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President Biden Cloaks His Legacy in Infamy With the Hunter Biden Pardon

By: Jonathan Turley | December 2, 2024

Below is my column in Fox.com on President Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter of not just his convicted crimes but any crimes that he may have chosen to commit. President Biden has set a standard that is not merely a new low but positively subterraneous for future presidents.

Here is the column:

President Joe Biden’s decision to use his presidential powers to pardon his own son will be a decision that lives in infamy in presidential politics. It is not just that the President used his constitutional powers to benefit his family. It is because the action culminates years of lying to the public about his knowledge and intentions in the influence-peddling scandal surrounding his family. Even among past scandals in the abuse of the pardon power, Biden has done lasting damage not just to his legacy but his office.

Despite its noble origins and purpose, the pardon power historically has not been a pristine power used by past presidents. As I have previously written, it was used to benefit the political cronies of past presidents. President Warren Harding was even accused of selling pardons, including to mob enforcer Ignacio Lupo, known as “Lupo the Wolf.” Former president William Clinton waited for the final days of his presidency to pardon his own brother as well as a major democratic donor.

In 2023, I wrote that Biden might follow this same pattern and pardon his son as a lame-duck president. The column suggested that Biden might withdraw as a candidate for office and then take the action as a father: “The pardon-and-apology approach might appeal to Biden not only as an effort to convert vice into virtue but to justify his withdrawal from the election as a selfless act.”

In the 2020 election and throughout his presidential term, Biden repeatedly lied to the American public with an ease and impunity that shocked even many political veterans in Washington. He was repeatedly asked if he knew about Hunter’s foreign dealings, including millions in alleged deals with Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, and other clients. President Biden lied and denied such knowledge. As I detailed in my testimony in the Biden impeachment hearing, he had repeated discussions of these dealings. He is even on tape discussing news stories on the dealings.

President Biden was also repeatedly asked if he met any of his son’s clients. He repeatedly lied. We have pictures and records of dinners and meetings with these clients. Hunter Biden was expressly thanked for his arranging such access to his father.

Few reporters pressed Biden on the corruption scandal, but they were often met not only with denials but angry retorts from the president. When Fox reporter Peter Doocy raised it, the President steamed “Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man — you’re a one-horse pony, I tell you.”

When CBS’s Bo Erickson broke ranks and raised the scandal and drew a rebuke from Biden “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.”

The President continued to lie throughout the election, the presidential debates, and his term.

Then, the press repeatedly asked him whether he would pardon his son. The President was now running for reelection and again lied. He and the White House said over and over again that no such pardon would occur and was not being contemplated. That was also a lie. NBC is reporting that, while issuing these denials last June, there were discussions about the pardon.

The pardon power was written in absolute terms, and a president can even, in my view, pardon himself. However, what is constitutional is not necessarily ethical or right. This is one of the most disgraceful pardons even in the checkered history of presidential pardons. President Biden has lied to cover up a corruption scandal that reportedly brought his family millions in raw influence peddling. His portrayal of his son as a victim stands in sharp contrast to the sense of immunity and power conveyed by Hunter in his dealings.

There were diamonds as gifts, lavish expense accounts, and a sports car, in addition to massive payments that Hunter claimed were “loans.” There are messages where Hunter belies the President’s portrayal of a political witch hunt, including messages like the one to a Chinese businessman openly threatening the displeasure of Joe Biden if money is not sent to them immediately. In the WhatsApp message, Hunter stated:

“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. 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, 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. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The President has now pardoned Hunter for his convicted felonies and any crimes he may have committed from “Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024.”

It is all now being buried under a sweeping immunity deal and a pack of presidential lies.

*Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “**The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage*.”

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After Trying Every Other Trick in The Book, Democrats Go Full ‘Trump Is Hitler’ Days Before the Election

By: M.D. Kittle | October 24, 2024

Kamala Harris addresses a questions at CNN's Town Hall.

Author M.D. Kittle profile

M.D. Kittle

They’ve attacked him. They’ve impeached him. They’ve arrested him. They’ve desperately tried to imprison him. They unconstitutionally denied him access to the ballot. They’ve tried to kill him. Democrats have failed at every turn to get rid of Donald Trump. Now the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy and their corporate media allies are turning to the last vestige of hope for the desperate in an extremely tight presidential race: Lies. And name-calling.

‘Do You Think Donald Trump Is a Fascist?’

Democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris opened Wednesday night’s CNN town hall with a long tirade in which she warned ostensibly undecided voters that Trump would be a dictator if given another term in the Oval Office.

“Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” host Anderson Cooper asked the vice president in the opening moments of the latest long-form, packaged-as-news political ad for the Harris-Walz campaign.

“Yes, I do. Yes, I do,” Harris answered as if reciting an unholy wedding vow.

Of course she does. The “Trump is Hitler” narrative is Harris’ — and the left’s — closing argument in a Reader’s Digest presidential campaign for the Democrats. It must be noted that Harris’ abridged quest began with the Democrats’ bloodless coup that removed the demented Democrat president of the United States from his run for a second term.

In an act of corporate media collusion so transparent it burns the eyes, the shameless Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief at The Atlantic, published the hit piece earlier this week that Harris and her team are using in one last-ditch effort to paint the former president as “unfit” to be president again. The smear job, citing bitter former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, claims, among other outlandish charges, that while in office Trump suggested Hitler “did some good things.” The story, mostly employing anonymous sources, was quickly debunked on the record by multiple people who were in the room with Trump.

As my Federalist colleague John Daniel Davidson wrote, the story “would never have passed muster in a newsroom 20 years ago.” And former Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi aptly noted on X, “The Hunter Biden laptop story couldn’t be repeated by any major outlet because it hadn’t been independently verified. The Atlantic pieces can be repeated by everyone. Weird how that works.”

The Hunter Biden laptop story couldn't be repeated by any major outlet because it hadn't been independently verified. The Atlantic pieces can be repeated by everyone. Weird how that works.
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) October 23, 2024

Of course, it’s not weird at all. Painting the former president as the devil has long been the playbook. Lies and empty accusations are just fine, if they’re in pursuit of what the left thinks is right. And what is right to the Democrats is holding on to power by any means necessary.

Just ask the late spawn of Satan, Harry Reid. The nasty, formerly breathing Democrat senator infamously lied about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney not paying his taxes. Reid lied from the Senate floor. When called out on his lie, Reid sneered, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

‘She May Lose’

That’s the left. It’s what they do. And, yes, sometimes the lies work. But there is political peril for Harris. Voters have heard it all from Democrats, particularly the patently false stuff about Trump and his relationship with the military and service members.

As pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz told CNN’s Kasie Hunt hours before her network’s town hall, Harris runs a real risk of alienating the relatively few undecideds in the race. Luntz said Harris did well in the opening days of her Joe Biden replacement campaign focusing on “why she should be elected.” Remember all those “good vibes” and joy and crap?

“She’s had the best 60 days of any presidential candidate in modern history. And then the moment that she turned anti-Trump and focused on him and said, ‘Don’t vote for me, vote against him,’ that’s when everything froze,” the strategist said.

The polls show as much. Trump in recent weeks has devoured any gap as Harris could no longer hide and had to answer at least some actual questions about her record and her agenda. In Harris parlance, he is unburdened by what has been.

Trump is defined, Luntz said.

“He’s not gaining, he’s not losing. He’s who he is and his vote is where it is,” the pollster said.

“[Harris] is less well defined and if she continues just to define this race as ‘vote against Trump,’ she’s going to stay where she is now, and she may lose.”

But desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess. Democrats haven’t been able to stop Trump to date. So, they’re hoping to deal him a death blow with lies.

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

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Hunter Biden Loses Game of Chicken with Himself

By: Jonathan Turley | September 6, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the sudden guilty plea from Hunter Biden in his federal tax case. It was not the plea but the timing of the plea that was the surprise. What is missing is any cognizable legal strategy in waiting until the first day of the trial to make a “naked plea” when it offered the least possible benefit to him. It was like waiting for the water to reach the deck of the Titanic before asking about swimming lessons. He was a tad late and then unsuccessfully sought to plead guilty without admitting guilt.

Here is the column:

Hunter Biden just showed the perils of playing the game of chicken with yourself. For months, many of us have marveled at the sight of Hunter careening toward a cliff while declaring publicly that he was prepared to go all the way. The Justice Department was never going over the cliff because they had nothing to gain or lose in open-and-shut cases in Delaware and California. There was never a serious question of convicting Hunter of these crimes, just a will of the Justice Department to secure them.

Special Counsel David Weiss inexplicably allowed serious felonies to expire, refused to bring obvious crimes as an unregistered foreign agent, and sought to cut an embarrassing sweetheart deal with Hunter to avoid any jail time on a couple of minor crimes. The deal then collapsed in open court when a judge balked at a provision that would give Hunter sweeping immunity for any crime. When she asked the federal prosecutor if he had ever seen such a plea bargain offered a defendant other than the President’s son, he admitted that he had not.

That is when the chest pounding began. Unwilling to accept anything but the sweetheart deal, Hunter’s defense counsel told the prosecutors in court to “just rip it up.” They did and Weiss was forced to actually prosecute Hunter.

According to the Justice Department, Weiss continued to try to cut a plea bargain with Hunter but was rebuffed by the defense. They then went to Delaware, the home of the Bidens, and tried to convince a sympathetic jury that Hunter was a drug addict who was not responsible for his action as well as other unsupported claims. It failed in spectacular fashion with a conviction on all counts.

Hunter then floored it for the California cliff on the tax charges as the Justice Department and most of us watched confused about how he was trying to intimidate. He hit the brakes as the trial was beginning. Hunter has succeeded in putting himself in the worst possible position for a plea. He waited until he had little to trade and reportedly did not even inform the prosecutors of his decision.

But it gets worse. If he had agreed to a less generous plea deal last year, he could have secured a recommended sentence on both the gun and tax charges. Instead, he will go into this sentencing with a past criminal record, an aggravating factor that could reduce the benefit of the belated plea. In the end, Hunter had nothing to offer, nothing to bargain. He plead guilty to all nine counts.

This decision may still be based more on political than legal calculations. Hunter was almost certain to be convicted. But it would have taken time as his father’s administration (and pardon authority) wanes. If Hunter still hopes for a presidential commutation or pardon, the chances of such executive action is dramatically improved after a sentencing. The White House rarely considers pardons before a trial and sentencing. Indeed, they often wait for appeals to run their course.

Moreover, a demand for jail time seems likely from the Justice Department given this history and it is equally likely to be granted. If that sentence is lengthy, it will add pressure on President Biden to take action with a commutation or pardon. If President Biden does violate his promise to not pardon Hunter, it would not be a surprise for many. In 2022, I wrote that the President could resign or withdraw as a candidate and pardon Hunter.

I referred to this as “break-the-glass option”: “He would end his political career with an act as a father, which some would condemn but most would understand.”

The plea also avoided the massive influence peddling operation of the Biden family from being aired in open court.

The refusal of the Justice Department to charge Hunter as an unregistered foreign agent stands in flagrant contradiction to past and current cases under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

None of this explains the logic of Hunter’s criminal defense strategy. A legal one-man game of chicken is certainly engrossing to watch but leaves most lawyers wincing rather than flinching as the spectacle unfolds.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Justice Department Makes The Case Against Hunter Biden . . . and Itself in California

By: Jonathan Turley | August 8, 2024

Special Counsel David Weiss appears to have finally made the long-awaited case exposing years of concealment and political corruption. No, it is not the case against Hunter Biden. The allegations of tax fraud in California are obvious and unavoidable. Weiss just made the case against the Justice Department and himself in protecting Hunter Biden from the most damaging charges of being an unregistered foreign agent. In a new filing, Weiss released evidence on Hunter seeking money to advance the interests of a Romanian on United States policy.

I have previously testified on the Foreign Agents Registration Act and have previously written about the disturbing disconnect in the treatment of the President’s son as opposed to figures like Paul Manafort. The charge was always one of the greatest fears of the White House. If Hunter Biden was a foreign agent, it would magnify the influence peddling scandal and further link his conduct to work of his father as vice president and later president.

What was previously known about millions received from China, Russia, and other countries made such a charge obvious. In the past, the Justice Department has used the charge early and often in high-profile cases to pressure defendants and force cooperation or plea agreements. During the Trump Administration, an official could not go to Epcot without drawing a FARA charge from DOJ.

This charge has been a favorite of the DOJ before the President’s son was implicated in a massive influence peddling scheme with foreign figures.

Here is the definition used in such cases:

A “foreign agent” is defined as “(1) any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal, and who directly or through any other person— (i) engages within the United States in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (ii) acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal; (iii) within the United States solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal; or (iv) within the United States represents the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States; and (2) any person who agrees, consents, assumes or purports to act as, or who is or holds himself out to be, whether or not pursuant to contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign principal as defined in clause (1) of this subsection.”

For years, I have expressed alarm at the special treatment afforded to Hunter Biden on the charges. Many of us have also criticized Weiss for allowing the most serious tax charges to expire despite being able to extend the statute of limitations. He has yet to offer a compelling reason why prosecutors would ever allow viable felony charges to expire when they could have extended that period.

Now, Biden is seeking to avoid conviction under the tax charges in California. He is repeating the claims that failed in his recent gun violation. He is claiming that he was an addict and not responsible for his criminal conduct, even though he was flying around the world collecting millions from foreign sources.

To rebut that claim, Weiss’ team said they plan to introduce evidence showing his sophisticated scheme to tap foreign sources interested in influencing the government and federal policy.

In the filing below, Weiss opposes the Biden team effort to exclude the evidence of his working for the Romanians. Senior assistant special counsel Derek Hines writes in the filing that “[t]he evidence of what the defendant agreed to do and did do for [the businessman] demonstrates the defendant’s state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years charged in the indictment. It is also evidence that the defendant’s actions do not reflect someone with a diminished capacity, given that he agreed to attempt to influence U.S. public policy and receive millions of dollars pursuant to an oral agreement.”

That sounds a lot like seeking the work of a foreign agent. Here is the language from FARA:

“The first category of evidence the defendant seeks to exclude is any “reference to allegations that Mr. Biden (1) acted on behalf of a foreign principal to influence U.S. policy and public opinion . . .” Motion at 3 (emphasis added). The government does not intend to reference allegations at trial. Rather, the government will introduce the evidence described above, including that the defendant and Business Associate 1 received compensation from a foreign principal who was attempting to influence U.S. policy and public opinion and cause the United States to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P in Romania.” (emphasis added)

It is a curious argument. It is akin to saying that we know that he stole the car because he used it in the kidnapping. It leaves most people wondering why you did not charge on the kidnapping crime.

The fact is that this is only one of an array of such contracts that have been detailed by the House Oversight Committee and other House committees. The other foreign dealings reportedly involved Hunter reaching out to government officials while his father was vice president. That includes the controversy over Joe Biden’s sudden decision to issue an ultimatum to the Ukrainian government.

In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.

The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “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. He got fired.”

However, a State Department memo is shedding disturbing light on that account and shredding aspects of Biden’s justification for the action. It directly contradicts Biden’s insistence that he took this extraordinary stand because there was little hope for the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine if Shokin remained prosecutor.

The Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizes the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee that was handling the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine: “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee.” One senior official even complimented Shokin on his progress in fighting corruption. So, Biden was told to deliver on the federal aid but elected to unilaterally demand Shokin be fired.

In testimony from Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden, we learned that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with Hunter. He described how the need to neutralize Shokin was raised with Hunter and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. While Archer also said that “the narrative spun to me was that Shokin was under control,” he and others also heard concerns over Shokin and the risks of the investigation.

Other transactions directly requested intervention on matters being addressed by the Obama-Biden Administration.

So, now, the Justice Department is citing some of these dealings to show a conscious and premeditated effort to shake down foreigners to influence U.S. policy. Weiss now maintains that “The defendant did receive compensation from a foreign principal to attempt to influence U.S. policy and public opinion, as alleged in the indictment, and this evidence is relevant.”

They have made more than the case against Hunter Biden. They have made a conclusive and overwhelming case against themselves in slow walking and minimizing charges against the President’s son.

Here is the filing: gov.uscourts.cacd.907805.181.0

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Going Full Trump: Hunter Biden Challenges the Constitutionality of the Weiss Appointment

By: Jonathan Turley | July 19, 2024

We previously discussed how Hunter Biden adopted the arguments of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun rights groups to challenge the law that his father has championed as a key gun control reform. In his effort to challenge his various charges, Hunter Biden has gone full Trump. Now, Hunter has adopted the Trump argument that special counsels are unconstitutional in seeking to toss out all of the charges by Special Counsel David Weiss, it is the very argument that Democrats and liberal law professors have denounced as meritless and menacing. Having recently embraced the conservative justices in challenging gun laws, Hunter is now channeling Justice Clarence Thomas on the unconstitutionality of special counsel appointments — an argument that his father denounced as wrong and “specious.”

I recently discussed the decision of Judge Aileen Cannon to strike down the Florida case against former President Donald Trump. Law professors ridiculed the concurrence of Justice Thomas in arguing that special counsels lack a constitutional foundation.

Biden is now asking the federal courts to adopt the Thomas position. On Thursday, courts in California and Delaware were asked to dismiss the criminal tax and gun cases against Biden.

The motions track the analysis of Judge Cannon and argue that “the Attorney General relied upon the exact same authority to appoint the Special Counsel in both the Trump and Biden matters, and both appointments are invalid for the same reason.”

I wrote in my column that the challenges seem to draw courts into the Wonderland of Special Counsels.

In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” the Mad Hatter asks Alice, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” It turned out that the Mad Hatter had no better idea than Alice.

In her 93-page order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon seemed to face the same dilemma when she asked Special Counsel Jack Smith why a private citizen is like a confirmed U.S. Attorney.

However, a key difference between Smith and Weiss is that it could lead these courts to asking, “why is a Weiss like a Smith?” The extent that he is not could prove a critical distinction. Weiss is a Senate confirmed U.S. Attorney where Smith was a private citizen plucked by Merrick Garland from the general population for the position.

Biden is seeking to brush over that Mad Hatter anomaly:

“The constitutional flaw at the center of the Special Counsel’s appointment is that Congress has not established the office of a Special Counsel. Given that Congress requires a U.S. Attorney to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, it makes no sense to assume that Congress would allow the Attorney General to unilaterally appoint someone as Special Counsel with equal or greater power than a U.S. Attorney. That is what has been attempted here.”

Clarence Thomas is beaming.

