This is so sad. He clearly has no idea where he is or what's happening and apparently not a single family member loves him enough to step in and say enough is enough. https://t.co/rAr0OUueku
They’re as useless as the paper they’re printed on. Useless, like the lying Senator. So principled he is, right?
Asa Hutchinson signed the RNC pledge to support the Republican nominee for president, but now says he will not support Donald Trump if he is the nominee. pic.twitter.com/qmwoFkYga8
“If you have been following the Hunter Biden legal case over the past thousand years or so, this weekend’s revelations should interest you.
Ed wrote about The New York Times’ story yesterday and his take is as always well worth a read. Politico dropped a separate, related story as well, and since their appearance, a lot of commentary from people involved has been floating around.
Both stories are based upon confidential correspondence between the prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s legal team, and I would speculate that they were leaked by Hunter’s team for their own reasons. Since the breakdown of the negotiations that led to the aborted plea deal Hunter’s legal team has been shaken up, his lawyer Abbe Lowell has been attacking US Attorney/now Special Prosecutor David Weiss, and new stories about the internal workings of the prosecution team have been coming out.
The most spectacular revelation of late is this: until the IRS agents blew the whistle David Weiss was going to drop all charges against Hunter Biden, letting him get off scot-free. Biden’s attorneys wanted an ironclad deal in writing to ensure no future prosecution, which eventually led to the current mess everybody has found themselves in.
Weiss was prepared to drop the matter entirely, but when the IRS whistleblowers came forward he decided he needed some face-saving plea from Biden. With such explosive charges on the table, he needed to at least give Hunter a haircut.”
—
Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute. While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.
—
“That’s rich, although entirely on-brand. Biden should skate, and the people who reveal the corruption should go to jail. Very Biden.
As you can see US Attorney David Weiss was doing exactly what we all pretty much knew he was doing: finding a way to cover for Hunter Biden while covering his own butt. He was originally going to simply produce an agreement–one which would never have gone before a judge–to not prosecute Hunter if he remained a good boy for several years. The first draft of the deal as reported by Politico would have been essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
—
On May 18, another lawyer for Biden sent two Delaware prosecutors — including Lesley Wolf, a senior prosecutor in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office — the first draft of a proposed deal, structured so it wouldn’t need a judge’s sign-off and wouldn’t require a guilty plea from Biden.
As part of the deal, Biden would admit he was late filing his taxes for 2017 and 2018, and that he owned a gun while he was using drugs. He would promise to pay any taxes he still owed, to pay his taxes on time for the next five years, and to never own a gun again. The deal would be made public, and it would also cover three corporate entities affiliated with him.
If he upheld his end of the bargain through January 2025, the Justice Department would promise not to prosecute him for anything they’d investigated thus far. The draft wording of that promise was clear and broad: “The Department of Justice agrees not to criminally prosecute Robert Hunter Biden and the affiliated businesses (namely: Owasco P.C.; Owasco LLC; and Skaneateles LLC): (a) for any federal crimes arising from the conduct generally described in the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A); or (b) for any other federal crimes relating to matters investigated by the United States.”
Weiss’ team of prosecutors seemed pleased. That evening, Wolf sent the Biden team a list of must-haves for a potential deal, noting that many of them were already in the first draft.
—
“The New York Times story makes clear that Weiss was prepared to take this deal as-is until the IRS whistleblowers came out. It was his decision to require a face-saving “guilty” plea on misdemeanors that eventually blew everything up. Because with a plea a judge would be involved, and as we saw an attentive judge would notice immediately that the deal was corrupt.”
AUSA Lesley Wolf had already pulled punches in the 2018-2021 investigation, and now in 2022 she was more than sympathetic to the arguments from Hunter's legal team, who she met with regularly without investigators. Clark told her charging Hunter would be "career suicide." /9 pic.twitter.com/QHItoXmkP8
Biden says "Jill and I have a little sense of what it's like to lose a home" and then tells the story of when lightning struck his house in 2004 and says "I almost lost my '67 corvette and my cat."
According to a report from the time, the lighting strike caused "a small fire… pic.twitter.com/V8IBfoZuEW
“The Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has a profound interest in American politics. Over the years, he has pumped $475 million he has earned manufacturing medical devices into left-wing advocacy groups – $72 million in 2021 alone, according to a new report from the conservative watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust.
According to a biography of Wyss written by a sister, Wyss’ goal is not to bend laws to his business’s advantage but to “[re]interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics.”
Although foreigners are prohibited from donating money directly to political causes, Wyss has donated lavishly to progressive political organizations. The New York Times reported in 2021 that these include the “Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, as well as organizations that ran voter registration and mobilization campaigns to increase Democratic turnout, built media outlets accused of slanting the news to favor Democrats, and sought to block Mr. Trump’s nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment.” Since 2016, some $245 million of his spending on American politics has gone to Arabella Advisors, which controls a vast network of progressive nonprofits which, among other activities, has financed hundreds of smaller groups that campaign for specific issues and candidates. Arabella, which raised $1.6 billion in 2021, was dubbed by The Atlantic “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”
Critics argue that Wyss’ largesse illuminates a gaping loophole in political finance that essentially allows wealthy foreigners to launder their contributions – one that has been exploited far more robustly by Democrats than Republicans. That may help explain why the issue became more prominent on Aug. 14, when House Republicans announced an investigation “into whether entities that qualify as tax-exempt under Section 501 of the U.S. Code are abiding by the statutory and regulatory prohibitions against … foreign sources of funding … being funneled through such organizations to influence America’s elections.” As part of that probe, the House Ways and Means Committee produced an open letter detailing the problem and requesting information from the public. A significant portion of the letter discussed the political donations of a single foreigner – Hansjörg Wyss.
