ASSAULTING FREE SPEECH - DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR MORE HIGH TECH CENSORSHIP TO PROTECT THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY

BIDEN WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ELECTED IF MARK ZUCKERBERG HAD NOT BEEN CLEANSING FACEBOOK OF ALL DATA ON THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY

VIDEO

Tucker Carlson: Apple is covering for the Chinese government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHJ_tzgTZn0

Cotton: Apple Needs to Stop Helping CCP Keep Chinese Protestors from Communicating

3

IAN HANCHETT

29 Nov 20220

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) criticized Apple, a company “deeply invested in China,” for restricting features like the AirDrop file-sharing service in China that the Chinese people protesting against the Chinese Communist Party’s oppressive COVID policies could use to bypass CCP censorship to communicate with each other and organize bigger protests and called on the U.S. government to do whatever it can to help protestors in China voice their desire for freedom.

Cotton said, “Corporate America, for instance, could take steps to help China — to help these Chinese citizens communicate with each other. Apple, which of course, is deeply invested in China, and has deep market penetration on its iPhones, could be enabling certain features that would allow them to communicate with each other so they can organize even larger protests. We should be taking every step possible to help these Chinese voice their deepest aspirations for freedom. It’s exactly what Ronald Reagan did in the Cold War. It’s what we should be doing now. And as I write in ‘Only the Strong,’ it didn’t lead to confrontational war. It led to peace and success and victory.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Swamp Launches Last Ditch Effort to Pass Media Bailout Bill JCPA

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

ALLUM BOKHARI

29 Nov 20220

7:51

Supporters of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill that would allow corporate media companies to band together in a cartel to collude with Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google, are mounting a last-ditch effort to pass the bill before Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next year, including the undemocratic possibility of adding the JCPA to a so-called “must pass” bill like defense spending.

Crucially, a new version of the JCPA set to be introduced in the House of Representatives includes a massive loophole allowing the corporate legacy media cartel to collude with tech companies on censoring their competitors, in addition to the financial handouts from Big Tech companies to Big Media companies that supporters of the bill somehow consider to be its number-one selling point.

The possibility of the media colluding with Big Tech on censorship nearly killed the bill in the Senate, only for it to be rescued at the last minute by an amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The limp-wristed amendment prevented formal discussions on censorship, but still left the door wide open for the exclusion of conservative media.

Senator Ted Cruz Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The new House version of the bill undermines even that small concession, empowering the media cartel to negotiate with Big Tech regarding not just the pricing of content from cartel members, but also the “terms and conditions” under which it is displayed.

“Terms and conditions” could include almost anything, including the prioritization of content from cartel members over sources the cartel deems to be “unreliable,” “low-quality,” “misinformation,” or any of the other purportedly viewpoint-neutral excuses that are regularly brandished as an excuse to exclude and censor independent media.

Politico’s Morning Tech reports that the JCPA’s supporters are staking everything on a final Hail Mary attempt to pass the bill in the lame duck session, with the likelihood of passage described as “slim but not implausible.”

If the JCPA is to pass, Politico suggests that lawmakers might have to take the controversial step of adding it to a “must-pass” bill, like defense spending, which would effectively bypass a genuine process of deliberation about the bill’s merits on the floor.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), the bill’s Republican co-sponsor in the Senate, told Politico that he hoped there would be a “little more floor time than some people think” to debate the bill. Politico struck a doubtful tone, noting the difficulty of obtaining floor time in a lame-duck session.

On top of normal difficulties, the new House bill makes the problem at the heart of the JCPA even clearer: it empowers and enriches the world’s wealthiest and most powerful media companies.

The bill also allows any news company to join a new cartel within 60 days of the announcement of its formation, meaning national conglomerates that own multiple outlets can dominate any new cartel by flooding it with members. Companies like Hearst, Gannett, Axel Springer SE, and Newscorp — all of which have pushed hard for the bill — would dominate decision-making in cartels, while small companies that do not own multiple news outlets would have virtually no sway.

