There is much more in the Daily Mail article about Obama's destructive arrogance, sense of entitlement, greed, and ego, as well as his obscene rants about Trump. As far as I'm concerned, the damage he did to the Democrat brand is yet more evidence that America supported Trump, not Biden, in 2020.
The book is Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump, and it may end forever the Democrats' Obama worship.
Georgia indictment of Trump exposes the rot of American political system
The indictment of ex-President Donald Trump in Georgia, the fourth in five months, is the most serious so far. It outlines, in nearly 100 pages of detail, how Trump and dozens of co-conspirators, some indicted, some not yet, engaged in a conspiracy to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Though limited to a single state, the indictment gives a much fuller picture than the federal indictment brought two weeks ago of the efforts by Trump and his aides to steal Georgia’s electoral votes, won by Democrat Joe Biden by a margin of 11,779 votes. It charges, among others, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s top campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, outside consultants like John Eastman and high-ranking officials of the Georgia Republican Party.
The charging document lists 41 criminal counts against the 19 defendants, including the blanket conspiracy charge brought against all of them, under the Georgia law targeting Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO). Some 161 overt acts are cited in furtherance of this conspiracy.
These actions ranged from submitting legal tracts claiming—entirely falsely—that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes while chairing the ceremonial congressional certification of the election—to thuggish efforts to intimidate Atlanta election worker Ruby Freeman by visiting her home at night.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis set August 25 as a deadline for Trump and his co-defendants to appear for arraignment and booking and expressed the desire to bring the case to trial within six months, a daunting task with so many defendants and charges.
Whatever the immediate outcome, the stage is being set for a presidential election year of unprecedented political tension and crisis
There are certain points that must be reiterated in response to the Georgia indictment. First, it is further confirmation that Trump and his co-conspirators engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the election, culminating in the attempted fascistic coup of January 6, 2021. The arrest and prosecution of all those involved is entirely appropriate and necessary.
Second, just as in the federal indictment brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, the Georgia indictment raises the question: Why did it take more than two years to bring indictments against Trump and his co-conspirators? Nearly all the overt acts cited were reported in the corporate press early in 2021. Many were public, like Trump’s incessant tweets giving instructions in furtherance of the campaign to overturn the election.
Third, also like the federal indictment, the Georgia case limits itself mainly to the efforts by Trump to discredit the 2020 election and substitute fake electors for the Biden electors actually chosen by the voters. It is silent on the events of January 6, 2021 themselves. But in several places it touches on these events, referring to the advice of Trump aides like Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro that the then-president should adopt “a strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
The various prosecutors and the Biden administration have tiptoed around the events of January 6 to avoid any exposure of the wider conspiracy involving most of the Republican Party leadership and significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, which sought to ensure the success of the Trump coup. The purpose of this cover-up is to preserve these key institutions of the ruling class and insure bipartisan support for the war policy of the Biden administration against Russia in Ukraine.
But the indictment raises broader issues. The entire political system in the United States, the center of finance capital and the cockpit of imperialist war planning, is in a state of intractable crisis and factional warfare.
How the ruling class will even carry out the 2024 presidential election is unclear. Trump, the leading candidate for the Republicans, faces as many as four criminal trials and five civil trials, assuming no additional cases are brought against him. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden, the son of the president, faces at least one trial for his evasion of taxes amid a continuing investigation into his corrupt dealings in both China and Ukraine, where he raked in millions trading on his father’s role as vice president in the Obama administration. Joe Biden could well be impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for his alleged role in his son’s influence peddling, particularly if there is evidence that he profited personally from it.
To think that the crisis originates from the personality of Trump is to blind oneself to reality. Trump is only the most grotesque expression of a political system that is rotten through and through, with pus seeping out of every pore.
Congress—where a large majority of House Republicans voted not to certify Biden’s election—is comprised of millionaires and ignoramuses. Both Democrats and Republicans in the House have rejected even token restrictions on their own financial dealings, such as a ban on stock trading.
The Supreme Court is itself awash in corruption, functioning now as a permanent conspiracy against the democratic rights of the American population. Should a close election end up being decided by the Supreme Court, as in 2000, the decisive vote could well be cast by Clarence Thomas, exposed in recent months as the recipient of lavish vacations, travel and other subsidies from a group of fascist billionaires, all of them seeking to influence the decisions of the high court.