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NEW TEXT MESSAGE ALLEGEDLY REVEALS HUNTER BIDEN PROPOSED MEETING FOR DAD, UNCLE AND CHINESE EXEC IN NYC

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Hunter Biden revealed top CCP leader wanted him to visit China to ‘discuss business opportunities’: emails

By Cameron Cawthorne , Andrew Mark Miller , Jessica Chasmar Fox News | Published June 18, 2024 1:35pm EDT | Updated June 18, 2024 1:36pm EDT

FIRST ON FOX: Hunter Biden informed his business associates in late 2013 that a top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader allegedly asked him to travel to China to talk about future “business opportunities,” according to an email obtained and verified by Fox News Digital.

In December 2013, Biden accompanied his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on a six-day trip around Asia that included China, South Korea and Japan. While in Beijing, Biden introduced his father to one of his Chinese business associates, who was accompanied by another associate, in the lobby of the hotel they were staying in.

During the China leg of the trip, Biden attended multiple events with his dad, including a lunch that featured some of the most powerful CCP leaders in China. On Dec. 5, Jonathan Li, the business associate who Vice President Biden was introduced to, emailed Biden asking him how his China trip was going, prompting Biden to email later that day that everything “went very well.”

“Do you know former Governor of Hong Kong- C.H. Troung (sp?),” Hunter asked. “He wants me to come to HK to visit to discuss business opportunities. He sat next to Dad at lunch w/ Premiere and implied we knew each other- but I don’t remember him.”

The CPPCC's Tung Chee-hwa — Tung Chee-hwa, vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. (YouTube/Screenshot)

“Very good, I can go with you to find out what he can do for us,” Li said to Hunter.

“Troung” refers to C.H. Tung, a former governor of Hong Kong and billionaire who served as the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) between 2005 and 2023, a former business associate of Biden confirmed to Fox News Digital. The CPPCC is the “key mechanism for multi-party cooperation and political consultation” under the leadership of the CCP, according to the CPPCC website.

In December 2013, Hunter Biden asked his business associates whether they knew C.H. Tung, or Tung Chee-hwa, a former governor of Hong Kong and billionaire who served as the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. (Fox News)

Fox News Digital could not confirm whether Biden took Tung up on his alleged offer to visit Hong Kong to discuss “business opportunities.”

Biden’s email about Tung would not be the last time that his name was mentioned in his emails. In July 2014, James Bulger, who goes by “Jimmy,” and served as the chairman of Boston-based Thornton Group LLC — a firm that joined forces with Hunter’s now-defunct Rosemont Seneca to launch its joint-venture with Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital to create BHR Partners— emailed Biden about introducing their Chinese business associates to Tung.

In July 2014, Hunter Biden said he would be “happy” to help introduce BHR CEO Jonathan Li and BHR committee person Andy Lu to “Mr. Tung,” who refers to Tung Chee-hwa, the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the time. (Fox News)

In the July 2014 email, Bulger asked Biden to introduce Li and Andy Lu, who was a BHR committee member, to “Mr. Tung” to discuss “BHR investment targets” and “fundraising,” alleging Biden sat next to Tung at a 2013 dinner welcoming Vice President Biden to Beijing, according to previous Fox News Digital reporting.

“It is my understanding that during the trip to Beijing that you made with your father, President Xi hosted a welcome dinner,” Bulger wrote. “[A]t that dinner, you were seated right next to Mr Tung, therefore J and Andy believe it would be very helpful if you could please send a brief email to Mr Tung laying out that you are a partner and Board Member of BHR and that You would be grateful to Mr Tung if he could meet your local partners to discuss the Fund.”

FLASHBACK: BIDEN MADE REVEALING COMMENT ABOUT NIECE’S OBAMA ADMIN ROLE WHILE PRAISING ‘RISING CHINA’

Hunter Biden and Joe Biden — Corporate media organizations spent years dismissing negative information pertaining to Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, right. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)

“Please let me know if you can introduce these two to Mr Tung by email it is very important to our BHR initiative [sic] at this moment,” Bulger stressed.

Biden responded that he was “happy” to fulfill the request but said he could not recall the names of the gentlemen who sat next to him at the dinner.

“Happy to do this,” he wrote, “but I have no email address for Mr. Tung and he very well may have sat next to me, but I don’t recall the two gentlemen’s names to my left and right. Regardless, I would suggest the team draft an email in Mandarin and English for my approval ASAP.”

“Let me reach out to Lin and J will revert ASAP,” Bulger replied later that day.

Multiple inquiries from Fox News Digital to Biden’s lawyer, Bulger, Li, Lu and Tung previously went unreturned about whether Biden ended up introducing Tung to his associates.

In addition to the 2013 dinner in Beijing, Tung was on the “expected attendees” guest list for at least two state dinners at the White House during the Obama-Biden administration. Tung’s bio on the Obama administration archives website for the January 2011 dinner says he was “Vice Chairman, CPPCC, former Hong Kong Chief Executive.”

In another press release for the September 2015 state dinner, Tung’s bio lists him as “Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.”

Biden china xi — Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with then-Vice President Joe Biden inside the Great Hall of the People on Dec. 4, 2013 in Beijing. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

According to a 2018 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government agency, the CPPCC is a “central part” of China’s United Front system, which works to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

According to a 2021 report by The Diplomat, the CPPCC is “designed to liaise with non-Communist Party members – and ultimately see them work with the CCP to advance its interests.” While serving as vice chairman of the CPPCC, Tung also founded the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) in 2008.

Tung has many powerful contacts in Washington, D.C., including President Biden’s top climate diplomat, John Podesta. Fox News Digital previously reported that Podesta referred to Tung as his “friend” and took several phone calls from him between 2015 and 2016 while serving as the chairman for Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign.

In May 2013, Tung and Podesta spoke at a luncheon hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which included Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai.

“For the last four years though, Center for American Progress and China-U.S. Exchange Foundation have co-hosted a US.-China track II dialogue and we continue to host these dialogues on an annual basis,” Podesta said. “I have the highest regard for C.H. Tung’s tireless efforts to bring our two nations closer together. He is always looking ahead to anticipate emerging challenges in the U.S.-China relations and to figure out what he can do to make those challenges more manageable.”

John Podesta, Founder and Director, Center for American Progress — John Podesta, founder and director of the Center for American Progress, speaks at The Center for American Progress CAP 2019 Ideas Conference in Washington, D.C., on May 22, 2019. (Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

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Fox News Digital also previously reported on Tung being instrumental in CUSEF’s targeting of Historically Black Colleges and Universities by visiting the office of a Black public relations consultant’s office across the street from the White House in 2009 to learn more about Black Americans.

“In 2009, the former chief executive of Hong Kong visited me in my office with his staff from the China-United States Exchange Foundation, and they wanted to know how we got a Black president,” Julia Wilson told the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff students during a 2017 presentation. “They were saying, ‘We don’t know anything about Black people. So can you write us a white paper and share it with us. How did Black people get enough power to vote a Black man into office?’ So they really needed an overview of our history. Who are we? Who are African Americans?”

Tung’s organization would go on to pay out over $1M to Wilson’s firm, Wilson Global Communications, between 2017 and December 2023.

Biden’s attorney, Li, and the White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Cameron Cawthorne is a politics editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Cameron.Cawthorne@Fox.com and on Twitter: @cam_cawthorne

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Did the Defense Make Prison More Likely for Hunter Under the Sentencing Guidelines?

By: Jonathan Turley | June 12, 2024

For months, I have been expressing disbelief that Hunter Biden and his defense team were going to take the gun case to trial. Even on the eve of the trial, I thought that the defense might snap into sanity and plead out the case. The reason was simple. A guilty plea would have materially improved the chances that Hunter could get probation and avoid jail by accepting responsibility. Conversely, a trial in a case with overwhelming evidence of guilt would make it less likely that a judge would depart from the guidelines at sentencing. Nevertheless, Hunter went forward with a nullification strategy and, in so doing, it may have nullified his best chance to reduce the risk of jail time.

After the verdict, I have been stating that jail time is a real possibility in this case despite the fact that this is a first offender. Frankly, I do not see any real need for incarceration in this type of case and many judges would be likely tempted to grant “downward departures” in sentencing or disregard any recommended prison sentence.

It is also important to note that, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Booker, sentencing guidelines are discretionary. Judge Maryellen Noreika could sentence him to probation in light of his struggle with his addiction and his status as a first offender (as well as the absence of other aggravating factors).

Yet, while many view this as a relatively minor offense, the sentencing guidelines do not.

Judges regularly sentence people to prison for these offenses. The sentencing guidelines put the recommendation at 15 to 21 months in prison. Moreover, over 90 percent of those convicted are sentenced to prison time.

The chances of probation are increased with guilty pleas, which generally allow for a downward departure of two levels for taking responsibility. That may not seem like a lot, but it could prove determinative for a judge on a marginal call over the need for incarceration. By pursuing the nullification strategy, Hunter lost that benefit and now would have to belatedly accept responsibility just before sentencing after putting the court and public through a trial.

If the defense reviewed Judge Noreika’s past cases, they would have seen that she takes a tough approach on gun cases. In May, she sentenced defendant Zhi Dong to a year in jail for lying about his address on a gun form. Notably, that was twice the recommended sentence of the prosecutors.

One point of distinction is that Dong purchased 19 pistols and 10 “lower receivers” rather than the single gun purchased by Biden. It is also notable that the prosecutors were only seeking six months of incarceration in that arguably more serious case.

The defense strategy also makes it more difficult for Special Counsel David Weiss, who has shown remarkable lenience at critical stages of his investigation. It was Weiss who allowed the most serious tax offenses to lapse under a statute of limitations (despite reportedly having an agreement to extend the period). It was Weiss who sought to give Hunter an obscene sweetheart deal that would have avoided any jail time and given him immunity for all crimes.

Many remain skeptical of Weiss and his actions in this case. For that reason, the failure to plead guilty puts Weiss in a box. Given the sentencing guidelines of prison time, any recommendations for probation would be read as more favoritism for the president’s son. Weiss may feel compelled to follow the recommendations to show that Hunter is being treated the same as other defendants.

Given the calculation for the three felonies, the defense had to know that they were increasing the chances of prison time by pursuing a nullification defense. The hope was that Wilmington is Bidentown and no local jury would convict the son of the favorite son of Delaware.

It didn’t work out that way. The team seemed to overplay its hand with defenses that were so implausible as to be insulting for the jury. They suggested that Hunter might not have checked the box or signed the form during a brief window where he was not using drugs. The prosecutors demolished those defenses within two days of the trial.

Accepting responsibility after a trial does not guarantee a downward departure. For example, in U.S. v. Womack, a defendant sought a departure for accepting responsibility before trial as a drug dealer. However, he still went to trial on other issues and the trial judge refused any departure on the basis of his earlier admissions of guilt. It found that he was still minimizing his responsibility for the underlying crimes. That decision was upheld on appeal.

Now, Hunter may have painted both the prosecutors and the court into a corner. In a play for a hung jury, Hunter may have hoisted himself on his own petard. Guilt was never in doubt, but his efforts also removed any question of accepting responsibility before he was facing actual sentencing for his offenses.

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Hunter Comes Up A Donut Short of a Defense in Delaware

By: Jonathan Turley | June 12, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the conviction of Hunter Biden in Delaware and how his nullification strategy may have backfired. As discussed below, empathy can turn into insult when jurors are given patently implausible theories by the defense. Hunter finally found a group of people who were unwilling to see him as immune from responsibility for his conduct. Hunter literally came up a donut short of a defense in Wilmington.

Here is the column:

The conviction of Hunter Biden on all of the federal gun counts created a surprising new precedent in Delaware … for Hunter Biden. In terms of the law, this was the easiest judgment since the Jussie Smollett verdict. (Actually the Biden jury took a third of the time with a verdict in just three hours.)

For Hunter Biden, though, this was the first time he’s ever been held accountable for any criminal conduct, be it drug use, or prostitution, or tax evasion, or violations of various federal laws. To have that moment come in the hometown of the Bidens likely only magnified the shock.

Last year, I described the growing legal problems of Hunter Biden as the cost of “legal gluttony.” The Bidens have always been adept at avoiding accountability, particularly for the extensive influence-peddling operation that raked in millions in foreign payments.

That appetite for special treatment proved the undoing of Hunter, much like his appetite in other areas of his life. Hunter and his team expected the same level of immunity when he worked with special counsel David Weiss to cut an astonishing deal to avoid any real punishment for these or other crimes. Even before the deal was cut, Weiss allowed major crimes to expire under the statute of limitations (despite having an agreement to extend that period). He also agreed to a deal that would have avoided any jail time and would have given Hunter an immunity bath that would have drowned the entire criminal code. Hunter and his legal team succeeded in securing this sweetheart deal, which shocked many of us.

More importantly, it shocked US District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who only had to question the immunity provision to have the entire agreement fall apart in open court. The prosecutor admitted that he had never seen a plea bargain like this in his long career. That’s when the legal gluttony became even more pronounced. Rather than fight to preserve key elements of the plea agreement, defense counsel said, “Just rip it up.” Later, the special counsel said the Hunter defense team would not agree to a compromise agreement and instead forced the matter to trial.

I wrote before the trial that the defense was insane to try the case rather than plead guilty. A plea would have virtually guaranteed that there would be no jail time in the case. Instead, the defense launched an open jury nullification effort to get the jury to simply ignore the evidence. In the hometown of the Bidens, this was the best jury pool that Hunter could hope for. However, the nullification strategy was another manifestation of a gluttonous appetite.

Hunter Biden was still demanding a pass in a case where guilt was unavoidably and undeniably obvious to everyone. Defense counsel Abbe Lowell made a series of defenses that collapsed within the first two days in spectacular fashion.

Lowell suggested that someone else checked the box on the form and that Hunter may have had a brief window of sobriety or non-drug use. Hunter’s own words played from his audiobook knocked down much of those arguments, and a store employee recounted watching Hunter fill out the form.

In the first interview with a juror, Fox News seemed to confirm that the Biden defense overplayed its hand. The juror raised the text messages showing Hunter trying to score drugs at a 7-Eleven. Lowell suggested that he might have been at the store buying a donut. However, the juror noted that Hunter stated in his book that the 7-Eleven was his favorite spot for buying drugs, just as his texts indicated. He clearly viewed the story as more hole than donut. It is an example of how an all-you-can-eat defense can fail to even get a donut from a sympathetic jury.

The problem now is that this all played out in front of the judge who will now sentence Hunter.

Noreika witnessed the attempt to secure the sweetheart deal and then the disaster in open court. She watched as a defendant not only refused to admit guilt but decided to put on an obvious jury nullification defense.

That history could weigh in favor of a short jail stint for Hunter, a risk that would have been effectively eliminated by a guilty plea.

Hunter will now face an even greater risk in Los Angeles on the more serious counts of tax evasion. It is, again, an open-and-shut case.

I expect that he will plead guilty in that case. If Delaware made any impression on Hunter, it is that there are real costs to allowing your appetite to exceed your limitations.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

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Trump Campaign: Hunter Trial ‘Distraction’ From Father

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Tuesday, 11 June 2024 01:29 PM EDT

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign Tuesday, after a Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden of all three felony charges in his federal gun trial, slammed the proceedings as being a “distraction” from the activities of President Joe Biden and his family members.

“This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in a statement about the conviction of the president’s son.

She added that “crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit.”

Hunter Biden’s charges are in connection to the purchase of a handgun in 2018. He was charged with lying on a form while buying the weapon, by saying that he was neither addicted to drugs nor illegally using them.

The verdict was returned in Wilmington, Delaware, after the jury deliberated for about three hours over a two-day time period.

He still faces a trial this September, just two months before the November general election on charges that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes, and Republicans in Congress have said they will continue to pursue information about him as part of their impeachment inquiry against his father.

Sandy Fitzgerald ✉

Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.

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Laptop Deniers in Delaware: The Media Shrugs as the Biden Laptop is Authenticated in Federal Court

By: Jonathan Turley | June 7, 2024

Below is my column in Fox.com on the authentication of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the Delaware trial. The government has denounced the Russian disinformation claims as a “conspiracy theory” and put on evidence that there is no evidence of tampering with the laptop. The FBI declared the laptop to be “real” and “authentic” and the court agreed. It was introduced as evidence before many reporters who previously embraced the debunked “conspiracy theory.” As discussed below, Houdini’s elephant was just revealed on stage and most of the audience looked away.

Here is the column:

Watching the coverage this week out of Delaware was like finding oneself in a parallel universe. There were ABC, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post and other news outlets reporting matter-of-factly that the Hunter Biden laptop showed no evidence of tampering and was both real and authentic.

These are the same outlets, and some of the same reporters, who eagerly spread the false claims that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

Yet, what followed the testimony of FBI agent Erika Jensen was absolute crickets. There was no effort to track down the signatories of the now-debunked letter from former intelligence officials just before the election. In the letter, figures such as Leon Panetta, former CIA director in the Obama administration, claimed that the laptop had all the markings of a Russian disinformation effort by intelligence services. (Panetta continued to make the assertion even in late 2023 in pushing what the federal government is now calling a “conspiracy theory.”)

There was no attempt by the media to confront associates of the Biden campaign (including now Secretary of State Antony Blinken) who pushed a long effort to get former intelligence officials to sign a letter.

There was no attempt to question President Joe Biden, who made this false claim in the presidential election to deflect any questions about the evidence of corrupt influence peddling on the laptop.

Years ago, I wrote that the Biden campaign had pulled off the single greatest political trick in history. As I wrote back then, the key to this Houdini-esque trick was to get the media to invest in the deception like audience members called to the stage.

Houdini used to make his elephant Jennifer disappear on stage every night because he knew that the audience wanted her to disappear. They were part of the act. The Bidens made the media part of the act, and these reporters have to back the illusion or admit that they were part of the deception. They are all laptop deniers, but they know that there are few who will call them to account for their conspiracy theory. Rather, it is social media where readers can see videos of leading media claiming that the laptop is the work of Russian intelligence.

In 2020, CBS News’ Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens.

Figures like former Chief of Staff at the CIA and Department of Defense Jeremy Bash, who told MSNBC that the laptop “looked like Russian intelligence” and “walked like Russian intelligence.” He dismissed the relevance of the laptop before the election by declaring that “this effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic, Russian playbook disinformation campaign.”

Bash added that it made Trump an effective agent of Russian intelligence since he kept referencing the laptop: “[when] Rudy Giuliani suddenly comes forward with these mysteriously created emails, probably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation, we have to acknowledge the fact that the President of the United States is supporting, is condoning, is welcoming a Russian intelligence operation in 2020. … This is collusion in plain sight.”

Bash, like others behind the conspiracy theory, was later given an intelligence position by Biden.

The New York Times and The Washington Post both eventually verified Hunter Biden’s laptop after big tech dismissed the New York Post’s bombshell reporting during the 2020 presidential election. The Post reporting was famously censored by Twitter ahead of the 2020 election.

