Saturday, November 2, 2019

PELOSI'S OPEN BORDERS - FEDS BUST LA RAZA MEX METH OPERATION IN KANSAS - YOU THOUGHT THE CARTELS ONLY OPERATED IN LOS ANGELES?


Feds Bust Mexican Cartel’s Methamphetamine Running Cell in Kansas

Michoacan Beheading
Breitbart Texas / Cartel Chronicles
2:51

A yearlong investigation by U.S. authorities in Kansas led to the arrest of a methamphetamine distribution cell tied to Mexico’s Los Viagras faction of the Familia Michoacana Cartel. The cartel cell is considered to be part of the violent cartel’s drug distribution operation which also has cells in Washington State and Georgia.

Court documents filed at the federal court in Wichita Kansas revealed that for more than a year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Kansas City Police targeted 57-year-old Luis Martinez Carrango and 13 of his associates tied to the widespread distribution of methamphetamine throughout the Midwest. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, during a recent raid targeting the cartel cell, agents seized 220 pounds of methamphetamine in the Kansas City Metro Area.
While not revealed in court documents, Breitbart Texas consulted with U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sources to confirm that Luis Martinez’s cell is part of Los Viagras from Michoacán. Law enforcement sources identified him as the criminal organization’s main point of distribution in the area and a close associate of Cesar “El Boto or Marrueco” Sepulveda Arellano, one of the top leaders of Los Viagras in Michoacán.
As Breitbart Texas reported, the man known as El Boto is the same cartel boss who in August 2018 placed a $100,000 bounty on one of the writers of Breitbart Texas’s Cartel Chronicles Project, only to be arrested by Mexican Marines 40 hours later after authorities received information on his precise location at a house in the state of Morelos. Despite his arrest, El Boto’s cell within Los Viagras continues to operate in Michoacán producing and moving large quantities of methamphetamine into the U.S. At the same time, the entire cartel continues a fierce turf war with Mexico’s Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion over control of Michoacán’s shipping ports and drug production areas.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.     
Jose Luis Lara from Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project contributed to this report. 

MICHELLE OBAMA - SHE ON DRUGS? 'Many around the world feel Barack is their dictator'

Michelle Obama: ‘Many’ Around the World Feel Barack Is ‘Their President’ 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - OCTOBER 29: Former U.S. President Barack Obama gives his wife Michelle a kiss as they close the Obama Foundation Summit together on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology on October 29, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. The Summit is an annual event hosted by the Obama …
Scott Olson/Getty Images
1:27

Former first lady Michelle Obama said Tuesday that her husband, former President Barack Obama, could have built his presidential library anywhere in the world because many feel he is “their president.”

Obama, speaking at the Obama Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology, explained Chicago’s Jackson Park was selected as the site for the Obama Presidential Center because it was close to the couple’s former home and situated near her South Side childhood home.
“There’s power in the selection of Jackson Park,” the former first lady said. “Barack and I don’t do things incidentally. There’s a strategy.”
Obama then argued the library could have even been built outside of the United States.
“Barack’s presidential library could have been anywhere in the world, because there are so many people who feel like he is their president,” she stated.
“New York wanted it. Hawaii wants it. Because it’s also an economic engine,” she added.
Michelle Obama appeared at the fireside chat with her brother, Craig Robinson, and interviewed by The Warmth of Other Suns author Isabel Wilkerson.
In June, a federal judge ruled plans to build the $500 million presidential center on Chicago’s lakefront could move forward, dismissing advocacy group Protect Our Parks’s lawsuit objecting to the use of public park land.




Pollak: Barack Obama Wrote the Playbook on Political Division

 

JOEL B. POLLAK

Left-wing pundits have accused President Donald Trump of using his tweets last weekend to launch a divisive re-election campaign.

David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted: “With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realDonaldTrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party. It’s a cold, hard strategy.”
That is debatable — but if so, Axelrod should know; Obama did it first.
By 2011, Obama knew that re-election would be difficult. The Tea Party had just led the Republicans to a historic victory in the 2010 midterm elections, winning the House and nearly taking the Senate. The economy was only growing sluggishly, and Obama’s stimulus had failed to keep unemployment below eight percent, as projected. Moreover, the passage of Obamacare had provoked a backlash against Obama’s state-centered model of American society.
Facing a similar situation in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton had “triangulated,” moving back toward the middle, frustrating the GOP by taking up their issues, such as welfare reform.
But Obama rejected that approach. Having watched his icon, Chicago mayor Harold Washington, settle for an incremental approach when faced with opposition in the 1980s, only to die of a sudden heart attack before fulfilling his potential, Obama chose the path of hard-left policy — and divide-and-rule politics.
The first hint of his strategy emerged during the debt ceiling negotiations in the summer of August 2011. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book about the crisis, The Price of Politics, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had wanted to reach a “grand bargain” with the president on long-term spending cuts. But Obama blew up that agreement by demanding $400 billion in new taxes, to his aides’ surprise. Obama wanted an opponent, not a deal. (Last week, Boehner told Breitbart News Tonight that Obama’s decision was his worst disappointment in 35 years of politics.)
In the fall of 2011, a new left-wing movement, Occupy Wall Street, was launched. A mix of communists, anarchists, and digital pranksters, the Occupy movement cast American society as a struggle between the “99 percent” and the “one percent.”
Obama and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) embraced the movement — and failed to distance themselves from it even as it collapsed into violence, sexual assault, and confrontations with police.
Instead, Obama picked up on Occupy’s themes and used them to shape his campaign.
In December 2011, Obama gave a speech at Osawatomie, Kansas — a place steeped in radical symbolism — at which he doubled down on his left-wing policies. He focused on the issue of economic inequality, and attacked the idea that the free market could lift the middle class to prosperity. “This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare,” he insisted.
Then, in the spring of 2012, Obama made a controversial play on race. When a black teen, Trayvon Martin, was killed in Florida during a scuffle with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, Al Sharprton — who was serving as an informal adviser to Obama at the time — made the local crime story into a national racial controversy. Obama, following Sharpton’s lead, weighed in: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said at the time.
Poll numbers suggest that race relations, which had been improving, dropped precipitously after that. But to Obama, it was worth it: the campaign needed to find a way to motivate minority voters. (Vice President Joe Biden did his part, telling black voters that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was “gonna put y’all in chains.”)
Trump is pushing a non-racial, nationalist message. But if he actually wanted to divide America for political gain, he could learn from the master.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.



