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.
As crude oil approaches $100 a barrel amid turmoil in the Middle East, the Biden administration continues its war on fossil fuels by hamstringing federal offshore drilling leases to the bare minimum required by law. Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other adversarial oil producers are the only winners of such a nonsensical decision, while the biggest loser may be America’s energy security.
The Interior Department’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing includes a mere three auctions in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years — by far the lowest since World War II. In comparison, the Trump administration proposed a plan in 2018 for 47 lease sales, located in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Alaska. Even the Obama administration held two auctions most years.
After the plan was announced, Sen. Murkowski, R-Alaska, rightly pointed out, “The Biden administration’s long-delayed five-year plan for offshore oil and gas has no lease sales in Alaska waters – even though they acknowledge that will result in higher energy prices and higher emissions.”
This decision is not surprising given the president’s campaign promise to fully ban new oil and gas leases on public lands. President Biden has consistently bowed to radical environmental groups that want to ban all fossil fuels, and this decision was a clear signal that he’s trying his best to comply with their demands after courts rejected prior attempts.
In fact, the Biden administration was obligated by law to offer this bare minimum as a prerequisite for holding offshore wind auctions – a deal Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., negotiated before signing off on the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”). Manchin didn’t mince words in response to this newest development:
“To be clear – three lease sales is more than the zero we would have gotten had it not been for the IRA. But it makes no sense at all to actively be limiting our energy production while our adversaries are weaponizing energy around the world. This is a failure of leadership, and I will continue to do everything in my power to hold this Administration accountable.”
While Interior Secretary Haaland boasted about the plan being the “smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history,” she had nothing to say about the fate of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (“LWCF”), which is fully funded from offshore oil and gas leasing.
Since Congress created the LWCF in 1965, it has provided $5.2 billion for roughly 45,000 conservation projects across the country. It funds everything from maintaining national parks to local trails to wildlife refuges. Still, the LWCF estimates a backlog of conservation projects totaling upwards of $57 billion. A recent study estimated that if no lease sales occurred over the next five years, we’d expect LWCF funding to decrease by 28 percent by 2036. As a result, we should expect the backlogs to keep piling up.
Katmai National Park in Alaska, United States (Jean-Erick PASQUIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Draining LWCF funding will be catastrophic to our public lands, yet “environmental” organizations are adamant we cancel its funding source. I’m not surprised, frankly. Opposition groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Just Stop Oil have long proven their dogmatism toward their preferred technologies blinds them from actually caring about the planet.
Covering large swaths of the Mojave desert with solar panels is more important than the rich habitat and Indigenous sites which occupy them. But if there’s an opportunity to mine uranium or drill for oil, Biden’s Interior Department will squash it and green NGOs will applaud.
Just last year, President Biden urged oil companies to drill more. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm correctly asserted that it’s “not a binary choice” between increasing reliable energy supply to global markets and deploying new clean energy. So American oil and gas stepped up and delivered when the world needed it.
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.
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.)
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.
In its latest attempt to interfere in state and local elections, the Biden administration is deploying federal agents to monitor polling places in several states during Tuesday’s off-year elections.
The U.S. Constitution charges states — not the federal government — with primary oversight and administration of elections. But according to the highly politicized Department of Justice, state and local election officials can’t be trusted to uphold the law. Thus, the agency has decided to forcibly inject itself into the process.
According to a Monday press release, the DOJ is dispatching federal observers from its Civil Rights Division to “monitor for compliance with the federal voting rights laws” in numerous jurisdictions throughout the country. Among those listed are Union County, New Jersey; Pawtucket and Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Madison County and Panola County, Mississippi; and Prince William County, Virginia.
Regarding Union County, a U.S. district court approved a consent decree proposed by the DOJ earlier this year that forces local election officials to provide “a comprehensive Spanish-language election program for voters” during the state’s Nov. 7 elections. The consent decree — which also authorized federal observers to monitor polling places throughout the county — was filed in conjunction with a DOJ lawsuit, which claimed that a failure by Union County officials to provide such materials constituted a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“The Civil Rights Division enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot,” the DOJ claimed. “The division regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with the federal civil rights laws in elections in communities all across the country.”
Okay, I’ll say it. This is the closest we, as a nation, have come to pure Socialism.
In addition to New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and several other states will decide the outcome of critically important elections on Tuesday.
This is hardly the first time the DOJ has concocted this type of election meddling. In fact, the agency carried out this same scheme during last year’s midterm elections. As Victoria Marshall wrote in these pages, most of the 64 jurisdictions the DOJ “monitored” during the 2022 elections are “Democrat strongholds or swing districts in states with key midterm contests such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.”
Much like last year, the jurisdictions being surveilled by the DOJ on Tuesday are mostly Democrat strongholds. During Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, for example, Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe won Prince William County by nearly 15 points over now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. Similarly, Union, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket Counties all went to Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
The DOJ’s increasing efforts to “monitor” local and state elections appear to be aimed at curtailing GOP poll watchers’ legitimate right to oversee U.S. election administration. After it became clear more conservatives were going to partake in this legal form of election oversight, legacy media began running hit pieces leading up to the 2022 midterms warning that so-called “election denying” MAGA Republicans volunteering as poll watchers were plotting to disrupt elections throughout the country.
While the left’s doomsday predictions (unsurprisingly) never came true, that hasn’t stopped regime-approved media from furthering the lie that election workers are under constant threat from Republicans. Even the Biden DOJ’s own data shows that there is no widespread threat to election workers. Nonetheless, so-called “journalists” continue to parrot their Democrat allies’ falsehoods without a second thought.
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
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.
There’s a simple pattern that the media follow when covering each new crisis that pops up during Joe Biden’s catastrophic presidency: A calamity occurs either domestically or abroad, and rather than examining the cause, the media instantly frame Biden as a hero at battle.
War in Ukraine? “Joe Biden Marshals U.S. Allies Against Russia” (Newsweek).
Obscene gas prices? “Biden’s frustration with soaring prices” (Washington Post).
War in Israel? “Why this Israel-Gaza conflict is so complicated for Biden” (CNN).
Folks! He’s frustrated, folks. It’s complicated for Biden, folks.
The New York Times’ David French offered up that same spa treatment for the president this week under the headline “Joe Biden knows what he’s doing.” In the piece, French implored his readers to “consider” all it is that Biden “confronts”: a war in Ukraine, another one in the Middle East, plus the ever-present threat from China. “And keep in mind,” he said, “Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact.”
Folks! Keep it in mind, folks. Biden is trying, folks. He’s managing lots of complicated problems, folks. It’s frustrating to the president, too, folks.
Honestly, I felt the same way under President Trump when he was confronted by two hot wars, record inflation, and impossible energy prices. He did the best he could to manage the challenges he faced — the struggles he endured.
Wait, that’s not right. There were neither wars nor inflation during Trump’s term. The U.S. was energy independent, and gas was cheap precisely because he flooded the market with oil for the taking. My mistake!
Actually, now that I think about it, I recall that despite a remarkable period of global calm and even a historic peace deal reached between Israel and the Arab world, the Trump era was marked by nonstop hysterics from the media about our supposedly shaken allies and emboldened foes. (i.e., Trump demanded that Western Europe live up to his part of the NATO bargain and made it known that the U.S. cannot solve all of the world’s problems, especially when large parts of the world don’t see them as such.)
But back to Biden. He’s not confronting or managing a series of events that happened to him. He and his party actively created them. Or, at minimum, they created an environment that anyone could have predicted would lead to them.
Russia has long insisted that NATO stop expanding along its border. The second Biden got into office, he pushed for Ukraine’s membership. Israel had its country under relative control for years right up until Biden’s team gifted Iran, the Jewish state’s greatest threat, $6 billion worth of goodies. We were energy independent until Biden said we couldn’t be. The economy was working itself out until Biden and his party thought it would be a good idea to pump hundreds of billions of dollars more into Covid-era welfare (“childcare” and “living assistance”). And let’s not start on the electric vehicle scheme, wherein car companies grabbed another round of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer funds, courtesy of Biden, for a product that barely works (and for which manufacturers are now rolling back their production of).
Biden isn’t a knight of the kingdom off to slay a dragon. He’s a dunce screwing up everything. He doesn’t get to turn the economy and international stability into ruins and then get credit for saying he takes it all very seriously.
He’s not “struggling” or “managing,” and it’s not “complicated.” Biden is the struggle. He is the thing to manage. He is the complication.
An engineer turns off the vent of a natural gas pump. Republicans in Congress want to turn off a Biden tax on natural gas, which they say will increase consumers’ energy bills. (Photo: Olga Rolenko/Moment/Getty Images)
Numerous Republican lawmakers have written to the newly elected speaker of the House asking him to repeal an emissions-reduction program from the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a copy of the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, wrote the letter, which urges House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program natural gas tax before the year’s end by including its repeal in a possibly forthcoming legislative package.
Pfluger and other prominent Republican signatories, such as Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Byron Donalds of Florida, and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, slammed the Methane Emissions Reduction Program as an excessive and unwieldy regulation that would stymie innovation and drive up costs for the American energy industry.
“The [Methane Emissions Reduction Program] is an inappropriate and highly unworkable tax on methane emissions,” the letter states.
“If implemented, the ill-conceived naturalgas tax will handicap technological innovation, reduce supplies of affordable energy, and increase both costs and emissions,” the letter continues, adding that “in order to lower costs for American families, we must repeal burdensome regulation, secure supply chains and unleash American energy.”
The Methane Emissions Reduction Program imposes a tax on emissions beyond 25,000 annual tons of carbon dioxide or an equivalent amount of pollution, according to the letter. Companies will be forced to collect the relevant data and pay a fee of $900 for every metric ton above 25,000 starting in 2024, which increases to $1,200 per extra metric ton in 2025 and then $1,500 per extra ton in 2026 and beyond.
The tax is a “statutory codification” of the forced collection of emissions data under a specific sub-section of the Clean Air Act, according to the letter. The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to overhaul that particular section of the Clean Air Act such that the agency can increase the scope and costs of the Methane Emissions Reduction Program.
New fees or taxes on energy companies will raise costs for consumers, creating a burden that will fall most heavily on lower-income Americans,” the letter states. “In fact, this tax alone will drive up the cost of household energy bills for the 180 million Americans and 5.5 million businesses that rely on natural gas. At a time of persistent inflation and record energy prices, this increase is unthinkable for consumers.”
The EPA and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
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.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken contendsthat Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”
You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.
The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.
The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.
It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.
Yet, only days after the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Biden was already lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu on how “democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.” The insinuation, again, is that there is something nefarious about winning a war against those who massacre your citizens.
Israel doesn’t target civilians, as Blinken, busy placating the progressives who now infest Washington and academia, knows well. Many Israeli soldiers have died because the nation avoids civilian casualties – even as Hamas diligently places their weapons and themselves behind women and children.
Then again, the idea Hamas’s greatest victory would be Israelis exacting revenge is itself the kind of self-satisfying gibberish that might impress a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival or readers of Tom Friedman columns.
Hamas’ greatest victory is killing and terrorizing as many Jews as possible. We know this because Islamists tell us this all the time. Why is this confusing? “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad” are the words literally written into the group’s charter. And Hamas is quite popular in both Gaza and the West Bank. Islamic fundamentalism is popular.
“Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people,” Joe Biden said the other day. This is the “religion of peace” canard, begun by George W. Bush and widely promulgated by Obama all over again.
When our former president declared that the “future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he wasn’t joking. Every time Islamists committed acts of terror, the Obama administration would turn the conversation towards “Islamophobia,” a neologism that conflates tolerance of individuals and groups (Muslims) with tolerance of a belief system (Islam). This rhetoric is not only meant to cloud reality but to chill speech and create immunity for the many progressive “anti-Zionists” on the left.
The modern Democrats have taken up this dishonest framing with gusto. When a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week if the president was concerned about rising anti-Semitism — you know, because of the Jew-hating protests that have broken out across the country — she responded by saying there were no “credible threats” and then pivoted the claims that “Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”
She did this twice. Not only is it a gross deflection, but it is also a lie. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews represent over 50 percent of all religion-related hate crimes, while hate crimes against Muslims are under 10 percent.
But Obama’s most corrosive legacy is foreign policy. Democrats have become obsessed with turning Iran into a regional counterweight to Israel while also restarting a “peace process” that would surely create a Muslim Brotherhood-led terror state on Israel’s borders.
Before Israel could even identify all the bodies of their citizens, Biden was already yammering on about the “dignity” and “self-determination” in places where “self-determination” manifested in the creation of a Jihadist terror state.
Donald Trump nixed this strategy, punishing Iran and circumventing Hamas/PLO in peace negotiations with Gulf states. That success was shattered when the Obama retreads entered the White House again and began opening up billions to Iran and sending Hamas and Fatah hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.
“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”
Definitely.
Even now, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in the killing of not only 1,300 Jews, 30 of them Americans, the administration does everything it can to deny Iran provided logistical and financial help that killed 30 Americans.
Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.
Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.
When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.
And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs.
President Joe Biden conducts a joint press conference Wednesday outside the White House with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden voiced support Wednesday for Israel’s defense and warned against believing Palestinian estimates of casualties as the Jewish state continues to pound the Gaza Strip in retaliation for terrorist attacks committed by Hamas, which governs Gaza. During a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the Rose Garden of the White House, Biden also talked briefly about newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., China’s aggression against the Philippines, climate change, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
A PBS reporter asked Biden about Johnson, saying that after the 2020 election, the Louisiana congressman objected to certifying Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. On the House floor Wednesday, Democrats also attacked Johnson as an election denier.
The PBS reporter asked: “If you win reelection in 2024, are you concerned that Speaker Johnson would again attempt to overturn the election?”
Biden responded, “No.”
“Just like I wasn’t worried that the last guy would overturn the election,” Biden added, referring to his predecessor, President Donald Trump. “He had about 60 lawsuits. Every time, they lost. I understand the Constitution.”
During his opening remarks at the press conference, Biden asserted that Israel has the right and responsibility to defend itself after Hamas’ surprise attack Oct. 7 on Israel, massacring 1,400 and taking about 200 others hostage. The same PBS reporter told the president that the “Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed over 6,000 Palestinians, including 2,700 children.”
But Biden appeared skeptical of those numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry.
“What that says to me is that I have no notion the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people were killed,” Biden said. “I’m sure innocents have been killed … but I think we should be incredibly careful. I think the Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure they are going after the folks that are propagating this war against Israel. It is against their interest when that doesn’t happen. But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are giving.”
A reporter from the Australian press shouted, “Are they lying?”
What an incredibly stupid question. Gee. Do you think this reporter has an agenda?
On Monday, Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Filipino vessels in the South China Sea. The United States has a mutual defense agreement with the Philippines going back to a 1951 treaty.
“Just this past week, the PRC vessels acted dangerously and unlawfully as our Philippine friends conducted a routine resupply mission within their own inclusive economic zone in the South China Sea,” Biden said of China’s actions.
“I want to be clear. I want to be very clear. The United States’ defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad. The United States’ defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad,” Biden said, repeating himself. “Any attack on a Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty with the Philippines.”
In a letter to President Joe Biden, four House Republicans say they are “deeply opposed to any potential attempts to parole into the U.S. Palestinians en masse.” Pictured: Palestinians carry belongings as they seek refuge Oct. 9 in schools operated by a U.N. agency in the Al-Fakhoura area of the northern Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images)
Republican lawmakers led by Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., are trying to discourage the Biden administration from taking in Palestinian refugees and resettling them in the U.S., according to a letter dated Monday and obtained first by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., had requested that the U.S. take in Palestinian refugees after Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, and killed, kidnapped, and raped hundreds of civilians. Now, House Republicans request that President Joe Biden ask Egypt to take in Palestinian refugees and not abuse his authority to bring in foreign populations, according to Brecheen’s letter, also signed by Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, and Clay Higgins of Louisiana.
Enough is enough! Denmark took in 321 Palestinian refugees in 1992.
By 2019, 64% had been convicted of a crime (including 34% of their children too).
“In light of recent news that members of your party are encouraging Palestinians to be paroled into the United States following Hamas’ attack on innocent Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, we write to you to remind the administration that no authority exists to grant categorical parole and we are deeply opposed to any potential attempts to parole into the U.S. Palestinians en masse following Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza,” the four GOP lawmakers say in their letter to Biden.
They then refer to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.
“Given concerns of terror attacks in our homeland, it is important as ever that matters are not made worse by attempting to parole Palestinians into our country. This should be obvious considering the DHS OIG report of Operation Allies Refuge, which found your claim false that Afghans paroled by your administration ‘already completed extensive background checks,’ and that information from many Afghan refugees like name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete or missing,” the lawmakers wrote.
Two former senior homeland security officials, Chad Wolf and Mark Morgan, recently told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient intelligence sharing with Hamas to vet refugees for terrorism ties.
Approximately 57% of those who live in the Gaza Strip maintain an opinion of Hamas that is at least “somewhat positive,” according to a recent poll from the Washington Institute.
“At this critical time, our nation must remain committed to defending our homeland,” the letter to Biden from the four House Republicans says. “We remind you that you do not have the authority to grant parole en masse as specified under existing U.S. law. We oppose any efforts to parole into the U.S. any Palestinians from Gaza.”
The U.S. response to Hamas’ Nazi-like massacre of Israelis, Americans, and anyone else in its murderous path has been, almost without exception, robust. But U.S. officials are largely missing the larger picture and risking being drawn into an escalation — on the enemy’s terms.
Hamas and Hezbollah are the symptoms; Iran is the disease.
But President Biden’s Oval Office address to the nation on Oct. 19 danced around the core issue of Iran’s financing, training, and encouragement of violent, brutal forces across the region and beyond, as well as its nuclear missile program. Thus, the gathering might of the U.S. Navy off the coast of Israel in the form of two aircraft carrier strike groups and a Marine Expeditionary Unit betrays unimaginative, linear thinking.
If used, American firepower would augment Israel’s own considerable military force. In theory, this threat helps to deter Hezbollah from unleashing its arsenal of 100,000 missiles on Israel, many of them sophisticated.
But, like Hamas, Hezbollah is expert at digging. They hide their missile launchers in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers — all guarded by an air defense network that is likely to get lucky enough times to raise the specter of captured American pilots.
If the incremental addition of American airpower is helpful to the pending effort to destroy Hamas while deterring a wider conflict, that role can more than adequately be filled by the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. Navy should instead be concentrating 2,000 miles to the east in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. There, the U.S. Navy would be playing to its unambiguous strength, enforcing sanctions against Iran by controlling the sea lines of communication that Iran depends on to generate the cash for its empire of terror.
Unfortunately, this would require a Biden administration that was both imaginative and strategic — and not in the thrall of a recently revealed Iranian influence operation that managed to place several advisors friendly to the Iranian mullahs in key national security positions since the Obama administration. Chief among these, Robert Malley, a longtime friend of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and an architect of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, a deal that focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program, rewarding the mullahs with cash and sanctions relief while greenlighting their missile program and global support for terror.
Iran’s Nuclear Program
Instead, Biden’s systematic appeasement of Iran, a continuation of the Obama-era policy that weirdly sought to use Iran as a counter to perceived Israeli intransigence on the Palestinian problem, has resumed. Up until the gruesome events of Oct. 7, Biden’s national security team was willfully blind to Iran’s bloody history of sponsoring terror and its determined drive to produce nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.
As a result, U.N. sanctions against Iran’s nuclear, missile, and drone program — never well enforced by Biden — expired on Oct. 18 with the U.S. announcing its own unilateral set of sanctions. The U.S. continues to pretend these efforts are somehow slowing Iran’s drive to push its nuclear program to completion, while Russian use of Iranian combat drones in Ukraine reveals the prior sanctions regime as inadequate to the task.
Reagan-Era Lessons
The U.S. never fully grappled with the Iranian theocracy after the shah was toppled in 1979. During the Cold War, it was assumed that the Soviet Union would come to Iran’s aid and that the military cost of defeating the regime would be too high. Instead, the U.S. was content to see Iran tied down in a bloody stalemate against Iraq after the latter invaded in 1980.
As the war started to threaten oil exports out of the Gulf, America responded by providing a U.S. Navy escort to six Kuwaiti-owned super tankers in July 1987. After an escorting U.S. Navy ship struck a mine on April 14, 1988, the Reagan administration responded only four days later with Operation Praying Mantis. It was the Navy’s largest combat action since World War II, sinking an Iranian guided missile frigate, crippling a second, sinking four other boats, and destroying two militarized oil platforms at the cost of one helicopter with two crew lost.
The operation was thoroughly wargamed a year before, when it was determined that an unambiguously aggressive response to Iran would likely prevent the conflict from escalating. In other words, a disproportionate response would rob Iran of the ability to control the timing and mode of escalation, reducing U.S. casualties and preserving the peace.
Applying Force
This lesson from the Reagan era opens up a final consideration. Rather than following through on the foolish precedent of incentivizing hostage-taking via negotiation and cash payments, America should ditch the carrots and pick up the stick.
