CRIME Hunter Biden Business Associate Flips From Prison, Releases Emails Detailing China Influence-Peddling Operation [main Hunter Biden]

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden’s dubious business dealings raise specter of a ‘compromised’ president​

By Joseph Clark - The Washington Times - Sunday, November 27, 2022
Hunter Biden’s long trail of suspicious business dealings will get new scrutiny as House Republicans, armed with subpoena power, begin what is expected to be an intense, politically charged investigation of President Biden’s suspected involvement in his son’s moneymaking schemes.

By serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, pursuing deals with Chinese Communist Party-linked energy tycoons and reportedly pocketing more than $3 million from a Russian businesswoman and widow of a former mayor of Moscow, Hunter Biden’s far-flung business deals have raised eyebrows for years about potential influence peddling and other possible crimes.

President Biden, who has denied any involvement in his son’s business deals and framed his son’s tribulations as a struggle to overcome years of addiction and grief, has largely been granted a free pass from the mainstream news media and the powers that be in Washington.

All of that is changing, though, as Republicans aim to expand their investigation of Hunter Biden, 52, and look at whether the president has been “compromised by foreign governments” in connection with his son’s overseas business ventures.

Details that Republicans hope to uncover will add to the mountain of evidence accumulated over the years from investigative reporting — mostly by conservative-leaning news outlets — and from inquiries on Capitol Hill.

Much of the evidence was unearthed by Senate Republicans led by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, then the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. They led an investigation beginning in 2019 into potential conflicts of interest arising from Hunter Biden’s position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while his father served as vice president in the Obama administration.

The Senate inquiry followed accusations by President Trump that Mr. Biden used his position as vice president to improperly press for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, angling to shield Burisma and his son from a corruption investigation.

Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer, received more than $4 million from Burisma from 2014 to 2016 despite bringing few qualifications to the table, leading the lawmakers to conclude in their September 2020 report that Hunter Biden “cashed in” on his father’s role as the White House’s point man on Ukraine.

Officials in the Obama administration were aware that Hunter Biden’s position on the board was “problematic” and interfered “in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” but they stopped short of pinning any wrongdoing on Mr. Biden while he was a candidate, according to a Senate report.

The report, which was based in part on suspicious activity reports filed with the Treasury Department’s financial crimes enforcement network, also unlocked a trove of suspect payments that Hunter Biden received from other foreign sources while his father served as vice president and thereafter.

“These foreign nationals have questionable backgrounds that have been identified as being consistent with a range of criminal activities, including but not limited to organized prostitution and/or human trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and embezzlement,” it said.

Hunter Biden also sent “thousands of dollars to individuals who have either: 1) been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; 2) an association with the adult entertainment industry; or 3) potential association with prostitution.”

The recipients included Ukrainian and Russian citizens and nonresident alien women in the United States who wired funds received from Hunter Biden to people in Russia and Ukraine.

Citing Treasury Department records, the report noted that some of those transactions were linked to “what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.’”

Hunter Biden’s financiers and business partners include Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese businessmen with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2014, Yelena Baturina, the widow of corrupt former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Russia’s only female billionaire, wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, a company tied to Hunter Biden’s investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners. She also wired $241,000 in 2015.

Those payments came under scrutiny again this year after the Treasury Department excluded Ms. Baturina from its public sanctions list of Russian elites after the invasion of Ukraine.

In an April letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, House Oversight and Reform Committee Republicans, led by Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, questioned whether the U.S. avoided “sanctioning certain Russian oligarchs because of concerns they may attempt to influence American policy by exploiting Hunter Biden’s connection with his father.”

The 2020 Senate report also detailed Hunter Biden’s business associations with Chinese nationals Ye Jianming and Gongwen Dong, who ran a $33 billion energy fund and maintained ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Hunter Biden traveled to China at least six times from 2010 to 2016 seeking Chinese investors for various business ventures.

Hunter Biden’s ties to Mr. Ye, who controlled CEFC China Energy, began in 2011 while Mr. Biden was vice president. In 2013, Hunter Biden flew with his father on Air Force Two to China. After the visit, China approved a business license for Hunter Biden’s newly formed venture, Bohai Harvest Shanghai Equity Investment Fund Management Co.

Throughout their relationship, Mr. Ye’s energy company wired at least $6 million to Hudson West LLC, a joint venture that Hunter Biden owned with Chinese investors.

In 2016, Mr. Gongwen, who executed transactions for Mr. Ye’s companies, opened a line of credit for Hudson West LLC that was tapped by Mr. Biden’s brother James Biden, James’ wife, Sara, and Hunter Biden.

“The Bidens subsequently used the credit cards to purchase $101,291.46 worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants,” the Senate report said. “The cards were collateralized by transferring $99,000 from a Hudson West III account to a separate account, where the funds were held until the cards were closed.”

The Treasury Department flagged several transactions between Hunter Biden and the two Chinese businessmen as “potentially criminal.”

In November 2017, Mr. Ye’s associate Patrick Ho was arrested by U.S. authorities on charges of money laundering and conspiracy. Mr. Ye was detained in China the following year.

Hunter Biden’s unsavory ties were further exposed by whistleblower testimony and from the trove of emails and text messages recovered from his discarded laptop computer.

Emails recovered from the laptop computer show Hunter Biden sought a $10 million annual fee from Mr. Ye for making introductions that led to more business ventures.

Hunter Biden laid out his expectations from Mr. Ye in an August 2017 message to Mr. Gongwen.

“My understanding is that the original agreement with the Director was for consulting fees based on introductions alone a rate of $10 million per year for three years guarantee total of $30 million,” Hunter Biden wrote.

Republican-led investigations have revealed further evidence that lawmakers say shows Hunter Biden may have been compromised by Chinese intelligence through a business associate who advised on a deal to sell liquefied natural gas reserves to China and later encouraged his father to run for office in 2020.

In a letter last month to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Mr. Comer revealed emails and text messages between Hunter Biden and JiaQi “Jackie” Bao, a former Chinese official who maintained ties to Chinese intelligence while advising the Biden family.

Mr. Comer wrote that Ms. Bao “provided Hunter insight into purchasing liquefied natural gas reserves in the United States to sell to China, had access to the Biden family’s financial information, and liaised with CCP-affiliated agents on the Bidens.”

The Republican investigators said Ms. Bao provided Hunter Biden with Chinese-language maps of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, holdings in the U.S. and attended negotiations with U.S. energy companies to help execute financial transactions.

They also said Ms. Bao, after “infiltrating the Biden family,” encouraged the current president to run for office months before he announced and supplied his campaign with “advice related to China.”

In a December 2018 text message exchange, Ms. Bao told Hunter Biden that “Uncle Joe should run for President in 2020” and “should not be distracted” by a New York Times article about the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC’s influence peddling within the Biden family.

Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson said Ms. Bao also provided opposition research to Hunter Biden on Mr. Trump ahead of the election and called Hunter Biden her “coconspirator-in-mischief.”

Mr. Biden has repeatedly denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings. In 2019, he declared that he had never spoken with Hunter about his overseas business dealings. He has stuck to that story despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

A September 2017 email obtained by the Daily Caller showed that Hunter Biden planned to set up a Washington office that would include his father and Mr. Gongwen.

“Please have keys made available for new office mates,” Hunter Biden wrote in an email to the office building manager. He listed his father, uncle James and stepmother Jill Biden as office mates along with Mr. Gongwen.

The office sign was to read: The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC US).

Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski has revealed that he met with Mr. Biden in Los Angeles in 2017 while attempting to set up a venture for Chinese investments, SinoHawk Holdings.

Mr. Bobulinski was set to become the CEO and Hunter Biden the chairman. Hunter Biden’s father, believed to be referred to as “the big guy” in an email thread, was to receive a 10% cut in the venture. The deal, however, fell through.

In a voicemail from 2018, Mr. Biden called his son to assure him that he was “clear” after reading a New York Times article detailing Hunter Biden’s dealings with CEFC.

The newspaper reported that Mr. Ho called Jim Biden upon his arrest. Jim Biden told the newspaper that he believed the call was meant for his nephew, though the outlet reported that it was “unclear whether Hunter Biden struck any deals with CEFC.”

“I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good,” Mr. Biden said in the voicemail recording to his son. “I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you.”

Mr. Biden immediately dismissed the 2020 Senate report as politically motivated. His campaign said the investigation was based on “a long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory.”

Mr. Biden’s campaign also branded the now-authenticated laptop as Russian disinformation.

That explanation was also peddled by more than 50 former U.S. senior intelligence officials in an open letter and by social media platforms that, acting on FBI warnings on the authenticity of the laptop computer, began censoring online discussion of the laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Hunter Biden has also been the subject of a Justice Department investigation dating to 2018.

Last month, reports surfaced that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware leading the investigation, is nearing a decision on whether to bring charges against the president’s son.

Prosecutors are said to be considering charging Hunter Biden with tax crimes and making false statements in connection with a gun purchase.

House Republicans have pledged to expand their investigation of Hunter Biden’s business dealings once they take the committee gavels in January.

Republicans who will soon run the House Oversight and Reform and Judiciary committees fired their first shot across the president’s bow last week by laying out evidence that they say “raises troubling questions” about whether the president has been “compromised by foreign governments.”

“This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” said Mr. Comer, who is poised to become chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee.

Mr. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who is expected to lead the Judiciary Committee, recently previewed their investigations of Mr. Biden and his family’s moneymaking deals.

Citing evidence obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer and through whistleblowers, Mr. Comer said his committee uncovered a “decade-long pattern of influence peddling, national security risks, and political cover-ups” committed by the Biden family with the direct knowledge and involvement of the president.

Republicans on the oversight committee said in a 31-page report that Mr. Biden was directly involved in his family’s business deals, including those involving foreign interests, despite claiming he did not know the details.

The White House has brushed off Republicans’ pledge to expand their inquiry. It again called the lawmakers’ claims “politically motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories.”

“President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge,” said White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams.

Mr. Jordan noted the administration’s evolving attempts to distance the president from Hunter Biden’s business schemes as more evidence emerges.