Heading for civil war



Donald Trump’s opponents are completely unhinged. The hate and slander directed towards the president and his supporters is off the charts. The vitriol comes not just from the Democrat party, the media, and the world of entertainment, but also from a sizable proportion of the federal bureaucracy and many seemingly ordinary people.  
The media coordinates this campaign and amplifies the hate at every opportunity. Media twist every event, be it big or small, into a criticism of the president. The goal is always to present Trump in not just an unfavorable light but to make him appear too loathsome for polite society. And Trump is not the sole target of this demonization. It is directed at his supporters, too. 
Where will all this lead? No less than Angelo M. Codevilla fears it could ultimately result in a bloody civil war. And if it comes to that, there's no doubt where he places the blame.  
The story of the contemporary American Left's sponsorship of hate and violence began around 1964, when the Democrats chose to abandon the Southern constituencies that had been its mainstay since the time of Jefferson and Jackson. In less than a decade, the party found itself increasingly dependent on gaining super-majorities among blacks, upscale liberals, and constituencies of resentment in general -- and hence on stoking their hate. 
For the past half century, America's political history has been driven by the Democrats' effort  to fire up these constituencies by denigrating the rest of America.
Codevilla notes that prominent Democrats like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton have led millions of their followers "to think and act as if conservatives were simply a lower level of humanity, and should have their faces rubbed in their own inferiority."
It’s not surprising that many ordinary followers have concluded that harassing conservatives in restaurants, airports, and public functions is "not just permissible but praiseworthy, and if thousands of persons who exercise power over cities, towns, and schools have not concluded that facilitating such harassment and harm is their duty."
This is the toxic environment that the Democrats, in conjunction with the media, have created. Has Pandora's box been opened? Are we beyond the point of no return? Are leftists and their liberal soulmates too obtuse not to expect that hate and violence will someday be answered in kind? These questions are up in the air. Right now, one thing is clear. As Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction while the worse are full of passionate intensity."
Codevilla's worry about a civil war dovetails with The Fourth Turning,: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About American's Next Rendezvous with Destiny (1997)  by William Strauss and Neil Howe. To my reading, these authors predict a Fourth Turning Crisis period around the years 2020-2022. Then, many things that Americans have always taken for granted will unravel. 
Just to touch on a few of the changes that Strauss and Howe see: today's soft criminal justice system will become swift and rough. Vagrants will be rounded up and the mentally ill recommitted. Criminal appeals shortened and executions hastened. Pension funds will go bust and Social Security checks become iffy. The full spectrum of society will be under distress. All the problems will be combined into one -- the survival of society.  
Aren't the seeds already planted for a crisis? Trust in Washington and in government institutions is at an all-time low. Political violence is tacitly condoned and often openly encouraged by Democratic officeholders. The political establishment encourages massive Illegal immigration. The mainstream media is highly partisan and corrupt beyond reform. The American flag, the country's history, and even its nationhood are openly despised in universities. American public schools are a disgrace despite the money poured into them. The country is burdened by a $22 trillion national debt to which many trillions more of unfunded government liabilities must be added. Students owe a trillion dollars in school loans that can never be repaid.

Someday there has to be a reckoning for all this dysfunction. Irrespective of the election results in 2020, the time frame of 2020-2022 sounds about the right for things to come to a head. It would be prudent to be ready. 


SCRATCH THE SURFACE OF BARACK OBAMA IS A PRO-MUSLIM, ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-CHRISTIAN, ANTI-JEWISH DICTATOR IN THE MAKING FOR GLOBALIST BANKSTERS AND BILLIONAIRES.

  

When Obama found religion (or feigned the motions of doing so for future electability), he chose out of the near 1,000 available options to him in Chicago a church whose pastor was an outspoken anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.  For the next 20 years, Obama and Michelle chose to sit in the pews of that swine and devour the filth he shoveled out from the trough at his altar. 

