Month: September 2023

Impeachment inquiry null and void without House vote, confirmed by Trump’s DOJ

Posted on by Hunter

There's been a bit of fuss made over this, but it's important to put it in context so that's what we'll do. Yes, it's absolutely true: According to a binding opinion issued by the Justice Department, House impeachment inquiries are invalid unless the House votes to authorize them, meaning the Biden administration can take whatever subpoenas come from House Republicans in the next few weeks and summarily trash them. Sorry, none of it counts! Come back when you've taken a vote, Kevin.

That binding opinion was issued by Donald J. Trump's gloriously crooked Justice Department, and specifically by DOJ Office of Legal Counsel head Steven Engel. It was one of the many Trump administration efforts to dodge House subpoenas during the impeachment investigation that stemmed from Trump's move to block military aid to Ukraine until the Ukrainian president agreed to announce a sham investigation of Trump’s political opponents, including President Joe Biden. It came after Trump's team tried a great many other dodgy things to cover up Trump's extortion attempt, such as improperly classifying the phone call in which Trump did it, but technically, it's still on the books and Justice is currently obliged to tell Reps. James Comer, Jim Jordan, and the others to pound sand.

But, you know, legally pound sand. This would be the kind of invitation to pound sand that comes under a really nice letterhead, one that greatly details how the sand should be pounded and why, with a big ol' signature or two at the end of it. You can't tell me they're not selling raffle tickets inside Justice right now to decide who gets to put their name on that letter. Here’s a suggestion: Consider using a glitter pen.

Aside from its sublime trolling opportunities, however, this isn't a particularly useful little tidbit. House Republicans who once thought OLC opinions to be sacrosanct when they were written to protect Dear Leader's constant crookery will now declare the same legal stances to be communism if a not-Republican tries to follow them. Nobody among House Republicans gives a damn what their own supposed deeply held principles were a few years back, and a party that both attempted and is still conspiring to block investigations of an attempted coup really, really does not give a damn about what the lawyers have to say.

Remember, Jordan himself gleefully defied the authorized subpoenas of his own Congress demanding he testify about his role in Jan. 6, 2021. Nobody has ever claimed the former wrestling coach cares about what's legal and what's not, and nobody ever will. These are seditionists, not scholars.

A Biden administration attempt to troll Republicans with Engel's own binding legal opinion is also easily worked around, in theory. After launching the initial impeachment probe into Trump without a full House vote in 2019, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought the matter to the House floor and got official authorization about five weeks later, on Oct. 31. It wasn't until the following January that a stonewalling Trump administration announced that they still didn't have to respond to any subpoenas issued before that vote because they weren't "authorized," and that's the stance they and Senate Republicans went into Trump's first impeachment trial with.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy could, in theory, set up a similar authorization vote whenever he wants. He's not doing that right now, because Republicans in non-hard-right districts do not want to take that vote and do not think they can win reelection after supporting an impeachment premised solely on the party’s revenge fantasies, so impeachment backers simply don't have the votes. But it's possible McCarthy could somehow develop actual leadership skills at some point, coming up with a trade that would goad them into it.

In the end, though, none of this particularly matters because House Republicans—and specifically the coup supporters in the caucus—don't have any "evidence" they want or need to find to begin with. The impeachment probe was announced after House Republicans pursued the same conspiracy theories pushed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to discredit the Ukrainian government and give Trump possible blackmail fodder that would help him win reelection. Republican investigators found not one damn thing, because there was nothing to find to begin with. Republicans can issue subpoenas as an extended fishing expedition, looking for any unreturned library books or unpaid parking tickets that they can spin into new frothing theories, but an "impeachment inquiry" so brazenly premised on retaliation rather than evidence will struggle to even define what information they're supposedly demanding.

None of this matters, in other words. It's political theater, and all the House coup-backers care about is that they can keep it alive, Giuliani-style, long enough to benefit indicted seditious crapsack Trump in his bid to win back power. Republicans need to claim Biden is corrupt precisely because Trump has been indicted in four separate venues. The evidence against Trump is so clear in each case that Trump could well be found guilty in all four of them, and the only defense House Republicans have for propping up a potential jailbird as president is by claiming that Actually, he's no more crooked than anyone else in Washington, D.C., so you might as well elect the felon you know.

Joe Biden's son claimed to be more of a bigshot than he was. Ooooh, what a scandal. Surely, there's never been a Republican failson to ever be caught doing that.

Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden 

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Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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WATCH: Karine Jean-Pierre launches rant over Biden impeachment inquiry, snaps at reporter in testy moment

Posted on by Latest Political News on Fox News

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went off Wednesday when asked repeatedly about the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even snapping at a reporter who tried to push back against her claim that the president "didn't do anything wrong."

The exchange occurred during the daily White House press briefing after Jean-Pierre was asked how confident she was that there would be no evidence incriminating Biden in his son Hunter's foreign business dealings, his alleged involvement in which has been the centerpiece of House Republicans' investigation into the family's finances.

"Any specifics to the inquiry, certainly — I want to say this at the top … I'm going to refer you to my colleagues at the counsel's office," Jean-Pierre responded, something she noted throughout the briefing when asked questions related to the inquiry.

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She attempted to deflect, referencing Biden's upcoming speech on "Bidenomics," and arguing it was part of the "real issues" the American people truly wanted to hear about, rather than Republicans' investigations.

"They have spent all year investigating the president. That's what they've spent all year doing and have turned up with no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong. I mean, that is what we've heard over and over again from their almost year-long investigation. And that's because the president didn't do anything wrong," she said.

New York Post reporter Steve Nelson attempted to push back against Jean-Pierre's claim, prompting her to snap at him.

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"Even House Republicans have said the evidence does not exist. House Republicans have said that to my friend in the back who just yelled at, which is incredibly inappropriate," she said, appearing frustrated. 

"But House Republicans have said that there doesn't — there doesn't — it doesn't exist. Their own investigations have actually debunked their ridiculous attacks. And the only reason Speaker McCarthy is doing this — is doing this political stunt — and we have seen it, you all have reported, is because Marjorie Taylor Greene has said — she threatened to shut down the government," she said. 

Jean-Pierre went on, listing the Republicans she said were threatening House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's speakership, and calling the impeachment inquiry "baseless."

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McCarthy announced the formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, stating at a press conference that House Republicans had "uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct."

He listed allegations of "abuse of power, obstruction and corruption" made against Biden by several GOP-led committees who have been investigating the president and his family's foreign business dealings.

Fox News' Chris Pandolfo and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

Key witness in Hunter Biden case contradicts so-called whistleblowers’ testimony

Posted on by Mark Sumner

For months, Republicans have been pointing to testimony from IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley as evidence that the FBI and Department of Justice were protecting Hunter Biden. That coverup supposedly included U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who Shapley said was unable to bring the charges he wanted against President Joe Biden’s son because his authority was too limited.

But just hours after Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he was turning the multiple House investigations into an impeachment inquiry without bothering to hold a vote of House members, it turns out that not only was that whistleblower evidence in serious doubt—but Republicans already knew it.

As The Washington Post reports, FBI agent Thomas Sobocinski, who manages the team investigating Hunter Biden, contradicted much of Shapley’s testimony in closed-door testimony with legislators. However, unlike Shapley’s claims, Republicans have been completely quiet about Sobocinski. Because what the agent in charge had to say doesn’t fit their manufactured narrative.

What the Post referred to as Shapley’s “most eyebrow-raising allegations” concerned a meeting that took place on Oct. 7, 2022. According to the IRS whistleblower, that meeting was his “red-line” in stepping forward because Weiss admitted at that meeting that another U.S. attorney was blocking him from filing charges against Hunter Biden. Shapley also claimed that Weiss had asked to be named special counsel but had been “denied that authority.”

However, Sobocinski, who was also present at that meeting, said he did not hear Weiss claim he asked to be named special counsel, and did not hear Weiss complain about someone blocking his ability to file any necessary charges. “I never thought that anybody was there above David Weiss to say no,” Sobocinski said. That testimony matches that of another, currently unknown FBI agent also present at the meeting.

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Transcripts of Shapley’s testimony and the testimony of another IRS agent, Joseph Ziegler, who reported to Shapley, have been released by House Republicans. Their claims that Hunter Biden should have been charged with multiple felonies, and that President Biden was pulled into phone conversations with Hunter Biden’s clients, have been central to the claims Republicans have made about the president’s involvement in his son’s business.

In a letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham, Weiss rebutted a key point of Shapley’s testimony. The U.S. attorney—who was put in office by Donald Trump and reportedly spent over two years investigating Hunter Biden before Joe Biden was elected—stated flatly that he had “not requested Special Counsel designation” and that he had all the authority he needed to file any charges he sought.