Imagine the transformative discussion over the current hostage crisis — and the forestalling of future hostage-taking by Iran and its proxies — if the U.S. were to announce that every hostage taken is worth $1 billion (or $1.171 billion if we wish to account for Bidenflation). That amount would be deducted from seized Iranian assets or taken from oil tankers filled with Iranian oil. The proceeds would compensate hostages and their families, with the remainder used to replenish the Pentagon’s waning stocks of armaments.
This is exactly the kind of naval power application the U.S. Navy was built for. Unfortunately, the radical cadres infesting the Biden administration’s national security staff would never allow such an idea to reach the desk of our cognitively impaired commander-in-chief.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said his panel has uncovered evidence that Joe Biden, in 2018, received a “$200,000 direct payment” from his brother James Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, and is demanding the president answer questions about “financial arrangements” with members of his family.
Comer, R-Ky., has been leading an investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings since January and whether President Biden was involved in those ventures or “personally benefited” from them.
Comer, in a video posted to “X,” formerly known as Twitter, detailing his committee’s latest findings. Comer said the check was written by James Biden to President Biden as a “loan repayment,” but questioned the timing.
“Bank records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have revealed a $200,000 direct payment from James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden in the form of a personal check,” Comer states.
Comer explains that in 2018, James Biden “received $600,000 in loans from Americore —a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator.”
Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans based upon representations that his last name Biden, could open doors; and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections,” Comer said.
“On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account—not their business bank account,” he continued. “And then, on the very same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.”
Comer said James Biden “wrote this check to Joe Biden as a ‘loan repayment.’”
“Americore—a distressed company—loaned money to James Biden who then sent it to Joe Biden,” Comer said.
But Comer said even if the payment was “a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.”
James Biden headshot, brother of US President Joe Biden (AP)
“Some immediate questions President Biden must answer for the American people: Does he have documents proving he lent such a large sum of money to his brother and what were the terms of such financial arrangement?” Comer asked. “Did he have similar financial arrangements with other family members that led them to make similar large payments to him?”
Comer also demanded Biden answer whether he knew that the same day he received the $200,000 check, “James Biden had just received a loan for the exact same amount from business dealings with a company that was in financial distress and failing.”
U.S. President Joe Biden boards Air Force One for travel to Alabama from Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, U.S. March 5, 2023. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
“The House Oversight Committee will soon announce our next investigative actions and continue to follow the money,” he said. “The bank records don’t end here. There is more to come.”
Comer’s findings come amid his months-long investigation. Comer, alongside House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., is leading the House impeachment inquiry against Biden.
So far, during his committee’s investigation, Comer said he has found that Biden family members, their business associates and their “related companies” received “significant payments from individuals and companies in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania.”
Comer said the House Oversight Committee has learned throughout its investigation that the Biden family and their business associates brought in more than $24 million between 2014 and 2019 by “selling Joe Biden as ‘the brand’ around the world.”
Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.
President Joe Biden delivers falsehood-filled remarks at the pro-LGBTQ Human Rights Campaign’s annual national dinner at the Washington Convention Center on Saturday night. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/ Getty Images)
President Joe Biden spoke Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual national dinner. Biden said it was his fourth appearance at the annual event, which is billed as “a national gathering for champions of LGBTQ equality.”
Although the 80-year-old president rarely makes public appearances before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m., he made an exception for his close allies, and he delivered a reasonably coherent address to boot. As to the truthfulness of Biden’s remarks, the most charitable description is that the spin began before he started speaking and ran through his concluding paragraph.
From downright false testimony to invented stories, from ideological falsehoods to absurd non-sequiturs, the president’s speech had it all. Perhaps it would even have been comedic if the stakes weren’t so deadly serious.
Biden was introduced by his wife, Jill, and the false testimony began with her. But the president added his own false claims.
Lies About State Laws
First, the president lied about state legislatures acting to protect women and children from the harmful effects of transgender ideology. He denounced “over 600 hateful laws [actually, bills] introduced,” of which he said “more than 70” became law, “denying the existence of transgender people, silencing teachers, banning books, threatening parents with prison for getting their children health care.”
In June, the Human Rights Campaign had declared a national state of emergency for “LGBTQ+ people” in the U.S. over this wave of state legislation, and they deliberately mischaracterized the laws in ways quite similar to the president. The HRC’s move was a one-time political stunt that meant absolutely nothing, but Biden at least knew how to play to the crowd.
The bills to which Biden referred do things quite different from the things he claimed they do. A law “denying the existence of transgender people” in Biden’s estimation is any law that defines “sex” in verifiable ways—that is, in biological terms—instead of the nebulous vagueness of self-perceived feelings.
By “silencing teachers,” Biden referenced laws that regulate school classrooms to ensure that material being taught to children in kindergarten through 3rd grade is age-appropriate.
The policies Biden claimed were “banning books” merely removed sexually inappropriate materials from school libraries, but it did not prohibit private individuals from purchasing said books, which is the traditional understanding of a “book ban.”
Lastly, Biden mentioned laws “threating parents with prison for getting their children health care.” This is a reference to SAFE Act-style bills, which protect minors from the harmful effects of gender transition drugs and surgeries. For starters, these procedures are not health care.
Additionally, only five out of 22 (four out of 19 enacted in 2023) state laws carry any criminal penalties. Of those five laws, none targets parents: Laws in Florida, North Dakota, and Oklahoma specify the felony penalties are for health care professionals, while Alabama’s and Idaho’s laws carry felony penalties for activities only medical professionals can do.
Biden followed up on these wild accusations by claiming that families with LGBT-identifying children “now face excruciating decision to move to a different state,” making them feel like “refugees inside our nation.” His remark cheapened the plight of millions of actual refugees—even from his beloved Ukraine, not to mention Israel—who have had to flee from their homes because they lived in literal war zones.
Yet, even if we granted, for the sake of argument, the president’s contention that interstate migration provoked by bad governance implied a moral failure on the governing parties, what does that say about California and New York? Their strict COVID-19 lockdowns, soft-on-crime policies, and high taxation have provoked an exodus to the very states Biden condemned—and certainly a much larger migration than however many families decided to relocate to obtain harmful gender transition procedures for their children.
Lies About Congressional Action
Having borne false witness against state legislatures, the president proceeded to do the same against Congress. “In the United States Congress, extreme MAGA Republicans are trying to undo virtually every bit of progress we’ve made,” he argued. “They’re trying to wipe out federal funding to end the HIV epidemic, strip funding from community centers for seniors, reinstate the ban on transgender troops, ban the Department of Justice from enforcing civil rights laws, ban Pride flags from flying on public lands. … And they threaten the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.”
Let’s set the record straight.
“Federal funding to end the HIV epidemic” refers to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), America’s largest overseas aid program, devoted to preventing and treating HIV/AIDS in undeveloped countries. It’s five-year authorization expired Sept. 30.
Pro-lifers in Congress agreed that PEPFAR was “critical legislation” and were concerned that the Biden administration had reimagined PEPFAR’s strategic direction, turning it into a vehicle to advance abortion and the LGBT agenda overseas—mostly because that’s what the Biden administration said they were going to do.
After including some legislative protections to prevent the administration from pulling a fast one, House Republicans reauthorized PEPFAR for another year in the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill, which now sits unpassed in the U.S. Senate. To Biden, passing a bill to fund the program amounts to “trying to wipe out federal funding.”
Next, Biden accused Republicans in Congress of wanting to “strip funding from community centers for seniors.” The factual basis for this claim is that in July the House Appropriations Committee struck $3.62 million for three LGBTQ community centers from the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. Only LGBT publications such as The Advocate say the LGBT centers are for seniors. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., said appropriators removed the funds because the community centers had programming supporting communism, drag shows, and the administration of gender transition hormones to minors. Some senior centers!
The president also said that congressional Republicans wanted to “reinstate the ban on transgender troops.” If not presented among so many other obvious untruths, this could be forgiven as careless wording more than an outright lie. But, in context, it’s clear that Biden’s word choices were deliberate, and this one too misrepresents the facts.
The Trump-era regulation which Biden called a “ban” would merely prevent the military from becoming a glorified clinic for people rendered undeployable by deep mental health issues, and who were seeking expensive surgeries. It did not automatically kick someone out of the military simply because they claimed to be transgender.
Biden further claimed that Republicans wanted to “ban the Department of Justice from enforcing civil rights laws.” Again, that’s not at all what Republicans want. Republicans have taken issue with the DOJ rewriting civil rights laws to extend them to matters Congress never intended the law to cover. Specifically, the DOJ is attempting to redefine “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected categories, extending the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision even to laws Bostock didn’t address.
In addition, Biden accused congressional Republicans of seeking to “ban Pride flags from flying on public lands.” Like the “book ban” Biden previously mentioned, this attempts to conflate regulations on something’s appropriate use with making that thing unlawful. Congressional Republicans are actually seeking to prevent government agents and agencies from flying the Pride flag with taxpayer dollars, or in a way that gives the controversial symbol the government’s endorsement.
But if, say, someone wants to hang a Pride flag from their camper in a national park, or if someone wants to turn it into a bumper sticker and drive down an interstate highway, congressional Republicans are not seeking to ban that.
Finally, Biden claimed that congressional Republicans “threaten the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.” Oh, if only that were true! Yet, just last year, 47 Republican representatives and 12 Republican senators voted to affirm same-sex marriage. There is currently no pro-marriage majority to undo that vote.
Lies About ‘Violence Against LGBTQ Americans’
Biden referenced “violence against LGBTQ Americans” to argue that “we have to do more to keep people and their communities safe.” He offered five examples, but he bungled nearly every single one.
First on Biden’s list was the murder of Matthew Shepard. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent to 303 Creative v. Elenis, Shepard was “targeted by two men, tortured, tied to a buck fence, and left to die for who he was.” Much like George Floyd for BLM, Shepard’s death became a rallying cry for an entire movement against anti-LGBTQ violence.
The only problem is, he wasn’t killed “for who he was.” Wrote National Review fellow Haley Strack, “Shepard, who was involved in the Wyoming meth drug culture, was murdered by a bisexual who confirmed that the murder had nothing to do with Shepard’s being gay.”
Next, Biden mentioned O’Shae Sibley, who he said was “killed while dancing and expressing joy.” The Associated Press reported that another teen began arguing with Sibley and his friends while they danced shirtless while filling up at a gas station, but that the argument broke up. Later, said The AP, in a video, “Sibley could be seen following the teen and then lunging at him. The stabbing happened out of a clear view of the cameras.”
Biden then mentioned Laura Ann Carleton, who “hung a Pride flag outside her home,”and Colin Smith, who was “stabbed while defending a friend being harassed.” From cursory research, these seem to be the most accurate descriptors, but they still miss key information. Carleton hung a flag outside her business, not her home. Smith was stabbed on a bar patio in lawless Portland, Oregon. Curiously, neither Carleton nor Smith personally identified as part of any LGBTQ group.
Lastly, Biden mentioned “the horrific shooting at Club Q [an LGBT nightclub] in Colorado Springs,” which killed five people and wounded nearly two dozen. The shooter—who identifies as “nonbinary” and uses “they/them” pronouns to refer to himself—has been sentenced to serve five consecutive life sentences plus another 2,208 years in prison. But Biden said the episode highlights the need for stricter gun laws.
In summary, Biden’s list of examples of “violence against LGBTQ Americans” included three examples where the perpetrator or instigator identified as LGBTQ and two examples where the victim was someone who did not identify as LGBTQ. It also ignored the trend of violence committed by people who identify as LGBT, such as the Covenant School shooter.
Lies About Personal Experiences
Not satisfied with unjustly slandering state and national legislators, Biden proceeded to fabricate stories about his own life. “I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again,” began the 80-year-old president.
“I wanted to work in the projects as a lifeguard on the east side of Wilmington [in Delaware]. And [my dad] was dropping me off on his way to work at the City Hall to go get an application to be a lifeguard there. And as I got out of the car at the four corners at the center of town, two men—it turns out, one going to the Brandywine; one worked for the Dupont Company; the other worked for Hercules Company; this was back when I was a kid—and they leaned up and kissed one another. And I’d never seen that before. I turned and looked at my dad. And he just looked at me and said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. It’s simple, Joey. They love one another. It’s a simple proposition.’”
In a previous telling of this story—which Biden repeats often—he said the incident occurred in 1961, when he was 17 or 18. This was years before the sexual revolution launched and a full decade before the first known same-sex couple applied for a marriage license. It was one year before any state repealed its sodomy law, and 11 years before Delaware repealed its sodomy law. It was 12 years before the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
Most problematic of all, neither building Biden referenced had been built when he said the story took place. The Brandywine Building was built in 1969, while Biden was practicing law in Wilmington. The Hercules Building opened in 1983, while Biden was serving his second term in the U.S. Senate.
Descent Into Confusing Nonsense
In fairness to Biden, not everything he said on Saturday was an outright lie. He correctly characterized Hamas as the villain in its contest with Israel:
“A week ago, we saw hate manifest in another way in the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. More than 1,300 innocent lives lost in Israel, including at least 27 Americans. Children and grandparents alike kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas. A humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Innocent Palestinian families—and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with Hamas. They’re being used as human shields.”
But Biden followed that up with a statement that won’t hold up in many other contexts. “Folks, we have to reject hate in every form. Because history has taught us again and again anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia—they’re all connected,” he said. “Hate toward one group, left unanswered, opens the door for more hate toward more groups, more often, readily. But here’s what, which history shows: The antidote to hate is love. The answer to twisted, dehumanizing ideologies is solidarity and standing up for everyone’s humanity.”
Biden’s philosophy is clear: Everyone has a binary choice between love or hate. The LGBT movement paints the slogan “love is love” on its banners. Or, as a columnist wrote last week in Philadelphia Gay News regarding Hamas’s intolerance of LGBT lifestyles, “hate is hate.”
But there are many things to love or hate, and sometimes loving one thing means hating something else, or at least deprioritizing it. Hamas is the dictionary definition of antisemitism, and Biden would likely regard them as homophobic, too. But could Hamas ever succumb to Islamophobia?
Taking an example closer to home, many of the most antisemitic members of Congress are among the most rabid proponents of the LGBT agenda. One member has a Palestinian flag outside her office and refused to condemn Hamas’ terror attack. Next to it flies a Progress Pride flag.
In another illogical moment, Biden announced “an ambitious plan to end HIV,” boasting that his administration “finally did away with the outdated policy banning gay and bisexuals from donating blood.” In other words, allowing the group at highest risk of contracting HIV/AIDS to donate blood, which might be contaminated with the disease, is part of his plan to end the disease by 2030.
“We’re leading with science, not stigma,” said Biden. Such awkward dissonance of ideas—“The Office” would be proud.
But out of all of Biden’s confusing moments, this one takes the cake: Biden delivered a message to LGBTQ-identifying youth across America, “We see who you are, made in the image of God, deserving dignity, respect, and support. That’s why my administration is combating the dangerous, cruel practice of conversion therapy.”
Here Biden does a bait-and-switch. The “dangerous, cruel practice” refers to quack treatments such as electric shock therapy aimed at removing a person’s LGBT feelings; such practices are everywhere discontinued and nowhere proposed. Yet LGBT activists continue to push sweeping bans on so-called “conversion therapy,” a ban so broad that it encompasses any effort—including simple talk therapy, which is a widespread practice—to help a person move out of an LGBT lifestyle.
Such therapy would simply involve affirming someone in their biological sex. Given the fluidity of sexual orientation, there would be quite a demand for such counseling, without any force involved.
Thus, a Christian counselor might tell a troubled young person seeking help to leave behind an LGBT lifestyle, “God made you in His image as male or female. The person God made you deserves dignity, respect, and support, and you don’t need to change to feel whole.”
Biden wants to prohibit such counseling. But the reason he gives for wanting to ban such advice is quite similar to the advice he wants to ban.
Bad Theology, Too
Biden concluded his address with some very popular—but very bad—theology. “I see a great nation because we’re basically a good people,” he said. But Jesus disagreed, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).
“Folks, we’re the United States of America. And there is nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together,” said Biden. Here the biblical parallel is to the tower of Babel. “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them,” said God (Genesis 11:6).
So, God confused their language to divide them and stop their work. Confused language and division over language are widespread in America today.
Biden administration officials including President Joe Biden warned over the weekend that Hamas’ attack on Israel has resulted in an increased threat of terrorism within U.S. borders. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned on Saturday that the “heightened environment” presented by the fighting in Israel and Gaza has caused “an increase in reported threats.”
“We’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own,” Wray said during his address at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference. “I’d encourage you to stay vigilant because as the first line of defense protecting our communities, you’re often the first to see the signs that someone may be mobilizing to violence.”
Biden similarly confirmed during a “60 Minutes” sit-down that Americans are at greater risk of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil after the events of the last week and a half.
“Because of what we’re seeing in the Middle East, is the threat of terrorism in the United States increased?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked.
“Yes,” Biden replied. “I had a meeting this morning with the Homeland Security people, with the FBI, in the Situation Room for the better of part of an hour to discuss how we make sure that we prevent a lone wolf and or any coordinated effort to try to do what was done in synagogues before, do what was done to Jews in the street.”
Biden claimed that his administration is “making a major effort to make sure that doesn’t happen,” yet he has no concrete plans to cut off the biggest potential terrorist pipeline into the United States.
Hama’s “global day of rage” prompted terrorist attacks and anti-Israel demonstrations not just in France, China, Jordan, Iran, and Italy, but also in states like Washington and California. In addition to the Iranian spies who made their way into the Biden administration and the terrorist sleeper cells already embedded in U.S. cities, foreign incendiaries who wish ill on Americans can literally walk right into the U.S. via our compromised Southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sources confirmed to Fox News on Monday that two of the Iranians caught sneaking across the Southern border in the last month were pinned as “raising red flags that they could pose a significant security threat.” Their information was later located in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
The capture is not the least bit surprising to border officials who, since October 2022, arrested nearly 160 illegal border crossers whose information was found on the TSDB. The Department of Homeland Security even admitted last week that “[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States” via its open Southern border.
Yet, Biden has no plans to stymie the border crisis created by his commitment to undo Trump-era security policies. On the contrary, the Democrat has repeatedly reinforced that he does not care to stop the collapse of the Southern border.
When word spread that Biden, in a major reversal, sought to build part of the Trump border wall he had been “quietly”auctioning off, the Democrat regime scrambled to assure Americans that the administration did not care to secure the nation’s borders, especially with physical barriers.
I want to address today’s reporting relating to a border wall and be absolutely clear.
There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. My full statement ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ga1fEMqvN8
— Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (@SecMayorkas) October 5, 2023
Biden is not blind to the fact that nearly 7 million illegal border crossers have marched into the country detected by border officials, though likely not detained for long. Instead of addressing the border crisis that is clearly used as a pathway by potential terrorists to infiltrate the states, however, Biden is planning a trip to Israel to discuss its border issues.
If the Biden administration can waive more than two dozen laws to begrudgingly erect part of the border wall, it could easily reinstate other border security measures that would keep illegal border crossings down and free up Border Patrol to capture the several potential terrorists who inevitably make up part of the 1.5 million gotaways who made it into the U.S. under Biden.
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.
Joe Biden’s presidency is tracking Jimmy Carter’s four years in the Oval Office so faithfully it must give his campaign team hives. Recent events in Israel create even more parallels. It was a Middle East crisis that brought down Jimmy Carter’s presidency; the current conflict in the region could prove Biden’s undoing as well.
In 1979, more than 50 U.S. citizens were taken hostage in Iran, and Carter failed to secure their release. Worse, a U.S. military mission sent to rescue the prisoners failed, infuriating Americans. Carter’s foreign policy blunders sank his reelection bid, but they were far from his only problem. His administration was considered weak and inept, and the events in Tehran reinforced those perceptions.
Like Biden, Carter was already in trouble when the hostage crisis occurred. The Georgia peanut farmer presided over sky-high inflation: so has Biden. Carter pushed enormous and controversial increases in government spending: ditto Biden. Like Biden, Carter started with high approval numbers that went pretty much straight downhill.
As he approached reelection in 1980, Carter faced a primary battle from fellow Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy; nearing next year’s presidential election, another Kennedy — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – was until recently attempting to mount a primary challenge against Biden. History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.
Today, 30 Americans have been murdered by Hamas and more than a dozen are being held captive. Voters will hold President Biden responsible for punishing the terrorists responsible for those deaths, and for bringing both American hostages and those trapped by war home safely.
So far, the Biden White House has not impressed. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted eight days before Hamas’ invasion of Israel that, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” displaying either incredible ignorance or unjustifiable smugness.
Elsewhere, it turns out that Robert Malley, Biden administration’s “special envoy” to Iran, who is known to have had close contacts with Hamas, was put on leave from his State Department post several months ago. Officially, he has been accused of mishandling classified documents, but there is speculation that he has long worked on behalf not of the U.S. but of Iranian interests.
Biden and his national security team have refused to accuse Iran for complicity in Hamas’ attack on Israel, claiming repeatedly there is no evidence of Tehran’s involvement. That is untrue. There is increasing proof that the planning for the attack went on for months, discussed by senior officials of both Hamas and Hezbollah meeting with leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Beirut.