“When it started off, it was, ‘No, it’s not his laptop,’” Mr. Jordan said. “Then it was, ‘Well, it’s his laptop, but remember, it’s Russian disinformation, and no one did anything wrong.’ Then it was, ‘Well, maybe he did something wrong, but President Biden didn’t know about it.’”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden investigator to GOP: 'This is totally about Joe Biden'​

'This is not about a laptop'​

By Art Moore
Published November 27, 2022

Several years before the New York Post's revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop rocked the 2020 presidential election, Peter Schweizer and his Government Accountability Institute presented documentary evidence that at least five members of the Biden family were engaged in a global business, peddling influence and access to the White House for cash.

But as House Republicans prepare to investigate multimillion-dollar deals with the likes of Chinese Communist Party intelligence chiefs, and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, they need to maintain a single focus, advised the Government Accountability Institute's director of research, Seamus Bruner, in a nearly hourlong video interview with WND (embedded below).

"This is not about Hunter Biden. This is not about a laptop," he said. "This is totally about Joe Biden."

Significantly, Bruner observed, Hunter Biden’s business ventures have tracked alongside Joe Biden's policy initiatives.

"When Joe Biden is a senator writing banking legislation, Hunter Biden is a lobbyist working for banking companies," he said. "So, when Joe Biden becomes vice president, that's when Hunter really gets into the international dealings."

In 2009, President Obama made Joe Biden point man for Latin America policy, and after the vice president visited Costa Rica, brother Frank Biden's company Sun Fund Americas struck a deal there. When Joe Biden was overseeing the Obama administration's pivot to Asia, Hunter Biden accompanied his father on Air Force Two in 2013 to Beijing, where he obtained a 10% stake in a Chinese government-linked equity firm Bohai Harvest that eventually was worth $1.5 billion in working investment capital, as Schweizer and Bruner were first to report. With Joe Biden in charge of Ukraine policy and the U.S. anti-corruption agenda, Hunter Biden sat on the board of one of the nation's most corrupt firms, Burisma, for a cool $1 million. Did that deal have anything to do with Joe Biden – as he boasted in a Council on Foreign Relations meeting panel – threatening to withdraw $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if the nation's top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma at the time, was not fired immediately? Among the many other deals was brother James Biden obtaining a housing contract in Iraq while Joe Biden oversaw the country's reconstruction.

"It’s like insider trading, which is notoriously hard to prove," Bruner said. "But you see the pattern of transactions always just happening to be in the areas where Joe Biden is the policy point man."

Espionage
Bruner said he and Schweizer became aware of the Bohai Harvest story while they were researching the book "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich," which brought scrutiny on the Clinton Foundation and a "pay to play" scheme that became the subject of an FBI investigation.

"We were shocked. And it's only gotten worse, the more we find out – the Chinese intelligence connections, that it’s tens of millions of dollars directly into Biden family pockets."

Schweizer has said that for Beijing, the deals – including the one with the strategic Communist Party-controlled CEFC China Energy in which a verified email indicates 10% was to go to "the big guy" – are about espionage, Chinese intelligence having "their claws" in the Biden family.

"There's at least five people tied to the highest levels of Chinese Communist Party intelligence who are enriching the son of the Vice President," Bruner said.

Evidence on the laptop, for example, shows Hunter Biden received $4.8 million in the CEFC China Energy deal directly from Patrick Ho, described by Hunter as "literally the f****** spy chief of China." Hunter may have overstated Ho's status, but the federal government obtained at least one Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant related to Ho, a former Hong Kong home affairs secretary, indicating he was a potential counterintelligence threat.

CEFC chairman Ye Jianming has ties to the People's Liberation Army, and CEFC itself was a crucial component of Chinese President Xi Jinping's "Belt and Road Initiative," established to spread the Chinese Communist Party's influence and power globally. And when Ho was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for a multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe top African leaders, his defense lawyers argued his actions were "in furtherance of the Chinese state's agenda" by promoting Belt and Road. Further, bank records show Hunter Biden was paid a $1 million retainer in March 2018 to legally represent Ho.

"The Biden’s are totally compromised," Bruner said. "It's a huge national security issue."

Nothing to see here
One week ago, the Associated Press noted that "Joe Biden has said he's never spoken to his son about his foreign business" before opining that "nothing the Republicans have put forth suggests otherwise."

But Bruner pointed out that the 2013 trip to Beijing alone, "completely blows out of the water Joe Biden's and Hunter Biden's outright lies that they never discussed business dealings, that Joe says he never met with any of Hunter Biden’s business partners."

In fact, Joe Biden's introduction in Beijing in 2013 to Hunter Biden business partner Jonathan Li, the CEO of Bohai Harvest, wasn't the first meeting of that kind, Bruner said. After having gone through every message on the laptop, they discovered that Joe Biden had hosted a delegation of Chinese entrepreneurs in 2010.

The AP added that "there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president," referring to the U.S. Attorney from Delaware's investigation of Hunter Biden, which began in 2018, over possible tax law violations and finances related to his overseas business ties and consulting work.

However, at a minimum, messages from the laptop indicate Hunter Biden was paying Joe Biden's personal bills while he was vice president. And former partner in the CEFC China Energy deal, Tony Bobulinski – who has turned over all of his evidence to congressional investigators – has described Joe Biden's role in the global family business as "chairman of the board."

And what exactly was that business selling?

"What were they getting paid for?" Bruner asked. "That's the big question that congressional investigators need to get to the bottom of."

He argued, having gone through the laptop line by line, there is "no discernible work product."

"The only emails are about, when is the money going to arrive?" he explained. "You don't have any reports drafted by Hunter on the climate of investment in the United States or anything like that. Hunter Biden just basically appears to be a bag man."

All told, the Bidens have received directly in cash some $31 million, according to the calculations of Bruner and Schweizer. But amid a complex web of offshore accounts and corporate shell games, there likely is a much higher figure to be found.

What, for example, will the 150 suspicious activity reports banks have filed with the Treasury Department on transactions by Hunter and James Biden reveal? So far, Biden's Treasury has refused to release relevant financial documents to committee Republicans.

But the GOP will become the majority in January.

"With subpoena power and all of these suspicious activity reports, you can pull all of the bank records, you can pull the corporate documents of these offshore accounts," Bruner said.

"I really hope that Congress goes after these documents hard."

Bruner said the laptop "proved everything that Peter Schweizer has written in his past three books."

Fallout_Cover.jpeg


He worked with Schweizer on the 2018 book "Secret Empires: How Our Politicians Hide Corruption and Enrich Their Families and Friends," centering on "corruption by proxy," in which family and friends of powerful political figures position themselves as middlemen, creating "previously unimaginable pathways to wealth." Among the "princelings" featured in the book was Hunter Biden, who was making deals with Chinese Communist Party-linked companies while the Obama administration was negotiating sensitive issues with the Chinese government. In January 2020, 10 months before the laptop was revealed, Schweizer’s "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite" included a chapter on the "Biden Five," the family members who cashed in on Joe Biden's vice presidency.

Along with assisting Schweizer in his New York Times bestsellers – the latest is "Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win" – Bruner is the co-author with investigative reporter John Solomon of "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies, and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties."

'Milking both sides of a conflict'
Bruner pointed out "the Bidens were milking both sides of a conflict that now is being seriously considered as a potential for World War III."

"You've got corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs paying Hunter Biden. And you’ve got corrupt Russian oligarchs."

The payoff from Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, an associate of Vladimir Putin and the widow of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was at least $40 million and could be as high as $400 million, Bruner said.

Hunter Biden’s real estate firm Rosemont Realty received a $40 million investment from Baturina, according to an email leak by the anti-corruption group Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery. Congressional investigators flagged a separate $3.5 million wire transfer to a bank account held by Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a business consortium formed between Hunter’s investment company Rosemont Seneca and a consulting firm called The Thornton Group.

Bruner noted that the Democrats "are very good at narrative," having turned their Jan. 6 hearings into "a cinematic event."

"The Republicans would do well to take their time and really build the case, rather than try to throw off some grenades and fireworks," he said.

"Definitely don’t focus on drugs and prostitutes," he said of the content on Hunter Biden's laptop that chronicled his troubled life.

"Focus on Joe."
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

February 8, 2020

Romney's Links to Burisma​

By Daniel John Sobieski

It wasn’t 2012 Presidential loser Mitt Romney’s faith that caused him to vote to impeach President Trump, whom he once begged to rescue him from political oblivion. While Romney, who undoubtedly entertained visions of succeeding a President Trump after his vote helped remove from office, says it was his faith that caused him to believe Trump really did abuse his power to pressure the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Bidens, more likely it was because that Romney wanted to put an end to an administration that might expose his link to the Bidens and Burisma,

Romney will go down in the history as the only senator to vote to impeach a member of his own party, but the question remains why he retained such animus against the man who forgave Romney his 2016 rant warning, as Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and that seditious bunch later would, that Donald J. Trump was an unhinged danger. Trump supported Romney’s Utah Senate run. Et tu, Mitt?

Why, as CNN put it, has Mitt Romney "been a lone Republican voice expressing concern about President Donald Trump's July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Ukraine's President to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family"?

Little notice has been paid to the fact that Joseph Cofer Black, a former CIA operative, served as Romney’s special adviser in his 2012 campaign for President. As Breitbart News reported at the time:

In October 2011, Romney announced that Black, who had served in the CIA since 1974, had been selected as a special adviser.

“I am deeply honored to have the counsel of this extraordinary group of diplomats, experts, and statesmen,” Romney said at the time. “Their remarkable experience, wisdom, and depth of knowledge will be critical to ensuring that the 21st century is another American Century.”

Black trained for covert operations and eventually became the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 1999 until 2002. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda, Black was appointed ambassador at large and coordinator for counterterrorism in December 2002 by President George W. Bush.