Marneé Banks, a spokesperson for the two organizations most responsible for Wyss’ political giving, told RCI that “The Wyss Foundation and Berger Action Fund prohibit their grants from being used to support or oppose political candidates or parties or to fund get-out-the-vote or voter registration activities.” She said, “Both organizations comply with the rules and laws governing their activities, and they support increasing transparency in our campaign finance system.”
Almost every expert interviewed agrees that the House investigation will prove challenging. The opaque nature of 501(c)4 independent political expenditure groups makes it impossible to tell whose donations are spent on what.
“There’s no way for us right now to even check up on, let alone stop, wealthy foreign interests, say from China or Russia, from cutting a check to an American foundation that disappears into its coffers and winds up in the hands of a political nonprofit,” says Hayden Ludwig, Director of Policy Research at the Restoration of America, a right-leaning nonprofit that investigates the undisclosed donations to nonprofits commonly disparaged as “dark money.” “And if it’s 501I4 [the IRS tax designation for organizations that can engage in activity supporting political candidates and electoral issues] that money can absolutely be used for independent expenditures, running political ads, hammering Republicans and electing Democrats.”
Arabella, along with its subsidiary organizations, declined to comment for this article.
Taking foreign donations has long been illegal, but it emerged as a major concern in 1996 when figures tied to Chinese intelligence illegally funneled hundreds of thousands to the Democratic National Committee. One of the major figures in the scandal, a Chinese businessman named Ng Lap Seng, told ABC News in 1997, “My philosophy is that I should not break the law but I wouldn’t mind bending it.”
The political landscape shifted profoundly in 2010 with the Supreme Court landmark decision in Citizens United vs. FEC. By holding that campaign finance laws violated the right to free speech, the court broadly prevented the government from restricting independent political spending by corporations and other associations.
Although foreigners have never been allowed to make direct contributions to campaigns, Citizens United essentially allowed Wyss and other foreign billionaires to give unlimited amounts of money to political action committees and other organizations that did not coordinate their advocacy with specific candidates.
In the thirteen years since the Citizens United decision, which Democrats have long derided, a large number of 501(c)4 independent expenditure groups have sprung up to take advantage of the new rules. None has been as successful as Arabella Advisors.
Arabella was founded by Eric Kessler, a former Clinton White House appointee, as well as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, which was plagued by fundraising controversies. Under Kessler, Arabella achieved great success in wrangling wealthy liberal donors and thereby making many organizations on the left dependent on its largesse: The Arabella network spent $1.2 billion in 2020. “Altogether this is absolutely one of the largest fundraising machines I have ever come across,” Robert Maguire of the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Politico in 2021. “I am really struggling to think of any other group, especially recently, that could rival it,”
The structure of Arabella Advisors is complicated and opaque by design. Arabella is comprised of a handful of smaller but still large and influential funds – New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund. Those groups then create several “pop-up” groups with generic names such as “Floridians for a Fair Shake” and “Arizonans For Responsible Government” to campaign for specific issues and candidates.
“They’re little more than websites designed to look like fully independent, grassroots advocacy groups; yet they can be unplugged the minute a campaign wraps up,” according to a recent report on Arabella’s operations by Ludwig. “These pop-up groups don’t file IRS disclosures, nor do they reveal their staff, boards, or budget. They often solicit donations from unsuspecting liberals, some of whom might be bothered to realize they’re in fact supporting the biggest ‘dark money’ monster in politics and not a grassroots group.”
The Arabella network has created some 500 of these groups since 2006, and even political journalists are often fooled into thinking these are grassroots groups instead of entities controlled by well-funded D.C. activists. (Some of these pop-up groups have even run political ads that deceptively try to look like local news outlets.) Many of those pop-up groups are also 501(c)(3) organizations, which unlike 501(c)(4) groups, are tax deductible and supposed to be nonpartisan.”
Tychicus – of course I think he’s guilty but I haven’t read the indictments so I don’t know which charges are related to which incidents so couldn’t tell you which charges I think will stick. But the Mar-a-Lago charges will probably stick – he was far too careless, showing people documents, refusing to return some, etc. The charges related to false electors in various states will be harder to stick as they have to prove a connection between Trump and the people who actually did it. Charges related to the phone call to the Sec’y of State will stick. Apparently some of the charges relate to some staff members going to a rural county in Georgia to take apart a voting machine, and there’s a trail leading to Trump for this trip. I’d be interested in seeing if they connect the dots there.
Biden’s trip to Hawaii is either a roaring success or a complete failure depending on who you read. Democratic pages and blogs – quote Hawaiians with favourable comments, his meeting with Buddhist monks, and his expressions of sympathy. The traditional media was fairly neutral – said what he did, noted criticism and praise. Then there’s the Republican sites…..
