Hang All the Members of the Liars’ Club?
The lying sharks swim and circle with impunity.
Federal prosecutors last week announced the indictment of U.S. Representative George Santos (R-N.Y.) on a host of charges, including misuse of federal campaign funds and wire fraud, almost all of them resulting from his pathological lies.
Certainly, Santos deserved the attention of prosecutors for lying on federal documents and affidavits that may have helped him win a congressional seat as well as personal lucre.
But if that’s the case, why haven’t federal prosecutors also gone after Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)? She clearly lied her way into a Harvard Law School professorship and an erstwhile presidential candidacy by claiming, in part, quite falsely she was a Native American, supposedly Harvard’s first indigenous law professor.
Her Senate colleague, Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), flatly lied (he said “misspoke”) about being a Vietnam War veteran. He never confessed to “misspeaking” about his résumé until caught. Both senators, apparently like Santos, gained political traction in their various campaigns from such lies, but the two apparently never put them in writing, or at least not as blatantly as did Santos.
New Federal Standards?
Are federal and states prosecutors now setting a new moral and legal standard by criminalizing Santos’ lies? If true, congratulations—it is long overdue.
Now can we please extend the long arm of the law to reach far beyond a bit player like Santos?
Why not reboot with the really big liars? Their lies far more undermined the integrity of our key agencies and indeed our national security.
So let us start with John Brennan, the former CIA director. He lied on two separate occasions, in one case while under oath before the U.S. Senate. His untruths were not mere campaign finance fabrications. They involved falsely swearing that the CIA did not spy on the computers of Senate staffers (“Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate.”). He also lied that U.S. drone missions in prior years had not killed innocent bystanders (“There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.”).
Brennan, only when caught, admitted to both lies. But he faced zero consequences and, in fact, was soon rewarded with an on-air analyst job at MSNBC.
Then we come to James Clapper, the former director of the Office of National Intelligence. Like Santos, he lied. But unlike Santos, Clapper was under oath to Congress. And further unlike Santos, Clapper was not a small fish, but a whale in charge of coordinating the nation’s intelligence bureaus.
Clapper’s lies mattered a great deal, especially when he swore to Congress that the National Security Agency did not spy on Americans. (“No, sir. Not wittingly.”) When caught, Clapper confessed that he gave “the least untruthful answer.” (“I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying ‘no.’”). He faced zero consequences for his perjury. And like Brennan, he marketed his anti-Trump phobias into a comfortable cable news gig.
Note well that both Clapper and Brennan likely lied again when they signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, with a wink and nod suggesting it was a hallmark example of “Russian disinformation.”
Then we come to the former interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He is also currently working as a cable news commentator. McCabe admitted to lying—according to the inspector general, “done knowingly and intentionally”—four separate times to federal investigators, three times under oath. McCabe misled the country in matters that concerned a national election, more specifically lying that he had not leaked to the media to massage media narratives about the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
Then there is James Comey, another former FBI head, who confirmed McCabe had lied. He simply claimed on 245 occasions to House investigators and members that he either had no memory or had no knowledge, when asked under oath to explain some of the wrongdoing of the FBI during his directorship. Remember, Comey and the FBI signed off on the authenticity of Steele document material to obtain a FISA warrant, when they knew it was unreliable and Steele was not credible. Comey also likely leaked to the media a confidential memo officially memorializing a private conversation with the president of the United States.
Should we include yet another former FBI director? Robert Mueller swore under oath to Congress that he knew little about Fusion GPS (“I’m not familiar with that”) and more or less had ignored the Steele dossier. (“It’s not my purview.”) Mueller’s claims cannot be true because revelations about both were the very catalysts that prompted his own special counsel appointment.
Will the Santos prosecutors go after Anthony Fauci, the recently retired head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases?
Fauci seemingly lied under oath to the Senate when he preposterously claimed the money he channeled through a third party to the Wuhan virology lab did not entail support for gain-of-function virology research. (“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”) Many virologists were aghast at Fauci’s claims, since they knew gain-of-function research conducted in China—the point being to skirt U.S. laws—was precisely what the U.S.-subsidized researchers in China were doing.