The new House bill also attempts to address the concerns of left-wing Democrats, who expressed concerns that the massive handouts the bill would secure from tech companies would go into the hands of media executives, not frontline journalists.

The new bill seemingly attempts to address that, mandating that 70 percent of all payments go to “news journalists.” But the bill’s definition of “news journalist” is drawn so broadly (it includes “producing” and “publishing” news in addition to collecting and presenting it) that highly paid executives and publishers could easily argue that they fit the criteria.

Even if just 30 percent of the Big Tech handouts were distributed to executives, this would still be a massive payout relative to the one received by frontline journalists, given that the number of executives at media companies tends to be in the single or low double digits, compared to hundreds or thousands of regular journalists.

Aside from financial handouts to already-wealthy media giants that regularly smear conservatives, a key complaint from top Republicans including  Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Marsha Blackburn, and Tom Cotton is that the JCPA will result in more censoring and sidelining of conservatives.

Sen. Cruz amended the Senate bill to limit negotiations just to price, and subsequently lent his support to the media bailout bill, shocking conservatives who have spent years being smeared by the same media industry that Cruz now wants to enrich.

But even without the new House bill that specifically undermines Cruz’s goal, his amendment did not prevent conservative media from being excluded. As previously reported, the bill empowers media companies to exclude members based on virtually any criteria.

Via Breitbart News:

Specifically, the new JCPA contains a provision that allows “eligible” media companies forming a cartel to “create admission criteria for membership unrelated to the size of an eligible digital journalism provider or the views expressed by its content, including criteria to limit membership to only eligible publishers or only eligible broadcasters.”

That provision is significant especially for its specificity. These mainstream and left-wing media cartels may not exclude based on size or “views expressed by its content.” But that is not how the exclusion happens or will happen.

These self-appointed mainstream and left-wing media cartels ARE allowed to exclude based on the usual, totally subjective, factors they always do, such as: “trustworthiness,” “fake news, “extremism,” “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “conspiracy,” “correction policy,” “expertise,” “authoritativeness,” etc.

Even if there was a way to limit formal negotiations between the media cartel and Big Tech to price, there is no way to prevent the effects of the informal ties that will develop between the cartel’s representatives and companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. An already-corrupt relationship, in which Big Tech companies voluntarily devote billions of dollars to propping up the corporate media, will become more corrupt – something Senator Cruz knows.

The discredited legacy media is desperate to pass this bill. The JCPA’s supporters, funded by big lobbying bucks from media giants, have been trying to pass the bill through the House and Senate since 2021.

With vast amounts of Big Tech money at stake, lobbyists have repeatedly revived the bill from the dead after earlier efforts failed, with experts and journalists from across the partisan spectrum highlighting that the bill is simply a bailout for the nation’s largest and wealthiest media companies.

Media lobbyists are pushing for the bill despite the fact that their companies already receive massive handouts from the tech giants: billions of dollars from Facebook and hundreds of millions from Google. In addition, both tech giants have a documented track record of favoring the legacy media in their algorithms, while suppressing the independent media.

The bill, aimed at tilting the playing field even further towards the legacy media, is opposed by the Republican leadership in the House, including Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Jim Jordan.

In the Senate, the bill is opposed by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, Thom Tillis, and Tom Cotton.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.

Joe Biden is unfit to be president. Why didn't anyone stop him?

By William Perry Pendley

Despite Democrats performing better than expected in the midterm elections just completed, two thirds of those voters do not want their leader, President Joe Biden, to run for re-election in 2024.  Perhaps, by now, like nearly everyone else in the country, they know the real Joe Biden.  Just who is he?  

President Biden is a man of mediocre intellect who, over almost five decades in national public office, accomplished little to nothing, other than his election to federal offices and becoming rich off the federal teat and various side hustles.  He is a thin-skinned, chip-on-the-shoulder, macho swaggerer who, in Tucker Carlson phrase, "kisses up and spits down."  He is a prevaricator, plagiarist, teller-of-tall-tales narcissist who has no respect for the truth, only narratives that advance his interests or portray him favorably.  If not a racist, he see only through the lens of race and panders, prejudges, or pounces accordingly.  Finally, when it comes to young children and women, he just cannot, as my mother use to put it, keep his hands to himself; he may be guilty of much, much worse.  