Biden is understandably loathe to implicate Iran in Hamas’ atrocities. Confronting Tehran could escalate the hostilities in the region, and would also boost oil prices, which would inevitably hurt Biden’s approval ratings. Also, Biden’s White House, foolishly pursuing a nuclear pact, has enriched and emboldened the mullahs, in part by loosening enforcement of sanctions; voters will not look kindly on that decision.
Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald wrote recently in an op-ed, “Relaxing sanctions has allowed Iran to generate oil revenues exceeding $80 billion annually while strengthening its relationship with China. As I warned in April 2021, using China to dodge U.S. sanctions allows Iran to funnel money to its proxy forces in the Middle East, including the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas, which is armed, funded, and led by the Iranian regime.”
At the same time, there has been a spike in the number of people on the terror watch list who have been apprehended at the uncontrolled southern border, through which millions of people have entered our country illegally since Biden took office. Fox News reports that four Iranians have been caught since October 1, heightening concerns.
Our State Department has been slow to help evacuate Americans from Israel, even as other countries have arranged to airlift their citizens to safety. In addition, recent news reports show U.S. citizens responding to our government’s advisory and arriving at the Egyptian border, only to find it blocked and being told to go home.
The Biden White House claims to be “surging additional military assistance” to our ally. Given that Biden goofed some months ago by admitting that the conflict in Ukraine has drained our stocks of munitions, it is not clear how much we can provide.
Hamas, on the other hand, appears to be well-equipped, thanks at least in part to mountains of weapons and ammunition abandoned by U.S. forces in their hasty exit from Afghanistan, which Joe Biden and his team continue to applaud as a “success.”
Meanwhile, while the world has been transfixed by the horrors taking place in Israel and Gaza, the president has carried on with his campaigning. Biden’s support for Israel may be unwavering, but his attention span is not. As Israel declared war, Biden and his wife hosted a barbeque for White House staffers; the next day the president spoke at a Rose Garden campaign event celebrating his efforts to cut down on “junk fees.”
The very next day, Biden traveled to Philadelphia to promote his green energy agenda. An agenda, we note, that includes curbing U.S. oil production and consequently driving prices higher, helping to fund Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The president may have received word that his campaigning was not well received; he abruptly canceled a trip to Colorado on Monday to “instead hold meetings with his national security team as Israel’s war with Hamas appears set to escalate,” as one news outlet helpfully explained.
Jimmy Carter, faced with the hostage crisis, had the decency to suspend campaigning and focus his government on the plight of the captive Americans. One of his aides at the time, Stuart Eizenstat, wrote that the Carter’s so-called “Rose Garden strategy” “personalized the crisis in the American media by focusing the responsibility on the Oval Office and showing the terrorists they could put the American presidency itself into dysfunction.” Maybe that’s why Biden is choosing to keep up his campaigning, but his behavior is unseemly.
So far, voters back our support for Israel; if more American lives are lost, or the conflict spreads, they will not be so forgiving, and they will blame Joe Biden.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
The Biden administration is deporting a Christian family from Germany who legitimately fears persecution and should qualify for asylum, while allowing 99 percent of illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., most of whom likely do not qualify for asylum.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike reportedly fled Germany in 2008 because they were threatened with prosecution and $9,000 fines for homeschooling their five children. The couple and their family have lived in Tennessee and filed for asylum. The family has thrived in the U.S., including having two children who are American citizens and two other children who married American citizens. Unfortunately, the U.S. authorities denied their asylum claim in 2013. After the Obama administration intervened, the family had been able to stay in the U.S. under an “indefinite deferred action status.”
But last month the Biden administration told the family they must return to Germany. Since Germany hasn’t changed its law regarding homeschooling, the family has legitimate concerns that if they go back to Germany, they will face the same prosecution that drove them away in the first place.
While the Biden administration is determined to deport this Christian family, it has done next to nothing to remove millions of illegal immigrants who came into the U.S. through our nation’s southern border, according to a new report from House Republicans.
The Biden administration and its Democrat allies have insisted for more than two years that the U.S.-Mexico border wasn’t open, there is no border crisis, and the administration has enforced immigration laws. But the data gathered by the House Judiciary Committee paints a very different picture: that the Biden administration has failed to deport, through immigration court proceedings, more than 99 percent of illegal immigrants between Jan. 20, 2021, and March 31, 2023.
After pressure from the committee to release basic statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported more than 5 million illegal immigrant encounters in that same period (not including unknown numbers of illegal “getaways”). Most of them sought to claim asylum but were disqualified under asylum’s legal definition. Yet fewer than 6,000 illegal immigrants were placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge and actually removed from the United States during this time.
Meanwhile, nearly half of the 5 million illegal immigrants “had no confirmed departure from the United States.” DHS “released at least 2,148,738 illegal aliens into the United States” during the same period, and only 6 percent of them “were even screened for fear of prosecution for the purpose of asylum.”
An Impeachable Offense?
According to Jeffrey H. Anderson, president of the American Main Street Initiative think tank, U.S. immigration law “requires that those entering the U.S. without proper documentation be continuously detained until their claim can be adjudicated.” The Biden administration has obviously failed to comply with U.S. immigration law, a failure that Anderson regards as President Biden having committed an impeachable offense.
Despite complaints from Democratic mayors, such as New York City’s Eric Adams, about their cities being overwhelmed with illegal immigrants, the Biden administration recently doubled down on its open border policy by granting work permits to close to half a million illegal immigrants from Venezuela without congressional authorization.
The Biden administration’s reluctance to enforce existing laws and its willingness to offer amnesty have created an incentive for even more illegal border crossings. The GOP report estimates 1.2 million illegal migrant encounters between April and September this year. Last month, within 24 hours, more than 10,000 illegal migrants were “encountered” at the U.S.-Mexico border. Unsurprisingly, most came from Venezuela because they regard Biden’s amnesty to Venezuelans as an open invitation to the United States.
Additionally, our nation’s southern border has become a gate for the illicit drug trade, directly contributing to America’s opioid epidemic. The United Nations calls the U.S.-Mexico border “the deadliest land route” for human trafficking, especially the trafficking of children, many of whom have become enslaved workers in the U.S. What’s even more outrageous is that citizen journalists caught U.S. government officials facilitating child trafficking at taxpayers’ expense.
About-Face on Border Wall
In an about-face move, the Biden administration recently announced it would expedite the construction of a border wall, despite calling the wall construction under the Trump administration “just one example of the prior administration’s misplaced priorities and failure to manage migration in a safe, orderly, and humane way.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to justify the administration’s embarrassing policy reversal by insisting Biden hasn’t changed his opposition to a border wall. Still, his DHS “is complying by the law” to build a border wall because “that appropriation came from fiscal year 2019 under the last administration, Republican leadership.”
The Biden administration’s claim of “complying with the law” is rich. The alarming statistics from the House GOP’s report demonstrate that the Biden administration, starting with President Biden, has surrendered one of the government’s most fundamental responsibilities: to enforce laws and keep America safe. Not to mention that the Biden administration’s approach to immigration laws is so upside down and illogical that it insists on deporting a Christian family facing persecution in their home country while welcoming with open arms illegal migrants who are disqualified for asylum.
President Biden certainly believes he deserves another term. American voters, however, should remember the disastrous results of Biden’s policies and never again elect as president someone who refuses to enforce the laws of the United States.
After the slaughter of more than a thousand Jews in Israel, among them beheaded infants and impaired elderly women burned alive, President Joe Biden delivered a righteous speech defending Israel and condemning the antisemitism of Hamas as “pure, unadulterated evil.” We should expect this kind of sentiment from any leader of a nation of civilized people after the single worst act of butchery against Jews since the Holocaust. And, earnestly, the moral clarity was nice to hear after listening to the degeneracy of Hamas allies and the fellow travelers that infest the American left these days.
Democrats who’ve spent years defending the likes of Rashida Tlaib or Ben Rhodes or BLM or CAIR or whomever else are now feigning surprise that Soviet-style “anti-Zionists” are in their midst. And these aren’t members of some fringe groups dressing up like a bunch of Nazis in front of Disney World. They’re celebrated and educated and deeply embedded in left-wing intellectual circles, in major universities, in bureaucracies, in Congress, in establishment publications, and in cable news channels.
Some on the center-left have spoken out. Most leaders have not. I’m not suggesting censoring anyone. But if you’re too much of a coward to denounce these people at this point, when will you?
So, anyway, Biden’s speech was nice. But what are Democrats going to do? It is likely that the United States is providing Israel with intelligence assistance. One hopes we’ll provide diplomatic cover rather than engage in the Obama-era machinations that treated the Jewish State as if it were barely an ally. All that is also appreciated.
When, however, will the administration rescind the $6 billion waiver it gave the Iranian mullahs, who have spent decades murdering and kidnapping American citizens, in addition to fueling war against our allies in the Middle East? There is no plausible way that Hamas could launch an attack of this scope without the logistical and monetary assistance of Iran. The Biden administration has allowed somewhere around $40 billion in waivers to flow to Iran over the past few years, not only six. Some of that was likely to keep world supplies up and prices domestically down (of course, we could drill here instead.) Sanctions exist to pressure regimes to engage in normal behavior. Will that change, or will Biden continue to employ pernicious Obama-style placation of the terror regime?
What is Biden going to do about Qatar — where Hamas leaders are welcome to celebrate the murder of Jews and Americans while sipping spring water in upscale hotel rooms in Doha? The Department of Justice has designated Hamas as a terror organization. Qatar is ostensibly an ally. There is no reason we should not be able to extradite the architects of violence against American citizens.
What is Joe Biden doing about the hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars that continue to flow to Palestinian governments every year in direct aid and through the United Nations? Will we fund groups that divert fungible assets to launch terror attacks and pay stipends to the families of those who murder Jewish civilians? Should we be funding regimes that work to instill and propel (generational) hate and violence?
Only months ago, Fatah was in talks to form a unity government with Hamas, the organization that executed 260 young people at a music festival. (Though, to be fair, Hamas could probably win a majority support from the Congressional Progressive Caucus or the Harvard student body, as well.) For over a decade, there haven’t been elections in the “West Bank” because Hamas, or similarly fanatical parties, would prevail. The only group that can make Fatah look moderate is Hamas. Does that sound like the type of place deserving of U.S. aid? Or moral support? Or a state?
The president has said all the right things. It’s appreciated. But his administration hasn’t done many of them. Not yet.
We’re hearing a lot about what President Biden said in Tuesday’s address on Hamas’s outrageous attack on Israel. What’s missing, though, is … well, what was missing. For while he was careful to denounce this brutal, inexcusable act of terrorism, Biden ignored the key role played by his own disastrous policies, and left Americans largely clueless as to how his administration would respond to this major test of U.S. leadership.
Let’s recap what we didn’t hear:
1. Ghosting on Iran
It is common knowledge that Biden was trying to buy the Iranians off with a massive payout for hostages. Add to this gaps in sanctions big enough for the biggest oil tankers to sail through, and virtual silence on Iran’s human-rights record, support for terrorism, and destabilizing activities in the region and Latin America.
Biden had hoped that Iran would keep a low profile, at least until after the 2024 elections. Tehran’s payback to the U.S. and Biden was not only to cheerlead as Hamas terrorists decapitated babies, but to likely assist in supporting and planning the terror campaign.
The president could not even bring himself to mention Iran in his speech on Tuesday. That’s a clear signal the administration is clueless what to do now that it’s been hit with irrefutable evidence that its Iran policy has utterly and completely failed.
2. Ignoring Russia
Russia has declared itself all in for Hamas, a marked shift in Moscow policy. Further, there are reports that Russian mercenaries may have assisted in training and preparing Hamas’s shock troops. And there are additional reports Russians smuggled captured arms to the Hamas and then spread a false-flag that these arms were sold by Ukrainians to Hamas on the black market.
Both Russia and Iran clearly believe that a spiraling war in the Middle East will overstretch and distract the United States. Meanwhile, Biden, who has never articulated a clear strategy for Ukraine, now gives us a “no plan” plan for dealing with a dual global crisis.
All we have from the White House is that Ukraine can expect a blank check for as long as it takes. For Israel, we get finger-wagging at Israel not to over-react. The signal this sends to both Moscow and Tehran is that Washington is just making this up as it goes along.
It’s Amateur Night writ large at a time when we need true professionals at work.
3. Gaslighting on the Border
Israel gets hammered with Pearl Harbor from Gaza with virtually no warning. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the most open border on earth. Millions of illegals have poured into the U.S. without even being observed by border agents, let alone vetted.
We know that this flood includes people from all over the world. We know it includes people on terrorist watchlists. We know this because in recent months we have culled unprecedented numbers of them at the border. The odds that they’re the only ones are less than zero. Yet in his speech Tuesday, the president had nothing to reassure Americans that he’s prepared to safeguard Americans from the next 9/11.
4. Antisemitism Gets a Pass
A long list of yahoos, from the “Squad” in Congress to BLM to radicals at Ivy League universities, have reacted to Hamas’s atrocities by attacking Israel. The president has a deep, insidious, and pernicious problem with antisemitism in his own party. Tuesday’s speech presented a perfect opportunity for him to call them out and declare it unacceptable. He didn’t take it.
The White House staff is probably proud that Biden could muster the energy, after hosting a BBQ, to deliver what was largely a boilerplate speech. But Americans looking for real leadership can’t help being disappointed by a president who appears to be going through the motions at a uniquely critical time.
We can no more count on Biden to defend our border than to assist Israel. That means states and local communities must take their fates into their own hands.
“Such is the nature of Evil. Out there in the vast ignorance of the world it festers and spreads. A Shadow that grows in the dark. A sleepless malice as black as the oncoming wall of night. So, it ever was, so it always will be.”
These words from the movie adaptation of The Hobbit were quoted by my colleague Dr. David Wurmser, who is presently in Israel reporting as he can between rocket attacks and shelter-in-place orders.
Only Tolkien’s stories of the changeless sweeping malevolence of evil across the ages seem appropriate to encapsulate the tremendous paradigm shift represented by the horrific massacre perpetrated by Hamas over the weekend. The losses suffered, perhaps as many as 1,000 dead and many thousands more wounded, are of such a horrific scale in light of Israel’s small population that regardless of how the fight proceeds now, Israeli society is likely to be changed forever. The attack, in which as many as 1,000 Hamas jihadists crossed the Gaza border under the cover of a massive rocket barrage and drone attacks, seized control of towns in Southern Israel and went from door to door to rape, torture, and murder every Jew they could find, all on video, instantly evoked horrors known to most of us only from black and white newsreels in previous centuries.
As the perpetrators have openly admitted, the massacre was planned and prepared with the help of Iran, whose other terrorist proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and Houthi terrorists in Yemen, remain at the ready to expand the fight on Tehran’s orders.
A New Age, A Timeless Evil
The likely purpose of the attack from Iran’s perspective was to undermine peace efforts between Israel and Arab states, most especially Saudi Arabia. Not coincidentally, this has also been a major effort of the Biden Administration, which has sought to undermine the historic Abraham Accords achieved under President Trump by injecting the Palestinian issue into the center of the Arab-Israel conflict, even while pretending to seek an agreement.
The Biden Administration has released $6 billion dollars to Iran, currently stored at a bank in Hamas-friendly Qatar. It has provided funds to Gaza which they admitted would result in arming Hamas, and pillaged stockpiles of U.S. arms stored in Israel as part of a long-standing agreement, and sent them to Ukraine.
Like the conniving Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings, the Biden administration, as the Obama administration before it, has at every turn counseled Israel to maximize restraint and complacency in the face of a growing peril, all while professing friendship.
Here at home, the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that consists of numerous Democrat politicians at the local, state, and federal level, hosted the largest Pro-Hamas rally thus far, in New York City replete with open calls in support of terrorist violence. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with close ties to Hamas, has called for a National Day of Resistance and a “Unity Intifada” in solidarity with the Hamas attack for Thursday, Oct. 12.
In the face of this reality, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley saying the attack represents “an attack on America,” or Qatar-friendly Sen. Lindsay Graham issuing threats against Iran is mere fecklessness and bravado. The truth is that as it is currently constituted, the U.S. government, especially the State Department and intelligence agencies, are unlikely to do anything but deliberately hamper Israel’s attempts to defend itself and seek ways to further bolster Iran and its proxies behind the scenes.
Americans should demand the American government keep out of meddling with Israel’s response and allow it to defend its citizens as it sees fit. Certainly, the U.S. should honor existing agreements and obligations (refilling drained stockpiles for instance) but over-the-top or performative action will likely only amount to interference.
The Invasion on Our Own Border
Meanwhile, we should tend urgently to our own border and security. Israel’s border with Gaza was one of the most heavily surveilled and monitored borders in the world. As events have shown, surveillance is not enough. U.S. border doves for years promised that a border can be protected by a mere “virtual fence” of cameras and sensors. The reality is that only real physical barriers, like walls, watched over by sufficient numbers of properly armed and trained men constitute a secure border. Anything else is theater. On the other side of that border are barbaric criminal cartels and narco-insurgents every bit as murderous as Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, Hezbollah has extensive ties with various drug cartels, which it has used to try and conduct attacks inside the United States. Hundreds of individuals already named on the terrorist watchlist have crossed into the country.
Israeli awareness of the situation in Gaza now being criticized as insufficient, is undoubtedly far superior to our own understanding of the threats on the other side of our own border.
The Biden administration continues to facilitate an invasion, consisting of as much as an entire infantry division a day, mostly of military aged males across the Southern border. They come from all over the world, including places rife with jihadist terrorists, and increasingly from hostile adversaries like China. Some, likely working with the cartels, cross the border wearing camouflage and carrying firearms.
Iran’s parliament is chanting “Death to Israel! Death to America!
This would not be happening under Trump! Joe Biden just gave them 6 Billion Dollars.
We can no more count on the Biden Administration to defend our border than to assist Israel. That means states and local communities must take their fates into their own hands.
In the wake of the attack from Gaza, Israel immediately loosened its otherwise quite strict gun laws to increase the number of prepared citizens able to defend themselves from terrorists. The reality is that no government force can respond quickly enough against such overwhelming violence to prevent tragedy. Americans should strongly oppose any efforts to restrain our own Second Amendment and take advantage of the ability to possess and train with firearms for their own defense whenever and wherever possible.
Bolster Law Enforcement
Local communities in Israel were quickly overwhelmed by the coordinated terrorist attack, and local police were not equal to the onslaught. It has been reported that over 30 Israeli police were trapped in a police station that came under siege by Hamas gunmen. Many fought bravely and lost their lives.
In America, both urban and rural areas are struggling to recruit, train, and outfit sufficient law enforcement officers following the left’s assault upon policing in 2020. Many local agencies are hundreds of officers below their required needs. Cities continue to attempt to replace armed law enforcement with mere social workers.
Americans everywhere should endeavor to support and bolster the morale of their local law enforcement, most especially their elected Sheriff. Encourage your community to provide the necessary funding to train, recruit, and equip the best possible local law enforcement, without relying upon fickle and restrictive federal grants. Law enforcement leaders should consider ways to augment smaller or struggling police forces with citizen auxiliaries, properly vetted and trained. States should look at ways to bolster their National Guard and State Defense Forces and prepare them for the kinds of violence we know are possible.
Things will get worse before they get better. The attack on Israel is an unmistakable sign that we have entered a dangerous and trying time. The forces of evil fester and spread, not just in the Middle East, but here at home.
First and foremost, we should, as Tolkien wrote, set ourselves to “uprooting evil in the fields that we know” and encourage our friends abroad to do the same.
Kyle Shideler is senior analyst for Homeland Security at the Center for Security Policy.
President Joe Biden’s White House repeatedly insists that the invasion at the U.S. Southern border is “not a crisis” but waived 26 federal laws this week so that it can resume construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall and curb the millions of illegal migrants inundating border officials.
Mere weeks after the Department of Defense was caught “quietly”auctioning off millions of dollars of barrier parts, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced plans to rebuild a portion of the fortification separating the U.S. and Mexico.
The border wall project, assigned to DHS in a 2019 appropriations bill, is expected to cover 17 miles in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas where many illegal border crossings occur.
The Biden administration’s decision to simply waive more than two dozen laws without scrutiny is a slap in the face to Republicans like Trump who had to jump through judiciary hoops every time he tried to secure the Southern border.
It’s also yet another major flip-flop for Biden who, even before he was elected, swore off of physical barriers as an effective illegal immigration deterrent.
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” he told NPR in August 2020.
On day one in the Oval Office, Biden scaled back several Trump-era border protections and halted Southern border wall construction. By April 2021, Biden’s DOD canceled the border wall construction contracts completely and diverted the funds to other Pentagon pet projects.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas previously told the House Homeland Security Committee under oath that he supported Biden’s decision to halt construction of the wall.
Interesting news considering Secretary Mayorkas told this Committee under oath that he supported Biden's decision to end border wall construction.🤔 https://t.co/YyCZ15ZRd8pic.twitter.com/WjOdqqypBL
Millions of record-breaking illegal border crossings later, Mayorkas has changed his tune.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” Mayorkas wrote in his announcement waiving federal laws to restart barrier building.
