pioneered avenues of religious persecution against political opponents, primarily through the Department of Justice (DOJ).

1. Investigating Catholics as Terrorists

The FBI, under the Biden administration, infiltrated traditional Catholic parishes to investigate “white supremacy.”

In January last year, a leaked memo from the Bureau’s offices in Richmond, Virginia revealed the federal intelligence agency targeted “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” as “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” (RMVE). The FBI rescinded the memo once public discovery made headlines. But a new memo in August obtained by House Republicans shows the FBI’s surveillance of Catholics involved multiple field offices across the country.

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” reported former special agent-turned-whistleblower Kyle Seraphin.

The FBI rescinded the memo once public discovery made headlines. But a new memo in August obtained by House Republicans shows the FBI’s surveillance of Catholics included multiple field offices across the country.

2. Pro-Lifers Prosecuted for Prayer

The Department of Justice indicted 22 pro-life activists in 2022 while neglecting to go after pro-abortion extremists who firebombed pregnancy centers, according to a Federalist review. Among them include Paul Vaughn, one of a handful who was convicted for the crime of praying at an abortion facility in Tennessee. If his appeal fails, Vaughn, a father of 11, faces 11 years in prison and fines of up to $260,000.

The DOJ claims the pro-life activists “aided and abetted by one another, used force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services” when they spent most of their time praying.

3. Biden DHS ‘Dirty Tricks’ Operation Attacked Christians

An internal memo published in May last year revealed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used federal funds to launch a smear campaign against dissident groups, including Christian organizations.

Dan Schneider, the vice president of the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America, repo r ted on the DHS operations in Fox News. According to the memo, the DHS funneled “$40 million taxpayer dollars away from bona fide anti-terrorism programs and into a weaponized operation deceptively known as the Targeted Violence & Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP).”

Groups investigated under the federal program include the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by Pat Robertson in 1960.

4. Repeal of ‘Conscience’ Rule

In 2019, Trump issued the “conscience” rule to protect health care workers from administering treatments violating practitioners’ moral convictions on procedures such as abortion. Politico reported in the spring of 2022 that Biden was preparing to dismantle the Republican-era regulation. The final rule came last month rescinding protections.

“Some doctors, nurses, and hospitals, for example, object for religious or moral reasons to providing or referring for abortions or assisted suicide, among other procedures. Respecting such objections honors liberty and human dignity,” said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But, the agency added, “patients also have rights and health needs, sometimes urgent ones. The Department will continue to respect the balance Congress struck, work to ensure individuals understand their conscience rights, and enforce the law.”

5. Biden Admin Targets Largest Christian University

Last year, the Department of Education levied a nearly $38 million fine against Grand Canyon University, claiming the school engaged in deceptive advertising campaigns. The department said the school “lied to more than 7,500 former and current students about the cost of its doctoral programs over several years.”

The university appealed the record fine in November.

“I have spoken to thousands of students, parents, employees, alumni and community stakeholders in Arizona and they all tell me the same thing: We need to fight this tyranny from federal government agencies not only to stand up for ourselves but to ensure this type of ideological government overreach and weaponization of federal agencies does not happen to others,” Grand Canyon University President Brian Mueller said in a statement. “American people are losing confidence in the federal government to be fair and objective in their operations and there are clearly no checks and balances to prevent this type of behavior from the Department of Education, which is out of control and continues to broaden its authority and selective enforcement powers.”

Mueller told The Federalist one month prior that the federal government’s efforts to target the university were “obviously political.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 12, 2024

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The special counsel report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed much more than our president’s mental deficits and the breadth of his irresponsible handling of top-secret and classified information. The report revealed a close nexus between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to intel during the elder’s term as vice president.

On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur released the results of his investigation into the president stemming from the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s D.C.-based Penn Biden Center, his private Delaware home, and the University of Delaware. While the specific details in the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided an extensive enough summary of the materials to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s “business” enterprises.

Ukraine Overlap

Appendix A of the report provided a table summary of the documents recovered. Many of the top-secret and classified documents concerned Ukraine during the time frame when Hunter Biden acted as an intermediary between Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that in early March 2014, he met Zlochevsky while in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 per month.

The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer an email dated April 13, 2014 — one week before Joe Biden would travel to Ukraine and meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys upcoming travels,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s ‘destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk,’” according to the New York Post.

Among the material recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locales were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents discussing Ukraine. One undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Another, dated Sept. 17, 2014, consisted of a “Memorandum for the Vice President from staff members, with subject ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’” Also dated Sept. 17, 2014, was an “event memo” from a vice-presidential national security staffer, titled, “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the following day.

The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s Burisma profiteering became more pronounced in 2015. On Dec. 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged to work with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that it had “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama Administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden’s Special Advisor for Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the Vice President’s National Security Advisor, presented the agenda for the trip and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”

Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma executives Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, on Dec. 4, 2015, pushed Hunter Biden to call his father. The Burisma executives, according to Archer, expressed concern over the pressure they were under from Ukrainian investigators.

Shokin’s Firing

During Biden’s visit to Ukraine the following week, the vice president threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees from the country unless the Ukrainian president fired the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. Shokin was later fired, and Biden bragged about his role in the termination.

Last week, the special counsel reported recovering documents classified as “secret,” dated circa Dec. 12, 2015, “setting forth the purpose and talking points for a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.” A transcript of the call between Biden and Yatsenyuk was attached, with a handwritten post-it note showing the then-VP had directed his executive assistant: “Get copy of the conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.”

That transcript, labeled “CONFIDENTIAL” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY,” according to the special counsel, included “pleasantries” exchanged between the two, “and the Prime Minister heaped praise upon Mr. Biden for his December 9, 2015 speech to Ukraine’s parliament.”

In that speech, Biden told Ukrainian lawmakers, “[I]t’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

A Change in U.S. Policy

Biden continues to maintain that his demands to Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, represented U.S. policy. But that policy seemed to have made a sharp turn from just months earlier. For instance, according to the House Oversight Committee, in “June 11, 2015, then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland wrote Prosecutor General Shokin, applauding his office’s progress in anti-corruption efforts.”

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt would likewise publicly state in September 2015, “[W]e want to work with Prosecutor General Shokin so the [Prosecutor General Office] is leading the fight against corruption.” That same month, “the Interagency Policy Committee asserted Prosecutor General Shokin had made sufficient progress in combating corruption to warrant a third guarantee of a $1 billion loan,” according to House Oversight Chair James Comer.

As part of its impeachment inquiry, the House Oversight Committee has been seeking records to establish how American policy shifted from supporting Shokin to demanding his firing. And now that Special Counsel Hur’s investigation into Biden has ended, Comer is demanding “unfettered access to these documents to determine if President Biden’s retention of sensitive materials were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling.” As Comer stressed, in addition to the Ukraine-related documents, top-secret and classified documents connected to China — another key source of Hunter Biden’s millions — were recovered.

Comer had previously asked Hur whether any of the classified records “were related to the countries that his family conducted business with,” but the special counsel’s office refused to provide details on the seized material. Comer told The Federalist that “[w]hile the Justice Department has closed its investigation, the Oversight Committee’s investigation continues.”

More to Probe

“Important questions remain about the extent of Joe Biden retaining sensitive materials related to specific countries involving his family’s influence peddling schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens,” Comer told The Federalist. “We will continue to provide the transparency and accountability owed to the American people.”

The key here, however, is not whether Joe Biden retained the documents to further Hunter Biden’s selling of access, but whether he shared details he had learned from his position as vice president with Hunter. Given the thousands of emails VP Biden exchanged using pseudonyms, the fact that he had no problem sharing classified information with his ghost writer, and that he has lied repeatedly about his involvement with Hunter Biden’s business affairs, it isn’t a stretch to believe he shared confidential information with his son to advance Hunter’s pay-to-play scheme.

But the special counsel’s report makes one more thing clear: Joe Biden will never face a jury — not because he is innocent, but because he lacks the mental competence. Attorney General Merrick Garland apparently concurred in that assessment, as he approved Hur’s report. So surely then, Garland, as a member of the Cabinet, is discussing with his fellow cabinet members, the need to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment… Right?

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Hunter’s Painting Foray Had All the Classic Earmarks of a Biden Family Influence-Peddling Operation

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 19, 2024

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Hunter Biden’s “Sugar Bro,” Kevin Morris, testified before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on Wednesday. A readout of Morris’ testimony, when considered in tandem with the testimony provided last week by Hunter Biden’s gallerist, suggests Hunter was setting up another front for the family influence-peddling racket when the plan collapsed due to public scrutiny.

On Thursday, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer issued a statement following the committee’s transcribed interview of Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris. In his press release, Comer revealed that Hollywood producer Lanette Phillips introduced Morris to Hunter Biden during a campaign event at her Los Angeles home for Joe Biden in the winter of 2019. One week later, Phillips called Morris to discuss what Morris apparently framed as an “entertainment” issue. Morris later visited Hunter at his home in L.A., according to the press release.

According to Comer, Morris testified he began providing money to Hunter Biden in January 2020. Then on Feb. 7, 2020, Morris emailed Hunter’s advisers and tax accountants, writing, “We are under considerable risk personally and politically to get the returns in.” Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden filed his long-overdue 2017 and 2018 tax returns, although he didn’t pay his hefty tax bill at the time. Around Oct. 18, 2021, Morris paid some $2 million in overdue taxes for the president’s son.

In addition to paying Hunter’s taxes, Morris also paid for many of his living expenses and bought 13 of Hunter Biden’s paintings — two from before Hunter retained a gallerist and 11 after, with Morris paying $875,000 for the set purchased from the gallerist.

The Gallerist

That gallerist, George Berges, testified before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees last Tuesday concerning his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s profiteering from his newfound career as a painter. Berges, the owner of the Soho-based George Berges Gallery, told the committee that he served as the “gallerist” for Hunter Biden beginning in December 2020. As Hunter’s gallerist, Berges acted as the exclusive agent, selling Hunter’s paintings. In that role, Berges had firsthand knowledge of the money flowing into Hunter’s bank account from his newest business venture.

Berges’ testimony pales in comparison to some earlier witnesses who revealed details of Hunter Biden’s dealing with Burisma and Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings. Yet, when studied in its entirety, the gallery owner’s testimony paints a picture of an attempt to launch a new enterprise to provide cover for a continuation of the Biden family’s pay-to-play scheme. Morris’ testimony this week adds further definition.

First, we have the gallerist’s testimony that Lanette Phillips also introduced him to Hunter in 2019, telling Berges that Hunter was an artist. Next, there is the fact that in December 2020, Hunter and Berges executed a contract appointing the gallery owner as his exclusive representative, with Berges receiving a commission of 40 percent on sales. That contract, Berges testified, included a provision that required the gallerist to disclose to Hunter the identity of the purchasers of his paintings.

As Berges explained, that was not a typical contract term; he had never included a similar clause in any of his other contracts. “Normally, the gallerist does not let the artist know who the collectors are,” Berges confirmed, adding that of the 15 or so artists he currently works with, none ask to know who purchased their artwork. Berges elaborated, stating, “It’s my collector base,” and you don’t want “your artists to circumvent you if they know your collectors.”

While the contract required Berges to tell Hunter the names of the purchasers, Berges explained during the interview that he never did, and because Hunter didn’t push for their identities, his instinct was not to share the information. Nonetheless, Hunter learned the names of several of the purchasers — for instance, Elizabeth Naftali.

Again, Lanette, the same Hollywood producer and Biden-booster who introduced Hunter to Morris and Berges, introduced Berges to Naftali. Naftali purchased two of Hunter’s paintings, the first in February 2021, shortly after his father’s inauguration. She later purchased another painting, spending a total of $94,000 for the pair.

During the committees’ questioning of Berges, they noted that on July 1, 2022, President Biden appointed Naftali to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. A committee lawyer added that while Joe Biden was vice president he had also arranged for Hunter Biden’s then-business partner Eric Schwerin to be appointed to the same board.

In addition to Naftali, Hunter Biden also knew the identity of Morris, who on Jan. 19, 2023, purchased, in the name of his LLC, Kuliaky Art, 11 paintings for $875,000. Berges explained that Morris had seen the paintings at Hunter’s exhibit in California in October 2021 and then negotiated the January 2023 sale with him by telephone.

Berges further explained that Morris did not pay the galley for the paintings, but instead paid Berges his 40 percent commission and then paid Hunter (or reduced his loan balance) separately.

Comer notes in his readout from the interview of Morris that it was only after he purchased those paintings from Hunter that he scored a visit to the White House. But there is a bigger smoke cloud surrounding those purchases than Joe Biden welcoming his son’s benefactor to the White House.

Something Doesn’t Add Up

Why would Morris purchase paintings from Berges at all? As Berges testified, the reason gallerists don’t share the names of their buyers with the artists is so they aren’t cut out of the deal. Morris, however, likely didn’t want to ruin Hunter’s relationship with Berges, Berges reasoned. But that doesn’t explain why Morris wouldn’t have purchased art from Hunter before he had a gallerist.

Here we run into an interesting detail: Morris testified he had purchased two pieces of art from Hunter Biden before he had a gallerist. Why then wait for Hunter to enter a contract with Berges before purchasing more art? And why wait until January 2023, when he saw the art during an October 2021 exhibit? (It is also noteworthy that Berges got the impression from Hunter that he had never sold any artwork before retaining him as a gallerist.)

Morris’ $875,000 represented a huge chunk of Hunter Biden’s total sales of $1.5 million. In fact, Morris’ purchase represented such an “outlier,” as Berges put it, that the Soho gallery owner hasn’t renewed his contract with Hunter and is considering dropping him as a client.

“I look at the totality,” Berges explained. “If I look at the whole picture of this artist objectively, I would say, okay, this is great that we got someone to do a major acquisition, but let’s look at the general response and what the value is.”

“It’s not that impressive,” he concluded.

Morris negotiating with Berges over the price of the pictures, however, sidesteps questions of whether he overpaid for the art to make a then-taxable gift to Hunter Biden. Morris’ purchase also creates the impression that his friend’s art is worth the high price Berges was asking, even though “the general response,” without Morris, was “not that impressive.”

One must wonder, though, if the lack of interest in Hunter’s high-priced paintings stemmed from the spotlight on what appeared to be the latest pay-to-play scam scaring off the target audience for the artist: those seeking favors or access to the now-president.

A Plan Foiled?

Without media coverage, it was a perfect plan: Hunter Biden reemerges as an artist and sends those he or his family want to shake down to Soho to buy his paintings from a gallerist who has independently set the prices of the paintings. Berges’ testimony indicates he is truly independent, for while he explained he has become friends with Hunter, much to his chagrin, he was forced to acknowledge donating multiple times to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. Berges even hinted that he had voted for Trump and not his client’s father in 2020.

Hunter, in fact, even ensured he could learn the identity of the purchaser to confirm the transaction, although it soon became clear that wasn’t necessary; the buyer could just tell him or show him the artwork. But then the press got ahold of the story and, unlike the laptop scandal, this time they didn’t bury it. By the summer of 2021, the White House was forced to do damage control, claiming it was working on a deal with Hunter’s gallerist to ensure the identity of purchasers of his paintings remained anonymous.

Berges testified he was surprised to hear that from the White House since he had never spoken with anyone there about his contract with Hunter Biden. Nonetheless, at Hunter’s request, Berges removed the disclosure requirement and replaced it with a provision prohibiting the gallery owner from disclosing the identity of the purchasers. They then entered a new contract on Sept. 1, 2021.

Other than Morris’ large purchase last January, there seems to be little demand now for the paintings — leaving one to wonder if, without his target audience, Hunter’s art is as worthless as his board member skills.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Bank Records Show China-Linked Company Made Direct Payments to Joe Biden

By: Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / December 04, 2023

This is at least the third example of a direct payment to Joe Biden that stems from a family-owned business entity. The difference is that these monthly payments came directly from a Biden company. Pictured: Biden departs Ireland’s Dublin Airport on Air Force One on Aoril 14 with his sister Valerie and son Hunter. (Photo: Julien Behal/Irish Government/Getty Images)

A Hunter Biden business entity tied to China made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden in the months leading up to the former vice president’s announcement that he would run for president in 2020, according to newly released subpoenaed bank records from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. The monthly payments came from Owasco PC, which Hunter Biden set up as a business entity.

Biden, the president’s 53-year-old son, is under federal investigation for using Owasco PC’s corporate account to commit alleged tax crimes. Owasco PC has links to Chinese energy company CEFC, where the younger Biden was a partner. This is at least the third example of a direct payment to Joe Biden that stems from a family-owned business entity. What appears to be different here is that the payments came directly from a Biden company. Two previous payments appeared to filter indirectly through the president’s younger brother, James Biden.

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., noted in a video statement that the president previously claimed there was an “absolute wall” between his official government duties and his family’s business; claimed his family didn’t receive money from China; and claimed he didn’t talk to his son about his business dealings.

On each, Comer said, “This was a lie.”

🚨BREAKING🚨

Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden. The bank records don't lie.

Owasco PC received payments from Chinese-state linked companies & other shady entities. Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes. pic.twitter.com/MfvtA4yEZU
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) December 4, 2023

“Now, Hunter Biden’s legal team and the White House’s media allies claim Hunter’s corporate entities never made payments directly to Joe Biden,” Comer said. “We can officially add this latest talking point to the list of lies.”

“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world,” Comer added.

The oversight panel is one of three House committees leading an impeachment inquiry into the senior Biden’s activities for evidence of influence peddling. The committee subpoenaed the financial records of Hunter Biden and of James Biden in September.

OwascoSubpoenas Download

The House-obtained records show that Hunter Biden’s business account, Owasco PC, received payments from companies linked to Communist China and from other foreign nationals and companies.

Records released by the committee show one monthly payment in September 2018 for $1,380. Also that year, James Biden wrote two separate checks to Joe Biden for $200,000 and $40,000, respectively. The checks were marked as “loan repayments,” but Comer’s committee has tied the payments directly to Biden family business transactions.

An FBI confidential informant said in a formal document that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid a $5 million bribe to Joe Biden and another $5 million to Hunter Biden in 2016 when Biden was still Barack Obama’s vice president.

While he was vice president, Biden met with or communicated with several of his son’s business partners, records show.

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Special Counsel Jack Smith Sought Info On Anyone Who ‘Favorited Or Retweeted’ Trump Tweets

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 29, 2023

Special Counsel Jack Smith hunted information on X users who liked or retweeted posts published by former President Donald Trump, according to redacted search warrants and other documents released Monday.

According to the heavily redacted document issued to then-Twitter in January, the court ordered the social media giant to forfeit a bevy of information regarding Trump’s account, including “advertising information, including advertising IDs, ad activity, and ad topic preferences,” as well as IP addresses “used to create, login, and use the account” and privacy and account settings.

The warrant also demanded information such as Trump’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.

Though the warrant was first covered in August, it was again released as part of a court order after numerous media organizations filed to obtain the document to shed light on the Smith-led special counsel’s “investigation into Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol,” according to the New York Post. Smith previously indicted Trump in August on several bogus charges related to the former president’s challenging of the 2020 election results in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021.

But it wasn’t just Trump’s Twitter account that Smith and his cronies were targeting. The special counsel’s warrant also sought data on Twitter users who interacted with the former president’s account. Among the information Smith sought was a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” during the aforementioned timeframe. Smith similarly demanded that Twitter, which has since rebranded as X, fork over a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account.

Smith and his team went even further, seeking to acquire data on Twitter users who engaged with Trump’s tweets in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. This included “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by [Trump], as well as all tweets that include the username associated with [Trump’s account] (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).”

According to the Post, Smith’s warrant was issued to then-Twitter “along with a nondisclosure order, instructing the company not to notify Trump about the search.” Twitter initially bucked Smith’s demand, arguing that to forfeit such information to the government constituted a violation of the First Amendment. The social media giant ultimately complied with the warrant but was fined $350,000 for failing to meet the special counsel’s demands by deadline.

In the heavily redacted court filing opposing Twitter’s legal attempts to notify Trump of the search, Smith baselessly claimed that telling the former president about the unprecedented seizure “would result in a statutorily cognizable harm,” as Trump is “a sophisticated actor with an expansive platform.”

“The [Non-Disclosure Order] was granted based on facts showing that notifying the former president would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, or other serious jeopardy to an investigation or delaying of trial,” said the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Nearly every other word listed under “The Non-Disclosure Order” section of the filing is redacted.

Smith’s seizure of Trump’s personal social media information and those who engaged with the then-president’s posts isn’t all that surprising given the special counsel’s weaponization of the government against Trump thus far. In addition to indicting Trump, Smith filed a motion in September to institute a gag order on the 45th president, effectively stifling his First Amendment right to criticize the very government attempting to silence him. That gag order was ultimately approved by D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a left-wing Obama appointee with a track record of highly partisan court rulings.

Trump’s legal team has since appealed the order to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and has threatened to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court given the “unconstitutional” nature of the mandate.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Biden Can’t Be Trusted to Confront the Chinese Communists Who Pay His Family Millions

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Biden and Xi raise a toast at luncheon at the White House

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President Joe Biden met Chinese dictator Xi Jinping for high-level talks in California on Wednesday, marking the first time the two leaders have spoken face-to-face in a year. While specific details of the conversation will assuredly remain under wraps, a White House readout of the discussion indicates that Biden and Xi covered a variety of hot-button issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s defense against Hamas terrorists in the Middle East, and Taiwan. The two leaders also agreed to revive communications between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

Given Biden and his administration’s history of getting humiliated in talks with their Chinese counterparts, it wasn’t surprising that Wednesday’s meeting didn’t produce any headway on holding China accountable for its human rights violations, military aggression, or cover-up of Covid-19’s origins. But aside from Biden’s incompetence at juggling U.S. foreign policy, Wednesday’s U.S.-China talks raised a far more concerning question. How can Biden be trusted to manage U.S. relations with China when he and his family have received millions of dollars from Chinese entities connected to the Chinese Communist Party?