Sadly, as a result of advanced age and cognitive decline, his skills, such as a quick wit, adroit speech, and pleasant countenance, have eroded as his less desirable traits, such as anger, mendacity, and lack of self-control, have worsened.  No wonder people are discovering the real Joe Biden.

Senators who served with him always knew.  Nonetheless, none said to another, "Joe's a nice enough guy, but he must never be president."  We can't let him have access to the nuclear codes, run the largest law enforcement operation in the world, or make life-and-death decisions about sending our Armed Forces into or out of harm's way.  All senators, Democrats and Republicans, refused to hold Biden accountable and make him, at least as to any plan he had for the White House, persona non grata.

Nonetheless, there is historic precedent for such nonpartisan and patriotic action.

On August 7, 1974, my once and future boss, U.S. Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyo.), joined a few of his Republican colleagues, most famously Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Senator Hugh Scott (R-Pa.), on a journey to the White House to urge President Richard Nixon to resign.  They told him, "not only had he 'lost' the congressional support of his own party and his natural allies among conservative Democrats, [but] also that they would actually convict him at trial and remove him from office."  Nixon resigned the next day.

On New Year's Eve in 1974, Justice William O. Douglas, one of the Supreme Court's longest serving jurists, suffered a severe stroke in Hawaii.  After months at Walter Reed Hospital, he returned to the Court, but he was nearly incapacitated, yet he hung on into the Court's new term the first Monday in October.  On October 17, seven of the eight remaining justices agreed that no case would be decided by a five-four vote with Douglas in the majority.  Only Justice Byron White of Colorado disagreed and pressed for Douglas's retirement.  A month later, after 36 years on the bench, Justice Douglas did so.  

In 1988, President George H.W. Bush nominated former U.S. senator John Tower (R-Texas) as his secretary of defense.  Senator Tower, who served from 1961 to 1985, was the first Republican senator to represent Texas since Reconstruction.  He chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, later was chief U.S. negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Switzerland, and in 1986 chaired the Tower Commission inquiry into the Iran-Contra Affair.  All that was not enough to prevent the Senate from rejecting his nomination, given its concerns over his alcoholism and other issues.  

Years ago, on a visit from Denver to D.C., I met with an old friend who once served as an attorney to the Senate Judiciary Committee and thus had frequent interactions with Biden.  Knowing he was aware of my negative view of the senator, I asked his opinion.  "He's always been good to me," he responded.  "That's a pretty low bar," I replied.  "It's my test," he shrugged.  So it must have been for the senators, Democrats and Republican, who knew the real Joe Biden for nearly five decades.  Now all Americans are paying a terrible price for their willingness to set such low standards. 

Mr. Pendley, a Wyoming attorney, served in the administrations of presidents Reagan and Trump and for 30 years provided pro bono representation, including before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The top question it raises is whether Zelensky "has something" on Joe Biden, given the revelations of corruption between the Biden family and Ukraine's oligarchs, as seen from the contents of the abandoned Hunter Biden laptops.  What does Zelensky indeed have on Biden?

Zelensky demands $55 billion more from American public to fund his bureaucrats

By Monica Showalter

Seems it's pretty easy for Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to shake out more cash from the Uncle Sam money tree, what with Joe Biden in the White House ready to accommodate.

So he's gone bold now, calling on Uncle Sugar to provide him with another $55 billion, on top of the $90 billion already earmarked for Ukraine by Congress, $13 billion of which he's already gotten for budget needs.  High as that is, it's even more outrageous than it looks, which we will get to in a minute.

First, Tucker Carlson's observations:

Conservative Treehouse has more here.

