CAN WE SAVE OUR COUNTRY FROM JOE BIDEN?
The Democrats exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to unconstitutionally manipulate state voting laws, expand and abuse mail-in voting, and orchestrate unfettered ballot harvesting in order to place in office perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, and bribable president in American history. They cannot feign ignorance as virtually every Washington insider knew Biden was an unprincipled buffoon since his early days in the Senate.
The Worst President in the Last 100 Years" - Victor Davis Hanson
Maureen Dowd can't seem to figure out who the liar-in-chief is
Whenever I see a column in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd, writing about our liar-in-chief, I assume that she is talking about the current commander-in-chief who has been a congenital liar his entire life.
After all, Joe Biden has lied continuously throughout his Washington career.
He lies about big and little things.
Here is a small sample:
He lied about his college rank and grades at law school.
He plagiarized a speech as he ran for president in 1988. The media chased him from that race.
- Joe Biden has plagiarized from speeches, essays, and policy positions throughout his entire life
- As a student at Syracuse Law School in 1965, Biden plagiarized 5-pages from a law review journal "without quotation or attribution"
- During his failed 1988 presidential campaign, Biden plagiarized from speeches by British politician Neil Kinnock, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy
He continues to lie about what Trump said in Charlottesville to gin up racial hate and division.
He lied when he said that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation during a debate with Trump. (he clearly knew the truth)
He continues to lie that no one in his family ever made money from foreign sources and that he never talked to Hunter or anyone in his family about their business dealings.
He continues to lie that he inherited a bad economy. The economy was growing rapidly when he took office.
He lied that there were no vaccines available when he took office.
He lied that inflation was caused by Russia and the supply chain when inflation took off as soon as he forced his radically destructive government spending on the American people.
He lied that the border was under control.
And he continues to lie that his policies cut the deficit in half.
But nope, the column in the Times was talking about Trump, not Biden.
Maybe Maureen Dowd also thinks Trump won in 2020 and is still the chief.
Here are a few excerpts from Dowd's column:
A man is running to run the government he tried to overthrow while he was running it, even as he is running to stay ahead of the law.
Would Trump have authorized National Guard troops to the Capitol if he really wanted to overthrow the government? Sadly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't do her job to secure the Capitol and sadly, the media never cared about the truth.
A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.
Would Trump have told the people at his January 6 rally to march peacefully and patriotically if he wanted the rally to be violent? The media and other Democrats, along with some Republicans, also bury that truth.
I do not recall the media saying that Democrats wanted to overthrow the government when they challenged the 2000, 2004, and 2016 election and supported riots.
Dowd then asks:
The question now is: Has Trump finally run out of time, thanks to Jack Smith, who runs marathons as an Ironman triathlete? Are those ever-loving walls really closing in this time?
Dowd loves all the leaks and charges from Smith's office but doesn't care that the current commander-in-chief illegally took classified documents and mishandled them. Why are there no leaks and charges from Biden's special counsel since no one is supposedly above the law and everyone is treated equally by this "independent Justice Department?
We were expecting an epic clash when Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 as a special counsel to head the investigation into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia and his potential obstruction of justice. It was the flamboyant flimflam man vs. the buttoned-down, buttoned-up boy scout.
Mueller, who had been a decorated Marine in Vietnam, was such a straight arrow that he never even deviated to wear a blue shirt when he ran the F.B.I.
Amid the Trump administration chaos, Mueller ran a disciplined, airtight operation as special counsel, assembling a dream team of legal talent. But regarding obstruction of justice, the final report was flaccid, waffling, legalistic.
And Dowd loved Mueller’s dream team, filled with Hillary supporters, who did a two-year witch hunt on Trump searching in vain for fictional Russian collusion.
After all, the media, Justice Department, and other Democrats had spread the lie to the public that Trump had colluded with Russia and surely these leftists could find it or create it.
Trump always told the truth that it was a hoax, yet he is called the liar.
The reason the Mueller dream team didn’t leak is because the leaks would have had to be how many Justice officials had lied to the FISA court and that Hillary and the DNC had perpetuated a massive fraud on the American people with the fictional Russian dossier.
What this article does not show are any lies by Trump.
Anyone who believed the Russian collusion story probably still believes that Biden never talked to Hunter about his business dealings. They must be toting off the same bong as Hunter’s friend and benefactor.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0
Whenever I see a column in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd, writing about our liar-in-chief, I assume that she is talking about the current commander-in-chief who has been a congenital liar his entire life.
After all, Joe Biden has lied continuously throughout his Washington career.
He lies about big and little things.
Here is a small sample:
He lied about his college rank and grades at law school.
He plagiarized a speech as he ran for president in 1988. The media chased him from that race.
- Joe Biden has plagiarized from speeches, essays, and policy positions throughout his entire life
- As a student at Syracuse Law School in 1965, Biden plagiarized 5-pages from a law review journal "without quotation or attribution"
- During his failed 1988 presidential campaign, Biden plagiarized from speeches by British politician Neil Kinnock, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy
He continues to lie about what Trump said in Charlottesville to gin up racial hate and division.
He lied when he said that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation during a debate with Trump. (he clearly knew the truth)
He continues to lie that no one in his family ever made money from foreign sources and that he never talked to Hunter or anyone in his family about their business dealings.
He continues to lie that he inherited a bad economy. The economy was growing rapidly when he took office.
He lied that there were no vaccines available when he took office.
He lied that inflation was caused by Russia and the supply chain when inflation took off as soon as he forced his radically destructive government spending on the American people.
He lied that the border was under control.
And he continues to lie that his policies cut the deficit in half.
But nope, the column in the Times was talking about Trump, not Biden.
Maybe Maureen Dowd also thinks Trump won in 2020 and is still the chief.
Here are a few excerpts from Dowd's column:
A man is running to run the government he tried to overthrow while he was running it, even as he is running to stay ahead of the law.
Would Trump have authorized National Guard troops to the Capitol if he really wanted to overthrow the government? Sadly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't do her job to secure the Capitol and sadly, the media never cared about the truth.
A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.
Would Trump have told the people at his January 6 rally to march peacefully and patriotically if he wanted the rally to be violent? The media and other Democrats, along with some Republicans, also bury that truth.
I do not recall the media saying that Democrats wanted to overthrow the government when they challenged the 2000, 2004, and 2016 election and supported riots.
Dowd then asks:
The question now is: Has Trump finally run out of time, thanks to Jack Smith, who runs marathons as an Ironman triathlete? Are those ever-loving walls really closing in this time?
Dowd loves all the leaks and charges from Smith's office but doesn't care that the current commander-in-chief illegally took classified documents and mishandled them. Why are there no leaks and charges from Biden's special counsel since no one is supposedly above the law and everyone is treated equally by this "independent Justice Department?
We were expecting an epic clash when Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 as a special counsel to head the investigation into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia and his potential obstruction of justice. It was the flamboyant flimflam man vs. the buttoned-down, buttoned-up boy scout.