He is looking physically exhausted and ageing more. Trump is probably the only president I’ve seen not age while in office. The presidency tends to accelerate the ageing process. Some suggest Trump’s lack of ageing demonstrated his lack of effort…..not sure if I buy that but he is an anomaly in ageing.
The video discussing the heat on the ground should be taken in context. They were discussing the boots on his dog. Not sure who raised it but that’s what’s happening in the clip.
Loyalty pledges are stupid – why should you be forced to pledged loyalty to a party and their candidate if you just spent six months arguing why you should be the candidate and not the others. You are essentially asking a person to put a party before the country. Trump’s decision to forgo the debates means he doesn’t have to make the pledge. Given that, the other candidates have a perfectly valid reason not to pledge to support Trump if he won’t reciprocate.
Money is speech. Right wing groups who pressed the Citizen’s United case opened a pandora’s box. Not sure if they saw massive amounts of corporate and foreign money supporting candidates they don’t like. Backdraft.
NJ – a friend of mine shared the Carlson episode with me. I lasted about 5 minutes til there were enough errors that I stopped. The one lie that made the deepest impression was his claim Polish POWs were extremely well treated by Russians. Live coverage of prisoner exchanges have shown emancipated Poles being released by Russians. Unless every Russian is also starving, there’s enough evidence to suggest mistreatment. There’s a few more errors in terms of battle success, supplies, and logistics, etc. McGregor is old school – on the field he’s apparently a great leader but political he’s out of depth.
Remember kids, it’s only a crime and a threat to muh democracy when Rs do it.
“Flashback 2016: Democrats Pressured Trump Electors to Flip to Hillary
“They aggressively targeted & harassed me with the goal of me committing to being 1 of the 37 ‘Faithless Electors’… […] My personal info was posted and I received tens of thousands of letters to my mailbox, emails, and calls/texts at all hours of the night for weeks.””
“In light of the DC indictment and Georgia Indictment against former President Donald Trump, which centers around allegations of a so-called alternative electors scheme, as well as the Michigan case where their Attorney General filed felony charges against 16 alleged pro-Trump “fake electors,” it’s worth revisiting the 2016 presidential election and the media-approved attempts by Democrats all the way up to high-ranking members of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to get 37 electors to switch their votes.
CNN was among the numerous “news” outlets lending credence to the plan to stop Trump from being sworn in:”
CNN in 2016
– America needs 37 "faithless electors” from states Trump won to do this in order to drop him below the 270 threshold and block him from automatically winning the White House. The election would be determined by the House of Representatives, which has a… pic.twitter.com/BsLpyYublG
“The most troubling of all, as The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway has extensively documented, was the Clinton campaign’s coordination and participation in what essentially was a coup attempt against Trump, starting with the Russia collusion hoax nonsense and culminating with the faithless electors plan:”
In fact, within hours she instructed her team to lean into the Russia collusion hoax she bought and paid for. She tried to force electors to hear her disinfo operation prior to their vote. And Dem intel officers' leak and sabotage campaign was in high operation in Dec. and Jan. https://t.co/40TBkQJYm1
Why wasn’t Hillary prosecuted for her attempted 2016 Electoral College Coup? Reminder that Hillary Clinton & her 2016 campaign not only orchestrated the phony Steele Dossier/“Russian collusion” hoax, they sought to use that hoax, etc., to have electors invalidate the results… pic.twitter.com/HUNOmsq8TU
Not enough Repubs see duty as their top concern, but at least some do, and at least most of them would SAY it's their highest priority if asked. The GOP has a zillion problems, but at least it retains some tenuous grasp of the ideal of politicians as public servants.
This is baked deeply into the ideological foundation laid within the minds of every Democrat. They're told all their lives that America was born in sin, the common folk are racists, private capital is exploitation, and their sacred calling is to deliver "social justice."
Redistribution is coercive. You can tell Lefties are well aware of this because they scoff at the notion of people voluntarily funding charitable endeavors or community services. They laugh bitterly when reminded they could pay more taxes voluntarily instead of hiking tax rates.
And of course, as the tawdry Biden scandals remind us, Dem politicians are absolutely obsessed with money and devoted to making themselves richer. They believe they DESERVE riches and luxuries, because they're the elite. They seethe at capitalists who live better than they do.
Add the effects of media bias. Even the worst Dem politicians are constantly showered with puff pieces. Even the most obviously stupid and venal of them are lauded as moral and intellectual titans. They get unlimited credit for good intentions and zero accountability for failure.
The fact that Dems are never held accountable for the disastrous outcome of their policies means they endlessly double down on failure. They view every agency under their control as a piggy bank to be looted for ideological crusades, Party-building slush funds, and personal gain.
Dems hire swarms of government employees and turn them into ideological footsoldiers. Competence and efficiency are EXPLICITLY less important than ideological conformity – that's what all those mandatory DEI political exercises are about.
These are problems that plague Big Government in general, and Lord knows Republicans aren't immune, especially the ones that attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Dem power structure as controlled opposition. They naturally inherit a lot of Dem attitudes.