John Brennan succeeded Black in his job as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

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Cofer Black would come to know Hunter Biden as well. Black would wind up serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma at the same time that Hunter, who had no special knowledge of Ukraine or the energy business, was being paid ungodly sums to curry influence with the Obama-Biden administration. Was Black also hired because he was an adviser to a former governor and future senator with good connections in the Washington swamp? As The Federalist reported last September:

As Democrats and the media remain fanatically obsessed with assembling some form of a “quid pro quo” from the infamous Trump-Zelensky phone call, new details have emerged regarding Burisma, the company for which Hunter Biden worked and the company that Ukraine’s top prosecutor had been investigating before Vice President Joe Biden had the prosecutor fired via a months-long pressure campaign. According to web archives, top Mitt Romney adviser Joseph Cofer Black, who publicly goes by “Cofer Black,” joined Burisma’s board of directors while Hunter Biden was also serving on the board.
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According to The New Yorker, Hunter joined Burisma’s board in April of 2014 and remained on it until he declined to renew his position this past May.

Meanwhile, according to Burisma’s website, Black was appointed in February of 2017 and continues to serve on its board. The timelines would indicate that Black and Biden worked together at Burisma, and indeed, web archives from late 2017 show Black and Biden listed simultaneously on the board.

There is no doubt that Burisma as was stockpiling people on its board who could provide it with cover from prying investigations, like the son of a vice president and a special adviser to a GOP presidential candidate. The nature of Hunter’s job is known -- his father, Vice President Joe Biden, would get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired, taking the heat off Burisma to protect his son.

What Black’s role was, or why he was on the board other than providing potential access is unclear. But certainly he could tell us something about the Burisma-Hunter connection

True, Romney did vote to call witnesses, but there was no guarantee Hunter Biden would make the short list. Black’s name wasn’t even mentioned. Romney was willing to risk Hunter Biden being called if other witnesses like John Bolton could potentially help get Trump out of office.

Why was Black on the Burisma board at the same time as Hunter Biden? Mere coincidence? What did he know and when did he know it? What did Romney know and when did he know it? Why was a former adviser to the only Republican senator to vote to impeach the President who legally asked the Ukrainians, in accordance with treaty and U.S. law, if they knew anything about Ukrainian corruption and possible interference in U.S. elections, on the Burisma board? Romney’s former adviser could tell us much.

^^^
(COMMENT: I remember there also being talk about mercenaries fighting battles in oil fields in disputed territory with Russia about the time of Hunter and Cofer. I wonder if the C** was involved. Also, it looks like Black had ties to biotechnology. I also read that Hunter was involved in the Bioweapons facilities in Ukraine. Perhaps all this is why they don't want the investigation opened.)
 

Calhounshd

Veteran Member
Instead of the White House, it should be called the Tarnished House or the Out House if we consider what the residents are full of. A day of reckoning is coming. As I recall, the builders of one great ship said "Even God could not sink the Titanic.
 
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marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden’s Strategy To Go On The Offensive Further Indicts The Feds​

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND
DECEMBER 12, 2022

A strangely timed DEA raid, whistleblower claims, and other red flags raise new questions about Hunter Biden and his family affairs.

Two months after the FBI subpoenaed the laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store, the Drug Enforcement Administration searched the office of Hunter’s one-time psychiatrist Keith Ablow and seized a second laptop Hunter had left with him. The timing of the DEA raid and the fact that criminal charges were never filed against Ablow, coupled with whistleblowers’ claims that the FBI buried evidence against Hunter Biden, raises the question of whether the search was a pretext to recover Hunter’s laptop and protect the Biden family.

While the DEA’s recovery of the second Hunter Biden laptop escaped scrutiny over the last nearly three years, a Washington Post article from Saturday brings that laptop into focus — and with it questions about the DEA’s seizure of the laptop and agents’ decision to return it to Hunter.

Back in the News​

In a weekend article titled “Some Hunter Biden Allies Making Plans to go After His Accusers,” The Washington Post reported that Hunter and his closest advisers are plotting an offensive for when Republicans assume control of the House of Representatives in January. The strategy sessions to counter what Biden associates frame as “an expected onslaught of investigations by House Republicans” began last September, according to the Post, with a meeting at the California home of Hunter Biden’s friend and lawyer Kevin Morris.

Morris, already famous in the entertainment industry as an attorney for the co-creators of “South Park,” gained notoriety when the New York Post reported that Morris “footed Hunter Biden’s overdue taxes totaling over $2 million.” In addition to Morris, David Brock, a liberal activist, reportedly joined in the September 2022 strategy session. “At one point, Hunter Biden himself happened to call into the meeting, connecting briefly by video to add his own thoughts,” according to the Post.

While not detailing Hunter’s purported thoughts, The Washington Post reported that Morris suggested “it was crucial” “for Hunter Biden’s camp to be more aggressive.” According to Saturday’s article, Morris then described during the September meeting at his California home the “defamation lawsuits the team could pursue against the presidential son’s critics, including Fox News, Eric Trump and Rudy Giuliani.” Morris also reportedly “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.”

Brock provided more insight, telling the Post: “They feel that there is a whole counternarrative missing because of the whole Hunter-hater narrative out there.” “What we really got into was more the meat of it, the meat of what a response would look like,” Brock said of the September meeting. To aid the efforts, Brock planned to start a new group — since launched — named Facts First USA, which Brock described as a “SWAT team” designed to “ensure that the media and public do not accept the false narratives that flows from congressional investigations.”

More recently, according to the Post, “Brock’s group, Facts First, is engaging with Hunter Biden and those in his immediate circle.” Brock is reportedly “reviewing research that Morris has conducted on Biden’s adversaries, including Bobulinski and Mac Isaac.”

According to The Washington Post, Morris and others are also focused on whether the data claimed to be recovered from the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at the Delaware computer repair store, “was improperly obtained and distributed,” with Hunter and his allies suggesting that the materials released by Giuliani and others may not have originated from the laptop Hunter abandoned at the repair shop. Instead, the help-Hunter crew posits that the information may have been improperly taken from a laptop Hunter left with Ablow, whom the Post frames as “close to Republican activist Roger Stone.” The Post then reported that “Morris has been overseeing a forensic analysis of that laptop to determine if it was the basis of the hard drives that were later distributed by Trump allies.”

Morris began floating a similar tangled conspiracy theory in May 2022, with CBS News reporting, “Morris and his team have been circulating provocative slides that tease a coming counter-narrative to political attacks against the president’s son.” The slides describe a “contextualized theory” positing that “there was no laptop dropped off with Mac Isaac, just a laptop which Hunter abandoned on Feb. 1, 2019, at the office of his psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow.”

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine also lighted the conspiracy theory Morris floated in May, writing: “Morris alleges in his scrawled mind map, and in conversations with confidants, that Trump ally Roger Stone and his lawyer, Tyler Nixon, masterminded a plot with Ablow and Mac Isaac to create ‘clones’ of the laptop left in Newburyport to damage Joe before the 2020 election.”

Morris pushed the theory based on Stone writing a foreword for Ablow’s 2020 book, “Trump Your Life,” and Ablow’s appearances on Fox News.

But as Devine detailed in her article, the material contained on the MacBook abandoned at Mac Isaac’s business included material created after Hunter had left the laptop with Ablow: “The biggest problem with Morris’ conspiracy theory of the ‘Ablow clones’ is that there are authentic videos and other material unique to the Mac Isaac laptop that were created after Hunter left his second laptop at Ablow’s office.”

Ablow has also dismissed the counternarrative as “a work of fiction,” stating: “I never looked at any laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, much less shared any laptop belonging to Mr. Biden with anyone, ever.” “I wouldn’t know how to access a password-protected laptop if my life depended on it,” Ablow added.

Stone reportedly said the theory is “insane conjecture bordering on defamation.” Mac Isaac described it at the time as a “loose effort to muddy the waters.”

In response to Morris’s most recent push, as captured in Saturday’s Washington Post article, Mac Isaac’s attorney, Brian Della Rocca, told The Federalist, “As we have always said, Hunter Biden knows it is his laptop. That is why neither he nor his father have ever actually denied that it is his.” “The night before the story broke,” Della Rocca added, “Hunter’s attorney reached out to John Paul to ask about whether he still had Hunter’s laptop.” What Morris is doing now, Mac Isaac’s attorney claims, is “nothing more than trying to create more of a stir so the story will be worth more in Hollywood.”

Beneath the Surface​

Whether crafting a Hollywood story or an offensive strategy to protect Hunter Biden, what Morris and Hunter’s other confidants fail to realize, however, is that by pushing the theory that the material recovered from the Delaware laptop originated from the laptop left with Ablow, they are resurrecting a story that received little scrutiny at the time: the DEA’s raid of Ablow’s office. And since Morris first pushed this conspiracy theory in May 2022, “highly credible whistleblowers” have come forward and accused the Department of Justice and FBI “of burying ‘verified and verifiable’ dirt on President Biden’s troubled son Hunter by incorrectly dismissing the intelligence as “disinformation.”

So, the question arises: Was the DEA’s raid of Ablow’s office a pretext to recover Hunter’s second laptop? And relatedly: Did the DEA return the laptop to Hunter without securing the evidence first for the criminal investigation against the now-president’s son?

While most Americans now know of the infamous laptop Hunter reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store, shortly after the New York Post broke the news that material recovered from the laptop implicated Joe Biden in Hunter’s shady business dealings, CBS News reported on Oct. 30, 2020: “[A]ccording to two people familiar with the matter, a different Hunter Biden laptop landed in the custody of the DEA in February when they executed a search warrant on the Massachusetts office of a psychiatrist accused of professional misconduct,” the psychiatrist being Ablow.

The February 2020 raid on the office of Hunter’s one-time Massachusetts-based psychiatrist Ablow received only passing mention at the time, with local outlets reporting that the DEA claimed the execution of the search warrant was part of an “ongoing investigation.” Coverage at the time also highlighted the revocation of Ablow’s medical license for alleged “inappropriate sexual activity with patients and illegally giving prescriptions to employees.”

There was no mention of the recovery of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden at the time, or at any time until two unnamed sources told CBS News of that detail on Oct. 30, 2020. Since then, Ablow confirmed that Hunter left his laptop at a bungalow attached to Ablow’s office in 2019, where the Biden son was reportedly staying for intravenous ketamine treatments for his addiction in December 2018 and January 2019.