Mueller, who had been a decorated Marine in Vietnam, was such a straight arrow that he never even deviated to wear a blue shirt when he ran the F.B.I.
Amid the Trump administration chaos, Mueller ran a disciplined, airtight operation as special counsel, assembling a dream team of legal talent. But regarding obstruction of justice, the final report was flaccid, waffling, legalistic.
And Dowd loved Mueller’s dream team, filled with Hillary supporters, who did a two-year witch hunt on Trump searching in vain for fictional Russian collusion.
After all, the media, Justice Department, and other Democrats had spread the lie to the public that Trump had colluded with Russia and surely these leftists could find it or create it.
Trump always told the truth that it was a hoax, yet he is called the liar.
The reason the Mueller dream team didn’t leak is because the leaks would have had to be how many Justice officials had lied to the FISA court and that Hillary and the DNC had perpetuated a massive fraud on the American people with the fictional Russian dossier.
What this article does not show are any lies by Trump.
Anyone who believed the Russian collusion story probably still believes that Biden never talked to Hunter about his business dealings. They must be toting off the same bong as Hunter’s friend and benefactor.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0
They CRACKED the Case
DID you SEE this?
HOW MANY OF THESE PIGS ARE GAMER LAWYERS ON THE TAKE?
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?) and the Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY GAMER LAWER TONY BLINKEN AS WELL AS CON MAN ADAM SHIFF). BRIAN C JOONDEPH
HOW MANY OF THESE PIGS ARE GAMER LAWYERS ON THE TAKE?
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?) and the Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY GAMER LAWER TONY BLINKEN AS WELL AS CON MAN ADAM SHIFF). BRIAN C JOONDEPH
SHOCKING SHAKE-UP in Hunter Biden plea deal ... Did lawyers LIE?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMBHiEyp_Ms
It's time to prosecute the prosecutors
The farther we drift from the constitutional rule in this country, the less shocking the shocking will become.
A few years ago, the notion of an incumbent American president prosecuting his political opponent for so-called "crimes" involving the opponent's speech would have shocked America's conscience.
This totalitarianism tactic happens in Russia, where Putin jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, or Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro arrests opposition leaders like Leopoldo López, or Cambodia, where opposition leader Kem Sokha was convicted of "treason," got 27 years in prison, and was banned forever from running for office.
But not in America. Not in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Imagine Ronald Reagan prosecuting Walter Mondale, or George H.W. Bush prosecuting Bill Clinton, or Bill Clinton prosecuting Bob Dole.
The shocking thought of such foolishness would never have been tolerated by the American people.
But no more. Once the shock value wears off, and once the wide gates of banana republicanism are thrown open, there's no turning back. How ironic that Putin-obsessed Democrats are acting just like him.
Afraid your opponent might beat you at the polls? Is his rhetoric a little too hot to handle? No problem. Just prosecute him. The Russians, Venezuelans, and Cambodians do it. So why not the Democrats? The ends justify the means, say the Marxists.
The Democrats over the last eight years have pushed the envelope ever closer to the unthinkable. Never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emmanuel famously advocated. The Democrats create their crises, and then create their own heavy-handed, unconstitutional solutions to the crises, with the ultimate aim always the same: more power.
In other words, set the fire, and then solve it by pouring on the gasoline.
In 2020, they used COVID to generate chaos and bend election rules, ignoring established ballot verification requirements, arbitrarily changing voting deadlines, and shutting down counting in the middle of the night in places their guy was losing badly, all to achieve their desired electoral result.
With their lies about masks, vaccines, and lockdowns all exposed, another pandemic won't work, because nobody's buying that trick again. So now, it's banana republic prosecutions against the Republican frontrunner, on multiple, coordinated fronts. Note the timing here — not two years ago, but right before the election. What a coincidence!
By bringing these prosecutions, Smith and Garland are breaking federal law by violating the Hatch Act, which states that a federal "employee may not ... use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." But the unfortunate fact remains that few legal tools or weapons exist to hold rogue prosecutors accountable for these wild shenanigans.
Violators of the Hatch Act, for example, face a maximum $1,000 fine and debarment from working for the government for a maximum of five years. But does anybody think a thousand-dollar fine will deter Smith and Garland from their rabid anti-Trump fixation?
Come on.
Without criminal sanctions, the Hatch Act's slap-on-the-wrist, "fine and ban" approach provides no real deterrent against prosecutors like Smith and Willis and their insatiable thirst for power.
If Dracula were a prosecutor, he'd be Jack Smith — a blood-sucking prosecutor whose goal isn't just acquiring short-term political power, but the ultimate destruction of the Constitution, which, at least on paper, remains a theoretical barrier to totalitarianism
Smith and his banana republic prosecutions assault our constitutional republic and attack the Constitution itself. Their goal: to first criminalize Trump's right to free speech, and then to criminalize ours.
They concoct flowery language, with pompous terms causing CNN to slobber — terms like "obstruction," "racketeering," and "the Espionage Act." But that doesn't change the fact that these prosecutions are all, at their core, aimed against Trump because of his speech.
They don't like that he said on January 6, "You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong." They don't like that he called Brad Raffensperger to ask about suspicious circumstances in Georgia's electoral process.
They despise the fact that Trump would use his words to dare challenge their power or call their party into question.
Like what Bobby Kennedy, Jr. said last week before Jim Jordan's committee, when 102 Democrats tried censoring his appearance in a hearing about censorship, "The First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for."
Democrats prosecute Trump because they don't like the way he talks. They don't like him complaining or asking questions about an election, which, frankly, should still be questioned. So they attack the Constitution, hammering the right of free speech with their prosecutions. They take dead aim against the Constitution hiding their motives under cleverly invented flowery language, like "inciting a riot," or "insurrection," or "Espionage Act," and MSNBC dutifully oohs and aahs.
But flowery language or not, and despite CNN's excited mouth-foaming over all this, at the core, theirs is an attack on the First Amendment.
Trump has a constitutional right to raise questions, as does every American concerned about the appearance of an election gone off the tracks, where Democrats changed rules in the middle of the game.
It's not Trump, but rather these Democrat prosecutors who directly threaten the Constitution. Their prosecutorial assault against the Constitution is so serious that something must be done to shut them down in their tracks.
To protect the Constitution, Congress must bring down the hammer to create a deterrent so that the likes of Smith, Willis, and Bragg will think twice about political prosecutions in the future. Congress must pass "rogue prosecutor laws" so that a prosecutor who prosecutes a political opponent, if that prosecution is primarily for political motives, can be prosecuted himself.
Under these laws, that prosecutor should face felony charges and years in prison for bringing a political prosecution.
Does this mean that all prosecutions of politicians must end? Certainly not. A prosecution involving a clear "meat and potatoes" crime, like murder, assault, or larceny — that's one thing. But a prosecution where a defendant faces prison time for words spoken is quite another.