 

The Crisis Obama Let Go to Waste



Barack Obama's legacy is nothing if not consequential.  In his decades as "community organizer" among Chicago's poorest, most desperate neighborhoods, he did nothing other than perpetuate complete dependence on Big Brother.  His Affordable Care Act, and its accompanying criminal penalties for not engaging in commerce, scythed a mile-wide berth into the already frayed concept of a citizenry living free from government coercion.  More ominously, Obama was able to entwine his instinctive Marxism with a vision for America's path forward in a way his predecessors had been unable to. 
The singular cunning of Obama was his success in realigning the "victim" hierarchy almost completely from class to race.  Free citizens in a market society can climb or descend the social ladder, but race remains a constant throughout.  Race is our most recognizable difference, no matter its superficial nature.  In the deepest recesses of our prejudices, race is pure tribalism.  And in the darkest hours of human history, at our most trying moments, and during our most vicious wars, people of all tribes have taken refuge not within their class, but within their race or ethnicity.  The examples of Nazi Germany, of Bosnia, of Rwanda, and of the Armenians in Turkey are but a few examples of the horrors lifelong friends and neighbors of the same class can inflict on one another in the name of racial identity politics.
This isn't to say Marxism hasn't been peddled before under the guise of racial identity grievance.  Indeed, Lenin himself was able to provoke satellite regions like Ukraine and Kazakhstan to revolt from czarist Russia in the name of ethnic separatism.  In the United States, it has been tried repeatedly since the 1960s.  But as our nation's first (half) black president, Obama was able sow division with absolute authority, and with minimal criticism by a political class that either openly supported his aims or was petrified of soliciting unsubstantiated accusations of racism. 
And sow division he did, with every chance he got. 
When Obama found religion (or feigned the motions of doing so for future electability), he chose out of the near 1,000 available options to him in Chicago a church whose pastor was an outspoken anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.  For the next 20 years, Obama and Michelle chose to sit in the pews of that swine and devour the filth he shoveled out from the trough at his altar.  When asked to justify his close association with this shameless bigot, Obama shrugged off such concerns, comparing Wright to "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with."  Obama distanced himself from Wright only when it started affecting his poll numbers.
When armed Black Panthers were caught threatening voters outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008, the Department of Justice under the Bush administration charged (and convicted) them with violations of the Voting Rights Act.  Once in office, Obama had political appointees in the DOJ dismiss the charges.
When Cambridge Police (both white and black, not that it should matter) arrested his black friend Henry Gates for disorderly conduct, Obama, after admitting that he didn't know all the facts, stated that the police "acted stupidly."
After Trayvon Martin was shot by Afro-Peruvian (AKA "white Hispanic") George Zimmerman, Obama intoned, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."  This implies that Martin was shot because he was black, and not because he was repeatedly pummeling Zimmerman's head into the pavement.  Even Eric Holder's investigation concluded otherwise.
After black nationalist Xavier Micah Johnson opened fire and murdered five Dallas police officers in 2016 (as they protected a Black Lives Matter march), Obama gave a eulogy at their funeral.  The eulogy itself stands as perhaps one of the most despicable moments of the Obama presidency.  He used the podium to equate the murder of the Dallas police officers with the recent shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile (both of which were investigated and found justifiable, and neither man was "unfairly targeted" because he was black, as Obama asserted).
It was a speech as deft as it was cynical.  Reading through the text, one realizes more clearly the manipulation taking place that, when spoken, is less detectable.  He subtly but unmistakably steers the speech from a tribute to the murdered officers to a damning indictment of our alleged systemic racism, coupled with a defense of the paranoid style of the Black Lives Matter movement.  By the end of the speech, Obama had skillfully twisted the events to the point where theoretical, faceless white racism was to blame for the actual, documented racism of Xavier Johnson. 
One wonders if, had he attended Sterling's funeral, he would have lectured the audience about murdered police.
At this point, I must interject a side note regarding the aforementioned shootings.  Philando Castile was shot in a horrible case of mistaken identity.  He closely matched the description of a suspect from a recent armed robbery, and the officer thought he was reaching for a gun he admitted to having.  Alton Sterling (who had a long arrest record that included battery, burglary, and weapons charges) was shot because he was physically fighting with police, despite being tasered several times.  Police shot him when he reached for the loaded .38 caliber revolver in his pants.  His shooting was completely warranted, and Baton Rouge is a safer place without him.  Neither the tragic shooting of Castile nor the justified shooting of Sterling can in any reasonable way be attributed to racism, nor can they be remotely likened to the premeditated slaughter of the five Dallas officers.  But such are the dots that Obama connected to hustle his race narrative.
Obama is notoriously thin-skinned to criticism, or to the suggestion that someone, somewhere, might be smarter than he.  This is the guy who claimed, with a straight face, that he was a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, more knowledgeable about policy than his policy directors, and a better political director than his political director.  Still, one assumes he was adroit enough to recognize that objections to his policies, or questions of their constitutionality, were not the default reactions of repressed racism.  If he had thought they were, he would have said so.  On a fundamental level, Obama understands that America is not the systemically racist cesspool he allowed it to be portrayed as under his watch.  Yet he was Machiavellian enough to let this yarn spin itself for the purpose of political advantage.
Obama also understood the political pitfalls inherent in hiding behind the race card in efforts to deflect policy debates he could not win.  So he did one better.  He let his media sycophants do it for him.  For the duration of his presidency and beyond, these shrieking curs claw the flesh off their faces at the slightest hint of criticism of Obama, his policies, or his style of governance.  I am unaware of a single instance in which he publicly censured his groupies for their utter lack of nuance.
Therein lies the biggest tragedy of Obama's legacy.  As a biracial president, he had a foot in both black and white America.  He was uniquely positioned to use this to the advantage of the entire country, to serve as a bridge of healing and progress between races who have butted heads for far too long.  Instead, for eight continuous years, he chose to do the exact opposite.  He entrenched identity politics as deeply as he could, ripping open wounds in the process, and divided this great nation perhaps past the point of no return.  He did this to spread a thoroughly debunked ideology, the achievability of which his ego will never allow him to admit he was mistaken about.
In a 2008 speech in which Obama attempted to justify Jeremiah Wright's irrational hatred, he said, "At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings."  Never before has a poker player so inadvertently revealed his own hand.  When Obama spoke those words, he was no doubt doing what he does best: thinking of himself.