The “acute and immediate need” Mayorkas refers to is the influx of illegal border crossers who have spent the last two years flooding underequipped regions and crowding already overpopulated cities.
Migrants rushed to the U.S.-Mexico border shortly after Biden was elected because he promised to abandon the border wall, ditch Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, and scale back ICE arrests and deportations.
August alone yielded 232,972 illegal border crosser arrests. Another surge in September means 2023 apprehensions are on track to outpace the nearly 2.4 million illegal border crossers arrested in the 2022 fiscal year. Those numbers don’t even include the estimated tens of thousands more “gotaways” who evade arrest every month.
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.
It’s no secret by now that Democrats love rigging elections in their favor.
During the 2016 contest, agencies such as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI willingly partook in a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded operation to convince the American public that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to steal the election. The FBI didn’t just launch an investigation into Trump based on “uncorroborated intelligence”; it used the Clinton-funded Steele dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on his campaign.
These kinds of nefarious activities continued into the 2020 election, in which these agencies (along with the CIA) worked overtime to discredit damaging reporting about then-candidate Joe Biden. These departments even went so far as to pressure Big Tech platforms in the months leading up to the election to censor information like the Hunter Biden laptop story when it became public. Like clockwork, these companiesacquiesced.
And who could forget Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose “Zuckbucks” flooded local election offices in key battleground states to change how elections were administered and effectively fund a Democrat get-out-the-vote operation?
Now, as the country hurtles towards another intense presidential election, Democrats are once again putting their feet on the electoral scale to rig the 2024 contest in their favor.
1. FBI Targeting of Conservatives
Another facet of so-called “law enforcement” agencies’ election interference is their blatant targeting of conservatives. Within the past few years, the FBI has been caught directing its fire at parents attending school board meetings, Catholics who attend Latin Mass, and innocent pro-lifers, to name a few.
Given these actions, it wasn’t shocking when Newsweek reported on Wednesday that the agency is gearing up to single out supporters of former President Donald Trump as “domestic terrorists” ahead of the 2024 contest. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, “Testimony from more than a ‘dozen current or former government officials who specialize in terrorism’ to Newsweek confirmed that this increase in targeting was born out of the FBI’s decision to lump Trump supporters into its expanded definition of ‘domestic extremism.’”
2. Protecting Joe Biden
Former business associates, IRS and FBI whistleblowers, bank records, text messages, emails, reporting from a “highly credible” informant, and even President Joe Biden himself have all corroborated different aspects of the latter’s involvement in his family’s corrupt foreign business ventures. But according to Democrats and their legacy media allies, this is just evidence of a father’s love for his son.
From the moment mountains of evidence began piling up, implicating Biden in playing a major role in his family’s international influence-peddling scheme, Democrats have done all they can to hide, excuse, and obfuscate the massive scandal surrounding the sitting president. With help from the DOJ — which almost got away with offering Biden’s son, Hunter, a sweetheart plea agreement to evade future criminal charges and hasroutinelyhinderedinvestigative efforts into the Bidens — these acts represent a clear attempt by Democrats to hide damning information about the sitting president from the American public ahead of the 2024 election.
3. Trump Indictments
Who needs free and fair elections when you can just throw your political opponents behind bars ahead of a major election? Spanningfourseparatecases and 91 felony counts, the DOJ and leftist prosecutors’ seemingly coordinated efforts to imprison Trump could not represent a more obvious attempt to interfere in the election process.
4. Zuckbucks 2.0
While 25 states passed legislation banning or restricting the use of “Zuckbucks” in elections, that hasn’t stopped nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) — one of the Zuckerberg-funded groups that meddled in the 2020 election — from attempting to replicate their 2020 strategy for future elections.
Last year, CTCL and other left-wing groups launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million venture designed to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” and advance Democrat-backed voting policies in local election offices. Through the use of “scholarships” and low entrance fees, the coalition seeks to make the 2020 private hijacking of election offices look like child’s play.
5. Big Tech Censorship
It’s not surprising the same agencies that pushed Big Tech platforms to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election would continue their censorship practices years later. As indicated in severalfederal court rulings, the Biden administration has been actively colluding with social media giants like Facebook to suppress commentary and facts posted online that it claims are examples of “misinformation.” Equally alarming is that in spite of these rulings barring such authoritarian behavior, the administration has continued to appeal the decisions to regain the power to stifle speech online.
And these actions don’t even include the efforts undertaken by left-wing groups such as Vote.org, which have pressured Big Tech platforms to adopt plans to combat so-called “election disinformation.”
6. Passing Lax Election Laws
Sometimes the only way to win the game is to change the rules in your favor — and that’s exactly what Democrats have been doing to America’s election laws.
After expanding insecure voting practices such as mass unsupervised mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes during the 2020 election, Democrat-controlled state legislatures have sought to enshrine these policies into law across the country. States such as New Mexico, Minnesota, and Michigan have all adopted sloppy election procedures under the guise of “democracy” and so-called “voting rights.”
7. Lawfare Against Election Integrity Laws
Meanwhile, in states where Democrats don’t hold power, the DOJ and leftist lawyers have stepped in to launch dishonest lawsuits against Republican-backed election integrity laws. For example, the DOJ launched a lawsuit against a Georgia election integrity law requiring voter ID in June 2021, in which the agency parroted the lie that Georgia’s law was designed to “deny[] or abridg[e]” nonwhite Americans’ right to vote.
8. Partisan Voter Registration Paid for by U.S. Taxpayers
Shortly after taking office, Biden took the unprecedented step of ordering hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration. Executive Order 14019 mandated all departments use U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Agencies were also instructed to develop “a strategic plan” explaining how they intended to fulfill this directive.
While the Biden administration has routinely stonewalledefforts by good government groups to acquire these plans, available information reveals an apparently partisan venture aimed at registering voters who are likely to support Democrats. Recent reporting from The Daily Signal indicates agencies such as the Indian Health Service are collaborating with leftist groups like Demos and the ACLU to “register and turn out voters” under Executive Order 14019.
9. Media Attacks on Election Oversight
The Biden bribery scandal isn’t the only subject legacy media continue to lie about. In the months leading up to and after the 2022 midterms, media propagandists launched a full-scale attack on GOP voters seeking to legally observe the elections process. Despite their repeated insistence of a widespread conspiracy of Republicans threatening election officials, there is no evidence to suggest such an assertion is true. In fact, Biden’s own DOJ all but admitted as much last year.
The corporate press’s goals in regurgitating this false narrative are to both cast their political opponents as extremists and dissuade conservatives who have legitimate concerns about election integrity from partaking in legal forms of electoral oversight (such as poll watching).
10. Left-wing Nonprofit Voter Registration Ops
While federal law prohibits tax-exempt 501(c)(3) groups from engaging in partisan voter registration, that hasn’t stopped left-wing nonprofits from skirting the legal system by targeting voting demographics favorable to Democrats.
Organizations such as Restoration of America and Capital Research Center have issued reports in recent months detailing how leftist billionaires bankroll nonprofit groups to register likely-Democrat voters. Instead of explicitly stating they’re registering voters for the Democrat Party, groups like the Voter Registration Project target “people of color,” women, and young people. In other words, they specifically aim to register demographics likely to vote for Democrats.
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
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.
Congress averted a government shutdown this weekend, agreeing to 45 days of funding to give members time to pass appropriations bills for the full year. Incredibly, Democrats seemed prepared to shut down the government over their desire for increases in Ukraine war funding. Republicans, by contrast, bucked Senate leader Mitch McConnell to keep the government open without such funding.
While shutdown battles have become common, this one had absurd moments. Democrats tried to delay votes with everything from “magic minutes,” which allow party leaders to speak at length, to Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulling a fire alarm in the middle of a vote, forcing the evacuation of a House office building.
With hundreds of Jan. 6 protesters facing excessive sentences, which Department of Justice prosecutors say is because they attempted to delay or obstruct an official congressional proceeding, some Americans began demanding the elected member of Congress be held to the same excruciating standard. Bowman, a former school principal, later claimed he didn’t understand how fire alarms work.
Even after the House passed the bill, Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado further delayed the eventual passage by placing a hold on the bill. The procedural delays were partly a result of efforts to force a shutdown that could be blamed on Republicans. Conventional wisdom in Washington is that Republicans get blamed for government shutdowns regardless of who is responsible.
Democrats Willing to Shut Down over Ukraine
However, Democrats’ delays were also about a demand for additional Ukraine funding. Some Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also want U.S. taxpayers to finance even more of the war against Russia, which has descended into an expensive quagmire.
“Despite nine months of bloody fighting, less than 500 square miles of territory have changed hands since the start of the year. A prolonged stalemate could weaken Western support for Ukraine,” reported The New York Times last week.
“The press never even mentions that Ukraine war funding has become incredibly unpopular with actual Republican voters and an increasing number of independents,” one social media analyst noted. “It’s always framed on every network like some fringe position when it’s actually the majority of Americans.”
Democrats are enthusiastically adopting the Bush-era foreign policy of supporting lengthy U.S.-led wars with a tenuous or even deleterious effect on national security. These wars tend to have very little strategy other than avoiding quick resolution. Such long wars enable years or even decades of financing of the defense industry, which some Ukraine war supporters point to as a benefit for Americans. Democrats are even adopting the Bush-era claim that such wars need to be fought to advance “democracy.”
Partisan Divide On The Issue Rears Head
On Friday night, the lack of additional funding for Ukraine caused Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., to object to Sen. Ron Johnson’s, R-Wis., request on the Senate floor to pass a clean two-week funding extension.
“The Dems are about to shut down the government over Ukraine. I actually can’t believe it, but here we are,” Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, said in a social media post.
The Senate then pushed a bill that would give an additional $6 billion to fund the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy dismissed it out of hand and said the House would propose something instead. A few days prior, House Republicans were able to strip $300 million in Ukraine funding from a bill that was being debated.
Back in the Senate, McConnell failed to get fellow Republicans to sign onto his plan to force Ukraine funding instead of allowing House Republicans to work on a funding bill without it. Punchbowl’s John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio had perhaps the most intriguing reporting of the weekend with this vignette:
Senate sources said it was the first time they could remember that Republican senators didn’t seem to fear repercussions for disagreeing with McConnell, particularly on a prominent issue on which he’d staked out a clear position. It was unclear whether senators overruled McConnell because his mental and physical weakness has left him vulnerable or simply because they recognize how strongly Republican voters feel about funding an expensive war without a clear strategy for success.
House Democrats dug in, passing around a one-page sheet lambasting McCarthy for his continuing resolution, almost all of which focused on Democrats’ desire for U.S. taxpayers to finance the Ukraine war.
The Senate prepared to hotline, or fast track, their vote on the House bill that did not include war funding. That’s when Bennett held it up over the Ukraine issue.
The pressure for funding could not have been more intense. “Senior administration officials” pressured McConnell, saying that Ukraine could not be sustained without funding in this weekend’s bill.
“It’s rumored that Pentagon officials are on their way over to the Capitol to lobby for Schumer-McConnell. The Military Industrial Complex™️ doesn’t like to lose,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Saturday.
Russia-collusion hoaxer Michael McFaul trotted out the same type of argument that has been used to bully Americans to stay in drawn-out wars for decades. “If the US pulls back on our support from Ukraine now, we radically diminish our credibility to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” he said.
Ukraine War Enthusiasts Pressure McCarthy
The Ukraine war enthusiasts only allowed the stopgap funding measure to proceed on the grounds they’d soon get a vote on whether to send another major aid package to Ukraine.
“We will not stop fighting for more economic and security assistance for Ukraine,”Schumer said.
“We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted. I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment,”President Biden said in his announcement on the funding measure. He said he’d made a deal with McCarthy to vote on additional funding.
House Democrats said, “When the House returns, we expect Speaker McCarthy to advance a bill to the House Floor for an up-or-down vote that supports Ukraine, consistent with his commitment to making sure that Vladimir Putin, Russia and authoritarianism are defeated. We must stand with the Ukrainian people until victory is won.”
Nearly every Democrat and a fair number of Republicans want to continue funding the Ukraine war, despite the results of previous rounds of funding. They’ll likely succeed, but the vote will be harder.
Conservative Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will be on guard. “When I said I’d do everything I could to stop the US government from being held hostage to Ukraine, I meant it. We cannot continue to put the needs of other countries above our own. We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy. I’m grateful to all Members of Congress who stood with me, but the battle to fund our government isn’t over yet — the forever-war crowd will return,” he wrote.
Democrats’ campaign strategy of emphasizing Ukraine war funding at a time of economic distress for many Americans will be interesting to watch.
The chairmen of three House committees investigating the conduct of President Joe Biden confer Thursday during the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry by the Oversight and Accountability Committee: from left, Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., Oversight; Jason Smith, R-Mo., Ways and Means; and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Judiciary. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
During Rep. Jim Jordan’s opening remarks during the first hearing of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden, he expressed a long-understood formula for political shenanigans.
“This is a tale as old as time,” said Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which held the hearing, as well as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “Politician takes action that makes money for his family, and then he tries to conceal it.”
House investigators argue that evidence shows Biden family members received transfers of large sums of money from foreign sources, including China and Ukraine, as a result of first son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.
Although Jordan’s words may describe the typical political scandal, the Biden probe marks the first presidential impeachment inquiry predicated on alleged financial misconduct—or using public office for monetary or personal gain.
Still, plenty of impeachment precedent exists for alleged profiteering from office, which has led to the ouster of federal judges and one Cabinet secretary over the years.
In the opening hearing Thursday for the impeachment inquiry, experts testified that Congress should explore the grounds for bribery, conspiracy, and tax fraud charges—all of which have been the basis of past impeachments.
Historically, conduct that leads to an impeachment may be divided into two types of improper use of office, contends a 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service.
The first is a “vindictive use of office,” according to the report, and the second type is behavior that “involves misuse of the office for personal gain,” which is at the center of the allegations against Biden.
This second type of conduct, the Congressional Research Service report says, led to the impeachment of several federal judges who were ousted as a result—including the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla. The secretary of war in the Grant administration also was impeached for financial improprieties.
In some cases, the alleged offenses preceded a judge’s time in his current office, which is similar to today’s investigation into alleged influence peddling by Biden and other members of his family while Biden was vice president to Barack Obama from 2009 through 2016.
In other examples, Congress impeached and removed federal officials based on financial irregularities that didn’t rise to the level of a criminal prosecution.
“Financial crimes have been the most common basis for impeachment of federal judges, and the Constitution directly mentions bribery as a ground for impeachment,” Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group, told The Daily Signal.
“What Biden is accused of fits easily and squarely into what historically has been impeachable and what the Founders had in mind,” Levey said.
‘Prostituting His High Office … for Private Gain’
President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William W. Belknap, resigned two hours ahead of a scheduled House impeachment vote. That move didn’t work. The House impeached Belknap anyway in March 1876. The Senate held a trial, but acquitted him when a majority, but not the required two-thirds majority, voted to convict him. A House investigation had found evidence that Belknap took part in kickbacks and corruption involving a military vendor who paid $20,000 to Grant’s war secretary, who ran the equivalent of today’s Defense Department. The House didn’t impeach Belknap over alleged bribery, an offense specifically proscribed in the Constitution, but managed to use more colorful and almost racy language.
“Bribery was mentioned at the Senate trial,” the 2019 CRS report says, “but it was not specifically referenced in the impeachment articles themselves.”
The House approved five articles of impeachment against Belknap, including one accusing him of “criminally disregarding his duty as secretary of war and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.”
Belknap remains the only presidential Cabinet secretary ever to be impeached.
Impeached for Conduct Before Taking Office
Two federal judges have been impeached over actions before they entered their then-current public offices, similar to the threat of Biden’s potential impeachment for actions he took while vice president. In 1912, the House impeached Judge Robert W. Archbald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, alleging in 13 articles of impeachment that he used his office to acquire business favors from both litigants and potential litigants in his court.
President William Howard Taft had appointed Archbald to the appeals court.
After a trial, the Senate convicted Archbald on four articles alleging misconduct in his position as a circuit judge as well as a fifth article involving his conduct in his previous offices of a district judge and commerce court judge. Notably, that conduct did not appear to violate any criminal statute directly, according to a separate 2019 Congressional Research Service report.
Almost a century later, in 2010, the House impeached U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous, of the Eastern District of Louisiana, on four articles. Porteous, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, is the most recent federal judge to be impeached. The impeachment scandal revolved around accusations that Porteous had a financial relationship with attorneys in a case before him. The federal judge also was accused of receiving things of value from a bail bondsman in return for helping the bondsman develop corrupt relationships with state court judges.
The first article of impeachment had to do with conduct that occurred before Porteous became a state judge in Louisiana. The second article alleged that Porteous lied to the Senate during its confirmation hearing on his nomination by Clinton as a federal judge. During his Senate trial, Porteous argued that charges predating his time as a federal judge could not be grounds for impeachment.
The Senate convicted him, removing Porteous and disqualifying him from holding future federal office.
Thomas Jipping, who was deputy counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Porteous trial, said impeachment is such a political and legal process that it can be difficult to determine whether a precedent has been established.
“Each impeachment is totally unique. None are entirely comparable. So, you don’t need a precedent,” Jipping, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“Past cases can provide guidance, but impeachment is so rare and each is based on a specific set of facts,” Jipping said. “It’s the exception to the rule.”
Two Democrat senators at the time issued statements saying that it didn’t matter when Porteous had committed corrupt acts. Then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who chaired the Senate panel conducting the trial, characterized Porteous’ argument as an “absolute, categorical rule that would preclude impeachment and removal for any pre-federal conduct.”
“That should not be the rule, any more than allowing impeachment for any pre-federal conduct that is entirely unrelated to the federal office,” McCaskill said.
Then-Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said his colleagues should reject “any notion of impeachment immunity [for pre-federal behavior] if misconduct was hidden, or otherwise went undiscovered during the confirmation process, and it is relevant to a judge’s ability to serve as an impartial arbiter.”
Porteous was not charged criminally, even though his case emerged from an FBI investigation.
Today, if more evidence mounts against the president, it’s not likely that Democrats will fall back on the argument that Biden was only vice president as millions came in from foreign sources, the Committee for Justice’s Levey said.
“We might see Biden’s lawyers make that point, but I don’t think Democrats in Congress will,” Levey said. “It’s just not a compelling case.”
Falling Short of Criminal Conviction Standard
Not facing criminal charges is one matter. One judge was impeached after a jury acquitted him. As a Democrat in the House representing Florida, Hastings voted against impeaching Clinton, a fellow Democrat, in December 1998 and for impeaching President Donald Trump, a Republican, in December 2019 and again in January 2021, six days before Trump left office. Hastings also voted in two of the House’s judicial impeachments.
In a bit of political theater during the Clinton impeachment process, Hastings introduced an impeachment resolution against independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who had completed a report to the House on the constitutional grounds for impeaching Clinton.
Hastings died in 2021, while still in Congress. But the Democrat’s career in the House came after his own impeachment and removal as a federal judge.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, appointed Hastings as a district judge for the Southern District of Florida. Hastings was impeached by the House and tried and removed by the Senate in 1988, a time when Democrats controlled both chambers, despite having been acquitted by a jury in a criminal trial.
Hastings had been charged in 1981 with conspiracy and obstruction of justice for allegedly soliciting a $150,000 bribe to reduce the sentences of mob-connected felons. A jury acquitted him after a trial in 1983, although his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, was convicted.
The Judicial Conference, a national entity composed of federal judges that reviews investigations of other judges, reviewed the Hastings case and sent a referral to the House of Representatives. The House approved 17 articles of impeachment against Hastings, including perjury, bribery, and conspiracy. The judge contended that the House’s impeachment proceedings constituted “double jeopardy,” since he already had been acquitted in a criminal trial.
The Senate reached a two-thirds vote to convict Hastings on eight of the 17 charges, removing him from office but not disqualifying him from holding future office.
Florida voters elected Hastings to the House in 1992.
The Hastings case is among those demonstrating that proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, so key to a criminal trial, doesn’t have the same status in an impeachment case.
Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee repeatedly said during Thursday’s hearing that there is “no evidence” that Biden benefited personally from the more than $20 million from foreign persons or businesses received by Biden family members and their associates.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, countered that argument during the hearing.
“Even under criminal cases, when you deal with bribery, extortion, the Hobbs Act, courts actually have rejected that,” Turley said. “They’ve said that money going to family members is in fact a benefit. … This idea that you can have millions going to a politician’s family and that’s not a benefit, I think is pretty fallacious.”
The Hobbs Act, which became law in 1946, prohibits robbery or extortion that affect interstate or foreign commerce and outlaws conspiracy to do so. The law has been used in prosecuting racketeering and public corruption cases.
Tax Crimes
It was fairly easy for the House in 1986 to impeach U.S. District Judge Harry E. Claiborne of Nevada, a Carter appointee, after he was convicted in a criminal trial of making false statements on his tax returns. Claiborne refused to resign from the bench despite being incarcerated.