The issue is the prosecutor's motivation. All these prosecutions against Trump take aim at his speech, which, unlike robbery, murder, assault, and child prostitution — or whatever the Democrats were doing on Epstein Island — is constitutionally protected.
Targeting a political opponent's speech is prima facie evidence of a politically motivated prosecution, and at the end of the day, prosecutors who bring these types of cases should wind up in jail. Why? Because after paying lip service to their oaths to the Constitution, they seek to destroy it. They use their offices to abuse the judicial process, transforming the process into a political weapon to grab power, threaten the Republic, and threaten our freedoms. In doing so, they make a mockery of the criminal justice system.
No one, not even federal prosecutors, is above the law, and these political prosecutions of Trump based on his words, and nothing more, threaten us all. Once they succeed in imprisoning Americans for words spoken in the political arena, our Constitution dies. We will have become Russia, Venezuela, and Cambodia.
Garland, Smith, Willis, and Bragg must understand that what goes around might eventually come around. With rogue prosecutor laws in place, a Republican attorney general might review their conduct one day.
To Speaker McCarthy and Republicans in Congress, pass rogue prosecutor laws to stop the lunacy. Do it now. It's time to prosecute the prosecutors.
Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer, is the author of the book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance and CALL SIGN EXTORTION 17: The Shootdown of SEAL Team Six, and the author of 15 books on the United States military, including three national bestsellers. He is one of four former JAG officers serving on the Lorance legal team. Lorance was pardoned by President Trump in November 2019. Brown is also a former military prosecutor and a former special assistant United States attorney. He can be reached at donbrownbooks@gmail.com and on Twitter at @donbrownbooks.
Image via Picryl.
The Democrats exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to unconstitutionally manipulate state voting laws, expand and abuse mail-in voting, and orchestrate unfettered ballot harvesting in order to place in office perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, and bribable president in American history. They cannot feign ignorance as virtually every Washington insider knew Biden was an unprincipled buffoon since his early days in the Senate.
The farther we drift from the constitutional rule in this country, the less shocking the shocking will become.
A few years ago, the notion of an incumbent American president prosecuting his political opponent for so-called "crimes" involving the opponent's speech would have shocked America's conscience.
This totalitarianism tactic happens in Russia, where Putin jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, or Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro arrests opposition leaders like Leopoldo López, or Cambodia, where opposition leader Kem Sokha was convicted of "treason," got 27 years in prison, and was banned forever from running for office.
But not in America. Not in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Imagine Ronald Reagan prosecuting Walter Mondale, or George H.W. Bush prosecuting Bill Clinton, or Bill Clinton prosecuting Bob Dole.
The shocking thought of such foolishness would never have been tolerated by the American people.
But no more. Once the shock value wears off, and once the wide gates of banana republicanism are thrown open, there's no turning back. How ironic that Putin-obsessed Democrats are acting just like him.
Afraid your opponent might beat you at the polls? Is his rhetoric a little too hot to handle? No problem. Just prosecute him. The Russians, Venezuelans, and Cambodians do it. So why not the Democrats? The ends justify the means, say the Marxists.
The Democrats over the last eight years have pushed the envelope ever closer to the unthinkable. Never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emmanuel famously advocated. The Democrats create their crises, and then create their own heavy-handed, unconstitutional solutions to the crises, with the ultimate aim always the same: more power.
In other words, set the fire, and then solve it by pouring on the gasoline.
In 2020, they used COVID to generate chaos and bend election rules, ignoring established ballot verification requirements, arbitrarily changing voting deadlines, and shutting down counting in the middle of the night in places their guy was losing badly, all to achieve their desired electoral result.
With their lies about masks, vaccines, and lockdowns all exposed, another pandemic won't work, because nobody's buying that trick again. So now, it's banana republic prosecutions against the Republican frontrunner, on multiple, coordinated fronts. Note the timing here — not two years ago, but right before the election. What a coincidence!
By bringing these prosecutions, Smith and Garland are breaking federal law by violating the Hatch Act, which states that a federal "employee may not ... use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." But the unfortunate fact remains that few legal tools or weapons exist to hold rogue prosecutors accountable for these wild shenanigans.
Violators of the Hatch Act, for example, face a maximum $1,000 fine and debarment from working for the government for a maximum of five years. But does anybody think a thousand-dollar fine will deter Smith and Garland from their rabid anti-Trump fixation?
Come on.
Without criminal sanctions, the Hatch Act's slap-on-the-wrist, "fine and ban" approach provides no real deterrent against prosecutors like Smith and Willis and their insatiable thirst for power.
If Dracula were a prosecutor, he'd be Jack Smith — a blood-sucking prosecutor whose goal isn't just acquiring short-term political power, but the ultimate destruction of the Constitution, which, at least on paper, remains a theoretical barrier to totalitarianism
Smith and his banana republic prosecutions assault our constitutional republic and attack the Constitution itself. Their goal: to first criminalize Trump's right to free speech, and then to criminalize ours.
They concoct flowery language, with pompous terms causing CNN to slobber — terms like "obstruction," "racketeering," and "the Espionage Act." But that doesn't change the fact that these prosecutions are all, at their core, aimed against Trump because of his speech.
They don't like that he said on January 6, "You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong." They don't like that he called Brad Raffensperger to ask about suspicious circumstances in Georgia's electoral process.
They despise the fact that Trump would use his words to dare challenge their power or call their party into question.
Like what Bobby Kennedy, Jr. said last week before Jim Jordan's committee, when 102 Democrats tried censoring his appearance in a hearing about censorship, "The First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for."
Democrats prosecute Trump because they don't like the way he talks. They don't like him complaining or asking questions about an election, which, frankly, should still be questioned. So they attack the Constitution, hammering the right of free speech with their prosecutions. They take dead aim against the Constitution hiding their motives under cleverly invented flowery language, like "inciting a riot," or "insurrection," or "Espionage Act," and MSNBC dutifully oohs and aahs.
But flowery language or not, and despite CNN's excited mouth-foaming over all this, at the core, theirs is an attack on the First Amendment.
Trump has a constitutional right to raise questions, as does every American concerned about the appearance of an election gone off the tracks, where Democrats changed rules in the middle of the game.
It's not Trump, but rather these Democrat prosecutors who directly threaten the Constitution. Their prosecutorial assault against the Constitution is so serious that something must be done to shut them down in their tracks.
To protect the Constitution, Congress must bring down the hammer to create a deterrent so that the likes of Smith, Willis, and Bragg will think twice about political prosecutions in the future. Congress must pass "rogue prosecutor laws" so that a prosecutor who prosecutes a political opponent, if that prosecution is primarily for political motives, can be prosecuted himself.
Under these laws, that prosecutor should face felony charges and years in prison for bringing a political prosecution.
Does this mean that all prosecutions of politicians must end? Certainly not. A prosecution involving a clear "meat and potatoes" crime, like murder, assault, or larceny — that's one thing. But a prosecution where a defendant faces prison time for words spoken is quite another.