The Paper Trail

Despite Joe Biden claiming on national television that his son, Hunter, “has not made money” from Chinese entities, the New York Post published a bombshell story in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, sourced to Hunter’s laptop, which called Biden’s assurances into question. Emails from the laptop showed Hunter had “pursued lucrative deals” with CEFC China Energy Co., a Chinese energy giant that operates as “an arm of the Chinese Government.”

As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, one email obtained by the Post showed Hunter describing a business transaction as “interesting for me and my family.” Another listed the younger Biden as “‘Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC’ with pay at ‘850’ and could offer monetary compensation for six people.”

“Those involved in the email from James Gilliar of the international consulting firm J2cR, including Hunter, were allegedly part of the four people who created a ‘provisional agreement’ to split 80 percent of the ‘equity’ of the company equally with ’10 for Jim’ and ’10 held by H for the big guy,’” Boyd wrote. While “Jim” is in reference to Joe’s older brother James Biden, a highly credible confidential human source has since corroborated that “big guy” was a moniker used to refer to Joe Biden.

Hunter’s dealings with CEFC often involved Ye Jianming, the since-arrested head of CEFC who has ties to China’s military. In early 2017, Hunter worked for Ye “as a counselor and adviser” and was later hired by CEFC in September 2017 to serve as defense counsel for Chinese businessman Patrick Ho, “despite his little experience in criminal defense.” Ho — who served as Ye’s “top lieutenant” and whom Hunter referred to as “the f-cking spy chief of China” — was arrested and later convicted by the Justice Department for bribing the presidents of several African countries.

Bank records obtained by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office indicate that Hunter was paid $1 million for representing Ho. According to Yahoo News, however, “it is not clear what work, if any, [Hunter] did for Ho,” with court records of Ho’s case “show[ing] no indication that Biden or his law firm at the time … participated in Ho’s legal defense.”

A bevy of communication records released by the House Ways and Means Committee in September included a December 2018 WhatsApp text exchange between Hunter and Hallie Biden — who was the widow of Joe’s other son, Beau, and dated Hunter after Beau’s passing — lamenting Ho’s arrest and Ye’s disappearance. The records also showed how Hunter sold the Biden “brand” to overseas business associates to increase the family’s fortunes.

But as additional evidence released by House Republicans has shown, the Bidens’ financial connections with CEFC and its associates run deeper than previously known, and in several cases, further implicate Joe Biden. Despite the elder Biden repeatedly denying involvement in his family’s foreign business ventures, Hunter’s communication records indicate that Joe was keenly aware of his son’s overseas financial interests and served as a primary force behind the operation.

A series of July 2017 WhatsApp messages sent by Hunter to Chinese businessman Raymond Zhao show the younger Biden leveraging “his father’s name and threaten[ing] CEFC executives unless a lucrative deal was worked out with Ye.” In his messages, Hunter explicitly stated, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” He further threatened to leverage “the man sitting next to me and every person he knows” to punish Zhao should he fail to follow through on the arrangement.

Within 10 days of that conversation, a CEFC subsidiary poured roughly $5 million into a Biden-linked bank account. Bank records recently obtained by House Republicans show that on the same day, Hunter “transferred $400,000 out of [that account] and into his corporation, Owasco P.C.,” before wiring $150,000 of these CEFC-tied funds to a company owned by James and his wife, Sara, who withdrew $50,000 from said company and deposited the money into their personal checking account. Less than a month later, on Sept. 3, 2017, Sara signed a $40,000 check to Joe, claiming it represented a “loan repayment.”

As noted by The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland, “the $40,000 Joe ‘the Big Guy’ Biden received was exactly 10 percent of the $400,000 Hunter Biden received from CEFC.”

Untrustworthy at Best

OMG… is this real? pic.twitter.com/wqSUp1RK2l
— @amuse (@amuse) November 15, 2023

At a time when China is becoming increasingly aggressive towards the U.S. and its allies, Americans need leaders doing everything in their power to stand up for U.S. interests and limit threats to their security. But with Biden at the helm, that’s no longer a guarantee.

Lunch Bucket Joe and his family’s financial ties to individuals and entities connected to Beijing’s communist government make him a liability for the United States. Americans can’t — and shouldn’t — trust that Biden’s judgment over anything having to do with U.S.-China relations is fully within their best interests.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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COMER DEMANDS ANSWERS ON WHETHER BIDEN CLASSIFIED RECORDS MENTION COUNTRIES RELATED TO FAMILY BUSINESS DEALS

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Willfully Blind David Weiss Pinky Promises Political Favoritism Didn’t Affect Hunter Biden Probe

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Politics absolutely, positively had no bearing on the Hunter Biden investigation, Delaware U.S. Attorney-turned-Special Counsel David Weiss assured the House Judiciary Committee last week. Yet Weiss also acknowledged it would be a “problem” if someone had warned Joe Biden’s transition team of FBI agents’ impending plan to interview the president-elect’s son, as whistleblowers say occurred. Weiss just didn’t bother to ask anyone about the leak or any other concerns of political favoritism, showing the federal prosecutor has opted for willful blindness over oversight of the Hunter Biden criminal probe — even after his appointment as special counsel.

On Tuesday, Weiss sat for an interview before the House Judiciary Committee. A transcript of Weiss’s testimony, which The Federalist has reviewed, shows the special counsel faced several questions about claims that political favoritism infected the Hunter Biden investigation.

But even before the questioning began, in a brief opening statement, Weiss declared that “political considerations played no part in our decision making.” Rather, the Delaware U.S. attorney, doing double duty as special counsel, assured the committee that “throughout this investigation, career prosecutors on my team and I have made decisions based on the facts and the law.”

Weiss repeated that mantra several times during questioning about specific steps his team took — or didn’t take — in the Hunter Biden investigation. “Again, I’m not going to comment on any aspect of the investigation or a prosecution, and from my perspective, the prosecutors who participated in this case followed the law and the facts. That was the motivation.”

Of course, that was Weiss’s “perspective” because, even after the IRS whistleblowers provided concrete examples of the politicization of the Hunter Biden investigation, the U.S. attorney buried his head in the sand rather than inquire about the veracity of the claims. The totality of Weiss’s testimony confirms this reality, but it is best exemplified in an exchange about the warning given to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that agents intended to interview Hunter Biden.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley had previously testified that the day before their Dec. 8, 2020 “day of action,” when agents planned to interview a host of relevant witnesses, he learned someone had tipped off Joe Biden’s transition team of the plans to interview Hunter Biden and another 10-plus witnesses. “This essentially tipped off a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden and gave this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach on the witnesses,” Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee.

The House Judiciary Committee asked Weiss if he knew “who made the decision to tip off the presidential transition team about the day of action, and that the investigators wanted to try to speak with Hunter Biden.” Weiss initially responded that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to comment on the matter but that he would address the question in his special counsel report.

A Concerning Connection

However, additional questioning soon reviewed a concerning connection between the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office and the Biden transition team, in the person of Alexander Mackler, whom Weiss acknowledged had been one of his assistant U.S. attorneys from 2016 through about mid-2019. According to the committee’s questioning, Mackler had at one point served as Joe Biden’s press secretary, had been Beau Biden’s campaign manager during his reelection campaign, and from 2014-2016 served as deputy counsel to then-Vice President Biden. While Weiss testified, he knew Mackler had worked for Biden, he said he didn’t know many of those specifics. However, Weiss acknowledged learning that Mackler had been named to Biden’s transition team, although he said he couldn’t remember when or how he had learned of that fact.

The House Judiciary Committee then pushed Weiss on whether he or anyone else from his office had any communications with Mackler while he was working with the transition team. While Weiss stated he was “very confident” he “had no conversations” with Mackler about the latter’s work on the transition team or about the Hunter Biden case, Weiss said he had “no idea whether anyone else has spoken to Alex Mackler period or about the case.”

Weiss further testified that he was actually unaware of whether the transition team had been tipped off, as IRS whistleblowers claimed. But if so, Weiss confirmed it would be “a concern” and “a problem” and that “it shouldn’t happen.” Yet when pushed on what he would do to address the problem if he “found out that something like that did occur,” Weiss refused to answer the question, saying it was “a hypothetical” that he would not “speculate on” other than saying that “as a general matter, it’s problematic.”

Willful Blindness

On first blush, Weiss’s non-answers about the tip-off to the transition team seem like inconsequential, unhelpful responses that merely lead to a dead end. But Weiss’s acknowledged ignorance is explosive news: The man that Attorney General Merrick Garland named as special counsel to supposedly ensure independence in the investigation and prosecution of the president’s son failed to inquire of his team about whether someone had leaked to the transition team details about the impending questioning of Hunter Biden. In fact, according to Weiss, he didn’t even bother to confirm the tip-off had occurred — much less seek to determine who bore responsibility for the leak — even though he knew that a former Delaware assistant U.S. attorney served on the Biden transition team.

Weiss’s failure in this regard was not an aberration. Rather, throughout his House Judiciary Committee testimony last week, Weiss confirmed he has ignored the whistleblowers’ claims of politicization. For instance, when asked whether “any of the attorneys on your team, whether it’s a Special Counsel team or before the Special Counsel team was stood up, have any ties which you would consider close to the Biden family,” Weiss said he doesn’t “delve into those kinds of things,” but that he is “unaware of any such thing.”

Weiss’s failure to inquire about his staff’s relationship with the Biden family may have made sense initially but given the two whistleblowers’ detailed allegations of political favoritism, not asking some basic questions to ensure an unbiased staff is inexcusable.

Weiss’s failures extend much further, however, with his Tuesday testimony confirming he has not reviewed his staff’s handling of the investigation in light of the whistleblowers’ testimony that there were “politically-motivated decisions made in the Hunter Biden case.” Specifically, while Weiss acknowledged the whistleblowers’ claims, his responses to questions show he disregarded the claims without any inquiry. For instance, when asked, “If an investigator or prosecutor makes what is believed to be a politically-motivated statement or decision, how is that reviewed in your office?” Weiss responded that he was “not aware of such a situation.”

The House committee pushed the special counsel more on this point, asking: “For example, on the Hunter Biden case, if one of your assistant United States attorneys was exhibiting favoritism towards the Biden family or towards Hunter Biden, and that was brought to your attention, what would be the process to sort that out?”

“My office has no process or protocol for dealing with something like that. It’s not something we have engaged in, participated in, or that I have experienced,” Weiss countered. Weiss held firm under additional questioning, stating he was “not aware of any such reviews.”

“I’ve told you. I have no such process. We haven’t experienced it in our office,” Weiss insisted.

Head in the Sand

This testimony establishes that Weiss has done nothing to review his team’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigation for possible political bias, notwithstanding the whistleblowers’ detailed claims of such favoritism. No wonder then that Weiss can say he has confidence in his prosecutors and believes they acted “in a professional and unbiased manner without partisan or political considerations.”

Ironically, if this were a criminal case in which federal prosecutors needed to establish the defendant’s knowledge of some sort of “shady dealings,” the U.S. attorney’s office would seek what is collegially called the “ostrich instruction.” The “ostrich instruction” informs the jury that a deliberate effort “to avoid guilty knowledge is all the guilty knowledge the law requires,” and that a defendant who knows or strongly suspects “he is involved in shady dealings” cannot avoid criminal liability by making sure “he does not acquire full or exact knowledge of the nature and extent of those dealings.”

While there is no suggestion that Weiss is a co-conspirator in some criminal enterprise, he is similarly burying his head in the sand when it comes to the politicization of the Biden investigation exposed by the IRS whistleblowers and congressional oversight committees. Thus, his assurances that “political considerations played no part in our decision making” are meaningless.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Follow $40,000 From Communist China Directly to Joe Biden’s Bank Account

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | NOVEMBER 01, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Joe Biden received $40,000 from Chinese communists, funneled through his son and brother and their businesses, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed Wednesday morning.

“Where’s the money?,” President Joe Biden quipped over the summer when asked by a reporter to comment on the House’s investigation into the bribery scandal swirling around his family. Comer continues to answer that question for the country, with a press release and video detailing the House Oversight Committee’s latest discovery from subpoenaed bank records that establish Joe Biden directly profited from his family’s influence-peddling.

A 12-page memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s staff to the majority members of the committee, which The Federalist has reviewed, details the latest development Comer summarized in his video and press release. The bottom line is a $40,000 check from Sara and James Biden’s personal checking account written to Joe Biden on Sept. 3, 2017, claiming to represent a “loan repayment.” But following that money upstream reveals it originated from the Chinese “business” partners Hunter Biden had threatened a little over a month earlier in a WhatsApp message.

Hunter Biden had sent that WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017, to Raymond Zhao, an associate of CEFC, the Chinese energy giant Hunter and James Biden began courting in 2016, while Joe Biden was vice president. After Joe Biden left office at the end of the Obama administration, according to one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, the Chinese communist-connected CEFC sent them a $3 million wire in March of 2017 as a “thank you” for the Bidens’ assistance in furthering their business interests.

But CEFC had committed to investing another $10 million, which an email recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicated would be used to form a joint venture. CEFC’s founder and chairman, Ye Jianming, was to hold 50 percent interest in the company, and Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, and some of their business associates would hold the other 50 percent. That email noted Hunter Biden would own a 10 percent interest in the holding company for “the big guy,” a moniker used for Joe Biden.

However, as of the end of July 2017, the $10 million cash infusion had yet to materialize, prompting Hunter Biden to text Zhao on WhatsApp, telling him to “Please have the director call me- not James or Tony or Jim- have him call me tonight,” with the “director” being an apparent reference to the executive director of CEFC, and James and Tony being business partners, along with Jim Biden. The text continued:

I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. I am very concerned that the Chairman has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight. And Z if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang (sic) or the Chairman I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness — and all too often I am standing over top of them saying I warned you. From this moment until whenever he reaches me. It I [sic] 9:45 AM here and i assume 9:45 PM there so his night is running out.

The Oversight Committee memorandum then detailed how in a WhatsApp message on July 31, 2017, Zhao responded, “CEFC is willing to cooperate with the family.” Hunter later followed up with a text to another CEFC associate, Gongwen Dong, stating, “The Biden’s [sic] are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this partnershipn [sic]. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.”

The money soon began flowing, with Hunter Biden first opening a bank account on Aug. 3, 2017, for a new company, Hudson West III, which would serve as the joint venture between Hunter Biden and CEFC’s Gongwen Dong. Hunter Biden’s business, Owasco P.C., owned 50 percent of Hudson West III, and Dong’s company, Hudson West V, owned the other 50 percent.

On Aug. 8, 2017, financial records show Hunter Biden’s new business venture with CEFC received a $5 million wire from the CEFC-connected business Northern International Capital. That same day, Hunter Biden transferred $400,000 out of Hudson West III and into his corporation, Owasco P.C. From those funds, Hunter purchased a Porsche and transferred funds to other of his personal or business accounts.

Then on Aug. 14, 2017, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 from his Owasco account to the Lion Hall Group — the company owned by James and Sara Biden. Two weeks later, Sara Biden “signed a withdrawal ticket for $50,000 from the Lion Hall Group bank account,” and on the same day deposited that $50,000 into her and James’ joint personal checking account. Soon after, on Sept. 3, 2017, Sara Biden signed the $40,000 check payable to Joe Biden.

The House Oversight staff memorandum provides a clear narrative of these transactions and copies of the relevant bank records. The memorandum also added this graphic to further crystalize the money trail:

Significantly, the House memorandum also established that the $40,000 used to supposedly repay a loan to Joe Biden came solely from funds the communist China-connected CEFC paid to Hunter Biden to “cooperate with the family.” The House Oversight staff’s memorandum made that point clear by detailing, in addition to the flow of funds from CEFC to Joe Biden, the balances in the various accounts prior to the receipt of those funds.

For instance, before Sara Biden transferred $50,000 into their personal checking account from which they paid Joe Biden $40,000, their balance was $46.88. And before Hunter Biden transferred the $150,000 into the Lion Hall Group bank account, that account showed a balance of $1,964.62.

So, whether James and Sara Biden actually owed Joe Biden $40,000 is irrelevant because the money they used to repay the supposed loan came from the Chinese company that Hunter and James groomed to serve as the family cash cow during Joe Biden’s vice presidency. And CEFC only provided that capital after Hunter Biden — saying he and his father were sitting there trying to understand why the promised $10 million hadn’t yet materialized — threatened their Chinese counterparts.

It’s also interesting to note that the $40,000 Joe “the Big Guy” Biden received was exactly 10 percent of the $400,000 Hunter Biden received from CEFC.

With Wednesday’s release of a copy of the $40,000 check paid to Joe Biden, Comer has provided two examples of the now-president directly benefitting from his son and brother’s selling of his political influence. Earlier this month, Comer released evidence establishing James Biden paid Joe $200,000 in funds the president’s brother obtained from the since-bankrupted Americore.

Wednesday’s news, however, proves even more scandalous because the funds originated from individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party who first partnered with Hunter and James Biden while Joe Biden was vice president — and the payment followed Hunter Biden’s threatening text message, which invoked his father’s name (and presence) and warned of his wrath.

But to Joe Biden apologists, this will likely remain “no evidence” of corruption.

This article has been updated since publication.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Comer raises questions about $200k ‘direct payment’ from James Biden to Joe Biden in 2018

By Brooke Singman Fox News | Published October 20, 2023 2:47pm EDT

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said his panel has uncovered evidence that Joe Biden, in 2018, received a “$200,000 direct payment” from his brother James Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, and is demanding the president answer questions about “financial arrangements” with members of his family.

Comer, R-Ky., has been leading an investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings since January and whether President Biden was involved in those ventures or “personally benefited” from them.

Comer, in September, issued three subpoenas for the personal and business bank records belonging to both Hunter Biden and James Biden.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

We have found a $200,000 DIRECT payment to Joe Biden.
@RepJamesComer lays out the money trail. 👇 pic.twitter.com/0vq3lqhRHz
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 20, 2023

Comer, in a video posted to “X,” formerly known as Twitter, detailing his committee’s latest findings. Comer said the check was written by James Biden to President Biden as a “loan repayment,” but questioned the timing.

“Bank records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have revealed a $200,000 direct payment from James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden in the form of a personal check,” Comer states.

Comer explains that in 2018, James Biden “received $600,000 in loans from Americore —a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer — Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans based upon representations that his last name Biden, could open doors; and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections,” Comer said.

“On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account—not their business bank account,” he continued. “And then, on the very same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.”

Comer said James Biden “wrote this check to Joe Biden as a ‘loan repayment.’”

“Americore—a distressed company—loaned money to James Biden who then sent it to Joe Biden,” Comer said.

But Comer said even if the payment was “a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.”

“Some immediate questions President Biden must answer for the American people: Does he have documents proving he lent such a large sum of money to his brother and what were the terms of such financial arrangement?” Comer asked. “Did he have similar financial arrangements with other family members that led them to make similar large payments to him?”

Comer also demanded Biden answer whether he knew that the same day he received the $200,000 check, “James Biden had just received a loan for the exact same amount from business dealings with a company that was in financial distress and failing.”

President Joe Biden Air Force One — U.S. President Joe Biden boards Air Force One for travel to Alabama from Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, U.S. March 5, 2023. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

DOJ ORDERED HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATORS TO ‘REMOVE ANY REFERENCE’ TO JOE BIDEN IN FARA PROBE WARRANT: HOUSE GOP

“The House Oversight Committee will soon announce our next investigative actions and continue to follow the money,” he said. “The bank records don’t end here. There is more to come.”

Comer’s findings come amid his months-long investigation. Comer, alongside House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., is leading the House impeachment inquiry against Biden.

So far, during his committee’s investigation, Comer said he has found that Biden family members, their business associates and their “related companies” received “significant payments from individuals and companies in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania.”

Comer said the House Oversight Committee has learned throughout its investigation that the Biden family and their business associates brought in more than $24 million between 2014 and 2019 by “selling Joe Biden as ‘the brand’ around the world.”

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Media Corruption on Full Display as NYT Tries To Justify Publishing Terrorist Propaganda as News

BY: JORDAN BOYD | OCTOBER 19, 2023

Corrupt corporate media outlets like The New York Times scrambled on Thursday to justify their role in disseminating terrorist talking points to the world without scrutiny.

“After Hospital Blast, Headlines Shift With Changing Claims,” one of the outlet’s Thursday headlines reads.

NYT acknowledges that it was one of the “many Western news organizations” that regurgitated the unsubstantiated lie (sourced directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip) that Israel killed hundreds by bombing a Gaza hospital.

Even though there was plenty of evidence absolving the Jewish state of the alleged war crime, the publication made no effort to issue retractions, print corrections, or even apologize for its role in the American press’s collective amplification of the propaganda.

Instead, NYT blames its feckless participation in the rumor mill — that incited violence against European and American embassies across the globe — on “fast-moving events” and “the difficulty of covering the war.”

NYT’s original coverage of the so-called blast, which was the result of a misfired jihadist rocket that landed in a parking lot near the hospital, featured a photo of a destroyed building that had nothing to do with the hospital in question.

When evidence mounted that jihadis, not Israel, were responsible for the destruction, both of which were far less than what original reports suggested, NYT covertly modified its original headline at least three times in an attempt to cover up its reckless role in the information war.

By Thursday, the feature image on the Times’ breaking news article pinning blame on Israel was replaced with a nondescript photo of a Middle Eastern man being transported into an intact medical facility on a gurney.

NYT further tried to absolve itself of accountability by noting that it sent out a news alert about a “misfired Palestinian rocket” once Israel’s internal investigations revealed it was not the perpetrator. That little news alert hours after NYT first blamed Israel did nothing, especially since dozens of corporate media outlets merely pivoted their coverage to indicate that Israel and terrorists were “trading blame” for the blast.