CNN’s Alex Marquardt told viewers, “We do know it is a very active Russian campaign.”

Indeed, the Washington Post has continued to suggest that this reporting was accurate. One of the leading purveyors of this false story was the Post’s Philip Bump, who slammed the New York Post for its now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”

After Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims, I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims. The Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including the laptop conspiracy theory. That was in August 2023.

Of course, this trick would not have been possible without the assistance of 50 former intelligence officials who were reportedly organized through Clinton campaign associates to issue the infamous letter. These figures then continued to spread the false claim.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of the 50 who signed the letter, also claimed that the laptop bore “the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.”

James Clapper, a former director of National Intelligence and CNN analyst, said the laptop was “classic, textbook Soviet, Russian tradecraft at work.”

Members of Congress also repeated the false claims, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who told the media not to join Giuliani as a “vehicle for Russian disinformation.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, insisted that the laptop was clearly “Kremlin propaganda.”

This long-debunked claim was even recently repeated in Congress by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who claimed that the laptop could not be authenticated even though it was just authenticated and introduced in a federal prosecution.

All of those who pushed what the U.S. government is now calling a false “conspiracy theory” have flourished in the wake of Biden’s victory. Intelligence officials like Bash received plum positions while others like Clapper were given media contracts. Schiff is expected to be elected to the Senate and is running, ironically enough, on his record with intelligence investigations of Trump.

Conversely, the New York Post and reporters like Miranda Devine have received no recognition for their work in disclosing the contents and defying attacks from politicians and media alike. While reporters were given a Pulitzer for reporting the now debunked Russian collusion story, Devine and others will never receive a Pulitzer for uncovering the true story behind the laptop.

Devine, the New York Post, and others simply refused to get in on the trick. As is often said, there are some facts simply “too good to check” in the media. The Hunter Biden laptop disappeared from the stage like Houdini’s elephant because the media wanted it to disappear.

The reappearance of the laptop in a Delaware courtroom might be awkward for most people, but not the media or intelligence officials or politicians who pushed the conspiracy theory. After all, they were all in on the trick. It was the voters who were played for chumps.

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Just Ask Mookie: Hunter Biden Has No Defense Other Than Nullification

By: Jonathan Turley | June 6, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the first day of testimony in the trial of Hunter Biden. Every claim of the defense seemed to collapse in the first two days of the trial. The defense argued that Hunter did not check the box on the gun form, so the prosecutors called the employee who watched him fill out the form. It claimed he was not using drugs at the time, so the prosecutors read texts from the next day in which Hunter sought to buy crack and called a series of witnesses on his continual use of crack during the period. The defense previously claimed the laptop showed evidence of tampering, so the prosecutor called a FBI agent establishing that there is no evidence of tampering and that the laptop is authentic. The defense claimed that Hunter just wandered into the store and was pressured to buy a gun, so prosecutors called an employee who testified that Hunter came in specifically wanting to buy a gun. As previously discussed, the lack of a defense is becoming glaringly obvious as is the nullification strategy.

Here is the column:

On the first day of his trial, Hunter Biden spoke to the jury . . . against himself. The prosecutors in his Wilmington gun trial read long excerpts from Hunter’s book on his long addiction to drugs and his self-proclaimed “superpower — finding crack anytime, anywhere.”

Listening to himself was the President’s son, whose counsel had just suggested that Hunter may have had a brief moment where he was drinking as opposed to snorting or smoking.

Accordingly, defense counsel Abby Lowell suggested, Hunter did not “knowingly” deny that he was using drugs when he purchased a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver from the StarQuest Shooters and Survival Supply in Wilmington, Del. Somehow the argument is that — for a brief moment on October 12, 2018 — Hunter forgot that he was a superpowered junkie. The problem is that the next prosecution witness is likely to be, again, Hunter Biden.

The day after he bought the gun, Hunter was texting a guy named “Mookie” to score drugs behind a minor league baseball stadium. Mookie appears to have come through for Hunter since the next day (two days after denying that he used drugs), Hunter allegedly texted Hallie Biden that he was “waiting for a dealer named Mookie.”

Then, two days after the gun purchase, Hunter texted, “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney.” That corner appears less than a mile and half from the federal courthouse where Hunter is sitting. It is roughly five miles from the gun shop where he denied using drugs.

Hallie will also testify. She was the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother and started an intimate relationship with Hunter after Beau’s death. She was also allegedly doing crack. Yet, when Hallie saw the gun in the console of Hunter’s car, she had the presence of mind to realize he was an unstable addict. She took the gun and threw it into a dumpster behind a restaurant.

The brutal start of the hearing raises the question — again — of why Hunter decided to go to trial. There is no viable defense. The most that the defense can come up with is a claim that someone else may have completed the form, or that he had a moment of sobriety before heading off to meet Mookie.

In his book, Hunter describes an addiction that led him to smoke crack almost every 15 minutes. That would seem likely to come to mind when you are given a form asking, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

Certainly his need for drugs was much on Hunter’s mind when he was texting Mookie.

Indeed, not long after the purchase, the Biden family held an intervention at their Delaware home to deal with Hunter’s raging addiction.

These defenses are about as convincing as saying that your client got locked into the bank vault after losing his way to the restroom . . . hours after the bank closed.

So why present unbelievable defenses in Wilmington? Because it is Wilmington. This is Biden’s hometown. The President maintains his residence in the city and remains the town’s favorite son.

As if the jury needed any reminder, First Lady Jill Biden sitting behind Hunter brings home that this is a Biden trial in Bidentown. The combination of sympathy for a reformed addict and identification with the Bidens could be enough for a jury nullification strategy. The defense is not asking the jury to consider the evidence. It is asking the jury to ignore it.

Every juror appeared to confirm knowing someone with a drug addiction, including siblings or other relatives. Given that panel, Hunter could well take the stand to describe his addiction and lack of clarity of thought.

Hunter’s book offers moving descriptions of his struggle with addiction and could sway some jurors, especially given the relatively minor criminal charges. Wilmington for Biden is the opposite of Manhattan for Trump. This is a town that overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2016 and 2020. It is a great jury pool for the defense. Viewed through a nullification defense, it does not matter how absurd the actual defense is in the case.

It is merely a pretense. Whether it is sympathy for a drug addict or a Biden, the defense clearly hopes that the jury will look beyond the evidence and the crime in this case.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

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Is Hunter Biden Pursuing a Jury Nullification Strategy?

By: Jonathan Turley | June 5, 2024

Below is my column in The Hill on the start of the Hunter Biden trial and the elements of a classic jury nullification strategy by the defense. It is not clear that it will work in an otherwise open-and-shut case, but it might. What is clear is that it may be all that Biden has short of the Rapture.

Here is the column:

There was an interesting development this week in the Hunter Biden gun trial: the fact that there will indeed be a Hunter Biden gun trial. That development is surprising only because there do not appear to be any facts in dispute in this case. And the primary witness against Hunter Biden will be Hunter Biden himself.

The sole issue in this case is whether Biden filed a false gun form (ATF Form 4473) in which, as a condition for his purchase of a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver from the StarQuest Shooters and Survival Supply in Wilmington, Del., he stated that he was not a user of drugs.

Biden’s counsel, Abbe Lowell, previously suggested that his client may have had a window of sobriety when he signed the form, but then returned to his addiction afterward. But then Hunter himself blew that theory away with his public comments and books. Lowell then suggested in court that someone else may have checked the box on the form.

In the interim, Lowell has brought a litany of challenges. At one point, he claimed that the government must fulfill a prior dead plea agreement. At another, he adopted an argument of the National Rifle Association challenging the underlying statute.

The defense also failed this week to call a last-minute witness who would testify that Hunter may not have known that he was an addict. The defense was accused of essentially hiding the ball with the expert’s expected testimony so Judge Maryellen Noreika barred the appearance of the Columbia professor.

Yet, again, Hunter Biden himself would have destroyed the defense. The form asks if Hunter was a user of drugs, not just an addict: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

Hunter wrote how he was a user of a wide array of drugs for years. It is hard to imagine he thought himself as clean as a clergyman in Wilmington in 2018.

So why wouldn’t Hunter just plead guilty? Even without his earlier plea deal, a guilty plea could significantly reinforce a request to avoid jail time in the case. It would also avoid an embarrassing trial for himself and his father during a presidential election.

While Hunter could always throw in the towel before the start of testimony, there is currently no discernible strategy beyond hoping that a pending case in the Supreme Court might undermine the indictment.

There may also be another possible strategy in play: jury nullification.

Unlike Donald Trump in Manhattan, Delaware is Biden country. The chance that he will get strong supporters of his father on the jury is an almost statistical certainty. In 2020, Joe Biden received roughly 60 percent of the vote over Donald Trump in the state. Having first lady Jill Biden, who is extremely popular, at the trial will only reinforce the connection.

In addition to a favorable jury pool, Biden may be hoping that testimony on his travails with drugs will prompt one or more jurors to ignore the law and vote to acquit. Notably, virtually all of the selected jurors have said that they know of someone who has struggled with drugs.

Indeed, Judge Noreika already appears to suspect such a strategy. Noreika rejected the effort of the defense to introduce an altered version of the federal firearms form created by the gun store employees. They argue that the alteration showed a political bias on the part of the prosecutors. The court found the document “irrelevant” and chastised the defense team for pursuing “conspiratorial” theories and an effort to confuse or mislead the jury.

She noted that the use of the altered form would be “unduly prejudicial and invites (jury) nullification.”

Jury nullification arguments have long been banned or discouraged in many courtrooms. Nevertheless, jury nullification has its advocates. For example, Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler has called for Black jurors to refuse to convict Black defendants of drug crimes. Butler has said that “my goal is the subversion of the present criminal justice system.”

Hunter Biden is obviously not the primary concern of Professor Butler in the impact of drug prosecutions on the Black community. However, he has also argued that “jury nullification is just part of an arsenal of tools to end the failed “war on drugs.”

Biden’s case has all of the characteristics of a nullification defense. Even if he cannot secure acquittal, the combination of political and social elements at play in Delaware could produce a hung jury.

Trying a Biden in Delaware is a challenge for any prosecutor, even without the potential sympathies for a reformed drug addict. With the first lady sitting behind him, the family ties will be on full display. There is an understandable parental desire to show emotional support for Hunter, but prosecutors cannot be thrilled by the potential effect on jurors in the pro-Biden state.

Wilmington is President Biden’s hometown, where he still maintains a family residence. In Wilmington itself in 2020, Biden received 26,698 votes to Trump’s 3,580.

The hope is that, as President Biden once said, “Delaware is about getting everyone in the room, no matter how tough the problem, no matter how big the disagreement, and staying in the room until we figure it out.” Most everyone is in the courtroom and the hope is that at least some of these jurors will “figure it out” in their favor.

Perhaps Hunter put it best: “The single best thing is, family comes first. Over everything. I can’t think of anything that has been more pervasive and played a larger part in my life than that simple lesson.”

The defense may be hoping that, for some jurors, “family [will] come first … over everything,” particularly over the evidence.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

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Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Hunter Biden’s Criminal Gun Trial

BY: STEVE ROBERTS, JONATHAN FAHEY, AND ANDREW PARDUE | JUNE 04, 2024

STEVE ROBERTS, JONATHAN FAHEY, AND ANDREW PARDUE

Jury selection for Hunter Biden’s first federal criminal trial began Monday in Delaware. The Biden son is facing trial on three charges: two counts of false statements and one count of unlawful firearm possession, all related to a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver he allegedly purchased and possessed in Delaware in October 2018. Biden faces up to 25 years imprisonment if convicted of these offenses.

The case the prosecution intends to prove is relatively straightforward. Biden has struggled with addiction to various narcotics for years and was even discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve after failing a mandatory drug test in June 2013. In his 2021 book, Beautiful Things, he openly discussed the fact that during the period that is relevant in this case, “[a]ll my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs — feeding the beast.” Then, amid this addiction, Hunter Biden purchased a handgun.

Every gun owner will be familiar with ATF Form 4473, a document that asks all prospective firearms purchasers a series of questions to ensure they are legally authorized to own a firearm before completing a sale. One of these questions asks whether the purchaser is “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

The prosecution will attempt to prove that Biden answered “no” to this question on his Form 4473 when the truthful answer should have been “yes,” and he therefore obtained a gun that he was not legally authorized to possess. In other words, Hunter Biden is not being prosecuted for being an addict; he is being prosecuted for lying about his addiction to unlawfully obtain a firearm and then possessing that firearm as an unlawful user of illegal drugs.

For years, it appeared as if Hunter Biden would avoid accountability for his conduct entirely. After significant public pressure, however, a plea agreement was reached between Biden and the government that would allow him to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses — despite allegedly failing to pay over $1.4 million in taxes by understating his income and inflating his expenses, offenses that themselves carry a maximum of 17 years in prison — and avoid responsibility almost entirely for his gun offenses by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement. Such agreements are almost entirely unheard of for firearms offenses.

To make the deal even sweeter for Biden, the agreement did not even require him to cooperate with the government, which is often a requirement with plea agreements, particularly in cases where extreme leniency is being offered.

But then something happened in the spring of 2023 that threw a wrench into the deal being worked out between Biden and the government and changed the landscape. Two IRS whistleblowers came forward alleging political interference in their investigation of Hunter Biden’s taxes by officials in the Department of Justice who repeatedly limited the scope of the investigation. A New York Times investigation revealed that the U.S. attorney’s posture on whether to require Hunter Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses as a condition of any deal changed shortly after the IRS whistleblowers came forward.

Then Biden’s team demanded that the plea deal include immunity for “any other federal crimes” he may have committed, even beyond the gun and tax-related matters that were the subject of this investigation. Because this broad immunity request went farther than the prosecution was willing to go, the plea deal fell apart and was ultimately rejected by the federal judge.

The case has also raised interesting questions about the scope of the Second Amendment after Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that the federal law under which he was charged infringes upon his constitutional right to own a firearm. Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Biden’s attorneys argued that the charges should be dismissed because there is no “historical tradition” in the United States of prohibiting users of illicit substances from obtaining firearms simply upon the basis of their addiction (as opposed to a prior criminal conviction for drug charges, for example).

Federal courts are divided on the constitutionality of this law, and while the argument was not successful in preventing Biden’s case from moving forward to trial, it could still be relevant in an appeal. If Biden’s argument succeeds, that would effectively expand Second Amendment rights to a class of people whose right to own a firearm is not currently protected under federal law.

Hunter Biden’s legal troubles will not end with the conclusion of his Delaware trial. His indictment for failure to pay taxes from 2016 through 2019 is pending. And a congressional investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals and lobbying is also ongoing. Of course, his legal troubles may all go away after the November election, when, if reelected, President Biden would have the ability to pardon him, likely without serious political ramifications.

Steve Roberts and Jonathan Fahey are partners at Holtzman Vogel, and Andrew Pardue is a Holtzman Vogel associate.

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Merrick Garland Shouldn’t Be Praised. He Should Be Impeached

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JUNE 04, 2024

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It’s no accident that The Wall Street Journal ran an “exclusive” hagiographic piece on Merrick Garland’s “by-the-book, play-no-favorites approach” the day the attorney general is set to be grilled by Congress. The administration wants to paint the AG as a fair-minded dispenser of justice.

In truth, while Garland might occasionally — only when faced with no real options — put the Biden administration in an uncomfortable political position, he has regularly weaponized the agency to target the president’s political enemies, from pro-life protesters to concerned parents to presidential candidates.

Even as I write this, Garland is refusing to hand over audio recordings of Joe Biden’s interviews with former Special Counsel Robert Hur, despite a congressional subpoena. Even as the DOJ stonewalls Congress, it is prosecuting the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for crimes for which the Hur tape supposedly “exonerates” Biden.

Garland’s claims of executive privilege are risible. If Biden’s audio can be withheld from the public simply because someone somewhere might manipulate the tape using AI, then any audio of any president can be denied the public.

Also, why is this DOJ’s concern? Considering the Hur transcript has already been released — and we know that Biden lied about it — there is even less justification for withholding the audio. And considering the DOJ has apparently cleaned up all the “uhs” and “ohs” and garbled words in the transcript, the tape would likely further cement the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

So, the real problem here isn’t the deep fake; it’s the unedited tape. Withholding the audio is obviously politically motivated. Which is unsurprising, since Garland has been one of the most partisan AGs in memory.

While Garland was raiding the home of the former president over a classified document dispute, he was letting the statute of limitations on the foreign influence-peddling by the president’s family run out.

While left-wing pro-Hamas protesters were rioting and targeting Jews, Garland was still fearmongering over the coming MAGA extremist revolution, inflating the threat with bogus statistics.

While Garland did nothing about those (likely) illegally picketing the homes of federal judges and attempting to intimidate them and influence cases — even after an assassin tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh — the DOJ was deploying armed teams to raid the homes of pro-life families and prosecuting elderly anti-abortion protesters for praying in front of “clinics.”

Even as Democrats are yammering about saving democracy, the DOJ has been working to undermine the electoral choices of voters in red states like Texas. Abortion is not a (pretend) constitutional right anymore. The DOJ does not care.

The DOJ is restarting censorship efforts under the guise of stopping foreign interference, and also targeting X owner Elon Musk, who has opened his platform to more neutral speech. It’s quite the happenstance, right?

Not only did Garland form a “task force” to investigate local parents who were protesting authoritarian Covid restrictions and racist curriculums, but he refused to dissolve the effort even after the National School Boards Association apologized for the letter that sparked it.

Of course, it was the Biden administration that prompted the organization to use the term “domestic terrorism” to give the DOJ justification to get involved in the first place. Even The New York Times acknowledged that “Garland did not detail any specific threats of violence or offer reasons for the increase in harassment and threats.” The only reason to get involved was to chill speech and intimidate parents.

No matter.

Even the case against Hunter Biden, used most often by the left to brandish Garland’s alleged Solomonic credentials, is a farce.

Let’s not forget if the Justice Department had its way, the case would have disappeared. To begin with, Garland ignored the law and appointed a counsel from within the government. David Weiss, whose office was filled with Biden allies, was prepared to give Hunter an astonishing immunity deal, not only on felony gun and tax charges, but for a slew of unrelated serious potential offenses, including failure to register as a foreign agent, bribery, and corruption.

It was only because of the whistleblower testimony of Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler that Weiss was forced to ask Hunter to plead guilty to two piddling misdemeanor counts. And the immunity deal was only quashed because Judge Maryellen Noreika, who pointed out there was not a single precedent in which immunity was offered for “crimes in a different case,” rejected it.