Malia, Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/malia-michelle-barack-and-college.html
*
Michelle was the next to attend Harvard, in her case Harvard Law School. “Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades weren’t good enough for an Ivy League school,” writes Christopher Andersen in Barack and Michelle, “Michelle applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway.”

GOOGLE WHAT THE OBOMB DID FOR HIS SAUDIS PAYMASTERS

Barack Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before prosecutors send some of the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their dimness, they might want to ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire peddled to get Obama into Harvard.

“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now  “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM


MICHELLE OBAMA ANNOUNCES SHE WILL RUN FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND BE BARACK’S THIRD TERM FOR LIFE.
MEXICO WILL ELECT HER!
The main objective of “political animals” like Obama and the Clintons is to get elected; it’s not to fix a broken America, nor to protect her. There are people who govern and there are people who campaign; Obama and the Clintons are the latter. Just look at the huge Republican electoral gains under Obama and the Clintons. It’s amazing that Democrats who still care about their party still support the very people who have brought it down.

“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years.   MATTHEW VADUM


Editorial Reviews: Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

GET THIS BOOK!

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY

 Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.

 

JOE BIDEN SAYS HE KNOWS NOTHIN' 'BOUT HUNTER BIDEN'S BRIBES SUCKING.... Joe just sits there at the table helping count the loot!


Joe Biden Claims He Was Not Aware of Son’s Service on Burisma’s Board

Vice President-elect, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., left, stands with his son Hunter during a re-enactment of the Senate oath ceremony, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
P Photo/Charles Dharapak
4:45

Joe Biden claimed on Friday he was unaware his youngest son, Hunter, was serving on the board of directors of a Ukrainian oil and gas giant while Biden was responsible for Obama administration policy towards the country.

The former vice president made the claim during an interview with PBS News Hour in which he was asked why a recent campaign pledge to not have children “involved” with foreign countries did not apply to his eight year tenure in the Obama White House. Biden responded to the question by asserting “no one” had established either he or his son has done “anything wrong” in their professional and business dealings in Ukraine, before alleging he had no knowledge of his son’s position with Burisma Holdings.
“I did not know he was on the board of that company,” the former vice president said. “In fact, no one has asserted on the board that it was illegal for him to be on the board or that he did anything wrong.”
When asked if he would have interceded with his son had “he known” about the appointment, Biden again reiterated his son did “nothing wrong”
The former vice president’s claim to not have known about his son’s position with Burisma, however, has been undercut by numerous sources, including Hunter Biden himself. The younger Biden admitted during a series of candid interviews for a New Yorker profile published in June that he in fact had discussed his foreign business interests with his father on at least one occasion.
“Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do’” Hunter Biden told the magazine.
The contradicting stories between father and son only underscore the multiple unanswered questions surrounding Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. At the center of controversy is how and why Hunter Biden secured an appointment to Burisma’s board of directors, which at times paid more than $83,000 a month.
As Peter Schweizer, senior contributor at Breitbart News, detailed in his bookSecret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden had no prior experience with either the energy industry or Ukraine before joining Burisma in April 2014. In fact, his background in investment banking, lobbying, and hedge fund management paled in comparison to that of current and past members of the company’s board of directors.
At the time of his appointment, ethics watchdogs highlighted the younger Biden’s lack of qualifications but were more concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. In particular, many worried Hunter Biden’s ascension to the board of directors, a position that paid at times more than $83,000 per month, was related to his father’s position as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
The poor optics not only raised flags among ethics watchdogs but also with Hunter Biden’s own business partners. Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry and co-owner of an investment firm with Hunter Biden in 2014, rushed to play damage control with State Department officials at the time of the appointment, according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Examiner. 
Adding to concerns is the fact that at the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma, the company was seen as actively courting western leaders to prevent further scrutiny of its business practices. The same month Hunter Biden was tapped for the group’s board, the government of Great Britain froze accounts belonging to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky under suspicion of money laundering.
Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian minister of natural resources, would later be accused of corruption for using his office to approve oil and gas licenses to companies under his control. A Ukrainian official with strong ties to Zlochevsky admitted in October the only reason that Hunter Biden secured the appointment was to “protect” the company from foreign scrutiny.
Joe Biden’s role in the entire matter has only increased suspicions of conflicting interests. As the sitting vice president, Joe Biden led the Obama administration’s response to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. In that role, he pushed billions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian government, some of which allegedly was filtered to Burisma.
More troubling, however, is an episode that took place in 2016, when Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the country’s top prosecutor.
Officially, the former vice president has claimed his threat to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if Shokin was not fired came from the Obama administration, which had lost confidence in the prosecutor’s abilities to root out corruption.
Unofficially, though, it was well known that Shokin was investigating both Burisma and Zlochevsky for wrongdoing. Regardless of the reason, Shokin’s successor closed the investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky, allowing the oligarch to return to the country after having fled it in 2014.
The appearance of impropriety has only been underscored by comments Hunter Biden made in a recent ABC News interview, where he admitted his father’s political influence was likely the reason for his appointment to Burisma’s board.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” the younger Biden said when asked if he would have been tapped for the lucrative job had his father not been the sitting vice president. He quickly added, though, that his family’s political prominence had always played a large role in his dealings. “But that’s—you know—I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