Here's some of the original reportage from Reuters last month:

WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday appealed to international donors to increase their financial support, saying more money was needed to rebuild schools and homes destroyed by months of Russian bombardment.

Zelenskiy, speaking by video link to finance ministers at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington, said Ukraine needed about $55 billion — $38 billion to cover next year's estimated budget deficit, and another $17 billion to start to rebuild critical infrastructure, including schools, housing and energy facilities.

"The more assistance Ukraine gets now, the sooner we'll come to an end to the Russian war, and the sooner and more reliably we will guarantee that such a cruel war will not spread into other countries," Zelenskiy said.

Well, no, Vlodko.  That's not how these things work.  Extended wars create entire consultant classes of special interests, intent on keeping the war fires burning, the budgets expanding, and the salaries rising.  More money, longer war.  Or, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, you can have all the Ukraine war you'd like to pay for.  (In the original, he said "poverty," in criticism of huge expanding government poverty programs.)  Just ask what happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Ukraine may have a sympathetic cause, given that it was invaded, but it's also a nation that didn't prepare for its own defense.  It's had plenty of money, but it's one of the most corrupt places on Earth, according to Transparency International and other watchdogs of corruption and waste.  In 2021, Transparency found that Zambia, Algeria, and the Philippines were less corrupt places.  The corruption is so bad that Ukraine is a poorer nation than most of its Western neighbors, such as economically flourishing Poland and Hungary.

Is anyone asking where this money is going?  Back when the last big tranche of federal cash was dispatched by the Senate to Ukraine, Sen. Rand Paul called for an auditing amendment to watch where that money was going.  His amendment was turned down by a Democrat-led Senate, and Zelensky, whose nation is not a NATO ally, got what he wanted.

Well, he's spent that, and now he wants us to fill the budget hole in his government operations to the tune of $55 billion, some $38 billion for government operations and $17 billion for reconstruction of the country, showing that constructing roads and bridges is no match in terms of cost for government salaries and pensions.  He asks this as if the place were still operating normally, as if the country were incapable of cutting the size of its government, freeing its citizens of all its oppressive regulations, and growing its economy on its own without the gigantic government apparatus of pre-war times.  It could be argued that Ukraine spent so much on government bureaucrats and bureaucrat pensions that it didn't have much left for its national defense.

Here are some of the problems with that one.

Why does Zelensky want $38 billion for government operations when, according to the Reuters report, the IMF, which does demand conditions for aid, says it needs $3 billion per month, which would be $36 billion, not $38 billion?  That needs a little explaining right there.

Second, what do these bureaucrats do that creates this $38 billion in "value" to justify the expense?  Why can't they just be laid off as useless fixtures during a hot war and be done with it?

On the matter of pensions, note that pensions in Ukraine are a big cost indeed, given that so many young people have fled the country even in the pre-war era.  It's expected that about a quarter of the population is going to be on government pensions by 2024, according to Wikipedia.  Maybe they can try to bring some of the young people back by freeing their economy for entrepreneurship so they can get a tax base?

Here are some other problems cited in Wikipedia's entry, emphasis mine:

Pension expenditures in 2017 amounted to 284 billion UAH. representing approximately one-third of total spending. The government covered 141 billion UAH of pension spending while the rest was funded by Single Social Contribution.[12]

Capital residents received the highest average pension in 2017, 2408.02 UAH, while the lowest was in Sumy Oblast, 1560.95 UAH.

Nearly half of retirees (5.6 million) received the minimal pension.

Pensions of public servants, judges, prosecutors, and educators received multiples of the average. According to the State Statistic Service, payments over 10,000 UAH (312 EUR) were received by only 15.5 thousand pensioners.

Six million workers pay Single Social Contribution from which 12 million pensions are funded, which means that each contributor supports two retirees.