Politics does not exist in a void but reflects social processes. The US economy is a massive Ponzi scheme, with giant banks, corporations and hedge funds having used trillions of dollars in government bailout funds to carry out financial operations even more convoluted and opaque than those which sparked the Wall Street crash of 2008-2009. Cryptocurrency billionaire Samuel Bankman-Fried has been arrested and charged with massive fraud, but his is only the most glaring case among hundreds.
Social infrastructure is in an advanced state of decay and disintegration, as exemplified most recently in the horrific destruction and devastation caused by the fire in Hawaii. Biden, speaking for a financial oligarchy obsessed with its own self-enrichment and militarist plunder, could hardly manage to speak a coherent word about it.
Trump brought into the political system the methods of gangsterism, financial skullduggery and media manipulation he learned in the course of his business career in Manhattan construction and real estate, Atlantic City casinos and “reality” television. He personifies what Karl Marx called, describing the political decay of the French financial aristocracy before the 1848 revolution, the “rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.”
But the political system as a whole takes on more and more the character of the ancient Roman Empire, a diseased apparatus sitting atop a dying social order. It is through the development of the class struggle, politically armed with a socialist perspective and leadership, that this state apparatus can be swept away, together with the capitalist system it defends.
Peter Schweizer: Appointment of Special Counsel ‘a Massive Favor to the Bidens’
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer says the Department of Justice did President Joe Biden and his son Hunter a “massive favor” by appointing David Weiss to the rank of Special Counsel.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment last week of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as a special counsel to continue his prosecution of Hunter Biden after plea talks broke down, opens a new, politically fraught chapter in the long-running legal drama as his father, President Biden, campaigns for re-election.
For one thing, it’s not clear whether the appointment of Weiss is even legal. “Weiss has been a DOJ employee since 2017,” Schweizer pointed out. “The [special counsel] law says they must come from outside the federal government, outside the Department of Justice… David Weiss does not,” he added.
Not only that, but with special counsel status, Weiss can now stonewall Congress’s own investigation by claiming that it needs to maintain evidence for its own purposes, according to congressional sources.
Russell Dye, a spokesman for House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, called Weiss’s appointment to special counsel “a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption.”
Schweizer, who broke the Hunter Biden story wide open in his 2018 book Secret Empires, noted on the most recent episode of his podcast, “The Drill Down,” that it was David Weiss’s office that concocted the now-abandoned plea deal. That deal offered Hunter Biden a guilty plea to two tax misdemeanors and a gun charge with a suspended sentence along with a promise not to prosecute him any further. A federal judge rejected that scheme.
“Two choices: This is either massive incompetence [by Merrick Garland], or there is some level of design behind this muddle,” Schweizer says. “I think this is by design.”
Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers, both with the Government Accountability Institute, also reacted to the release by House Oversight Committee Republicans of the transcript of an interview with a former FBI agent who worked on the Hunter Biden investigation.
The agent corroborated claims from two IRS whistleblowers that Hunter Biden’s legal team was given an advance tip-off of an upcoming attempt to get an interview with him in connection with their probe.
And there’s more. Schweizer and Eggers note there’s shady activity by the Secret Service, dating back to an incident in 2016 when Hunter Biden left personal effects, drug residue, and even a crack pipe inside a returned rental car in Arizona.
The Secret Service ran interference for Hunter Biden, shielding him from an investigation by local Phoenix police of that incident. That subject was discussed on The Drilldown last month.
“The Secret Service is supposed to guard their protectees’ physical security, not shield them from legal scrutiny,” Schweizer said.
As Eggers quipped, “there are things being pursued here, but justice is apparently not one of them.”
To hear more of the Drill Down podcast – click here.
SHOCKING Total Cost of Joe Biden's Corruption
Pollak: Appointment of David Weiss as Special Counsel May Be Unlawful, Despite Precedent
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware as Special Counsel to investigate Hunter Biden contradicts federal regulations requiring that a special counsel be chosen from outside the government.
However, it would not be the first time that an Attorney General had ignored those regulations. In 2003, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed as Special Counsel in the Valerie Plame affair. He was appointed by Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who would later depart from procedure and regulations in announcing that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted. In 2020, Attorney General William Barr appointed John H. Durham as Special Counsel to investigate the Russia “collusion” hoax.
Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which deals with judicial administration, states in section 600.3(a) (emphasis added):
An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government. Special Counsels shall agree that their responsibilities as Special Counsel shall take first precedence in their professional lives, and that it may be necessary to devote their full time to the investigation, depending on its complexity and the stage of the investigation.
Weiss is currently a presidential appointee working in the U.S. government. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation of former President Donald Trump, had left the Department of Justice (DOJ) to work as the chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Special Counsel Robert Hur, who is investigating President Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, had also left the DOJ and was working outside government at the time of his appointment last year.
However, as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has noted, others have been appointed Special Counsel despite being U.S. Attorneys. (CRS quotes the regulations as saying the Attorney General “may,” not “shall,” choose from outside the government.)
In his brief statement on Weiss’s appointment, Garland claimed to have followed relevant regulations. He noted that Weiss “will continue to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware.” He did not elaborate on any contrast with DOJ regulations.
U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss announces the unsealing of documentation related to Amir Ardebili at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Wilmington, Del. on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009. Ardebili, of Iran, has pleaded guilty to plotting to ship sensitive military technology to Iran, and told an undercover U.S. investigator his country’s leaders think war is coming, court papers revealed Wednesday. Weiss is flanked by John Morton, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration, right, and John Kelleghan, Special Agent in-Charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Philadephia. (AP Photo/Ron Soliman)
Republicans had long urged the appointment of a special counsel due to the evident conflict of interest in investigating the president’s son, who is alleged to have involved his father in his business activities (despite President Joe Biden’s denials).
However, the timing of the appointment drew criticism, as did the choice of Weiss, whose office offered Hunter Biden a plea bargain described by many as a “sweetheart deal” that would have immunized him from future, related prosecutions.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This post has been updated to include John H. Durham.
VISUALIZE IMPEACHMENT AND IMPRISONMENT
White House Deputy Spox Andrew Bates Lied About Biden’s Burisma Meeting
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates misled the press in 2020 when he denied that a meeting between then-Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi in 2015 took place — a meeting that was confirmed last week.
In October 2020, the New York Post revealed an email from Pozharskyi on the laptop of Biden’s son, Hunter. In the email, dated April 17, 2015, Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for inviting him to Washington, D.C., to meet and spend time with his father.
The email therefore suggested that Joe Biden had lied when he told reporters in 2019 that he had never discussed his family’s business dealings. It also confirmed a link to Burisma, which the Bidens had denied during Trump’s first impeachment trial.
The Biden campaign vigorously denied that such a meeting ever took place, however, saying there was no such meeting on the “official schedules” of the vice president. Andrew Bates, then a spokesperson for the campaign, issued a strident statement:
Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.
The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani – whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported – claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.
However, as Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer noted at the time, there were gaps in Biden’s official schedule that day. And last week, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, confirmed the 2015 meeting at the House Oversight Committee.
The following exchange took place at the committee, during Archer’s testimony (via House Oversight Committee transcript):
Q — turn your attention now to spring of 2015, dinner at Cafe Milano, where I believe Vice President Biden attended as well. Can you tell us about that dinner? Who was there?
A Okay. Could you repeat the date?
Q It’s the spring or April of 2015, around —
A April 2015.
Mr. Schwartz. The second one.
Mr. Archer. Oh, the second — there you go. Yes, Vice President Biden did attend.
BY MR. MANDOLFO:
Q And who else was there?A There was two dinners. At that diner, it was Vadym, Karim Massimov — so Vadym P. from Burisma; Karim Massimov; a Greek priest, Orthodox priest; I think — I believe someone from the World Food Programme. I think that was the — and then there — do you have others?
Democrats attempted to play down Archer’s testimony, saying that Joe Biden merely discussed “the weather” with his son’s business partners. None acknowledged that the president had lied, or that his campaign had lied, about Burisma and other contacts with Hunter Biden’s business partners.
Bates has not commented on the latest revelations.
Legal analyst Jonathan Turley, commenting on the confirmation of a meeting between Joe Biden and a Burisma executive that Bates had claimed never took place, observed: “It was the same pattern that we saw with the laptop. The claims of Russian disinformation. The lack of media curiosity. The lack of coverage of the later disclosures. It is the hallmark of a state media, by consent rather than coercion. There is the denials of the incident, the dismissal of the story, and then the downplaying of the countervailing facts.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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