In his remarks to Congress today, Garland promised that he “will not back down from defending our democracy,” despite the “repeated attacks” and “conspiracy theor[ies]” regarding the DOJ. Some conspiracy theories exist, no doubt, but most criticisms of Garland’s work are legitimate. Treating criticism of his corrupt tenure as an attack on the “judicial process itself” has it backward. Demanding no one question the actions of state institutions is authoritarian. If the system were working properly, Garland would be impeached.

But in their efforts to save “democracy” — a concept that’s been stripped of any meaning — Democrats have justified deploying the state to punish and destroy political enemies. For many progressives, the legal system isn’t merely a tool for criminal justice but a way to exact political justice.

Garland is one of the leaders in this fight. Whether it’s because he is a weak man willing to do what’s expected of him or because he is corrupt makes little difference.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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The Spy Who Loved Me? Morris Reportedly Protected by CIA in Hunter Biden Investigation

Recently, it became public that Kevin Morris, the entertainment lawyer who has subsidized the expenses and bought the art of Hunter Biden, had stopped his funding of Biden. Morris has paid off Hunter’s IRS debts and reportedly lent him a total of $4.9 million for housing, car payments, legal fees, and other possible costs.

The so-called “sugar bro” is “tapped out” according to media reports. (For full disclosure, Morris previously threatened me with a defamation lawsuit over my writing about his representation of Hunter). Now the House has confirmed prior stories that whistleblower records indicate that the CIA prevented the Justice Department from questioning Kevin Morris as a witness in its probe of Hunter Biden.

Morris has maintained that he lent Hunter millions for “no ulterior motive” and continued to support him out of friendship. Yet, when investigators started to look into the payments and the relationship, they were told that Morris had some relationship with the CIA in August 2021. According to previously unreleased information, IRS special agent and current whistleblower Gary Shapley documented the bizarre intervention of the spy agency.

In a sworn affidavit in May, Shapley declared:

During a recurring prosecution team conference call, in or around late August 2021, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Lesley Wolf told the team that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had recently returned from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they had been summoned to discuss Kevin Morris.

AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness. Investigators probed AUSA Wolf, but since her briefing was classified and she was apparently sanitizing it to an unclassified form to share over an open phone line, she did not elaborate with more information. She reiterated more than once that they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop while she was there.

It is unclear how the CIA became aware that Mr. Morris was a potential witness in the Hunter Biden investigation and why agents were not told about the meeting in advance or invited to participate. It is a deviation of normal investigative processes for prosecutors to exclude investigators from substantive meetings such as this.

It is a testament to the level of bias in the mainstream media that this story is not the sole focus of every media outlet in America. Imagine if the CIA intervened to stop an investigation into a donor maintaining one of the Trump children and supporting his effort to blunt any investigation into corruption. MSNBC would make it ongoing special programming with its own time slot.

This is an agency that is supposed to avoid domestic interventions into politics as well as other areas. It is accused of pulling in a prosecutor to tell her to close part of a criminal investigation involving the financial supporter of the president’s son. Even if Morris was an asset, the question is why shut down the inquiry into his payments to Hunter Biden. The work of Morris with the CIA could be protected or redacted. Instead, the line of inquiry was shut off and Wolf reportedly left Langley with CIA swag and an empty bag of evidence.

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“Not Evidence”: Federal Judge Denies Hunter Biden Motions to Dismiss Tax Charges in Stinging Rebuke

By: Jonathan Turley | April 2, 2024

Despite hours of argument by the counsel for Hunter Biden, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi denied his eight motions to dismiss tax charges with a stinging rebuke that the defense omits one thing from its argument: actual evidence.

Hunter Biden has been arguing that he is the victim of selective prosecution despite a documented history of receiving special treatment as the son of the President. However, he has proven a key witness against himself in swatting down defenses raised by his counsel and publishing self-incriminating facts in his book.

The filings also did 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.

Special Counsel David 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.

One only has to look at the series of superseding indictments against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., to see how Hunter continues to receive special treatment. Rather than the four original counts, Menendez 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.

Judge Scarsi made fast work of the Biden filings as entirely insufficient to dismiss these charges. Abby Lowell and the defense team seem to be doubling down on the same claims despite the uniform rejection by courts.

The judge noted:

“As the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. The motion is remarkable in that it fails to include a single declaration, exhibit, or request for judicial notice. Instead, Defendant cites portions of various Internet news sources, social media posts, and legal blogs. These citations, however, are not evidence.”

Lowell disagreed with the court’s order and pledged “to vigorously pursue Mr. Biden’s challenges to the abnormal way the Special Counsel handled this investigation and charged the case.” In truth, the “abnormal” treatment of Hunter was giving him advance notice of attempts to interview him and to search of Biden property. It was allowing the statute of limitations to run despite having an agreement on the table to keep potential felonies alive. It was trying to secure a plea agreement that even the prosecutor admitted in court was like nothing he had ever seen in his career.

The court even makes reference to Schrödinger’s cat, a paradox suggested by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 that a cat in a thought experiment could be viewed simultaneously as both alive and dead:

“The Court understands that its decision rests on an interpretation of the agreement neither party advocated—that the Diversion Agreement is a binding contract, but performance of its terms is not yet required. The Court, therefore, invites the parties to stipulate to further pretrial motion practice to the extent there are additional disputes that arise from the Court’s Schrödinger’s cat-esque construction of Defendant’s immunity under the Diversion Agreement.”

The court also rejected the repeated unsuccessful claim by Hunter that the plea agreement is enforceable. The court found that the agreement fell apart before preconditions were met. It is null and void.

“Having found that the Diversion Agreement is a contract that binds the parties but that the parties made the Probation Officer’s signature a condition precedent to its performance, the Court turns to Defendant’s theory of immunity: that the United States’ obligation to refrain from prosecuting Defendant under section II(15) of the Diversion Agreement is currently in force. It is not. The immunity provision is not one exempted from the term of the contract under the survival clause.”

Scarsi has scheduled a status conference for May 29.

Here is the opinion: Hunter Biden Ruling

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Special Counsel Opposition

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Moving Up

A.F. BRANCO | on March 24, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-moving-up/

Kamala Visits Minnesota — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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Kamala goes to Minnesota to promote Biden’s stance on abortion in the name of women’s health, babies be damned.

Kamala Harris makes celebratory visit to Minnesota abortion clinic

By Mary Margaret Olohan – March 14, 2024

(The Daily Signal) — Vice President Kamala Harris spent Thursday afternoon visiting a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Minnesota.

The visit, which makes her the first vice president to do so, is intended to demonstrate President Joe Biden’s administration’s dedication to promoting abortion in the post-Roe v. Wade era. The visit is a historic first. While a celebratory visit to an abortion clinic once would have been considered horrifying, tactless, and gruesome, Harris used her Thursday tour to claim there is a “health crisis” in the post-Roe v. Wade United States — since it’s now harder in a number of states for women to abort their unborn babies. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Justice Denied

A.F. BRANCO | on March 25, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-justice-denied/

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It’s great to be a Democrat when Trump affiliates see prison time, but Democrats rarely do for even worse crimes. Peter Navarro is sentenced to prison for refusing a subpoena from a phony kangaroo court, but Democrats like Hunter Biden, Eric Holder, and others get nothing. There is absolutely a two-tier justice system in this country now.

Fox News Anchor Cuts Away From Peter Navarro’s Speech Outside of Prison to do a ‘Fact Check’ (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila – March 19, 2024

Please consider contributing to Peter Navarro’s GiveSendGo to help with his legal defense fund. Trump aide Dr. Peter Navarro on Tuesday delivered remarks before he reported to prison for his 4-month sentence. Navarro is the first high-ranking Trump aide to be imprisoned by the Biden Regime.

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith cut away from Navarro’s speech outside of prison to do a fact check. When I walk in that prison today, the justice system, such as it is, will have done a crippling blow to the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege,” Navarro said. Sandra Smith interrupted Navarro’s speech to ‘clarify’ that Navarro has been convicted. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – 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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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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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.

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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“Patently False”: Special Counsel Files Blistering Reply to Hunter Biden Motion to Dismiss

Jonathan Turley | March 10, 2024

Special Counsel David Weiss has filed a blistering opposition to the motion to dismiss by Hunter Biden in California that cites his own book and conflicting statements as creating “nothing more than a house of cards.” The filing (below) shows how Hunter’s claims (repeated by many in the media) collapse under even cursory review in court.

Weiss’s filing bulldozes through arguments of selective prosecution and political influence in the case. He specifically notes that Biden repeatedly makes statements without any proof or support in his filings.

The filing begins by outright accusing Hunter Biden and his counsel of lying to the court about what occurred after the earlier plea agreement fell apart in court after the judge in Delaware asked about a sweeping immunity clause in paragraph 14. Notably, Weiss said that it was Hunter Biden’s legal team that inexplicably shut down negotiations by playing hardball in seeking to preserve the original agreement:

“The government proposed changes to the agreements that addressed only the issues identified during the hearing. Exh. 3. The defendant rejected these counterproposals on August 7, 2023. Id. Instead, the defendant began insisting that the proposed Diversion Agreement had bound both parties, even though it had not been approved by the Chief U.S. Probation Officer, a condition precedent to formation that would have brought it into effect. Moreover, by taking this position, he chose to shut down any further negotiations that could address the issues raised at the hearing.”

It then accuses Biden and his counsel as outright lying to the court:

“In his motion, in multiple places, the defendant falsely states that DOJ ‘inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time.’ He cites nothing in support of his false claims, which is a consistent theme across his motions. The government attaches as Exhibit 3 a redacted letter from the defendant’s counsel which confirms the defendant understood that the government had proposed changes to only those paragraphs that were at issue during the hearing, not paragraphs regarding the charges the defendant must plead to or any “jail time” the defendant must serve. As shown in Exhibit 3, the government proposed changes to Paragraphs 14, 15 and 17 of the Diversion Agreement, and Paragraph 5(b) of the Plea Agreement. The government proposed no changes to Paragraph 1 of the Plea Agreement, which required the defendant to plead guilty to two misdemeanors. Nor did the government propose any changes to Paragraph 6 of the Plea Agreement, in which the United States had agreed to recommend a sentence of probation. The defendant rejected these counterproposals and refused further negotiations…His newly invented claim in his motion that the government “inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time” is patently false, unsupported by evidence, and belied by his own letter and representations in his filings in the Delaware case.”

The rest of the filing is equally devastating.

Weiss notes that Biden repeatedly misrepresents facts or claims authority that does not exist. He notes that Biden does not cite any cases of similarly situated individuals who were not prosecuted. For example, it notes:

“The only attempt the defendant makes to link animus directly to prosecutors is his claim that “reports indicate Mr. Weiss himself admitted [the charges] would not have been brought against the average American.” Motion at 13. However, his citation does not include a reference to reports (plural), rather it includes a single New York Times citation, which includes a denial immediately after the quoted excerpt: “A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.” An anonymous account that is “forcefully denied” is not evidence that can satisfy the defendant’s burden of producing “clear evidence” of discriminatory intent and animus by prosecutors.”

In rejecting the two cases that he references, Weiss takes a swipe at Hunter’s book. When he published the book, some of us noted that he was making statements against his own interest in possible prosecutions. Weiss just made that a reality:

“The defendant compares himself to only two individuals: Robert Shaughnessy and Roger Stone, both of whom resolved their tax cases civilly for failing to pay taxes. Shaughnessy failed to file and pay his taxes, but he was not alleged to have committed tax evasion. By contrast, the defendant chose to file false returns years later, failed to pay when those returns were filed, and lied to his accountants repeatedly, claiming personal expenses as business expenses. Stone failed to pay his taxes but did timely file his returns, unlike the defendant. Neither Shaughnessy nor Stone illegally purchased a firearm and lied on background check paperwork. And neither of them wrote a memoir in which they made countless statements proving their crimes and drawing further attention to their criminal conduct. These two individuals are not suitable comparators, and since the defendant fails to identify anyone else, his claim fails.”

The brief even takes a shot at the use of public statements by former Attorney General Eric Holder to prove selective prosecution, noting that Holder seems hopelessly conflicted in his own claim of selective prosecution:

“The defendant cites media commentary by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who acknowledged that the defendant is not similarly situated to other individuals: ‘This isn’t some kind of ordinary run-of-the-mill tax case, [] this was an abuse of the tax system . . .’”

The filing annihilates the public claims of Hunter and his allies. It is the difference between making a case in the court of public opinion and making a case in an actual court of law.

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8 Unbelievable Claims From Hunter Biden’s Congressional Deposition

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MARCH 01, 2024

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

“You have my answer under oath and under the penalty of perjury,” Hunter Biden declared a half-dozen times during closed-door questioning by the joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on Wednesday, a transcript of which was released Thursday. His protestations of truth-telling lacked conviction, though, because the facts and logic proclaimed a different reality.

Here are the highlights of Hunter Biden’s most unbelievable testimony.

1. It’s All a MAGA-Orchestrated Conspiracy Theory

Hunter Biden opened by claiming the committees had “hunted” him as part of a “partisan political pursuit” of his father.

“You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies,” he continued before claiming the only basis for the claims of Biden family corruption came from criminals, fugitives, or other liars.

But no matter how many times Hunter evoked the name of Alexander Smirnov — the recently indicted FBI confidential human source who allegedly lied about Burisma paying the Bidens bribes, as memorialized in the FD-1023 — bank records and the testimony of Biden-friendly witnesses negate Hunter’s claims of a conspiracy theory.

There are only so many coincidences the American public will buy before realizing they’re being sold a bag of malarkey. Evidence of large deposits to Hunter Biden-connected businesses from foreigners in Joe Biden’s wake leaves Hunter’s claim of a conspiracy unbelievable.

2. I Called Upon the Wrong Guy

Probably the most incredible area of Hunter’s testimony was his explanation for a text he sent to Raymond Zhao, asking him to have the director of CEFC call him. “I’m sitting here with my father,” Hunter texted Zhao, “and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. I’m very concerned that the chairman has either changed his mind or broken our deal without telling me or that he’s unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept.”

“Tell the director I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter continued, adding that “if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, 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 direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness, and all too often I’m standing over the top of them saying, I warned you.”

“I will call you on WhatsApp,” Zhao replied.

This text exchange was incredibly damning because the players involved were connected to the communist Chinese energy company CEFC, which later transferred $5 million in capital to a company Hunter Biden created only a few days after the above text exchange.

But don’t worry, Hunter assured the committee. His text went to the wrong guy because he was “so out of his mind” from his addiction, he had accidentally sent the threat to “Henry Zhao,” who was not connected to CEFC.

“And I, like an idiot, directed it towards Henry Zhao who had no involvement, who had no understanding or even remotely knew what the hell I was even Godd-mn talking about. Excuse my language,” Hunter told the committee.

First, given the quick response to Hunter’s text from CEFC, it is unbelievable that the text didn’t go to the CEFC-connected Zhao. Second, even if Hunter basically drunk-dialed the wrong mark, that doesn’t exonerate him or his father — the latter of whom, the evidence establishes, helped Hunter by showcasing his accessibility to his son’s business partners.

In short, the text shows Hunter intended to shakedown CEFC, and the $5 million suggests he succeeded.

3. Burisma Wanted Me to Call My… Teen Daughters?

A close second for the most outrageous storyline concerned the call to D.C. that Hunter Biden’s business partner and friend Devon Archer claims Hunter made at the request of Burisma executives.

Archer, a Biden-friendly witness, had previously testified to the House Judiciary Committee that in early December 2015, after a Burisma board meeting, the founder of the Ukrainian energy company had asked Hunter to call D.C. because of pressure being placed on the company. In a follow-up question, Archer confirmed the Burisma request was for “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.”

According to Hunter’s friend and former business partner, Hunter stepped away with the Burisma executives to make the call to D.C. But when asked about the call on Wednesday, Hunter testified, “I never would have called, and never did my father on behalf of Burisma.”

So, whom did he call?

Hunter didn’t remember but suggested it was his wife or his high school-aged daughters.

Sure, Jan.

4. The Big Guy = The Big Lie?

Revisiting Archer’s testimony from last year added another improbability to Hunter Biden’s testimony — this one concerning “the big guy” moniker.

When questioned about the reference to 10 percent being “held by H for the big guy,” Hunter claimed not to know what that meant. And when questioned by Democrats on the committee about Joe Biden’s nicknames, Hunter denied his family referred to Joe as “the big guy.”

Tony Bobulinski, however, testified previously that “the big guy” was Joe Biden’s nickname. And while Hunter Biden claimed Bobulinski was a liar and not to be believed, Archer also used that nickname in an apparent reference to Joe Biden in his testimony, saying Burisma wasn’t “specific, you know, can the big guy help? It was — it’s always this amorphous, can we get help in D.C.?”

5. ‘My Chairman’ is Absolutely, Positively Not Daddy

Also ringing hollow was Hunter Biden’s assertion that “my chairman” was not his father. House investigators asked Hunter about a text he had sent to Bobulinski, in which he said, “In light of the fact that we are at an impasse of sorts, and both James’ lawyers and my chairman gave an emphatic no — I think we should all meet in Romania on Tuesday next week.”

Hunter went on to say that “my chairman” was Chairman Ye of the Chinese company CEFC. Hunter then testified that he didn’t ever refer to his father as “my chairman,” calling the suggestion “laughable.”

The Republican committee members confronted Hunter with a text his business partner Rob Walker had sent to Bobulinski that said, “When he said his chairman, he was talking about his dad.”

Hunter sought to negate Walker’s testimony by claiming it was merely one “third party that was talking with another third party” who was “making a judgment about what I was talking about.”

Hunter then reverted to, “[Y]ou have my answer under oath that I did not refer and never have referred to my father as chairman.”

His “under oath” guarantee isn’t very assuring, however, given that Hunter had earlier stressed his long-standing relationship with Rob Walker — the third party who identified “my chairman” as Joe Biden.” “Rob Walker has known me since 1998,” Hunter testified. In fact, Hunter claimed Walker would have told their other business partners they were “way out of bounds” if Walker knew they were suggesting getting Joe Biden involved in their business deals.

So it sure seems like Walker would know whether Hunter would refer to his father as “my chairman.”

6. The Laptop Was a Plant

While many of Hunter’s explanations were unbelievable, his claims about the laptop the FBI seized from a Delaware repair shop were surreal.

When asked about his laptop from hell, Hunter claimed first not to remember dropping one off at a repair store in 2019. Then, when asked if he ever dropped off a laptop at a repair shop, Hunter spoke of dropping one off at a place three blocks from his D.C. office and at an Apple store in Georgetown. When pushed on whether he had ever left a laptop for repair in Delaware, Hunter replied that “the largest Apple store in America is at the Christiana Mall,” and that if he were “to drop off a laptop” — not that he “ever remember[ed] doing that, but if [he] was going to drop off a laptop” — he “would have gone to the Apple store, which was 7 minutes from [his] parents’ home there.”