The issue is the prosecutor's motivation. All these prosecutions against Trump take aim at his speech, which, unlike robbery, murder, assault, and child prostitution — or whatever the Democrats were doing on Epstein Island — is constitutionally protected.
Targeting a political opponent's speech is prima facie evidence of a politically motivated prosecution, and at the end of the day, prosecutors who bring these types of cases should wind up in jail. Why? Because after paying lip service to their oaths to the Constitution, they seek to destroy it. They use their offices to abuse the judicial process, transforming the process into a political weapon to grab power, threaten the Republic, and threaten our freedoms. In doing so, they make a mockery of the criminal justice system.
No one, not even federal prosecutors, is above the law, and these political prosecutions of Trump based on his words, and nothing more, threaten us all. Once they succeed in imprisoning Americans for words spoken in the political arena, our Constitution dies. We will have become Russia, Venezuela, and Cambodia.
Garland, Smith, Willis, and Bragg must understand that what goes around might eventually come around. With rogue prosecutor laws in place, a Republican attorney general might review their conduct one day.
To Speaker McCarthy and Republicans in Congress, pass rogue prosecutor laws to stop the lunacy. Do it now. It's time to prosecute the prosecutors.
Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer, is the author of the book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance and CALL SIGN EXTORTION 17: The Shootdown of SEAL Team Six, and the author of 15 books on the United States military, including three national bestsellers. He is one of four former JAG officers serving on the Lorance legal team. Lorance was pardoned by President Trump in November 2019. Brown is also a former military prosecutor and a former special assistant United States attorney. He can be reached at donbrownbooks@gmail.com and on Twitter at @donbrownbooks.
Image via Picryl.
The Democrats exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to unconstitutionally manipulate state voting laws, expand and abuse mail-in voting, and orchestrate unfettered ballot harvesting in order to place in office perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, and bribable president in American history. They cannot feign ignorance as virtually every Washington insider knew Biden was an unprincipled buffoon since his early days in the Senate.
The Democrats’ Dilemma: How to Convince Joe Biden to Drop out of the Race
As the 2024 presidential election is beginning to cast a growing shadow over the American political landscape, many in the party establishment are quietly looking into replacing Joe Biden as the Democrat Party nominee. But who will they choose to replace Biden and how are they going to force him to either resign or drop out of the race without creating political turmoil for the party?
Biden’s physical and mental incapacity is becoming increasingly pronounced and the Republican House, with the assistance of numerous whistleblowers, is revealing evermore damning evidence of potential criminality by both Joe and his son, Hunter. The pressure to either force him to resign or drop his candidacy and remain in office is accelerating as the Democrats become increasingly fearful of losing the presidency in 2024.
Finding someone to replace Biden is perhaps the least of their problems. While a number of names have been bandied about, an exceedingly flawed Gavin Newsom appears to be the current front-runner. However, there is another potential candidate that sets many Democrat hearts aflutter: Gretchen Whitmer, the 51-year-old, well-spoken and telegenic Governor of Michigan.
On July 6, 2023, Politico Magazine published a fawning article extolling Governor Whitmer. Within the article, Whitmer claimed she has no interest in running for president, however:
A subsequent announcement, however, made it clear she’s willing to try. Whitmer is creating a federal PAC, called “Fight Like Hell,” to boost Biden and congressional candidates next year….
This step could also allow her to assume the role of a leading candidate for the 2024 Democrat nomination, replacing Joe Biden.
Jonathan Martin, the author of the Politico article also reveals that many backstage conversations have been taking place with Whitmer. He further exposes the Democrats’ increasingly shaky strategy of Biden easily winning again in 2024.
These backstage conversations have taken place as Biden’s approval ratings show little sign of improvement and increasingly appear impervious to external events, for good or ill. Of course, Democrats are betting that the most significant external event of all—Republicans renominating a candidate with more baggage than O’Hare [Airport] at Thanksgiving—will tip the election again to Biden.
Yet even their assumedly strong odds in such a rematch have not soothed Democrats.
The angst now percolating among the Democrat hierarchy is also reflected among the rank-and- file Democrat voters, as over 50% are saying they do not want Biden to run for the nomination.
If the Democrat establishment succeeds in getting Biden to resign or drop out of the race and the choice is between Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, Whitmer would, in all likelihood, be the preferred nominee as she will be a formidable presidential candidate pitted against Donald Trump. But finding a new candidate to replace Joe Biden is the easy part, getting him to resign or drop out of the race without triggering a political firestorm may prove to be far more difficult.
The Democrats exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to unconstitutionally manipulate state voting laws, expand and abuse mail-in voting, and orchestrate unfettered ballot harvesting in order to place in office perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, and bribable president in American history. They cannot feign ignorance as virtually every Washington insider knew Biden was an unprincipled buffoon since his early days in the Senate.
By foisting this reprobate on America, they also, per the Constitution, granted him the unlimited power to grant pre-emptive pardons to whomever he chooses. Joe, in order to protect himself and his family, will, at some point, exercise his presidential prerogative to issue these pardons.
Coupled with the unthinkable specter of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election, the power to pardon also serves as a potential extortion tool in the hands of an unscrupulous Joe Biden in his dealings with Democrat party elites.
The revelations emanating from the House of Representative and multiple whistleblowers of Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged criminality have been devastating. A July 12, 2023 poll reveals 56% of Americans (and 40% of Democrats) believe Biden likely took bribes from sources tied to various foreign governments. There is little likelihood these polls, coupled with many that are now showing Trump beating Biden, will change as more potential criminality is being exposed and the White House remains unable to offer any viable explanations.
With this evolving political disaster for the Democrats, they will, of necessity, have to either force Joe Biden out of the White House as soon as possible or induce him to drop out of the race and remain in office.
The Democrat establishment’s reluctance to compel a dangerously incapacitated and compromised Joe Biden to resign is the product of both the buffoonish incompetence of his VP successor, Kamala Harris, and of Biden’s pardon power. If the Democrats and the legacy media succeed in forcing Biden to resign, he will issue pardons for himself and Hunter et al on his way out the door. Thus, creating a potential political firestorm as the bulk of the citizenry would be incensed over this egregious self-dealing. Resulting in the Democrat Party and its down-ballot candidates being negatively impacted in the 2024 election.
Additionally, a Biden resignation would thrust an extraordinarily unpopular Kamala Harris, who is losing to Trump by double digits in every poll, back into the presidential sweepstakes creating potentially more problems for the Democrats among minorities if she is forced off the 2024 ticket.
Thus, the Democrat elites would prefer any arrangement which allows Biden to drop out of the race and remain in office. Their ideal arrangement would be to give Biden whatever he wants if he agrees to wait until after Election Day November 5, 2024 to issue pre-emptive pardons. After which the Party elites could feign outrage at his actions.