Ablow reportedly “made repeated efforts to persuade Hunter Biden to retrieve his computer,” with Ablow even contacting Hunter’s attorney to arrange for its return.” However, the second laptop reportedly remained in a safe in Ablow’s basement for a year, and the DEA raided the psychiatrist on Feb. 13, 2020, then returned the computer to Hunter’s lawyer George Mesires.

Red Flags​

The timing of the raid and the return of the computer to Hunter’s lawyer raises several red flags, especially since federal charges were never brought against Ablow. First, the Feb. 13, 2020, DEA raid occurred some nine months after the Massachusetts Board of Medicine suspended Ablow’s medical license on May 15, 2019, for purportedly diverting “controlled substances from patients,” among other things. One would think the DEA would act more promptly to execute a search warrant to prevent the destruction of evidence.

Second, the DEA only executed the search warrant after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena in mid-December of 2019 to seize the first Hunter Biden laptop from the Delaware store owner, raising the question of whether the real goal was to ensure there were no more Biden laptops floating about before the 2020 presidential election.

Third, even if there was nothing pretextual or nefarious about the raid on Ablow’s office, that the DEA returned the laptop to Hunter’s lawyer raises other concerns because at the time, and still to this day, Hunter Biden was under investigation. In fact, it was that investigation that served as the basis for the FBI to subpoena the laptop from the Delaware repair store. Given the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden, why would the DEA return the laptop to his attorney?

Given the FBI whistleblowers’ claims that government agents buried incriminating evidence against Hunter Biden, the House oversight committees should pose these questions to the DEA to ensure that federal agency was not also acting as a protect-Biden front. And we can thank Morris and The Washington Post for reminding us of the DEA’s seizure of that second Hunter laptop — something that at the time seemed straightforward but, given the developments over the last six months, now smells suspect.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

RINO Mitt Romney Calls For Investigations Into Hunter Biden to END – But There’s Much More to This Story​

By Anthony Scott
Published December 11, 2022 at 8:05pm

Sen. Mitt Romney has once again cozied up to Democrats by recently condemning his Republican colleagues who are launching investigations into Hunter Biden.

Romney told The Bulwark, he believes investigations by the now Republican-controlled House are a waste of time and resources.

Romney would go on to say “I think the American people want us to tackle some of the big challenges we have—immigration, inflation, and so forth—and the other things that divert from those priorities I think are a waste of time.”

The Gateway Pundit previously revealed Romney’s top advisor Joseph Cofer Black was on the the board of Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden was also sitting on the board.

This connection alone makes sense why Romney would be against any investigation into Hunter Biden.

1670911123864.png

It’s extremely hypocritical for Romney to claim investigating Hunter Biden is a waste of time and resources.

Back in May of 2021, Romney was one of six Republican Senators to vote in favor of the bill that created the January 6 Committee.

So, it’s clear, Romney is all for investigations into Trump and his supporters but not in favor of any investigations into Hunter Biden due to Romney’s top advisor previously sitting on the board of Burisma.

Romney’s comments come after Republican members of the Oversight and Reform Committee vowed to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings that involved his father Joe Biden.

The Gateway Pundit reported in response to the upcoming House investigations, Hunter Biden is planning to go on the offensive and is preparing to sue Fox News, Eric Trump and Rudy Giuliani for defamation.

It’s hard to believe Rep. Mitt Romney was once the face of the Republican party back in 2012.

Since Romney’s horrific presidential run in 2012, the Republican party has been totally transformed by President Trump for the better.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Jonathan Turley: President Biden statement appears CLEARLY & UNEQUIVOCALLY FALSE 3:53 min

Jonathan Turley: President Biden statement appears CLEARLY & UNEQUIVOCALLY FALSE​

Punugupati Srikanth Published December 13, 2022

Jonathan Turley: "I think the measure of that is precisely what was in that Post article.I mean, they're going to this scorched earth campaign because there's not a lot of ground left for them to fight on.The statement made repeatedly by President Biden appears clearly and unequivocally false.He said that he had no knowledge,no discussions on his son's foreign failings.There are pictures of him meeting with these business executives.There are emails going back and forth.

And the person who was most threatened in that Washington Post article, bob Alinsky, is the guy who is the greatest threat to President Biden because he said he met with President Biden to discuss these deals and that he was brought in to help manage those.So it's clear that they've sort of declared an open season on him and others who might testify against the Biden."
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Why Hunter Biden’s 2nd laptop, Twitter, & Soros all relate 13:03 min

Why Hunter Biden’s 2nd laptop, Twitter, & Soros all relate​

Glenn Beck Published December 13, 2022

In this clip, Glenn ‘strings together’ 5 recent stories that show just how corrupt our leaders in D.C., Big Tech, and elsewhere in the world truly are. First, Glenn provides an update on Hunter Biden — and his SECOND laptop that was oddly seized by the DEA. Plus, Glenn describes a mysterious meeting the head of the SEC had with George Soros, the latest Twitter File revelations, the next chapter in the 'FTX saga,' and more…
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

'Russian Disinformation' Narrative On Hunter Biden Laptop Story Proved False By Twitter Files, Trump DNI Says​

TUESDAY, DEC 13, 2022 - 05:05 PM
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The recently publicized internal Twitter communications have proven false the claim that the story around Hunter Biden’s laptop was a part of Russia’s disinformation campaign, former director of national intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe said Friday.

“What I said as the DNI in October 2020 was proven true,” Ratcliffe wrote on Twitter. “The IC had zero intelligence supporting a false narrative that the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Nobody in the IC had authority to say otherwise.”

Ratcliffe, who served as the nation’s top intelligence official and the principal intelligence adviser to President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021, shared part of independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s post series, known as “Twitter Files.”

In the multi-post thread, Taibbi used screenshots of email exchanges between company executives to illustrate Twitter’s biased content moderation decisions, including the suppression of the New York Post’s report of the link then-presidential candidate Joe Biden allegedly had with dubious foreign business dealings based on emails retrieved from a laptop once belonged to his son, Hunter.

Twitter’s initial response to the story is to limit its reach, claiming at that time that this was based on the platform’s “Hacked Material Policy” that prohibited users from posting “content obtained through hacking.”

One of those screenshots, according to Taibbi, shows that Yoel Roth, Twitter’s moderation and safety leader until his recent resignation, had been having a “weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI” regarding issues with “election security” in the wake of the laptop story.

“Hacked Materials exploded. We blocked the NYP story, then we unblocked it (but said the opposite), then said we unblocked it… and now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots, and we’re refactoring an exceedingly complex policy 18 days out from the election,” wrote one executive who is purportedly Roth.

“Weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI re: election security,” the message continued. “The meeting happened about 15 minutes after the aforementioned Hacked Materials implosion; the government declined to share anything useful when asked.”

Roth’s weekly meetings with law enforcement and intelligence officials may have involved separate meetings, where not all of them showed up, Taibbi reported.

“I have to miss the FBI and DHS meetings today, unfortunately,” Roth wrote to a Twitter staffer, indicating that officials of the two agencies weren’t scheduled to meet with him together at once.

None of these messages mentioned anything about Russia, although at that time many commentators, media outlets, and Democrat leaders—notably House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), claimed that the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian disinformation plot.

“We know this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” Schiff told CNN in October 2020, claiming that it was in Moscow’s interest to keep Trump in the White House. “Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president is only happy to have Kremlin help in trying to amplify it.”

Such assertion had prompted Ratcliffe to speak out, accusing the Democrats of trying to “politicize the intelligence.”

“The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress,” Ratcliffe said in an interview with Fox Business following Schiff’s comments.

“It’s funny that some of the people who complain the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the intelligence,” he added. “Unfortunately, it is Adam Schiff who said the intelligence community believes the Hunter Biden laptop and emails on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Legion Of Democratic Doom? Biden Operatives Plan "Swat Force" On Hunter Biden Scandal

TUESDAY, DEC 13, 2022 - 01:45 PM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the New York Post on the very public plan to target potential witnesses — and even media — in the Biden influence peddling scandal. It is rare to see such a scorched Earth campaign intentionally made public. When Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded the Steele dossier, it hid its role and even denied the funding when asked by reporters.

This was clearly an effort to not only reveal the plan but to specifically declare the potential targets, including key witnesses, against the Bidens.

Here is the column:

Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family “allies” planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes.

Republicans will see it more like the gathering of the Legion of (Democratic) Doom. Some of the most controversial political operatives are involved in the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect the Bidens.

The California meeting’s host was none other than Hunter Biden’s friend, agent and lawyer Kevin Morris. After Hunter was placed under investigation for, among other possible charges, tax evasion, Morris reportedly paid off as much as $2.8 million in back taxes for Hunter.

Morris, per The Washington Post, called for a “more aggressive” response to those seeking to investigate the alleged influence peddling. That plan includes hitting critics, such as Fox News, with possible defamation lawsuits. (For full disclosure, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.)

The paper also reported Morris “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.” “Spurned” is hardly the sole or most relevant description of Bobulinski: The businessman was recruited by the Biden family to manage foreign deals and later directly contradicted President Joe Biden’s claims he knew nothing of those dealings. His testimony could present a serious threat in the coming House investigation in establishing not only the president’s knowledge but his possible receipt of proceeds from the deals.

Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden.

What’s most interesting about the piece is why The Washington Post was given such access and such a detailed account. Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses.

For key witnesses like Bobulinski, the message is about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. The Washington Post is viewed as one of the most pro-Biden newspapers in the country and only recently admitted the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic after pushing the false Russian-disinformation claim. Now the paper is detailing a plan that could create an open season on those who might try to substantiate the Biden family’s influence peddling.

Notably, the article stresses this effort is “operating separately from the White House. [David] Brock said his organization also remains independent of Hunter Biden and his team and is following its own strategy.”

The separation is important to deflect any allegations of witness intimidation. Media and political figures leveled such claims against the Trump White House when impeachment witnesses were attacked in the press. Congressional Democrats denounced criticism of the witnesses as an effort to silence or deter witnesses from coming forward. (For the record, I also criticized the targeting of witnesses against Trump even if it did not constitute chargeable witness intimidation).