China and the 2020 Election

On April 25, 2019, Joe Biden declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Seven days later, on May 3, 2019, the Chinese sent a diplomatic cable to the Trump Administration blowing up a 150-page draft agreement that had taken many months to negotiate.  The cable was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands.  In each of the seven chapters of the trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: theft of intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation.
A coincidence or a premeditated scenario?
Joe Biden, in his days in the Senate, was very partial to China, as he voted against revoking China’s most-favored nation status and in 2007 opposed the idea of applying any tariffs on China despite their obvious unfair trade practices.  However, it was as Vice President that he became wholly enamored with the country and its leadership.
For example, while in China, Biden, in August of 2011, defended and approvedof China’s one-child policy which brutally used forced abortions to implement the law.  In the same year Biden was given the assignment, by Barack Obama, to be the point man on China due his close personal relationship with Xi Jinping, then Vice-President and heir apparent to the Presidency.  (Xi Jinping is currently President and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the most powerful figure in China’s political system).
Due solely to Joe Biden’s influence, in 2011, less than a year after starting Rosemont Seneca Partners, essentially a three-man investment firm with Chris Heinz (stepson of John Kerry), Biden’s son Hunter, who had no previous experience in private equity, was in China to explore business opportunities with Chinese state-owned enterprises.  These meetings occurred just hours before Joe Biden met with the Chinese president in Washington.  Later in the same year, Hunter had a second meeting with many of the same Chinese financial powerhouses -- just two weeks after his father, the Vice President, conducted U.S.-China strategic talks in Washington with Chinese officials.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping dine at the State Department, Valentine's Day, 2012
(Official White House Photo by David Lienemann, croppped)
Meanwhile Joe Biden never missed an opportunity to downplay China’s threat to the United States.  In May of 2013, during a commencement speech he assured those concerned the Chinese were “going to eat our lunch” that they had nothing to be alarmed about as China had immense problems and an inability to think differently.  In May of 2014 Biden described China as a nation incapable of producing innovative products and ideas.  (Two weeks after declaring his 2020 candidacy Biden, in Iowa, said, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man…they can’t even figure out how to deal with the corruption that exists within the system.  I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks.  But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”   After a massive backlash, he walked back some of those comments a few days later by saying “I don’t suggest China is not a problem.”
In December 2013, Biden flew to Beijing on Air Force Two with his son Hunter on an official trip ostensibly to discuss tensions over disputed territories in the East China Sea.  Joe and Hunter were ushered into a red-carpet meeting with a delegation of various Chinese officials.  Hunter remained with the delegation while his father met with President Xi Jinping.  During these meetings Joe Biden struck an extremely conciliatory and friendly tone with the Chinese leadership -- much to the dismay of America’s allies in the region.
Ten day later, Hunter’s company, Rosemont Seneca, signed an exclusive $1 Billion (later expanded to $1.5 Billion) deal with the state-owned Bank of China, creating an investment fund called Bohai Harvest, with money guaranteed by the Chinese Government.  As Peter Schweizer, who was the first to unveil these conflicts of interest, wrote in his book Secret Empires “the Chinese Government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers”  Rarely has there been a more stark illustration of being “compromised by a foreign power.”
And in 2014, another arm of Hunter’s budding business empire, Rosemont Realty, began negotiating multi-billion dollar deals with Gemini Investments, a Chinese firm with ties to the China Ocean Shipping Company Ltd. which reportedly operates as an extension of the Chinese military and who eventually acquired 75% of Rosemont Realty in order to purchase commercial real estate in the United States.
Anyone who has dealt with the Chinese Government or the myriad of entities controlled by the government can attest: any foreign business transaction with China always has a requisite or implied quid pro quo that oftentimes does not involve monetary considerations.  Once entangled in this web it is nearly impossible to escape.  It would be naïve to believe that the Biden family, particularly Joe, are not embroiled in this labyrinth of expectations and demands.
In the years and months before he decided to throw his hat in the ring, it had to be obvious to Joe Biden and in particular those close to him that his mental acuity is rapidly failing, not to mention that his and Hunter’s questionable business activities in China and the Ukraine would be exposed on a grand scale.  Why then would he willingly take on a grueling 18-month marathon of running for president?  As the timing of Biden’s announcement and Chinese abrupt volte face on the trade agreement implies, one must, therefore, assume he was coerced into declaring his candidacy as a pawn in the chess game the Chinese are playing in order to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.
If Xi Jinping coerced his old friend Joe Biden into running, then he placed his prestige and fate on the line that China would be able to hold out in the ongoing trade war and achieve a favorable outcome in any negotiations with Biden at the helm.  While Xi Jinping is powerful, he still is one of seven members of a standing committee of the Politburo (25 members) that can oust him.   At this point Xi Jinping cannot be perceived as losing face by caving to Donald Trump and reinstituting the agreement made in the spring of 2019. 
Therefore, while the threat of further escalation in the trade war will recede there is little chance of anything substantive happening as intransigence will be the rule the day between now and November 2020.  However, China’s growing internal problems and failing economy will dramatically escalate, which could force the Politburo to either remove Xi Jinping, or accept, with clinched teeth and a renewed determination to defeat Donald Trump, the basic terms of the May 2019 trade agreement.
Joe Biden’s everyday performance on the campaign trail reinforces the reality that he will not be the Democratic Party presidential nominee.  Thus, whoever is nominated by the Democratic Party will, by default, be backed by the Chinese -- who will do whatever is legal, illegal or unethical to defeat Donald Trump.  The actions the Russians were falsely accused of in the 2016 election will be child’s play by comparison.
It appears that the Chinese may have made a major blunder in April and May of 2019.  A blunder with potential major ramifications for China and, if Donald Trump is defeated in 2020, the United States.