The Bidens
Prosecutors are currently looking at the various shenanigans of Hunter Biden, whose lies may even be a match for those of George Santos. Joe Biden’s son apparently lied on his firearms background check affidavit when applying for a handgun purchase—so far, with impunity.
When asked point blank on national television whether his lost laptop was his own—he had signed a receipt for it at the repair shop—Biden refused to give a yes or no answer.
Hunter Biden has apparently de facto lied for years when he purportedly did not report either his entire income or his real business expenses accurately, or that he was the father of a child he conceived with an ex-stripper in Arkansas.
If Hunter’s lies do not match the number of Santos’ prevarications, his were at least far more significant. His lie that the laptop was not his prompted current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a former top Biden 2020 campaign aide, to call up Mike Morell, former interim CIA director. Morell’s mission was to round up as many intelligence authorities as he could to lie on the eve of a presidential election that the laptop had “all the hallmarks” of “Russian disinformation.” He found 51, including himself. Apparently, some active members of the CIA pitched in as well to lend the letter additional authenticity.
Note that Morell swears Blinken called him to solicit signers of the bogus letter, while Blinken claims he did not. So either the current secretary of state or the former interim director of the CIA is lying—or they both are. Again, among the first to sign the fraudulent intelligence letter were Brennan and Clapper. They apparently had earned a reputation as team players, given that both men had been willing to lie under oath to Congress. Misleading the nation again about the laptop to aid Joe Biden’s campaign was small potatoes.
Biden, on spec, promulgated the lie when he said in his second debate with Trump, “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it, except his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
A subsequent poll suggested the Bidens’ concocted laptop lies may have influenced voters to side with Biden in the election. If true, that was a lie that should be of far more interest to current federal prosecutors than Santos’ crazy fairy tales.
The Lies of the “Big Guy”
So we come to the greatest prevaricator of all.
Joe Biden flat-out lied on numerous occasions, such as when he claimed that he never discussed the family shake-down business with Hunter Biden.
Joe Biden, in fact, turns up on the laptop as someone deeply connected to Hunter Biden’s quid pro quo companies (“10 [percent] for the Big Guy”). Tony Bobulinksi, a former business associate of Hunter’s, has sworn that Joe and his brother Jim Biden were deeply involved in their foreign leveraging efforts.
A photo shows Joe Biden with Hunter’s “business” associates. Will the current Santos prosecutors turn their attention to the Oval Office occupant’s financial records to determine whether his lavish private homes and lifestyle were viable under his reported stated income?
Biden lied to Americans dozens of times to get elected. The tragic death of his wife in a car accident was not due to the drunkenness and fault of a truck driver. That was a horrific smear designed to shift blame onto an innocent man and gain sympathy for himself.
He lied that his son, Beau, died while serving in Iraq.
Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after he was caught lying about his college records and plagiarizing a speech from a British politician.
So we know that in the past, Joe Biden’s lies have left a mark on history in a fashion that Santos’ never will.
When Biden prefaces his whoppers with “No joke!” or “This is the God’s honest truth!” and especially when he swears, “My word as a Biden!” then it is a fair bet that he is lying.
When Biden entered office, he lied about the number of Americans previously vaccinated under the Trump Administration and preposterously claimed there had been no COVID vaccine available.
He lied that his loan forgiveness amnesty passed Congress by two votes. In fact, Biden simply declared amnesty by fiat and never submitted the request to Congress at all.
He repeatedly lies that billionaires pay only three percent of their income in taxes on average. He lies about minor details, from giving his Uncle Frank a purple heart to matters of national concern, such as the price of gas when he entered office. It was most certainly not $5 a gallon!
Biden constantly lies about his résumé. He was never a long-haul truck driver. Nor was he a star athlete almost headed for the Naval Academy on a sports scholarship if only Dallas Cowboys legend Roger Staubach had not beat him out. “I was appointed to the academy in 1965 by a senator who I was running against in 1972. I didn’t come to the academy because I wanted to be a football star. And you had a guy named Staubach and Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”
His house was never almost destroyed by a fire. He was never raised “politically” as a Puerto Rican. Biden never pinned the Silver Star on a Navy Afghanistan war hero for bringing back the body of a fellow soldier from a deep ravine. He was never arrested, either in South Africa or in Atlanta, for demonstrating on behalf of civil rights.