Those who view this as a not-so-veiled threat will likely cite the inclusion of David Brock, one of the most controversial and reviled Democratic operatives in Washington.

Long a radical figure closely associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaigns, Brock has repeatedly been at the center of controversial attack campaigns and was most recently tied to news sites criticized as fakes or ploys.

Many see him as the lowest common denominator of Democratic operatives, someone willing to take extreme measures to support Democratic figures and causes. Even Biden senior adviser Neera Tanden allegedly once remarked, “I hope Hillary truly understands now how batshit crazy David Brock is.”

Brock, however, has always given figures like Clinton deniability for direct responsibility for his actions. He described his new group, Facts First USA, as a “SWAT team” designed to “ensure that the media and public do not accept the false narrative that flows from congressional investigations.”

The Post described the meeting as a “glimpse into a sprawling infrastructure that is rapidly, almost frantically, assembling to combat Republicans’ plans to turn Hunter Biden into a major news story when the GOP takes over the House next year.” It also discussed an array of well-known lawyers the Biden family has assembled as well as plans by the White House and Democratic National Committee.

Various Democratic groups plan to attack efforts to disclose the Bidens’ multimillion-dollar efforts by attacking Donald Trump’s family. These include the Congressional Integrity Project, which recently hired Jeff Peck, the chief of staff to Biden when he was a senator. These talking points are already appearing in the media, which are heavily invested in denying any scandal connected to the family.

That’s why the Post article looks like a shot across the bow of any potential witnesses. This is not to say these reporters are knowing agents of this campaign, but Democratic operatives clearly wanted people to know about this alliance.

The article touches all the bases to insulate the Bidens and the Democratic National Committee from responsibility for what Brock and Morris may unleash. However, with the inclusion of former Biden staff and allies, it’s a line that can be quickly lost as investigations heat up. Targeting witnesses like Bobulinski could invite congressional investigators to look more closely at these groups and their funding.

Morris could also be taking a real risk. There are already questions about whether he was acting as counsel, agent or friend in reportedly paying off tax debts for Hunter Biden. Rules of professional ethics demand clarity in legal representation.

Moreover, Morris himself could be called as a witness and face questions over his own role in the scandal and its suppression in the media. That makes orchestrating an aggressive public campaign more problematic if it targets or intimidates other witnesses.

This is, of course, well known to these sophisticated political operatives, which makes the effort to publicize this campaign all the more concerning. House Democrats have blocked efforts to investigate any Biden influence peddling. They will have to take ownership of that refusal if the investigation now establishes a massive and corrupt operation.

But the new campaign is designed to give plausible deniability and comfortable distance from planned attacks on witnesses and commentators. Hunter Biden may have collected millions in selling access and influence, but anyone investigating or accusing the Bidens is now fully warned: Proceed at your own peril.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-Btsx8Pr6s
13:23 min

Hunter Biden Allies Plan SMEAR Campaign Connected to... SECOND Laptop? | @glennbeck​

AMLnZu-PG-Utny-2wA_EWHskHM7wsmtTnVslE1nMabnCcA=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

BlazeTV
Dec 14, 2022
There are some odd stories in the news right now. For starters, new questions have been raised about Hunter Biden after a very suspicious DEA raid, a strategy session for a smear campaign, and a second laptop. Meanwhile, an SEC official removed a meeting with Hillary Clinton and George Soros from his calendar. And Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas...coincidentally right before he was supposed to testify to Congress.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Reporter Behind '50 Former Intel Officials' Hunter Biden Propaganda Ignored DNI Denial​

THURSDAY, DEC 15, 2022 - 11:21 AM

Former Trump administration intelligence official and best-selling author, Cliff Sims, has offered a rare glimpse into the 5th column's propaganda machine - namely, how former Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand concocted the report that '50 former intelligence officials' said the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

"Want to know what it's like to deal with some journalists who "cover" the Intel and NatSec communities at the highest level, but actually serve more like mouthpieces of the permanent security state?" Sims asked, kicking off a Wednesday Twitter thread.

Continued (emphasis ours):

Oct. 16: @RepAdamSchiff suggest the laptop might be a part of a Russian effort to "smear" Biden.

Oct. 19: @JohnRatcliffe says there's NO intel to support Schiff's lie.

The press played it like it was a "battle." History has proven who was a liar & "politicized" their position.



Oct. 19, then-@politico reporter @NatashBertrand preps a story about 50 former Intel officials claiming the Biden laptop story is Russian disinfo.

I warn her that it is NOT and point her to Ratcliffe's statements.

She writes it anyway and gives Democrats the headline they want.



[ZH: for more on Bertrand, (actual) journalist Glenn Greenwald has pulled back the curtain on this particular operative on many occasions...]

Back to Cliff Sims:

Oct. 28: @NatashBertrand calls claiming @JohnRatcliffe "went off script" with his comments about Iran, the implication being that they actually weren't trying to hurt Trump.

She had two anonymous "senior officials" as sources.
I push back hard with two main points...

1. The intelligence was clear about Iran's intention to hurt Trump. The country's top counter-intel official had even called them out publicly months before. Here's his statement from Aug. 7, 2020, relaying the Intelligence Community's assessment of what Iran was up to.



2. How could Ratcliffe go "off script" when it's his script? We were still writing his remarks in the motorcade on the way to the press conference, right up until moments before he went on stage. The whole angle of the story made no sense. @NatashaBertrand said didn't care.

At this point I took the rare step of asking to speak to her editor, who was @blakehounshell, before the story published.

I explained to Blake what I outlined above, and reminded him that @NatashaBertrand had also been wrong about the Biden laptop.
It got a little heated...

At some point, exasperated that the truth didn't seem to matter when @NatashaBertrand was fixated on building a narrative, I snapped and said it was "garbage reporting."

@blakehounshell replied that I was a "garbage person."

And @politico published another misleading story.




March 2021, Biden's own Office of the DNI released the Intelligence Community's Assessment of foreign threats to the 2020 election.

As I'd told @NatashaBertrand and @blakehounshell back in 2020, they assessed that Iran sought to hurt Trump.

Proven right, again.



But @CNN hired @NatashaBertrand and the @nytimes hired @blakehounshell.

None of them -- Schiff, the former Intel officials who lied about the laptop...the journalists involved -- have ever admitted they were wrong.
And these headlines remains on @politico to this day.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

National Archives Preparing to Release Emails About Hunter Biden and Burisma​

BY LINCOLN BROWN 11:51 AM ON DECEMBER 16, 2022

As of this writing, the White House has 59 days to respond to a heads-up from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The agency let the Biden administration know about the release of emails that could contain information about Hunter Biden and his relationship with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.

According to Business Insider, the records contain hundreds of pages of information from internal documents from the Obama administration in 2014 and include emails that mention Burisma. NARA received a FOIA request for the documents from Stephen Miller, a former Trump advisor and a lawyer for the group America First Legal.

Legal teams for both Obama and Biden have the above-mentioned window of time to assert a claim of executive privilege to prevent the Burisma information from being released. If they take that option, the files will be sealed until January 2029. The Biden administration has so far declined to say whether or not it will move to stop the release. The Obama camp has not returned a request for comment. America First Legal has also yet to respond.

Insider doubted that any document dump would show that Joe Biden exerted pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who had been in the process of investigating Burisma. Of note, Hunter Biden’s company received a total of $1.5 million while he was a member of the Burisma board. A Hunter Biden associate, Devon Archer, also received $1.5 million. But, the site did suggest that it might prove or disprove Joe Biden’s claim that he did not discuss client matters with his son and that he stayed out of Hunter’s business.

Even if the information does not contain the smoking gun for which Miller or other conservatives have been looking, the Biden administration’s allergy to sunlight will probably result in an invocation of executive privilege. And even if the Biden camp shrugs the matter off, what would change? The White House can always rely on a complicit media and an American public that has a penchant for only reading “above the fold” to make sure that anything of substance disappears.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

What Will the White House Do to Keep Protecting Hunter? National Archives Set to Release Obama-Era Documents Including Those Related to Hunter & Burisma In February, 2023​

By Margaret Flavin
Published December 17, 2022 at 3:20pm

In a letter dated June 16, 2022, sent to the Biden Administration, The National Archives announced plans to release hundreds of Obama-era documents in February, 2023 including documents related to Hunter Biden and his relationship with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

The National Archives sent further clarification in a letter dated November 30, 2022, that the potential release includes records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for emails that contain the word “Burisma.”

This presents quite the conundrum for Biden. Will he cover for Hunter again and invoke executive privilege to keep the emails secret?

The Presidential Records Act allows both the Biden and Obama legal teams 60 days to assert claims of privilege. If they do so, the emails will remain sealed until 2029.

The New York Post reports:

The Biden administration faces a difficult decision early next year — whether to block the National Archives from releasing hundreds of Obama-era documents related to first son Hunter Biden and his relationship with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Joe Biden was vice president.

The White House has been mum about whether it will invoke executive privilege to stop papers from becoming public Feb. 28, 2023, Insider reports.

The records include 69 images and 260 email messages that mention Burisma and date back to 2014, when Hunter, now 52, had a lucrative seat on the company’s board — a shady relationship The Post exposed in a series of reports in October 2020.

The National Archives informed the Biden White House and the Obama Foundation in a Nov. 30 letter that it planned to release the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for vice presidential records created between May and December of 2014 that contain the word “Burisma,” Insider said.

The letter said “several” of the emails involved media inquiries after it was revealed in 2014 that Hunter Biden would accept a seat on Burisma’s board, where he was paid as much as $83,333 a month even though he had no experience in energy issues.
 

Publius

TB Fanatic
So how best to get after all the players involved in this and that includes people that helped covered up for these crimes.
FBI people need to be fired, DOJ need to be fired and there are more.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

FBI and Hunter Biden laptop: #TwitterFiles 7 is LIVE! and daaaang @OliverDarcy must feel like an IDIOT​

DEC. 19, 2022 12:52 PM BY FRED T

The Twitter Files Part 7 is HERE and once again it’s an utterly damning release, bot for the previous Twitter regime and for the government, the FBI, the Democrats and the MEDIA.