The monstrous portrait rotting in D.C.'s attic is a study of the Democrat Party and its ideology of coercion in pursuit of "social justice." States and cities are stacking up corpses because Dems love government, but have little interest in the responsibilities of governing. /end
“In the wake of the Maui fire tragedy, incompetence has been evident, but much is being squelched in the form of media blackouts from the island
To get a real sense of the way today’s press corps works tirelessly to prop up the public image of Joe Biden, we only have to see the manner in which the tragedy in Hawaii is being treated. There is a twofold issue, and both sides require complicit behavior from the press. On the one hand, you have President Biden’s detached involvement and on the other, the local actions – or inaction – that contributed to the problems.
Biden has been pathetically disengaged from this tragedy, as he has given repeated “no comment” responses to earlier questions as well as his taking repeated vacation stops as this is playing out. Then there is the matter of his visit to the island on Monday and how that extended his PR problems. As for the local authorities, you have matters like a warning system that was never engaged, questions on the early containment of the fire, and a water management official who apparently was lax in providing water diversion commands to aid in battling the blaze.”
—
“Residents on Maui are being told that even boiling water at this point is not safe. Why not employ those Marines to bring potable water transports over to the island?! Amazing.
All of this would be expected to generate media outrage on par with what we saw when George Bush was scorched for the handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, but we are not seeing much in the way of critical coverage in the media — that is, when we see coverage at all. Yes, the networks have covered the tragedy, but there is a noticeable difference in the overall reporting. We are not seeing nearly as many on-the-ground details emerging as we might expect.
This appears to be by design. A week ago, Will Cain from Fox News explained that he had been prevented at times from reporting on conditions and was actually blocked from accessing many areas of the island. He did manage to get some remote reporting, however, due to the fact that he is a resident and this granted him the ability to access certain areas he otherwise would have been barred from entering.
In the following days, things have only improved marginally as far as information getting out. A local reporter, Ashley Probst, from The Maui Times, expressed her frustration at the inability to not only report on conditions and detail what is taking place but having been met with obstinate actions from local authorities who have not been open about recovery efforts and have worked to stymie her attempts at getting information out to the public.
Meanwhile, the local authorities are facing criticism over this lack of transparency in the emergency, and they, in turn, are becoming combative with the press over the lack of clear communication and the inability of journalists to do work on the ground. Look at the contentious stance of Governor Josh Green as he faces questions from the press while at the same time being critical of these same journalists.
What Governor Green is detailing here is an unfavorable condition of his own making and the making of other area officials. He is openly critical – downright hostile, in fact – towards the concept of social media delivering information in this tragedy, but when they are not forthcoming with information as well as curtailing the media in their ability to work on the ground, then what he complains about is an inevitable result. If there is a blockade on media efforts, then social media and citizen journalists will be the ones to fill that information void.
While there are these concerns with authorities tamping down information on the ground, and mostly locally, the national press appears to be willing to deliver mostly fed dispatches. There is a notable lack of heavy criticism of the president and his dismissive actions on this matter. No criticisms of his time off, as he heads from Hawaii to take time off in Lake Tahoe – immediately after he had a beach weekend, which came days after he returned from a lengthy vacation.
So Biden is not looked at critically, the local officials are dithering, and it appears some of their energy is spent controlling the narrative as opposed to orchestrating the best possible relief efforts. Reining in the press is only feeding the questions and critiques in the general public, as speculation only swells. Will Cain alluded to this very reality a week ago, and the condition of things in regard to press access does not appear to have improved significantly.”
There’s a difference between faithless electors and fake electors. With the former, you try to get them to change their pre-arranged vote. With the latter, you try to replace the legitimate electors with a slate of fake electors. The first may be unethical but the latter is illegal. Of course, both are evidence for why the electoral college is silly and antiquated and they should just go with the popular vote.
A long day for Biden? I fall asleep at staff meetings and rely on my colleagues to make sure I’m awake enough not to annoy admin. Where’s Jill? But as I told a friend who shared this with me – more Americans prefer a sleeping Biden than a wide awake Trump.
Facebook is preventing people from sharing news links in Canada. So to compensate I’ve taken to reading the online version of the Guardian. And I must admit I should thank Zuckerburg.
Debatable (Biden – sleeping or bowing his head?) I thought it looked more like a head bow, but …? these days in this political climate, it all too often depends only on one’s political leanings.
_____________
From one blurb I saw (edited here):
Did Joe Biden Fall Asleep During Maui Wild Fire Memorial Service? Take the Latest Political Rorschach Test
~ … The longer video shows Biden coughing, then bowing his head for about 20 seconds, then raising it as the crowd cheers. If you watch the clip that starts without the cough, it sure looks like he’s (sleeping), but it doesn’t read quite the same way in a larger context.
Doesn’t matter, really. If you (dislike Biden), you will see him in the least charitable way, (even) if it’s false. (Otherwise), you will likely defend him, regardless.
It’s just the latest example of the Political Rorschach Test Era in which we live. ~
______________
If we weren’t “there,” if we don’t — we should more wisely take the social media gab circulating with a grain of salt.
“Conservative pundits falsely claim Biden slept during Maui fire memorial
Using low-quality video that distorts how Biden appears, pundits made the false claim go viral on social media.”
“Higher-resolution video from the nonpartisan network C-SPAN shows that Biden looked downward for about 10 seconds while he was seated at a table. In the video, Biden watches someone who’s speaking, coughs, looks downward and then nods in agreement with the speaker. Then he looks up again. He later delivered a speech to the same audience.