In a continued attempt to build its case, NYT quoted a former executive editor of The Associated Press, the same outlet that hired a terrorist sympathizer to be its Gaza correspondent and even shared office space with Hamas at one point. The AP veteran lamented that it’s not easy for media outlets to get “firsthand or verified accounts” of the war easily.

NYT used the ex-editor’s quote as a springboard to suggest that the Israel and Hamas war caused “vast amounts of misleading and false information online.”

The tone-deaf statement came mere sentences after the outlet feigned shock that, after dozens of headlines purported Israel was in the wrong, “much of the Arab world united in support of Palestinians.”

“It takes time to independently verify the claims from all sides,” NYT insisted, less than 24 hours after it failed to verify terrorists’ claims before publishing them as facts.

War propaganda is tough to sift through, but it takes deliberate stupidity to think that the word of the same guys who just raped and murdered 1,400 people and counting is worth splaying across breaking news banners and above-the-fold stories. Trusting the people who use women and children as human shields and stockpile weaponry and munitions near schools and hospitals was NYT’s first mistake, if you can call it that.

As Federalist Senior Editor David Harasanyi pointed out on Wednesday, the Times has a long track record of “spreading simil ar disinformation.”

“The paper’s editorial board and its op-ed pages are teeming with Hamas apologists — as are its news pages,” Harsanyi warned.

The NYT’s terrible track record is the product of unchecked corruption that plagues every corporate media outlet in the U.S.

Terrorists know outlets like NYT are corrupt. That is why they pitch their latest public relations campaigns to newsrooms with full confidence that their talking points will dominate front pages. A majority of Americans know the media is a corrupt threat to democracy because most outlets are run by partisans who want to divide the country.

The latest NYT article even proves that the media know they are corrupt. They simply aren’t sorry about it.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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James Biden’s Role In The Biden Access-For-Hire Operation Shows It Was A Family Affair

BY: ELLE PURNELL | OCTOBER 04, 2023

Author Elle Purnell profile

ELLE PURNELL

VISIT ON TWITTER@_ETREYNOLDS

As the Biden family’s corruption scandals tumble out into the open, corporate media badly want you to think the only story here is about Hunter Biden, a struggling drug addict who may have made some unwise decisions while grieving the loss of his brother. The more evidence — from whistleblower testimony to documentation — of President Joe Biden’s involvement arises, the more frantically they shout “no evidence!” and insist the elder Biden was only involved to the extent that he loves his son and talks with his wealthy foreign friends about the weather.

But setting aside the evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in the access-for-sale scheme — of which there is an abundance — there’s another central figure in the operation. The participation of James Biden, Hunter’s uncle and Joe’s brother, shows just how much of a family affair the scandal is, with Joe Biden, the family’s “only asset,” at the top.

So what exactly do we know about James Biden’s involvement?

Payments from CCP-Linked Energy Firm

Chinese energy company CEFC, a state-backed firm that is “effectively an arm of the Chinese Government,” paid the Biden family and their associates millions — presumably for “access” to Joe Biden — funneling the cash through Robinson Walker LLC, an account run by Biden family associate Rob Walker. After receiving a $3 million payout from CEFC, Robinson Walker LLC wired two $50,000 payments to an account belonging to James Biden on April 3, 2017, another $120,000 on April 20, $125,000 on April 24, and $15,000 on May 18, bringing James Biden’s total receipt from CEFC in that exchange to $360,000.

Later, James also received money via his consulting firm, Lion Hall Group. “Between Aug. 14, 2017 and Aug. 3, 2018, [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco sent 20 wires totaling $1,398,999 to the Lion Hall Group, a consulting firm that lists James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden, on the bank account,” Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley reported in 2020. The transfers started days after CEFC wired millions to Hudson West III, a joint venture between Hunter Biden and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, which began sending money to Owasco. After the transaction into the Lion Hall Group account was flagged “for potential criminal financial activity,” the bank “submitted the account for closure.”

In August 2017, around the time those payments started, James Biden was made a manager at Hudson West III, to be paid $65,000 a month.

Hudson West III also sent a total of $76,746 directly to Lion Hall Group in 2018.

On top of that, James, his wife Sara, and Hunter went on a $101,291 spending spree with credit cards opened by Hunter and Kevin Dong, who “served as ‘Chairman Ye[’s] CEFC emissary’ in the United States.” The three Bidens purchased “extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants.”

Two years later, The Washington Post confirmed Johnson and Grassley’s discoveries, admitting “the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle.”

On Thursday, House investigators subpoenaed bank records for both Hunter and James Biden after additional records revealed “the Bidens and their associates have received over $20 million in payments from foreign entities.”

Meetings and Communication with Hunter Biden’s Foreign Associates

Documents released by the House Ways and Means Committee last week show dozens of WhatsApp communications involving James Biden, including direct communications between Hunter and James, as well as group messages between Hunter, James, and associates like Tony Bobulinski, Rob Walker, and James Gilliar, and group messages between Hunter, James, Kevin Dong, and Mervyn Yan, whom IRS investigators described as one of the “U.S. managers for CEFC related to the Hudson West entities” along with Dong.

On Aug. 27, 2017, Hunter Biden discussed a luncheon with Kevin Dong, telling him that James would be bringing Joe Biden along for an appearance. “My uncle will be here with his BROTHER who would like to say hello to the Chairman,” Hunter wrote.

On Sept. 27, 2017, James Biden messaged Hunter, Yan, and Dong that a meeting between them was “set” at “The Carlyle Hotel Madison Ave at 76th.” “We will meet you in the room, I’m here … Hunter will be arriving shortly,” James wrote. The following day, he sent details for a meeting at a Ritz Carlton in Atlanta to the same group.

In an interview with IRS investigators, James Biden admitted to attending a luncheon in Romania with Hunter, Walker, and Gilliar — a luncheon which James “understood … to be a side deal.”

He also told the IRS he had met with Chairman Ye Jianming of CEFC “once,” along with “the Director” (presumably CEFC Director Bo Zhang), in New York City at Hunter Biden’s request. James even showed Ye’s wife around the city, taking her to private schools where she might enroll her children, he told investigators.

Furthermore, when Patrick Ho — whom Hunter had described as the “spy chief of China” — was arrested by the DOJ for “his role in a multi-year, multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe top officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for CEFC,” James Biden was his first call. (James claims to believe Ho was actually looking for Hunter.)

James’ Role in the ’10 Held By H for the Big Guy’ Email

In October 2020, the New York Post published a May 2017 email that was sent to Hunter Biden discussing “remuneration packages” that included a provision of “10 held by H for the big guy?” — whom involved parties have confirmed is Joe Biden.

The email described a “provisional agreement” splitting up “equity” in an unnamed venture, with numbers indicating percentages. Twenty percent each would go to people identified as H, RW, JG, and TB — abbreviations that correspond, the Post noted, to the names in the email thread: Hunter, Rob Walker, James Gilliar, and Tony Bobulinski. In addition to the “10 held by Hunter for the big guy,” another 10 would go to “Jim,” which almost certainly referred to James Biden.

James and Hunter Discuss Money, ‘Protecting Dad,’ and Getting ‘Help’ From Joe

Despite telling the IRS “that he recalled not being involved with anything beyond 2017,” James Biden sent a message to Hunter in February 2018 that he was “in a near panic” because “we got nothing in Feb! … Did K [likely Kevin Dong] cut us off in Feb? I thought you had said that $ were wired into your account , 82.5 was on its way. We can’t find any record that was sent. Did I miss something?”

James continued to frantically try to reach Hunter for answers, texting weeks later that “I also have something at stake as well.”

In March 2018, Hunter asked James to let him know in writing if James “no longer [wished] to be involved” and expressed regret that “you’ve been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting Dad”:

If YOU NO LONGER [W]ISH TO BE INVOLVED IN THIS VENTURE REGARDLESS of how tangentially I need it in writing. Because [as] you have pointed out over and over again- you cannot be my uncle or my protector and counsel if you don’t have all the information. … we can talk later but you’ve been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting Dad- and I know any of the BS money is mine ultimately- Well you’ve done your job and he f-cking but only is true to form but even more so why be so horribly angry over nothing g but being duped. You both ha[v]e said it’s bigger than me a
family …

“I am no dupe for anyone. If you see me as an agent for my brother, there is something seriously wrong,” James Biden responded later, before continuing to talk business.

Nearly a year later, after Hunter Biden sent James a message on Dec. 29, 2018, complaining that “I can’t pay alimony w/o Dad or tuitions or for food and gas,” James wrote back, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father alone!! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

A History of Financial Wheeling-and-Dealing

Unrelated to his role in international influence-peddling, James Biden is “under ongoing investigation by federal authorities in Western Pennsylvania over a series of hospital deals struck under Americore Health,” a scandal The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway reported on in 2020. Americore’s former CEO Grant White accused James Biden of fraud and racketeering, in documents prepared for a lawsuit that was eventually settled.

James also has a history of leveraging the Biden name to get private loans, and even left-wing outlet ProPublica admitted that “on occasion, as Jim pursued opportunities, Joe met with his potential clients or partners, at Jim’s request.”

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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EXCLUSIVE: Email Shows Weiss Violated DOJ Policy By Sending Letters To Cover For Garland

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | OCTOBER 03, 2023

Merrick Garland sitting at a desk with a binder

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

The Department of Justice directed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss not to respond to congressional inquiries, according to an email provided exclusively to The Federalist. That same email stressed that under DOJ policy, only its Office of Legislative Affairs, or OLA, can respond to requests from the legislative branch.

Yet Weiss would later sign and dispatch a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in response to an inquiry sent directly to Attorney General Merrick Garland. And in that letter, Weiss misleadingly claimed he had “been granted ultimate authority over” the Hunter Biden investigation. The DOJ’s disregard of its own policy provides further proof that both Garland and Weiss intended to obfuscate the reality that Weiss never held the reins of the Hunter Biden investigation.

On May 9, 2022, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wrote to Delaware U.S. Attorney Weiss inquiring about several aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation. After the senators sent a follow-up email to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office requesting a response by week’s end, Delaware’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson asked the DOJ about protocol and then updated Weiss, stating in an email:

Consistent with my conversation with [redacted] last night, we are supposed to forward this and any other correspondence to OLA. Per DOJ policy, only OLA can respond on behalf of the Department to a request from the legislative branch.

On June 9, 2022, the OLA, as provided for in the DOJ’s policy, responded to Grassley and Johnson’s letter. The following month, Grassley and Johnson dispatched a second letter to Weiss, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In an email reviewed by The Federalist, the Office of Legislative Affairs told Weiss’s office it would “take the lead on drafting a response” to Grassley and Johnson’s letter.

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project obtained these emails and the most recent one revealing the DOJ’s policy that only the “OLA can respond on behalf of the Department to a request from the legislative branch,” after its Director Mike Howell filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the DOJ. The email to Weiss summarizing the DOJ policy contained in this latest batch of court-ordered disclosures proves huge given the sequence of events that occurred earlier this year.

On May 25, 2023, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland questioning him about the removal of the IRS whistleblowers from the Hunter Biden investigation. Although Jordan directed his inquiry to Garland, on June 7, 2023, Weiss dispatched a letter to the House Judiciary chair, noting in his opening: “Your May 25th letter to Attorney General Garland was forwarded to me, with a request that I respond on behalf of the Department.”

Weiss then stated, as Garland had previously indicated, that he (Weiss) had “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution…”

That Weiss would respond on behalf of Garland raised eyebrows at the time. Jordan noted “the unusual nature of your response on behalf of Attorney General Garland,” and asked for information concerning the names of individuals who drafted or assisted in drafting the June 7 letter, as well as details concerning the drafting and dispatching of the letter.

But now we know it wasn’t merely “unusual” for Weiss to respond on behalf of the attorney general — it was in apparent violation of the DOJ policy that only the OLA would respond to legislative inquiries. And it was that same policy that prevented Weiss from responding to the earlier questions posed by Johnson and Grassley directly to the Delaware U.S. attorney.

The content of Weiss’s June 7 letter provides a pretty clear answer for why the DOJ ignored its own policy and enlisted the Delaware U.S. attorney to respond to Jordan: Garland needed Weiss to verify what the attorney general had previously told Grassley during a March 1, 2023, hearing. During that hearing, Garland expressly stated that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.” Weiss’s assertion in the June 7 letter that he had “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution…” seemingly confirmed Garland’s testimony.

Of course, as informed Americans now know, the release of the IRS whistleblower’s testimony — that Weiss claimed he was not the ultimate decisionmaker — forced the Delaware U.S. attorney to pen a follow-up letter to Jordan. In that June 30, 2023 sequel, Weiss, while purporting to stand by what he had previously written, contradicted his earlier representation that he had “been granted ultimate authority.” Instead, Weiss explained he had “been assured” that “if necessary,” he would be granted authority to charge Hunter Biden in any other district.

Having ultimate authority and being assured that you would be given ultimate authority if necessary are clearly two different things, yet Weiss gave cover for Garland in his June letters. Now we have further proof that the DOJ was behind those letters — otherwise, Weiss would be in violation of the department’s policy.

The DOJ did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment on Weiss’s apparent violation of the department’s policy.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Leaked Messages From UAW Official Reveal a Big Cause of Unions’ Decline

By: Rachel Greszler / September 28, 2023

A local UAW president speaks on a picket line

A leaked UAW official’s message reveals the union’s strategy for wounding and weakening U.S. companies—the very companies its members rely on for their paychecks. Pictured: Jesse Ramirez, president of the United Auto Workers Local 230, speaks on a picket line during a strike outside a Stellantis distribution center in Ontario, California, on Sept. 26, 2023. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon, AFP/Getty Images)

“If we can keep them wounded for months, they don’t know what to do … this is recurring reputations damage and operation chaos.”

That leaked statement, first reported by The Detroit News, is not a military tactic nor a hostile takeover plan. Rather, it’s a strategy for wounding and weakening American companies, with collateral damage that includes the American economy. And it’s the strategy—expressed in a private group chat on X (formerly Twitter) by United Auto Workers communications director Jonah Furman—of an organization whose foremost mission statement is to “improve and protect” the compensation and work environment of UAW members.

The utter disconnect between the UAW’s strategy of wounding, damaging, and inflicting chaos on the companies upon which its members’ jobs and compensation prospects depend is astounding. Big Labor’s increasingly distorted understanding of unions’ role in America—and of free enterprise and democracy—are a cause of their decline. At their heyday, unions represented about 35% of workers in the U.S. Today, they represent 10% of workers, and only 6% of private sector workers.

Workers realize that the viability of their jobs and the compensation they receive are interwoven with the success of their employers. In science, this is referred to as a symbiotic relationship: two groups working together toward a common goal.

(There will, of course, always be some bad employers who take advantage of workers or deny them a voice in the workplace. And when that happens, the best remedies are for workers to either seek better job opportunities or for those who want to band together collectively to do so.)

But despite surveys that show that teamwork and good relationships with managers are primary components of employees’ engagement and satisfaction, Big Labor seems intent on convincing workers that they must be at war with their employers.

When critiquing the suggestion that unions would do better to abandon their focus on politics and adversarial tactics, two Teamsters union attorneys essentially admitted that creating conflict is how they survive, saying, “It is no secret that such a ‘non-adversarial’ approach would gravely weaken organized labor.” That’s where unions have gone astray, thinking that “it’s us or them.”

Even in 1950, when the only cars Americans could buy were those made by the Big Three automakers, that flawed interpretation of labor unions’ roles was short-sighted. Yes, the UAW was able to drive up compensation above market wages to the benefit of its members, but the result of higher car prices meant fewer families could afford cars and, thus, fewer cars were produced and fewer workers were needed to produce them.

Now, in the globally competitive 21st century, unions inflicting damage and chaos are at odds with unions’ short- and long-term goals. How can companies whose reputations have been crippled and who’ve suffered financial losses somehow pay workers 40% more for 20% less work? That’s like eliminating 11 players from the Arizona Cardinals roster, not allowing players to access to their practice stadium, and expecting them to win the Super Bowl.

Understandably, the Big Three automakers are frustrated.

A Stellantis spokesperson said that the reported comments “are incredibly disturbing and strongly indicate that the UAW’s approach to these talks is not in the best interest of the workforce. We are disappointed that it appears our employees are being used as pawns in an agenda that is not intended to meet their needs.”

GM said that it’s “now clear that the UAW leadership has always intended to cause months-long disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities.” GM also said this “calls into question who is actually in charge of UAW strategy and shows a callous disregard for the seriousness of what is at stake. UAW leadership needs to put the interests of its members and the country over their own ideological and personal agendas.”

And a Ford spokesperson said, “It’s disappointing, to say the least, given what is at stake for our employees, the companies, and this region,” and noted, “For our part, we will continue to work day and night, bargaining in good faith, to reach an agreement that rewards our workforce and allows Ford to invest in a vibrant and growing future.”

If union officials actually want to protect UAW jobs and improve workers’ compensation, then they have to want the Big Three American automakers to succeed and to grow. Considering that U.S. auto production is less than half of what it was two decades ago, success is likely going to require that the UAW work alongside—rather than against—U.S. automakers to help them become more competitive.

To the extent that involves lobbying policymakers, the focus should be on getting the government out of the business of picking winners and losers by its subsidizing of more expensive electric vehicles that require 40% less labor while also seeking to ban gas-powered vehicles that Americans still overwhelmingly desire.

And if unions across America want to increase their membership, they should appeal directly to workers by offering things they value instead of using their dues to get politicians to go against their interests by doing things like attacking secret ballot union elections, restricting employers’ ability to share important information with workers before union elections, and establishing a pathway to force an employer to bargain with a union even if workers don’t want to be represented by it.

COMMENTARY BY

Rachel Greszler

Rachel Greszler is a research fellow in economics, budget, and entitlements in the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, of the Institute for Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research.

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What Congress Should Ask The FBI Agent Involved In Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Elvis Chan, the lead FBI agent involved in mass social media censorship, to appear for a September 21, 2023 deposition. Last week’s subpoena followed Chan’s failure to appear for a scheduled voluntary interview to face questioning about the federal government’s role in burying the Hunter Biden laptop story in the month before the 2020 election.

While that scandal is much bigger than Chan, he is first in line to untangling the truth about how the government interfered in the 2020 election by running an info op to convince voters the Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Given Chan’s testimony in the civil lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana and several individual plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, as well as since-uncovered documents from Facebook, the importance of questioning Chan cannot be overstated.

What Chan Said

In Missouri v. Biden, the plaintiffs sued the Biden administration and numerous agencies and government officials, including the FBI and Chan. They alleged the federal defendants violated the First Amendment by, among other things, coercing and significantly encouraging “social-media platforms to censor disfavored [speech].” After filing suit, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and then obtained an order allowing for expedited discovery.

Since then, the district court has entered a preliminary injunction barring several federal agencies from coercing tech giants into censoring speech. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the injunction but upheld many of the lower court’s legal conclusions. The Supreme Court is currently considering the Biden administration’s motion for a stay of the injunction.

What matters to the House’s subpoena of Chan is what the expedited discovery in Missouri v. Biden uncovered. It included the plaintiffs’ deposition of Chan. In his deposition, Chan testified he was one of the “primary” FBI agents who communicated with social media companies about so-called “disinformation.”

Specifically, “During the 2020 election cycle, Chan coordinated meetings between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and at least seven of the major tech giants, including Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, Yahoo!/Verizon Media, and Microsoft/LinkedIn,” with meetings occurring weekly as the election neared.

In questioning Chan, the plaintiffs’ attorneys pushed him on several points related to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, forcing Chan to acknowledge the FBI regularly raised the possibility of “hack and dump” operations with senior officials at the various tech companies. Those discussions included the FBI warning of a potential hack-and-leak occurring in advance of the 2020 election, much like the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack and WikiLeaks release of internal emails.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs also quizzed Chan on the identity of the government officials who discussed “hack-and-dump Russian operations” with the tech giants. Chan identified Section Chief Laura Dehmlow, along with four FBI officials who attended Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) meetings. Chan named Brady Olson, William Cone, Judy Chock, and Luke Giannini as some of the individuals who had discussed the supposedly impending hack-and-leak operation. Chan claimed not to recall, though, whether anyone within the FBI suggested he raise the possibility of Russian hack-and-dump operations with the tech giants.

That Chan and others warned big tech of the potential for a pre-election hack-and-dump operation is huge. As Chan also testified, the government had no specific intelligence suggesting there were plans for such an operation. Nonetheless, the warnings prompted Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story following The New York Post’s story breaking.

FBI Played Social Media Companies

While the government had no reason to believe a hack-and-leak operation was in the works, several of the FBI agents involved in warning the social media companies knew Hunter Biden had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair store and that the material on the laptop was genuine. That includes Chan, Demhlow, and at least three other individuals connected to the FBI’s FITF.

Chan did not reveal these details in his Missouri v. Biden deposition. Instead, Dehmlow informed the House of these facts during her deposition. Among other things, Dehmlow testified that soon after The New York Post broke the Biden laptop story, somebody from Twitter asked the FBI whether the laptop was real. An analyst in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division confirmed, “Yes, it was.’” An FBI lawyer on the call then immediately interjected, “No further comment.”

Dehmlow further testified that several individuals on the FBI’s FITF knew the laptop was real, including then-FITF Section Chief Brad Benavides and the unit chief. Dehmlow then confirmed that after the call with Twitter, the FBI had internal deliberations about the laptop and that later when Facebook asked about the authenticity of the laptop, Dehmlow responded, “No comment.”

During his deposition in the Missouri v. Biden case, Chan confirmed Dehmlow’s representation that in response to the Facebook inquiry, she had replied, “No comment.” Chan, however, then claimed he was not aware of any other inquiries from social media companies concerning the Hunter Biden laptop.