So these bureaucrats whom Zelensky expects Uncle Sam to bankroll make many times as much in terms of average pensions paid out compared to ordinary Ukrainians.  Seems they can't be asked to make any wartime sacrifices, and with Joe Biden in the saddle ready to sign off on another tranche of free money to them, why would they?  They can continue to live high on the hog compared to other Ukrainians, with many reports out there of them buying second and third properties for themselves in other countries.  Can't interrupt that, now, can we?  Zelensky himself is believed to be worth upwards of $20 million, according to Forbes.  What's his wartime contribution?

Note also from the Wikipedia report that the latest they retire is at age 65.  Over here in the states, they just raised that age to 70.  Ukraine, which is the land of long-lived people who drink their yoghurt, can't raise their full retirement age to 70, too, so they can pay out less?

It's conditions like these that make that $55-billion demand to fund Ukraine's government seem so skeevy.  It raises obvious questions about why there isn't an auditor for these gargantuan amounts, as well as a free-market policeman demanding reforms as conditionality, the way the IMF does, and why the IMF amounts and the contributions from Europe are so small, while the demands on the U.S. are so big.  The top question it raises is whether Zelensky "has something" on Joe Biden, given the revelations of corruption between the Biden family and Ukraine's oligarchs, as seen from the contents of the abandoned Hunter Biden laptops.  What does Zelensky indeed have on Biden?

But sure enough, Zelensky feels comfortable enough to get away with making these extraordinary demands, which seem to propel Ukraine into a fantasyland of permanent war and raining money.  "Show leadership," he implored the U.S. by means of flattery.  What he really meant was "show money."

Image: Screen shot from Fox News video via YouTube.

Comer: If Dems Think We’re Lying about Hunter, They Can Just Turn over Bank Records Instead of Establishing a War Room

2,053

IAN HANCHETT

26 Nov 20220

2:29

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said that if Democrats want to embarrass Republicans for their statements about Hunter Biden, they don’t need a war room, the Bidens can just release suspicious activity reports on the Biden family and prove them wrong if they really believe Republicans are wrong.

Comer said, “[I]f the Democrats want to embarrass Republicans on the Oversight Committee for making allegations that aren’t true about the Biden family, then all they have to do is prove that what we say is not true, turn those bank records over, those suspicious activity reports. This is the most damning thing with respect to what this White House has done to block congressional investigations and to protect Hunter Biden and the entire Biden family from all of their influence-pedaling overseas. They have changed the rules to where Congress can’t have access to those suspicious activity reports. That shouldn’t be something that we have to subpoena. We will if we have to. But, at the end of the day, Maxine Waters, once Joe Biden changed that rule, put language in legislation to give Congress that authority back. I think that’s something the Financial Services Committee can do early on to try to get Congress to have the ability to access those suspicious activity reports.”

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’ investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Biden's bizarre, money-wasting COVID priorities

By Michael Letts

Do you recall when President Joe Biden said at the end of August that he wants to "fund the police," after facing so much backlash from what took place with those "defund the police" protests?

Speaking to a group of 500 people at the time, he said, "When it comes to public safety, the answer is not to 'defund the police.'  It's to fund the police."

And yet here we are, months later, with barely any sort of action taken.  There is a bill that's making its way through the Senate that will reportedly provide that funding, but, considering how long it took to get through the House, it's hard for anyone to guess when it will pass.

I bring this up because it seems as though the president says a lot of things lately — like how just about three weeks later, he claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic that had affected thousands over the past couple of years was a done deal.  He noted, in the same statement, that the "pandemic is over," but "we still have a problem with COVID."

Now, months later, according to Fox News, he's seeking funding to continue to fight against COVID, requesting $9 billion for the U.S. and $1 billion for international purposes.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi supported his request, noting that additional money is needed so the United States can "stay prepared in the face of an unpredictable virus."

It seems like an ironic statement, don't you think?  Biden was bold when he told everyone back in the early part of fall that the "pandemic is over," without even checking in with his advisers or any health experts.  Follow up months later, and here he is, asking for more money to fight it.

Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder why he's turning a blind eye to what's happening with the police departments in this country.  Several major cities, including Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and New York, are seeing massive crime increases across the board.  But their local governments aren't raising a finger to help keep police staffed, nor are they taking care of their officers who remain with the force.

As a result, we've seen thousands leave their positions, including some who have fully abandoned their pensions for the sake of their mental health.  We've even seen some cases where they've committed suicide, unable to take the pressure that's coming down on them.

Yet here's ol' Joe, begging for more money to take on a pandemic that he said is "over" and done with, instead of actually pushing forward on his previous statement to "fund the police."

The White House Office of Management and Budget noted where the COVID budget would lie.  "That is why we are requesting funding to help prepare for a possible winter surge, smooth the path to commercialization for vaccines and therapeutics, accelerate research and treatment for long COVID, and develop next-generation vaccines and treatments."

But imagine what funding like that could do for the police departments that so desperately need the men and women in blue right now.  Nine billion dollars would buy all sorts of proper gear, as well as hiring mental health specialists who could provide these officers the care they need — not to mention that this funding could open up new positions for officers to fill, as well as the ability to hire more recruits.  Because we need them, now more than ever.

Perhaps Biden should hold off on making any more statements until he's able to follow through on what he previously promised.  He said to that crowd of his devotees that he would "fund the police," so now it's time to follow through.  I understand still needing to take care of COVID vaccines and all, but we've got a more severe problem with crime running rampant in a majority of cities at the moment.

And I can assure you, Biden won't be able to gloss past it by saying "crime is over."

Michael Letts is the founder, president, and CEO of InVest USA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.  He also has over 30 years of law enforcement experience under his belt, hence his pro-police stance for his brothers and sisters in blue.  Those interested in learning more about Letts can visit his official website.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The GOP’s Hunter Biden Probe is Legit

Which party is really the one defending democracy?

November 29, 2022 by David Harsanyi 4 Comments

As a tactical concern, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises a limited political return. It would serve Republicans, and the country, far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents “domestic terrorists” and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters.

None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to “democracy” to investigate. Yet Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post warns: “If Republicans can obliterate the distinction between congressional investigations done in good faith and ones that weaponize the process in bad faith, they win.”

You see, only Democrats can launch investigations in “good faith.”

Pathological partisanship can lead to cosmic shamelessness. And you almost have to admire the chutzpah. These are the very same people who spent years championing one of the most unethical investigations in American history. We now know that Russia’s “collusion” hysteria was predicated on partisan opposition research and disinformation meant to delegitimize the 2016 election. There was a total of zero indictments related to the 2016 election “collusion.” So rickety was the evidence that guardians of our sacred norms never even tried to impeach former President Donald Trump over this alleged sedition. I’ll spare you the slew of blown one-source anonymous “scoops” spread by major media organizations in concert with the FBI and Democratic Party. Sargent highlighted them all.

Let’s remember when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, virtually the entire left-wing media complex regurgitated the risible claims of former intelligence officials — including known liars James Clapper and John Brennan — that the entire kerfuffle was just Russian “disinformation.” Sargent dismissed the news as a “fake scandal” and worked to discredit the story.

The Hunter story always had far more journalistic substantiation than the histrionic and fallacious Russia-collusion investigations that Sargent and his paper peddled for five years. Post reporters had interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his computer. They had Hunter’s signature on a receipt. They had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of his interactions. They had Tony Bobulinski, one of two former business partners of Hunter Biden who contend that “the big guy” was Joe.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the computer shop owner and Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former chief technology officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command who made campaign contributions to progressives like Ro Khanna, were part of an elaborate fascistic cabal spreading “disinformation.” But now, Congress can put them under oath.

Later, emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunter’s schemes were authenticated by forensic specialists. Yet virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, with the help of tech giants, limited the story’s exposure to help their preferred candidate win.

“Democracy,” indeed.