The higher-resolution video shows that Biden kept his eyes open for most of the time he was looking downward. His open eyes aren’t clearly visible in the lower-quality videos.”
Wandering Views 
It’s fine….
LikeLiked by 1 person
But loyalty pledges for Trump, right?
They’re as useless as the paper they’re printed on. Useless, like the lying Senator. So principled he is, right?
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is great. Hunter’s lawyers are leaking info now on the DoJ and their process for ignoring crimes.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/08/21/hunter-biden-document-dump-over-the-weekend-n572475#google_vignette
“If you have been following the Hunter Biden legal case over the past thousand years or so, this weekend’s revelations should interest you.
Ed wrote about The New York Times’ story yesterday and his take is as always well worth a read. Politico dropped a separate, related story as well, and since their appearance, a lot of commentary from people involved has been floating around.
Both stories are based upon confidential correspondence between the prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s legal team, and I would speculate that they were leaked by Hunter’s team for their own reasons. Since the breakdown of the negotiations that led to the aborted plea deal Hunter’s legal team has been shaken up, his lawyer Abbe Lowell has been attacking US Attorney/now Special Prosecutor David Weiss, and new stories about the internal workings of the prosecution team have been coming out.
The most spectacular revelation of late is this: until the IRS agents blew the whistle David Weiss was going to drop all charges against Hunter Biden, letting him get off scot-free. Biden’s attorneys wanted an ironclad deal in writing to ensure no future prosecution, which eventually led to the current mess everybody has found themselves in.
Weiss was prepared to drop the matter entirely, but when the IRS whistleblowers came forward he decided he needed some face-saving plea from Biden. With such explosive charges on the table, he needed to at least give Hunter a haircut.”
—
Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute. While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.
—
“That’s rich, although entirely on-brand. Biden should skate, and the people who reveal the corruption should go to jail. Very Biden.
As you can see US Attorney David Weiss was doing exactly what we all pretty much knew he was doing: finding a way to cover for Hunter Biden while covering his own butt. He was originally going to simply produce an agreement–one which would never have gone before a judge–to not prosecute Hunter if he remained a good boy for several years. The first draft of the deal as reported by Politico would have been essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
—
On May 18, another lawyer for Biden sent two Delaware prosecutors — including Lesley Wolf, a senior prosecutor in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office — the first draft of a proposed deal, structured so it wouldn’t need a judge’s sign-off and wouldn’t require a guilty plea from Biden.
As part of the deal, Biden would admit he was late filing his taxes for 2017 and 2018, and that he owned a gun while he was using drugs. He would promise to pay any taxes he still owed, to pay his taxes on time for the next five years, and to never own a gun again. The deal would be made public, and it would also cover three corporate entities affiliated with him.
If he upheld his end of the bargain through January 2025, the Justice Department would promise not to prosecute him for anything they’d investigated thus far. The draft wording of that promise was clear and broad: “The Department of Justice agrees not to criminally prosecute Robert Hunter Biden and the affiliated businesses (namely: Owasco P.C.; Owasco LLC; and Skaneateles LLC): (a) for any federal crimes arising from the conduct generally described in the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A); or (b) for any other federal crimes relating to matters investigated by the United States.”
Weiss’ team of prosecutors seemed pleased. That evening, Wolf sent the Biden team a list of must-haves for a potential deal, noting that many of them were already in the first draft.
—
“The New York Times story makes clear that Weiss was prepared to take this deal as-is until the IRS whistleblowers came out. It was his decision to require a face-saving “guilty” plea on misdemeanors that eventually blew everything up. Because with a plea a judge would be involved, and as we saw an attentive judge would notice immediately that the deal was corrupt.”
https://twitter.com/Cliff_Sims/status/1693065384184697242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1693065384184697242%7Ctwgr%5E2bc23d82cdcc0a35f5e4024a4c3714c32f6244d1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Fdavid-strom%2F2023%2F08%2F21%2Fhunter-biden-document-dump-over-the-weekend-n572475
—
LikeLiked by 2 people
Tone. Deaf. Fool.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Soros has some competition….
Dark money is only bad when Rs do it.
“The Progressive Benefactor Who Makes U.S. Barriers to Foreign Cash Look Like Swiss Cheese”
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/08/22/the_progressive_benefactor_who_makes_us_barriers_to_foreign_cash_look_like_swiss_cheese_973986.html
“The Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has a profound interest in American politics. Over the years, he has pumped $475 million he has earned manufacturing medical devices into left-wing advocacy groups – $72 million in 2021 alone, according to a new report from the conservative watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust.
According to a biography of Wyss written by a sister, Wyss’ goal is not to bend laws to his business’s advantage but to “[re]interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics.”