Was Chan Telling the Truth?

Last month, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan revealed his committee had obtained internal documents from Facebook that call into question Chan’s testimony. “I spoke with SSA Elvis Chan (FBI San Francisco) on 15 October 2020, as a follow up to the call with the Foreign Influence Task Force on 14 October,” one Facebook document read, contradicting Chan’s claim that he knew of no other inquiries from social media companies.

“I asked SSA Chan whether there was any update or change. . . as to whether the FBI saw any evidence suggesting foreign sponsorship or direction of the leak of information related to Hunter Biden as published in the New York Post story,” Facebook’s memorandum continued. According to Facebook’s internal document, Chan stated “that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI and that there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection or direction of the leak.” Chan further assured Facebook “that the FBI would be in contact if any additional information on this was developed through further investigation.”

Chan’s claim to Facebook that he was “up to speed on the current state of the matter” also seemingly conflicted with Chan’s testimony in the Missouri v. Biden case that he had “no internal knowledge of that investigation,” and “that it was brought up after the news story had broke.” It is also difficult to reconcile Chan’s claim — that the laptop was only brought up after the Post ran the story — with Dehmlow’s testimony that several individuals on the FITF knew the laptop was real, including an FBI analyst.

What the House Should Ask Chan

The House should explore these inconsistencies with Chan and further quiz him on both Dehmlow’s testimony and the Facebook documents. Chan should also be quizzed on with whom else he discussed the potential for a hack-and-leak operation.

We know from Chan’s Missouri v. Biden deposition that he had served as the supervisor for the Russia-adept cyber squad that investigated the DNC server hack before the San Francisco office handed it to FBI headquarters. Chan testified in that deposition that he would have discussed national security cyber-investigations involving Russian matters with Sean Newell, a deputy chief at the DOJ National Security Division who had also worked on the DNC hack. Chan should be pushed further on whether Newell or anyone else who worked on the DNC hack had raised the issue of a 2020 hack-and-release repeat.

If so, the question then becomes whether they knew of the existence and authenticity of the Biden laptop. That question proves significant because it appears the hack-and-leak narrative was peddled to the social media companies to prime them to censor the laptop story. So, knowing who knew the laptop story was accurate but still fed the hack-and-leak hysteria will point to the players responsible for interfering in the 2020 election by silencing the truthful reporting of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Chan may refuse to testify, however, even pursuant to a subpoena, or the Department of Justice may direct Chan not to submit to congressional questioning, forcing Republicans to enforce the subpoena in court. We’ll know tomorrow if either scenario plays out or if Chan comes clean with what he knows.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Here’s How the House Should Grill Attorney General Merrick Garland

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, marking his first congressional appearance since an IRS whistleblower called into question his claim that U.S. Attorney David Weiss had ultimate charging authority over Hunter Biden. While Garland has much to answer for beyond the botched Hunter Biden investigation — such as the targeting of pro-life protesters — the Judiciary Committee should focus on getting answers to these questions.

The committee should start with a series of direct questions to the AG focused on aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation before confronting Garland with inconsistencies between his prior statements and Weiss and the whistleblowers’ claims. The committee and the country need to understand how the attorney general directed the handling of the Hunter Biden investigation.

Specifically, what if anything did Garland say to Weiss about how the investigation should be run?
Did Garland directly communicate with Weiss?
When and how often?
Did the AG instead assign an assistant attorney general to interact with Weiss?
Who?
When?
What specific authority or concerns did Weiss discuss with Garland or his assistant attorneys general?

Then the $5 million question:

Did Weiss ever discuss special attorney or special counsel status and, if so, when?
A follow-up $5 million question seems exceedingly appropriate in this situation: When did Garland first provide Weiss with authority to prosecute Hunter Biden in other districts?

Of course, we know the answer to that is when Garland named Weiss special counsel, but having the attorney general confirm that reality in sworn testimony provides a nice segue to drill Garland on his prior inconsistent statements:

General Garland, you told Sen. Chuck Grassley on March 1, 2023, quote ‘the U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary,’ but that’s not true, is it?

Weiss didn’t have ‘full authority’ until after you named him special counsel, correct?

Beyond Weiss’s charging authority, it’s important to understand the investigative authority the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office held. Was Main Justice updated on the investigation?
Did Main Justice provide oversight to the investigation?
How much?
Did the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office need to seek approval from Main Justice on anything?
If so, on what?
And from whom?
Who decided that Main Justice would provide oversight for the Hunter Biden investigation?
Was Garland informed of Main Justice’s involvement in the investigation?
When?
And if Main Justice was involved in the oversight, didn’t that interfere in the supposed independence of Weiss?

The House Judiciary Committee should also ask Garland about what, if anything, he told other Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Did Garland discuss the Hunter Biden investigation with Matthew Graves, the D.C. U.S. attorney, and Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California?
Did he direct those offices to partner with Weiss?
Did Garland know Weiss had wanted to partner with those offices?
Did he know those offices had denied Weiss’s request for them to bring charges against Hunter?
When and how did Garland first learn of Weiss’s interest in bringing charges in California and/or D.C.?

Likewise, Garland should be quizzed on his communications with FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the role FBI headquarters should (or shouldn’t) have in the Hunter Biden investigation.

Did Garland and Wray discuss the Hunter Biden investigation?
Did Garland allow Wray to decide the propriety of involving FBI headquarters in the investigation?
Did Garland know Wray had permitted FBI headquarters to participate in the investigation and/or decision-making?

The House committee should connect this line of questioning with Garland’s prior testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in April 2022. Then, the attorney general, in response to a question by Sen. Bill Hagerty, claimed Weiss was “supervising the investigation” and was in “charge of that investigation.”

But if that’s true, why did Weiss’s office have to run things by Main Justice and FBI headquarters?
And for that matter, why did Main Justice and/or FBI headquarters seek the removal of the FBI whistleblowers?

Beyond uncovering the details of the investigation, the House Judiciary Committee should clarify three aspects of the continuing investigation.

First, Garland should be quizzed on the breadth or limits of Weiss’s authority as “special counsel.”
How can Weiss possibly serve in that role and continue as U.S. attorney?
Why did Garland not appoint an outsider, as the regulations require?
What resources has Weiss requested?
Is Weiss staffing up an entirely separate office?
And is that office investigating individuals beyond Hunter Biden?

Second, Garland should be questioned about Department of Justice policies and whether he maintained the policy former Attorney General William Barr put in place about the launching of an investigation against a presidential candidate. Under current regulations, would Special Counsel Weiss’s team need to obtain permission from Garland before running down leads that might implicate Joe Biden in criminal activity?
If not, when, if ever, would they need Garland’s permission to take investigative steps against Joe Biden?
Would Garland tell the country when such authority had been granted?
Has Weiss’s team been given authority to investigate President Biden?

Third, the Judiciary Committee should obtain assurances from Garland that the DOJ will cooperate in the House’s impeachment inquiry and not withhold information or evidence. Garland is unlikely to agree to such a request, however, hedging with claims of protecting an ongoing investigation. Ah, but that would mean there is an ongoing investigation into the president!

But even if there were such an investigation, that does not limit the House’s equal authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. That inquiry, however, can only answer half the scandal, concerning the current president’s potential criminal conduct while vice president. The second half of the scandal concerns the DOJ and FBI’s cover-up.

The House’s questioning of Garland on Wednesday should start to unravel portions of the protect-Biden plot, but if the attorney general continues to stonewall the probe, as he has done in the past, Garland should expect to face his own impeachment inquiry.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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‘Highly Credible’ Whistleblower: CIA Offered Six Analysts Hush Money To Shut Them Up About Covid Lab Leak

BY: JORDAN BOYD | SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

The CIA offered hush money to six CIA analysts who concluded that Covid-19 originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, a “multi-decade, senior-level, current” CIA officer alleged to Congress.

The news of the suspected payoff broke in two letters penned by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to CIA Director William J. Burns and former CIA Chief Operating Officer Andrew Makridis.

In the letter to Burns, SSCP Chairman Brad Wenstrup and HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner detail the testimony of “a highly credible senior-level CIA officer” who alleged the CIA used a “significant monetary incentive” in an attempt to discredit Covid lab leak evidence analyzed by its officers. The unnamed whistleblower told the committees that six of the seven CIA analysts charged with uncovering the origins of Covid “believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low-confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.”

The chairmen noted that these Covid Discovery Team members were “multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise” who were well-qualified to give that kind of assessment. Yet, the CIA, unsatisfied with its analysts’ conclusion, allegedly dangled “financial incentives” in front of the officers in an attempt to “change their conclusion in favor of a zoonotic origin.”

“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis,” the committee chairmen noted.

The whistleblower indicated that a financially motivated flip-flop may have occurred, which led to “the eventual public determination of uncertainty.”

The CIA is one of two intelligence agencies that still claims it is “unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” according to a 10-page declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published in June.

The committee chairmen demanded the CIA hand over all documents, communication, and financial transaction information involving the agency’s virus origins investigation team by Sept. 26. They also requested that the CIA give up the Covid discovery team’s communications with other government agencies.

“Any improper influence exerted by the CIA will be investigated to ensure accountability from the intelligence community,” the committee chairmen warned.

In their letter to Makridis, the Republican chairs asked for a voluntary transcribed interview that would grant them an understanding of the “central role” he played in creating the Covid discovery team and failing to determine the virus’ origins.

The CIA’s wide-sweeping rejection of lab leak evidence is unusual given the growing number of government agencies, like the FBI and U.S. Department of Energy, finally admitting Covid likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.

The HPSCI determined in 2022 that intelligence agencies, including the CIA, “downplayed the possibility that SARS-CoV2 was connected to China’s bioweapons program based in part on input from outside experts.” Those same agencies, along with bureaucrats, corporate media, and Big Tech, scrambled in 2020 to censor suggestions that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab specializing in gain-of-function coronavirus research.

Documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in June later linked U.S. taxpayer dollars to the research conducted by the WIV lab staff, who were the first to fall ill at the onset of the pandemic.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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House Launches Formal Impeachment Probe Into President Joe Biden’s Corrupt Family Influence-Peddling Business

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

4 MIN READ

McCarthy announces launch of impeachment

‘These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,’ McCarthy said.

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SHAWN FLEETWOOD

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday that the House of Representatives will be opening a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden to further investigate growing evidence and allegations surrounding the president’s family business dealings.

“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy said during Tuesday’s press conference. “That’s why today, I’m directing our House committee[s] to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”

In his remarks, McCarthy highlighted how House Republicans’ investigations into the Bidens’ business ventures revealed that Joe Biden lied when he claimed he had no knowledge of his son Hunter’s business deals. More specifically, McCarthy alluded to “eyewitnesses” to those dealings such as Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat. According to intelligence obtained by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, Zlochevsky has claimed to possess 17 audio recordings of conversations with the Bidens, two of which purportedly involve then-Vice President Joe Biden.

WhatsApp messages included in testimony by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley further indicate Joe’s involvement in Hunter’s business affairs. In one message allegedly sent to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao, Hunter threatened to use his father’s political power to extort unfulfilled “promises and assurances” from Zhao.

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” the message reads. Hunter also purportedly indicated his “ability” to “forever hold a grudge that you will regret” with help from “the man sitting next to me and every person he knows” if Zhao did not meet his demands.

Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer also testified to at least 24 times Joe spoke with his son’s business associates. Curiously, since these revelations became public, the White House has shifted its narrative from claiming Joe never “discussed” business dealings with Hunter to now claiming the president “has never been in business with his son.”

During Tuesday’s press conference, McCarthy also pointed to Joe’s use of his office to “coordinate with Hunter Biden’s business partners about Hunter’s role in Burisma.” An FD-1023 obtained by Grassley’s office containing intel from a “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) offers further evidence the then-vice president was instrumental in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma. It also contains allegations that the Bidens were paid $10 million for Joe’s role in firing the prosecutor.

McCarthy also highlighted House Republicans’ discovery earlier this year that the Bidens were paid millions of dollars by foreign companies during and after Joe’s time in the Obama White House. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd previously reported, a review of bank records conducted by the House Oversight Committee “confirmed that at least nine Biden family members, including some children, received millions in diluted payments from foreign companies during and shortly after Joe’s vice presidency.”

McCarthy further emphasized the role the Department of Justice has played in protecting the Bidens from both criminal probes and congressional inquiries. According to testimony by IRS whistleblowers, federal prosecutors concealed critical documents from tax investigators probing Hunter Biden while officials from the Justice Department sought to undermine the IRS’s investigative efforts. One of the whistleblowers had previously alleged in May that his investigative team had been removed from the Biden tax probe at the behest of the DOJ.

In addition to its alleged interference in the IRS tax probe, the DOJ also sought to give legal immunity to Hunter regarding charges filed against him earlier this year. A Delaware judge ultimately exposed the agreement for what it was — a sweetheart deal designed to protect Hunter and, by default, Joe from future prosecution.

“The American people deserve to know that the public offices are not for sale, and that the federal government is not being used to cover up the actions of a politically associated family,” McCarthy said.

The impeachment inquiry will be led by Republican Reps. James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Jason Smith, according to McCarthy.

I want to go on the record in opposition to any impeachment proceedings. Since the President Clinton disaster, each Congress has had payback on their collective brains.

STOP IT! We have far more important issues to deal with. We have to stop this cycle of payback, or every administration will have to deal with this foolishness.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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EXCLUSIVE: FOIA Turns Up Zilch on The ‘Full Authority’ Garland Claims He Gave Weiss Over Hunter Biden

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 07, 2023

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal a glaring gap in the documentation maintained by the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office: There is nothing memorializing the authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claims he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss for the Hunter Biden investigation.

For more than a year, Garland represented to Congress that Weiss held ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation — which the eventual appointment of Weiss as special counsel contradicted. But now there is more evidence — or rather a lack of evidence — indicating the claimed authority was always a charade.

The Friday before the long holiday weekend, the DOJ provided the Heritage Foundation with the second batch of documents it was ordered by a federal court to produce in response to Heritage’s FOIA lawsuit. This installment concluded the DOJ’s production of the non-exempt documents in Weiss’s custody which concerned his authority for investigating Hunter Biden. But none of the documents produced addressed Weiss’s authority or any authority promised by Garland.

Mike Howell, the director of the Heritage Oversight Project and a co-plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ, stressed the significance of this omission to The Federalist.

“The DOJ lives on paper.” Anything as important as granting Weiss ultimate authority over an investigation or promising to give him authority to bring charges in another venue, if necessary, “would have been written down,” Howell explained. To Howell, this last batch of documents constitutes an admission by Garland that “there was nothing written down at the DOJ and sent to Weiss, indicating Weiss had any of the authority that Garland claimed he did.”

“We’re beginning to understand why Biden’s DOJ is throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us to fight the release of these records in federal court, all paid for by the taxpayers of course,” Howell told The Federalist.

While the DOJ withheld some documents from the production, claiming various exemptions from FOIA, it is difficult to fathom what FOIA exemption would permit the DOJ to withhold a communication granting Weiss the authority Garland publicly discussed on multiple occasions. When asked why Garland had not memorialized his supposed grant of ultimate authority to Weiss, the DOJ did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiry.

The lack of any materials documenting such authority raises more questions about the statements both Garland and Weiss made to Congress. As far back as April 26, 2022, the attorney general told Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty that the “Hunter Biden’s investigation … is being run by and supervised by the United States attorney for the District of Delaware,” and that Weiss “is in charge of that investigation.”

Then on March 1, 2023, Garland unequivocally testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in response to questioning by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.”

Garland maintained that position even after IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified that during an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, “Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.” Specifically, after news broke of the whistleblower’s testimony, Garland said during a press conference that Weiss was assured he could “make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

Weiss would later write to Congress to confirm Garland’s position, stating:

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

After the transcript of Shapley’s testimony was released, however, Weiss would walk back his claims by clarifying that what he meant was that Garland had promised him that he would be granted ultimate authority to make charging decisions — not quite the same thing as having that ultimate authority.

Either way, one would presume that if Garland had granted Weiss full authority over the Hunter Biden investigation and promised to authorize him to file charges in other venues, there’d be some documentation to back up the claim. But there was none in the FOIA production.

Of course, after the sweetheart plea deal — footsied out between one of Weiss’s top assistant U.S. attorneys, Lesley Wolf, and Hunter’s attorneys — imploded, Garland named Weiss special counsel. So, the federal prosecutor now has the requisite authority to charge the president’s son in whatever district he wants.

But that belated appointment isn’t a grant of absolution for misleading Congress, which is precisely what appears to have happened. And the documents that weren’t suggest as much.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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EXCLUSIVE: FBI Lies About ‘Highly Credible’ Source Claims Were Leaked to NYT And Spoon-fed to Weiss

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | SEPTEMBER 05, 2023

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Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.”

However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.

Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

The Emails

The never-before-seen emails provided late last week by the Department of Justice to the Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project director, Mike Howell, in response to a court order, included an email thread revealing how the Times story landed in Weiss’s lap.

“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.

The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.

Given the sweetheart deal Weiss’s top Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf later tried to gift to Hunter Biden, this latest revelation raises the question of whether (and, if so, when) Weiss’s staff informed him of the CHS’s reporting that Burisma paid $5 million each in bribes to both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

These questions are now more important than ever because the just-released emails show Weiss’s staff sharing with him The New York Times’ false reporting that portrayed evidence coming from the Pittsburgh FBI office as sourced solely to Rudy Giuliani. But that’s not true — not by a long shot. At a minimum, Wolf and others in the Delaware office knew that — but Weiss might not have.

The Background

As The Federalist previously reported, contrary to the Times’ reporting, in the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr directed the Western District of Pennsylvania to serve as an intake office for any evidence related to Ukraine. U.S. Attorney Scott Brady was then charged with screening the evidence to ensure disinformation did not reach the other offices handling investigations related to Hunter Biden or Ukraine.

While some of the evidence Brady’s team screened came from Giuliani, agents also independently discovered a separate line of intel originating from a “highly credible” CHS who had worked under the Obama administration. Agents interviewed that CHS in late June 2020 and memorialized the CHS’s reporting in an FD-1023 form.

Americans would later learn the contents of that FD-1023 when a whistleblower informed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office of its existence. Then, after FBI Director Christopher Wray dragged his feet in responding to congressional inquiries, Grassley released a minimally redacted copy of the unclassified document to the public.

The unredacted portions of the FD-1023 confirmed Giuliani had nothing to do with the sourcing of the intel. On the contrary, according to the form, the longtime CHS had personally conversed with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and the company’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii.

The FD-1023 memorialized explosive reporting from the CHS, including the following:

Pojarskii claimed Hunter Biden was paid to serve on Burisma’s board of directors to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma, but Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had been coerced to pay bribes of $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Zlochevsky expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory, but then told the CHS that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had 17 recordings of the Bidens but had never paid Joe Biden directly.
The “Big Guy” moniker was used to refer to Joe Biden — a significant detail because the CHS interview predated the public release of material contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop, including information that established the “Big Guy” was one of Joe Biden’s nicknames.
Burisma discussed purchasing a U.S.-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million.

When news first broke of the FD-1023 and its damning indictment of the Bidens, Democrats and their paramours in the press tried to bury the story with a one-two punch. First, they framed the evidence as originating from Giuliani and part of a foreign disinformation operation. Grassley’s release of the actual FD-1023 destroyed that narrative.

Second, they falsely represented to the American public that Brady had already investigated the FD-1023 and closed the investigation as meritless. But as The Federalist first reported, that claim was blatantly false.

“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist after Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin falsely claimed that “the former attorney general and his ‘handpicked prosecutor’ had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe.”

“On the contrary,” Barr told The Federalist, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

BY: JORDAN BOYD | AUGUST 30, 2023

Tucker Carlson on “The Adam Carolla Show”

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JORDAN BOYD

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Tucker Carlson admitted on Wednesday that he’s “never been this worried about anything” as much as he is about where the country is headed under a deep state that repeatedly targets its political enemies and “rigs” elections instead of acting on voters’ desires.

Carlson made his anxieties about the state of our constitutional republic known in an interview with Adam Carolla, who asked the former Fox News host to weigh in on the coordinated effort by intelligence agencies and political elites to keep former President Donald Trump from taking back the White House. To kick off the question, Carolla showed Carlson a clip of now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in January 2017 that it was “dumb” for Trump to “take on the intelligence community” because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

“From what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them. And we need the intelligence community,” Schumer said.

Carlson said that every time he hears Schumer’s words in that clip, “it renders me speechless.”

“That’s the end of democracy,” Carlson remarked. “I don’t know how you can in the same sentence say ‘I’m for democracy’ and then say ‘actually, our country is run by a shadowy intel agency no one elected and no one has oversight over.”

Tucker Carlson on the 2020 Election & Chuck Schumer's Intelligence Agency Threats

"That was a rigged election and I hope that we never have another one…The CIA is a totally illegitimate criminal organization unless it is following precisely the orders of the elected… pic.twitter.com/qu0etLzZzl
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) August 30, 2023

Carlson said there’s no such thing as a “democratic republic if the CIA can punish you as an elected president for doing things that they don’t like.” Outside of the authority of the president, Carlson continued, intelligence agencies like the CIA “have no constitutional legitimacy.”

“Our system is super simple. The people who are elected by the public have all the power. They have employees to whom they delegate that power to get things done, but those employees have no independent power at all and no independent legitimacy,” he said. “The CIA is a totally illegitimate criminal organization unless it is following precisely the orders of the elected president. Democrat or Republican, doesn’t matter.”

Carlson said that Schumer, in the 2017 interview, is “describing a crime.”

“The people committing that crime in the CIA should be in prison for long terms. That’s the great threat to democracy right there. And the fact that no one on that set could even see that tells you how deeply corrupted they are. That’s terrifying and it’s true,” Carlson added.

