THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY ALWAYS HAS SEC OF TREASURY YELLEN TO PROTECT THEIR 150 SHADY BANK WIRE TRANSFERS.
Treasury Department accused of obstructing Biden probe
So Hunter Biden's need to take baksheesh undercut U.S. security interests, left Ukraine a corruption-soaked mess unfit for NATO membership, and opened the gates wide for Russia to move in on Ukraine. Ukraine was too corrupt to be a member of NATO, yet Western interests were knee-deep in perpetrating that corruption and reaping big dollars for themselves.
Way to go, Joe. Biden family corruption was one of many reasons why Ukraine couldn't get into NATO and secure the Article 5 protections it needed to deter Russia. Now it's fighting alone and hoping it can defeat the Russian juggernaut, which is only just beginning. Whether Putin intends to stop just there is anyone's guess. He's not in a friendly mood right now and has the wherewithal to use his oil earnings to wreak untold havoc on the West. Is Hunter enjoying his money now? We know that no prosecutor seems to be able to stop him.
We hope Joe and Hunter are proud of themselves. This is a war they made possible as they helped themselves to the goodies.
Hunter’s Criminal Defense Lawyer Exits After ‘Unease and Dissent’ Plague Defense Team
Hunter Biden’s high-powered criminal defense lawyer Joshua Levy is reportedly no longer working for the president’s son after “unease and dissent” plagued the legal defense team, which consisted of at least four lawyers.
Levy, who was hired to work on opposing congressional investigations that seek to reveal the complexities of the family’s business schemes, is no longer representing the infamous Biden family business member, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Levy has removed himself from the case, reportedly due to infighting within Hunter’s legal team and specifically with Abbe Lowell, who was hired in December to defend Hunter and the Biden family from nine congressional probes, including money laundering and wire fraud. In the past, Lowell has represented high-profile individuals engulfed in political scandals, such as Bill Clinton and Jared Kushner.
Levy was reportedly discontented with Lowell’s legal strategies and feared that his tactics could flop. In February, Lowell was a part of the effort to send Rudy Giuliani, Tony Bobulinski, and 12 others “litigation hold” letters to preserve “Laptop from Hell” records, a move seen by some critics as a public relations tactic to change the troubling narrative for the Biden family.
Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, told Breitbart News those letters were a “desperate, frivolous, and laughable” effort that would hurt the family’s legal position because the lawsuit will lead to discovery, a legal process by which Hunter would be deposed on camera.
The Times reported on why Hunter initially hired Levy:
President Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, had recommended Mr. Levy for the job. But Mr. Levy had clashed with Kevin Morris, a lawyer and close adviser to Hunter Biden who has lent him money to pay his back taxes and some other bills, according to a person familiar with the strategy. Mr. Morris and Hunter Biden brought on Mr. Lowell late last year, prompting Mr. Levy’s departure.
Lowell’s involvement in Hunter’s defense has not only forced the exit of Levy but has also triggered infighting with attorney Chris Clark, another high-profile attorney who leads Hunter’s criminal defense. Clark’s professional history includes working as a partner at the same Washington, DC, law firm where Rep. Liz Cheney’s husband works. The firm’s biography of Clark says he represents Hunter in the “grand jury investigation regarding tax issues.”
“Chris Clark, the lead criminal defense lawyer representing Mr. Biden in the Justice Department investigation, has kept Mr. Lowell at a distance in dealing with that matter,” the Times reported. With Clark keeping “a distance,” and Lowell and Levy’s departure, Hunter’s very expensive legal team has begun to crack just months into the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family business.
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 even to 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.
Pentagon Investigates, Gives All Clear over Ukraine Fraud Allegations
There is no evidence any of the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars spent on weapons and aid sent to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into criminal hands, the Pentagon’s inspector general said Tuesday, before adding investigations are still at an early stage.
The assurance came after members of Congress persistently questioned how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to ensure it is not subject to fraud.
AP reports Robert P. Storch was pressed by House members several times about any fraud findings. He said a number of tips and allegations have come in to a new hotline, but there have been “limited findings” to date, with many reports pending.
Storch, who was testifying with other Pentagon leaders before the House Armed Services Committee, repeatedly qualified his remarks by saying he did not want to talk about investigations that have not yet been completed.
His comments came on the back of months of claim and counterclaim regarding the potential for corruption to the very highest levels of the Ukraine government, as Breitbart News reported.
In January a string of senior Ukraine government officials were sacked or resigned amidst a flurry of corruption claims, with those shown the door accused of taking illicit payments as the Ministry of Defence allegedly signed overinflated military contracts.
Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Kyrylo Tymoshenko and Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Simonenko were among the senior Ukraine government officials who departed.
The AP report said Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the Republican committee chairman, observed Congress has appropriated more than $100 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies.
Of that, the U.S. has doled out more than $75 billion so far including nearly $32 billion in Pentagon weapons and training to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor a year ago.
File/Ground personnel unload weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and other military hardware delivered on a National Airlines plane by the United States military at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv on January 25, 2022 in Boryspil, Ukraine. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“These are unprecedented numbers. And it requires an unprecedented level of oversight by Congress,” Rogers said.
The Pentagon has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday at a press briefing.
There’s also a small team of Americans in Ukraine working with Ukrainians to do physical inspections when possible, but also virtual inspections when needed, since those teams are not going to the front lines, Ryder said.