Although foreigners are prohibited from donating money directly to political causes, Wyss has donated lavishly to progressive political organizations. The New York Times reported in 2021 that these include the “Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, as well as organizations that ran voter registration and mobilization campaigns to increase Democratic turnout, built media outlets accused of slanting the news to favor Democrats, and sought to block Mr. Trump’s nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment.” Since 2016, some $245 million of his spending on American politics has gone to Arabella Advisors, which controls a vast network of progressive nonprofits which, among other activities, has financed hundreds of smaller groups that campaign for specific issues and candidates. Arabella, which raised $1.6 billion in 2021, was dubbed by The Atlantic “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”
Critics argue that Wyss’ largesse illuminates a gaping loophole in political finance that essentially allows wealthy foreigners to launder their contributions – one that has been exploited far more robustly by Democrats than Republicans. That may help explain why the issue became more prominent on Aug. 14, when House Republicans announced an investigation “into whether entities that qualify as tax-exempt under Section 501 of the U.S. Code are abiding by the statutory and regulatory prohibitions against … foreign sources of funding … being funneled through such organizations to influence America’s elections.” As part of that probe, the House Ways and Means Committee produced an open letter detailing the problem and requesting information from the public. A significant portion of the letter discussed the political donations of a single foreigner – Hansjörg Wyss.
Marneé Banks, a spokesperson for the two organizations most responsible for Wyss’ political giving, told RCI that “The Wyss Foundation and Berger Action Fund prohibit their grants from being used to support or oppose political candidates or parties or to fund get-out-the-vote or voter registration activities.” She said, “Both organizations comply with the rules and laws governing their activities, and they support increasing transparency in our campaign finance system.”
Almost every expert interviewed agrees that the House investigation will prove challenging. The opaque nature of 501(c)4 independent political expenditure groups makes it impossible to tell whose donations are spent on what.
“There’s no way for us right now to even check up on, let alone stop, wealthy foreign interests, say from China or Russia, from cutting a check to an American foundation that disappears into its coffers and winds up in the hands of a political nonprofit,” says Hayden Ludwig, Director of Policy Research at the Restoration of America, a right-leaning nonprofit that investigates the undisclosed donations to nonprofits commonly disparaged as “dark money.” “And if it’s 501I4 [the IRS tax designation for organizations that can engage in activity supporting political candidates and electoral issues] that money can absolutely be used for independent expenditures, running political ads, hammering Republicans and electing Democrats.”
Arabella, along with its subsidiary organizations, declined to comment for this article.
Taking foreign donations has long been illegal, but it emerged as a major concern in 1996 when figures tied to Chinese intelligence illegally funneled hundreds of thousands to the Democratic National Committee. One of the major figures in the scandal, a Chinese businessman named Ng Lap Seng, told ABC News in 1997, “My philosophy is that I should not break the law but I wouldn’t mind bending it.”
The political landscape shifted profoundly in 2010 with the Supreme Court landmark decision in Citizens United vs. FEC. By holding that campaign finance laws violated the right to free speech, the court broadly prevented the government from restricting independent political spending by corporations and other associations.
Although foreigners have never been allowed to make direct contributions to campaigns, Citizens United essentially allowed Wyss and other foreign billionaires to give unlimited amounts of money to political action committees and other organizations that did not coordinate their advocacy with specific candidates.
In the thirteen years since the Citizens United decision, which Democrats have long derided, a large number of 501(c)4 independent expenditure groups have sprung up to take advantage of the new rules. None has been as successful as Arabella Advisors.
Arabella was founded by Eric Kessler, a former Clinton White House appointee, as well as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, which was plagued by fundraising controversies. Under Kessler, Arabella achieved great success in wrangling wealthy liberal donors and thereby making many organizations on the left dependent on its largesse: The Arabella network spent $1.2 billion in 2020. “Altogether this is absolutely one of the largest fundraising machines I have ever come across,” Robert Maguire of the left-leaning watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Politico in 2021. “I am really struggling to think of any other group, especially recently, that could rival it,”
The structure of Arabella Advisors is complicated and opaque by design. Arabella is comprised of a handful of smaller but still large and influential funds – New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund. Those groups then create several “pop-up” groups with generic names such as “Floridians for a Fair Shake” and “Arizonans For Responsible Government” to campaign for specific issues and candidates.
“They’re little more than websites designed to look like fully independent, grassroots advocacy groups; yet they can be unplugged the minute a campaign wraps up,” according to a recent report on Arabella’s operations by Ludwig. “These pop-up groups don’t file IRS disclosures, nor do they reveal their staff, boards, or budget. They often solicit donations from unsuspecting liberals, some of whom might be bothered to realize they’re in fact supporting the biggest ‘dark money’ monster in politics and not a grassroots group.”
The Arabella network has created some 500 of these groups since 2006, and even political journalists are often fooled into thinking these are grassroots groups instead of entities controlled by well-funded D.C. activists. (Some of these pop-up groups have even run political ads that deceptively try to look like local news outlets.) Many of those pop-up groups are also 501(c)(3) organizations, which unlike 501(c)(4) groups, are tax deductible and supposed to be nonpartisan.”
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https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/e9ef641c-743d-4783-8150-b19da8a5493f?j=eyJ1IjoiMWhvcmVsIn0.sKDsJtvn84Hufwg9JtmKjkidTdwJDkGmKWhnBUgYruU
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Tychicus – of course I think he’s guilty but I haven’t read the indictments so I don’t know which charges are related to which incidents so couldn’t tell you which charges I think will stick. But the Mar-a-Lago charges will probably stick – he was far too careless, showing people documents, refusing to return some, etc. The charges related to false electors in various states will be harder to stick as they have to prove a connection between Trump and the people who actually did it. Charges related to the phone call to the Sec’y of State will stick. Apparently some of the charges relate to some staff members going to a rural county in Georgia to take apart a voting machine, and there’s a trail leading to Trump for this trip. I’d be interested in seeing if they connect the dots there.