Unless the rampant corruption and coverups by agencies like the CIA are addressed and punished, Carlson said the U.S. will continue to “decline” and see its “democratic institutions weaken.”

Carolla asked if Carlson believes these agencies, which participated in the Russia collusion hoax and subdued information about Biden family corruption, will let Trump win re-election.

“No of course [not],” Carlson replied, listing off Demcorat’s failed attempts to protest, impeach, and now indict Trump out of the 2024 race.

“We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously, and no one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion,” Carlson said. “They have decided, permanent Washington, both parties, have decided that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have it.”

TUCKER ON TRUMP: “We are speeding towards assassination obviously. — They have decided that there's something about Trump that's so threatening to them, they just can't have it”

pic.twitter.com/g0tVLXJRGb
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 30, 2023

Earlier in the interview, Carlson identified Trump as “a threat to the whole ecosystem of bullsh-t that makes Washington the richest city in the world and its suburbs, the richest suburbs.”

Democrats’ latest indictment scheme, Carlson said, is an attempt to send Trump “to prison for life for complaining about the last election,” which he is well within his First Amendment rights to do.

Carlson asked Trump during their sitdown earlier this month whether he feared for his life.

“Indictment is not working, your poll numbers go up,” Carlson said. “What’s next? Trying to put you in prison for the rest of your life, that’s not working. Don’t they have to kill you now?”

“I think the people of our country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are. But they get it, they really get it,” Trump replied.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democracy Dies In Darkness

A.F. BRANCO | on August 29, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-democracy-dies-in-darkness-3/

D.C. Corruption — Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2023

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Down in the Dumps

A.F. BRANCO | on August 27, 2023| https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-angry-birds/

Governor Walz of Minnesota is blaming Trump and the GOP for Biden and the Dem’s bad poll numbers.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Angry Birds

A.F. BRANCO | on August 28, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-angry-birds/

The MS Media ignores that Bidenomics is hurting the poor and middle class with inflation, gas prices, and food costs.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Operation Deflection

A.F. BRANCO | on August 22, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-operation-deflection/

The more that is revealed on the Biden scandals, the more indictments they throw at Trump.

Biden Deflection — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – GOP Line Up

A.F. BRANCO | on August 23, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-gop-line-up/

Fox will host the GOP Debate but the main attraction won’t be there, Trump to be interviewed by Tucker at that time.

FOX News GOP Debate — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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DEVON ARCHER CONFIRMS JOE BIDEN ‘LIED’ ABOUT KNOWLEDGE OF HUNTER’S BUSINESS DEALINGS, COMER SAYS

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As White House Pushed Facebook to Censor COVID-19 Vaccine Content, Facebook Employees Leaked to White House

By: Katrina Trinko / @KatrinaTrinko / August 09, 2023

white house 2018 — Facebook faced heavy pressure from the Biden White House to censor content on the COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo: Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: Facebook staffers were leaking to the White House as the tech company and the Biden administration battled over COVID-19 vaccine content and whether Facebook should be censoring it, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.

In an April 18, 2021, email that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, produced to the House Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government, executive Nick Clegg told Facebook colleagues that Andy Slavitt, then a White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response, said Facebook employees were leaking to the White House.

Clegg, who said that he had just had a long call with Slavitt, wrote that “Andy told me in confidence … that internal FB employees are leaking to his team (I assume via Rob F[laherty] accounts of disobliging remarks made about both Andy and Rob by FB decision makers.”

Flaherty was then the digital director at the Biden White House.

Clegg, who is the president of global affairs at Meta, also wrote that Slavitt said Facebook employees suggested that Facebook leadership was planning to manipulate the White House with the data it shared.

“Those remarks [by Facebook decision makers] are coupled with suggestions about how FB should ‘snow’ the White House with info/data about authoritative Covid info in order not to share the most telling/helpful data about content which contributes to vaccine hesitancy,” he added about what Facebook employees were allegedly leaking to the Biden administration.

The leaks occurred at a time when Facebook faced heavy pressure from the Biden White House to censor content on the COVID-19 vaccine. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the government weaponization subcommittee, has been revealing the extent of the pressure in the “Facebook files” posts he releases on Twitter, sourced from documents and emails Meta shared with the subcommittee.

“These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook,” writes Jordan.

These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook.

More evidence of the censorship-industrial complex.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 3, 2023

Brian Rice, vice president of public policy at Meta, responded to Clegg’s April 2021 email, saying, “Rob made an offhand comment about conversations with ‘other people from Facebook’ during a recent conversation, this is clearly what he was referencing.”

Rice added, “I haven’t been part of any conversation that includes disparaging remarks made about Andy, or about any strategy to snow the White House[.]”

Documents obtained by the subcommittee reveal that Facebook temporarily throttled the reach of a popular Tucker Carlson video on the COVID-19 vaccine, even while acknowledging that the video did not violate any of Facebook’s rules. The White House also complained to Facebook about the reach of a popular meme suggesting that those who received the COVID-19 vaccine may later sue for injuries.

Flaherty, the then-digital director at the White House, also asked a question suggesting that Facebook might want to curb the reach of Tomi Lahren, a commentator who had announced she would not get the vaccine, and The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet. “If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see [New York Times], [Wall Street Journal], any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?” Flaherty wrote in an email to Facebook employees.

According to Open Secrets, Meta employees heavily favor Democrat candidates over Republican candidates. In 2020, the year Joe Biden was elected president, Meta employees gave $6.3 million to Democrats and $578,000 to Republicans.

The emails provided to The Daily Signal also indicate the White House told Facebook YouTube was censoring vaccine content more aggressively.

“Andy [Slavitt] attended a meeting of misinfo researchers (didn’t provide names) organized by Rob F[laherty] on Friday in which the consenus was that FB is a ‘disinformation factory’, and that YT [YouTube] has made significant advances to remove content leading to vaccine hesitancy whilst we have lagged behind,” Clegg wrote in the April 18, 2021, email.

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Devon Archer says Hunter used Joe Biden as ‘defensive leverage’ for foreign biz partners, transcript shows

Fox News Digital obtained a transcript of Archer’s testimony before the House Oversight panel

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published August 3, 2023 9:00am EDT

FIRST ON FOX: Devon Archer told congressional investigators that Hunter Biden used then-Vice President Joe Biden as “defensive leverage” to send “the right signals” to his foreign business partners, while selling him as “the brand” that offered “capabilities and reach,” as well as a “unique understanding of D.C.”

Archer’s comments came during a transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Fox News Digital obtained the more than 140-page transcript of Archer’s interview, which took place behind closed doors.

Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, arrives at the O’Neill House Office Building before testifying to the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Monday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Archer told investigators that Hunter Biden used his “very powerful name” to “add value” in pitching and securing foreign business ventures.

Archer said Hunter Biden “would not be so overt,” or “overtly” say “we’re going to use my dad for this,” but instead, Archer said that he would use the name to “get leverage.”

“Defensive leverage that the value is there in his work,” Archer said.

“The value that Hunter Biden brought to it was having — you know, there was — the theoretical was corporate governance, but obviously, given the brand, that was a large part of the value,” he continued. “I don’t think it was the sole value, but I do think that was a key component of the value.”

Archer and the Bidens — Devon Archer golfing with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden in 2014. (Fox News)

Archer told investigators that Hunter put his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on speakerphone while meeting with business partners at least 20 times. Archer described how Joe Biden was put on the phone to sell “the brand.”

“You aren’t talking about Dr. Jill or anybody else. You’re talking about Joe Biden. Is that fair to say?” Archer was asked.

Archer replied: “Yeah, that’s fair to say… Obviously, that brought the most value to the brand… It was Hunter Biden and him,” Archer said. “We would discuss having, you know, an understanding of D.C. and that was a differentiating component of us being able to raise capital.”

Devon Archer, a former longtime business associate of Hunter Biden, is set to testify before Congress.

He added, “It wasn’t as specific as, you know… the vice president’s son, but obviously, the brand carried.”

When asked if Archer and Hunter Biden would tell business partners they had “unique access” because of Vice President Biden, Archer said: “Yes, we would say we had unique understanding of D.C. and how it operates and how that, you know, could positively reflect on the terms of our business.”

Archer served on the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings alongside Hunter Biden beginning in 2014 and received $83,000 a month for his work.

Referring to Burisma, Archer told investigators that Hunter Biden used the “brand” of Joe Biden for having “doors opened,” which “sent the right signals” for Burisma to “carry on its business and be successful.”

DEVON ARCHER: HUNTER BIDEN, BURISMA EXECS ‘CALLED DC’ TO GET UKRAINIAN PROSECUTOR FIRED

“My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it,” Archer said.

When pressed, Archer clarified that he believed Burisma was “able to survive” for as long as it did “just because of the brand.”

“Because people would be intimidated to mess with them,” Archer explained.

“In what way?” Archer was asked.

“Legally.”

Joe, Hunter and Archer split image — From left: President Biden, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. (Fox News)

President Biden and the White House have repeatedly denied ever being in business with his son, and have repeatedly said Joe Biden never discussed the businesses and never had any knowledge about his son’s business dealings.

But Archer testified that then-Vice President Biden attended dinners with Hunter’s foreign business associates — including with an executive of Burisma Holdings.

One dinner, Archer recalled, took place in the spring of 2014 at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Archer, Eric Schwerin, the mayor of Moscow’s wife Yelena Baturina and other business partners attended.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/08/67b5b2e7-Devon-Archer-Transcript.pdf

That dinner took place just weeks after Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an LLC linked to Hunter Biden and his associates.

Archer also recalled a dinner in the spring of 2015, again at Cafe Milano. This time, Archer said Vadym Pozharskyi — an executive at Burisma — attended the dinner.

EXCLUSIVE: JOE BIDEN ALLEGEDLY PAID $5M BY BURISMA EXECUTIVE AS PART OF A BRIBERY SCHEME, ACCORDING TO FBI DOCUMENT

Meanwhile, as for Burisma, Archer testified that he and Hunter Biden attended a board of directors meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015.

On the sidelines of that meeting, Archer testified that Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter to make a phone call to “D.C” to address “pressure” the company was facing.”

Archer said Burisma had “several pressure issues,” saying that was “kind of a theme” of the company, noting the issues involved 23 million pounds of “capital tied up in London,” U.S. visa issues and the Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the firm.

“They requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said. “You know, government pressure from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola, et cetera.”

Biden and Zlochevski — Hunter Biden, left, and Mykola Zlochevsky. (Getty Images)

Fox News Digital previously reported that on Nov. 2, 2015, just weeks before the board meeting in Dubai, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, emphasizing that the “ultimate purpose” of the agreement to have Hunter on the board was to shut down “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” referring to Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.

“The request is like, can D.C. help?” Archer said, adding, however, that the request was not specific to “can the big guy help.”

“It was always this amorphous, can we get help in D.C.?”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pressed Archer, saying: “The request was help from the United States Government to deal with the pressure they were under from their prosecutor, and that entailed the freezing of assets at the London bank and other things that were going on in Ukraine?”

“Correct,” Archer said.

When asked why Burisma would ask Hunter for help, Archer said he was “a lobbyist and an expert and obviously he carried, you know, a very powerful name.”

HUNTER DEMANDED $10M FROM CHINESE ENERGY FIRM BECAUSE ‘BIDENS ARE THE BEST,’ HAVE ‘CONNECTIONS’

“That’s what they were asking for,” he said.

After the Burisma executives asked for help, Hunter “called his dad,” Archer said, adding that he “did not hear this phone call.”

When asked if Hunter Biden calling the vice president of the United States to “do something” about the pressure Burisma was facing would “cause off some serious alarm bells for influence peddling, conflicts of interest,” Archer testified: “Right.”

Archer testified that he was “left out” of “black box D.C. types of conversations.”

But just five days after Hunter Biden called then-Vice President Joe Biden from Dubai, Joe Biden took a trip to Ukraine.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

During that trip, the former vice president made a statement: “It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

Archer testified on other details related to joint ventures with Hunter Biden.

Meanwhile, Archer was pressed on an FBI FD-1023 form, which contained allegations that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting Shokin fired.

Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month.

BIDENS ALLEGEDLY ‘COERCED’ BURISMA CEO TO PAY THEM MILLIONS TO HELP GET UKRAINE PROSECUTOR FIRED: FBI FORM

The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption and say that his firing was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.

The FBI form said Pozharskyi said the reason Hunter Biden was hired was “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”

Archer was not familiar with that arrangement and suggested Zlochevsky could have been referring to payments he made to Archer and Hunter Biden.

Joe and Hunter Biden at Fort McNair — President Biden and his son, Hunter. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Archer said he was not aware of a $5 million payment to Joe Biden from Zlochevsky and said the Burisma CEO could have been boasting or exaggerating to give “the impression of access.”

Archer’s testimony comes as part of the House Oversight Committee’s months-long investigation, which Republicans say has yielded evidence related to the Biden family’s alleged foreign business schemes — including that the Biden family and its business associates created more than 20 companies and received more than $10 million from foreign nationals while Joe Biden served as vice president.

BIDEN WROTE COLLEGE RECOMMENDATION LETTER FOR SON OF HUNTER’S CHINESE BUSINESS PARTNER, EMAILS REVEAL

Meanwhile, the White House released a statement following Archer’s testimony Monday:

“It appears that the House Republicans’ own much-hyped witness today testified that he never heard of President Biden discussing business with his son or his son’s associates, or doing anything wrong,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams told Fox News Digital. “House Republicans keep promising bombshell evidence to support their ridiculous attacks against the President, but time after time, they keep failing to produce any.”

In February 2022, Archer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for defrauding a Native American tribal entity and various investment advisory clients of tens of millions of dollars in connection with the issuance of bonds by the tribal entity and the subsequent sale of those bonds through “fraudulent and deceptive means,” according to the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department, over the weekend, sought to set a date for Archer’s sentence to begin.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Evidence Of Biden Burisma Corruption Is Overwhelming

BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | AUGUST 01, 2023

Author Mollie Hemingway profile

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

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A key associate of Hunter Biden reluctantly admitted details about how the Biden family business was run — and those details are shocking.

Devon Archer, a longtime business partner and close friend of Hunter Biden’s, told congressional investigators Monday that at a meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015, top executives of Ukrainian energy concern Burisma asked Hunter Biden and himself for help from D.C. At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden’s dad, Joe Biden, was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president as well as his point person on Ukraine. Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, a Burisma executive, wanted to get Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired as he was investigating the company for corruption, Archer told members of Congress.

Hunter Biden put Zlochevsky and Pozharski on a call with “D.C.,” Archer said, noting he was not part of the phone call so couldn’t possibly know who exactly was on the other end of the line. Joe Biden did meet and speak more than 20 times with various business associates who were paying for access to the Biden family, Archer admitted.

In this case, Burisma was paying Archer and Hunter Biden as much as $83,000 a month to serve on the Ukrainian energy concern’s board, despite the fact that neither man had relevant experience or expertise for the job outside of their frequent meetings and contact with the then-vice president. The two were hired the same month that the U.K. had opened an investigation into company officials. The money was well spent.

A mere five days after the Dubai meeting and phone call, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada, its parliament in Kyiv, attempting to lay the groundwork for firing Shokin.

It took just a few short months before Shokin was fired. Joe Biden bragged in a public speech in January 2018 that he was personally responsible for getting that firing accomplished so quickly. In fact, he claimed he had bullied the Ukrainian government into firing the investigator by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee unless he got what he wanted. Seriously:

And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had — they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to — or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said — I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

What an amazing series of events that led to Joe Biden personally fulfilling what Burisma was paying Hunter Biden to accomplish. What are the odds?

Not the Weather

After Archer’s transcribed interview, Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who previously ran some of the Russia-collusion hoax as a congressional staffer, ran to the cameras to cushion the blow of the explosive new information.

For years, the corporate press and other Democrats had uncritically accepted Biden’s preposterous claim that he had never spoken with his son or his son’s business partners about the Biden family business. Even when Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski described — in detail, on the record, and with supporting evidence — how Joe Biden served as the “chairman” of the family business, the media largely ignored the explosive claims. With Archer echoing Bobulinski’s claims, and further noting that the business wouldn’t have worked without Joe Biden’s “brand,” Goldman and others like him had to concede that Biden did in fact speak with Hunter’s business associates. In fact, they had to admit he spoke with them frequently. However, Goldman claimed, they were only talking about the weather.

While no one actually thinks Joe Biden has a secret interest in meteorology that he only shares with corrupt foreign oligarchs who happen to be in business with his son, the claim is ridiculous for another reason.

As conservative broadcaster Larry O’Connor wrote, “Understand this: Hunter getting Joe on speakerphone WAS THE DELIVERABLE. It literally doesn’t matter what was discussed. Showing that he could get the Vice President of the United States on the phone was all Hunter had to show his clients to seal the deal. He was selling ACCESS not policy. Getting The Big Guy to pick up the phone demonstrated his ability to deliver that access. Case closed. Impeach.”

Otherwise, why would Joe Biden get on the phone with his business associates at all? Why would Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine be talking to Ukrainian officials under suspicion of massive corruption who were paying large sums of money to his son? What was the point, exactly, if not as chairman of the family business?

We know Burisma was paying Biden family members for help getting powerful people in D.C. to get investigators off its back. We know Biden was the top official in D.C. related to Ukraine. Five days after Burisma made the request, Biden was laying the groundwork for the firing. And he has publicly bragged about getting the prosecutor fired.

n 2019, President Donald Trump was impeached for raising the issue of a potential corruption scandal involving Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Burisma. At that time, scores of corporate media and other Democrat activists asserted without evidence that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and that it was a lie to suggest otherwise. For instance, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post wrote in 2019, “Trump has falsely claimed that Biden in 2015 pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor, because he was investigating Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, which had added Biden’s son, Hunter, to its board in 2014. There are two big problems with this claim: One, Shokin was not investigating Burisma or Hunter Biden, and two, Shokin’s ouster was considered a diplomatic victory.”

Since that false “fact” “check,” investigators in the House and Senate have shown that the Biden family business involves oligarchs and other powerful figures from Russia, Romania, China, and even France and other countries. Joe Biden reportedly met and spoke with his son’s employers from across the globe. The corporate press and other Democrats will fight disclosure about the Biden family business every step of the way, but Archer’s transcribed interview shows how important it is to reveal the truth of that business to the American people.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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Biden Family Scandals Are So Much Bigger Than Hunter’s Hookers And Burisma Bribery

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 26, 2023

Joe Biden at his desk talking on the phone in black and white

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

When the New York Post broke the news that documents recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, the corporate media — to the extent they didn’t frame the story as Russian disinformation — pretended the reporting solely concerned Hunter Biden’s personal life. The scandal, however, was never about Hunter’s sordid sex life and history of drug abuse. Rather, it concerned Joe Biden’s abuse of power as vice president for financial gain. But now it reaches much further — including 10 distinct scandals.

Saturated in Scandal

1. The Many (Uncharged) Crimes of Hunter Biden

While the current scandals swirling around the laptop are unrelated to Hunter Biden’s sex life or drug abuse, the president’s son features in the first scandal: Evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed numerous crimes, including felonies. Evidence suggests Hunter Biden acted as an unregistered foreign agent for, at a minimum, Ukraine and China in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting suggests Hunter also accepted bribes from Burisma or alternatively helped extort $10 million from the Ukrainian oil and gas company for himself and his father.

IRS whistleblowers and federal prosecutors also believed the evidence supported multiple felony tax counts. Lying on a federal firearm application is a serious felony as well.

The evidence that the president’s son likely engaged in extensive criminal conduct for over a decade is a huge scandal, but it also bred a separate scandal: the DOJ and FBI’s efforts to protect him, No. 7 below.

2. Joe Biden’s Business Lie

Hunter Biden’s laptop also exposed the reality that Joe Biden lied to the American public, dating back to September 2019. During a campaign stop, the then-Democrat presidential candidate snapped at Fox News’ Peter Doocy, claiming: “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

More than two years later, after The Washington Post and New York Times belatedly confirmed the authenticity of the emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Doocy asked then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether “President Biden still maintains he never discussed overseas business deals with his son Hunter,” to which Psaki replied, “Yes.”

While Biden and his team stuck with that lie for two-plus years, his current press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is attempting to snuff out that scandal by reframing Biden’s denial. “I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same: The president was never in business with his son,” Jean-Pierre said on Monday.

Moving the goalposts won’t erase the lie.

3. Joe Biden’s Corruption

The much more serious scandal, however, concerns extensive evidence of Joe Biden’s widespread corruption. Bank and corporate records, suspicious activity reports, emails and text messages recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop, travel records, reporting from a “highly credible” CHS, and testimony and expected testimony from Hunter Biden’s business partners indicate that Joe Biden, while vice president, exchanged political favors for payments to his family members — with a cut of the cash coming to the “Big Guy.”

People and/or organizations from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and China, among others, all paid Biden-related business entities millions of dollars, with evidence indicating the now-president received a cut of the bribes. The evidence indicates that in exchange, the individuals received access to the then-vice president. In the case of Ukraine, Biden forced the firing of the prosecutor general who was investigating Burisma, the company where Hunter held a board seat and which allegedly paid Joe and Hunter Biden each $5 million in bribes.

The evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption is bad enough, but the scandal deepens when one considers the president has supplied Ukraine with cluster bombs and billions in American tax dollars.

Cover-Ups

While the first three scandals involve misconduct and likely criminality by Hunter and Joe Biden, there are at least twice as many distinct scandals that flow from cover-up efforts to protect the Bidens.

4. FBI’s Interference in the 2020 Election

By December 2019, the FBI had authenticated the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. Yet, knowing the laptop was real and contained spectacularly damaging details implicating Joe Biden in corruption, the FBI spent the months leading up to the November 2020 election grooming tech giants to believe a “hack-and-leak operation” was imminent. The FBI also pushed social media companies to change their terms of service to prohibit the posting of so-called hacked materials.