The articles of impeachment echoed a criminal indictment, and one asserted that “by conviction alone he is guilty of … ‘high crimes’ in office.”
Claiborne’s Senate trial was the first to be conducted by a special committee rather than by the full Senate, as is customary for a presidential impeachment trial. All judicial impeachment trials since have been conducted by a committee, which sends a recommendation to the Senate floor.
The full Senate voted to convict Claiborne.
Big Business of Bankruptcy
In the late 1920s and the 1930s, bankruptcy could be big business for certain public officials.
In 1926, the House impeached U.S. District Judge George W. English of the Eastern District of Illinois on several charges, including showing favoritism to certain litigants before his court.
An appointee of President Woodrow Wilson, English was accused by the House of favoritism to Charles B. Thomas, his referee in bankruptcy, to whom he was “under great obligation, financial and otherwise.” The House also accused English of manipulation of bankruptcy and other funds to benefit the referee, himself, and his son.
In 1933, during the Great Depression, the House impeached U.S. District Judge Harold Louderback for allegedly showing favoritism in appointing bankruptcy receivers, which were coveted positions in light of the 1929 stock market crash.
Although the House Judiciary Committee voted against recommending impeachment, the full House adopted the recommendation of the minority report and voted to impeach English anyway. The judge resigned before a Senate trial, and the Senate dismissed the matter.
In another Depression-era impeachment, the House voted in 1936 to impeach U.S. District Judge Halsted L. Ritter of the Southern District of Florida for profiting off the appointment of receivers in bankruptcy proceedings.
The Senate reached the required two-thirds supermajority only on the final impeachment article accusing Ritter of bringing his court into disrepute and undermining the public’s confidence in the judiciary.
Ritter faced no criminal charges, kept his law license, and went into private practice.
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.
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.
President Joe Biden needs to address the border crisis if he wants to keep the government open, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday. Pictured: Biden in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on September 25. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
If President Joe Biden wishes to avoid a government shutdown, he should sit down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and hammer out a plan to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, McCarthy said at a news conference Wednesday.
The speaker addressed the president on his border policies: “This wasn’t a policy that was passed from the House and Senate that opened up this border. It was simply your decision, and you could do something to change it.”
McCarthy said he planned to pass a continuing resolution in the House that includes the House’s border bill, H.R. 2. Such a resolution with border requirements “would keep government open while we finish the job.” Unless Congress passes and the president signs legislation funding the government, nonessential functions will shut down on Oct. 1. On Tuesday, the House advanced four bills to fund specific departments—the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, and Agriculture—that would limit the impact of the shutdown. (Funding the government requires 12 appropriations bills, or Congress can pass a continuing resolution to fund the government on a limited basis.)
The House is voting on amendments Wednesday and will vote on passing the bills Thursday. These bills would fund 71% of total discretionary spending for the next fiscal year. Meanwhile, the Senate has not voted on a single appropriations bill.
Also on Tuesday, the Senate advanced a continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 17, the week before Thanksgiving. That bill would provide about $6.15 billion in additional funding for Ukraine and $5.99 billion in disaster relief funding. McCarthy said the Senate bill would be a nonstarter in the House.
“I don’t see the support in the House,” he told reporters Wednesday.
The Daily Signal reached out to the Senate resolution’s sponsor, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for comment on the resolution and responses to criticism of it, but neither responded by publication time.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is opposing the bill.
“Coach is a no,” Steven Stafford, Tuberville’s communications director, told The Daily Signal in an email statement Wednesday. “D.C. politicians are doing more for Ukraine’s border than our border, not to mention more for Ukraine’s farmers than our farmers.”
Heritage Action for America urged members of Congress to vote against the legislation, making it a “key vote” for legislative scorecards. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation, of which Heritage Action is the political action arm.)
“Combining reckless spending levels with priorities the American people overwhelmingly don’t support—like additional, unaccountable funding for Ukraine—this package would do nothing more than continue the status quo in Washington,” he said.
Heritage Action has demanded that government funding bills must include “meaningful spending cuts to alter the nation’s discretionary-spending trajectory,” by lowering top-line spending to the levels of fiscal year 2022. It has also insisted that “any short-term funding extension should include policy changes to secure the border and prevent the Biden administration from continuing its open-border agenda.” The Senate bill meets neither of those criteria.
“Between worsening inflation, the crisis at the southern border, and the weaponization of the federal government against citizens, the American people are feeling the consequences of the Biden administration’s policies every day,” Walker added. “We cannot afford more of the same failures and attacks on American opportunity.”
The speaker noted that 11,000 people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, marking 50,000 people in the last five days.
“Think about what America looks like now that President Biden has come into office,” he said, noting various labor strikes across the country. “We’ve got a wide-open border. We’ve got people picketing in Michigan that’s going to put more costs into cars, and why are they picketing? Because his policies subsidize electric cars that are taking their jobs away. We’ve got in Hollywood five months of picketing.”
“We’ve got five embassies—American embassies in other countries—that had to be evacuated,” the speaker added. “Based upon his missteps in Afghanistan, we now have allies turning towards China. We now have something we haven’t seen since the ’30s, the creation of the axis of powers. It’s North Korea, China, Russia and Iran” allying with one another.
“All this chaos is based upon his foreign policy, his immigration policy,” McCarthy claimed about Biden. “He’s got people in his own party now, states declaring states of emergency.” He noted that Democratic governors in Massachusetts and New York have declared states of emergency connected to the border crisis.
The speaker mentioned the spread of fentanyl, the growth of Mexican cartels, and the expansion of human trafficking.
“Just going and joining a picket line that you created doesn’t solve the problem by having a photo-op,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Tuberville.
The Washington Post/ABC News released a poll showing former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by 10 points, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspects that is effectively a narrative-driven poll result.
Polls are showing a desire to push narratives to get Trump the GOP nomination and potentially drive Biden out of running for reelection, DeSantis told Newsmax‘s Addison Smith in a one-on-one interview that aired in part on “Newsline.”
“Just understand, the media — if he ends up being the nominee, they will not be putting polls out like that; it’ll be the opposite,” DeSantis said. “I mean, they use this to juice a narrative.”
DeSantis pointed to the poll results showing Trump leading Biden among voters under 35 by 20 points as begging the question about the narrative goals behind publishing a self-described “outlier” result.
“I think people were showing that that poll had Trump beating Biden with under 35 by 20 points: No Republican has even won that, so when you see that you wonder, OK, what are they trying to do?” DeSantis continued. “I think they’re trying to do two things: I think the corporate press does want Trump to be the nominee. I think you see that in the coverage of that. I think you also see that in how they attack me. But I also think they’re trying to get the Democrats to dislodge Biden.”
The “corporate press” is trying to turn Democrats away from a Biden reelection campaign to get another candidate like California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in the race, according to DeSantis.
“They want to show that Biden is weak, and they would like to see a Newsom or somebody else,” he added. “So I think when the corporate press is doing this, I think people should take it with a grain of salt, absolutely.”
DeSantis has already been geared up for a Newsom run, having already committed to a Nov. 30 debate with the California Democrat at 9 p.m. ET.
“That’s why, you know, he said he would debate me, so I said, ‘Let’s do it,'” DeSantis continued. “We’re waiting for the date. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do it, you know, within the next month or two. I think it’s an important debate for the country – not like saying who’s better Florida or California, because that debate is over.”
The migration numbers away from California and to Florida has shown people have already voted in that debate “with their feet,” DeSantis said.
“They’ve left California and come to Florida not the other way around. He has lost massive amounts of population. No governor in California history has ever witnessed population loss at all on net and he’s had it and that’s because of the policies he’s driving people away.
“But what’s the future for the country? The future for the country for what the left would want to do is just double down on the California policies. And so I think it’s being important debate. I think he’s definitely angling for it.”
Biden will not just “step down willingly,” DeSantis concluded. “I think it’s harder to dislodge somebody who’s an incumbent president and people assume it would be, but I think the Democrat establishment really, really is concerned, particularly, you know, if they have to run against somebody like me.
“I think that their view on Trump is that he will help energize their base to come out in ways that maybe some other Republicans won’t. I don’t know that that’s true, per se, the way they’re thinking it.
“But they do think that, so I think they’re looking for, How do we get away from this? Because, you know, Biden is floundering on the world stage. I mean, it’s been really embarrassing to see what he’s doing.”
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Now that one of the 2 million Democrat prosecutors chasing Donald Trump has filed a court motion to make it illegal for him to talk about the election, is it okay to laugh anytime Joe Biden frames 2024 as a referendum on “democracy”?
Monday night would have been a good time to exercise that rule. Speaking at a fundraising event on Broadway, the president told “FOLKS!” in attendance that he’s running for reelection because “democracy is at stake” and “on the ballot once again.”
It’s gotten so corny, and yet if there weren’t pollsters, consultants, and all of the media telling every Democrat in the country that it’s a line that works for their voters, he wouldn’t be saying it.
Yet, it’s Democrats who come up with a new way to shut down the few remaining options and avenues the American public has to express their opinions and choices on virtually everything. They do it on the daily. Just last week, Special Counsel Jack Smith requested that a federal judge in Washington, D.C., place a gag order that would prevent Trump from disparaging Smith’s Jan. 6-related case against him, even in political terms.
“[T]he defendant has repeatedly and widely disseminated public statements attacking the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses,” Smith wrote in the filing. “Through his statements, the defendant threatens to undermine the integrity of these proceedings and prejudice the jury pool…”
He asserted that Trump has a “history of inflammatory and misleading statements” that “would cause others to harass and harm perceived critics or adversaries.” One of those supposedly dangerous statements was a social media post wherein Trump said, “Joe Biden directed his Attorney General to prosecute his rival. This is not an independent Justice Department, this is not an independent special counsel. This is being directed by the Commander-in-Chief.”
Smith said that remark was made “without any basis,” even as none other than the New York Times wrote in April last year for its millions of readers — does Jack Smith have a subscription? — that Biden has told his associates he wants indictments against his predecessor and that he wanted his attorney general “to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.”
It wouldn’t be until seven months later that Trump would launch his own reelection campaign, but everyone knew he was going to do it, and everyone knew that when he did, he would instantly become the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
That’s the context dismissed by Jack Smith as “without any basis.”
The motion comes just a month after the judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, has already sided with Smith on a similar motion regarding “inflammatory statements.” She said there were limits to what Trump could say “whether it will affect a political campaign on either side.” In essence: Even if Trump’s campaign is partly or wholly about the case against him, he can’t talk about it.
When Democrats aren’t limiting what Trump can talk about in a national election, they’re trying to get his name removed from state ballots. When they’re not doing that, they’re suppressing what their dissenters can say on the Internet. When they’re not doing that, they’re trying to shrink the Internet by icing out would-be customers from renting space.
If you don’t agree with Democrats on anything, what are you supposed to do? Where are you supposed to go?
Democracy really is at stake. Biden and his party are working to eliminate it as an option altogether.
Updated Sept. 19, 2023. Two hundred and fifty lies and counting.
More than two and a half years into President Joe Biden’s White House tenure, his fabulism is on repeat. He’s told more lies than anyone could ever quantify, but we’ve done our best to document his serial falsehoods. Here is part four of The Federalist’s rigorous coverage designed to hold Biden and his administration accountable with substantive fact-checking throughout the rest of his presidency.
250. Self-Professed Catholic President Claims He Was Raised In Synagogues
In a call with Jewish faith leaders on Sept. 14, 2023, Joe Biden claimed he was “raised in the synagogues” in Delaware.
“I — you might say raised in the synagogues in my state. You think I’m kidding. I’m not,” Biden said during his greeting.
Biden, on a call with rabbis before the Jewish High Holy Days: "I was, you might say, raised in the synagogues of my state. You think I'm kidding — I'm not" pic.twitter.com/qGM1MkQGgX
“I’m as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic. My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It’s not so much the Bible, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It’s the culture. The nuns are one of the reasons I’m still a practicing Catholic,” Biden wrote in the first chapter of his biography “Promises To Keep.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, marking his first congressional appearance since an IRS whistleblower called into question his claim that U.S. Attorney David Weiss had ultimate charging authority over Hunter Biden. While Garland has much to answer for beyond the botched Hunter Biden investigation — such as the targeting of pro-life protesters — the Judiciary Committee should focus on getting answers to these questions.
The committee should start with a series of direct questions to the AG focused on aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation before confronting Garland with inconsistencies between his prior statements and Weiss and the whistleblowers’ claims. The committee and the country need to understand how the attorney general directed the handling of the Hunter Biden investigation.
Specifically, what if anything did Garland say to Weiss about how the investigation should be run?
Did Garland directly communicate with Weiss?
When and how often?
Did the AG instead assign an assistant attorney general to interact with Weiss?
Who?
When?
What specific authority or concerns did Weiss discuss with Garland or his assistant attorneys general?
Then the $5 million question:
Did Weiss ever discuss special attorney or special counsel status and, if so, when?
A follow-up $5 million question seems exceedingly appropriate in this situation: When did Garland first provide Weiss with authority to prosecute Hunter Biden in other districts?
Of course, we know the answer to that is when Garland named Weiss special counsel, but having the attorney general confirm that reality in sworn testimony provides a nice segue to drill Garland on his prior inconsistent statements:
General Garland, you told Sen. Chuck Grassley on March 1, 2023, quote ‘the U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary,’ but that’s not true, is it?
Weiss didn’t have ‘full authority’ until after you named him special counsel, correct?
Beyond Weiss’s charging authority, it’s important to understand the investigative authority the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office held. Was Main Justice updated on the investigation?
Did Main Justice provide oversight to the investigation?
How much?
Did the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office need to seek approval from Main Justice on anything?
If so, on what?
And from whom?
Who decided that Main Justice would provide oversight for the Hunter Biden investigation?
Was Garland informed of Main Justice’s involvement in the investigation?
When?
And if Main Justice was involved in the oversight, didn’t that interfere in the supposed independence of Weiss?
The House Judiciary Committee should also ask Garland about what, if anything, he told other Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Did Garland discuss the Hunter Biden investigation with Matthew Graves, the D.C. U.S. attorney, and Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California?
Did he direct those offices to partner with Weiss?
Did Garland know Weiss had wanted to partner with those offices?
Did he know those offices had denied Weiss’s request for them to bring charges against Hunter?
When and how did Garland first learn of Weiss’s interest in bringing charges in California and/or D.C.?
Likewise, Garland should be quizzed on his communications with FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the role FBI headquarters should (or shouldn’t) have in the Hunter Biden investigation.
Did Garland and Wray discuss the Hunter Biden investigation?
Did Garland allow Wray to decide the propriety of involving FBI headquarters in the investigation?
Did Garland know Wray had permitted FBI headquarters to participate in the investigation and/or decision-making?
The House committee should connect this line of questioning with Garland’s prior testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in April 2022. Then, the attorney general, in response to a question by Sen. Bill Hagerty, claimed Weiss was “supervising the investigation” and was in “charge of that investigation.”
But if that’s true, why did Weiss’s office have to run things by Main Justice and FBI headquarters?
And for that matter, why did Main Justice and/or FBI headquarters seek the removal of the FBI whistleblowers?
Beyond uncovering the details of the investigation, the House Judiciary Committee should clarify three aspects of the continuing investigation.
First, Garland should be quizzed on the breadth or limits of Weiss’s authority as “special counsel.”
How can Weiss possibly serve in that role and continue as U.S. attorney?
Why did Garland not appoint an outsider, as the regulations require?
What resources has Weiss requested?
Is Weiss staffing up an entirely separate office?
And is that office investigating individuals beyond Hunter Biden?
Second, Garland should be questioned about Department of Justice policies and whether he maintained the policy former Attorney General William Barr put in place about the launching of an investigation against a presidential candidate. Under current regulations, would Special Counsel Weiss’s team need to obtain permission from Garland before running down leads that might implicate Joe Biden in criminal activity?
If not, when, if ever, would they need Garland’s permission to take investigative steps against Joe Biden?
Would Garland tell the country when such authority had been granted?
Has Weiss’s team been given authority to investigate President Biden?
Third, the Judiciary Committee should obtain assurances from Garland that the DOJ will cooperate in the House’s impeachment inquiry and not withhold information or evidence. Garland is unlikely to agree to such a request, however, hedging with claims of protecting an ongoing investigation. Ah, but that would mean there is an ongoing investigation into the president!
But even if there were such an investigation, that does not limit the House’s equal authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. That inquiry, however, can only answer half the scandal, concerning the current president’s potential criminal conduct while vice president. The second half of the scandal concerns the DOJ and FBI’s cover-up.
The House’s questioning of Garland on Wednesday should start to unravel portions of the protect-Biden plot, but if the attorney general continues to stonewall the probe, as he has done in the past, Garland should expect to face his own impeachment inquiry.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The White House sent a memo to news organizations telling to push back on Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry into Joe and Hunter Biden’s foreign influence peddling. The media are willingly complying. Pictured: President Joe Biden departs the White House and approaches the press corps on June 28. (Photo: Bill O’Leary, The Washington Post/Getty Images)
When President Joe Biden’s aide Ian Sams wanted to leak his strongly worded memo to “Editorial Leadership at U.S. News Media Organizations,” he chose CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy, who is one of many enthusiastic White House spinners at CNN. Darcy and CNN didn’t have enough self-respect to push back on Sams for implying they needed to be lectured on going soft on Republicans.
Instead, in reporting this administration’s “breaking” list of demands, the incredibly servile Darcy claimed Sams was right.
“While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage,” wrote Darcy. It’s “frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse.”
Try to figure out how the press can publish “innumerable fact checks” and yet they still “robustly” failed to “call out” misinformation. Neither the Sams memo nor the Darcy report elaborated on which “lies” about the Bidens are “saturating” the discourse.
Conservatives on Twitter mocked this memo, as if the pro-Biden media needed a public whipping, as if they haven’t been carrying barrels of Biden water for years.
One could suggest that the Republicans are rushing into impeachment and devaluing its seriousness. But you could not credibly forward this argument if you are a Democrat or a member of the “mainstream media,” which twice devalued impeachment against Donald Trump.
The “PBS NewsHour” doubled down on the Darcy spit-and-polish approach by putting Sams on taxpayer-funded TV so he could repeat all the Carvillesque talking points in his memo.
No “fact-checker” at PBS was going to lift a finger as Sams proclaimed the polar opposite of the truth: “The truth is that the president was never in business with his family and that these lies and false attacks that are coming from Republicans, with no evidence, no evidence to back them up, are in fact lies.”
PBS co-host Amna Nawaz should have at the very least challenged Sams to specify what’s a “lie” and made him answer for Biden’s lies in the final 2020 presidential debate: “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China … the only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”
Biden also denied Trump’s allegation in the first 2020 debate that Hunter made “a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow, and various other places.”
Back in August 2019, Biden boldly proclaimed, “I have never discussed with my son, or my brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses, period.”
The contents of the Hunter Biden laptop underlined the dramatic dishonesty of this statement, as has the testimony to those supposedly “lying” House Republicans. They documented that Joe Biden lied about never discussing the family influence-peddling business on at least 16 occasions. He lied to reporters. In a perfect world, one would expect the entire media would object and correct the record.
The Sams memo implies that our “objective” media are far too objective. That’s ridiculous. But it’s clear that Democrats—inside and outside the White House—expect journalists to practice 100% compliance with Democrat spin. Professionalism equals propaganda.
On Monday, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley provided congressional oversight committees nine new documents related to the botched Hunter Biden investigation, according to a letter sent Wednesday morning to the House Judiciary Committee. The letter also contained a redacted 10th new document: the handwritten notes Shapley took during the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting in which Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss allegedly announced to his team that he was “not the deciding official on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden.
Those handwritten notes further bolster Shapley’s earlier testimony about the meeting and debunk counterclaims by the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office that Weiss had not said he lacked authority to charge Hunter Biden. What the other nine documents reveal, however, remains to be seen.
“Yesterday the Washington Post published a story reportedly based on a transcript it obtained of the Committee’s interview of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski,” the letter from Shapley’s Empower Oversight attorneys to the House Judiciary Committee opened. Sobocinski was one of seven attendees at the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, in which — according to Shapley’s previous testimony, corroborated by an email he sent following the meeting — Weiss said he was “not the deciding official” on whether to charge Hunter Biden and that he had been denied special counsel authority to charge the president’s son in D.C. or California.
As The Federalist reported earlier Wednesday based on its review of the transcript of Sobocinski’s interview, “Sobocinski claimed he did not remember Weiss saying he had sought (and been denied) special counsel status or that Weiss had represented that he was ‘not the deciding official.’” Further, “according to Sobocinski, had Weiss said either of those things, he would have remembered it,” with the FBI agent implying Shapley’s claims were false.
According to the transcript, Sobocinski tried to discredit Shapley’s testimony and the email he had sent following the October meeting by stressing that Shapley had not drafted the email during the meeting and thus the notes were not really “contemporaneous” with Weiss’s supposed statements.