And of course he is guilty of sexual assault.
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Biden’s trip to Hawaii is either a roaring success or a complete failure depending on who you read. Democratic pages and blogs – quote Hawaiians with favourable comments, his meeting with Buddhist monks, and his expressions of sympathy. The traditional media was fairly neutral – said what he did, noted criticism and praise. Then there’s the Republican sites…..
He is looking physically exhausted and ageing more. Trump is probably the only president I’ve seen not age while in office. The presidency tends to accelerate the ageing process. Some suggest Trump’s lack of ageing demonstrated his lack of effort…..not sure if I buy that but he is an anomaly in ageing.
The video discussing the heat on the ground should be taken in context. They were discussing the boots on his dog. Not sure who raised it but that’s what’s happening in the clip.
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Loyalty pledges are stupid – why should you be forced to pledged loyalty to a party and their candidate if you just spent six months arguing why you should be the candidate and not the others. You are essentially asking a person to put a party before the country. Trump’s decision to forgo the debates means he doesn’t have to make the pledge. Given that, the other candidates have a perfectly valid reason not to pledge to support Trump if he won’t reciprocate.
Money is speech. Right wing groups who pressed the Citizen’s United case opened a pandora’s box. Not sure if they saw massive amounts of corporate and foreign money supporting candidates they don’t like. Backdraft.
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NJ – a friend of mine shared the Carlson episode with me. I lasted about 5 minutes til there were enough errors that I stopped. The one lie that made the deepest impression was his claim Polish POWs were extremely well treated by Russians. Live coverage of prisoner exchanges have shown emancipated Poles being released by Russians. Unless every Russian is also starving, there’s enough evidence to suggest mistreatment. There’s a few more errors in terms of battle success, supplies, and logistics, etc. McGregor is old school – on the field he’s apparently a great leader but political he’s out of depth.
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Remember kids, it’s only a crime and a threat to muh democracy when Rs do it.
“Flashback 2016: Democrats Pressured Trump Electors to Flip to Hillary
“They aggressively targeted & harassed me with the goal of me committing to being 1 of the 37 ‘Faithless Electors’… […] My personal info was posted and I received tens of thousands of letters to my mailbox, emails, and calls/texts at all hours of the night for weeks.””
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/08/flashback-2016-democrats-pressured-trump-electors-to-flip-to-hillary/
“In light of the DC indictment and Georgia Indictment against former President Donald Trump, which centers around allegations of a so-called alternative electors scheme, as well as the Michigan case where their Attorney General filed felony charges against 16 alleged pro-Trump “fake electors,” it’s worth revisiting the 2016 presidential election and the media-approved attempts by Democrats all the way up to high-ranking members of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to get 37 electors to switch their votes.
CNN was among the numerous “news” outlets lending credence to the plan to stop Trump from being sworn in:”
“So was CBS News, which reported the below story without any noticeable concern about the state of “our democracy” (as Hillary has often put it):”
“Endorsements of the proposed 2016 “faithless electors” switch included elected Democrats like Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.):”
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“Leading Democrat lawyers such as Laurence Tribe and Lisa Bloom offered their legal support:”
https://twitter.com/jimstinson/status/1692514758119829880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1692514758119829880%7Ctwgr%5E52d47478f4ce64af2ecb4273c4d843e19da1471d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Flegalinsurrection.com%2F2023%2F08%2Fflashback-2016-democrats-pressured-trump-electors-to-flip-to-hillary%2F
—
“The most troubling of all, as The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway has extensively documented, was the Clinton campaign’s coordination and participation in what essentially was a coup attempt against Trump, starting with the Russia collusion hoax nonsense and culminating with the faithless electors plan:”
—-
Because some pigs are more equal than others.
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I’m sure the press would ignore it if an R did this.
Not.
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Nailed it.
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Despite some who live in denial and say otherwise, yes.
“Is There a Maui Media Blackout to Prevent Biden’s Katrina Catastrophe?”
https://redstate.com/bradslager/2023/08/22/is-there-a-maui-media-blackout-to-prevent-bidens-katrina-catastrophe-n2162915
“In the wake of the Maui fire tragedy, incompetence has been evident, but much is being squelched in the form of media blackouts from the island
To get a real sense of the way today’s press corps works tirelessly to prop up the public image of Joe Biden, we only have to see the manner in which the tragedy in Hawaii is being treated. There is a twofold issue, and both sides require complicit behavior from the press. On the one hand, you have President Biden’s detached involvement and on the other, the local actions – or inaction – that contributed to the problems.
Biden has been pathetically disengaged from this tragedy, as he has given repeated “no comment” responses to earlier questions as well as his taking repeated vacation stops as this is playing out. Then there is the matter of his visit to the island on Monday and how that extended his PR problems. As for the local authorities, you have matters like a warning system that was never engaged, questions on the early containment of the fire, and a water management official who apparently was lax in providing water diversion commands to aid in battling the blaze.”
—
“Residents on Maui are being told that even boiling water at this point is not safe. Why not employ those Marines to bring potable water transports over to the island?! Amazing.