These combined efforts prompted social media companies to censor the New York Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 blockbuster article, “Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad.” After the story broke and after initially confirming its authenticity to Twitter, the FBI refused to comment on whether the material had been hacked or was Russian disinformation, leading to its continued widespread censorship. Not only did the FBI improperly protect Joe Biden and prompt the censorship of true political speech, it interfered in the 2020 election and likely handed Biden the White House.

5. Intelligence Agencies’ Interference in the 2020 Election

Former and current members of intelligence agencies soon joined the FBI in interfering in the 2020 election. The House Intelligence and Weaponization Committees previously detailed evidence of that interference in their report titled, “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.”

That report established that the infamous October 2020 letter, which was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and falsely framed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, was concocted by Biden-campaign officials, including now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. Then-candidate Joe Biden would cite that letter in his final debate with Donald Trump to lie to the American people (again), telling the country the laptop was Russian disinformation.

It is scandalous that scores of former intelligence officials would use their prior positions and reputations to deceive Americans in a way that likely affected the 2020 election. That any of those individuals retained security clearances adds to the scandal, as does the role of the Biden campaign and the involvement of at least one CIA employee in soliciting signatories for the statement.

6. Intel Agencies’ Failure to Protect America Against Foreign Influence

Not only did intelligence agencies interfere in the 2020 election, but in their efforts to protect Joe Biden, they likely also failed to provide necessary defensive briefings, putting Americans at risk.

To protect our country, intelligence officials must have frank discussions with leaders (and candidates) about the risks of foreign malign influence. Given how hard the FBI and intelligence agencies tried to bury the news of the laptop, it seems likely they omitted any reference to the laptop and details contained on it in briefings to then-President Trump, then-candidate Biden, and the Biden campaign.

To date, this scandal has been overlooked and merits further inquiry to determine whether the intelligence apparatus fulfilled its duty to the country or omitted inconvenient facts in briefings to protect Joe Biden. Of particular concern is whether intelligence agencies assessed and warned about the risk that the Russians had stolen a second Hunter Biden laptop that contain materials the Biden son believed rendered him susceptible to blackmail.

7. DOJ and FBI’s Handling of Biden Investigations

When it comes to how the DOJ and FBI handled investigations into Biden family corruption, the evidence of potential misconduct is overwhelming.

Broadly, this scandal includes conflicts of interest between Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys — including the Pennsylvania U.S. attorney handling an investigation into the Jim Biden-connected company Americorp, and the California and D.C. U.S. attorneys who reportedly refused to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden. Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s conflict of interest proves scandalous given the numerous efforts by the DOJ and FBI headquarters to interfere in the investigations.

Beyond conflicts of interest, the IRS whistleblowers and another whistleblower who’s provided information to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have revealed numerous instances of DOJ and FBI procedural violations, the burying of evidence such as the FD-1023, the false labeling of derogatory evidence as disinformation, and limits on the investigative steps agents could take. Consequently, the DOJ charged Hunter Biden only with misdemeanors and one firearm felony that could be dropped, and to date it appears no investigation has occurred into Joe Biden or his brother, Jim Biden, on allegations of bribery and money laundering.

While Democrats counter the growing evidence of corruption by wrongly claiming it has not been corroborated, that fact does not vindicate the Bidens: It implicates the DOJ and FBI in a separate scandal.

Cover-Ups of the Cover-Ups

8. DOJ and FBI’s Cover-Up of Failure to Investigate Bidens

Once whistleblowers began exposing the Biden administration’s interference in the family’s pay-to-play investigation, the DOJ and FBI began to cover-up the cover-up. We saw this most clearly when Garland professed that there was no political interference in U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden. Garland stressed that, as a Trump holdover, Americans could trust Weiss’s independence.

Garland’s testimony cannot be squared with the extensive interference coming from FBI headquarters and the limitations the DOJ placed on investigative techniques. When Grassley pushed on the point, Garland maintained that Weiss had ultimate charging authority. According to an IRS whistleblower, however, Weiss said otherwise, claiming he wasn’t the ultimate decision-maker.

Here, the cover-up of the cover-up began in earnest, with Garland and Weiss writing a series of letters and making public statements that attempted to obscure the ultimate question of whether Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden and whether DOJ or FBI headquarters interfered in the investigation. This scandal has yet to be unraveled. But on Monday, the DOJ sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee offering up Weiss to testify — indicating Biden’s Justice Department might be preparing to throw Weiss under the bus.

9. Democrats Lying to Protect Joe Biden

Many Democrats are also wrapped up in lying to protect Joe Biden. Some of these lies predate the election when they spun the laptop as Russian disinformation. But more recently, we saw Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin lying to the American public about the FD-1023 form. Had former Attorney General William Barr not gone on the record to correct Raskin’s falsehood, the public would have been none the wiser.

Seeking to protect Joe Biden from damning bribery claims, Raskin falsely claimed that Trump appointees Barr and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had reviewed the CHS’s reporting contained in a June 2020 FD-1023 form and closed out the investigation. Raskin also portrayed the CHS’s reporting as connected to Rudy Giuliani.

But as The Federalist first reported, Barr unequivocally said that Raskin’s claim was “not true.” The investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.” “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.” Likewise, Barr explained the CHS’s reporting was unrelated to Giuliani.

10. Press Acting as Biden-Run Media

When the Post broke the laptop story, the legacy media either silenced it or framed it as Russian disinformation. Even two years later, after belatedly authenticating the material recovered from Hunter Biden’s computer, the corporate media refused to cover the implications — that the emails, documents, and texts indicated Joe Biden was involved in a massive corruption scandal. The corrupt press still refuses to cover the news fairly, opting instead to brand the evidence as a conspiracy theory.

The media’s refusal to seek and report the truth proves the most dire of all the scandals because without a free press checking government corruption, the corruption will only grow.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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T0day’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – A Father’s Love

A.F. BRANCO | on July 26, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-a-fatherss-love/

The Democrat media continues to play defense for President Biden’s bribery scandal with his son Hunter as the bagman.

Biden Loves His Son — A.F. Branco Cartoon ©2023.

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FBI Told Delaware U.S. Attorney It Had Already Partially Corroborated Biden Bribery Claims, Source Says

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 24, 2023

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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When the Pittsburgh FBI office briefed the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, the agents also told the Delaware team they had already corroborated several aspects of the confidential human source’s claims, an individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist.

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the FD-1023 summary of a confidential human source’s reporting that the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes so the then-Vice President would “protect” Burisma “from all kinds of problems.” Those bribes were in addition to the more than $4 million in total paid to Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer for sitting on Burisma’s board of directors.

The Federalist has now learned that the Pittsburgh FBI office had corroborated several details contained in the FD-1023 as part of the intake process that former Attorney General William Barr established before the election under the leadership of the Western District of Pennsylvania’s then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady. Significantly, in briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney on the results of their office’s screening of evidence related to Ukraine, the Pittsburgh FBI agents told the Delaware office they had corroborated multiple facts included in the FD-1023, an individual with knowledge of the briefing told The Federalist.

Following the late June 2020 interview with the CHS, the Pittsburgh FBI office obtained travel records for the CHS, and those records confirmed the CHS had traveled to the locales detailed in the FD-1023 during the relevant time period. The trips included a late 2015 or early 2016 visit to Kiev, Ukraine; a trip a couple of months later to Vienna, Austria; and travel to London in 2019.

As The Federalist previously reported, during their briefing of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, the Pittsburgh FBI agents said the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and that it merited further investigation. The person familiar with that briefing now confirms the agents also informed the Delaware office that the Pittsburgh FBI had corroborated the CHS’s presence in the various cities at the times claimed.

The Federalist has also learned that the CHS’s handler corroborated the CHS’s claim that he had met with Oleksandr Ostapenko. According to the source with knowledge of the matter, the CHS’s handler told Pittsburgh’s FBI agents that the CHS told his handler he had an upcoming meeting with Ostapenko. The CHS’s contemporaneous claim of the planned rendezvous with Ostapenko tracked the timing of one of the visits the CHS claimed in the FD-1023 to have had with Ostapenko. Significantly, the Pittsburgh office briefed the Delaware office on that piece of corroborating evidence that came from the CHS’s handler.

Open-source reporting of Burisma’s purchase of an interest in a North American oil and gas company likewise lined up with the discussions the CHS relayed to the FBI, as summarized in the FD-1023, the individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. That the Pittsburgh FBI office not only provided the Delaware office with a summary of the damning FD-1023 and its conclusion that it bore indicia of credibility but also identified several pieces of corroborating evidence is huge because, to date, it appears the Delaware office did nothing to investigate the allegations contained in the FD-1023.

As Barr previously made clear, the role of the Pittsburgh office was limited to providing a “clearing-house function” for information related to Ukraine to weed out “any potential disinformation.” The purpose of the intake process, Barr stressed, was to “check[] out the source and credibility of evidence before assigning it to one of the ongoing investigations already pending in the Department,” such as the Delaware investigation into Hunter Biden. As such, the Pittsburgh office lacked the authority to subpoena witnesses or records or to use grand jury proceedings to further corroborate the FD-1023. That responsibility fell with the Delaware office.

But not only did the Delaware office apparently ignore the allegations contained in the FD-1023, as well as the corroborating evidence already allegedly accumulated by the Pittsburgh FBI office, but U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s office allegedly secreted the very existence of the FD-1023 from the whistleblowers. Both IRS whistleblowers testified last week that they did not even learn of the existence of the FD-1023 until Barr publicly confirmed he had sent the information to Delaware for further investigation.

Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf also excluded the IRS agents working the Hunter Biden investigation from the meeting at which the Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the office on the FD-1023 and the corroborating evidence they had already uncovered. The IRS whistleblowers further testified that portions of Hunter Biden’s laptop were withheld from them and they were explicitly prohibited from taking any investigative steps connected to Joe Biden — or questioning anyone by using Joe Biden’s name, “Dad,” or “the Big Guy.”

Under these circumstances, even if the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office comes forward now to say it did investigate the FD-1023, its belated claim would be meaningless because the individuals with the knowledge and skill necessary to investigate a complex, international money laundering, bribery, and tax fraud scheme were cut out of the process and barred from interviewing the necessary witnesses.

The Delaware office remains mum, however, not even pretending to have investigated the FD-1023’s allegations. That failure is even more scandalous now that we know Pittsburgh had already corroborated several aspects of the CHS’s reporting and briefed Weiss’s office on the corroborating evidence.

Yet the Biden White House continues to falsely claim the FD-1023 charges “have been debunked for years.” On the contrary, the only thing debunked to date has been the lies of Biden’s Democrat apologists, such as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Jamie Raskin, who doubled down on his claim that Barr had found the FD-1023 not credible and not meriting further investigation.

Americans now know not only that Raskin and his Democrat colleagues lied, but that President Joe Biden lied — both when he said he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures and in claiming now that the FD-1023 has been debunked.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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TIMELINE OF BIDEN ADVISER’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH HUNTER, MEETINGS WITH VP ABOUT BURISMA RAISES QUESTIONS

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Hunter Biden’s friend to tell Congress then-VP Joe joined dozens of son’s business meetings via phone: report

By Lawrence Richard | Fox News | Published July 24, 2023 12:45pm EDT

Devon Archer, a former best friend and business associate of Hunter Biden in Ukraine, is expected to testify under oath to Congress this week that President Biden met with dozens of Hunter’s business associates while he was serving as vice president between 2009 and 2017.

Fox News Digital has confirmed that Archer has been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee and could testify as early as Thursday, July 27. The expected testimony could cast further doubt on President Biden’s repeated claims that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings or of having any influence on them.

Miranda Devine, a New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor, reported Monday that Archer, 48, is expected to tell the House Oversight Committee about meetings he witnessed attended by both Bidens — Hunter and Joe — either in person or via telephone. During the meetings, Hunter would specifically introduce his father to foreign business partners or prospective investors, Archer is expected to testify.

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Archer to speak as House Republicans continue to investigate whether the Bidens used the influence then-Vice President Biden had in the White House to elicit these deals and other alleged Biden family corruption. The committee told Fox News it believes the president communicated in some form with Hunter Biden’s business associates.

Hunter Biden gets off plane with president — President Biden has snapped at reporters who have asked him about alleged corruption involving him and his son, Hunter Biden. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

“We are looking forward very much to hearing from Devon Archer about all the times he has witnessed Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners when he was vice president, including on speakerphone,” the committee said in a statement.

The committee invited Archer to testify as he was sentenced last year to one year in prison for his role in a $60 million bond fraud involving various clients. At least three previously planned dispositions were canceled by Archer for personal reasons.

“Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings,” committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement on Monday. “Evidence continues to be revealed that Joe Biden was very much involved in his family’s corrupt influence peddling schemes and he likely benefited financially. This includes deals with a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch and a CCP-linked energy company that generated millions for the Bidens and undermined American interests.”

Comer added, “It certainly appears that Joe Biden and his family put themselves first and Americans last, but corporate media and the Justice Department continue to cover up for the Bidens. The Oversight Committee will continue to follow the facts to provide the transparency and accountability that the American people demand and deserve. We look forward to speaking soon with Devon Archer about Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s business affairs.”

Devine, also the author of “Laptop from Hell,” reported Archer is expected to testify on specific examples of the elder Biden getting involved in his son’s business deals, including an evening meeting in Dubai on Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, which ultimately saw Hunter Biden meeting with Ukrainian energy company Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and calling his dad during their conversation. At the time, Burisma was paying Hunter $83,000 a month to serve as a director, Devine reported.

GOP RIPS HUNTER’S ‘SWEETHEART’ PLEA DEAL ON TAX AND GUN CRIMES, ZERO IN ON JOE BIDEN

According to Devine, Archer, who was also a director, is expected to testify that the call between Joe, Hunter and Hunter’s business partners came after he and Hunter had dinner with the Burisma board at the Burj Al Arab Hotel. Archer and Hunter reportedly left the meeting and traveled to the Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach when Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior Burisma executive, called them and said Zlochevsky needed to urgently speak with Hunter. The two Ukrainians then reportedly joined Hunter and Archer at the Four Seasons, where Pozharskyi specifically asked Hunter, “Can you ring your dad?”

According to Devine, Archer is expected to testify that Hunter called his father, who was in Washington, D.C., at the time, and introduced the Ukrainians by their first names. Then the younger Biden emphasized that the Burisma executives “need our support.” Then-Vice President Biden acknowledged the Ukrainians, as he did in other calls with Hunter’s business partners, but kept the conversation brief, Archer is expected to testify.

Devine reported that committee members are likely to ask Archer about the context surrounding that meeting as three days after that conversation, on Dec. 9, 2015, then-Vice President Biden, who was former President Obama’s point man for Ukrainian issues, flew to Kyiv to address the Ukrainian parliament. At the time, Zlochevsky was being investigated by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for corruption and, just two months later, Shokin seized four of Zlochevsky’s houses in Kyiv, two plots of land and a Rolls-Royce, Devine reported.

A month after the seizure, then-Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired. Then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promptly fired Shokin.

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Biden later bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations during an event in January 2018, saying, “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, he got fired.”

Members of the House Oversight Committee are expected to ask Archer about the timing of the firing as Shokin was also investigating Burisma at the time.

The New York Post previously reported an email sent on Nov. 2, 2015 that shows Pozharskyi was ratcheting up pressure on Hunter and Archer to use their influence to “close down” Shokin’s investigation into Burisma.

President Biden has repeatedly defended the firing as pointing back to Poroshenko, who said Shokin was corrupt and was slow walking efforts to clear corruption in the prosecutor’s office. Biden and the U.S. were also not the only entities advocating for Shokin to be removed. According to a Congressional Research Service report published in Jan. 2017, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde threatened to withhold $40 billion unless Ukraine undertook “a substantial new effort” to clear corruption in the government. The CRS report said Shokin submitted his resignation in February 2016 and was subsequently removed.

Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma before he resigned in Feb. 2016. (GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images)

However, Just last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released an FBI document describing an allegation that Zlochevsky told an FBI informant he paid a $10 million bribe to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2016 “to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.” The FBI document, known as an FD-1023, shows Zlochevsky calling Joe Biden “the big guy.” Archer is expected to testify the “big guy” was a title other people in Biden’s circle used to refer to the elder Biden.

According to Devine, Hunter Biden’s former business partner in Los Angeles, Tony Bobulinski, also met with Hunter and Joe. In an email sent to Hunter, Bobulinski refers to then-Vice President Biden as “the big guy.”

Archer also is expected to tell the committee about other instances — as many as two dozen times in Archer’s presence — where Hunter called his father and put him on speaker to impress prospective investors, Devine reported.

REPUBLICAN CALLS TO IMPEACH BIDEN GROW FOLLOWING RELEASE OF FBI DOCUMENT DETAILING BRIBERY ALLEGATIONS

His testimony is expected to include information about dinners Hunter organized, so his father could meet his foreign business partners, Devine wrote. A Fox News Digital review found that Biden personally met with several of Hunter’s business associates from the U.S., Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan over the course of his vice presidency. Joe Biden met with two of Hunter’s since-dissolved investment fund partners, former Colombia President Andrés Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, at the Naval Observatory — the official residence of the vice president — on March 2, 2012, the New York Post reported.

Biden, Poroshenko — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, hosted then-Vice President Joe Biden for official talks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 16, 2017. (Vitaliy Holovin/Corbis via Getty images)

According to emails reviewed by Fox News Digital, the elder Biden also met with two of Hunter’s Mexican business associates, Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani, when they visited the West Wing on Feb. 26, 2014. Joe and Hunter Biden also gave Velasco and Magnani a tour of the White House Brady Press Briefing room.

Emails reviewed by Fox News Digital, also showed Hunter arranged a video conference with his father and Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire with whom Hunter was seeking to do business with at the time, on Oct. 30, 2015.

Joe, Hunter, and Hunter’s business partner Jeff Cooper hosted another meeting at the Naval Observatory, located at Number One Observatory Circle in Washington D.C., for Slim, Velasco and Magnani on Nov. 19, 2015. At the time, Hunter and Cooper were interested in investing in a Mexican energy company with the business executives, the Daily Mail reported.

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In February 2016, Hunter and Cooper flew on Air Force 2 to Mexico City, where Hunter wrote an email to Magnani that he would be personally attending a meeting between Joe and then-Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. In the same email, Hunter said Magnani had not spoken to him “for months” despite Hunter delivering “on every single thing you’ve ever asked,” which included bringing guests to meet his father.

“I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration and then you go completely silent,” Hunter wrote in the email. “I don’t know what it is that I did but I’d like to know why I’ve delivered on every single thing you’ve ever asked – and you make me feel like I’ve done something to offend you.”

Hunter, Joe Biden — Hunter Biden’s business associates thanked him for introducing them to his father Vice President Joe Biden in emails found on the younger Biden’s laptop. (Kris Connor/WireImage)

Joe Biden also attended a dinner with Hunter’s business associates from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia at the Georgetown restaurant Café Milano in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2015, emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show. One such email from Hunter to Archer shared a guest list for the dinner, which included Burisma’s Pozharskyi, late Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife, Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, who was in business with Hunter’s Rosemont firm. It is not clear if these individuals ultimately attended the dinner.

The day after the 2015 meeting, Pozharskyi emailed Hunter thanking him for introducing him to his father.

Devine reported that Archer is expected to answer questions from the committee about these Café Milano meetings.

A close associate of Archer’s said he believes it is his “civic duty” to testify before the committee, Devine reported.

According to Devine, the associate said Archer has “nothing to hide, no revenge to enact nor anyone to protect other than his family and he feels he has been handcuffed by the absurdly bogus [fraud] case into remaining silent. In a forum where he has immunity he can at least start to speak truth.”

Fox News’ Gillian Turner, Chad Pergram and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.

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6 Ridiculous Narratives Democrats Tried In Response To IRS Whistleblowers’ Damning Biden Testimony

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler’s testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee about the political interference in the Biden investigation proved so unimpeachable that Democrats resorted to a shotgun attack on everything except the facts. Here are the top six themes the left hammered during the hearing.

1. Orange Man — and His Family And Associates — Bad

Wednesday’s hearing began promptly at 1:00 with opening statements by Republican Chair James Comer and Democrat Ranking Member Jamie Raskin. From the get-go Raskin set one theme Democrats would continue to peddle over the course of the next six hours: Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad man.

Trump was impeached and is under indictment. His daughter was under investigation, and her husband sold out to the Saudis. Trump’s cronies — Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and Cohen — committed crimes, and Trump pardoned them. On and on they went, pointing to Trump to turn the focus from the whistleblowers’ testimony: that the evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed felonies and now-President Joe Biden may have been complicit in the illegality. Democrats likewise used this misdirection to avoid confronting the overwhelming evidence that the DOJ and FBI interfered in the investigation and protected the Biden family.

2. How Dare Republicans Say ‘Two-Tier Justice System’

A second prevalent tactic on display during Wednesday’s hearing was Democrats feigning outrage over Republicans’ complaints of a “two-tier justice system.”

According to Democrats on the committee, that phrase belongs to the civil rights movement and may only be invoked to condemn systemic racism. Some representatives ran so hard with this theme that they spent their allocated time highlighting decades-old hate crimes rather than asking the IRS whistleblowers questions concerning their testimony.

One representative even quizzed Shapley on his knowledge of the racial disparity seen in the prosecution of tax cases. Shapley said he was unaware of the statistic. The Democrat lawmaker then cited the relative percentages for the IRS agent, while remaining oblivious to the fact that Shapley was complaining of favoritism bestowed on the white, privileged Hunter Biden.

