Are the Walls Closing in on the Bidens?
When a protection racket starts to sink.
Everyone paying attention to the latest revelations about Hunter Biden and his energetically supportive father knows that journalists and Republican officials have opened a vein, or “the walls are closing in.” Even so, the leftist media are trying to report as little of this damaging scandal material as they possibly can.
We can scarcely imagine the anxious political chatter inside pro-Biden newsrooms, but let’s imagine it sounds something like Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show. Psaki brought all her persuasive pressure on former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to recant how he tweeted former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were both unpopular and “both potentially face very serious legal troubles.” It should apparently be unthinkable to compare them. Psaki argued, “Hunter Biden is not in office, he’s not serving in government … not equivalent!”
New scoops are underlining this is a Joe Biden scandal. The New York Post reported Hunter Biden’s former business partner and friend, Devon Archer, will be testifying that he put Joe Biden on the phone with his business associates from Burisma at least two dozen times. That’s worse than the story of Hunter intimidating foreign clients by claiming his dad is in the room, listening in.
The website Business Insider reported Hunter Biden made $1.3 million for his amateurish watercolor paintings. One unknown buyer spent $875,000 on “artworks.” Joe Biden appointed one buyer, Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, to a prestigious commission.
The Washington Free Beacon added that Naftali has visited the White House at least 13 times since December 2021, including a meeting with senior Biden adviser Neera Tanden. All of Naftali’s visits occurred after Hunter Biden’s first art show opened in New York in November 2021.
The Washington Examiner found a close personal friend and aide to the Biden family appears to have worked for years in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office under David Weiss, including when the Hunter Biden probe began.
Democrats are clearly telling their journalistic allies that you can’t cover stories like this on the Biden scandals because to cover them automatically means that Biden and Trump both face “serious legal troubles.” They cover Trump scandals so meticulously, hour after hour after hour, that one screen on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” simply said this: “DC Grand Jury Meets As Possible New Indictment Looms.”
This is their business model. “Grand Jury Meets” is worth hours of airtime, and “Possible New Indictment” can be a news hook for weeks. Meanwhile, even those network stars who are tiptoeing on the Biden investigations sound extremely tentative.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash could only ask Rep. Nancy Pelosi about Hunter Biden probes, “Are you confident the politics did not play a role here?” This is like asking, “Are you sure humans are made up of molecules?” This only cued Pelosi to disparage Republican hearings as a “ridiculous clown show.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan told former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that the Biden Justice Department’s sweetheart plea deal with Hunter “infuriated” Republicans, but, “I wonder, after this plea happens, if you would advise your party to move on?”
Christie said no, but what kind of question is this? Would she ask Democrats whether they should just move on from their Trump investigations? This question isn’t about holding the Bidens accountable. It’s a journalist demanding that the Bidens should be in charge of handling the Bidens.
The media elites did not vet Joe Biden before he won the 2020 election. They spent the 2020 election cycle protecting him like a journalistic Secret Service. Their protection racket continues and should be obvious to anyone who observes the press in action — or inaction.
Lawmakers Call for Emergency Hearing into DOJ’s ‘Interference’ of Devon Archer Testimony
At least five members of the House Judiciary Committee called for lawmakers to return to Washington, DC, for an emergency hearing about the Justice Department’s “interference” in the House Oversight Committee’s scheduled testimony of Devon Archer, a key Biden family associate.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was the first member to demand an emergency hearing into the alleged interference. Then followed Reps. Mike Johnson (R-LA), Chip Roy (R-TX), Harriet Hageman (R-WY), and Dan Bishop (R-NC).
The demands came after House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed Sunday morning that the DOJ requested a judge on Saturday to set a date for Archer to begin a jail sentence regarding an unrelated, prior conviction for defrauding a Native American tribal entity in 2022.
Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Many interpreted the letter as a means by which the DOJ was trying to prevent Archer from testifying before Congress on Monday. Comer said the DOJ rarely conducts business on a Saturday.
“The DOJ is trying to arrest Devon Archer ahead of his bombshell testimony Monday about Joe Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s Ukraine business when he was VP,” New York Post‘s Miranda Devine tweeted. “US attorney in the SDNY Damian Williams issued a menacing letter yesterday – Saturday – telling Judge Abrams to order Archer to go to jail immediately to serve a one year sentence for his fraud conviction.”
As the rumor of the DOJ’s shenanigans swirled throughout the day, the agency issued a second letter Sunday in an attempt to either backtrack on its previous request or clarify its actions.
“Update: The weaponized DOJ now “clarifies” they won’t try to prevent Devon Archer from testifying tomorrow,” Mike Johnson tweeted Sunday evening. “Witness intimidation & obstruction? Nah, nothing to see here”:
Archer’s scheduled testimony could reveal a lot of information about the Biden family, as he goes back a long way with Hunter Biden. In the late 1990s, they attended Yale together. Archer went on to become the vice chairman of finance for John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign, where he connected with his college classmate Chris Heinz, Kerry’s stepson and another Biden family business partner.
In 2014, Archer served with Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukraine-based energy company. Archer resigned from Burisma’s board after his arrest in 2016. Authorities convicted him of defrauding a Native American tribal entity in 2022, and he was ordered to pay a $43,954,416.75 judgment to the victims.
Some of Archer’s largest deals involved Bohai Harvest, an entity controlled by Chinese state-owned interests.
In 2019, Hunter texted Archer that he was a part of the Biden family and that the price of power was persecution: “Every great family is persecuted prosecuted in the US — you are part of a great family — not a side show not deserted by them even in your darkest moments,” he said. “That’s the way Bidens are different and you are a Biden. It’s the price of power.”
The House Oversight Committee announced late Monday it has subpoenaed Devon Archer (highlighted in red), a Biden family associate, to appear for a deposition to Congress this Friday (Tucker Carlson Tonight).
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Did the Justice Department try to jail Devon Archer before he could testify to Congress Monday?
One can’t rule out anything when it comes to the behavior of Department of Justice officials functioning as partisan protectors of the Democrats and their current figurehead, Joe Biden. So, it is not out of line for close students of the Biden crime family bribery scandals to suspect the worst, as such luminaries as Miranda Devine and Matt Gaetz.
Ms. Devine:
Rep. Gaetz goes step further, charging criminality:
For such a gambit to work, it would require a federal judge to work over the weekend and issue an order for the immediate imprisonment of Archer, and thereby risk fierce blowback for cooperating with an effort to silence a congressional witness of the highest profile (even as corporate media attempts to downplay the story).
It is unusual, though not unprecedented, for federal prosecutors to file motions with a court on a weekend, so suspicions are in order that a nefarious intent was at work. Bt if so, it was extraordinarily clumsy and counter productive. Deep State defender Politico writes:
As of the early hours of Monday, Judge Ronnie Abrams has not ordered Devon Archer to prison, so it seems likely this effort (if that’s what it was) was a stupid, doomed failure.
Update: The DOJ has issued a "clarification" that of course it never intended to block Archer's testimony.