All of this would be expected to generate media outrage on par with what we saw when George Bush was scorched for the handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, but we are not seeing much in the way of critical coverage in the media — that is, when we see coverage at all. Yes, the networks have covered the tragedy, but there is a noticeable difference in the overall reporting. We are not seeing nearly as many on-the-ground details emerging as we might expect.
This appears to be by design. A week ago, Will Cain from Fox News explained that he had been prevented at times from reporting on conditions and was actually blocked from accessing many areas of the island. He did manage to get some remote reporting, however, due to the fact that he is a resident and this granted him the ability to access certain areas he otherwise would have been barred from entering.
In the following days, things have only improved marginally as far as information getting out. A local reporter, Ashley Probst, from The Maui Times, expressed her frustration at the inability to not only report on conditions and detail what is taking place but having been met with obstinate actions from local authorities who have not been open about recovery efforts and have worked to stymie her attempts at getting information out to the public.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hEE5VC1D-A4?feature=share
Meanwhile, the local authorities are facing criticism over this lack of transparency in the emergency, and they, in turn, are becoming combative with the press over the lack of clear communication and the inability of journalists to do work on the ground. Look at the contentious stance of Governor Josh Green as he faces questions from the press while at the same time being critical of these same journalists.
What Governor Green is detailing here is an unfavorable condition of his own making and the making of other area officials. He is openly critical – downright hostile, in fact – towards the concept of social media delivering information in this tragedy, but when they are not forthcoming with information as well as curtailing the media in their ability to work on the ground, then what he complains about is an inevitable result. If there is a blockade on media efforts, then social media and citizen journalists will be the ones to fill that information void.
While there are these concerns with authorities tamping down information on the ground, and mostly locally, the national press appears to be willing to deliver mostly fed dispatches. There is a notable lack of heavy criticism of the president and his dismissive actions on this matter. No criticisms of his time off, as he heads from Hawaii to take time off in Lake Tahoe – immediately after he had a beach weekend, which came days after he returned from a lengthy vacation.
So Biden is not looked at critically, the local officials are dithering, and it appears some of their energy is spent controlling the narrative as opposed to orchestrating the best possible relief efforts. Reining in the press is only feeding the questions and critiques in the general public, as speculation only swells. Will Cain alluded to this very reality a week ago, and the condition of things in regard to press access does not appear to have improved significantly.”
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There’s a difference between faithless electors and fake electors. With the former, you try to get them to change their pre-arranged vote. With the latter, you try to replace the legitimate electors with a slate of fake electors. The first may be unethical but the latter is illegal. Of course, both are evidence for why the electoral college is silly and antiquated and they should just go with the popular vote.
A long day for Biden? I fall asleep at staff meetings and rely on my colleagues to make sure I’m awake enough not to annoy admin. Where’s Jill? But as I told a friend who shared this with me – more Americans prefer a sleeping Biden than a wide awake Trump.
The left of centre press is still reporting about Hawaii, its just not reporting the same narrative as the right of centre press.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/22/hawaii-fires-climate-crisis-pacific-people
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Facebook is preventing people from sharing news links in Canada. So to compensate I’ve taken to reading the online version of the Guardian. And I must admit I should thank Zuckerburg.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/22/trump-yearns-to-govern-a-mafia-state-fitting-that-he-faces-racketeering-charges
And this article reminded me that Mark Meadows is thought to have rolled over to Jack Smart. Trump’s not helping Giuliani – will he roll over too?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/22/michael-cohen-donald-trump-rudy-giuliani-legal-fees
Still think the NYT is far left.
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Debatable (Biden – sleeping or bowing his head?) I thought it looked more like a head bow, but …? these days in this political climate, it all too often depends only on one’s political leanings.
_____________
From one blurb I saw (edited here):
Did Joe Biden Fall Asleep During Maui Wild Fire Memorial Service? Take the Latest Political Rorschach Test
~ … The longer video shows Biden coughing, then bowing his head for about 20 seconds, then raising it as the crowd cheers. If you watch the clip that starts without the cough, it sure looks like he’s (sleeping), but it doesn’t read quite the same way in a larger context.
Doesn’t matter, really. If you (dislike Biden), you will see him in the least charitable way, (even) if it’s false. (Otherwise), you will likely defend him, regardless.
It’s just the latest example of the Political Rorschach Test Era in which we live. ~
______________
If we weren’t “there,” if we don’t — we should more wisely take the social media gab circulating with a grain of salt.
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*if we don’t personally know
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Sure, we’ll ignore what our lying eyes are showing us……. 🙄
Amazing that some have an excuse for everything he does.
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“Conservative pundits falsely claim Biden slept during Maui fire memorial
Using low-quality video that distorts how Biden appears, pundits made the false claim go viral on social media.”
“Higher-resolution video from the nonpartisan network C-SPAN shows that Biden looked downward for about 10 seconds while he was seated at a table. In the video, Biden watches someone who’s speaking, coughs, looks downward and then nods in agreement with the speaker. Then he looks up again. He later delivered a speech to the same audience.
The higher-resolution video shows that Biden kept his eyes open for most of the time he was looking downward. His open eyes aren’t clearly visible in the lower-quality videos.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/biden-maui-video-fake-asleep-falls-sleep-rcna101263
Here’s the fuller video:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5082027/user-clip-biden-hawaii-memorial
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