Senate Finance Committee Probes Biden-Linked, Chinese Military-Boosting Tech Sale

Tom Brenner/Getty Images
 15 Aug 20192,058
3:44

The Senate Finance Committee is probing the Obama administration’s 2015 decision to approve the sale of a U.S. company with insight into “military applications” to the Chinese government and an investment firm run by former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, Hunter Biden.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee’s chairman, sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Thursday requesting documents relating to the sale of Henniges, a Michigan-based automotive company, to Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) and Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). The latter was formed in 2013 by a merger between a subsidiary of the Bank of China and Rosemont Seneca, a firm started by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Since AVIC was a subsidiary of the Chinese government and Henniges, the producer of “dual-use” anti-vibration technology with military application, the deal required approval from the Obama administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The panel — made up of representatives from 16 different federal bodies, including the departments of State, Treasury, and Defense — is required to review any transaction that could lead to a foreign person gaining control of an American business.
In question is whether CIFUS was influenced by Obama administration officials, most notedly Joe Biden and John Kerry, who had an interest in seeing the deal move forward.
“The direct involvement of Mr. Hunter Biden and Mr. Heinz in the acquisition of Henniges by the Chinese government creates a potential conflict of interest,” Grassley wrote.
The senator noted in his letter that AVIC’s bid for Henniges should have immediately set off alarm bells in the Obama White House. In 2007, AVIC “reportedly involved in stealing sensitive data regarding the Joint Strike Fighter program,” which it later “reportedly incorporated … into China’s J-20 and J‑31 aircraft.”
Even more troubling, however, is that bid was facilitated at the same time China was staking out a more adversarial role in global affairs. At the time, Beijing was suspected of undermining U.S. cybersecurity by underwriting hackers stealing governmental data. There was also simmering tension over disputes in the South China Sea.
Despite the threat to national security, the $600 million deal was approved by CIFUS, with AVIC purchasing 51 percent of the company and BHR taking ownership of the other 49 percent. Upon purchase, an industry newsletter stated the deal was the “biggest Chinese investment into US automotive manufacturing assets to date.”
In his letter to Mnuchin, Grassley compared the deal to the Uranium One scandal, which arose when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the sale of a Canadian mining company to Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear energy conglomerate. It later emerged that both investors in the company and Russian energy officials had donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.
“As with the Uranium One transaction, there is cause for concern that potential conflicts of interest could have influenced CFIUS’ approval of the Henniges transaction,” Grassley wrote. “Accordingly, Congress and the public must fully understand the decision-making process that led to the Henniges approval and the extent to which CFIUS fully considered the transaction’s national security risks.”
This is not the first time that Hunter Biden’s ties to China have caused grief for his father’s political career. As Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News, revealed in his bestselling book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden signed the $1.5 billion deal creating BHR in 2013 only ten days after visiting China aboard Air Force Two with his father.

 

Eight Things to Know About the Biden Family’s Culture of Corruption

14 Aug 2019386
10:50

The family of former Vice President Joe Biden has earned millions of dollars since the start of his political career, often from dealings with heavy political overtones.