And at the end of the thread below there’s a little reminder for a certain CNN hack.
Dig right in.
Here’s the INTRO:

AND HERE WE GO…

9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.
Why is that? What, exactly, happened?
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

12. And yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation.
This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.https://t.co/IvTjyYw9iR pic.twitter.com/5iq2ATB3bW
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

13. They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, ‘Hey… you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'" pic.twitter.com/yPGP8nYgCq
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel?
No, they weren't
“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov. pic.twitter.com/tFPMqbydbA
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform
"We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by @oneunderscore__ @NBC News of foreign-controlled bots.
“Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…” pic.twitter.com/fWYNv7mMea
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.
In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden
The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it pic.twitter.com/lQSorONUSh
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News
Attendees included Meta/FB's head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for @nytimes @wapo and others pic.twitter.com/3yO5ZIc2Jy
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.
They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]. pic.twitter.com/Dhy8LotZHU
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

33. Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present. pic.twitter.com/1uhJ39OYSS
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

34. On Oct 14, shortly after @NYPost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.” pic.twitter.com/xMnEWzgxdU
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15. pic.twitter.com/MpQTUj6Esl
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019. pic.twitter.com/hwr2zBouly
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

37. As for the FBI, it likely would have taken a few *hours* for it to confirm that the laptop had belonged to Hunter Biden. Indeed, it only took a few days for journalist @peterschweizer to prove it. pic.twitter.com/eD8uk9lefn
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story
“The suggestion from experts – which rings true – is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware” pic.twitter.com/n2Xj9mP1Hs
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

39. At 3:38 pm that same day, October 14, Baker arranges a phone conversation with Matthew J. Perry in the Office of the General Counsel of the FBI pic.twitter.com/26ub4A4uKd
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

40. The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did *not* come from a whistleblower.
One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani’s leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia. pic.twitter.com/VdrQhf2YMB
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

41. There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

42. In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of “Russian interference” into their investigation of Hunter Biden.
The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.https://t.co/5QsJKMPhpM
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

43. “The unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation.” pic.twitter.com/TuUCLNL3Qk
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

44. Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media.
“You’re saying he’s under criminal investigation? That’s why you’re not letting him answer?” Meadows asked.
“Yes”Ex-FBI general counsel faced criminal leak probe
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

45. In the end, the FBI's influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.
By Dec. 2020, Baker and his colleagues even sent a note of thanks to the FBI for its work. pic.twitter.com/ZEASt2aXXm
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

46. The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.
“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021. pic.twitter.com/SmNse97QxK
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

47. And the pressure from the FBI on social media platforms continues
In Aug 2022, Twitter execs prepared for a meeting with the FBI, whose goal was “to convince us to produce on more FBI EDRs"
EDRs are an “emergency disclosure request,” a warrantless search. pic.twitter.com/sENBIi6zPg
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”Twitter’s top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns.
/END
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

Most recent thread update: 2:05 p.m. Eastern
And Tom Elliott calls out CNN stooge Oliver Darcy immediately and correctly.

I look forward to your correction, @oliverdarcy https://t.co/9CYQnCnQm1 https://t.co/ukZ0TDvjcp
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 19, 2022

But Darcy will never say he was wrong. The media isn’t capable.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden Hires Bill Clinton's Criminal Defense Attorney As Congressional Investigations Loom​

THURSDAY, DEC 22, 2022 - 12:21 PM

As House Republicans gear up to grill Hunter Biden over a wide range of alleged influence peddling and other illegal activities with members of the Biden family, the First Son has hired famous white collar criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell of the firm Winston and Strawn.

Lowell has represented several high-profile Democrats over the years, including former President Bill Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), Sen. Bob Mendez (D-NJ) and Jared Kushner during the Mueller Russian collusion probe.

"Hunter Biden has retained Abbe Lowell to help advise him and be part of his legal team to address the challenges he is facing," said Hunter Biden attorney, Kevin Morris, adding "Lowell is a well-known Washington based attorney has represented numerous public officials and high profile people in DOJ investigations and trials as well as Congressional Investigations. Mr. Lowell will handle congressional investigations and general strategic advice."

According to NBC News, Lowell will be primarily responsible for coordinating Hunter Biden's response to the anticipated congressional oversight investigations, as well as other legal issues.

The incoming House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said at a news conference in November that Hunter Biden and other Biden family members will be a major focus, specifically if the family’s business activities “compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality.” -NBC News

The White House in November accused Congressional Republicans of stoking long-debunked conspiracy theories" in regards to allegations from House lawmakers that President Biden was actively involved in overseas business dealings with his son Hunter.

"Instead of working with President Biden to address issues important to the American people, like lower costs, congressional Republicans’ top priority is to go after President Biden with politically-motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories," said White House Counsel office spokesman, Ian Sams.

Except, here's former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski explaining how the Biden family brought him in on a shady Chinese energy company deal.

In mid-November, after Republicans retook the House in the midterm elections, GOP Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan held a press conference to provide details into their upcoming investigations into the Bidens and the Biden administration.

According to Comer, whistleblowers have come forward to detail how Hunter and family "flourished and became millionaires simply by offering access to the family," Fox News reports.

"Was Joe Biden directly involved with Hunter Biden's business deals, and is he compromised? That's our investigation," he said.

Republicans have alleged a "decade-long pattern of influence peddling, national security risks, and political cover-ups" involving the Biden family.

"Committee Republicans’ investigation has uncovered evidence demonstrating deliberate, repeated deception of the American people, abuse of the Executive Branch for personal gain, use of government power to obstruct the investigation and prevent transparency, and potential violations of the United States Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause," states a GOP report released Thursday.

"The President's personal participation in his family’s global business ventures—committed through and by a complex network of relatives and associates to enrich the Biden family—has exposed the United States to national security risks that could be leveraged by our enemies to undermine the Office of the President."
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden’s Ex-Wife Dishes On Couple’s Marriage In New Memoir​

Martin WalshDecember 23, 2022


OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, dished on their marriage in a tell-all memoir called, “If We Break.”

“Buhle and Hunter got married back in 1993, split in 2015, and finalized their divorce in April 2017 — weeks after Hunter revealed that he was in a relationship with his late brother Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden. That relationship ended in 2019, and in May 2019, Hunter wed South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen and the couple welcomed their first child together, a son named Beau, in March 2020,” People reported.

The book details Buhle’s side of the story regarding her divorce from Hunter Biden and how their split played out in court. The couple married in 1993 and split after around 24 years of marriage. They share three daughters: Naomi, Finnegan, and Maisy.

“When my marriage ended, I felt like I’d lost my sense of who I was,” she said. “Anyone who has seen addiction ruin a relationship, or been through infidelity and divorce, can tell you how devastating it feels. But what I also realized through those crushing experiences is that I needed to find a way to stand on my own.”

“In February 2017, Buhle alleged in a legal filing that her estranged ex had spent money on drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, and strip clubs. Buhle’s book doesn’t shy away from those previous disclosures; instead, it will shine a light on the “heavy toll” addiction can take on relationships, according to the book’s publisher,” the report stated.

“Around the book’s release, she opened up to PEOPLE about being cancer-free following her stage 3 colon cancer, and how she feels she now has “total control over my life.” As she explained, she’s since forgiven Hunter for the money he used to support addictions, his infidelities, and whatever were to come of a Justice Department investigation into his finances and business affairs,” People reported.

“Writing this book has been incredibly healing for me… and my hope is it will be meaningful to those who have been through addiction or divorce, and especially to women who have felt like their entire identity was tied to their spouse. In the end, divorce allowed me to find my strength,” Buhle asserted.

Hunter Biden’s problems continue to get worse.

He’s been outed as having fathered a child with a stripper and had a romantic relationship with his late brother’s widow, the latter of which he explained in his own recent memoir.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware is investigating Hunter Biden over his “tax affairs.”

“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter Biden said in a statement at the time. “I take this matter very seriously, but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

According to CNN, investigators are looking into whether Hunter and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings with Chinese companies.

“Publicly available documents show Hunter and his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle had an Internal Revenue Service lien against them for taxes not paid, possibly including interest and penalties, totaling $112,805.09, until this past March. The documents, filed by the IRS, show the lien was placed in November 2019. It is not immediately clear if the lien has anything to do with the investigation,” CNBC previously reported.

“Separately, Hunter Biden had individual income tax liens of almost $453,890 placed on him by the District of Columbia on July 9, related to taxes owed for 2017 and 2018, according to a document on file in D.C. Recorder of Deeds Office. Those liens were canceled six days later, records show. The District of Columbia’s income tax rate is 8.95 percent for income above $1 million annually, plus about $85,000,” the report added at the time.

The U.S. Secret Service also recently announced that it found hundreds of documents related to Hunter Biden’s purchase of a handgun that was later found after being discarded in a dumpster behind a small grocer in Delaware.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Hunter Biden-Linked Energy Company Tied To China Receiving Millions From White House.​

BY: NATALIE WINTERS / WARROOM.ORG​

by EDITOR
December 16, 2022

A green energy company has received over $10 million in grants from the White House since partnering with a Chinese energy company financially linked to Hunter Biden, the son of the President of the United States.

The carbon capture company, LanzaTech, has received the eight-figure sum since April 2021, when the company announced its partnership with Sinopec Capital.

Sinopec Capital is the clean energy investment arm of the Sinopec Group, a Chinese Communist Party-run oil and gas enterprise whose “fully-owned subsidiary” Sinopec Marketing Company enjoyed nearly $1 billion in investment from Hunter Biden’s private equity firm BHR Partners.

Finalized in March 2015, the investments from the controversial investment fund led to BHR Partners amassing a nearly 30 percent stake in Sinopec. Hunter reportedly still owns a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners, whose LinkedIn profile highlights its Sinopec investment, revealing it was involved “in the pilot state-owned enterprise reform deal involving the segregation and capitalization of Sinopec Group’s non-oil business into Sinopec Marketing Corporation.”

BHR Partners was a joint venture between Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment fund founded by Hunter Biden and Obama-era Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson in 2009, and the state-owned Bank of China. The billion-dollar fund was notoriously birthed less than two weeks after Hunter traveled to China alongside his father and then Vice President.