3. Never Mind the Whistleblowers, Let’s Talk About Rudy and the Arms Dealer

Democrats also sought to distract from the whistleblowers’ testimony by framing the evidence detailed by the two experienced and well-credentialed IRS agents as flowing from Rudy Giuliani. But as Ziegler testified, he launched the investigation into Hunter Biden after evidence implicating him was discovered pursuant to a separate criminal investigation. None of the evidence Ziegler and Shapley developed came from Giuliani.

Nor did the allegations that Joe and Hunter Biden each received $5 million in bribes from Burisma, as reported by an FBI confidential human source and summarized in the FD-1023, come from Giuliani. The IRS agents never saw the FD-1023 in any event.

House Democrats likewise attempted to minimize the whistleblowers’ testimony by pretending that, beside Giuliani, the only evidence of misconduct came from a witness charged with being an arms dealer, namely Gal Luft. Whether Luft has credible evidence of Biden-family corruption, however, has nothing to do with Ziegler and Shapley’s claims.

4. Merely a Misunderstanding

In their less hysterical moments, the Democrats offered a gentler spin, framing the House’s hearing as much ado about a misunderstanding. It also came down to the whistleblowers not grasping the difference between a special counsel and a special attorney, several Biden apologists suggested.

But as Shapley made clear, he had documented U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s statement — that the DOJ had denied Weiss special counsel authority — soon after Weiss made that representation, and thus while Shapley’s memory was clear. In any event, according to Shapley, Weiss had also said during that meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, that he was not the final decision maker on whether to bring charges against Hunter Biden. That fact makes the distinction between a special counsel and a special attorney irrelevant.

Raskin also suggested Shapley was confused about Weiss’s authority, claiming the Delaware U.S. Attorney made clear in his letters to Congress he had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden.

Both whistleblowers decimated that line of argument by highlighting what Weiss actually said, which was that he lacked charging authority outside of Delaware. In fact, if anything, Raskin hurt his cause by highlighting the contradictions between Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statements, establishing the necessity for both DOJ bigwigs to testify before Congress to resolve the inconsistencies.

5. Just a Difference of Opinion

A related theme Democrats peddled during Wednesday’s hearing centered on prosecutorial discretion. The left side of the aisle painted the whistleblowers’ testimony as merely a professional disagreement between the IRS agents and Weiss.

But there was no disagreement in opinion, Shapley and Ziegler stressed: Both the IRS and Weiss agreed that Hunter Biden should be charged with multiple felony counts. Weiss, however, lacked the ability to bring charges in D.C., and it was the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney there, as well as in California, that kept the Delaware U.S. attorney from filing criminal felony charges against the president’s son.

Further, that the D.C. and California U.S. attorneys thwarted efforts to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden proved especially rich given the Democrats continued references throughout the hearing to Weiss being Trump’s “hand-picked U.S. attorney.” Beyond the obvious point that being a Trump appointee establishes nothing, under the Democrats’ standard, the involvement of the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys removes this case from the “difference of opinion” scenario.

6. There’s No Evidence, I Tell You, No Evidence

A sixth narrative Democrats pushed during the Oversight hearing was that there’s no evidence of misconduct or favoritism. But to paraphrase Shapley’s line, just repeating the same lie multiple times doesn’t make it true. And to say there’s no evidence of misconduct or favoritism is a whopper of a lie.

The evidence of misconduct by the Bidens exists in the form of texts, emails, chat messages, bank records, suspicious activity reports, the FD-1023 report, and statements made by former business partners such as Tony Bobulinski. The public record is also replete with evidence of DOJ and FBI favoritism, including the extensive testimony of these two whistleblowers, parts of which a third whistleblower has already corroborated.

The Democrats may not like the evidence or want to talk about it, but to say none exists is about as believable as the Secret Service’s claim that they cannot determine whose cocaine was recovered in the White House.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Explosive FD-1023 Exposes More Biden Bribery Dirt — And Teases Damning Evidence to Come

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 20, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, just released a minimally redacted copy of the FBI’s FD-1023 detailing a confidential human source’s reporting of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian business Burisma. According to the FD-1023 summary, Burisma’s owner specifically referenced the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin — the same man Biden bragged about Ukraine firing after his threat to withhold aid from the country while he was vice president.

After months of pushing the Justice Department and FBI to explain what investigative procedures they had undertaken in response to evidence implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme, Grassley released the unclassified copy of the FD-1023, which documented claims made by the “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS). Grassley had acquired the FD-1023 via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.

While some of the information included in the FD-1023 has already been revealed by members of the House who previously reviewed the summary of the CHS’s reporting, the public release provides new explosive details related to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin.

Among the CHS’s conversations with Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky, one took place shortly after Joe Biden made his first public statement about Shokin “being corrupt.” At the time, according to the CHS, Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”

Then, following Trump’s election in 2016, the CHS spoke again with Zlochevsky, who expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory but noted that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on…” Zlochevsky’s statement proves significant because Joe Biden had long claimed he pushed for Shokin’s firing because Shokin was not investigating Burisma — which is the exact opposite of the details summarized in the FD-1023.

Beyond putting the already known details in black-and-white for the public to read, such as Zlochevsky’s representation that he had 17 recordings of the Bidens and had never paid the “Big Guy” directly, the release of the FD-1023 is significant for another reason: The American public now knows the many details the FBI could have and should have investigated.

For instance, did Burisma or any other related entity purchase a Texas-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million during the relevant time period? Were the CHS and his business partner in Kiev in the 2015 and 2016 time period? Did the CHS’s U.S. business partner confirm the details of the meeting? Was the CHS in London during the relevant time in 2019? And did the FBI ever ask the CHS to record his conversations with Zlochevsky or attempt to turn Zlochevsky into an asset?

According to the FD-1023 report, in 2019, the CHS had offered to assist Zlochevsky if he wanted to speak to the U.S. government about the Bidens and what Zlochevsky claimed was their coercion of Burisma to pay the bribes. Did anyone ever ask the CHS to contact Zlochevsky? If not, why not?

The public release of the FD-1023 is significant now for a third reason: It comes on the heels of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee that suggested the CHS’s reporting corroborates other evidence.

During Wednesday’s hours-long hearing, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler both told lawmakers they had never seen the FD-1023. Significantly, Ziegler then stated: “There’s things that are contained on that document that could further corroborate other information that we might be having an issue corroborating because it could be regarding a foreign official. So, if we have information regarding that in a document or a witness, we can further corroborate later evidence.”

But because federal law prohibits the discussion of confidential taxpayers’ information, other than through specific procedures, Ziegler did not detail what, if any, information they may have discovered during their investigation into Hunter Biden. Instead, Ziegler said, “if that’s something that we have, we can turn that over to the House Ways and Means Committee.”

This testimony suggests that the IRS’s investigation likely uncovered evidence the FD-1023 corroborated. With that form now public, both Ziegler and Shapley can study it and assess what documentary material, such as wire transfer reports, they uncovered that is now corroborated. However, that evidence will have to go to the House Ways and Means Committee before it is made public.

So much for Democrats’ claim that there is no evidence of Joe Biden’s complicity and corruption.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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10 Abnormal Things Biden’s ‘Return To Normalcy’ Brought Americans

BY: SAMUEL BOEHLKE | JULY 13, 2023

Author Samuel Boehlke profile

SAMUEL BOEHLKE

As they worked tirelessly to oust Donald Trump from the White House in 2020, a chorus of corporate media, Never Trumpers, establishment Democrats, and Joe Biden himself promised Americans a Biden presidency would usher in a “return to normalcy.”

Two and a half years later, normalcy has yet to appear. Biden’s tenure has cemented a new “normal” of men pretending to be women, a march toward global conflict, and synthetic drugs in the White House. Decency and decorum? Not exactly. As the 2024 election season heats up, now is as good a time as ever to take stock of our cultural and political status quo and remind ourselves that the self-proclaimed unifier-in-chief and his administration’s lackeys have done everything in their power to upend our norms, not return to them. Here are 10 examples.

1. Obscene LGBT Activism

In exchange for Trump’s mean tweets, Biden’s normal includes men showing off their prosthetic breasts on the White House lawn. As LGBT extremists enforced pride month on the rest of the country, the Biden family saw fit to host a pride party at the symbolic residence. Three of their guests proudly stripped off their tops to flaunt their mutilated “true” selves.

After immediate backlash, the Biden administration noted the behavior was “inappropriate” and disinvited the three people involved — but there was nothing “normal” about nude White House party guests.

Speaking of indecent exposure, LGBT activism under the Biden administration has taken an obscene turn and not just during “pride month.” The White House’s gay and trans agenda has no limiting principle, with the president going out of his way to promote irreversible medical interventions for confused youths. This radicalism trickles down into defending pornographic books for children, explicit “education,” public nudity, and graphic sexual depictions in family-friendly public environments.

2. Corruption

When Biden talked about normalcy, did he mean multimillion-dollar bribery schemes? Thanks to astute lawmakers like Sen. Chuck Grassley and brave whistleblowers within the Internal Revenue Service and FBI, Americans are finally seeing past the Biden-protection racket to the corrupt family business.

Biden and his DOJ will pretend the sins are littler misdemeanor tax crimes limited to his poor addict son Hunter, but whistleblower testimony about a damning FBI document suggests “the big guy’s” hands are dirty — and the Justice Department has been covering it up.

3. Cocaine at the White House

The same administration that tracked down grandmas who happened to be in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, claims it won’t be able to figure out who brought cocaine into the high-security White House, complete with Secret Service agents, cameras, and records of every guest’s name, date of birth, and social security number, among other things.

Whether the synthetic drug belongs to Hunter Biden, an obvious suspect who is believed to be living in the White House right now, or someone else, Colombian bam-bam turning up at the president’s house isn’t normal.

4. Federal Weaponization and Censorship

To suppress its ideological and political opponents, the Biden administration found convenient ways to silence social media users. As recent House reports have shown, Biden’s agencies regularly engaged in collusion with the largest Big Tech companies to suppress free speech. Not only did they push for the censorship of speech that was factually wrong — speech that is still protected by the First Amendment — but they labeled information critical of the Democrat regime as “disinformation” and “misinformation” to justify stripping it from the public square. Worse, the Biden administration devised a category of speech that’s true but inconvenient, called “malinformation” — and worked to silence that too.

5. Bidenomics

Despite recovering some of the jobs the government forced workers out of during Covid lockdowns, Biden’s economy overall has been disastrous for the American people. Inflation in particular has been a steady theme, with prices for essentials from groceries to gasoline soaring throughout the early years of Biden’s term. Prices are still high and many Americans are still suffering in 2023, but in January the president had the audacity to claim a high inflation rate was a good thing because it had “cooled” from the 40-year record Biden broke the previous year.

6. The Edge of World War

Aggressive support for Ukraine in its war with Russia has been a constant theme of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, this support edges us closer to a global war. With escalation as the apparent goal of this conflict, depleted stockpiles put the U.S. at increased risk of war with insufficient supplies to fight it. NATO’s recent shortening of Ukraine’s membership application process could threaten to drag NATO member countries, and America in particular, into a great power conflict once again.

Of course, this is in addition to rising threats from China and at America’s southern border, with foreign threats growing under the noses of a distracted national security apparatus.

7. Science-Denying HHS Assistant Secretary

How’s this for normal? Biden appointed a science-denying man as the first “female” four-star

admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The president selected Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender-identifying person and motivated LGBT ideologue, as the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Levine previously promoted the most extreme policies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during Covid and was responsible for thousands of excess deaths in Pennsylvania during his tenure as the head of the Pennsylvania Health Department. In his position as Assistant Secretary, Levine has consistently fought to deny biological realities and promote the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children.

8. Pop Star as a Medical Expert

In keeping with Biden’s elevation of the unqualified, his administration turned to celebrities such as Olivia Rodrigo to persuade Americans to fawn over a flailing Anthony Fauci. In 2021, Rodrigo partnered with Fauci and Biden to produce videos encouraging youth vaccination. Her fans, along with the rest of the world, realized her expertise in healing hearts through music did not extend to medicine; her vaccination video remains one of her least-liked social media posts.

9. Senility and Lying

Probably the easiest return to normal would have been the election of a younger, coherent president who maintained some semblance of accountability to Americans. Instead, Biden offers regular doses of verbal incoherence, sleepiness, gaffes, uncomfortable whispers and shouts, and tumbles. These are all bad looks, but not as bad as the lies that spill out of the president on the daily, which The Federalist has tracked since his first day in office. Lying may be normal for Biden, but it shouldn’t be normal for the presidency, and neither should perceived physical and cognitive weakness on the world stage.

10. War on SCOTUS

It’s no surprise attacks on the Supreme Court have ramped up under the Biden administration. After all, this president evidently believes he’s above the law, and the court has disagreed, smacking down his administration on everything from student loans to Covid jab mandates. Not to mention other blows to the left during Biden’s tenure, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 303 Creative decision, and a university affirmative action takedown.

With the help of the media, the Biden administration has gotten bold about its plans to undercut and circumvent the court wherever it can. And the president is not alone; private universities will also be doing their best to dodge the law to keep supporting racial discrimination.

Samuel Boehlke is a rising senior in Mass Communication/Law and Policy at Concordia University Wisconsin and a current intern at The Federalist. He is Web Editor for CUW’s The Beacon and External Affairs Editor for Quaestus Journal. Reach him at sboehlkefdrlst@gmail.com or by DMs @vaguelymayo.

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Top 10 Takeaways From FBI Director Christopher Wray’s House Judiciary Testimony

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 13, 2023

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

FBI Director Christopher Wray sat for nearly four hours of questioning on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are the top takeaways from the hearing.

1. Wray Indicates Foreign Intel Agencies Worked with Big Tech to Silence Speech

The FBI director faced fierce questioning from Republican committee members on the FBI’s efforts to induce Big Tech to censor American speech. Several representatives specifically challenged Wray to justify the FBI passing along requests from the Ukrainian intelligence agency, SBU, to social media companies. The FBI’s role as a conduit for SBU was just revealed on Monday in a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

That report revealed that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the SBU enlisted the FBI to forward to American social media companies lists of accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI obliged, sending a flurry of requests for accounts to be removed, including many American accounts, to multiple social media platforms. In fact, the House report highlighted the inclusion of the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department. The House Judiciary Committee queried Wray on how this could happen, while also inquiring why the FBI would assist the SBU in this endeavor, especially in light of Russia’s known infiltration of SBU.

In explaining the FBI’s involvement, Wray stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had cut off Ukraine’s communications, causing SBU to ask the FBI to contact U.S. companies on their behalf with the list of accounts supposedly spreading Russian disinformation. But as Republicans on the committee highlighted, the account lists in question included American accounts. Thus, the FBI’s involvement triggered the same First Amendment problems as those litigated in Missouri v. Biden.

This testimony also raised a second area of concern, namely the apparent coordination between U.S. social media companies and foreign governments. Wray said he served as an intermediary because Ukraine’s communications system was down. But in that case, it appears SBU would have contacted the American companies on its own behalf, seeking the silencing of Americans’ speech.

So the question for American social media companies is this: Do they accept requests to remove accounts or posts from foreign countries? And do they censor Americans’ speech based on foreign claims of disinformation?

2. Private Corporations Present a Bigger Concern Than Wray

Social media companies are not the only ones who have some explaining to do following Wray’s testimony. Americans should also demand answers from private businesses with access to consumer information, especially those in the financial sector.

This concern flows from Wray’s response to questioning about Bank of America handing the FBI financial records of customers who had purchased firearms within the six months before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Wray defended the FBI’s receipt of this information by noting that “a number of business community partners, all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity.” Such activity is entirely lawful, the FBI director maintained, although he added that the FBI opted not to use the Bank of America data to avoid concerns over the bureau obtaining that data.

That the FBI decided not to use the data, however, provides no comfort because Bank of America obviously had no qualms about sharing the information. Further, Wray framed Bank of America’s data sharing as consistent with “business partners” who “all the time” share information about possible criminal activity.

But financial data showing a customer had previously purchased a gun does not represent evidence of “possible criminal activity.” Yet that didn’t stop Bank of America from giving the information to the FBI. So what other financial information is Bank of America providing? And what about other “business partners”?

3. Wray Needs to Read the Court’s Opinion in Missouri v. Biden

The partnership that took main billing during Wednesday’s hearing was that forged between the FBI and social media companies, and Republicans drilled Wray on the coordinated efforts to censor American speech. Throughout the entire hearing, though, Wray unwaveringly maintained the bureau was not responsible for the censorship because the FBI was merely making suggestions that posts involving foreign malign influence be removed.

No one who read the district court’s opinion in Missouri v. Biden could reasonably reach that conclusion. And since the FBI played such a heavy role in the censorship enterprise summarized in that case, the FBI director owes it to the public to actually study that opinion.

DOJ lawyers may be telling Wray the FBI is in the clear, but a federal judge disagreed,

and since the court has ordered the FBI to abandon its unconstitutional conduct, Wray needs to understand precisely what that means. Reading the court’s unfiltered opinion is the only way to see the many ways the FBI violated the First Amendment.

4. So Much Ignorance, So Little Time

Wray was not only ignorant of the facts underlying Missouri v. Biden, but he also revealed several other blind spots. For instance, during the hearing, Wray acknowledged he had previously testified that the FBI had not used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications of foreign individuals, in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That ended up not being accurate, however, but Wray was “blissfully ignorant” of that fact when he testified to the contrary to Congress.

Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell also put on a display of ignorance Wednesday, although in his case it was a feigned ignorance, with the California congressman framing the Hunter Biden laptop as concerning the nudes of a private citizen. While Swalwell may still be fixated on the nudes on the laptop, Republicans’ concern has always been of the evidence of a pay-to-play scandal implicating now-President Biden.

Then there’s Rep. Zoe Lofgren who claimed the GOP majority was engaging in “conspiracy theories” to discredit “one of the premier law enforcement agencies in the United States,” and “without any evidence” trying to “make the case that the FBI is somehow opposed to conservative views.” These 20 examples tell a different story.

5. Why Was Auten Anywhere Near Biden Evidence?

Wray and the Democrats weren’t the only ignorant ones, however. Republicans were clueless when it came to understanding why FBI analyst Brian Auten was anywhere near evidence implicating Hunter Biden. After all, Auten had been under internal investigation since 2019 for his role in Crossfire Hurricane. Given the partisan witch hunt that investigation proved to be, why would the bureau allow Auten to play a part in the highly political investigation of Hunter Biden?

Yet it apparently did. A whistleblower has told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 and that assessment provided other FBI agents the ability to falsely brand derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation.

Wednesday’s testimony by the FBI director shed no light on the question of Auten’s involvement.

6. AG Garland’s the Real Hack Targeting Parents

While Wray was unable to explain Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, he made clear that when it came to the parents-are-terrorists memorandum, that was all Attorney General Merrick Garland’s doing. That testimony proved enlightening by showing that for all of the FBI’s deficiencies, even its director sees the attorney general as more of a hack for targeting parents at school board meetings.

7. Orange Man Bad, FBI Good

Also enlightening were the Democrats’ main lines of questioning. Here, there were two. The leftist lawmakers spent most of their time rehabilitating the FBI, reciting the many important bureau missions, showcasing hero agents, highlighting horrible attacks on FBI offices, and rejoicing in the FBI’s family days. Then the far-left faction merely attacked Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.

Together these lines of questioning exposed the Democrats as unconcerned by the many abuses Americans have witnessed over the last half-dozen years. And what was unserious appeared downright absurd when Democrat Pramila Jayapal used her allotted time to challenge the FBI director over the bureau’s purchase of citizens’ data, including location data, from various data brokers. Pre-Trump, every Democrat would have been drilling Wray on such abuses of civil liberties, but this week it was only Jayapal.

8. The Speech or Debate Clause Does Some Heavy Lifting

In addition to the Democrats’ two main lines of questioning, a sub-theme of many of the comments concerned the whistleblowers, with Democrats attempting to discredit their testimony. One way they sought to do that was by presenting the whistleblowers as hired tongues. But beginning with Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and continuing through Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, they made this point by slandering the whistleblowers, falsely stating they had been paid for their testimony.

Of course, the speech or debate clause prevents the whistleblowers from suing the committee members who lied about them, which is precisely why they had no qualms about doing so.

REMEMBER WHAT THE DEMS WERE SAYING ABOUT THE SO-CALLED WHISTLEBLOWER THAT CAME OUT ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP? I guess it’s the accused that makes their speech different.

9. Schiff Can’t Stop Lying

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is proof of this point because he can’t stop lying. He lied about the Carter Page FISA warrants. And on Wednesday, he lied again about President Donald Trump’s telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state following the November 2020 election.

Unfortunately, “as I’ve been forced to detail time and again because the corrupt media continue to lie about the conversation, the transcript of the call established that Trump did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’” As I wrote in February, “It never happened.” Instead, during that “telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the secretary of state’s office, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that ‘the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.’” Thus the legal team wanted the secretary of state’s office to investigate the violations of Georgia election law because the court refused to do its duty.

Schiff knows this, but he also knows there are no consequences for lying. On the contrary, he might just convince Californians to send him to the Senate so he can follow in Harry “He Didn’t Win, Did He?” Reid’s footsteps.

10. A Mixed Bag on the Pro-Life Question

The final takeaway topic from Wray’s testimony concerned the pro-life question, and Wray presented a mixed bag. On the one hand, he outrageously refused to condemn the FBI agents who decided to use a SWAT-like display of force to arrest a pro-life sidewalk counselor at his family home when the man’s attorney had agreed to arrange for his client to voluntarily appear to face the charges — of which he was later acquitted.