No foreign leader can believe Biden. He never traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He lied about his own Amtrak travel. He lied about his record on inflation and economic growth. He lied about upping Social Security payments. (It was a larger-than-usual automatic cost-of-living increase spurred by his inflationary policies.) He lied about the nature of the Trump tax cuts.
Biden keeps lying that the southern border is “secure” even as nearly 2 million people have crossed illegally on his watch and tens of thousands more are massed to enter the country as Title 42 restrictions are lifted.
He insists that five police officers died at the hands of protestors on January 6, 2021. In truth, the one person we know for certain who died violently that day was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police lieutenant with a checkered record, whose identity was suppressed for months while Babbitt’s past was sullied by the press.
Biden’s defenders hint that either he is cognitively compromised and thus not responsible—as if he has told the truth the last 40 years when he was hale!—or his lies are mere “exaggerations” unlike the “lies” of Trump—as if lying about the death of one’s spouse or son or school record or resume or major legislation or his presidency is a mere “exaggeration.”
As a general rule, since 2015, if any federal bureaucrat or elected official lied in service of opposing Donald Trump, he was exempted from consequences. If not, he was properly held responsible for his lying. So the more that the fake Steele dossier, the Russian collusion hoax, and the Russian disinformation laptop lie warped the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, the more the promulgators of those falsehoods never faced any consequences for their untruths.
So, yes, let federal prosecutors go after the lying George Santos to set a precedent that the lying of government officials has consequences.
But in the great scheme of lying things, Santos is a prevaricating minnow who was snagged to great acclaim because the lying sharks swim and circle with impunity.
This article originally appeared at AmGreatness.com.
UPenn Raked in Over $1 Billion in Foreign Funding Since Opening Biden Think Tank
The University of Pennsylvania has raked in over $1 billion in foreign funding since launching President Joe Biden's think tank in 2018, according to financial records—with money pouring in from Chinese officials, the Saudi Arabian government, pharmaceutical companies seeking U.S. assistance, and business magnates facing investigations for tax fraud and corruption.
The influx of cash increased significantly after Biden took office, spiking from $79 million in 2020 to $479 million in 2021 and $495 million in 2022, according to the Pennsylvania state records, which were obtained by the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.
The financial details, some of which were reported by Fox News on Tuesday, reveal for the first time the names of foreign donors that have been withheld by the Biden administration. Prior to 2020, the Department of Education published online the names of overseas contributors to universities that receive federal funding.
The news could also add to concerns from watchdog groups that Biden's foreign policy think tank at University of Pennsylvania, which after it officially launched in 2018 employed several people who are now senior cabinet officials, created a conflict of interest and security issues for the president. In January, the FBI seized classified documents from Biden's vice presidency that were improperly housed at the Penn Biden Center's lavish Washington, D.C., office.
Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, said the records obtained by the group raise "further questions about the scope of President Biden's ties to China."
"We now know that the University of Pennsylvania—home to Joe Biden's namesake think tank—received a massive increase in contributions from China and Hong Kong as he was ramping up his presidential campaign and has raked in millions from CCP-tied donors since he took office," Sutherland said.
Stephen MacCarthy, a spokesman for the university, previously told the Washington Free Beacon that the Penn Biden Center has "never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity" and the entire budget for the think tank "comes from university funds." He said the Penn Biden Center has only received donations from two individuals, both American, who gave a total of $1,100.
Both University of Pennsylvania and the White House have declined to provide a list of the center's donors.
Germany had the largest amount of contributions to UPenn, totaling over $850 million since 2018, according to the latest records. The second largest were from China and Hong Kong, with a combined $106 million. The United Kingdom was third, with contributions totaling $70 million.