In its Wednesday letter to the Judiciary Committee, Shapley’s legal team responded to Sobocinski’s objections by providing the committee a redacted copy of Shapley’s “contemporaneous handwritten notes,” in order to let the committee “access the truthfulness and reliability of Mr. Sobocinski’s testimony.” Empower Oversight, which represents Shapley, further stressed in its letter that, unlike Shapley, Sobocinski took no notes during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022.
Shapley’s handwritten notes taken during the meeting do indeed track the email summary he sent later that evening. In his notes, he wrote: “Weiss stated— He is not the deciding person.” This provides strong corroboration for Shapley’s email and his testimony.
Conversely, Sobocinski has nothing to corroborate his (lack of) recollection of the meeting. Sobocinski has also proven himself not credible by testifying that Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden anywhere, anytime — well, kinda, sort of, not really.
While Shapley’s credibility remains bars above Sobocinski’s, the bottom line is it doesn’t really matter what Weiss said during the October meeting. What matters is what happened and whether Biden’s Department of Justice refused to pursue tax felony charges in other venues and kept Weiss from doing so himself. What matters is whether the DOJ and FBI interfered in the Hunter Biden investigation.
On the first question, Americans may never get a clear answer, as Weiss continues to obfuscate and cover for Attorney General Merrick Garland. But on the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the Hunter Biden investigation, there is already overwhelming evidence establishing this scandal — and it isn’t merely coming from Shapley or his fellow IRS whistleblower. Rather, another whistleblower exposed the burying of the FD-1023 form, which implicated both Hunter and Joe Biden in a Burisma bribery scandal. That whistleblower also revealed to Sen. Chuck Grassley that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an “assessment” in August 2020 to improperly discredit “verified and verifiable” derogatory intel about Hunter Biden.
The nine new documents Shapley provided to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee may add even more evidence of the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the investigation of the president’s son. But unless and until the committees vote to release that information publicly, they will remain secreted from the American public. Likewise, the redacted portions of Shapley’s handwritten notes will remain confidential as potentially protected taxpayer information until the relevant congressional committees authorize their release.
That may happen sooner than originally planned, however, now that the White House is attempting to spin the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden as misinformation, with an assist from the DOJ and FBI lawyers representing Sobocinski.
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.
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.
‘These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,’ McCarthy said.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday that the House of Representatives will be opening a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden to further investigate growing evidence and allegations surrounding the president’s family business dealings.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy said during Tuesday’s press conference. “That’s why today, I’m directing our House committee[s] to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”
In his remarks, McCarthy highlighted how House Republicans’ investigations into the Bidens’ business ventures revealed that Joe Biden lied when he claimed he had no knowledge of his son Hunter’s business deals. More specifically, McCarthy alluded to “eyewitnesses” to those dealings such as Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat. According to intelligence obtained by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, Zlochevsky has claimed to possess 17 audio recordings of conversations with the Bidens, two of which purportedly involve then-Vice President Joe Biden.
WhatsApp messages included in testimony by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley further indicate Joe’s involvement in Hunter’s business affairs. In one message allegedly sent to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao, Hunter threatened to use his father’s political power to extort unfulfilled “promises and assurances” from Zhao.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” the message reads. Hunter also purportedly indicated his “ability” to “forever hold a grudge that you will regret” with help from “the man sitting next to me and every person he knows” if Zhao did not meet his demands.
Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer also testified to at least 24 times Joe spoke with his son’s business associates. Curiously, since these revelations became public, the White House has shifted its narrative from claiming Joe never “discussed” business dealings with Hunter to now claiming the president “has never been in business with his son.”
During Tuesday’s press conference, McCarthy also pointed to Joe’s use of his office to “coordinate with Hunter Biden’s business partners about Hunter’s role in Burisma.” An FD-1023 obtained by Grassley’s office containing intel from a “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) offers further evidence the then-vice president was instrumental in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma. It also contains allegations that the Bidens were paid $10 million for Joe’s role in firing the prosecutor.
McCarthy also highlighted House Republicans’ discovery earlier this year that the Bidens were paid millions of dollars by foreign companies during and after Joe’s time in the Obama White House. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd previously reported, a review of bank records conducted by the House Oversight Committee “confirmed that at least nine Biden family members, including some children, received millions in diluted payments from foreign companies during and shortly after Joe’s vice presidency.”
McCarthy further emphasized the role the Department of Justice has played in protecting the Bidens from both criminal probes and congressional inquiries. According to testimony by IRS whistleblowers, federal prosecutors concealed critical documents from tax investigators probing Hunter Biden while officials from the Justice Department sought to undermine the IRS’s investigative efforts. One of the whistleblowers had previously alleged in May that his investigative team had been removed from the Biden tax probe at the behest of the DOJ.
In addition to its alleged interference in the IRS tax probe, the DOJ also sought to give legal immunity to Hunter regarding charges filed against him earlier this year. A Delaware judge ultimately exposed the agreement for what it was — a sweetheart deal designed to protect Hunter and, by default, Joe from future prosecution.
“The American people deserve to know that the public offices are not for sale, and that the federal government is not being used to cover up the actions of a politically associated family,” McCarthy said.
The impeachment inquiry will be led by Republican Reps. James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Jason Smith, according to McCarthy.
I want to go on the record in opposition to any impeachment proceedings. Since the President Clinton disaster, each Congress has had payback on their collective brains.
STOP IT! We have far more important issues to deal with. We have to stop this cycle of payback, or every administration will have to deal with this foolishness.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
President Joe Biden may still be receiving benefits from oligarchs, and if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tries to tie spending bills to an impeachment inquiry to investigate this, it will be met with “disaster,” Oversight Committee member Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told Newsmax.
On Monday, when asked by “Carl Higbie FRONTLINE” if there was enough evidence to start the impeachment inquiry into Biden, Donalds responded, “Yeah, 100%.” Making the case for an impeachment inquiry, the congressman adds that the Oversight Committee has in its possession records of concealed accounts that “all started when Joe Biden was vice president.”
“They knowingly set up these accounts to conceal money from the American people,” Donalds continued. “The fact that Joe Biden allowed his son [Hunter] to do that already is public corruption first and foremost; that’s No. 1.”
“No. 2: There are concerns that there are still actually benefits associated from this corruption. The widow of the Moscow mayor, Elena Baturina, she’s an oligarch over in Russia. So when the Russian sanctions came down from President Biden, she mysteriously was left off the list. I wonder why?”
Amid the evidence and despite the eagerness of some members of the House GOP to begin the impeachment inquiry process, Donalds states that if McCarthy seeks to dangle impeachment inquiry as a means to push through fiscal legislation, his efforts will end in “disaster.”
“Let me put it this way: if this is gonna be his game plan, it is not gonna be met well. That would actually a disaster,” Donalds said. “There’s no such thing as dangling an impeachment vote so you can get away with spending more money.”
As part of the deal to end his 15-round election marathon for speakership in January, McCarthy agreed to lower the threshold for a motion to remove him as Speaker of the House from five members to one. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., last week threatened to invoke the motion if McCarthy did not move forward with an impeachment inquiry.
“When we get back to Washington in the coming weeks, we have got to seize the initiative,” Gaetz said. “That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if Kevin McCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long. So let’s hope that he works with us, not against us, but we’ve got contingency plans in the event that he’s not as productive.”
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.
Was 9/11 the beginning of the end for America? In the 22 years since the attacks, I’ve begun to worry that the answer to that question is “yes.”
It spawned the worst and most destructive foreign policy in the country’s history. The government response to 9/11 birthed the constitutional abomination that is the modern warrantless surveillance state. The Patriot Act enabled the government to weaponize its vast resources against its own people.
Bush’s failed foreign policy led directly to Obama’s presidency, and indirectly to Biden’s, both of which are responsible for diminishing the U.S. at home and abroad, militarily and economically. After two failed forever wars that wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, our government is now desperately trying to foment a potentially nuclear forever war against Russia.
Meanwhile, all the massive surveillance powers claimed by the U.S. after 9/11 are being ruthlessly deployed against American political enemies of the regime via the most insidious censorship-industrial complex the world has ever seen.
And then there’s the crippling legacy of debt enabled by America’s response to 9/11. Not content to spend trillions on poorly thought-out invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, our leaders spent as thoughtlessly at home, creating insane amounts of new entitlements, while doing nothing to put the country on a sound financial footing.
And where are we today? The ruling political party is criminalizing its opposition and attempting to throw its top political opponent and his supporters in prison, all under the guise of “democracy.”
While the national unity in the days after the towers fell was unfortunately fleeting, the changes to the country, its laws, and its leaders were not. Perhaps there’s no better example of this than watching the man who scoffed during a presidential debate at the notion of America engaging in global “nation-building” suddenly declare that it was America’s mission to spread democracy to the ends of the earth with the “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
It is clear that 9/11 spawned the most destructive foreign policy in modern American history. Instead of simply eliminating the Taliban and the terrorist havens in Afghanistan — an objective that had largely been achieved by the end of 2001 — the U.S. government insisted on grafting Western democracy onto the people of Afghanistan. Without 9/11, there is no 20-year forever war in Afghanistan that ends with China in control of an American airbase and the Taliban in control of tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment and weapons.
Without 9/11, there is also no war in Iraq, which morphed from a mission to eliminate weapons of mass destruction to a war to bring democracy to a hodgepodge of tribes, warring factions, and religious sects throughout the Middle East. Yes, I know the official original rationale was that the war was launched entirely to capture weapons that we now know didn’t exist, but without 9/11, there’s no “axis of evil” speech and resultant march to war to depose Saddam Hussein. In his 2003 State of the Union address on the eve of the Iraq invasion, Bush himself explicitly claimed that Hussein was personally working with al Qaeda, and warned that Hussein might give al Qaeda weapons they could use to attack the United States.
While Bush and Republicans rode the wave of post-9/11 sentiment to political victories in 2002 and 2004, the honeymoon was short-lived. By 2006, the country had largely soured on the war in Iraq amidst increasing casualties with little progress to show for them, paving the way for massive Democrat gains in Congress and a flip of both houses away from Republicans and into Democrat hands. And in the 2008 Democrat political primaries, it was Barack Obama who rode the anti-war wave onto the presidential ballot by defeating Hillary Clinton, who had supported Bush’s efforts in Iraq. A war-weary country that had soured on global military intervention at any cost overwhelmingly voted for the anti-war Obama over the pro-war John McCain.
Without 9/11, there is no war in Iraq, and without the war in Iraq, there’s likely no President Obama, no President Trump (whose opposition to the war in Iraq and America’s hamfisted approach to foreign policy propelled him into the presidency), and certainly no President Biden. When America was caught in the quicksand of Iraq in 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the country of Georgia. When America revealed itself to be a paper tiger in Afghanistan after 20 years of failed efforts to turn it into a beacon of Western liberalism, Putin seized Crimea. The seeds of each of those events were sowed on 9/11.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration seized on the emergency created by 9/11 to construct the largest surveillance state in world history. Almost overnight, the Patriot Act was passed, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and warrantless wiretaps were authorized, and it didn’t take long before each of those tools was weaponized against the American people. At the time, only a handful of people voted against those laws, and they were roundly mocked for their opposition (Rep. Barbara Lee was the sole vote in the House against the Afghanistan war, while Sen. Russ Feingold was the lone vote against the Patriot Act in the Senate). The U.S. government ended up using tools that were intended to be used against foreign terrorists to instead spy on the political campaign of Donald Trump. Tools that were supposed to be used to monitor terrorist chatter overseas are right now being used to justify censorship of American citizens. And all of it is being done based on laws and institutions that were created in the wake of 9/11.
Finally, at no point did America’s representatives in Washington consider actually paying for the trillions and trillions of dollars that would be used to prosecute their failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No, those costs were financed by debt that will eventually have to be repaid by the grandchildren of those who authorized it. On top of that, Congress and the president heaped new entitlement on top of new entitlement, year after year. After the growth of the national debt finally began to slow in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War, the national debt nearly doubled during George W. Bush’s presidency, doubled again during Obama’s tenure, and will double again between 2016 and 2026 according to Office of Management and Budget projections. A country with this kind of debt growth is a country that is all but begging for hyperinflation and currency devaluation. It’s not a question of if, but when.
In hindsight, America’s response to 9/11 crippled the country. It birthed a disastrous foreign policy ideology that is still wreaking havoc on our own country, as well as the rest of the world. It spawned a surveillance state that threatens to rip the fabric of the country in two. It led to monstrous debt growth that will destroy the country financially from within if the trends are not quickly reversed.
We generally remember 9/11 as the day that the towers came down. I now worry that future historians will look back on it as the day that America started to fall.
Sean Davis is CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn. He was named by The Hill as one of the top congressional staffers under the age of 35 for his role in spearheading the enactment of the law that created USASpending.gov. Sean received a BBA in finance from Texas Tech University and an MBA in finance and entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School. He can be reached via e-mail at sean@thefederalist.com.
Monday marks the twenty-second anniversary of the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11 and I’m here in New York City, visiting Ground Zero, the place where the World Trade Center towers once stood.
President Biden is not here and will not be coming here. The question is, why not? I believe it’s because he wants the American people to “move past” or forget about this attack, who carried it out, and why. He and his administration want us to move forward to new, bigger, and more lucrative wars.
They want us to focus on politically advantageous wars, like the war against parents who simply want to have a say in our children’s education or patriotic Americans who are standing up to protect our freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.
The Biden administration and their propagandists in the mainstream media downplay the fact that the 9/11 attack on our country was carried out by jihadists who continue to carry out a crusade to impose Islamic caliphates throughout the world, including the United States. They want to hide from the American people the fact that these jihadists are the biggest long-term threat to the United States and world.
nextImage 1 of 3 (Jennifer S. Altman/WireImage)
President Biden and his team want to hide from the American people the fact that these jihadists are the biggest long-term threat to the United States and world.
On this solemn anniversary, we hear a lot of platitudes from politicians, but we don’t hear them talking about who carried out the attacks, what their motivation was, and the fact they are continuing their jihad, doing their very best to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to carry out an attack that would make their attack on 9/11 seem minuscule in comparison.
It was not that long ago that I deployed to Africa with our Special Forces to take on these jihadists, who I guarantee you have not forgotten their mission to destroy the United States and freedom-loving people all over the world.
So, while neocon leaders, like those in the Biden administration, want us to forget that we are at war with jihadists, the jihadists have not forgotten.
But we will never forget. The American people are not sheep.
I, and countless other patriots who were motivated by the attack on 9/11 to put on the uniform, and every American patriot, will always remember the precious lives taken by these jihadists who attacked our country and continue to wage both ideological and kinetic war against us.
And on every anniversary of the attack on 9/11, we will recommit to defeating such jihadists.
Former Democrat turned independent Tulsi Gabbard represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021 in the United States House of Representatives. She was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Gabbard currently serves as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army Reserve where she commands a Civil Affairs Battalion.
Army Captain Larry L. Taylor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, enlisted June 1966 and served with the 1st Squadron, 4th Calvary Regiment, 1st Infantry Division in the Vietnam War. He flew over 2,000 combat missions in UH-1 and Cobra helicopters, was engaged by enemy fire 340 times, and was forced down five times, according to the Army.
Taylor, 81, has received at least 50 combat decorations, including 43 Air Medals, a Bronze Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Silver Star.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden presented Taylor with the Medal of Honor. Unlike other events helmed by Biden where he has slipped into the background unnoticed, Biden’s premature exit from Taylor’s Medal of Honor ceremony has sparked significant outrage.
Prior to Biden bailing out early, Lt. Col. Ann Hughes detailed Taylor’s brave deeds near the village of Ap Go Cong, Vietnam, on the fateful evening of June 18, 1968.
‘Feat never before accomplished’
A four-man long-range patrol team that had found itself surrounded and vastly outnumbered by a Viet Cong force called for fire support. One of the four on the ground, then-Sgt. David Hill, told the Army Times, “We were in a Custer-like situation.” Then-1st Lt. Taylor heard the call and came powering over at the command of a light fire team comprising two Cobra helicopter gunships.
Upon arrival, Taylor “immediately requested illumination rounds and supporting artillery to assist with identifying the enemy positions,” even though the fulfillment of that order would make his aircraft similarly easier to see and target. Hazarding “intense enemy groundfire” and flying “at a perilously low altitude,” Taylor fed the enemy encircling the patrol team a constant stream of hot lead and rockets, and he did so for 45 minutes.
As all good things come to an end, Taylor’s team began running low on ammunition. However, the Americans below were not yet out of harm’s way. The Tennessean appealed to light to stop the encroaching darkness in its tracks. Hughes indicated that using his chopper’s searchlight, Taylor began performing fake strafing runs on the enemy, thereby distracting them from the patrol team.
Still, the patrol team was not out of the woods, and now Taylor was running low on fuel, the Rubicon ostensibly behind him. Taylor and his wingman cleared some additional space for the patrol, expending their remaining minigun rounds, then “directed the patrol team to move 100 yards towards the extraction point, where First Lieutenant Taylor, still under enemy fire, landed his helicopter and instructed the patrol team to climb aboard anywhere they could.”
Hughes stressed that an extraction by way of Cobra gunship was a “feat never before accomplished.” After all, the aircraft is a two-seater gunship designed for leaving bodies, not carrying them. Nevertheless, Taylor made it work. The patrol team managed to both perch on the rocket pods and skids and hold on long enough for Taylor to fly them to safety.
Biden indicated that when he told Taylor he would be receiving recognition for his acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty that night, the Army captain responded, “I thought you had to do something to receive the Medal of Honor.”
An unceremonious exit
Immediately after setting the Medal of Honor around Taylor’s neck and giving the tearful veteran a handshake, Biden abruptly bolted out of the East Room as if to beat the traffic. One reporter can be seen in the video of the ceremony impressed with a look of confusion at the sight of Biden hurrying out, and for good reason: the event was far from over.
Now alone, Taylor remained at his post, waiting for the closing benediction.
Biden abruptly walks out of the Medal of Honor ceremony, even before the closing benediction pic.twitter.com/Ck0i8EIf8Q
The Daily Mail indicated that some have suggested Biden was attempting to give Taylor the spotlight; however, many have slammed the 80-year-old Democrat for what they figure was a gross lack of respect.
Former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan wrote on X, “Pardon my French… But what a f***ing idiot. The continuous lack of respect Biden has for anyone is appalling. Hawaii, Service members, active shooter victims, the list goes on.”
Ret. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Patterson suggested, “Democrat disconnect with the American military continues. He doesn’t give a s*** and can’t wait to nap.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), an Army veteran who also flew choppers, wrote, “At least he didn’t check his watch this time.”
Hunt appears to be referencing the 2021 incident where Biden repeatedly looked at his watch during a solemn ceremony for the 13 U.S. troops killed amid his botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
Conservative radio host Jason Rantz slammed Biden’s early exit, calling it “absolutely disgusting.”
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The Gateway Pundit is broadcasting the LIVE telethon to help fund the legal fees of the MI GOP electors who’ve been wrongfully charged with EIGHT felonies each for the crime of casting an ALTERNATE slate of electoral votes for President Trump in 2020.
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.
Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.
As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.”
However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.
Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.
The Emails
The never-before-seen emails provided late last week by the Department of Justice to the Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project director, Mike Howell, in response to a court order, included an email thread revealing how the Times story landed in Weiss’s lap.
“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.
The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.
Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.
Given the sweetheart deal Weiss’s top Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf later tried to gift to Hunter Biden, this latest revelation raises the question of whether (and, if so, when) Weiss’s staff informed him of the CHS’s reporting that Burisma paid $5 million each in bribes to both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
These questions are now more important than ever because the just-released emails show Weiss’s staff sharing with him The New York Times’ false reporting that portrayed evidence coming from the Pittsburgh FBI office as sourced solely to Rudy Giuliani. But that’s not true — not by a long shot. At a minimum, Wolf and others in the Delaware office knew that — but Weiss might not have.
The Background
As The Federalist previously reported, contrary to the Times’ reporting, in the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr directed the Western District of Pennsylvania to serve as an intake office for any evidence related to Ukraine. U.S. Attorney Scott Brady was then charged with screening the evidence to ensure disinformation did not reach the other offices handling investigations related to Hunter Biden or Ukraine.
While some of the evidence Brady’s team screened came from Giuliani, agents also independently discovered a separate line of intel originating from a “highly credible” CHS who had worked under the Obama administration. Agents interviewed that CHS in late June 2020 and memorialized the CHS’s reporting in an FD-1023 form.
Americans would later learn the contents of that FD-1023 when a whistleblower informed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office of its existence. Then, after FBI Director Christopher Wray dragged his feet in responding to congressional inquiries, Grassley released a minimally redacted copy of the unclassified document to the public.
The unredacted portions of the FD-1023 confirmed Giuliani had nothing to do with the sourcing of the intel. On the contrary, according to the form, the longtime CHS had personally conversed with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and the company’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii.
The FD-1023 memorialized explosive reporting from the CHS, including the following:
Pojarskii claimed Hunter Biden was paid to serve on Burisma’s board of directors to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma, but Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had been coerced to pay bribes of $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Zlochevsky expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory, but then told the CHS that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had 17 recordings of the Bidens but had never paid Joe Biden directly.