LanzaTech, which has partnered with other Chinese Communist Party-linked entities, appears to retain close links to Beijing, noting in its financial filings that “the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time” and that the company may be unable to “protect our interests” in Chinese joint ventures “by nominating a non-Chinese director to the board of directors of any such joint venture.”

Since partnering with Sinopec, it has received over $10 million in federal grants.

The company appears to align with the Biden White House and World Economic Forum’s agenda to combat climate change using a variety of tactics to reduce carbon emissions.

“LanzaTech’s carbon recycling technology is like retrofitting a brewery onto an emission source like a steel mill or a landfill site, but instead of using sugars and yeast to make beer, pollution is converted by bacteria to fuels and chemicals! Imagine a day when your plane is powered by recycled GHG emissions, when your shampoo bottle started life as emissions from a steel mill,” writes the company about its mission.

The company received a $1,890,001 grant on May 24th, 2021 a $3,894,307 grant on September 24th, 2021, a $3,710,263 grant on September 29th, 2021, and a $2,500,000 grant on September 2nd 2022, according to a U.S. government database. The grants came from the Department of Energy.

Among the areas it has received funding from the Biden regime are:
“LOW-COST SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUEL FROM WASTE CO2″
”CARBON-NEGATIVE CHEMICAL PRODUCTION PLATFORM”
“UPSCALING OF NON-RECYCLABLE PLASTIC WASTE INTO CARBONSMART(TM) MONOMERS”
“A NEW SUPPLY CHAIN FOR SUSTAINABLE ACETONE”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Joe and Hunter: The kings of Ukraine, the World Headquarters of Biden Family LLC. 1:21:29 min

Joe and Hunter: The kings of Ukraine, the World Headquarters of Biden Family LLC.​

tailgunnerjim Published December 30, 2022

Joe and Hunter: The kings of Ukraine, the World Headquarters of Biden Family LLC.

Just a few looks into the political carreer of the octogenerian, demented Joe Biden and his throw away son Hunter.

Brian Williams to Biden: Are You 'Cool' With 'Trump' Forces Investigating Ukraine?
Joseph Bell
Published on Jul 20, 2020

Joe Biden denies playing any role in his son's appointment on the Board of Burisma.

Election Interference Exposed - Secret Biden Ukraine Call
Oppressed News
Published on Nov 7, 2020

Joe Biden's leaked call with ex-Ukraine President Poroshenko is exposed on 'The Biden Bribe Tapes: Part 2" hosted by OAN Chief White House Correspondent, Chanel Rion.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment

7 Biggest Biden Family Business Revelations of 2022​

WENDELL HUSEBØ30 Dec 2022710

Seven key developments in the Biden family business scandal have come to light in 2022. The scandal, suppressed by the intelligence agencies and establishment media dating back to 2020, became one of the major storylines of the year.

Recent polling shows 71 percent of Americans believe accurate reporting of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” could have altered the 2020 presidential election. The political impact of the scandal has drawn GOP House leadership to launch nine investigations into Hunter and President Joe Biden. Sixty-two percent of voters approved of the congressional probes.

Since 2018, the DOJ has reportedly been investigating Hunter for alleged tax and gun violations. Hunter has yet to be charged with wrongdoing.

1) U.S. Banks Flagged Over 150 Suspicious Financial Transactions from Biden Family
In April, U.S. banks flagged over 150 suspicious financial transactions from Hunter and James Biden, according to CBS News. The wire transfers included “large” amounts of money tripped for further review by American banks.

Wire transfers have been the tool of choice for money launderers. To mitigate the risks to the financial institutions, suspicious wire transfers over $10,000 are flagged for review. Wire transactions involving more than $10,000 are also to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

“The focus is on day one are those bank violations and those bank records,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News. “We are pretty confident in what we’re going to find in those. We have two bank violations. We have some bank statements in hand, and we believe that suspicious activity reports, which are bank violations when the bank notifies the federal government that we’re pretty confident that our client has committed a crime, Hunter Biden and Jim Biden have at least 150 of those. And I’ve said this before, and I come from a strong banking background, I don’t think there’s anyone in the history of the United States that’s had that many suspicious activity reports.”

2) Joe Biden Met with Hunter’s Business Partner at White House
News broke in April that Hunter’s closest business partner Eric Schwerin made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations from 2009 to 2015, according to visitor logs from the White House. Schwerin also reportedly met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the White House.

The meetings contradict Joe Biden’s statement that he has not been involved in the Biden family business schemes. In fact, a total of seven times Joe Biden and his team have deflected or denied involvement in the family business.

“I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Joe Biden said.

3) Voicemail Proves Joe Biden Spoke to Hunter About Family Business
In June, news broke Joe Biden left Hunter a voicemail in 2018 about a Chinese energy deal, directly contradicting Joe Biden’s statement in 2019 that he and his son had not spoken about the family’s corrupt business schemes.

“Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you,” Joe Biden said in a voicemail reported by the Daily Mail.

“I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you,” he concluded.

4) Deputy DNI Warned Hunter’s Laptop Was Not ‘Russian Disinfo’; CNN’s Natasha Bertrand Wrote Now Discredited Story Anyway

In December, Cliff Sims, former deputy director of National Intelligence (DNI) stated he warned CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand that Hunter’s laptop was not Russian disinformation before she wrote the infamous and discredited Politico story which utilized “dozens of former intel officials” to purvey a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop. Breitbart News reported:

Bertrand, a reporter for Politico at the time, approached then-deputy DNI Sims on October 19, 2020, regarding an article she was writing about 50 former information officials claiming Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris had a few days earlier broken the “Laptop from Hell” story, which big tech censored, in the New York Post.

Sims told Bertrand before the publication of the Politico story that the “Laptop from Hell” was not Russian disinformation, citing then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. Despite Sims’ warning, Bertrand wrote the story anyway and gave the Democrats the headline they wanted, Sims stated.

5) White House Debating How to Combat Probes into Hunter
According to a Washington Post report in December, disagreement exists among those surrounding the Biden family about how to combat Republican investigations into the family business.

A disagreement exists between Hunter’s attorney, Kevin Morris, and the White House about how the Biden family should combat the investigations into the family business. Morris wants Hunter to remain in the public eye by attending public events, such as the recent White House state dinner and public art exhibits. The Post reported those who agree with Morris’s strategy also believe Hunter should play a public role in Joe Biden’s potential reelection campaign.

The White House appears to have opposed pushing Hunter further into the public eye, despite Hunter’s noted public appearances, including at Joe Biden’s vacation destinations.

6) Hunter’s Drug Abuse Reportedly Delaying Charges in Tax, Gun-Related Probe
The Justice Department reportedly delayed its “final decision” on whether Hunter will be charged for alleged tax and gun-related violations because people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal in October that Hunter’s drug abuse could be a scapegoat the defense could successfully use to defend the president’s son against potential charges.

According to media reports, charges were expected to be brought by the end of summer 2020, but Joe Biden’s Justice Department is reportedly wrestling with Hunter’s drug addiction.

7) Legal Experts Estimate Hunter Biden’s Legal Defense Costs $100K a Month
Hunter has stated he is not wealthy. According to Hunter’s ex-wife, Hunter was nearly penniless while Joe Biden was vice president, living paycheck to paycheck after out-of-control spending. From 2018-2019, Joe Biden even committed to wiring Hunter $100,000.

Where Hunter is finding the money to pay his legal bills is unknown, but it appears that Hunter has maintained multiple income streams. Breitbart News reported in December:

According to attorneys with knowledge of industry compensation standards, Hunter could be paying more than $100,000 per month ($1.2 million per year) for his legal defense team. Lawyers at such a level would cost $1,000 per hour, a D.C. attorney who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution and reprisal told Breitbart News. Prepping for a single hearing could range from 6 to 40 hours, another attorney said.

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.

Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department is concealing 400 pages of 'sensitive documents' laying bare payoffs and gifts to Hunter and Jim Biden from China, Russia and Ukraine - after acknowledging the records exist - lawyer claims in suit

Colorado lawyer Kevin Evans sued the Department of Justice in March after it failed to comply with his request for records on the Bidens' business dealings
Evans asked for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
He requested information regarding 'any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form' between Bidens and China, Russia or Ukraine

He said government lawyers first admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of 'potentially relevant' documents

Evans claims the DoJ are now trying to get away with saying they can 'neither confirm nor deny' the existence of any records that match his request

By JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 11:56 EST, 2 January 2023 | UPDATED: 15:35 EST, 2 January 2023

The Department of Justice is trying to prevent disclosure of 400 pages of sensitive documents on Hunter and Jim Biden's dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine – by pretending they don't exist.

Colorado lawyer Kevin Evans sued the department in March after it failed to comply with his request for records on the Bidens' dealings under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Evans, a FOIA expert, asked for documents pertaining to 'any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form' between the president's son Hunter or brother Jim, and China, Russia or Ukraine.

He said government lawyers first admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of 'potentially relevant' documents – but are now trying to get away with saying they can 'neither confirm nor deny' the existence of any records that match his request.

The DoJ is trying to prevent disclosure of 400 pages of sensitive documents on Hunter and uncle Jim Biden's dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine,

Colorado lawyer Kevin Evans sued the department in March after it failed to comply with his request for records on the Bidens dealings under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

Video on website 1:30 min

A Justice Department prosecutor, David Weiss, is currently considering a criminal case against Hunter with potential allegations of money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and tax crimes in relation to the First Son's overseas business dealings.

The 400 pages are not the only cache of Biden records being sought from the government.

The National Archives and Records Administration is preparing to release hundreds of Obama White House internal documents containing information about Hunter's relationship with controversial Ukrainian gas company Burisma, Business Insider reported this month.

Joe Biden was vice president at the time, with responsibility for relations with Ukraine. His son was serving on the board of Burisma, getting paid $83,000 per month.

Biden's administration is able to veto the release, but must decide by February whether to invoke executive privilege to keep them hidden until 2029.

The records date back to 2014 and include 69 images and 260 email messages mentioning Burisma.