Their anticipation would be that once Joe is out of the race, he will no longer be the center of attention in the campaign. The Democrats and the legacy media would then focus on manipulating the electorate into ignoring the allegations of Biden family criminality by making certain the American people fixate on Trump’s specious legal predicaments and the Democrats’ shiny new candidate running for president.
While this cabal is losing faith in Biden’s chances in 2024, they are still convinced that regardless of the circumstances surrounding Biden, almost anyone they nominate, but in particular Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer, could win as long as Donald Trump, entangled in their treacherous web of indictments and trials, is the Republican nominee.
There is, however, a high-stakes risk in the strategy of convincing Joe Biden to drop out of the race and remain in office. Can the Democrats and the legacy media keep a lid on the ongoing revelations about alleged bribes and fraud for the next 15 months without exposing their duplicity, thus, infuriating the bulk of the electorate?
An ever-increasing percentage of the citizenry is becoming aware of the potential criminality of Joe Biden and the cover-up by the Democrats and the legacy media. If the Republicans do not waver and continue to aggressively investigate and open an impeachment inquiry as well as expose Biden’s Democrat enablers, it is highly unlikely that this cabal will be able to control the narrative for an extended period of time.
After premeditatively foisting Joe Biden on the American people, it is a supreme irony that the Democrat party elites and the legacy media are now being hoisted on their own petard.
Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab (cropped).
As the 2024 presidential election is beginning to cast a growing shadow over the American political landscape, many in the party establishment are quietly looking into replacing Joe Biden as the Democrat Party nominee. But who will they choose to replace Biden and how are they going to force him to either resign or drop out of the race without creating political turmoil for the party?
Biden’s physical and mental incapacity is becoming increasingly pronounced and the Republican House, with the assistance of numerous whistleblowers, is revealing evermore damning evidence of potential criminality by both Joe and his son, Hunter. The pressure to either force him to resign or drop his candidacy and remain in office is accelerating as the Democrats become increasingly fearful of losing the presidency in 2024.
Finding someone to replace Biden is perhaps the least of their problems. While a number of names have been bandied about, an exceedingly flawed Gavin Newsom appears to be the current front-runner. However, there is another potential candidate that sets many Democrat hearts aflutter: Gretchen Whitmer, the 51-year-old, well-spoken and telegenic Governor of Michigan.
On July 6, 2023, Politico Magazine published a fawning article extolling Governor Whitmer. Within the article, Whitmer claimed she has no interest in running for president, however:
A subsequent announcement, however, made it clear she’s willing to try. Whitmer is creating a federal PAC, called “Fight Like Hell,” to boost Biden and congressional candidates next year….
This step could also allow her to assume the role of a leading candidate for the 2024 Democrat nomination, replacing Joe Biden.
Jonathan Martin, the author of the Politico article also reveals that many backstage conversations have been taking place with Whitmer. He further exposes the Democrats’ increasingly shaky strategy of Biden easily winning again in 2024.
These backstage conversations have taken place as Biden’s approval ratings show little sign of improvement and increasingly appear impervious to external events, for good or ill. Of course, Democrats are betting that the most significant external event of all—Republicans renominating a candidate with more baggage than O’Hare [Airport] at Thanksgiving—will tip the election again to Biden.
Yet even their assumedly strong odds in such a rematch have not soothed Democrats.
The angst now percolating among the Democrat hierarchy is also reflected among the rank-and- file Democrat voters, as over 50% are saying they do not want Biden to run for the nomination.
If the Democrat establishment succeeds in getting Biden to resign or drop out of the race and the choice is between Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, Whitmer would, in all likelihood, be the preferred nominee as she will be a formidable presidential candidate pitted against Donald Trump. But finding a new candidate to replace Joe Biden is the easy part, getting him to resign or drop out of the race without triggering a political firestorm may prove to be far more difficult.
The Democrats exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to unconstitutionally manipulate state voting laws, expand and abuse mail-in voting, and orchestrate unfettered ballot harvesting in order to place in office perhaps the most incompetent, corrupt, and bribable president in American history. They cannot feign ignorance as virtually every Washington insider knew Biden was an unprincipled buffoon since his early days in the Senate.
By foisting this reprobate on America, they also, per the Constitution, granted him the unlimited power to grant pre-emptive pardons to whomever he chooses. Joe, in order to protect himself and his family, will, at some point, exercise his presidential prerogative to issue these pardons.
Coupled with the unthinkable specter of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election, the power to pardon also serves as a potential extortion tool in the hands of an unscrupulous Joe Biden in his dealings with Democrat party elites.
The revelations emanating from the House of Representative and multiple whistleblowers of Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged criminality have been devastating. A July 12, 2023 poll reveals 56% of Americans (and 40% of Democrats) believe Biden likely took bribes from sources tied to various foreign governments. There is little likelihood these polls, coupled with many that are now showing Trump beating Biden, will change as more potential criminality is being exposed and the White House remains unable to offer any viable explanations.
With this evolving political disaster for the Democrats, they will, of necessity, have to either force Joe Biden out of the White House as soon as possible or induce him to drop out of the race and remain in office.
The Democrat establishment’s reluctance to compel a dangerously incapacitated and compromised Joe Biden to resign is the product of both the buffoonish incompetence of his VP successor, Kamala Harris, and of Biden’s pardon power. If the Democrats and the legacy media succeed in forcing Biden to resign, he will issue pardons for himself and Hunter et al on his way out the door. Thus, creating a potential political firestorm as the bulk of the citizenry would be incensed over this egregious self-dealing. Resulting in the Democrat Party and its down-ballot candidates being negatively impacted in the 2024 election.
Additionally, a Biden resignation would thrust an extraordinarily unpopular Kamala Harris, who is losing to Trump by double digits in every poll, back into the presidential sweepstakes creating potentially more problems for the Democrats among minorities if she is forced off the 2024 ticket.
Thus, the Democrat elites would prefer any arrangement which allows Biden to drop out of the race and remain in office. Their ideal arrangement would be to give Biden whatever he wants if he agrees to wait until after Election Day November 5, 2024 to issue pre-emptive pardons. After which the Party elites could feign outrage at his actions.
Their anticipation would be that once Joe is out of the race, he will no longer be the center of attention in the campaign. The Democrats and the legacy media would then focus on manipulating the electorate into ignoring the allegations of Biden family criminality by making certain the American people fixate on Trump’s specious legal predicaments and the Democrats’ shiny new candidate running for president.
While this cabal is losing faith in Biden’s chances in 2024, they are still convinced that regardless of the circumstances surrounding Biden, almost anyone they nominate, but in particular Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer, could win as long as Donald Trump, entangled in their treacherous web of indictments and trials, is the Republican nominee.
There is, however, a high-stakes risk in the strategy of convincing Joe Biden to drop out of the race and remain in office. Can the Democrats and the legacy media keep a lid on the ongoing revelations about alleged bribes and fraud for the next 15 months without exposing their duplicity, thus, infuriating the bulk of the electorate?