On the other hand, when Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., attempted to frame abortionists and abortion facilities as being increasingly targeted in the wake of Dobbs, Wray corrected the narrative, noting that the uptick in violence has been to pro-life centers, with 70 percent of the cases involving such organizations.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Grassley Probes Weiss Deputy’s Role In Obstructing Biden Investigation

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 10, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

A Delaware assistant U.S. attorney was briefed in October 2020 that a confidential human source (CHS) had reported Hunter and Joe Biden each received $5 million in bribes, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed Sunday in a letter to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. A source familiar with that briefing has now confirmed to The Federalist that the Pittsburgh office told the Delaware office the CHS’s reporting appeared credible and merited further investigation. That added detail increases the significance of Grassley’s Sunday letter and his question to Weiss about whether his deputy thwarted the investigation.

“On October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD-1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden,” Grassley’s letter said. “What steps have the Justice Department and FBI taken to investigate the allegations?” the Iowa senator asked before noting his concerns about Wolf’s involvement.

Grassley then highlighted the numerous ways Wolf appeared to have obstructed the investigation into Hunter Biden’s potentially criminal business activities. “IRS whistleblowers have affirmed that AUSA Wolf prevented investigators from seeking information about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s criminal business arrangements,” Grassley said, adding that she also “frustrated investigative efforts” by the IRS agents to question Hunter Biden’s business partner, Rob Walker, about Joe Biden.

Wolf also refused to allow agents to search Joe Biden’s guest house, even though there was “more than enough probable cause,” and she prevented investigators from searching a storage unit used by the now-president’s son, the letter said. In fact, Grassley stressed, Wolf alerted Hunter Biden’s lawyers to the investigators’ interest in the storage unit.

Given what Grassley called Wolf’s “questionable and obstructive conduct,” he asked Weiss whether Wolf had taken “similar proactive measures to frustrate any investigation into the FD-1023.” Grassley also probed Weiss’s knowledge of the accusations leveled against Wolf and how he has handled them. From Grassley’s questions, he seems to believe Wolf knows whether the DOJ buried evidence that Joe and Hunter Biden received bribes from the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma.

Former Attorney General William Barr had previously confirmed that the FD-1023 summary of the CHS’s intel had been sent to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office for further investigation, following then-Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady’s conclusion that the reporting was not Russian disinformation. Barr later also said the Delaware office had been briefed on the FD-1023 material. Until now, however, it was unclear who had received that information.

Knowing that Wolf and FBI special agents from the Baltimore field office received a briefing on the contents of the FD-1023 allows congressional oversight committees to probe precisely who investigated the CHS’s allegations and how — or if not, why. Did Wolf direct agents to disregard the FD-1023? Did anyone else? If so, why? Who was involved in the decision? Who knew of the decision?

While we do not know the answers to those questions yet, we do know from the Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers that they were not informed of the FD-1023. As Grassley noted in his letter, the IRS agents were excluded from the meeting with the Pittsburgh field office. We also know from the IRS whistleblowers’ congressional testimony and supplemental statements that they first learned of the FD-1023 when Barr publicly stated the information had been sent to Delaware for further investigation.

Who decided to exclude the IRS agents from the meeting? Who decided to keep them in the dark about the FD-1023 and the information contained in it? Was anyone from the Baltimore field office adequately skilled to investigate the CHS’s reporting? As members of the IRS’s International Tax and Financial Crimes group, both the IRS whistleblowers working with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office were. So why were they cut out of the case?

Following the release of Grassley’s letter, a source familiar with the Delaware briefing told The Federalist that in addition to summarizing the contents of the FD-1023, the Pittsburgh office requested the FBI provide FD-1023 access to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office and the agents out of the Baltimore field office working on the case. The Pittsburgh office also told Wolf and the FBI agents present during the briefing that the information contained in the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and they recommended it be further investigated.

But was it investigated? Grassley asked precisely that question to Weiss.

The Iowa senator also asked Weiss when he became aware of the October 2020 briefing and why the IRS agents were excluded from that meeting. Grassley further inquired of the Delaware U.S. attorney whether the scope of the “alleged ‘ongoing investigation’ include[s] criminal bribery with respect to the alleged criminal scheme between a foreign national and then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden?”

In posing these questions, Grassley noted that from information provided to his office, “potentially hundreds of Justice Department and FBI officials have had access to the FD-1023 at issue.” This comment proves intriguing because in an earlier letter, Grassley had noted that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten had opened an assessment that FBI headquarters used in September 2020 to falsely label derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation. According to Grassley’s letter, the FBI HQ team then “placed their findings with respect to whether reporting was disinformation in a restricted access sub-file reviewable only by the particular agents responsible for uncovering the specific information.”

Grassley’s recent comment suggests that contrary to the earlier assumption, it may have been other derogatory information labeled misinformation and not the FD-1023. Or possibly the FD-1023 had been at one time restricted and then made more broadly available. But if it wasn’t the FD-1023 that Auten buried, that means there was even more derogatory information about Hunter Biden that the FBI failed to investigate. What was that information?

Grassley’s letter may raise more questions than it answers, but it also establishes the senator is nearing the end of the trail that leads to the individuals responsible for deciding to — or not to — investigate the FD-1023 and the allegations that the now-president of the United States accepted a $5 million bribe from a corrupt Ukrainian.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tightrope

A.F. BRANCO | on July 6, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tightrope/

DOJ protects Hunter and the Biden Crime Family from the IRS and other Scandals.

DOJ Protecting the Bidens — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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Holiday Weekend News Dump Implodes Merrick Garland’s Biden-Investigation Testimony

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

A new letter sent by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to the House Judiciary Committee suggests Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress when he testified that Weiss “has full authority” to charge Hunter Biden in “other jurisdictions.” Whether Garland committed perjury will all come down to the meaning of the word “has.”

Late Friday, just as Americans unplugged for the long Independence Day weekend, Weiss confirmed he didn’t really have “ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden criminal investigation. In his letter, Weiss gave away the deceptive word game he has been playing with Congress — and Garland has been playing with America. More significantly, the letter suggests Biden’s attorney general lied to Congress and that everything the IRS whistleblower has said is true.

What the Whistleblower Said

Weiss’s letter followed the House Ways and Means Committee’s release of IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s testimony and related exhibits concerning the Hunter Biden investigation headed out of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office. The transcript of Shapley’s May 26, 2023, closed-door testimony revealed the IRS agent had told the House committee that during an Oct. 7, 2022 meeting between Weiss and senior-level managers, Weiss allegedly said, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

According to Shapley’s testimony, Weiss then explained that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, refused to allow Weiss to charge Hunter Biden in the D.C. district — the necessary venue for certain charges based on Hunter Biden’s residency during the relevant time. Shapley noted, “Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority.” “Instead,” Shapley recounted, Weiss “was told to follow the process,” which sent Weiss through another Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, for other potential criminal charges based in California.

Without the cooperation of Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys, Shapley told the House committee, Weiss was unable to bring charges outside his Delaware district. And Weiss’s lack of authority led to the statute of limitations expiring on felony tax charges against the president’s son for the 2014 and 2015 tax years.

To corroborate his testimony, Shapley provided the House Ways and Means Committee with an email he had sent a colleague soon after the meeting summarizing the key points. That Oct. 7 email recounted the details to which Shapley had testified and, significantly, Shapley copied the special agent in charge of criminal investigations of the IRS D.C. field office, Darrell J. Waldon, who had also attended the Oct. 7 meeting. Waldon would then reply to Shapley’s email summary, “Thanks Gary. You covered it all,” indicating Shapley had accurately recounted Weiss’s representation that he is “not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

The release of Shapley’s testimony and the collaborating email was huge because it indicated both Weiss and Garland had deceived Congress. Weiss for his part had sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023, stating:

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

Weiss’s Friday letter was in response to questions House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan posed to the Delaware U.S. attorney about his claim “to have been granted ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden investigation.

In his pre-Fourth of July weekend epistle, the Delaware U.S. attorney said he stood by what he wrote in the June 7, 2023 letter. He added, however, that he wished to expand on what he meant. Weiss then acknowledged that as the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, his charging authority is geographically limited to his home district.

“If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” the letter noted. “If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515.” Weiss concluded by stressing that he had “been assured that, if necessary after the above process,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

There was no reason Weiss could not have provided this explanation earlier — or at least no good reason: The Delaware U.S. attorney clearly intended to convey to Congress the false impression that he had “ultimate authority” to charge Hunter Biden, which would in turn suggest the IRS whistleblower’s claims to the contrary were false.

But Weiss’s clarification confirms he lacked “ultimate authority,” which is entirely consistent with Shapley’s testimony. In fact, had Shapley falsely summarized the statements Weiss made during the Oct. 7, 2022 meeting, Weiss could have easily said so. That he didn’t speaks volumes.

Lies, Lies, Lies

While Weiss’s clarification from late last week is technically consistent with what he told Congress in his June 7, 2022 letter, the same cannot be said for Garland’s earlier testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On March 1, 2023, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Garland whether Weiss had “independent charging authority over certain criminal allegations against the President’s son outside the District of Delaware.” After responding that Weiss “would have to bring the case in another district,” Garland added that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary” (emphasis added).

But according to Weiss’s latest letter, he didn’t have “full authority” and still doesn’t. Rather he had been assured, “if necessary,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

Given Shapley’s testimony, there is a huge difference between Weiss having “full authority” to bring charges in other districts and being promised a grant of such authority. If Weiss had “full authority,” as Garland told Congress, that would mean that either the whistleblower lied to Congress or Weiss lied to his senior team handling the Hunter Biden investigation. It would also clear Garland, the DOJ, and FBI headquarters of interfering in the investigation — a second allegation the whistleblower leveled in his testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee.

With both Weiss and Garland playing word games with Congress, it seems likely Weiss also sought to mislead the House when he stressed that he “had been assured” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.” That language suggests Weiss always had that assurance, but from the whistleblower’s testimony, it appears Weiss had previously requested such authority and been denied it. (The whistleblower and Waldon likely confused Weiss’s reference to special attorney status with special counsel status.)

A belated promise by Garland to give Weiss special attorney authority under § 515 means nothing, as the statute of limitations has already run out for the felony tax charges. So the question remains: Was Weiss denied such authority, as the whistleblower claims Weiss told him? And when did Garland assure Weiss he would have § 515 authority? For that matter, why wouldn’t Garland have immediately conferred such authority on Weiss?

It seems unlikely Congress or the American public will learn the answers to these questions any time soon. Weiss appears to be coordinating his communications with Garland, as demonstrated by his reference in Friday’s letter to the DOJ’s Department of Legislative Affairs — further proof that Weiss is no more independent from the Biden administration than the rest of the Department of Justice.

This article has been updated since publication.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes, Says Credible FBI Source

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 15, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

The Bidens allegedly “coerced” a foreign national to pay them $10 million in bribes, according to individuals familiar with the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the FD-1023 confidential human source report. What, if anything, agents did to investigate these explosive claims remains unknown, however, with sources telling The Federalist the FBI continues to stonewall.

On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed a foreign national — identified by individuals with knowledge of the matter as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky — allegedly possessed 17 recordings implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal. While 15 of the audio recordings consisted of phone calls between Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden, two were of calls the Ukrainian had with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the FD-1023.

The Federalist has now learned the FD-1023 reported the CHS saying the Bidens “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay the bribes. Sources familiar with the investigation also explained the context of Zlochevsky’s statements, and that context further bolsters the CHS’s reporting.

In the FD-1023 from June 30, 2020, the confidential human source summarized earlier meetings he had with Zlochevsky. According to the CHS, in the 2015-2016 timeframe, the CHS, who was providing advice to Zlochevsky, told the Burisma owner to stay away from the Bidens. Then, after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest, the CHS asked Zlochevsky if he was upset Trump won.

Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family, which included a $5 million payment to Hunter Biden and a $5 million payment to Joe Biden. According to the CHS, the Burisma executive bemoaned the situation, claiming the Bidens had “coerced” him into paying the bribes.

The CHS responded that he hoped Zlochevsky had taken precautions to protect himself. Zlochevsky then allegedly detailed the steps he had taken to avoid detection, stressing he had never paid the “Big Guy” directly and that it would take some 10 years to unravel the various money trails. It was only then that Zlochevsky mentioned the audio recordings he had made of the conversations he had with Hunter and Joe Biden, according to the CHS.

The broader context of this conversation adds to the plausibility of Zlochevsky’s claims that he possessed recordings implicating the Bidens. And we already know from Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer that the FBI considered the CHS, who relayed Zlochevsky’s claims to the FBI, a “highly credible” source.

Further, according to individuals familiar with the investigation, the FBI admitted the CHS’s intel was unrelated to the information Rudy Giuliani had provided the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney’s office — the office then-Attorney General William Barr had tasked with reviewing any new information related to Ukraine.

Sources told The Federalist that investigators out of the Pittsburgh office, in addition to reviewing Giuliani’s information, searched internal FBI databases and came across an earlier FD-1023 related to the CHS. That earlier FD-1023 then led to agents questioning the CHS on June 30, 2020, uncovering the details concerning Burisma’s alleged bribery of the Bidens.

What the FBI did to investigate the allegations is unknown, with sources telling The Federalist the bureau refused to either confirm or deny that the DOJ under Barr sent the FD-1023 to Delaware for further investigation. On the contrary, the FBI allowed Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, to falsely represent to Americans that Barr and Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had closed the investigation. Raskin’s deceit, tolerated by the FBI, forced Barr to publicly correct the record.

The FBI is also refusing to provide any information on what, if any, steps it took to investigate the detailed claims contained in the FD-1023. But sources familiar with investigative procedures maintain there was insufficient time between the June 30, 2020, interview of the CHS and the FBI headquarters’ closing of an assessment related to the FD-1023 in August 2020 to properly probe the matter. “They couldn’t have done much,” one source said.

There is also no independent confirmation from Delaware indicating any investigative steps were taken regarding the FD-1023. Agents in Delaware “could have sat on it,” according to one individual familiar with the investigation.

While the FBI’s efforts to unwind the pay-to-play scheme seem to have been nonexistent, banking records released in May by the House Oversight Committee show congressional investigators are unraveling the complex web behind the Biden family business. Those records provide concrete evidence of a pattern of public corruption involving foreign nationals, with Joe Biden at the helm. There are still more banking records to review, along with the many details recently discovered when the whistleblower came forward with the FD-1023.

Apparently, Zlochevsky wasn’t far from the mark when he said it would take 10 years to unravel the complex payment path that led to Joe Biden.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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CNN Internal Survey Shows Viewers Lost Trust In Network Over ‘Sensational’ Covid Coverage

BY: SAMUEL BOEHLKE | JUNE 07, 2023

Viewers lost trust in CNN due to its left-wing bias and histrionic Covid reporting, according to a 2022 survey commissioned by the network. Despite collecting bogus awards for “fact-checking,” and “special achievements” for “placing a premium” on investigative reporting, the network failed to maintain the trust of the American people — to the point where its own internal survey exposed its epic shortcomings.

A partial copy of CNN’s survey was cited by Semafor’s Max Tani, who noted that the three highest causes of mistrust were “liberal bias,” the “Chris Cuomo situation,” and the network’s Covid coverage. According to Tani, the report showed respondents “across the ideological spectrum” lambasting CNN’s “dire” and “overly dramatic and sensational” reporting.

In utter detachment from the real world, legacy media toadies rewarded the untrustworthy network. CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who was central to the network’s Covid sensationalism and fake fact-checking, received an award for “excellence in political journalism” and was praised for “accurate information.” Meanwhile, the CNN team that reported from Chinese quarantine received an award named after a reporter murdered in the Greek Civil War.

[READ: If You Want To Know Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Media, Watch CNN]

News of the report comes as network CEO Chris Licht faces significant criticism for his response to CNN’s Covid coverage, which was aired in a feature by The Atlantic. In it, Licht — who reportedly “felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism” — admitted CNN’s coverage began with a desire to help people in a confusing pandemic era but was ultimately driven by “ratings.” He has since apologized for his remarks, but CNN’s own survey results suggest his statements were based on public sentiment and statistics known to the company.

Outside sources confirm trust in CNN is declining. A Statista survey released a few months before Licht’s hiring last year showed only 20 percent of Americans placed “a lot” of trust in CNN — and it hasn’t improved under the new CEO. In April, YouGov found that only 13 percent of U.S. adults consider CNN “very trustworthy.”

Samuel Boehlke is a rising senior in Mass Communication/Law and Policy at Concordia University Wisconsin and a current intern at The Federalist. He is Web Editor for CUW’s The Beacon and External Affairs Editor for Quaestus Journal. Reach him at sboehlkefdrlst@gmail.com or by DMs @vaguelymayo.

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SAMUEL BOEHLKE

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Media

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Breadcrumbs From a Buried FBI Source May Lead to a Bigger Biden Scandal

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 31, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

ALL EMPHASIS ARE BY ME – Jerry Broussard WDYS

After a confidential human source claimed then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions, FBI agents used what’s called an FD-1023 form to record the allegation. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is defying a May 3 congressional subpoena to provide this form. On Tuesday, in response to Wray’s refusal to hand over the documents, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer announced the House will move to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.

It isn’t that announcement — or even the other explosive ones released over the past year by Comer’s Senate colleague, Chuck Grassley — that prove the most telling, however. Rather, it is the combination of all the details, big and small, that suggests the scandal set to unfold over the coming weeks will be bigger than anyone imagined.

The Dirt Is in the Details

Take recent big news from whistleblower disclosures revealing that the Justice Department and the FBI have the unclassified FD-1023 form spelling out Biden’s alleged criminal behavior. Then combine that with other known information to discover the bigger picture.

For instance, in response to Wray’s failure to comply with the subpoena, Grassley, who had previously noted the FD-1023 form was five or six pages long, indicated that the confidential human source (CHS) was “an apparent trusted FBI source.” This is huge because Grassley wouldn’t make that claim unless the whistleblower had. That means the source is not some random guy walking in off the street, but rather an existing “trusted” CHS, which is why the FBI used the FD-1023 form.

In response to Wray’s stonewalling, Comer likewise revealed some significant details, clarifying late last week that the CHS reporting document was dated June 30, 2020, and referenced “the amount of money the foreign national allegedly paid to receive the desired policy outcome” as “five million.” These details could only have come from a whistleblower with deep knowledge of the investigation, meaning the whistleblower’s characterization of the CHS as “trusted” carries more weight. Likewise, the whistleblower’s claim that the FD-1023 “includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” is more credible given the whistleblower’s knowledge of other details.

Comer’s reference to “five million” is also intriguing. In a letter to Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, Grassley had previously revealed a promise by a Chinese communist government-connected enterprise to funnel $5 million to “Hunter and James Biden to compensate them for work done while Joe Biden was vice president.” Records released by Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., also confirmed a $5 million payment to James and Hunter Biden from another Chinese-connected business.

The date of the FD-1023 form, June 30, 2020, also proves significant when read in conjunction with Grassley’s letter to Wray in July 2022. In that letter, Grassley said the whistleblower had claimed that “the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity,” but “that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters (‘FBI HQ’) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.”

The whistleblower further alleged that in September 2020, the FBI HQ team that handled the Auten assessment, after concluding the reporting was disinformation, placed the information in a restricted access sub-file that only the particular agents who uncovered the CHS’s information could access.

Several points merit mention here: First, Auten is the same agent responsible for some of the shenanigans in Crossfire Hurricane. Second, Grassley’s letter indicates Auten did not open the “assessment” on Hunter Biden or other members of the Biden family. The senator’s correspondence actually suggests the assessment may have been opened on the CHS.

Here’s the relevant language:

The basis for how the FBI HQ team selected the specific information for inclusion in Auten’s assessment is unknown, but in more than one instance the focus of the FBI HQ team’s attention involved derogatory information about Hunter Biden.

The whistleblower also reportedly told Grassley that FBI HQ later closed sources after branding their info as disinformation. Given the timing of the assessment (August 2020) and the date of the CHS report (June 2020), it seems likely the FBI used the CHS report as part of the “assessment” and that the “assessment” was of the CHS.

This leads to the next significant point: According to the whistleblower, Auten’s assessment led to the “improper discrediting” of the verified and verifiable derogatory information about Hunter Biden. Worse, based on several hints dropped by Grassley over the last year, FBI headquarters conducted little to no investigation on the CHS and other derogatory info before labeling it “disinformation.”

The timing of the CHS report in June 2020 also proves conveniently coincidental to the decision by Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mark Warner, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Adam Schiff to send a letter just two weeks later, on July 13, 2020, to the FBI claiming Congress was being subjected to a foreign disinformation campaign. On July 16, 2020, the then-ranking members of two congressional committees asked the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force — the same one that handled the “assessment” that branded the Hunter Biden intel as disinformation — to give the committees a defensive briefing. News of that “Russian disinformation” briefing soon leaked to the press.

What About a Recording?

Grassley’s correspondence and statements over the last year hint at one more possibility: The FBI had at least one recording that implicated members of the Biden family in a criminal enterprise and buried that evidence. Specifically, in one letter to the bureau, Grassley said other FBI records “shed light on Hunter Biden’s business and financial relationship with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky,” and those “documents include specific details about conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden.” Grassley had previously requested interview summary forms that referenced Zlochevsky, and in seeking FBI records, the senator’s letter made clear that “records” included “recorded or graphic material,” including “recordings of verbal communications.” This possibility fits with the whistleblower’s description of “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” that FBI HQ shut down in October 2020 “in furtherance of Mr. Auten’s assessment,” even though, according to the whistleblower, the intel could have been verified by use of search warrants.

A follow-up question Grassley asked Wray further suggests the possibility of recorded conversations implicating the Bidens: “Does the Justice Department have a specific policy regarding the use of materials and information related to U.S. citizens who reside in the United States provided by foreign governments, including the fruits of surveillance carried out by a foreign state’s intelligence service?”

Whether these possibilities pan out remains to be seen, but what should be clear to all now is that the whistleblower knows where the evidence is buried — and Grassley and Comer have brought their shovels.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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