Evans' case has its next hearing in January.

The Greenwood Village, Colorado-based lawyer said he filed his FOIA request in November 2020 after reading about the Bidens' overseas business dealings, and the Justice Department strung him along for almost two years before he eventually sued them.

'They eventually produced about 60 pages of documents, but they're all letters from senators and congressmen asking about Hunter, and letters from DoJ back,' he said.

'Then towards the end of last year they said, ''well we have these 400 pages of potentially responsive documents, we need to review them.''

'In March I filed suit, and before Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty they made the same representation: they've done a thorough search, they've uncovered 400 potentially responsive documents.'

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Evans said in his suit that he filed his FOIA request in November 2020 after reading about the Bidens' overseas business dealings, and the Justice Department strung him along for almost two years before he eventually sued them

Evans said the government dithered for a few more months, then made a confusing new argument: that they could 'neither confirm nor deny' the existence of any records.

Government agencies have a legal precedent to make such claims to avoid disclosures that could harm national security.

The precedent dates back to a 1975 Los Angeles Times story about a salvage ship secretly built by the CIA to recover a sunken Soviet submarine.

The paper filed a FOIA request about it and the agency responded that it could 'neither confirm nor deny' it had records about the ship, USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer. The response, upheld by courts, became known as a 'Glomar response'.

'I don't know how the heck they now can take the take the position that Glomar is applicable,' Evans said. 'To me, it seems the cat's out of the bag here after having disclosed the documents exist.'

But the attorney thinks the government will try to avoid disclosure of the papers even so.

While Biden was vice president, Hunter was serving on the board of controversial Ukrainian gas company Burisma, getting paid $83,000 per month

Justice Department prosecutor, David Weiss, is considering a criminal case against Hunter with potential allegations of money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and tax crimes

Video on website .36 min

'I'm quite confident that they will move for summary judgment on the privacy exemptions under FOIA in an effort to avoid having to produce these documents,' he said.

'But I don't think they should in this instance, particularly when they've disclosed and put on the record that potentially responsive documents exist.

'The problem is, FOIA has become a toothless vehicle. Courts do not comply with the spirit of the law, they're more inclined to bend over backwards to accept the government's position rather than force disclosure.'

Emails from Hunter's abandoned laptop obtained by DailyMail.com, and testimony from whistleblowers, shows he was involved in a multi-million-dollar deal with a Chinese oil giant closely linked to the Chinese government.

Bank records show Hunter's Chinese business partners transferred $10million to their joint venture.

And emails, texts, and accounts from whistleblowers suggest Joe was aware of the deal, and may have even been involved.

The most infamous example is a 2017 email from one of Hunter's business partners, James Gilliar, who suggests that Hunter would hold 10% of the equity in the deal on behalf of 'the big guy' – reference to his father.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Attorney: Biden’s DOJ Is Hiding Hundreds of Hunter Biden and James Biden’s Records on China Gifts​

By Jim Hoft
Published January 2, 2023 at 4:30pm

Colorado Attorney Kevin Evans says the Biden Department of Justice is hiding hundreds of documents on gifts Joe and Hunter Biden received from China.

Evans sued the DOJ in March after he said the agency failed to comply with his Freedom of Information Act request for records about the overseas business relationships of Joe Biden’s son and brother James Biden.

The Gateway Pundit reported on the giant diamond gifted to Hunter Biden from Ye Jianming, then the chairman of CEFC China Energy Company. The Gateway Pundit reported in October 2020 that this diamond was estimated to be worth $80,000. Hunter claimed it was worth $10,000.

The diamond in police custody was listed as 3.1 carats.

The evidence against Hunter and Joe Biden that is already public is voluminous. It’s not clear what they are still hiding.

Much of the evidence against the Biden Crime Family was discovered in Hunter Biden’s laptop that the FBI hid from investigators and now claims is lost somewhere after they retrieved it in 2019.

HUGE: GOP Lawmaker Obtains New Documents that Show Joe and Hunter Biden Working to Sell US Natural Gas and Drilling Assets to China – HAS WHISTLEBLOWERS WHO WILL TESTIFY (VIDEO)

The New York Post reported:

A Colorado lawyer says the Justice Department is trying to conceal hundreds of “potentially responsive” documents about gifts received by first son Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden from contacts in China, Russia and Ukraine, according to a new report Monday.

Kevin Evans sued the Justice Department in March after he said the agency failed to comply with his Freedom of Information Act request for records about the overseas business relationships of Joe Biden’s son and brother, the Daily Mail reported.

Evans said he sought documents “pertaining to any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form” from China, Russia or Ukraine.

He said lawyers for the federal government admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of “potentially responsive” documents but are now saying they can “neither confirm nor deny” whether the records exist.
 

Calhounshd

Veteran Member

7 Biggest Biden Family Business Revelations of 2022​

WENDELL HUSEBØ30 Dec 2022710

Seven key developments in the Biden family business scandal have come to light in 2022. The scandal, suppressed by the intelligence agencies and establishment media dating back to 2020, became one of the major storylines of the year.

Recent polling shows 71 percent of Americans believe accurate reporting of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell” could have altered the 2020 presidential election. The political impact of the scandal has drawn GOP House leadership to launch nine investigations into Hunter and President Joe Biden. Sixty-two percent of voters approved of the congressional probes.

Since 2018, the DOJ has reportedly been investigating Hunter for alleged tax and gun violations. Hunter has yet to be charged with wrongdoing.

1) U.S. Banks Flagged Over 150 Suspicious Financial Transactions from Biden Family
In April, U.S. banks flagged over 150 suspicious financial transactions from Hunter and James Biden, according to CBS News. The wire transfers included “large” amounts of money tripped for further review by American banks.

Wire transfers have been the tool of choice for money launderers. To mitigate the risks to the financial institutions, suspicious wire transfers over $10,000 are flagged for review. Wire transactions involving more than $10,000 are also to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

“The focus is on day one are those bank violations and those bank records,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News. “We are pretty confident in what we’re going to find in those. We have two bank violations. We have some bank statements in hand, and we believe that suspicious activity reports, which are bank violations when the bank notifies the federal government that we’re pretty confident that our client has committed a crime, Hunter Biden and Jim Biden have at least 150 of those. And I’ve said this before, and I come from a strong banking background, I don’t think there’s anyone in the history of the United States that’s had that many suspicious activity reports.”

2) Joe Biden Met with Hunter’s Business Partner at White House
News broke in April that Hunter’s closest business partner Eric Schwerin made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations from 2009 to 2015, according to visitor logs from the White House. Schwerin also reportedly met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the White House.

The meetings contradict Joe Biden’s statement that he has not been involved in the Biden family business schemes. In fact, a total of seven times Joe Biden and his team have deflected or denied involvement in the family business.

“I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Joe Biden said.

3) Voicemail Proves Joe Biden Spoke to Hunter About Family Business
In June, news broke Joe Biden left Hunter a voicemail in 2018 about a Chinese energy deal, directly contradicting Joe Biden’s statement in 2019 that he and his son had not spoken about the family’s corrupt business schemes.

“Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you,” Joe Biden said in a voicemail reported by the Daily Mail.

“I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you,” he concluded.

4) Deputy DNI Warned Hunter’s Laptop Was Not ‘Russian Disinfo’; CNN’s Natasha Bertrand Wrote Now Discredited Story Anyway

In December, Cliff Sims, former deputy director of National Intelligence (DNI) stated he warned CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand that Hunter’s laptop was not Russian disinformation before she wrote the infamous and discredited Politico story which utilized “dozens of former intel officials” to purvey a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop. Breitbart News reported:

Bertrand, a reporter for Politico at the time, approached then-deputy DNI Sims on October 19, 2020, regarding an article she was writing about 50 former information officials claiming Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris had a few days earlier broken the “Laptop from Hell” story, which big tech censored, in the New York Post.

Sims told Bertrand before the publication of the Politico story that the “Laptop from Hell” was not Russian disinformation, citing then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. Despite Sims’ warning, Bertrand wrote the story anyway and gave the Democrats the headline they wanted, Sims stated.

5) White House Debating How to Combat Probes into Hunter
According to a Washington Post report in December, disagreement exists among those surrounding the Biden family about how to combat Republican investigations into the family business.

A disagreement exists between Hunter’s attorney, Kevin Morris, and the White House about how the Biden family should combat the investigations into the family business. Morris wants Hunter to remain in the public eye by attending public events, such as the recent White House state dinner and public art exhibits. The Post reported those who agree with Morris’s strategy also believe Hunter should play a public role in Joe Biden’s potential reelection campaign.

The White House appears to have opposed pushing Hunter further into the public eye, despite Hunter’s noted public appearances, including at Joe Biden’s vacation destinations.

6) Hunter’s Drug Abuse Reportedly Delaying Charges in Tax, Gun-Related Probe
The Justice Department reportedly delayed its “final decision” on whether Hunter will be charged for alleged tax and gun-related violations because people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal in October that Hunter’s drug abuse could be a scapegoat the defense could successfully use to defend the president’s son against potential charges.

According to media reports, charges were expected to be brought by the end of summer 2020, but Joe Biden’s Justice Department is reportedly wrestling with Hunter’s drug addiction.

7) Legal Experts Estimate Hunter Biden’s Legal Defense Costs $100K a Month
Hunter has stated he is not wealthy. According to Hunter’s ex-wife, Hunter was nearly penniless while Joe Biden was vice president, living paycheck to paycheck after out-of-control spending. From 2018-2019, Joe Biden even committed to wiring Hunter $100,000.

Where Hunter is finding the money to pay his legal bills is unknown, but it appears that Hunter has maintained multiple income streams. Breitbart News reported in December:

According to attorneys with knowledge of industry compensation standards, Hunter could be paying more than $100,000 per month ($1.2 million per year) for his legal defense team. Lawyers at such a level would cost $1,000 per hour, a D.C. attorney who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution and reprisal told Breitbart News. Prepping for a single hearing could range from 6 to 40 hours, another attorney said.

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.

Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Occasionally, I pick up leavings from the dogs on my shoes which require scraping and cleaning that is cleaner than the Biden family.
 
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