An ever-increasing percentage of the citizenry is becoming aware of the potential criminality of Joe Biden and the cover-up by the Democrats and the legacy media. If the Republicans do not waver and continue to aggressively investigate and open an impeachment inquiry as well as expose Biden’s Democrat enablers, it is highly unlikely that this cabal will be able to control the narrative for an extended period of time.
After premeditatively foisting Joe Biden on the American people, it is a supreme irony that the Democrat party elites and the legacy media are now being hoisted on their own petard.
Photo credit: Twitter video screen grab (cropped).
How Investigative Journalists Have Become Cover-Up Promoters
After the highly touted, shamelessly self-promoted Washington Post "investigative" Watergate journalism, thousands of aspiring young people sought to become, like the legendary Woodward and Bernstein, fearless speakers of truth to power, uncovering corruption and cover-up without fear or favor. But fifty years later, these supposed investigative journalists have become the corrupt actors whom they promised to expose. Have our vaunted good guys become dirty cops? It sure looks like it.
While this evolution from clean to corrupt has been proceeding apace for fifty years, there is no better incarnation of this perverse role change than the recent journalism concerning ostensible Biden family corruption.
There is much room for legitimate, good-faith debate about the strength of evidence against Hunter Biden and, separately, his father Joe. But the debate is properly about the unseemly activities of Hunter and the practiced neglect of same, at the least, by his father. Whatever the strength of evidence, all of it is ugly, worrisome, problematic. There is no way to sugarcoat this: there is a noisome stench emanating from Bidenville that cries out for further investigation.
This tableau of potential Biden family corruption amounts to a test of the bona fides of modern "investigative" journalists. Will they investigate facts in a dispassionate way, or will they act as partisan publicity agents covering up wrongdoing, perhaps treason?
What results has this test thus far returned?
To decide this question, let's first recapitulate the evidence that seems to be uncontroverted, even if not publicized in detail by these supposed watchdogs.
In the throes of the "Maidan Revolution," by late 2014, Ukraine had been turned upside-down. To tamp down endemic corruption, which portended the country's demise, the United States took a firm anti-corruption stance, which it could enforce as the main player in granting foreign aid.
Vice President Joe Biden then volunteered to be the Obama administration point man for the troubled country. Before he flew to Ukraine, he had a multi-hour White House meeting with Devon Archer, his son's partner in apparent influence-peddling.
As Hunter and Archer thereafter maneuvered to pitch potential Ukrainian clients, Hunter sent a lengthy memorandum one such client, the energy company Burisma, which sounded suspiciously, with jargon, as if it had come directly from a classified analysis of U.S. policy on oil and gas exploration in and around Ukraine.
Soon, Attorney General Eric Holder, along with U.K. officials, heralded the London seizure of $23 million in Burisma funds directed to Cyprus for the personal benefit of a Burisma owner and apparent embezzler, Mykola Zlochevsky. After British officials attached the funds, all that was needed was certification by a Ukraine prosecutor that the gain was ill-gotten, in which case the Court would return the money to Ukraine.
But, oddly, no Ukraine official, to the British magistrate's stated frustration, ever claimed the money, which was reluctantly forwarded to Cyprus, for the benefit of Hunter's new client.
Another Hunter client, Igor Kolomoisky, carried out massive thefts with no apparent pushback. After $1.8 billion in foreign aid was sent to Kolomoisky's large, prominent PrivatBank to help stabilize the Ukrainian banking system, PrivatBank immediately lent that money to shell companies through deposits to PrivatBank's branch in Cyprus, secured by nonexistent contracts — monies never again seen. All in all, PrivatBank was looted for $5 billion under Joe Biden's nose, all of which had to be reflated through foreign aid.
When President Trump later called on new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden corruption, this was not an empty, partisan request, notwithstanding the president's awkward coloration of it. But Trump likely did not realize that President Zelensky's major benefactor was Igor Kolomoisky, in hindsight rendering Trump's initiative blackly comical, however appropriate. (Kolomoisky, in spite of looting his country's major bank, and stealing foreign aid, did not flee the country until late 2016, as Vice President Biden was leaving office, to return only after Zelensky was elected.)
In early 2016, after prosecutor Viktor Shokin, spurred by U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, raided Zlochevsky's home in an anti-Burisma investigation, Joe Biden famously had him fired — strong circumstantial evidence of the vice president's corruption. A recently unearthed FD-1023 report of a credible informant confirms that Hunter Biden and his father were each promised five million dollars for getting Shokin fired. While the cover-up spin is that Shokin was a shakedown artist, in fact, after he was fired, the strong cases against Burisma were settled for a paltry $7 million.
Shifting to China, it is well established that (a) Hunter had a strong relationship with the globally corrupt Chinese energy arm CEFC, on record as a company that bribed foreign officials, and (b) was given ten-percent ownership in the lucrative multibillion-dollar Bohai Harvest Fund, which invested funds from the Bank of China.
When Hunter wrote an email threatening a CEFC official who was late in paying him, he warned that his father was sitting next to him. Whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next to Hunter, the CEFC official was certainly under the impression that Joe was in on the deal, failing which his presence would be a meaningless threat.
Now, as specific evidence emerges fleshing out this obvious influence-peddling scheme, the only question is the degree to which Joe Biden willingly participated since, after all, Hunter's clients were purchasing that participation. But in any case, aren't these issues that investigative journalists should be tackling?
Let's hark back to Watergate. Richard Nixon was forced out of office by powerful journalism — not because he was guilty of the underlying criminal burglary, but because he enabled and participated in the cover-up. His most palpable crime was importuning the CIA to call the FBI off, briefly, its "Mexican money trail" investigation — a minor cover-up, but criminal, nonetheless.
Showing stronger culpability, the emerging evidence from credible whistleblowers verifies that the Biden administration, through its Justice Department, fixed the prosecution of Hunter, refusing indictments both in D.C. and Los Angeles, allowing statutes of limitation to expire, and refusing proper investigative steps recommended by IRS agents.
Given all the above, there is plenty of grist for the mill of our vaunted investigative journalists — you know, those same sleuths who breathlessly seized on every morsel suggesting that Donald Trump may have spoken to people with Russian accents.
A few examples of the accumulated evidence should suffice. In addition to two credible, experienced whistleblowing IRS agents, and the FD-1023 informant's report, Gal Luft, an American-Israeli think-tank director, in 2019 in Brussels had personally provided DOJ lawyers and FBI agents with specific facts detailing corruption by China of both Bidens.
In 2022, to both forestall and impeach Luft's testimony, Biden's Department of Justice issued a sealed indictment of Luft as an unregistered foreign agent violating FARA.
When the Luft indictment was recently unsealed, not coincidentally as Luft came forward with an incriminating video, did our watchdog media scream "cover-up" and "witness intimidation"? Not exactly.
Former White House spokesman Jen Psaki wondered aloud to Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin whether Republican James Comer had been "co-opted by a foreign agent." Unsurprisingly, Raskin eagerly agreed.