The “Big Guy” moniker was used to refer to Joe Biden — a significant detail because the CHS interview predated the public release of material contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop, including information that established the “Big Guy” was one of Joe Biden’s nicknames.
Burisma discussed purchasing a U.S.-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million.
When news first broke of the FD-1023 and its damning indictment of the Bidens, Democrats and their paramours in the press tried to bury the story with a one-two punch. First, they framed the evidence as originating from Giuliani and part of a foreign disinformation operation. Grassley’s release of the actual FD-1023 destroyed that narrative.
Second, they falsely represented to the American public that Brady had already investigated the FD-1023 and closed the investigation as meritless. But as The Federalist first reported, that claim was blatantly false.
“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist after Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin falsely claimed that “the former attorney general and his ‘handpicked prosecutor’ had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe.”
“On the contrary,” Barr told The Federalist, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
More Questions
Now we reach the crux of the matter: Who in Delaware knew of the FD-1023’s existence, its sourcing to a “highly credible confidential human source,” and that, as The Federalist previously reported, several details contained in the FD-1023 had already been corroborated prior to the handoff to Delaware? The Pittsburgh office had briefed the Delaware office on the document and its conclusion that it “bore indicia of credibility.”
A source familiar with the Pittsburgh brief of the Delaware office confirmed to The Federalist that in addition to agents from the Pittsburgh and Baltimore FBI field offices, Lesley Wolf attended the briefing on the FD-1023 and was informed of those details. Weiss, however, was not present for the briefing. Nor, as we previously learned, were the IRS agents-turned-whistleblowers included in the briefing.
The Federalist has also learned from a source with knowledge of the matter that the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office kept the Hunter Biden laptop secret from the Pennsylvania-based U.S. attorney’s office, which surely limited the investigators’ ability to assess the credibility of the evidence it was screening for disinformation.
Nonetheless, through its independent investigation of the CHS’s reporting, Pittsburgh corroborated several details of the FD-1023 and briefed Wolf on those details, telling her they believed the CHS’s information warranted further investigation.
But did Wolf tell that to Weiss? Did anyone tell that to Weiss? Or did Weiss’s team, after sharing The New York Times’ false narrative that Brady was on a political witch hunt of the Bidens and demanding an investigation into Giuliani disinformation, remain mum? Or did Weiss know about the FD-1023 and do nothing?
The emails don’t answer those questions, but they do confirm that Weiss and his top deputies were fed the Times story. Which leads to a final question: Which FBI agent(s) fed the Times the lies?
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.
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.
President Joe Biden’s White House has comprised a war room of attorneys, legislative aides and communications staffers to combat a possible Republican impeachment inquiry into the president’s alleged influence peddling, NBC News reported.
Talk of the House beginning an impeachment inquiry has picked up after committees’ investigations have discovered alleged misconduct by then-Vice President Biden in his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The war room, which includes up to two dozen lawyers, has been taking shape for months in the White House counsel’s office, NBC News reported Friday. The news outlet said that the president’s aides and allies are preparing to push back vigorously, calling an impeachment inquiry an evidence-free partisan sham.
“Comparing this to past impeachments isn’t apples to apples or even apples to oranges; it’s apples to elephants,” a White House aide told NBC News. “Never in modern history has an impeachment been based on no evidence whatsoever.”
White House aides have spent the August recess researching GOP statements, and fine-tuning a message and a response team, a source told NBC News.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested Sunday that an impeachment inquiry of Biden was becoming more likely, calling it “a natural step forward” as Congress soon ends its summer break and House Republicans seek to expand their investigative powers.
“If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told Fox News Channel.
“That provides Congress the apex of legal power to get all the information they need.”
Biden’s team, hoping to make Republicans pay a political price for overreaching, have researched the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton to get guidance on how to mount an effective defense. Defense attorney Richard Sauber and Russ Anello, the former staff director of the House Oversight Committee, are members of the Biden White House’s war room, NBC News reported. Communications operative and presidential campaign veteran Ian Sams and the pro-Biden group Building Back Together’s former communications director Sharon Yang will be the team’s “public face,” NBC News reported. Incoming White House counsel Ed Siskel, who worked in the Obama-era White House counsel’s office, soon will be added.
Besides combatting the GOP, the war room’s aim also is to allow other administration officials to focus on governing without getting “bogged down in the minutia of ongoing investigations,” a White House aide told NBC News.
The Washington Post’s chief fact-checker Glenn Kessler took exception to several stories President Biden has repeatedly told about his life to connect with audiences in a piece Thursday. Kessler went through several recurring anecdotes that Biden has shared with crowds over the years and detailed how many of them were embellished or just plain not true. He declared, “But throughout his career… Biden’s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life led to doubts about his truthfulness.”
Kessler analyzed Biden’s recent recounting of a past fire at his house almost destroying his Corvette, anecdotes about being him arrested for standing up during the civil rights era, and a story about the circumstances that led him to be accepting of same-sex relationships. Kessler stated that each of these folksy stories from Biden are part of his “tradition of embellishing his personal tales in ways that cannot be verified or are directly refuted by contemporary accounts.”
President Biden was called out by the Washington Post fact-checker for several embellished stories he has told audiences over his career. (Getty Images)
The fact-checker began with Biden’s most recent exaggerated story. He wrote, “At least six times as president, mostly recently in comments to Hurricane Idalia victims Wednesday, Biden has exaggerated the extent of a fire that occurred at his house in 2004.” In those retellings, Kessler noted how Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, had claimed “a couple firefighters” almost died, how his 1967 Corvette was nearly destroyed, and that a “significant portion” of his house burned.
The fact-checker corrected the record, saying, “The contemporary news accounts in the Wilmington News Journal and The Associated Press are much less dramatic.” Citing the outlets, he added, “’Biden’s house on Barley Mill Road was reported hit by lightning at 8:16 a.m., emergency officials said,’ the News Journal reported. ‘There were no injuries and firefighters kept the fire contained to one room.’
“Cranston Heights Fire Co. Chief George Lamborn told the newspaper the flames did not spread from the kitchen. ‘Luckily, we got it pretty early. The fire was under control in 20 minutes.’”
President Biden speaks after touring areas devastated by the Maui wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 21, 2023. (Evan Vucci)
Kessler then mentioned Biden’s oft-used anecdote about his conversation with an Amtrak conductor. He wrote, “At least 10 times as president, most recently during an Aug. 15 speech in Milwaukee, Biden has told a heartwarming but implausible story about an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri who congratulated him for traveling more on Amtrak than he had on Air Force planes as vice president.”
As Biden has told the story, Negri congratulated the then-vice president for traveling 2 million miles on Amtrak trains, almost double the amount he has traveled on Air Force One. Kessler corrected this, saying, “But it’s not possible this conversation took place as Biden describes… Biden did not pass the 1.2 million-mile mark until 2016; Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993, 16 years before Biden became vice president. Negri died in 2014, two years before Biden claims they had this conversation.”
The fact-checker also poked holes in one of Biden’s go-to gay rights stories. Kessler stated, “Three times this year — and at least seven times since 2014 — Biden has told a version, most recently on Aug. 10, of a story about words his father supposedly spoke after a teenage Biden saw two well-dressed men in suits kiss each other in downtown Wilmington in the early 1960s.”
However, the author noted, “Biden depicts a scene that would have been unusual six decades ago. He describes this exchange with his father usually as taking place in 1961. But back then, gay men generally did not kiss in public. Many people regarded homosexuality as deviant.”
“Moreover,” Kessler added, “Biden’s story has evolved over time. In 2014, in a New York Times article on his evolution on same-sex marriage, he was the father in the story, speaking to one of his sons.”
The journalist threw cold water on Biden’s civil rights stories as well. He reported, “Biden had a tangential role in the civil rights movement — The Fact Checker determined that he participated in one walkout at a restaurant and picketed a segregated movie theater — and yet sometimes he has suggested he was arrested for advocating on behalf of Black people.”
President Biden speaks during an event to mark Amtrak’s 50th anniversary at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia on April 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Kessler mentioned Biden’s claim that “he was arrested for standing on the porch with a Black couple who were subject to demonstrations” and stated, “But when we investigated, the story did not add up. There was a protest of a Black couple who had purchased a house in an all-White area, but it was a neighborhood many miles from the Biden home.”
The fact-checker also noted that Biden’s assertion that he was arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela “was false,” adding, “he amended his statement to say he was ‘stopped’ at the airport while traveling with a congressional delegation — though others on the delegation said that did not happen.”
Still, the White House championed Biden’s honesty. Deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates told the Post, “President Biden has brought honesty and integrity back to the Oval Office. Like he promised, he gives the American people the truth right from the shoulder and takes pride in being straight with the country about his agenda and his values; including by sharing life experiences that have shaped his outlook and that hard-working people relate to.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley warns: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris”, suggesting that re-electing the aged and addled president would almost certainly vault the vice president into the Oval Office within the next four years. The alarm from the GOP candidate is resonating; just about nobody wants Harris to be our next commander in chief. As Haley says, the very thought should “send a chill up every American’s spine.”
Joe Biden’s campaign is taking heed, prompting the White House to roll our yet another effort to reboot Harris’ “image” – by some counts the third such initiative in the past two years.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Coppin State University in Baltimore on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Vice President Harris, for the Biden White House, is both a blessing and a curse. Without Harris in the wings, the president would have faced even louder encouragement to step aside, inspired by his dismal approval ratings, alleged corruption and declining acuity. Some 44% of Democrats do not want Joe to run again, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. But Democrats are wary; if Biden steps out of the race, Harris, who has even worse favorability than the president, steps in. In that same poll, only 13% of her party wishes her to be the candidate.
On the other hand, if more GOP contenders begin to echo Haley, Americans might think twice about voting for doddering Joe.
The White House needs to pump up Kamala Harris… fast. It’s not as though they haven’t tried. Earlier in the administration they even started calling the Second Gentleman Douglas instead of Doug, to make him appear a more serious and appropriate spouse for a woman best known for breaking into hysterical laughter at the oddest moments. True story.
Mostly the makeovers have teetered on assigning Harris to new roles, hoping she might finally get traction. On her initial briefs – acting as U.S. border czar and the point person on overhauling voting rights, she fell flat. Her response to being asked if she would visit the border early on was to break into giggles, a telling moment that, given the gravity of the border crisis, should disqualify Harris from higher office.
Naturally, any redo starts with the help of the liberal media. Predictably, here comes a slew of puffy articles about the vice president. Politico recently ran this intriguing headline: “Why Kamala Harris is a Better VP than You Think.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Investing in America tour at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
It is worth a read. Houdini’s famous contortions pale next to author Julia Azari’s attempts to explain Harris’ face plant in office. In desperation, the political science professor points out that one possible VP role is to speak up for underrepresented groups, but then has to acknowledge that even black people don’t much like Harris.
Azari dismisses criticisms of Harris’ infamous “word salads” (because, you know, George W. Bush also spoke poorly) and her inability to retain staff (women of color have it tougher) but fails to make the case that Harris is a success. In desperation, she closes with, “In the final analysis, her political difficulties, and their causes, are nebulous and hard to pin down. Kind of like the vice presidency itself.”
The New York Times chimes in, writing recently “Kamala Harris Takes on a Forceful New Role in the 2024 Campaign.” The reporter begins: “The vice president is trying to reclaim the momentum that propelled her to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s side as a candidate and into the White House in 2020.”
What is he talking about? Harris flopped as a presidential hopeful early in the 2020 election cycle; a few months before she dropped out, a Quinnipiac poll showed her winning the votes of only 7% of Democrats and only 1% of the black vote. Her career was hanging by threads when Biden narrowed his V.P. choices by promising to tap a woman of color. The list of possible recruits was short; only Harris had any national name recognition.
In a November 2019 piece about the implosion of Harris’ run, the Times reported that Harris “proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.” Also: “there is only one candidate who rocketed to the top tier and then plummeted in early state polls to the low single digits: Ms. Harris.”
Now the Times is extolling her expanding presence on the campaign trail, lauding her attacks on GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis and confronting “rising extremism in the Republican Party…” In particular, Harris slammed the Florida governor’s African American history curriculum, which she claims (along with other civil rights activists) portrays slavery as in some instances beneficial. As William Allen, one of several black authors of the disputed material has argued, the reference is historically accurate and is one line in 216 pages.
In other words, Harris is, characteristically, spewing dishonest talking points instead of engaging in thoughtful or serious debate.
What the Times fails to mention, is that Harris is more visible on the campaign trail mainly because she’s filling a void. Joe Biden has done little campaigning, for good reason. Almost any time he steps to a microphone, his aids steel themselves for the inevitable goof – not knowing where he is, getting facts and dates wrong, or wandering lost from the podium. These are not Republican talking points; these are signs that Biden should not run again.
Kamala Harris is not a failed VP because the tasks are too tough or because she hasn’t been allowed a long leash – excuses the liberal press toss out to explain her abysmal ratings. She has failed because she is not a serious person and did not deserve such an important role. Joe Biden described her as a “work in progress” early in their joint administration; sadly for both, there has not been much progress.
When Americans vote next fall they should heed Haley’s warning; voting for Joe Biden could make Kamala Harris president, an outcome too dire to contemplate.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
Former Deputy National Security Adviser KT McFarland told Newsmax on Wednesday that if House Republicans began impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, it could give Democrats the political cover they need to select a new nominee for 2024.
“Maybe what happens is, as they look into what he [Biden] said [in emails using a pseudonym] — and impeachment allows you to look at a lot of corners that otherwise Congress and congressional committees couldn’t look into — what if they start finding stuff?” McFarland said on Newsmax’s“Wake Up America.” “And then you marry that up with Joe Biden, who’s clearly declining very rapidly mentally and physically, that gives the Democrats every excuse they need to jettison Joe Biden.”
The National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday acknowledged its possession of approximately 5,400 emails that contain pseudonyms that Biden was known to use during his time as vice president. The agency’s confirmation of the existence of the records came in response to a June 2022 Freedom of Information Act request by the Southeastern Legal Foundation. The nonprofit constitutional legal group requested emails relating to the accounts of Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware — pseudonyms Joe Biden was known to use in the Obama White House.
“The reason Joe Biden wants to cling onto this [the presidency], and, obviously, he likes the perks of office, but all the people underneath him — all the advisers, the Cabinet officers – they want to keep Joe Biden in place because they’re running the show,” McFarland said.
“If [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom, somebody else, gets the nomination, somebody else, some other Democrat, gets elected, these guys are out of a job. So that’s why they’re pushing to keep Biden in as long as he’s got a pulse.”
Commenting on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s exchange with CNN host Jake Tapper, in which Tapper was pressing Jean-Pierre about Biden’s age and stamina, McFarland said, “I think they’re [CNN] reading the tea leaves.”
“I think they’re looking at Joe Biden and saying he’s vulnerable, he’s weak, he’s aging very quickly, and so, if somebody’s going to make a move, they’ve got to start making a move now,” she said. “I think CNN, all the other mainstream media, they’re going to start hedging their bets.”
A new Siena Research poll shows less than half of New York Democrats want their party to nominate Biden as their 2024 presidential candidate. Just 47% said the party should pick Biden, versus 46% who said the Democratic Party should pick someone else. The remaining 7% were unsure.
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
The corporate media’s reaction, or lack thereof, to ex-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s Fox News interview this weekend is the latest proof that no amount of Biden corruption evidence or corroboration will deter the propaganda press from protecting their preferred political candidate.
Shokin, the man tasked with investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma, admitted that he believes then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, who was paid tens of thousands of dollars every month to sit on the company’s board, were bribed in exchange for his firing.
“Do you believe that Joe Biden or Hunter Biden got bribes?” asked “One Nation” host Brian Kilmeade.
“I do not want to deal in unproven facts, but my personal conviction is that yes, this was the case,” Shokin said, through a translator. “They were being bribed. The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing, isn’t that alone a case of corruption?”
QUESTION: " Do you believe that Joe Biden or Hunter Biden got bribes?"
"My firm personal conviction is that, yes, this was the case. They were being bribed." – Former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin. pic.twitter.com/VdbGn714RV
Shokin maintains that if his team was allowed to finish out the Burisma probe, “we would have found the facts about the corrupt activities that they were engaging in, that included both Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and others.”
“The founder and CEO of Burisma started bringing in people who could provide protection for him. Hunter Biden was among them and the corruption network expanded as a result,” Shokin explained. “So yes, to answer your question, there was no doubt in my mind that Burisma was engaged in illegal activities.”
Shokin concluded the interview by mentioning that several attempts on his life have already been made.
A cursory internet search shows corporate media largely ignored Shokin’s further confirmation of the Bidens’ Burisma corruption. The handful of outlets that did mention the interview focused more on discrediting Shokin than heeding his testimony.
“The fired Ukrainian prosecutor is not a reliable narrator,” The Washington Post alleged.
Anyone who suggests otherwise, the author notes, is siding with Republicans who “have spent years suggesting that Biden’s motives were actually the opposite — that this was an effort to insulate Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that his son Hunter Biden worked for, from an investigation by Shokin.”
The article claimed that evidence that the elder Biden fired Shokin to protect Burisma “remains meager.” That is a lie.
Contrary to years of denials and lies from the propaganda press, there is “overwhelming evidence” — even without Shokin’s corroboration — that Biden leveraged his authority in the Obama administration to orchestrate Shokin’s removal to benefit the company his son was being paid by.
Biden business associate Devon Archer told Congress earlier this month that Burisma heads expressed their desire for Shokin to be fired.
The FD-1023 form that the FBI desperately tried to conceal from Republican investigators also contained testimony suggesting the Burisma chief coordinated with the Bidens to kill Shokin’s investigation. The “highly credible” confidential human source who gathered the information for the form reported that Burisma chief Mykola Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings, including two of Joe Biden, that prove he “was somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
Biden himself even bragged in 2018 about threatening to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loans from Petro Poroshenko, the then-president of Ukraine, unless Shokin was canned. That pressure came shortly after Biden gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada explicitly calling for the end of corruption, the excuse he and American corporate media would use for urging Shokin’s firing.
When his interview with Shokin aired, Kilmeade said “that Viktor Shokin told him in the interview that no one had asked him for an interview despite his central role in the alleged Biden corruption scandal.” Corporate media outlets aren’t interested in hearing Shokin’s testimony because his claims run counter to the Biden coverup they’re spinning.
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.
Until now, Democrat politicians mostly haven’t been willing to criticize the Biden White House on the border security issue, or even suggest that the Biden administration originated the crisis. Pictured: Protesters rally in opposition to a proposed tent shelter for asylum-seekers July 29 on the campus of the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in New York City’s Queens borough. (Photo: Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images)
Republican border-state strategy to send illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities and states is paying off. On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to President Joe Biden begging for federal aid. Importantly, she finally acknowledged where the problem is coming from.
“This is a financial burden the city and state are shouldering on behalf of the federal government,” Hochul, a fellow Democrat, said of the illegal immigrants pouring into New York.
“I cannot ask New Yorkers to pay for what is fundamentally a federal responsibility,” the governor wrote. “And I urge the federal government to take prompt and significant action today to meet its obligation to New York State.”
In a press conference following release of the letter, Hochul further complained about illegal immigrants released into the country by the Biden administration.
NY Gov. Hochul complains the state has "shouldered the burden" of processed and released migrants coming from the southern border for "far too long," pointing to the billions of dollars they have spent to take care of the daily arrivals. pic.twitter.com/KUBSHwtKtM
This is an interesting pivot from the New York governor. Until now, Democrat politicians mostly have been unwilling to criticize the White House in any way on the border security issue, or even suggest that the Biden administration is where the problem originates. If you want to know the reason for the sudden pivot, a new poll sheds light. The Siena College poll released Tuesday shows that New Yorkers are deeply discontented about the surge of illegal immigrants in their state and mostly blame Democrat leaders.
“New Yorkers—including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters—overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said.
Now, this may seem meaningless in the sense that New York is unlikely to become a red state any time soon. But keep in mind that the crime issue didn’t just swing seats from Democrat to Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, it likely also gave the GOP overall control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Discontent over lawless Democrat policies is much worse now, and New York voters are heaping the blame on Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and, most of all, Biden.
Open borders and the idea that all immigration—whether legal or illegal—is a positive good is a matter of faith for Democrat Party activists. That’s less likely to be true with rank-and-file voters and independents.
“There is no question in my mind that the politics of this is a disaster to Democrats,” said Howard Wolfson, a former deputy and political adviser to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with The New York Times.
“This issue alone has the potential to cost Democrats the House, because it is such a huge issue in New York City and the coverage of it is clearly heard and seen by voters in all of these swing districts in the suburbs,” Wolfson said.
He described the issue as a “ticking time bomb” for Democrats.
Since Biden entered the White House in January 2021, a historic stream of illegal immigrants has poured across the U.S. southern border. This has had catastrophic consequences for many swamped communities in Texas and Arizona especially. They’ve shouldered the burden of the border crisis for years, so it’s a little rich for New York to be throwing a pity party.