In 2021, the university received a $200,000 gift from Rock Chen Chung-nin, a Beijing-approved member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and adviser to the Chinese government. It also took a $197,000 gift that year from Margaret Ren, the daughter-in-law of former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang. Catherine Leung, a former senior J.P. Morgan official in China, donated $142,000 months after she was cleared in a high-profile Hong Kong bribery case in 2021.
At least one of the donors also has links to Hunter Biden's business dealings in China, Fox News reported on Tuesday. Private equity company Cathay Fortune donated $1 million to UPenn in 2019. The group had an ownership stake in China Molybdenum, which partnered on a cobalt mining deal with Hunter Biden's investment firm Bohai Harvest RTS in 2016, according to Fox News.
Ma Jianrong, a Chinese politician, gave $500,000 to the university, while Chinese government adviser Chu Mang Yee's company contributed $14.5 million, Fox also reported.
Other donors and their companies have also come under scrutiny. Aditya Mittal gifted $400,000 to the university in 2022 as his steel mining business was facing a tax fraud investigation in Ukraine. Software mogul Robert Brockman last spring gave $1.6 million in research funding to UPenn through his Bermuda-based foundation, while he was under charges for running the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history. Brockman passed away last August.
UPenn raked in $1.2 million in contracts last year from the Saudi Central Bank, and over $800,000 from the Saudi General Authority of Zakat and Tax in 2021. Foreign drug companies, including Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Novartis, also inked high-dollar contracts with the university last year.
‘BANK RECORDS DON’T LIE,’ House Oversight Cmte. Says, Reporting that Biden Family Got Millions from Foreign Entities
Hunter Biden's Shady Business Partners Called To Testify in His Arkansas Child Support Case
Witness list includes convicted fraudster Devin Archer, who sat on Burisma board of directors with Hunter
The mother of Hunter Biden's four-year-old daughter plans to call his shady business partners and the art dealer who sold his paintings to testify in the Biden Arkansas child support dispute if it goes to trial, according to court records filed on Wednesday.
Several of Biden's business associates appear on the list of witnesses whom Lunden Alexis Roberts plans to have appear in court, including convicted fraudster Devon Archer, who notably served with Hunter Biden on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Also on the list of witnesses are close confidant Eric Schwerin, financial adviser Edward Prewitt, and New York City art gallery owner Georges Bergès.
The court filing indicates that Roberts's legal team has its sights trained on Biden's controversial business dealings. If the case goes to trial, public testimony from Biden's associates could shed new light on his financial activities, which are actively being probed by Republican lawmakers. The witness list includes several individuals whom the House Oversight Committee has sought to question as part of its investigation into potential influence-peddling by the Biden family.
Biden is asking the court to reduce his child support payments, saying he can no longer afford the $20,000-per-month settlement to which he agreed shortly after his father announced his presidential run in 2020. The case could go to trial this summer if the parties can't reach an agreement.
Biden's lawyers on Wednesday disclosed the list of the potential witnesses as part of an unredacted court filing. Roberts initially submitted the list to Biden's legal team last month.
The witness list also includes Biden's former business partner Jeff Cooper; John Robinson "Rob" Walker, who worked with Biden on a joint venture linked to Chinese energy group CEFC; and Devon Archer's wife, Krista Archer.
Devon Archer, who was convicted last year of defrauding a Native American tribe out of millions, was a longtime business partner of Biden who served with him on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Schwerin, whom Biden once described as a "close confidant and counsel," helped run Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment advisory firm cofounded by Biden. Schwerin has reportedly cooperated with House Oversight Committee investigators.
Prewitt was a financial adviser for several of Biden's companies and has also faced questions from House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.). Bergès, an art dealer who was once sentenced to jail time for making terrorist threats, handles the sales of Biden's high-priced paintings to undisclosed buyers.
Also named on the list is Hollywood agent Gabrielle "Gaby" Morgerman, the wife of Biden's celebrity lawyer and friend Kevin Morris, who has reportedly provided financial support and a car to Biden.
Roberts's legal team has questioned Biden's claims of financial struggles, arguing that the first son has retained "some of the most expensive attorneys on planet Earth," including D.C. superlawyer Abbe Lowell.
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