The Democrat-leaning Raw Story article, "Theater of the absurd': Raskin compares GOP's Hunter Biden quest to 'Inspector Clouseau" by Brandon Gage, went farther. Rather than viewing the Luft indictment as proof of a Biden retaliatory cover-up, its pundit saw that the indictment "damaged the credibility" of the case against Biden.
To Arthur Delaney of the HuffPost, the indictment of Luft for FARA violations demonstrated how weak any FARA claimwould have been against Hunter Biden. The reasoning? Unlike Luft, Hunter did virtually nothing for his pay! How can we say he's a foreign agent if he got his money without providing any apparent services? Thus, according to investigator Delaney, there is a large "hole" in the case against Hunter Biden. We are not making this up.
Now that it is to some degree probable that the Bidens were bribed to fire Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin, wouldn't our watchdog media perk up and at least begin an investigation? Well, no. Rather, ace investigators for the New York Times Adam Entous and Michael S. Schmidt summarized the growing evidence in a way that would make a criminal defense lawyer blush:
Despite their years of efforts-including Mr. Trump's attempts to muscle Ukraine into helping him sully the Bidens, an escapade that led to his first impeachment-Republicans have yet to demonstrate that the senior Mr. Biden was involved in his son's business deals or took any action to benefit him or his foreign partners.
Here is the take on the specific report of a credible informant that both Bidens were bribed to fire Shokin, as seen by Delaney and the HuffPost:
Republicans have dubiously claimed that the Burisma connection prompted then–Vice President to push for the ouster of Ukraine's prosecutor in 2016 in order to protect thecompany.
What is not noted by the Times or the HuffPost is the evidence that such a claim would be "dubiously" made or that the Shokin firing did not benefit Hunter's business partners.
How does the New York Times, per Glenn Thrush, depict Luft's explosive video testimony?
In a video published by the New York Post last week, Mr. Luft claimed — without offeringevidence — that he had informed the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials of wrongdoing by the Biden family, prompting what he cast as his persecution.
When Mr. Thrush notes that Mr. Luft does so "without offering evidence," it may shock him to learn that when a witness offers his own observations of an event, this is what lawyers and judges call "evidence." Indeed, Luft was offering eyewitness testimony, which constitutes strong direct evidence.
This deception is not an isolated misstatement. Riddled throughout reports of the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, and other outlets is the frequent assertion that there is "no evidence" of corruption against either Biden. Kara Scannell of CNN Politics gives the typical conclusion: "But there's no evidence Joe Biden abused his office to enrich his family."
But here is just one piece of evidence for these journalists to chew on. On his laptop from hell, Hunter self-pityingly confides to his daughter that she need not share her income with her father as Hunter himself must. To be sure, Hunter may at the time have been under the influence of some substance. But nonetheless, this is direct evidence against Joe Biden — an admission by a co-conspirator properly in evidence against his co-conspirator father.
Common sense tells us that corrupt actors do not pay millions for influence without proof of delivery of the influence sought. The millions going to Joe's relatives through a middleman cutout, Rob Walker, laundered through numerous shell companies, is itself evidence of corruption.
What conclusions can be drawn about the state of modern, major media investigative journalists? We can safely conclude that these "journalists" see their role as at a minimum aiders and abettors of corrupt partisan cover-ups. But going farther, they seemingly vie, like slippery criminal defense counsel, to create false cover stories behind which corrupt politicians can hide and defraud the public.
So, if some wish to assess the lasting impact of Watergate journalism, they should consult our allegedly most trusted news sources, such as the New York Times. But not for the investigations they do, but for those they choose not to do. And in doing so, please keep in mind the dominant trope of Watergate: it's not the crime; it's the cover-up.
John D. O'Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O'Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today's Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
After the highly touted, shamelessly self-promoted Washington Post "investigative" Watergate journalism, thousands of aspiring young people sought to become, like the legendary Woodward and Bernstein, fearless speakers of truth to power, uncovering corruption and cover-up without fear or favor. But fifty years later, these supposed investigative journalists have become the corrupt actors whom they promised to expose. Have our vaunted good guys become dirty cops? It sure looks like it.
While this evolution from clean to corrupt has been proceeding apace for fifty years, there is no better incarnation of this perverse role change than the recent journalism concerning ostensible Biden family corruption.
There is much room for legitimate, good-faith debate about the strength of evidence against Hunter Biden and, separately, his father Joe. But the debate is properly about the unseemly activities of Hunter and the practiced neglect of same, at the least, by his father. Whatever the strength of evidence, all of it is ugly, worrisome, problematic. There is no way to sugarcoat this: there is a noisome stench emanating from Bidenville that cries out for further investigation.
This tableau of potential Biden family corruption amounts to a test of the bona fides of modern "investigative" journalists. Will they investigate facts in a dispassionate way, or will they act as partisan publicity agents covering up wrongdoing, perhaps treason?
What results has this test thus far returned?
To decide this question, let's first recapitulate the evidence that seems to be uncontroverted, even if not publicized in detail by these supposed watchdogs.
In the throes of the "Maidan Revolution," by late 2014, Ukraine had been turned upside-down. To tamp down endemic corruption, which portended the country's demise, the United States took a firm anti-corruption stance, which it could enforce as the main player in granting foreign aid.
Vice President Joe Biden then volunteered to be the Obama administration point man for the troubled country. Before he flew to Ukraine, he had a multi-hour White House meeting with Devon Archer, his son's partner in apparent influence-peddling.
As Hunter and Archer thereafter maneuvered to pitch potential Ukrainian clients, Hunter sent a lengthy memorandum one such client, the energy company Burisma, which sounded suspiciously, with jargon, as if it had come directly from a classified analysis of U.S. policy on oil and gas exploration in and around Ukraine.
Soon, Attorney General Eric Holder, along with U.K. officials, heralded the London seizure of $23 million in Burisma funds directed to Cyprus for the personal benefit of a Burisma owner and apparent embezzler, Mykola Zlochevsky. After British officials attached the funds, all that was needed was certification by a Ukraine prosecutor that the gain was ill-gotten, in which case the Court would return the money to Ukraine.
But, oddly, no Ukraine official, to the British magistrate's stated frustration, ever claimed the money, which was reluctantly forwarded to Cyprus, for the benefit of Hunter's new client.
Another Hunter client, Igor Kolomoisky, carried out massive thefts with no apparent pushback. After $1.8 billion in foreign aid was sent to Kolomoisky's large, prominent PrivatBank to help stabilize the Ukrainian banking system, PrivatBank immediately lent that money to shell companies through deposits to PrivatBank's branch in Cyprus, secured by nonexistent contracts — monies never again seen. All in all, PrivatBank was looted for $5 billion under Joe Biden's nose, all of which had to be reflated through foreign aid.