Biden, the frontrunner among 2020 Democrats, often touts his middle-class bonafides on the campaign trail. Although Biden did not become a multi-millionaire until he left the White House in 2017, the same cannot be said of his family. In fact, several members of the Biden clan became immensely wealthy over the span of the former vice president’s 40-year political career.
Breitbart News is providing an in-depth breakdown of a few instances in which Joe Biden’s political career and his family’s financial interests seemed to intersect.
1. Joe Biden’s younger brother, James Biden, secured generous bank loans.
In the wake of Joe Biden’s upset election to the U.S. Senate in 1972, his younger brother James was able to secure a series of generous bank loans to start a Delaware night club.
Although James Biden had no business experience and a net worth of less than $10,000 at the time, he was able to arrange more than $160,000 in start-up capital for the venture. When the nightclub proved to be unsuccessful, generating more than $500,000 of debt by 1975, James Biden and his business partners were thrown a life-line by a Pennsylvania bank that loaned him a further $300,000.
During the same time period James Biden was receiving the extensive lines of credit, Joe Biden was sitting on the Senate Banking Committee, which had purview over the financial sector. A specific jurisdiction of the committee was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which provides bailouts to banks if they should become over-leveraged.
2. Joe Biden’s top campaign contributor hired his youngest son Hunter right out of law school.
Shortly after Joe Biden was reelected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, his largest campaign contributor, the credit card issuer MBNA Corp., hired his son for an undisclosed role. The job raised eyebrows from good government groups because MBNA employees had just donated $63,000 to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign in what appeared to be a coordinatedmanner to sidestep federal campaign finance regulations.
Clouding the picture even further was that, at the time, Hunter Biden was a 26-year-old recent graduate of Yale Law School with no prior banking or business experience. Both father and son defended the job offer, claiming nothing improper had or would result because of the arrangement.
“Unfortunately, no matter where I went to work, some people would make an issue of it,” the younger Biden told the Delaware News Journal in November 1996 when the job was announced.
Despite his role being unknown at the time of his hiring, when Hunter Biden left the company in 1998 to join the Clinton-era Commerce Department it was as a senior vice president.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Joe Biden was championing bankruptcy reform legislation endorsed by financial interests and credit card companies like MBNA.
3. An MBNA executive purchased Biden’s house for the full asking price in a deal that appeared facilitated by the company. 
A senior MBNA executive purchased Biden’s 10,000 square foot colonial mansion in the Wilmington, Delaware, suburbs for the asking price of $1.2 million in February 1996. The sale garnered notice because larger and newer homes in the vicinity sold for less. The issue became a minor campaign problem for Biden’s reelection but was quickly dismissed when the senator provided local media appraisal forms showing his home was worth the value for what it was sold.
Byron York, however, investigated the matter in an exposé for the American Spectator and found that properties appraised around the same value in the vicinity had “sold for a good deal less” than at what they were valued on paper.
“In comparison, it appears [the MBNA executive] simply paid Biden’s full asking price,” York wrote. “And, according to people familiar with the situation, the house needed quite a bit of work; contractors and their trucks descended on the house for months after the purchase.”
As York also noted, it appeared that MBNA may have played a role in facilitating the purchase. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that “in 1996 MBNA reimbursed [the executive] $330,115 for expenses arising from the move.” Of that total, $210,000 “was to make up for a loss [the executive] suffered on the sale of his Maryland home.”
4. Hunter Biden remained on MBNA’s payroll while Joe Biden was writing bankruptcy reform legislation. 
Throughout the early 2000s, Hunter Biden remained on MBNA’s payroll as a consultant while his father was writing and pushing the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The arrangement, which did not become public until after the law was passed, started in 2001 after Hunter Biden had left his position in the Commerce Dept. MBNA was paid monthly consulting fees, with some claiming they ranged upwards of $100,000, to advise the company on online banking issues.
The 2005 bankruptcy tightened regulations to make it extremely more difficult to declare bankruptcy. It was heavily favored by MBNA and other giants in the banking and finance sectors. Many consumer protection advocates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have claimed the bill benefited special interests at the expense of consumers. Some have even suggested the law only served to hasten and aggravate the recession of the late 2000s.
As previously reported by the New York Times, Biden worked against many of his own fellow Democrats in Congress to ensure the final version of the bill was free of provisions opposed by companies like MBNA.
Biden “was one of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month,” the Times noted.
5. Joe Biden paid his family members with campaign cash.
During his failed 2008 presidential campaign, Joe Biden paid more than $2 million to his family members and their business. According to the Washington Times, the money went to a company that was a long-time employer of Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens. Biden also directed funds to a law firm started by his old campaign treasurer, which at the time also employed his youngest son Hunter.
6. James and Hunter Biden sought to monetize off Joe Biden’s political standing. 
In 2006, close to when Joe Biden assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launched his second presidential campaign, James and Hunter Biden purchased a hedge fund called Paradigm Global Advisors. Although neither man had a strong background in finance, James and Hunter Biden reportedly believed they could leverage Joe Biden’s political connections to their benefits.
“Don’t worry about investors,” James Biden purportedly told Paradigm’s senior leadership upon taking over the fund, as reported by Politico. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
Paradigm’s executives claim that James and Hunter Biden saw the hedge fund as a way to “take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money” to Joe Biden’s campaign account.
“We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” James Biden allegedly told Paradigm’s staff.
Hunter and James also tried to solicit labor unions to invest their pension funds in Paradigm by relying on Joe Biden’s long record of advocating in favor of collective bargaining.
The efforts proved to unsuccessful, though, with James and Hunter Biden choosing to strip and sell the company off by 2010 after a number of bad decisions, including partnering with a Ponzi scheme.
7. James Biden’s received a $1.5 billion contract to build houses in Iraq while Joe Biden was overseeing the region. 
After his foray into the world of high finance ended disastrously, James Biden joinedHillstone International LLC as a vice president in 2010. The company, a subsidiary of Hill International, at the time, was pursuing technology and construction projects around the globe.
Although the company had been losing money for some time, James Biden’s arrival resulted in something of a reversal in fortune. Within six months of James Biden joining the firm, Hillstone was the recipient of $1.5 billion dollar contract to build 100,000 houses in war-torn Iraq. The deal, which was never finalized because outside funding failed to materialize, quickly caught attention as Joe Biden was overseeing the Obama administration’s policy in the region.
Both the Obama White House and Hillstone denied Joe Biden had anything to do with the deal, pointing to the fact the contract was awarded through a South Korean group working to build homes in Iraq. Despite the denials, Irvin Richter, the founder of Hill International, did admit James Biden may have had something to do with the deal.
“Listen, his name helps him get in the door, but it doesn’t help him get business,” Richter told Fox Business in 2012 when discussing James Biden. “People who have important names tend to get in the door easier but it doesn’t mean success. If he had the name Obama he would get in the door easier.”
Complicating matters was the fact James Biden was likely to get rich if the deal went through. Fox Business reported that a group of minority partners, which included James Biden, owned 49 percent of Hillstone. The other 51 percent was owned by the company’s parent group, Hill International. Given Hillstone’s profit breakdown structure, James Biden and the other minority partners would have been eligible to split more than $735 million after the deal was completed
8. Hunter Biden’s firm scored a $1.5 billion deal with the Bank of China only days after Joe Biden and his youngest son visited the country. 
Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News, revealed in his bestselling book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends that Hunter Biden’s firm signed a multi-billion dollar with a subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China only ten days after he visited the country with his father aboard Air Force Two.
In a SiriusXM Breitbart News Tonight radio interview from last year, Schweizer explained how the Biden-China deal unfolded:
“In December of 2013, Vice President Joe Biden flies to Asia for a trip, and the centerpiece for that trip is a visit to Beijing, China,” said Schweizer. “To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea. They basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely criticized on that trip for going soft on China. So basically, no challenging them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.”