It obviously would be better if the federal government was doing its job and enforcing our laws, but until that time there’s little border states can do to “fix” the situation. All they can do is mitigate the damage. The Biden administration has done all it can to make sure that the border remains nice and open, er, “secure.”
The administration’s actions have made it clear that Biden and his top officials want to flood the country with illegal immigrants.
This is completely insane.
Biden's DOJ is suing @elonmusk's SpaceX because they only hired American citizens instead of refugees and asylum seekers and wants to force them to give full back pay to non-citizens that they choose to not hire. pic.twitter.com/IzB3GVj252
Instead of carrying the entire burden of the Biden-led border disaster, Republican governors such as Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Doug Ducey in Arizona decided to ship illegal immigrants to places such as Chicago, New York, the District of Columbia, and, most amusingly, Martha’s Vineyard. This is hardly ideal. But if the federal government is going to foist open borders on the country, why not at least force the people who voted for this nonsense to pay more of the price for it?
Of course, Democrats in those destinations pointed fingers at the Republican governors for their newfound troubles, and some left-wing political commentators tried to say that shipping illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a posh, liberal vacation destination—was akin to Nazism.
Biden’s trusty allies in the legacy media have done all they can to “contextualize” the immigration issue to protect the president from criticism. However, much like with the crime surge, it’s hard to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people forever when they literally see the consequences of bad policies in their neighborhoods. Thanks to Biden, the bill for once low-cost, sanctuary-city virtue signaling has come due.
I suggest that if Democrat politicians want federal aid to care for illegal immigrants, they should demand that the White House work to restore the policies of the previous administration and actually attempt to get control of the border. The excuses have run out, the border crisis has become a national crisis, and blame for this mess falls on the “big guy” in the Oval Office.
Democrats’ demands for more money should be met with a resounding “no” until the actual problem is fixed at its source.
NBC News’ David Ingram performed a forensic investigation yesterday into claims that Joe Biden had fallen asleep during a ceremony honoring victims of the devastating forest fires in Hawaii. The president, who had finally mustered up the strength to fly out to the state between vacation days, may or may not have taken a quick nap during one of the speeches — a completely plausiblescenario considering Biden struggles to step over sandbags and string together consecutive coherent sentences. The president is an octogenarian.
In any event, Ingram took the time to ask Twitter to comment on the problems of conservative misinformation on its site. Ingram also allowed White House spokesman Andrew Bates to relay his thoughts on the matter (“It’s unfortunate they feel the need to lie. Instead, they should join him in supporting the people of Maui.”) Yet, it never occurred to him, apparently, to ask anyone why the president of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, told a crowd of mourning constituents that he knew what it felt like to “lose a home” due to a small kitchen fire in his Delaware home back in 2004 that nearly took the life of his microwave.
One might be tempted to blame the president’s mythologizing on his mental decline, but this is not new. Though most politicians idealize or romanticize their past, it is unlikely that there has ever been a bigger fabulist in presidential historythan Biden. Let’s again recall that this is a person who, during a presidential campaign, felt comfortable appropriating a stranger’s hard-boiled, mine-digging, poetry-reading life in Wales. And Joe didn’t merely steal Neil Kinnock’s words, as reporter Maureen Dowd noted in 1987, he copied the story “with phrases, gestures and lyrical Welsh syntax intact.” One might call that sociopathic behavior.
Certainly, Biden’s mendaciousness is abnormal even by the low standards we typically use to judge politicians. I mean, it takes a spectacular shamelessness for a man who began his political career sucking up to segregationists — even lying about getting awards from George Wallace — to retroactively place himself repeatedly at the center of the civil rights movement. Still, you might be able to rationalize those lies. Biden has never held any political principles. He’s willing to take any position that helps him hold power. And he has. But there is something quite demented about a person inventing misfortune or using real heartbreak to make himself the center of a story. Joe Biden does this regularly.
Until very recently, he’s been telling Americans that his deceased son Beau died in Iraq even though he passed from glioblastoma six years after returning home — really, an act of stolen valor by the president. After 13 service members were killed in Afghanistan, largely due to his administration’s incompetence, Biden visited the mother of Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola. “When Joe Biden, our elected president, entered the room, when he approached me,” Gold Star mother Cheryl Rex recently testified, “his words to me were, ‘My wife Jill and I know how you feel. We lost our son as well and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin.’” This story rings true because Biden has told much the same tale in public for years.
Recall also that Biden tragically lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972, which he also mentioned in Hawaii. But Biden has claimed or implied on numerous occasions that the driver of the truck that killed his family members was drunk — “drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch” – when there was no evidence that the man was intoxicated, much less did anything wrong. Biden made it up.
There has been a long-standing myth of Biden as Middle Class Joe. The guy with a $2.7 million beach house who lays out some $20,000 monthly for rent on that third home in McLean, Virginia. You know the type.
Most pre-election pieces on Biden also portrayed him as a man of deep empathy, religiosity, decency — an antidote for the egotism and cruelty of Donald Trump. This too was a mythology. “Empathy is the quality of putting yourself in the place of another, understanding how they are experiencing the world, identifying with their feelings, and being able to communicate that understanding to them,” explained Peter Wehner in a 2020 Atlantic hagiography headlined “Biden May Be Just the Person America Needs.” The endless need to inject yourself into everyone else’s tragedies — often with lies — isn’t empathy, it is narcissism.
Biden has delivered something like 60 eulogies in his professional life, an “emissary of grief,” according to The New York Times. I would bet that the president has injected his own life story into many, if not most, of them in one way or another. Maybe Barack Obama was a political creation, and maybe he’s wrong about everything, but I simply can’t imagine hearing him use a family tragedy for political gain. Donald Trump has a preternatural ego, but I don’t recall him doing it either. And yet, instead of dealing with this kind of perverse and unprecedented lying, the media was busy “fact-checking” whether Biden really fell asleep at an event.
The need for more public scrutiny of the Justice Department’s improper handling of the Hunter Biden case was already high following whistleblower revelations, the collapse of the sweetheart plea deal, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as “special counsel.” Now, the Biden legal team has apparently released a trove of its emailswith prosecutors to friendly press. These new revelations about Justice Department collusion with Biden family lawyers make it clear the two sides acted essentially as allies to kill the case, and it almost worked.
It is now more important than ever that Congress get serious about obtaining answers from the DOJ. Our client, IRS supervisor Gary Shapley, and IRS case agent Joe Ziegler both blew the whistle to Congress regarding five years’ worth of political favoritism, pulling punches, and conflicts of interest in the Biden case on Weiss’s watch. Since then, they’ve been threatened, retaliated against, and removed from the case.
U.S. Attorney Weiss was obviously the wrong choice for special counsel because IRS whistleblowers had already credibly alleged that his own office and he himself had given Biden preferential treatment and provided misleading information to Congress. With his appointment as special counsel, many across the political spectrum (including perhaps Garland) seemed to think that move somehow insulated the Justice Department from congressional questioning about the growing controversy. But it shouldn’t.
Nothing in the Constitution grants prosecutors or “special” or “independent” counsels immunity from congressional oversight — especially in this unprecedented situation where the special counsel himself is alleged to have committed wrongdoing. No matter how many insiders in the modern D.C. establishment assume otherwise, that does not make it true. Prosecutors wield immense power, and there must be a check against the abuse and selective use of that power.
Just because Congress chooses to defer to the Justice Department’s “ongoing criminal inquiry” excuse on some oversight inquiries does not mean it always must, or that the objection is based on any constitutional limit to the congressional power to investigate. Congress has frequently made the opposite judgment and successfully obtained information about ongoing criminal cases when needed for its oversight function.
In our previous combined 30-year careers on Capitol Hill, we personally led congressional probes related to ongoing law enforcement matters, including the Anthrax attacks, Operation Fast and Furious, Secret Service scandals, the Clinton email server, the Parkland school shooting, the Trump-Russia allegations, and many more. We have conducted transcribed interviews of officials from line attorneys and line agents up to the deputy attorney general. We obtained sensitive law enforcement information about ongoing matters in official briefings from senior officials, including the then-FBI director, as well as lawfully from executive branch whistleblowers without the knowledge or consent of their agency management.
And that’s just our personal experience. There’s also a long, well-documented history of extensive federal law enforcement oversight by Congress, even in ongoing cases. So it is simply uninformed and untrue to claim that constitutional oversight interest must yield to ongoing criminal matters. The truth is quite the opposite — especially when government misconduct is involved.
The Justice Department doesn’t even believe its own rhetoric on the sanctity of information about ongoing criminal cases. Its senior officials routinely leak information about ongoing cases to friendly media outlets with no consequence whenever it suits them — as they no doubt have done in this case. The same officials simultaneously and hypocritically claim they must stiff-arm legitimate congressional oversight to preserve the “integrity” of pending criminal matters. In reality, more forceful congressional oversight is exactly what’s needed to restore public faith in the integrity of how the DOJ handles high-profile criminal cases.
The appointment of Weiss and the controversies that led to it raise serious questions about Justice Department misconduct, and those questions need not be sidelined indefinitely in deference to the very process in need of scrutiny right now.
An Inadequate Regulatory Solution
The current “special counsel” designation is rooted in Justice Department regulations adopted under Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999 after Congress allowed the old “independent counsel” statute to lapse. That law had fueled sprawling inquiries from Iran-Contra to Whitewater by prosecutors overseen by a court rather than by the attorney general. Although that law ensured more independence than the current regulations, it led to excesses that eventually generated bipartisan opposition to renewing the statute.
The DOJ recognized conflicts of interest would still arise and threaten public confidence in its integrity. The special counsel regulations were meant to address that problem. However, attorneys general have only selectively followed portions of the regulations, choosing to ignore certain provisions when it suits them because there is no enforcement mechanism. For example, by appointing the current U.S. attorney from Delaware who has already been handling this case for five years, Garland chose to ignore the portion of the regulations that would require a special counsel be someone from outside the government. In light of the whistleblower testimony and the failed plea deal, that decision undermines public confidence in the inquiry rather than enhancing it.
Without any binding force of law, this type of special counsel status isn’t actually all that special. The named prosecutor actually just exercises the attorney general’s own statutory authority as delegated and described in the appointment order. Since Congress defines the scope of the attorney general’s statutory authority, it has every right to investigate how that authority is being used and whether the DOJ’s procedures are effective in preventing conflicts of interest.
Spoiler alert: They aren’t.
Studying whether to resurrect some form of the independent counsel statute or impose some portions of the special counsel regulations as a statutory requirement would be more than enough of a legislative purpose to justify enforcing subpoenas to the Delaware prosecutors. Add to that evidence of misleading testimony and letters to Congress about the scope of Weiss’s authority, and the case for compelled testimony and document production is already very strong — even without any formal impeachment inquiry into the officials involved.
Statutes Recognize Congressional Access
To hear some people talk, you’d think Congress must inevitably yield to the interests of any criminal inquiry and defer to any prosecutor’s discretionary whim with no public accountability. This is the unstated assumption of those who eagerly embrace lawfare against domestic political opponents through the criminal process. It is uncritically adopted too often by people who should know better.
The law recognizes, however, that insulating ongoing criminal cases from public scrutiny by elected officials is not the prime goal of government. The presidential pardon power is the ultimate example of this principle, but it can also be seen in several statutory provisions that recognize: The congressional need for information to fulfill its constitutional duties can trump the interests of preserving a criminal case.
As Iran-Contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh noted:
The legislative branch has the power to decide whether it is more important perhaps to destroy a prosecution than to hold back testimony they need. They make that decision. It is not a judicial decision, or a legal decision, but a political decision of the highest importance.
He should know. Oliver North’s famously immunized testimony before Congress eventually led to Walsh’s conviction of North being overturned on appeal.
The statutory procedure for Congress to obtain an order granting immunity for witness testimony is set out at 18 U.S.C. § 6005 and implicitly anticipates sharing information about ongoing criminal matters with Congress. The law requires that the attorney general receive 10 days prior notice of the request and allows a delay of up to 20 days, but it does not allow the attorney general to block the order. The notice and delay period merely enable consultation, during which the attorney general would presumably need to share information about any ongoing criminal inquiry if there were any hope of persuading Congress to abandon its plan to immunize the witness.
Similarly, statutes like 26 U.S.C. § 6103(f)(5) (“Disclosure by whistleblower”) explicitly authorize protected disclosures of otherwise confidential tax return information to certain committees of Congress without regard to whether it’s related to an ongoing criminal inquiry. If not for this provision, Congress may never have learned about improprieties in the Hunter Biden case reported by the IRS whistleblowers. Whistleblower statutes such as 5 U.S.C. § 2302 and § 2303 also protect disclosures to Congress by law enforcement personnel at other agencies, including the FBI.
A Long History of Precedents
Congress has many times obtained testimony and documents from prosecutors involved in active probes, including deliberative prosecutorial memoranda. Below are just a handful of the dozens from the past century.
Palmer Raids: In 1920 and 1921, Congress investigated Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s raids on suspected communists, and Palmer testified in public House and Senate hearings regarding deportation cases open on appeal.
Teapot Dome: The next year, Congress opened investigations into the Teapot Dome scandal. After Congress investigated for approximately a year and a half suspicious financial transactions surrounding the Interior Department’s disposition of oil and gas leases, it eventually became clear that an equally big problem was the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute wrongdoers.
When Congress began discussing the need for a special counsel to take prosecutions out of the hands of the Justice Department, President Calvin Coolidge attempted to get ahead of the issue by indicating on Jan. 27, 1924, his intent to nominate two such special counsels (a Republican and a Democrat). Congress adopted a joint resolution requiring that the president appoint the special counsels — subject to confirmation by the Senate. After rejecting the first two nominees, the Senate confirmed two others in mid-February 1924.
Congress did not wait for the newly confirmed counsels to finish their work. On March 1, 1924, the Senate established its own select committee to investigate the same prosecutorial decisions for which the special counsel now had jurisdiction. Its goal was to probe the Justice Department’s prosecutorial decisions and find cases that could still be prosecuted. It interviewed dozens of Justice Department attorneys — including about open cases — and obtained investigative records and prosecutorial memoranda.
When Attorney General Harry Daugherty’s brother refused to testify on the grounds that he was a private citizen, the case rose to the Supreme Court. The 1927 decision in McGrain v. Daugherty “sustain[ed] the power of either house to conduct investigations and exact testimony from witnesses for legislative purposes.” In this case, it noted, “[T]he subject to be investigated was the administration of the Department of Justice — whether its functions were being properly discharged or were being neglected or misdirected, and particularly whether the Attorney General and his assistants were performing or neglecting their duties in respect of the institution and prosecution of proceedings to punish crimes and enforce appropriate remedies against the wrongdoers, specific instances of alleged neglect being recited.”
But what legislative purpose could come from investigating open cases? The court answered:
The functions of the Department of Justice, the powers and duties of the Attorney General, and the duties of his assistants are all subject to regulation by congressional legislation, and … the department is maintained and its activities are carried on under such appropriations as, in the judgment of Congress, are needed from year to year.
The Supreme Court also reaffirmed in this case Congress’s inherent power to punish witnesses who refused to provide testimony. The court noted in Daugherty:
The power of inquiry — with process to enforce it — is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function. … Mere requests for … information often are unavailing, and also that information which is volunteered is not always accurate or complete, so some means of compulsion are essential to obtain what is needed.
Two years later, another subject of the investigation, Harry Sinclair, argued before the Supreme Court that because the joint resolution signed into law on Feb. 8, 1924, gave a special counsel jurisdiction to investigate his affairs, Congress has ceded its own such jurisdiction to the courts. The court held in Sinclair v. United States: “Neither [the] Joint Resolution … nor the action taken under it operated to divest the Senate or the committee of power further to investigate. … The authority of that body, directly or through its committees, to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own constitutional power is not abridged because the information sought to be elicited may also be of use in [the prosecution of pending] suits.” The court upheld Sinclair’s punishment for contempt of Congress.
Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Department of Justice: In early 1952, the House established a select committee of the Judiciary Committee to investigate (among other things) the Justice Department’s failure to enforce federal tax fraud and bribery laws. Around the same time, the attorney general appointed a “Special Assistant to the Attorney General,” Newbold Morris, to investigate the same matters.
Morris was fired by the attorney general just 63 days later and thus did not testify before the subcommittee until a week after his removal. However, in its overall review of the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute cases, the subcommittee went on to interview a sitting assistant U.S. attorney and the appellate chief of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, as well as several members of a St. Louis grand jury.
Church Committee:In January 1975, revelations emerging from Watergate — that the executive branch has used intelligence agencies to conduct domestic operations — led to the Senate establishing a select committee that came to be known for its chairman, Sen. Frank Church. The 800-plus witnesses interviewed over the next year included a host of Justice Department officials, from the attorney general down to an assistant section chief at the FBI. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights also held hearings with sitting DOJ officials.
Billy Carter: In July 1980, the Senate established a select committee of its Judiciary Committee to investigate the relationship between President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy Carter, and the government of Libya, as well as whether the Justice Department had properly handled an investigation into that relationship and a decision to proceed civilly rather than with criminal prosecution.
The attorney general, the assistant attorney general over the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and three deputy assistant attorneys general all provided testimony to the subcommittee. The department also provided prosecutorial memoranda, correspondence with the defendant, and other investigative reports and interview summaries.
ABSCAM:In late-March 1982, the Senate established a select committee to study Justice Department domestic undercover operations. The committee conducted interviews of a host of department witnesses, including line-level attorneys on Brooklyn’s Organized Crime Strike Force.
Recognizing that their preferences had to bow to constitutional oversight realities, Justice officials wrote to the select committee on July 15, 1982: “[T]he Department does not normally permit Strike Force attorneys to testify before congressional committees. … [W]e have traditionally resisted questioning of this kind because it tends to inhibit prosecutors from proceeding through their normal tasks free from the fear that they may be second-guessed, with the benefit of hindsight, long after they take actions and make difficult judgments in the course of their duties.”
In a statement that applies to all investigative interviews, the DOJ added that it would produce line-level attorneys “because of their value to you as fact witnesses and because you have assured us that they will be asked to testify solely as to matters of fact within their personal knowledge and not conclusions or matters of policy.” The department also produced more than 20,000 pages of documents, including prosecutorial memoranda. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights conducted a similar investigation, also receiving access to confidential DOJ documents.
E.F. Hutton: In 1985 and 1986, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime investigated the Justice Department’s conclusion of a plea agreement with stock brokerage firm E.F. Hutton. Hutton pleaded guilty to 2,000 counts of felony mail and wire fraud in May 1985, yet the department immunized a number of witnesses and ultimately charged none, instead simply requiring the payment of a $2 million fine and other conditions. The Justice Department produced a prosecutorial memorandum to the subcommittee.
Iran-Contra:On Jan. 6 and 7, 1987, the Senate and House, respectively, established select committees to investigate arms sales to Iran and the diversion of funds to Contras in Nicaragua. The two chambers then merged their investigations and hearings. The investigators had approximately 500 depositions and other interviews, from the attorney general down to the lowest-level Justice Department officials with knowledge of the case. Despite initial protests by the department that producing documents might prejudice pending or anticipated litigation by the independent counsel, the 1 million-plus pages of documents obtained by the committees included the documents they sought from the DOJ.
Ruby Ridge:In 1995, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information investigated the Justice Department’s conduct preceding and during the siege of Randall Weaver’s home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The subcommittee interviewed line witnesses and agents, the U.S. attorney for the District of Idaho, and other department officials.
Operation Fast and Furious:Beginning in 2011, we led Sen. Chuck Grassley’s investigation for the Senate Judiciary Committee into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Operation Fast and Furious, where the gunwalking of more than 2,000 firearms contributed to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. We interviewed line officials, the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, and the chain of command in ATF and into the Justice Department, all while the prosecutions and appeals of various individuals charged in the operation were ongoing.
Congress Must Act
Given all this history and our personal experience in congressional oversight of federal law enforcement, it is frustrating to see even some members of Congress uncritically assume that their authority ends where a criminal inquiry begins.
It does not.
While it is clearly not a prerequisite to obtaining Justice Department testimony or documents in pending matters, several of the investigations above began with the body voting to establish a select committee. The current House has the added advantage of having already empaneled the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and tasked it with looking into the expansive authority vested in the executive branch to investigate citizens of the United States, “including ongoing criminal investigations.” Surely an example like this where that expansive authority was not used against the president’s son in the same aggressive ways it has been used in others is worthy of investigation.
By providing hundreds of emails between the Biden camp and the Justice Department to friendly press outlets, either Hunter Biden’s legal team or the Justice Department has waived any claim of confidentiality. Congress should subpoena those communications immediately and let the public read them in full rather than relying on selected snippets chosen for curated narratives.
We aren’t suggesting that enforcing Congress’s constitutional right to information on pending criminal inquiries will be easy. It will take work and a shift in mindset away from relying on the executive branch or the courts to vindicate legislative branch oversight prerogatives. Congress must rely on its own constitutional powers — inherent contempt, the power of the purse, and impeachment — to be an effective check and balance on executive power once again.
Tristan Leavitt is the president of Empower Oversight. Jason Foster is the founder and chair of Empower Oversight.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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