A recent report from Transparency International found Ukraine ranked as the second most corrupt country in Europe, losing only to Russia, which ranked first. Ukraine also ranked as the 116th most corrupt country in the world, although it rose one rank since 2021.
GOP Hawks Say the Only Thing Cut From the Pentagon Will Be 'Wokeness'
'I can't think of a worse time to cut defense spending than now,' Rep. Mike Gallagher says
Congressional defense hawks say the only cuts to the defense budget that will be considered will be to "woke" programs, saying cuts to the Pentagon would be disastrous as the United States faces down a Russian war in Ukraine and Chinese threats to invade Taiwan.
"As Russia wages war on Ukraine and China eyes a similar move on Taiwan, I can't think of a worse time to cut defense spending than now," Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees America's $400 billion defense budget, told the Washington Free Beacon. Gallagher and other Armed Services Committee leaders, including chairman Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), told the Washington Free Beacon there is zero appetite among the majority of House Republicans to roll back the Pentagon's budget.
As part of concessions to a small group of Republican holdouts during the House speakership fight, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) reportedly agreed to some $130 billion in spending cuts that are expected to impact even traditionally insulated agencies like the Defense Department. The agreement has given rise to concerns the Pentagon's budget could be frozen in place, preventing it from expanding war-fighting priorities amid rising demands due to the war in Ukraine.
McCarthy has said he would only cut the Defense Department's spending on "wokeism" and other projects not impacting war-fighting capabilities. Others, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), said "everything has to be on the table" as the 2023 budget is made. But those with the most power over the Pentagon's budget said they will prevent any cuts that negatively impact an already strained fighting force.
The Biden administration's push to foster a more sensitive environment across the U.S. military has been under Republican scrutiny since the president took office. Hawks have pilloried the introduction of critical race theory books in the Navy as well as mandated gender identity trainings implemented by the Army and Navy.
Republican defense leaders who spoke to the Free Beacon said they see a pathway to compromise with far-right budget hawks. As McCarthy recently proposed, military programs seen as promoting a "woke" agenda, such as diversity and inclusion training, could provide a pathway to satiate members advocating defense cuts as well as those trying to keep the military well equipped to face down Russia, China, and Iran.
"On the House Armed Services Committee—we are laser-focused on the threats we face and the capabilities we need to defeat them," Rogers told the Free Beacon. "We are examining programs to determine if they actually provide the capabilities we need to defeat the threats we face. If they don't, they'll be cut. However, maintaining overmatch with China requires modernizing our military, and we cannot shy away from that investment."
Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), also an Armed Services Committee member, offered a similar analysis. Banks, like other GOP hawks, said wide-ranging defense cuts will embolden China and other U.S. enemies.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping "is now planning a visit to Moscow," Banks said, pointing to increased ties between China and Russia. U.S. president Joe Biden "has fomented chaos around the globe," Banks said, "and House Republicans need to be laser-focused on investing in our military and disentangling our defense industrial base from our greatest adversary."
Banks said he "will never vote to cut defense spending, and a large majority of Republicans are in the same boat." But the congressman also said there "are plenty of budget cuts I support that would strengthen our military, like defunding Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the [Defense Department]."
"Wokeness is weakness, and defunding these far-left ideologies will boost cohesion, retention, and morale and make our military stronger," Banks said.
There are concerns that with a slim Republican majority in the House, Republican defectors could team up with dovish Democrats to force defense cuts. "There are places I may actually agree with Republicans on defense cuts," Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) said last month. "If they're going to look at that and make certain cuts, then let's have that conversation."
"What we saw in the speaker fight was that a relatively small number of Republicans are willing to hold the process hostage out of the desire to make dramatic cuts in the budget," Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), the Armed Services Committee's former chairman, told the Hill last month. "So regardless of what McCarthy did or did not promise, that same group of people can do the same thing on the budget, on the appropriations bills, on the defense bill."
It is unlikely that any Democrat would sign on to cuts that target liberal initiatives such as the DEI office Banks has in his sights, and Republicans think they have a better chance to bring the party together on redirecting funds toward war-fighting rather than making any cuts.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee, said all flanks of the Republican Party could unite to redirect Pentagon funding to critical war-fighting programs that increase America’s ability to confront China and other threats, such as those posed by Iran in the Middle East.
"I'm in favor of identifying wasteful programs within the [Defense Department] and redirecting those funds to urgent priorities, but we cannot propose broad spending cuts on the backs of our troops," Waltz told the Free Beacon. "We need to ensure our military has the capability to counter China's massive military buildup, Iran's growing nuclear capabilities, the emerging terrorist threat in Afghanistan, and much more."
There are also concerns that potential defense cuts could interfere with efforts to modernize America's military, which has lagged behind similar efforts undertaken by China and other nations in recent years. Military production lines in the United States also have been strained by the ongoing war in Ukraine, where America is supplying a great amount of hardware. Potential cuts to the defense budget could exacerbate these supply-line issues.
"A strong budget ensures that our military forces are always capable of safeguarding the homeland, protecting our national interests, strengthening foreign alliances and partnerships, rapidly modernizing our forces to counter emerging threats, and supporting service-member families and veterans," Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), another Armed Services Committee member, told the Free Beacon.
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a national security analyst with the Hudson Institute think tank, said the American military needs hardware now more than ever, particularly if it is to engage in a showdown with China in the Pacific region.
"In an idyllic world at peace," Heinrichs said, "we could do the hard acquisition reform and gut all of the butter out of a budget that's supposed to be strictly guns, so to speak. But we are not in that world."
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