So Hunter Biden followed his dad around to Romania, too?



Hunter Biden was quite the devoted little sproutling, following his dad around wherever he went.
According to this NBC News report:
In the final year of the Obama administration, an American lawyer traveled to Romania to meet with a businessman accused of orchestrating a corrupt land deal.
The businessman was Gabriel “Puiu” Popoviciu, a wealthy Romanian real estate tycoon. The lawyer brought in to advise him was Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Hunter Biden’s work for Popoviciu in 2016 went unreported at the time, but Joe Biden’s involvement in Romania was very much public. The vice president was among the leading voices pushing the government to crack down on corruption.
At Fox News, Sean Hannity called it a "pattern." Hunter Biden following his dad around -- to China, Ukraine, and now Romania -- and somehow always came away with big-dollar business deals. Kind of the way then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used Bill Clinton as her bagman to scarf up donations to the Clinton Foundation after Hillary made some foreign policy decision. That's certainly the way it happened with the 2011 passage of the U.S.-Colombia free trade pact, according to Peter Schweizer in his book, "Clinton Cash."
Hillary had her Bill. Joe had his Hunter. It's worth it to take this pattern where it goes, which is an emerging picture of modern bribery.
Imagine what it must have been like in the not-so-long-ago years when Joe Biden was vice president of the U.S. -- big, powerful, full of demands to advance the Obama political agenda.
You're a scruffy post-Soviet regime or third-world country.  You need some kind of help from nearby predators, you want to avoid sanctions, or your country's just generally a hellhole.
In comes Biden, who just happens to be the guy assigned as 'point man' to handle your case, with his cocaine-using son in tow.
In order to get what you want from Joe, you need to set up some kind of meeting with sonny boy - who's traveling with Joe, supposedly there to do "business deals." Sonny boy doesn't know anything about business, or the industries he could be dropped into, or for that matter, following the rules on cocaine use in the Navy. He's unemployable. But he's there with dad, waiting for his post-dad meetings, too.
And he walks off with big-dollar business deals, often from no-show jobs, nice big money streams, the flying dollar-bill wake of Joe Biden's tour. After about the first or second one, you'd start to notice a pattern.. Joe blows in, a payoff will be required.
The strange passage of Colombia's free trade pact in 2011, based on a sudden change in Democrat sentiment of being utterly against it to being at least grudingly for it, was also reportedly enacted through a payoff. The Clinton Foundation got a big $800,000 payment with Hillary Clinton as sitting Secretary of State and voila, Clinton was in favor of passage. In a way, the House Biden setup paralled the Clintons-Clinton Foundation setup. It's now worth it to check now if that, or any trade pact passed during the Obama years -- and there were several -- also could have involved Joe.
Because obviously, word would have gotten around. You're a scruffy third world country, your job is to watch the gringos closely, see how you can get them to help you, see what it takes. You'd watch one, two, many international transactions with comparable countries. You'd watch closely to see what it takes.
I know this, because I've spent a lot of time in such countries, speaking with their officials. "What do we have to do?" is the most commonly asked question I've heard the world over.
As John Hinderaker at Power Line notes - the answer was bribery, an updated modern-day version of bribery that can't be pinned as bribery by the long arm of the law the way walking into a smoke-filled room with a black bag full of cash can. He writes:
Joe Biden didn’t do anything wrong? A time-honored method of taking bribes is having them paid to a family member, usually in exchange for nominal or nonexistent services. It is comical to watch “reporters” pretend not to understand this. 
They all know this, which is why this sort of thing happens. For Biden, the first shakedown of the scruffy foreigners is the hardest. But by the third or fourth, Biden doesn't have to say a thing. He just jets in with his son in tow and the everyone knows what to do.
This is how hideous the House Biden operation got to be. As Hannity noted, the cash that followed the visits was quite a pattern.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and make a forecast. With Ukraine, China and Romania being brought up, it's likely these aren't the only countries we are going to be hearing Joe and Hunter Biden's name attached to. They had a heckuva Pop-and-Junior tag-team racket.