Then there is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling and never personally “profited off” any of his son’s schemes. What did the president think Hunter was doing when he hitched a ride to secure deals with the Chicoms on Air Force Two in 2013? Does Joe not remember that two Obama administration officials raised concerns about Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma? When finally asked about his son, Biden claimed the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

His buddies lied — just like they had during the Russia collusion hysteria. This week, only two years late, CBS News confirmed that the Hunter Biden emails were all genuine — just like everyone knew they were. Now we have authenticated emails showing an executive from Burisma thanking Hunter for facilitating a meeting with the vice president.

If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation but he would have claimed to have irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese. Sargent would be churning out one hyperbolic piece after the next. We would all be watching another thermonuclear meltdown.

Of course, nearly every congressional investigation in history is to one extent or another undertaken in “bad faith,” and that’s fine. One of the most beneficial roles of political parties is that they will hold the opposition accountable. But Sargent, and other advocates of one-party rule, only see legitimacy in their objectives, which is one of the numerous reasons their claim to be democracy’s defenders is so laughable.

Exclusive: Elise Stefanik Slams Special Counsel Jack Smith as ‘Compromised’ by ‘Corrupt’ DOJ

17

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

WENDELL HUSEBØ

29 Nov 20220

5:06

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third senior ranking House Republican, ripped special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday for being a “compromised” member of President Joe Biden’s politicized Department of Justice (DOJ).

Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, Smith is overseeing investigations into former President Donald Trump concerning documents he took to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency. Smith’s appointment occurred just three days after Trump announced a 2024 presidential bid. The appointment was purportedly made to remove any conflict of interest between Biden and his potential 2024 political opponent.

Former President Donald Trump arrives on stage during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home on November 15, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump announced that he was seeking another term in office and officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said in his announcement of the special counsel.

While Biden’s DOJ launched a special counsel to investigate Trump, Stefanik pointed out no special counsel has been appointed by the DOJ to continue the ongoing probe into Hunter Biden. A special counsel would put a degree of separation between Joe and Hunter Biden, members of the “Biden Crime Family.”

President Joe Biden hugs his son Hunter Biden, wife Dr. Jill Biden and daughter Ashley Biden after being sworn in as U.S. president during his inauguration on January 20, 2021 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“The facts are clear: Jack Smith is compromised,” Stefanik told Breitbart News. “Joe Biden’s weaponized DOJ has launched an illegitimate special counsel to investigate his number one political opponent.”

“Where is the investigation into his criminal son Hunter Biden’s corrupt business dealings with Joe Biden?” she asked. “House Republicans will hold the Biden Crime Family accountable.”

Stefanik added the DOJ will be investigated by the new GOP House majority for its “corrupt” politicization of justice. “Our House Republican majority will investigate Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice and make sure our government is once again accountable to the American people,” she told Breitbart News.

Garland’s appointment of Smith has been criticized by Republicans as partisan. Most recently, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has stated Smith is a partisan actor whose record includes being involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives. Smith also led the prosecution and conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), which was later reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court.

Prosecutor Jack Smith waits for the start of the court session of Kadri Veseli’s initial appearance at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court in The Hague, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2020. (Robin van Lonkhuijsen/Pool Photo via AP)

A close family connection of Smith’s is also worrisome. His wife, Katy Chevigny, was a 2020 Biden donor who produced a Michelle Obama documentary called, “Becoming.”

Despite the appearance of partisan preferences, Garland heralded Smith as a non-partisan prosecutor who “underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

“Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner,” Garland claimed.

Meanwhile, the investigation into Hunter Biden remains uncompleted and without a special counsel. The DOJ has reportedly delayed its “final decision” on whether Hunter will be charged for alleged tax and gun-related violations because his drug abuse could be an excuse the defense could successfully use to defend the president’s son against potential charges.

House Republicans have vowed to probe the “Biden Crime Family” with an emphasis on Joe Biden’s participation in the family’s business dealings.

“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business dealing schemes,” announced Rep. James Comer (R-TN) the top Republican on the Oversight Committee. “National security interests require to conduct an investigation and we will pursue all avenues – avenues that have long been ignored.”

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.

Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.