When President Trump later called on new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden corruption, this was not an empty, partisan request, notwithstanding the president's awkward coloration of it. But Trump likely did not realize that President Zelensky's major benefactor was Igor Kolomoisky, in hindsight rendering Trump's initiative blackly comical, however appropriate. (Kolomoisky, in spite of looting his country's major bank, and stealing foreign aid, did not flee the country until late 2016, as Vice President Biden was leaving office, to return only after Zelensky was elected.)
In early 2016, after prosecutor Viktor Shokin, spurred by U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, raided Zlochevsky's home in an anti-Burisma investigation, Joe Biden famously had him fired — strong circumstantial evidence of the vice president's corruption. A recently unearthed FD-1023 report of a credible informant confirms that Hunter Biden and his father were each promised five million dollars for getting Shokin fired. While the cover-up spin is that Shokin was a shakedown artist, in fact, after he was fired, the strong cases against Burisma were settled for a paltry $7 million.
Shifting to China, it is well established that (a) Hunter had a strong relationship with the globally corrupt Chinese energy arm CEFC, on record as a company that bribed foreign officials, and (b) was given ten-percent ownership in the lucrative multibillion-dollar Bohai Harvest Fund, which invested funds from the Bank of China.
When Hunter wrote an email threatening a CEFC official who was late in paying him, he warned that his father was sitting next to him. Whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next to Hunter, the CEFC official was certainly under the impression that Joe was in on the deal, failing which his presence would be a meaningless threat.
Now, as specific evidence emerges fleshing out this obvious influence-peddling scheme, the only question is the degree to which Joe Biden willingly participated since, after all, Hunter's clients were purchasing that participation. But in any case, aren't these issues that investigative journalists should be tackling?
Let's hark back to Watergate. Richard Nixon was forced out of office by powerful journalism — not because he was guilty of the underlying criminal burglary, but because he enabled and participated in the cover-up. His most palpable crime was importuning the CIA to call the FBI off, briefly, its "Mexican money trail" investigation — a minor cover-up, but criminal, nonetheless.
Showing stronger culpability, the emerging evidence from credible whistleblowers verifies that the Biden administration, through its Justice Department, fixed the prosecution of Hunter, refusing indictments both in D.C. and Los Angeles, allowing statutes of limitation to expire, and refusing proper investigative steps recommended by IRS agents.
Given all the above, there is plenty of grist for the mill of our vaunted investigative journalists — you know, those same sleuths who breathlessly seized on every morsel suggesting that Donald Trump may have spoken to people with Russian accents.
A few examples of the accumulated evidence should suffice. In addition to two credible, experienced whistleblowing IRS agents, and the FD-1023 informant's report, Gal Luft, an American-Israeli think-tank director, in 2019 in Brussels had personally provided DOJ lawyers and FBI agents with specific facts detailing corruption by China of both Bidens.
In 2022, to both forestall and impeach Luft's testimony, Biden's Department of Justice issued a sealed indictment of Luft as an unregistered foreign agent violating FARA.
When the Luft indictment was recently unsealed, not coincidentally as Luft came forward with an incriminating video, did our watchdog media scream "cover-up" and "witness intimidation"? Not exactly.
Former White House spokesman Jen Psaki wondered aloud to Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin whether Republican James Comer had been "co-opted by a foreign agent." Unsurprisingly, Raskin eagerly agreed.
The Democrat-leaning Raw Story article, "Theater of the absurd': Raskin compares GOP's Hunter Biden quest to 'Inspector Clouseau" by Brandon Gage, went farther. Rather than viewing the Luft indictment as proof of a Biden retaliatory cover-up, its pundit saw that the indictment "damaged the credibility" of the case against Biden.
To Arthur Delaney of the HuffPost, the indictment of Luft for FARA violations demonstrated how weak any FARA claimwould have been against Hunter Biden. The reasoning? Unlike Luft, Hunter did virtually nothing for his pay! How can we say he's a foreign agent if he got his money without providing any apparent services? Thus, according to investigator Delaney, there is a large "hole" in the case against Hunter Biden. We are not making this up.
Now that it is to some degree probable that the Bidens were bribed to fire Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin, wouldn't our watchdog media perk up and at least begin an investigation? Well, no. Rather, ace investigators for the New York Times Adam Entous and Michael S. Schmidt summarized the growing evidence in a way that would make a criminal defense lawyer blush:
Despite their years of efforts-including Mr. Trump's attempts to muscle Ukraine into helping him sully the Bidens, an escapade that led to his first impeachment-Republicans have yet to demonstrate that the senior Mr. Biden was involved in his son's business deals or took any action to benefit him or his foreign partners.
Here is the take on the specific report of a credible informant that both Bidens were bribed to fire Shokin, as seen by Delaney and the HuffPost:
Republicans have dubiously claimed that the Burisma connection prompted then–Vice President to push for the ouster of Ukraine's prosecutor in 2016 in order to protect thecompany.
What is not noted by the Times or the HuffPost is the evidence that such a claim would be "dubiously" made or that the Shokin firing did not benefit Hunter's business partners.
How does the New York Times, per Glenn Thrush, depict Luft's explosive video testimony?
In a video published by the New York Post last week, Mr. Luft claimed — without offeringevidence — that he had informed the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials of wrongdoing by the Biden family, prompting what he cast as his persecution.
When Mr. Thrush notes that Mr. Luft does so "without offering evidence," it may shock him to learn that when a witness offers his own observations of an event, this is what lawyers and judges call "evidence." Indeed, Luft was offering eyewitness testimony, which constitutes strong direct evidence.
This deception is not an isolated misstatement. Riddled throughout reports of the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, and other outlets is the frequent assertion that there is "no evidence" of corruption against either Biden. Kara Scannell of CNN Politics gives the typical conclusion: "But there's no evidence Joe Biden abused his office to enrich his family."
But here is just one piece of evidence for these journalists to chew on. On his laptop from hell, Hunter self-pityingly confides to his daughter that she need not share her income with her father as Hunter himself must. To be sure, Hunter may at the time have been under the influence of some substance. But nonetheless, this is direct evidence against Joe Biden — an admission by a co-conspirator properly in evidence against his co-conspirator father.
Common sense tells us that corrupt actors do not pay millions for influence without proof of delivery of the influence sought. The millions going to Joe's relatives through a middleman cutout, Rob Walker, laundered through numerous shell companies, is itself evidence of corruption.
What conclusions can be drawn about the state of modern, major media investigative journalists? We can safely conclude that these "journalists" see their role as at a minimum aiders and abettors of corrupt partisan cover-ups. But going farther, they seemingly vie, like slippery criminal defense counsel, to create false cover stories behind which corrupt politicians can hide and defraud the public.
So, if some wish to assess the lasting impact of Watergate journalism, they should consult our allegedly most trusted news sources, such as the New York Times. But not for the investigations they do, but for those they choose not to do. And in doing so, please keep in mind the dominant trope of Watergate: it's not the crime; it's the cover-up.
John D. O'Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O'Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today's Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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