In other words, Hunter is claiming he wouldn’t have dropped his laptop off at Mac Isaac’s store to suggest he didn’t. This outrageous assertion is part of a conspiracy theory that suggests the laptop abandoned at the Delaware repair shop was a plant.

Hunter also pushed another false narrative by suggesting much of the evidence recovered from the laptop was fake.

“Many different things” on the laptop were “either fabricated, hacked, stolen, or manipulated.” “100 percent,” Hunter testified on Wednesday.

Of course, when it came to identifying which ones, Hunter insisted, “I can’t go through them all right now.”

7. My Resume Is Real — And It’s Spectacular

Throughout the transcribed interview, Hunter also attempted to deflect questions about his lucrative service on Burisma’s board of directors by touting his resume. But when pushed on what he actually did for Burisma for a million-dollar paycheck, Hunter’s explanation of attending board meetings and “providing the best advice that I could give” convinced no one.

That was especially true given that the one thing Hunter should have been giving advice about — Burisma’s various legal problems — the president’s son claimed to know nothing about. Specifically, according to his Wednesday testimony, he did not know Burisma was under investigation in the U.K. for money laundering and had $23 million of assets frozen until “it became public.”

One would think a board member bearing the impressive resume of Hunter Biden and charged with overseeing corporate governance would know about an investigation and frozen assets before “it became public.”

8. That’s Not My Money… Until It Is My Money

Another eyebrow-raising refrain from Hunter Biden concerned payments into accounts held in the name of Rosemont Seneca Bohai and Rosemont Seneca Thornton. Those entities were Devon Archer’s, and as such, the money deposited into those accounts from foreigners wasn’t Hunter’s, the president’s son suggested.

“I have no authority over those accounts, and I have no view inside of it,” he testified.

Never mind that Archer transferred large sums from those accounts to Hunter Biden-connected accounts or, in one case, used the $142,300 a Kazakhstani oligarch deposited into the Rosemont Seneca Bohai account to pay for a car for Hunter Biden. While Hunter tried to downplay the shifting of funds from one business to another, at the end of the day, it was all unbelievable.

The totality of Hunter Biden’s testimony also rendered his opening line unbelievable. That line—“I did not involve my father in my business” — seems false at every angle.

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, 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 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. 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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Special Counsel Indictment Looks Just As Bad For David Weiss As The Charged FBI Informant

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

On Thursday, Special Counsel David Weiss unsealed an indictment charging a longtime confidential human source (CHS) with making false statements. But it wasn’t Christopher Steele, the CHS who threw the country into turmoil for four years by peddling the fraudulent Steele dossier. Former CHS Stefan Halper, who helped further the Russia-collusion hoax, also wasn’t the subject of the indictment. Nor was CHS Rodney Joffe, who sought to destroy the Trump presidency with the Alfa Bank hoax.

No, it was the CHS who, on June 26, 2020, told his handler that the owner of Burisma claimed he had paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes in exchange for protection from being investigated by the Ukrainian prosecutor.

Thursday’s indictment revealed the name of that CHS for the first time — Alexander Smirnov — and alleged that Smirnov’s aforementioned statements, which were memorialized in an FD-1023 report, were false.

False Statements Allegations

Since news first broke of the existence of that FD-1023 last summer, House Republicans championed the CHS’s reporting as further evidence of Biden family corruption, while Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley focused on the Department of Justice’s apparent failure to investigate the veracity of the FD-1023 as part of their probe into Hunter Biden’s business affairs.

Weiss’s indictment presents a powerful case that Smirnov lied on June 26, 2020, when the CHS told his handler he’d had conversations with Burisma executives in 2015 and 2016: An investigation by Weiss’s team concluded Smirnov did not meet the Burisma executives until March 1, 2017, meaning the earlier conversations could not have occurred. The indictment references introductory emails that established the alleged accurate timing of events, as well as travel records of other individuals, which contradict Smirnov’s claims. That evidence, the special counsel’s office concluded, was sufficient to charge Smirnov with making false statements and creating a false record.

If Smirnov lied to his handler in June 2020 about his conversations with Burisma executives, the indictment is well deserved. Not only did Smirnov’s alleged lies violate the federal criminal statute that prohibits false statements, but they also proved especially damaging to society as a whole by interfering in the House’s impeachment inquiry.

The harm here is not merely that investigators wasted time chasing apparently false leads, or that Hunter and Joe Biden suffered from Smirnov’s allegedly false accusations, but also that Smirnov’s lies may overshadow the other unrelated — and substantial — evidence implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal, rendering it more difficult to obtain justice.

What About Other CHS Lies?

Smirnov, however, is but one CHS whose alleged lies have created havoc for our country.

Consider the lies peddled in the Steele dossier to our FBI. CHS Christopher Steele represented his sourcing as trusted, reliable, and well-placed when it was none of those things. That dossier led to the DOJ obtaining four unconstitutional surveillance warrants against an innocent American, resulted in our government spending millions investigating a hoax, and impaired the functioning of the Trump administration. Yet even after Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham referred the matter to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, Steele reaped no consequences for the lies he sowed.

Then there was CHS Stefan Halper who, according to an electronic communication, told the FBI the Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova had “latched” onto Michael Flynn at a Cambridge academic gathering and then, after the dinner, “surprised everyone and got into [Flynn’s] cab and joined [Flynn] on the train ride to London.” Halper, however, never attended the dinner, so he could not have witnessed any of the happenings, and the supposed cab ride was completely fictional.

The FBI’s summary of his debriefing also memorialized Halper claiming Trump volunteer Carter Page asked Halper during a July 18, 2016, meeting whether he “would want to join the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.” In an exclusive interview with The Federalist in 2020, however, Page, “unequivocally denied asking Halper ‘to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.’”

Add to those two sources Rodney Joffe, the CHS who helped concoct the Alfa Bank hoax. That fairytale went that the Trump organization had a secret communication channel with Putin operating through the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Joffe peddled that tale to the FBI and, with the help of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, pushed the CIA to investigate this second Russia hoax just as the Trump presidency was beginning.

As I wrote in 2022: “Justice Won’t Be Served In SpyGate Without John Durham Investigating More Confidential Human Sources.” But alas, Durham’s investigation ended without any reckoning for Steele, Halper, or Joffe.

Weiss Must Go

While the double standard is infuriating, assuming the allegations against Smirnov are true, charges are eminently justified. Also justified? Impeaching David Weiss.

Thursday’s indictment established that no one in U.S. Attorney Weiss’s office investigated Smirnov’s serious claims against Hunter and Joe Biden until after Grassley released a copy of the FD-1023 on July 20, 2023. It would be over a month later before FBI investigators would speak with Smirnov’s handler about the FD-1023. And, according to the indictment, it was not until Sept. 27, 2023, that the FBI interviewed Smirnov. That timeline confirms the incompetence of Weiss in handling the investigation into Hunter Biden because in October 2020, Weiss’s Delaware office received “a substantive briefing” concerning the FD-1023 from the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr tasked then-Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady with screening evidence related to Ukraine. Last year, Brady testified before the House Judiciary Committee about that screening process, including how his team handled the FD-1023.

Brady explained the Pittsburgh FBI office sought to corroborate anything they could from the FD-1023, but he noted that his office lacked the authority to use a grand jury for the screening process. Brady’s team nonetheless succeeded in obtaining travel records of the CHS and “interfaced with the CHS’s handler about certain statements relating to travel and meetings to see if they were consistent with his or her understanding.”

What they were able to identify, Brady testified, was consistent with the CHS’s representations in the FD-1023. Additionally, the CHS was a longtime source for the FBI and considered “highly reliable” — something the indictment confirms given his length of service and the government authorizing Smirnov to commit crimes while operating as a CHS.

Brady further testified that his office had vetted the FD-1023 and the CHS “against known sources of Russian disinformation.” To conduct that analysis, his team worked with the Eastern District of New York. “It was found that it was not sourced from Russian disinformation,” Brady told the House Judiciary Committee.

Then when his team finished screening the FD-1023 and other evidence related to Ukraine, a Pittsburgh assistant U.S. attorney briefed Weiss’s office on the evidence, explaining how they had screened it, and noting they concluded it had “some indicia of credibility” and should be investigated further.

Thursday’s indictment of Smirnov suggests the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office sat on the FD-1023 for nearly three years, until after Grassley released a copy to the public. Instead, Weiss’s office offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea agreement, which fell apart only because the federal judge assigned to the case inquired into the strange arrangement that appeared to give Hunter Biden blanket immunity in a pretrial diversion agreement — something she had never seen before.

Special Counsel Weiss clearly knows how bad this looks because, in the indictment, he tried to spin the assessment into the FD-1023 as being closed out by the Pittsburgh FBI office, implying that is why his office did not conduct any further investigative steps.

“By August 2020, FBI Pittsburgh concluded that all reasonable steps had been completed regarding the Defendant’s allegations and that their assessment, 58A-PG-3250958, should be closed,” Weiss wrote. “On August 12, 2020, FBI Pittsburgh was informed that the then-FBI Deputy Director and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States concurred that it should be closed.”

However, as former Attorney General Barr has made clear numerous times, the Pittsburgh office was merely charged with screening the evidence, and the investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.”

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

No further investigation occurred, however. That alone should justify Weiss’s removal — and not merely for what he failed to do, but also because the country can’t trust that his special counsel team will follow all the leads, including the ones we don’t know about.

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

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

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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House Republicans Seek Access to Biden’s Classified Documents

By Fran Beyer | Friday, 09 February 2024 02:52 PM EST

House Republicans on Friday demanded access to classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home amid the Oversight panel’s probe of the Biden family. In a social media post by the GOP-majority House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the panel demanded the Department of Justice Department provide Congress with access “to Joe Biden’s stashed classified documents to determine if they were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling schemes.”

The move follows Comer’s request that “Special Counsel Robert Hur provide our committee with information about whether President Biden retained classified materials related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business schemes that brought in millions for the Biden family,” the panel wrote — and that the DOJ “refused to provide this information under the guise of ‘an ongoing investigation.'”

The committee said that since the probe is now over “and the Special Counsel’s report reveals Joe Biden kept classified materials related to Ukraine and China, two countries where the Bidens made millions,” the DOJ “must provide Congress with unfettered access to these documents.”

Hur released his report to the public on Thursday, but didn’t recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents — and stated he wouldn’t bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office.

The records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other countries, among other records related to national security and foreign policy, which Hur said implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”

They also included documents related to Ukraine and China.

Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in June 2014 and also had joint business ventures with Chinese energy firms.

According to the full special counsel report, a “VP Personal” file folder contained a telephone call sheet from Dec. 12, 2015, talking points for a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, and a handwritten note attached addressed to Biden’s executive assistant that states: “Get copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.” The note is signed “Joe.” That document was marked as “Secret.”

Attached to that document was another, dated Dec. 11, 2015. The report describes that document as “a transcript documenting the substance of a Dec. 11, 2015 call between Mr. Biden and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.” The document is marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY.”

Biden gave a speech on Dec. 9, 2015 in which he discussed corruption in Ukraine.

“And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption,” Biden said in the speech. “The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

At the time, Burisma Holdings was under investigation by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Several months later, in March 2016, Biden successfully pressured Ukraine to remove Shokin. At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on the board.

Biden, at the time, threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

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HUNTER BIDEN MAKES SHOCKING APPEARANCE AT HIS OWN CONTEMPT HEARING

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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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House Judiciary passes resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress, setting up full floor vote

By Brooke Singman Fox News | Published January 10, 2024 4:15pm EST

The House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden, setting up a full vote on the House floor in the coming days that would recommend the first son for prosecution.

The vote at the House Judiciary Committee was 23-14.

The House Oversight Committee also met for a markup Wednesday at 10 a.m. to consider their own resolution that recommends contempt proceedings against the first son after he refused to comply with a subpoena compelling him to appear for a closed-door deposition.

Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell speaks after Hunter Biden walked out of a House Oversight Committee hearing — Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, listens to his attorney Abbe Lowell as they depart following a surprise appearance at a House Oversight Committee markup and meeting to vote on whether to hold Biden in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a request to testify to the House last month, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 10, 2024. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

The House Oversight Committee’s resolution has not yet been passed, and the panel’s mark-up meeting is ongoing.

The House Judiciary Committee’s resolution will go to the House Rules Committee. If the House Oversight Committee passes its separate resolution, it will also go to the House Rules Committee.

It is unclear, at this point, whether each committee’s resolution will be considered on the floor for a full vote, or if the House Rules Committee will combine both resolutions into one for consideration for a contempt of Congress vote.

A source familiar tells Fox News Digital a full House floor vote could come as early as next week.

Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at the House Oversight Committee markup with his attorneys Abbe Lowell and Kevin Morris.

Hunter Biden (L), son of U.S. President Joe Biden, with lawyer Abbe Lowell departs a House Oversight Committee meeting on January 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee is meeting today as it considers citing him for contempt of Congress. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Hunter Biden, ahead of his subpoenaed deposition on Dec. 13, had offered to testify publicly. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan rejected his request, stressing that the first son would not have special treatment and pointed to the dozens of other witnesses that have appeared, as compelled, for their interviews and depositions. Comer and Jordan vowed to release the transcript of Hunter Biden’s deposition.

The first son, though, defied the subpoena, ignored the offer and delivered a public statement outside the Capitol. At the time, he said his “father was not financially involved in my business.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Wednesday that Hunter Biden “blatantly defied two lawful subpoenas.”

Hunter Biden makes surprise appearance at House hearing — Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, sits with his attorney Abbe Lowell as he makes a surprise appearance at a House Oversight Committee markup and meeting to vote on whether to hold Biden in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a request to testify to the House last month, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 10, 2024. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

Comer said “Hunter Biden’s willful refusal to comply with the committees’ subpoenas is a criminal act” that “constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to the appropriate United States Attorney’s Office for prosecution as prescribed by law.”

HOUSE GOP SAYS HUNTER BIDEN ‘VIOLATED FEDERAL LAW’ BY DEFYING SUBPOENA, PREPARE CONTEMPT RESOLUTION

“We will not provide Hunter Biden with special treatment because of his last name,” Comer said. “All Americans must be treated equally under the law. And that includes the Bidens.”

During the meeting Wednesday, lawmakers acknowledged Biden was in the audience, with Democratic lawmakers asking to have Biden take questions during the session — a request Republicans rejected.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said if the committee wants to hear from Biden, the panel should vote and “hear from Hunter right now.”

Jordan and Comer react to Biden defying subpoena — From left, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., speak to reporters after Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, defied a congressional subpoena to appear privately for a deposition before Republican investigators who have been digging into his business dealings, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“Who wants to hear from Hunter right now, today? Anyone? Come on,” Moskowitz said. “Who wants to hear from Hunter? Yeah, no one. So I’m a visual learner, and the visual is clear. Nobody over there wants to hear from the witness.”

WHITE HOUSE MUM ON WHETHER HUNTER BIDEN GAVE ADVANCED NOTICE HE WOULD APPEAR AT HOUSE CONTEMPT MEETING

Biden and his attorneys ultimately left the markup session before the vote on the resolution.

“Hunter chose a hearing where Republicans could not distort manipulate, or misuse that testimony,” his attorney Abbe Lowell said, calling the move to consider a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress “unprecedented” in light of his offer to “publicly answer all their proper questions.”

“The question there is, what are they afraid of?” Lowell asked, before departing the Capitol.

Meanwhile, the White House refused to answer questions on whether it was told in advance that Hunter Biden would attend the House Oversight’s mark-up session on Wednesday.

“So here’s what I’ll say. And I’ve said this many times before: Hunter, as you all know, as a private citizen, he’s not a member of this White House,” Jean-Pierre said. “He makes his own decisions like he did today about how to respond to Congress.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on January 03, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

She went on to refer “any further questions, any additional questions about this process” to Hunter Biden’s attorneys.

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When pressed again on whether the White House was informed in advance, Jean-Pierre said: “I don’t have anything — we don’t have anything else to share beyond that.”

President Joe Biden speaks during an event at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, US, on Thursday, Dec. 14 2023. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Last month, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, expanded their investigation to probe whether President Biden was involved in his son’s “scheme” to defy his subpoena for deposition earlier this month, which, they say, “could constitute an impeachable offense.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Brooke Singman is a political correspondent and reporter for Fox News Digital, Fox News Channel and FOX Business.

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Joe Biden Said Subpoena Defiers Should Be Charged. Will His DOJ Arrest Hunter Biden?

By: Katelynn Richardson / @katesrichardson / December 15, 2023

Hunter Biden gives a statement to media outlets regarding the House Oversight and Accountability Committee investigation into his business interests outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Photo: Craig Hudson/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena on Wednesday, an action his father has previously said should be prosecuted. President Joe Biden said in October 2021 that individuals who defy subpoenas from the January 6 House Select Committee should be prosecuted, and the Justice Department indicted Steve Bannon for doing so in November 2021. Legal experts said the president’s son could be, but for various reasons may not be, likewise prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department for his choice to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill instead of sitting his deposition before the House Oversight Committee.

Criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the law “must be applied equally or it has no meaning.”

“Hunter Biden needs to be held to the same standard as other recent people who have thumbed their noses at congressional subpoenas,” Holloway said. “In this case, however, Hunter went so far as to show up on Capitol grounds and hold a press conference, thereby figuratively giving the middle finger to the House of Representatives. It is imperative that he be cited for contempt and that he be prosecuted by the U.S. attorney just as was the case recently with Bannon.”

Holloway called dodging a valid subpoena “just stupid,” noting Hunter could have “invoked the Fifth Amendment” at his deposition.

“I scratch my head wondering why Hunter’s lawyer—who stood with him at the presser—would subject his client to additional criminal charges,” he said. “I would never have advised someone to dodge a subpoena.”

George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley made a similar point Thursday, writing that Republicans initiating contempt of Congress proceedings could “force the hand of Attorney General Merrick Garland” and calling Hunter’s refusal to appear an “unenforced error.” Garland said in 2021 that the prosecution of Bannon was in pursuit of “equal justice under the law.”

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” said Garland in a statement at the time. “Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said in a statement Wednesday that they intend to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings.

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy wrote Wednesday that the younger Biden knows he won’t be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

“Similarly, Hunter Biden knows that, while the House could hold him in contempt, the Biden Justice Department is not going to prosecute him for criminal contempt for [sic] three reasons,” he wrote. “(1) he’s the president’s son; (2) there’s already tension with the White House because prosecutors botched the sweetheart plea deal and have now indicted Hunter twice (putting the president in the politically compromising position of having to pardon him at some point); and (3) the Justice Department is part of an administration whose story is that the impeachment inquiry is an illegitimate political hit job forced by MAGA Republicans so they can orchestrate proceedings hyped as ‘Biden impeachment’ in parallel with the criminal proceedings Trump faces in court, which Democrats are hyping.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – I Am Here

A.F. BRANCO | on December 15, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-i-am-here/

Hunter; I Am Here Address Cartoon — A.F. Branco Cartoon 2023

Hunter Biden parses his words unwisely, trying to avoid connecting his father to any of his business dealings.

One Word Hunter Biden Used During Statement at DC Presser Tore Up Joe Biden’s Defense of Corruption Allegations (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila

Hunter Biden on Wednesday arrived in DC and gave a press conference on Capitol Hill where he revealed he will only answer questions under his own rules despite a congressional subpoena.

Congressional Republicans subpoenaed Hunter Biden for a closed-door deposition related to his influence-peddling and family corruption.

Hunter Biden on Wednesday said he will only testify “at a public hearing.”

The first son also made a damning statement that tore up Joe Biden’s corruption defense. One word Hunter Biden used caught the attention of Republican lawmakers and reporters. READ MORE…

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Awkward: Hunter Biden’s Defense Invokes Gun Rights Ruling 19 Times After Joe Called It Unconstitutional

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | DECEMBER 14, 2023

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is relying on Second Amendment arguments that his father once slammed as “deeply” troubling to escape conviction on gun crimes.

On Monday, attorneys for the president’s son filed a series of motions to dismiss federal charges handed down by Special Counsel David Weiss. Among the charges Biden’s attorneys want thrown out are firearm charges that were filed on the basis of Hunter Biden purchasing a gun as a drug addict. Hunter Biden’s initial sweetheart plea agreement — which was derailed this summer after it fell apart in court — would have forgiven the felony firearm conviction if Hunter maintained 24 months of sobriety.

“Hunter Biden asserts that the gun charges fail as a matter of constitutional law because Congress could not criminalize the possession of a gun by an addict,” explained Federalist Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland. “And since Congress could not criminalize possession by an addict, it also could not make lying about being an addict a crime. Therefore, Hunter Biden argues the three gun charges fail.”

Hunter Biden’s attorneys cited United States v. Daniels, a 5th Circuit decision in August that reversed the firearm conviction of a non-violent drug user.

“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” the court ruled. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”

“The prosecution charges that Mr. Biden violated a rarely used statute that it claims prevented him from owning a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in their Monday motion. “But that statute’s status-based prohibition on gun ownership recently was struck down as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”

The Daniels decision followed the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, a landmark ruling in 2022 that broadly upheld the right to carry a handgun in public.

In another gun rights case that followed Bruen, attorneys for an Oklahoma man who was pulled over with a gun and marijuana in his car “argued the portion of federal firearms law focused on drug users or addicts was not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, echoing what the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled last year” in Bruen.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen 19 times in their motion filed on Monday. And yet, when the court handed down the landmark case in June 2022, President Biden said the “ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution and should deeply trouble us all.”

Now, Hunter’s case may further strengthen the Second Amendment protections his father disparaged.

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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HUNTER BIDEN WILL NOT SIT FOR DEPOSITION BY GOP, SAYS FATHER NOT ‘FINANCIALLY’ INVOLVED IN HIS BUSINESS

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Hunter Biden faces backlash after defying subpoena with press conference ‘stunt’: ‘Hold him in contempt!’

By Brandon Gillespie Fox News | Published December 13, 2023 12:12pm EST

Hunter Biden is facing intense backlash after holding a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday in which he refused to sit for a deposition before Congress, and declared his father, President Biden, was never “financially involved” in his business dealings. Calls to hold Hunter in contempt of Congress began almost immediately following the end of the press conference, while other critics pointed to the claims concerning his father’s relationship to his business dealings as “goalpost shifting.”

“They belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass my father, who has devoted his entire life to public service,” Hunter said. “For six years I have been a target of the unrelenting Trump attack team. ‘Where’s Hunter?’ Well, here’s my answer. I am here.”

He added that “my father was not financially involved in my business,” saying the elder Biden was not involved in his dealings with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, or his Chinese investments and others in the United States.

President Biden and Hunter Biden arrive in Syracuse, New York — A recent column from New York Times columnist Frank Bruni claimed that the media and Biden allies ignoring the Hunter Biden scandal and other Biden administration corruption are being “dishonest” and “dangerous.” (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

“We have moved from Joe Biden saying he never discussed business with Hunter to a new argument of Joe Biden wasn’t financially involved at all with Hunter’s business & most media haven’t covered the changing stories. Hold Hunter in contempt & impeach Joe,” OutKick founder and Fox News contributor Clay Travis wrote on X.

We have moved from Joe Biden saying he never discussed business with Hunter to a new argument of Joe Biden wasn’t financially involved at all with Hunter’s business & most media haven’t covered the changing stories. Hold Hunter in contempt & impeach Joe: pic.twitter.com/Mpnmohweld
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 13, 2023

Hunter Biden refuses to comply with @JamesComer's subpoena to be deposed behind closed doors and demands a public hearing so he can tell sob stories on TV.

Reminder that Don Jr. testified behind closed doors for over 40 hours about the Russia hoax.

Hold him in contempt! pic.twitter.com/1FoJB06zyX
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 13, 2023

“Hunter Biden refuses to comply with [Rep. James Comer’s, R-Ky.] subpoena to be deposed behind closed doors and demands a public hearing so he can tell sob stories on TV. Reminder that Don Jr. testified behind closed doors for over 40 hours about the Russia hoax. Hold him in contempt!” conservative commentator Greg Price wrote.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee quickly reacted on social media, pushing back against Hunter’s “stunt.” Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., both echoed those calls to hold Hunter in contempt, accusing him of mocking Congress with a “stunt” and calling his refusal an “obstruction of justice.”

“Hunter Biden, this ain’t Burger King. You can’t Have It Your Way when it comes to congressional subpoenas. Quit the stunts, make your way to the deposition room, and let’s talk,” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., wrote.

CALLS GROW FOR CONGRESS TO SUBPOENA JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S FLIGHT LOGS DESPITE DEMOCRAT ‘STONEWALLING’

Hunter Biden, this ain't Burger King.

You can't Have It Your Way when it comes to congressional subpoenas. Quit the stunts, make your way to the deposition room, and let's talk.
— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) December 13, 2023

What’s Hunter Biden so afraid of? https://t.co/7RSQbI3yxp
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) December 13, 2023

Donalds also responded to Hunter’s claim he was being targeted by “MAGA Republicans,” declaring, “‘MAGA Republicans’ did not impugn Hunter Biden’s character. Hunter Biden did that to himself.”

“What’s Hunter Biden so afraid of?” wrote Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.

“This is one HELL of a new qualifier from Hunter Biden. Hunter now says, “My father was not financially involved in my business” FLASHBACK: Joe Biden used to say he has never talked about business with his family. This is a major shift from the Bidens,” GOP communications strategist Steve Guest wrote.

WH SPURNS BIDEN FAMILY ‘CONSPIRACY THEORIES’ AHEAD OF LIKELY IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY VOTE, HUNTER BIDEN DEPOSITION

This is one HELL of a new qualifier from Hunter Biden.

Hunter now says, “My father was not financially involved in my business”

FLASHBACK: Joe Biden used to say he has never talked about business with his family. This is a major shift from the Bidens. pic.twitter.com/4oiALdD4Yg
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 13, 2023

So we've gone from Joe Biden claiming he never even discussed business with Hunter to Hunter claiming Joe was never *financially* involved in his business.

Big goalpost shifting and lots of lies from the Bidens.
— Abigail Jackson 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) December 13, 2023

Abigail Jackson, the communications director for Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., echoed Guest, noting that “we’ve gone from Joe Biden claiming he never even discussed business with Hunter to Hunter claiming Joe was never *financially* involved in his business. Big goalpost shifting and lots of lies from the Bidens.”

Hunter Biden Capitol Hill — Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden, is seen after making a statement during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol about testifying publicly to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

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“First, Joe Biden had no knowledge, then he had no involvement, and now he has no ‘financial’ involvement. Time to explain ‘10 held by H for the big guy,’ the reported bank records showing a money trail to Joe Biden, and Hunter’s messages saying Joe Biden financially benefited,” Republican National Committee strategic communications director Tommy Pigott wrote.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Brandon Gillespie is an associate editor at Fox News. Follow him on X at @BGillespieAL

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Jim Jordan To CIA: How Many Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Signatories Were On Your Payroll?

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | DECEMBER 08, 2023

Author Tristan Justice profile

TRISTAN JUSTICE

VISIT ON TWITTER@JUSTICETRISTAN

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is investigating whether the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter were paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

After Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop surfaced during the 2020 election, more than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter in Politico saying the computer “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” In a letter to CIA Director William Burns on Monday, Jordan, who leads the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, demanded the CIA chief come clean about the agency’s alleged involvement in branding the laptop as Russian disinformation, which plainly amounted to election interference.

“We understand that former intelligence officials often return to the intelligence community under private contract for their previous agencies,” Jordan wrote. “It is vital to the Committees’ oversight to understand whether any of the signatories of the public statement were actively employed by CIA as contractors or consultants at the time they signed the public statement.”

“If so,” Jordan added, “this information would raise fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA as it pertains to the October 19, 2020, ‘Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails’ signed and published by 51 former intelligence community officials in the weeks preceding the 2020 presidential election.”

A report from the Weaponization Committee in May revealed the CIA’s covert involvement in orchestrating the letter. Evidence that surfaced from Hunter Biden’s laptop unveiled blockbuster details about the Biden family’s influence-peddling operations now at the center of a Republican impeachment inquiry.

[READ: CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows]

In his Monday letter to the CIA chief, Jordan demanded a list of all signatories to the letter “who were on active contract or consulting for the CIA at any time from January 1, 2020, to the present,” as well as whether any of those potential contracts “pertained to Hunter Biden’s business dealings, Biden family influence-peddling, Ukraine, or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.”

Several of the intelligence letters’ signatories have since doubled down on the debunked claims of Russian interference despite the laptop having been verified even by news outlets that first dismissed the computer’s legitimacy. Charges that the laptop stemmed from a Kremlin campaign were even debunked by rare on-the-record statements from the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of National Intelligence, and the State Department before Election Day. However, the laptop was suppressed by major online platforms, at least in part over the allegations that it was Russian propaganda.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended signing the letter in an interview with New York Magazine last fall, with the magazine noting that “Clapper was not pleased to be asked about the letter two years after its release.”

“What are you trying to get me to say, that I screwed up and I shouldn’t have signed the letter? I’m not going to say that,” Clapper told the paper. “As far as I was concerned, we were waving the yellow flag. At the time, it was fishy to me. It had the characteristics of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, likewise told Fox News in October, “No, I don’t have any regrets” about signing the letter.

Last week, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., became the latest to peddle the fake Russia narrative at a hearing on censorship with the House Weaponization Committee.

“The problem,” Goldman said about the laptop, “is that hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia.”

In April, House Republicans expanded oversight inquiries surrounding the Politico letter to include Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In a letter to Blinken, lawmakers wrote, “[W]e have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor, and we therefore request your assistance with our oversight.”

Jordan gave CIA Director Burns until Dec. 15 to comply with the congressional request for records.

Read the full letter from Jordan to the CIA below:https://www.scribd.com/embeds/690706131/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-Tbq648AcGGRZj45uKoS7

2023-12-04 JDJ MT to Burns … by federalistzoom

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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A Short History of Joe’s Long Record of Lying About Biden Inc.

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | DECEMBER 05, 2023

Biden Has Tense Exchange With Voter Over Age, Son Hunter: ‘You’re A Damn Liar’

Author David Harsanyi profile

DAVID HARSANYI

VISIT ON TWITTER@DAVIDHARSANYI

During a 2020 campaign event, then-presidential hopeful Joe Biden was asked by an Iowa man if the former’s son Hunter Biden had ever had “access to the Obama administration.” The future president, who had vowed to bring decorum and decency back to the White House, called the man a “damn liar” and “fat” and told him he was “too old” before insulting his IQ. This act of projection from Biden should have been a warning. It was modus operandi for Joe, whose preternatural dishonesty was impressive even for a politician, to question the mental fitness of those who caught him in a lie. Biden had done much the same to a reporter during his 1987 failed presidential run.

Biden would go on to contend on numerous occasions that he never once even spoke to his son Hunter about the family’s influence-peddling business. Joe claimed never to have “discussed with my son anything having to do with what was going on in Ukraine. That’s a fact.”

As a Chicago ABC affiliate and the AP reported in an October 2019 story — helpfully headlined, “Joe Biden defends himself, son Hunter on Ukraine during Democratic debate following Trump accusations” — the former veep said he “never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We’ve always kept everything separate.”

Not a single thing.

When the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, indicating that Joe had lied, virtually the entire left-wing media regurgitated the claims of former intelligence officials — including known liars like James Clapper and John Brennan — that the story smacked of Russian “disinformation.” The story, allegedly discredited, was then censored by Big Tech and big media companies. Even Joe noted that the “vast majority of the intelligent people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

Well, we soon found out there was plenty of basis to the story. Hunter had hosted a dinner in a private room at Café Milano in D.C. with his dad and an executive from Burisma, the company that had enriched the Biden business. And in an email dated the next day, the Ukrainian exec thanked Hunter for the meeting with his dad.

In scores of other emails and texts, Hunter talks about his dad helping him secure payments and taking a cut. One of Hunter’s former business partners contends Joe was involved in the family business, as does Hunter’s former close friend, who testified under oath that Joe was on upwards of 20 calls with business associates.

At this point, there was overwhelming direct evidence that Joe was a willing participant, at the very least, in creating the impression that influence trading was happening and plenty of circumstantial evidence that the elder Biden was getting a 10 percent cut for the troubles.

As evidence of the president’s lies about his family’s influence-peddling business mounted, “fact-checkers” and the media began struggling to calibrate their defenses to correspond with the fresh information. While at first there had been “no evidence” that Biden knew anything — to say differently, was to peddle misinformation — suddenly there was “no evidence” that Biden had personally benefited from Hunter’s scheming (as if enriching your entire family wasn’t personal).

And this is when the partisan defenses of Joe began to see a dramatic decline in quality. One of my favorites was The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, who was not alone, arguing: “We know how important family is to the president. So, do you hang up on your son?”

It was probably familial love that induced James Biden to write brother Joe a personal check for $200,000, that — by complete happenstance – was the exact amount James had received from the failed Americore family venture on that very same day. Talk about crazy coincidences.

It was around this time, as well, that White House language began subtly shifting from blanket denials to finely tuned Clintonesque turns of phrase about Joe never being “in business with his son.”

This week, the House Oversight Committee released financial documents illustrating that Hunter signed off on monthly transfers to Joe through Owasco PC, a Biden shell company that pulled at least $5 million from the Chicom energy concerns in 2017 and 2018. The Daily Mail reports there were at least three payments, from September to November 2018, or a few months before Biden announced he was running for president.

Listen, the Biden family operated through at least 20 shell companies — as one does when running a completely above-board legit business venture. It’s not easy to keep up. Or, as Jon Hamm’s character quipped in “The Town,” you need a Venn diagram for these people.

You might recall that in 2020, Biden had claimed Hunter never “made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about — China.” But Hunter had not only tagged along on an Air Force Two trip to China in 2013, he’d introduced his dad to the Chinese banker he was teaming up with for a private equity fund.

So, I eagerly look forward to fact-checkers, media, and the White House clarifying why this is all just fine. It’s been a wild ride so far, so I bet the explanation is going to be amazing.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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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

Author Shawn Fleetwood profile

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD

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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The Gun Joe Biden Doesn’t Want You To Have Just Protected His Own Granddaughter

BY: REBEKA ZELJKO | NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Secret Service reportedly opened fire Sunday night on three suspects attempting to break into an unmarked government vehicle parked in front of the Georgetown home of Naomi Biden, President Joe Biden’s granddaughter. Reports allege that the three offenders fled the scene after the gunfire started.

These types of scenarios are exactly why Americans advocate for the Second Amendment, but unfortunately, not all citizens have the same protection the Biden family is afforded.

The average DC resident does not have protection from the Secret Service, as Naomi Biden does:

– 760 carjackings occurred in 2023

– 65% of those arrested for carjacking are juveniles

– Graves prosecuted only 56% of those arrested in 2023 pic.twitter.com/3atphWS9oS
— Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) November 13, 2023

Residents of Washington, D.C., are forced to navigate an onslaught of regulation and red tape before they can use firearms for self-preservation. According to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, residents have the “authority to carry firearm[s]” only in “certain places and for certain purposes.” Concealed carry requires a variety of applications and training, while “open carry is prohibited.”

IMAGE CREDITMPDC / DC POLICE DEPARTMENT WEBSITE

Meanwhile, crime in the District of Columbia is out of control. So far, violent crime is up almost 40 percent in 2023 over 2022, according to D.C.’s preliminary reports. Homicide and robbery are up 32 and 68 percent, respectively, while motor vehicle theft is up nearly 100 percent over last year. On Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency over the juvenile crime crisis.

Yet stringent gun laws are especially common in high-crime areas, making it even more difficult for citizens to protect themselves. And in the face of rampant crime, many law-abiding citizens are left defenseless at the direction of lawmakers and an executive branch that enjoys the protection of armed security details. The Council on Criminal Justice reports that across 37 U.S. cities, violent crime is up since 2019, with “24% more homicides during the first half of 2023” compared to the first half of 2019, and “motor vehicle thefts more than doubled (+104%).”

Naomi Biden isn’t the only one getting special treatment when it comes to firearms, however. Her dad, Hunter Biden allegedly lied about his drug use on a federal form to purchase a revolver in 2018 — a bombshell the public didn’t learn about until a few months after his father was safely installed in the White House in 2021. Later, Joe Biden’s DOJ struck a sweetheart plea deal with Hunter, which posited that if the Biden son pled guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, he would get broad immunity for other crimes, including no prosecution for his illegal possession of a firearm. Luckily, that deal fell apart thanks to an astute federal judge.

Then last month, Hunter Biden pled not guilty to three federal firearms charges. And while his lawyers claim the underlying law is unconstitutional, even Politico recognizes that argument “stands in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s advocacy for stricter gun laws.”

The double standard is clear: gun rights for the Biden family and their elite friends, not for everyone else. As Biden said of the Second Amendment last year, it’s “not absolute” — for you, at least.

Jesse Watters EXPOSES how Deep State is really PROTECTING Biden by charging Hunter with gun crime… pic.twitter.com/oQo3pECqG9
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 15, 2023

The firearm hierarchy is not unique to the Bidens. Political and cultural elites alike have benefitted from guns while simultaneously pushing anti-gun legislation. Along with the Bidens, other Democrat politicians are some of the worst offenders. For instance, the notoriously anti-gun former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had her own armed security detail to protect her home and office. Former New York City Mayor and Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg also demanded gun control while being protected by armed guards. Both lived comfortably under the protection of firearms while the citizens of their crime-ridden cities were left facing unmanageable gun regulations — and these politicos are just the tip of the iceberg.

This blatant hierarchy reveals the truth that Biden and other Democrats refuse to acknowledge: Guns can preserve life. And though Biden claims gun control is “about protecting children. It’s about protecting families. It’s about protecting whole communities,” his family’s own security details are proof that guns are actually the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones.

REBEKA ZELJKO

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

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | NOVEMBER 13, 2023

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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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Grassley’s Bombshells Show House Investigators Exactly Where to Aim Their Next Biden Subpoenas

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | NOVEMBER 09, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

The chair of the House Oversight Committee issued a slew of subpoenas on Wednesday, including to Hunter Biden and James Biden. Additional subpoenas, as well as requests for transcribed interviews, were served on other Biden family members and business associates. These investigative steps are solid, but the House committees charged with the Joe Biden impeachment inquiry need to issue subpoenas for the witnesses and documents Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, not-so-subtly suggested late last month.

“I’ve obtained the names of 25 DOJ and FBI personnel to interview at a future date,” Grassley wrote in a late-October letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the latest details the Iowa senator uncovered related to obstruction of the Biden-family corruption investigation. While the House Oversight Committee is understandably focused on unraveling the extent of foreign influence-peddling, the House should not ignore the second half of the scandal: the DOJ, FBI, and now the Biden administration’s cover-up of the scandal and their cover-up of the cover-up.

Grassley has been focused on that aspect of the scandal for several years, raising concerns “about political considerations infecting the decision-making process at the Justice Department and FBI.” Having heard from several whistleblowers about the scope of the obstruction, Grassley has said that if their allegations are true, it would establish the DOJ and FBI have been “institutionally corrupted to their very core.”

The House has followed several leads Grassley developed. The most significant was related to the FD-1023 summary of a “highly credible” confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting that Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes, which Grassley released earlier this year.

More recently, Grassley revealed that the Foreign Influence Task Force used an assessment opened by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten to mine FBI field offices for derogatory information related to the Bidens. The FBI then falsely branded the derogatory information as Russian disinformation, closing out the sources. That revelation was but one of many contained in the seven-page letter the Iowa senator penned to the AG and FBI director on Oct. 24, noting he had a list of some 20-plus agents to interview.

The House committees charged with overseeing the impeachment inquiry need to dissect that letter for leads relevant to the investigation into Biden-family corruption and also to unravel the DOJ and FBI’s corruption.

Foreign Influence Task Force

Among other things, that letter revealed the complicity of the Foreign Influence Task Force in falsely branding the reporting of confidential human sources from several different field offices as Russian disinformation. As Grassley noted, it was also the Foreign Influence Task Force that “improperly briefed” him and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about their investigation into the Biden family. That briefing served solely as a precursor to a media leak to spin the Republican senators’ investigation as contaminated by foreign disinformation.

Every member of the Foreign Influence Task Force should be questioned by the House, and every communication between the Foreign Influence Task Force, Brian Auten, and the various FBI offices involved in wrongly closing out sources should be subpoenaed. The House should likewise subpoena the materials made part of that assessment and especially any sources or reporting closed out as Russian disinformation.

FBI Field Offices

Here, Grassley helpfully highlighted in his letter several relevant field offices. In noting that the FBI tried to improperly shut down the FD-1023, Grassley emphasized that the claim that the CHS’s bribery report was Russian disinformation was “highly suspect and is contradicted by other documents my office has been told exist within the Foreign Influence Task Force, FBI Seattle Field Office, FBI Baltimore Field Office, and FBI HQ holdings.”

The House should focus its investigative efforts there first. The FBI Seattle field office is a new thread to pull, as it has not been previously raised as relevant to the Biden investigation. A review of the underlying FD-1023 also suggests the Cleveland FBI field office merits attention, as the CHS who reported on the alleged bribes to the Bidens noted that he was introduced to the Burisma executives by Alexander Ostapenko. And the FD-1023 included a notation that the CHS’s reporting on Ostapenko was maintained at the Cleveland field office.

In seeking materials from these field offices and the Foreign Influence Task Force, the House should ask for all records using the terms “Russian disinformation” or “foreign disinformation” from January 2019 to the present. Why? Because that is what Grassley asked the AG and FBI director to provide. And when the Iowa Republican asks for something, he usually knows precisely what the DOJ has secreted away.

DOJ and FBI Documents

Likewise, the House should seek the other documents Grassley identified in his October 2023 letter because the Republican-led House can follow up with subpoenas if the DOJ refuses to comply, whereas Grassley can’t. In total, the Iowa senator named 15 different categories of materials he sought from the DOJ and FBI, and the House should mirror those requests.

Of particular importance are the communications between the U.S. attorneys’ offices for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the Eastern District of New York relating to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and the FD-1023, as the Eastern District of New York had apparently concluded the FD-1023 did not match any known Russian disinformation. Subpoenaing FBI reports dating to Jan. 1, 2014, and referencing Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden, or Joe Biden will likely also turn up relevant information.

Naming Names

In addition to subpoenaing these witnesses and the related documents, Grassley’s letter provides the names of several other individuals deserving of questioning. Significantly, the letter indicates that the individuals named had knowledge of Joe Biden’s potential complicity in his son’s money-laundering scheme. But Grassley also named individuals from FBI headquarters, the Washington field office, the Baltimore field office, Delaware FBI agents, and FBI management personnel.

Finally, the House should take note of Grassley’s repeated references to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the various documents he requested that connect to Thibault. Those references should give House investigators pause because Grassley’s apparent focus on Thibault strikes an odd note given the tune Thibault played in his transcribed interview: that he was new to the job and was only on the periphery of decisions to close out sources.

Why then, would Grassley seek “[a]ll records derived from reporting on derogatory information linked to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and their foreign business relationships that was overseen under the approval, guidance, and purview of ASAC Thibault from January 1, 2020, to his last day at the FBI”? And why would Grassley ask for a copy of “[a]ll opened and closed cases initiated by the Washington Field Office under the purview of ASAC Thibault that were ordered closed by ASAC Thibault and/or denied for opening by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, and/or the United States Attorney Offices in the District of Columbia and Eastern District of Virginia”?

Grassley may not be able to force the DOJ and FBI to provide answers or those documents, but the House can — and it should, stat.

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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House Republicans Subpoena Biden Family For Transcribed Interviews

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | NOVEMBER 08, 2023

House Republicans on the Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for members of the Biden family and several of the family’s business associates. As part of the committee’s investigation into the family’s influence-peddling operations, GOP Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky announced subpoenas for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and the president’s brother, James, on Wednesday.

“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said in a statement. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”

House Republicans officially opened an impeachment inquiry into the president in September following months of controversy over the family’s corporate ventures with new evidence implicating Joe Biden in a criminal bribery scheme. In addition to Hunter and James Biden subpoenaed Wednesday, House Republicans are also seeking testimony from James Biden’s wife, Sara, Joe Biden’s widowed daughter-in-law, Hallie, and former Biden family business partners Rob Walker and Tony Bobulinski. Hallie’s older sister, Elizabeth Secundy and Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen, were also asked to answer questions from House lawmakers. Only Walker, Hunter Biden, and James Biden were given formal subpoenas.

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

Financial records reviewed by the House Oversight Committee show the Biden family laundered money through more than 20 shell companies, most of which were established while Joe Biden was vice president.

“Unlike the many lies President Biden told the American people about his family’s business schemes, bank records don’t lie,” Comer said Wednesday. “These records reveal how the Bidens sold Joe Biden around to the world to benefit the Biden family, including Joe Biden himself, to the detriment of U.S. interests.”

House Republicans held their first impeachment hearing at the end of September, just before the lower chamber came to a weeks-long standstill to elect a new speaker.

“So far, the evidence suggests the Biden family ‘business’ is exactly what it appears to be: an influence-peddling scheme on a scale never before seen in American history,” reported Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson.

Based on what we already know, it’s hard to see how Joe Biden couldn’t have been involved or couldn’t have benefited from his son’s corrupt dealings. Consider just a few items of evidence mentioned during Thursday’s hearing. In one text exchange with his uncle in June 2017, Hunter refers to his father as his “family’s brand” and “only asset.” That echoes something Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, said in his July testimony to the House Oversight Committee, that the value of adding Hunter to the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma was “the brand” — clearly a reference to then-Vice President Joe Biden. (Hunter had no experience in the energy sector and brought no value to the company other than access to his father.)

[READ: Yes, The Biden Impeachment Hearing Presented Evidence Of Corruption — Lots Of It]

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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TRISTAN JUSTICE

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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

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

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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7 Ways DOJ Obstructed The U.S. Attorney Investigating Biden Family Corruption

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | OCTOBER 27, 2023

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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The Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney charged with screening evidence of Ukrainian corruption before the 2020 election testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Monday about the bureaucratic obstruction his team faced. The roadblocks detailed by former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady over the course of the six-hour hearing were so outrageous that at one point a lawyer for the minority party asked whether he was speaking in hyperbole. He wasn’t.

The situation Brady faced was also much worse than the media have reported to date, as the full transcript of the interview, reviewed by The Federalist, establishes. Here are the seven most shocking details revealed during Monday’s hearing.

1. FBI Drags Its Feet While Tying Brady’s Hands

Monday’s closed-door hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the DOJ and FBI’s handling of the probe into Biden family corruption, opened with Brady explaining that in early January 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr tapped him to vet evidence related to Ukrainian corruption. While he immediately moved to open a matter in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Brady testified that he didn’t believe the FBI opened its assessment until late March. Part of the problem, Brady explained, was that the FBI maintained it had to operate under the framework of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) and that there was no procedure for handling a vetting assignment such as Barr assigned to the Pittsburgh office.

So, as Brady explained, he had a discussion with the Pittsburgh FBI agents about “how, in their administrative process, it should be characterized.”

“I said, ‘Well let’s all sit together around a table and talk this out; could you please share with me your DIOG,’” Brady testified, explaining the DIOG “is the FBI’s bible for their processes and procedures.”

The local FBI agents told Brady that someone from FBI headquarters directed the local agents not to share the DIOG with the U.S. attorney’s office. Brady’s response, as he relayed to the committee, perfectly crystalized the madness: “I’m a presidentially appointed United States attorney. We’re on the same team, part of the Department of Justice. What do you mean you can’t share your DIOG with me?”

“That’s what we were told, so we can’t, sir,” the local Pittsburgh FBI team replied, in his telling.

And they never did share the DIOG with him, the former federal prosecutor testified, explaining he instead resorted to finding an older redacted version online, and then referenced those standards when discussing with the FBI team how to open the investigation.

2. 17 Approvals Needed — and That’s Not Hyperbole

The FBI eventually opted to open an “assessment” for the material on Ukraine provided by the Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney’s office. Under the DIOG, an “assessment” could only last for 30 days, after which it would need to be reauthorized. That meant every 30 days, the Pittsburgh FBI office needed to re-up the assessment, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, Brady testified, because a special agent’s immediate supervisor, a supervisory special agent (SSA) at the local field office could reauthorize an assessment.

But not in the case of the Ukrainian corruption vetting.

“In this case,” Brady testified, “it required 17 different people, including mostly at the headquarters level to sign off on it before the assessment could be extended.” Consequently, Brady explained, at times the FBI agents “had to go pens down sometimes for 2 or 3 weeks at a time … because they were still waiting on, again, on someone within the 17-chain signoff to approve.”

The ridiculousness of a 17-person approval was clear to even the Democrat attorney questioning Brady. After noting he had made reference to “17 layers of approval,” she asked: “Was that an actual number, or was that just hyperbole? Were there 17 boxes to check?”

“So it was our understanding, related by someone on the FBI team in Pittsburgh, that that was an actual number, that there were 17 approvals that were required to extend the assessment an additional 30 days.”

3. FBI Headquarters Had To Sign-Off on Everything.

Not only did more than a dozen individuals need to approve the renewal of the assessment, including many out of FBI headquarters, but Brady testified that FBI headquarters was required to “signoff for any investigative steps that FBI Pittsburgh was asked to take by” the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office.

Brady reiterated this point, testifying: “It was my understanding that they could not take any steps absent the approval, the review and approval of FBI headquarters, not just the leadership of FBI Pittsburgh.” And later, when asked to elaborate on challenges with the FBI, Brady noted: “It was my understanding that FBI headquarters had to sign off on every assignment, no matter how small or routine, before they could take action.”

This level of signoff by headquarters was not normal, Brady confirmed, noting that in his experience, even in a sensitive investigation, the investigation is usually contained within the field office, with an SSA approving requests, or maybe an assistant special agent in charge or on occasion even the special agent in charge. But never in his career had Brady seen anything like this.

4. FBI Reluctance in Investigating

The former U.S. attorney’s testimony also made clear the FBI was reluctant to assist their investigation.

“It was a challenging working relationship,” Brady noted, saying he believed “there was reluctance on the part of the FBI to really do any tasking related to our assignment … and looking into allegations of Ukrainian corruption broadly and then specifically anything that intersected with Hunter Biden and his role in Burisma.”

When pushed on where the problems originated, Brady said, “It was somewhere at FBI headquarters,” but he “had no visibility into where that choke point was.” But it was somewhere below the deputy director and principal assistant deputy attorney general because whenever the FBI refused to cooperate, forcing Brady to elevate the issue to FBI headquarters or the DOJ, the issues were resolved by the various high-level officials.

Unbeknownst to Brady, that also proved to be the case when it came to his office briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on the results of his assessment. Brady testified that he had been trying for some time to arrange a briefing with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, only to learn later that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf had not wanted to take the briefing. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley recently revealed that the meeting only came about after Main Justice ordered Delaware to meet with Brady’s team to be briefed on the results of their vetting.

5. FBI Headquarters Tells Pittsburgh Agents to Play Coy

“Reluctance” appears to be an understatement, though, as Brady further testified that a member of the Pittsburgh FBI team relayed that FBI headquarters had directed them “not to affirmatively share information” but rather “only to share information with [Pittsburgh] if we asked them a direct question relating to that information…”

That “is not typically how the investigative process goes,” Brady added.

That the FBI agents had directions only to share information with the U.S. attorney’s office if asked a direct question seems to explain Brady’s later testimony. The former U.S. attorney later testified that when the Washington field office discovered an older FD-1023 report that included a discreet statement mentioning Hunter Biden’s service on the Burisma Board, the Pittsburgh office requested to see the FD-1023. Apparently, relying on the FBI to convey relevant information to the prosecutors was not an option. In this case, that FD-1023 led to the confidential human source providing extensive additional information about the Bidens’ involvement and alleged bribe-taking from Burisma, so it is a good thing Pittsburgh asked to see the actual document.

When it came to the Hunter Biden laptop, however, Brady and his team of prosecutors didn’t know what they didn’t know, so they never asked whether the FBI had seized any of Hunter Biden’s electronic devices. With “don’t ask, don’t tell” being Delaware’s protect-Biden policy, the Delaware office opted against informing the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office of the existence of the laptop. Rather, Brady testified that he first learned of the laptop’s existence when the New York Post broke the story in mid-October.

6. Delaware Refuses to Play Nice

Not only did Brady testify about the challenges of working with the FBI, but he also faced issues with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

“[I]t was regularly a challenge to interact with the investigative team from Delaware,” Brady testified. “There was no information sharing” or “very limited” information sharing, from Delaware. In fact, “at one point, the communication between our offices was so constricted that we had to provide written questions to the investigative team in Delaware, almost in the form of interrogatories, and receive written answers back,” Brady testified.

“This was very unusual,” Brady continued, noting that “typical U.S. attorney to U.S. attorney office communications, even on sensitive matters, is fairly clear and transparent.” “We’re all professionals,” Brady explained.

Yet, with Delaware, the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office had to resort to submitting a list of written questions to U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s team, which the Delaware prosecutors then responded to in writing, much as interrogatories are served on opposing parties in litigation.

Jim Jordan, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, asked Brady if he had ever seen anything like this during his time as an assistant U.S. attorney or U.S. attorney.

“Not where an office had to submit written interrogatories to another office for permission,” Brady said.

7. Lying About Brady

Another challenge he faced, Brady explained, was false representations being made to senior FBI leadership about what the U.S. attorney’s team was or wasn’t doing. “There was information that was being shared up that chain at the FBI that was incorrect,” Brady explained, and it rose all the way up to AG Barr.

Brady noted that while they resolved the issue, it presented an unnecessary challenge to handling the vetting process.

Of course, some of the same people likely used that same tactic by lying about the Pittsburgh vetting process to the press. And more recently, Democrats such as Jamie Raskin resorted to peddling falsehoods, such as that Barr’s handpicked prosecutor, Brady, had closed the assessment into the FD-1023.

During his Monday testimony, Brady also confirmed that Barr had accurately described the true scenario — that the FD-1023 had been passed on to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office for further investigation — and that Raskin was lying, at I reported here in The Federalist.

But what else could a Biden apologist do but lie — after whistleblowers exposed the DOJ and FBI’s obstruction and the evidence of the president’s corruption?

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

BY: ELLE PURNELL | OCTOBER 04, 2023

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ELLE PURNELL

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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

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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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Yes, The Biden Impeachment Hearing Presented Evidence of Corruption — Lots of it.

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

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The corporate news media all but refused to cover the opening hearing of the House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Thursday, and to the extent they did, it was only to repeat, at the behest of the White House, the exhausted mantra that there’s “no evidence” connecting Biden to his son Hunter’s international bribery scheme.

(The New York Times ran with a cursory and misleadingly headlined article, “First Impeachment Hearing Yields No New Information on Biden,” that boasted “even their [Republicans’] witnesses said the case for impeachment hadn’t been made.” Which, of course the case hasn’t been made yet. That’s why you launch an inquiry, of which Thursday was day one.)

But if the media had actually covered it, the American public might have heard more about the mounds of damning evidence now piling up by the day, including the release on Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee of reams of text messages and emails between Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden, and a colorful array of foreign oligarchs, business associates, and bagmen. All told, House Republicans presented more than two dozen pieces of evidence on Thursday linking Joe Biden to his son’s overseas business dealings.

This evidence was the centerpiece of the hearing Thursday, which served to lay the groundwork for the impeachment inquiry. So far, the evidence suggests the Biden family “business” is exactly what it appears to be: an influence-peddling scheme on a scale never before seen in American history. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who testified at the hearing, said that even though Washington, D.C., is “awash” in influence-peddling, he’s never seen “anything of this size and complexity,” and that Congress has a “duty to determine if the president is involved in what is a known form of corruption.”

Based on what we already know, it’s hard to see how Joe Biden couldn’t have been involved or couldn’t have benefited from his son’s corrupt dealings. Consider just a few items of evidence mentioned during Thursday’s hearing. In one text exchange with his uncle in June 2017, Hunter refers to his father as his “family’s brand” and “only asset.” That echoes something Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, said in his July testimony to the House Oversight Committee, that the value of adding Hunter to the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma was “the brand” — clearly a reference to then-Vice President Joe Biden. (Hunter had no experience in the energy sector and brought no value to the company other than access to his father.)

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina brought up an FBI memo released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee about another former business partner of Hunter’s, Tony Bobulinksi. In an FBI interview, Bobulinksi said that in 2015-16 Hunter and Hunter’s uncle James did business with CEFC, a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese government. But because Biden was still vice president, Hunter and James weren’t paid right away. “There was a concern it would be improper,” Bobulinksi said, because of the company’s affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party.

But Hunter and James wanted to get paid. According to Bobulinksi, “they believed CEFC owed them money for the benefits that accrued to CEFC through its use of the Biden family name to advance their business dealings.” Once Biden left office, Hunter and James were paid more than a million dollars by CEFC. “Now we know why,” said Mace. “Because it was back-pay.”

Later in the hearing, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida showed organizational charts of Hunter Biden’s businesses created by the IRS team investigating the president’s son, including from 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president, and 2018, when he was a private citizen. The charts show a dizzying array of interrelated companies — none of which involved real estate or any other industry where you would typically see this kind of complex matrix of different business entities and shell companies. Donalds then shared a text message between Hunter and James Biden in which Hunter, discussing a business deal, tells his uncle, “You’ve been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting Dad.”

This is just a sample, but you get the idea. Hunter was engaged in a patently corrupt scheme that involved selling access to his father, one of the most powerful politicians on the planet. The question the impeachment inquiry has to answer is whether Joe Biden knew about the scheme, whether he profited from it, whether he intentionally helped Hunter, and whether he changed U.S. policy as part of rendering that help. On every count, there is mounting evidence that the answer is “yes.”

But don’t expect Democrats to take any of this more seriously than the corporate media are. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, never one to miss an opportunity for self-parody, gravely asked all three Republican witnesses whether they were “presenting any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States,” as if the only evidence that counts is video footage of Joe Biden stuffing cash into a duffel bag marked “$$$ from China.”

Not to be outdone in performative stupidity, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, went on a bizarre, emotional rant claiming President Biden is only “guilty of loving his child unconditionally,” which is the only evidence Republicans have brought forward. She added, “And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child.” Ah yes, Joe Biden loved his son so much that he made him the frontman of an international bribery scheme and money-laundering operation.

So much for the opposition (including the corporate press). They aren’t going to take this seriously, even if the impeachment inquiry turns up audio recordings of Joe Biden saying, “Why yes, I did fire that Ukrainian prosecutor for $5 million from Burisma.” Democrats and the media don’t care about Biden’s corruption and won’t tell the truth about it, no matter what evidence comes to light. After Thursday’s hearing, at least that much is clear.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Hunter Biden Email Discussing $5 Million Payment From Burisma Corroborates FD-1023

BY: ELLE PURNELL | SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

screenshot of exhibit from affidavit of Joseph Ziegler

An email apparently sent by Hunter Biden to longtime business associate Devon Archer discusses a $5 million payment from Ukrainian energy company Burisma — appearing to corroborate the FBI FD-1023 form in which a confidential human source recorded testimony from Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky that “It costs 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden.”

“Need to determine what we consider expenses to be deducted from potential Burisma ‘pay’ before we determine true split # with Alex. (i.e. 5-.75/3= 1.42M apiece),” read an email that IRS investigators believed to be from the younger Biden, which was part of a batch of records released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee. According to a slide that investigators presented to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the “5” is a reference to $5 million that would be paid out by Burisma. Of that money, $750,000 would be subtracted — the email asked if Archer thought “750K [was] a reasonable expense # btw Wash and DC offices?”

Of the remaining $4.25 million, splitting the money between Hunter, Archer, and “Alex” (whose last name is redacted) would leave each man with $1.42 million.

IMAGE CREDITEXHIBIT FROM AFFIDAVIT OF JOSEPH ZIEGLER / WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE

According to an affidavit from IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, who worked the Hunter Biden tax case, the discussion “was believed to be [Hunter Biden’s] laying out of the plan related to the Burisma board income he and Archer were about to receive.”

The emails were obtained “by the investigative team via an Electronic Search Warrant served on Google related to RHB’s [Hunter Biden’s] Apple email account,” Ziegler noted.

“RHB references $5 million in total from Burisma (which was referenced in the beginning of the board agreement), which I believe coincides with information on the FBI Form FD1023,” he added.

The FD-1023 was an FBI form completed in June 2020, in which a highly credible confidential human source (CHS) reported having a conversation with Mykola Zlochevsky in which the Burisma founder complained about having to pay $5 million to both Hunter and Joe Biden. Zlochevsky claimed “he didn’t want to pay the Bidens, and he was ‘pushed to pay’ them” and told the CHS he had “recordings” of Hunter and Joe to prove it.

“Zlochevsky [said] he did not send any funds directly to the ‘Big Guy’ (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden),” the FD-1023 notes. When the CHS asked about Zlochevsky’s bank accounts, “Zlochevsky responded it would take them (Investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e., illicit payments to Joe Biden).”

The CHS also reported on the FD-1023 that another Burisma executive told him Hunter Biden was hired to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”

Despite the explosive allegations contained in the form, Weiss’s team withheld the FD-1023 from IRS investigators, according to Ziegler. Weiss has since been appointed special counsel by Joe Biden’s attorney general.

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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Now That Hoodies Are The Senate Uniform, Republicans Should Show Up Sporting These Slogans

BY: ELLE PURNELL | SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Woman wearing hoodie that says "Hunter Biden takes bribes"

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ELLE PURNELL

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Now that Chuck Schumer has dumbed down the Senate dress code to accommodate the slovenly habits of the privileged Pennsylvania senator who cosplays as a representative of the working class, hoodies like Sen. John Fetterman’s signature Carhartt are welcome on the Senate floor.

It’s an ugly visual of the decay of an American institution. But you know what, fine — if that’s the way it’s going to be, Republicans might as well play along. If they want something comfier but just as effective as Susan Collins’s suggested ensemble, they should show up wearing hoodies emblazoned with one (or several!) of these reminders.

1. ‘Impeach Biden’

As my colleague David Harsanyi has pointed out, there exists “more than enough evidence” of Biden corruption for an impeachment probe.

Joe Biden has publicly bragged about bullying Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, an energy firm that paid his son Hunter Biden millions to sit on its board and reportedly hired him to access the protection his father’s political power could provide. We also know that Joe Biden spoke with Hunter’s associates dozens, if not hundreds, of times and that the Bidens received millions from foreign oligarchs.

2. ‘Boys and Girls Are Different’

It’s an indisputable fact that there are two sexes and we are not the same but stating that obvious truth often causes the brains of Democrats who push transgender mania to combust.

3. ‘Democrats Support Abortion Up to Birth’

They don’t like to admit it, but Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly voted for a bill that would ensure abortions throughout all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy as long as she could find a provider to say it was important for her emotional health. Democrat-led states like Colorado have explicitly enacted laws permitting abortion up to birth, and Democrats in Washington have opposed protections for babies born alive in botched abortions.

4. ‘Hunter Biden Takes Bribes’

It’s no secret that Hunter Biden peddled access to his powerful father among his well-heeled foreign clients. In return, Hunter was rewarded with everything from shrouded bank transfers to a car with a six-figure price tag to a three-carat diamond.

Sen. Bob Menendez, who was recently indicted by Hunter’s dad’s DOJ for his own shady dealings, might consider a riff on this slogan, such as “Hunter Biden’s Bribery Scandal Is Worse Than Mine!”

5. ‘Biden Jails His Political Opponents’

Biden’s Department of Justice is prosecuting his 2020 presidential rival and likely 2024 opponent in multiple jurisdictions, threatening him with years of jail time. Not only has the DOJ gone after Trump, it’s targeted peaceful pro-lifers and parents at school board meetings, while throwing the book at Trump supporters like a nonviolent grandma with cancer for being at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

6. ‘Trump Won’

Yes, we’re aware that Biden won the 2020 election in a very literal sense, had more votes recorded for him, and was inaugurated as our 46th president. On the other hand, it clearly wasn’t our “most secure election ever” — it was rigged, or “fortified,” in numerous ways that were damaging to the integrity of our elections.

But you don’t have to get into the nuances of that to exercise your First Amendment rights by wearing a hoodie and enjoy the reactions it inspires.

7. ‘Defund The FBI’

Until the FBI stops interfering in our elections — as they did by falsely labeling the bombshell Biden corruption story sourced from Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation” in 2020 and by furthering the Trump-Russia collusion hoax in 2016 — congressional Republicans should refuse to keep paying its bills.

8. ‘Unborn Lives Matter’

This shouldn’t be controversial, right?

9. ‘Keep Porn Out of Schools’

This one shouldn’t be controversial either. But left-leaning school boards are working hard to fill school libraries with pornographic books promoting their LGBT agenda. They want you to think this is an issue of backwater Republicans “banning” harmless books like To Kill A Mockingbird, but when parents try to read the contents of the books in question at public meetings, it’s deemed too explicit for the ears of the adults in the room.

10. ‘Who Killed JFK?’

Why are parts of more than 15,000 records relating to the Kennedy assassination still being kept from the public after Biden delayed their release? What convinced Kennedy’s nephew that the CIA was involved in what he calls a “60-year coverup”?

11. ‘Save Girls’ Sports’

Allowing boys and men with gender dysphoria to enter girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams is neither safe nor fair to women, but Democrats want to do it anyway.

12. Trump’s Mugshot

OK, it’s not a slogan, but we’d still love to see Senate Republicans show up wearing this.

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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Democrats Have Become the Party of Authoritarianism. They Only Understand Power

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

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Perhaps you saw the news last week that two women in their 70s, Jean Marshall and Joan Bell, are each facing up to 11 years in federal prison for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic in 2020. Federal prosecutors charged the pair for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which Biden’s Justice Department has been aggressively enforcing against pro-life activists, convicting 26 people last year alone.

You might have also seen, a few weeks earlier, that a 42-year-old North Dakota man who ran over and killed an 18-year-old kid for being a Republican was sentenced to just five years in prison on a manslaughter charge, and with credit for time already served on house arrest, will spend only about four years behind bars.

Seeing these two things, maybe you wondered how it could be that two grandmothers might well spend twice as many years in prison for the nonviolent offence of sitting in front of an abortion clinic as a man who intentionally killed another man for his political beliefs. Maybe you thought, as @politicalmath put it on X (formerly Twitter), that the left needs “to start looking at this situation and admitting that this is not justice. They need to shake themselves awake and realize that their team is utilizing the justice system for political punishment and that this is destabilizing our entire culture.”

You might have thought the same thing recently about the Trump indictments. The hypocrisy is after all outrageous. Questioning an election is okay if Hillary Clinton and Democrats do it (as they did in 2016, 2004, and 2000) but it’s a “criminal conspiracy” if Trump and Republicans do it.

Or consider the draconian prison sentences for Jan. 6 rioters (22 years in one case) compared to the leniency shown to Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters, one of whom was sentenced to just 10 years despite setting a deadly fire in a Minneapolis pawn shop during the 2020 George Floyd riots — and this only after federal prosecutors invoked Martin Luther King Jr. and asked the judge to show leniency.

Or again consider the role of Biden’s Justice Department and FBI in protecting Hunter Biden and the president from congressional investigations that are, as of this writing, still uncovering damning evidence of corruption connected to Hunter’s overseas business schemes. Just this week we learned that two payments totaling more than a quarter-million dollars were wired to Hunter Biden from China, and the beneficiary address listed on the wires was Joe Biden’s home address in Delaware. (At the time the wires were sent, Hunter was living in California.)

Surely, you might be thinking, not even the most rabid partisans on the left can think that this is justice, or that this will end well for the country. Surely they see the danger of supporting a politicized federal law enforcement bureaucracy that criminalizes the opposition and uses the justice system as a weapon. Even if they don’t denounce it publicly, certainly they’re talking amongst themselves about how terrible this is and how to stop it. Right?

Wrong. To think this way is to misunderstand Democrats and the left completely. No, they’re not worried about any of this. No, they don’t want it to stop, they want it to continue and intensify. They don’t want justice, they want power.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Increasingly, Democrats will readily admit as much. For example, nearly half of them don’t believe in freedom of speech. A recent RealClear Opinion Research poll found that while solid majorities of Republicans (74 percent) and Independents (61 percent) believe speech should be legal “under any circumstances,” only 55 percent of Democrats agreed.

The same survey found that a third of Democrats think Americans “have too much freedom,” and a majority of them “approve of the government censoring social media content under the rubric of protecting national security.” Worse, about three-quarters of surveyed Democrats think the government has a responsibility to limit “hateful” posts on social media, and they are far more likely than Republicans or Independents to support censorship of political views.

That’s just one survey of course, but it captures a growing trend of authoritarianism on the left. We see it in polls, on college campuses and corporate boardrooms, on social media, and in how the left wields the power of the institutions it has captured, like the FBI and DOJ.

When you see these glaring disparities in how opponents of the Biden regime are treated by the Justice Department and the courts, when you see how corporate media cover the Trump indictments versus how they refuse to cover the Biden corruption scandal, when you see them calling for government censorship of “misinformation” on social media, understand that they are never going to take a step back and consider whether all of this is justice or injustice.

Despite the outdated moniker of “social justice warrior,” leftist Democrats aren’t interested in real justice. They’re interested in gaining and using power. Once they have it, they’ll use it against their enemies. Appealing to their desire for civil comity is futile. They have no use for comity so long as they have power.

This is to say, they won’t stop this until what they are doing to their enemies is in turn done to them. You don’t like left-wing district attorneys indicting the Republican frontrunner ahead of election season? Better find some GOP state attorneys general to indict Hunter and Joe Biden.

You don’t like Attorney General Merrick Garland using the Justice Department to protect a corrupt Biden administration? Better impeach him along with Biden. Don’t like a woke U.S. military funding abortions and gender surgeries on the defense secretary’s say-so? Better do as Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has done and use all available leverage to stop them.

Power is the only language the left understands. So, if Americans on the right want to be anything more than a managed opposition — and let’s be honest, plenty of elected Republicans are happy to be exactly that — they had better figure out how to wield the limited power they do have. And they had better hurry.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Garland Accidentally Admitted Biden DOJ Thwarted Weiss’s Hunter Investigation

BY: JORDAN BOYD | SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Merrick Garland testifies to House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 20, 2023

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U.S. Attorney, now Special Counsel, David Weiss did not have full charging authority during the bulk of his federal investigation into Hunter Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland slyly admitted in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Garland’s confession contradicts his previous under-oath insistence that Weiss possessed all of the authority he needed to properly charge President Joe Biden’s youngest son with various tax and gun crimes, some of which extended to other jurisdictions.

“You said [Weiss] had complete authority but he’d already been turned down. He wanted to bring an action in the District of Columbia and the U.S. attorney there said ‘no, you can’t.’ And then you go tell the United States Senate under oath that he has complete authority,” Chairman Jim Jordan explained during the hearing.

“No one had the authority to turn him down,” Garland claimed. One second later, Garland divulged that those U.S. attorneys in fact “could refuse to partner with him.”

AG Merrick Garland just admitted that David Weiss did NOT have full authority during the Hunter Biden investigation.

"They could refuse to partner with him."

This directly contradicts Garland's previous claims about Weiss' authority. pic.twitter.com/xZYJhz2PWG
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) September 20, 2023

Even after acknowledging Weiss’s attempts to charge Hunter were hampered by a U.S. attorney acting on behalf of the DOJ, Garland doubled down on his claims that the attorney “has full authority to conduct his investigation however he wishes.” He repeatedly invoked Weiss’s position as a Donald Trump appointee as proof that he was acting independently of the AG.

Despite the potential penalty of perjury, Garland claimed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 1, 2023, 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.”

In a June 7 letter to Jordan, Weiss appeared to confirm that “I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.” In a subsequent June 30 letter, however, Weiss reversed his claim and declared that his charging authority “is geographically limited to my home district.”

🚨 MUST WATCH ahead of today’s hearing with Attorney General Garland. pic.twitter.com/0j0qX7TxNm
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) September 20, 2023

Weiss’s June 30 clarification is consistent with testimony from IRS whistleblowers, including email documentation they recorded in 2022, and testimony from FBI agents. During the hearing, Garland attempted to discredit the agents’ attestations that the DOJ’s “cumbersome bureaucratic process” made it difficult for Weiss to charge Hunter by claiming “their description of the process as cumbersome is an opinion, not a fact.” He also claimed that Weiss’s letters “reflect that he had never asked me to be special counsel and that he understood the process for asking for a signature on a Section 515 form,” the form which Garland needed to sign for Weiss to prosecute outside of Delaware.

Weiss’s lack of jurisdiction was further confirmed in August when Garland named Weiss special counsel, an authority that allows the prosecutor to charge Hunter outside of Delaware. If Weiss truly did possess full autonomy in the Hunter case, as Garland dubiously declared on numerous occasions, he wouldn’t have needed the special counsel appointment to prosecute the president’s son. Garland still claimed he had made it clear that Weiss could bring a case in any jurisdiction with the attorney general’s blessing via a Section 515 form.

For most of the hearing, Garland tried to appear as a hands-off department head who let Weiss independently conduct his investigation. Republicans quickly saw through that facade when Garland immediately refused to disclose whether he had communications with Weiss about Hunter’s case.

.@RepMikeJohnson: "Under oath…your testimony is – you have not had any discussions with Mr. Weiss about this matter?"

GARLAND: "I do not intend to discuss internal Justice Department deliberations, whether or not I had them."

JOHNSON: "So, your testimony today is you're not… pic.twitter.com/Rjmp0zl74U
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 20, 2023

He also claimed could not “recollect” whether he discussed the investigation with anyone at the FBI.

QUESTION: "Have you had personal contact with anyone at the FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation?"

[Long pause]

AG MERRICK GARLAND: "I don't recollect the answer to that question." pic.twitter.com/HSJoaksEJK
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) September 20, 2023

“There is no question that he can answer whether such conversations occurred,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “When Bill Barr testified as Attorney General he confirmed subjects even in communications with the President while declining details on conversations.”

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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