In fact, Weiss would not have needed to be named special counsel to file charges outside Delaware. That only requires a special attorney provision, which is routinely granted to U.S. attorneys whose cases cross district boundaries. Both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the office of another U.S. attorney mentioned by Shapley have confirmed that Weiss was not blocked in any effort to file charges. Weiss has subtly suggested that Shapley may not have understood the difference between a discussion of the special attorney provision and seeking special counsel status.

Shapley has continued to stand by his testimony and claims to have taken real-time notes during the meeting to verify his claims. However, it now seems that Republicans also heard from Sobocinski, who was at the same Oct. 7 meeting and whose recollections do not at all match those of Shapley.

Ziegler was not in the meeting. However, he claimed in his testimony that FBI agents working on the case had tried to persuade Weiss to seek special counsel status, but were being stifled by their leadership.

According to The Washington Post, Sobocinski, who has been on the case for the past two years, indicated that he “had no awareness or recollection of conversations in which FBI officials working on the case lobbied for the appointment of a special counsel.”

Since that October 2022 meeting, according to Shapley, the IRS criminal investigation unit (known as the IRS CI) has “taken every opportunity to retaliate against me and my team,” which presumably includes Ziegler. Shapley says he was “passed over for a promotion for which I was clearly most qualified,” in an office he had anticipated taking over for years. He also stated that both Sobocinski and another FBI agent “sent threats” to the IRS field office to keep other whistleblowers from coming forward, and that the IRS CI leadership removed his team even though they “had been investigating [Hunter Biden] for over 5 years.”

Sobocinski did agree with Shapley and Ziegler on one thing: Weiss was taking too long.

Weiss was appointed as the U.S. attorney for Delaware in February 2018. He was retained as U.S. attorney in Delaware during Biden’s presidency, surely to avoid any appearance of interfering with the investigation. Still, it took over four years before Weiss announced a deal in June 2023 that would have seen Hunter Biden plead guilty on charges of tax evasion and illegal possession of a weapon while under the influence of drugs.

Expectations were that Hunter Biden would be saddled with a fine and probation, but the deal fell apart under intense public pressure from Republicans. According to The New York Times, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney had originally decided to “forgo any prosecution of [Hunter] Biden at all.” That changed when Shapley and Ziegler took their story to Republicans in Congress.

According to the Times, Republicans have claimed that “the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did” resulted in the prosecution of Hunter Biden. The continued pressure also seems to have played a role in undercutting the deal between Hunter Biden’s attorneys and the DOJ.

All of which makes it clear that someone really has put a finger on the scales and altered the outcome of a federal investigation … and it’s not President Biden.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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White House tells media to commit acts of journalism

Posted on by Laura Clawson

No media report on the House impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden is complete without prominent coverage of the fact that Republicans have no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, and are instead basing their drive to impeach on lies. Unfortunately, a lot of media coverage is incomplete in this exact way, leading the White House to send a letter to major media organizations, calling on them to do better at reporting the facts.

“It's time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” the White House wrote. The memo details how "Covering impeachment as a process story—Republicans say X, but the White House says Y—is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable.”

And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth.

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That’s the crux of it: If House Republicans can rely on the media to help spread their lies under the guise of neutral reporting, without a full explanation that these claims are false, then people are going to believe things that are not true. The media cannot fully combat the spread of disinformation, of course, and right-wing media organizations like Fox News are more interested in spreading it themselves. But traditional media shouldn’t let itself be used to launder false claims.

Predictably, the right-wing media immediately started stirring up outrage about the White House issuing “marching orders,” as go-to Republican legal expert Jonathan Turley put it. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen repeatedly.

The White House: Hey, guys, could you try to stick to the facts and identify misinformation as such?

Right-wing media: How dare they??? This is oppression.

That outrage is a reflexive response; in this case it’s also intended to distract from the 14-page appendix accompanying the White House letter, which offers thorough debunkings of seven key lies on which Republicans are basing their claims about the need for an impeachment inquiry. For instance, Republicans insist, “Joe Biden ‘engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.’” But that allegation is based on an FBI document recording an unverified allegation that was initially investigated and dismissed by the Justice Department under Donald Trump.

In short: A claim about something Biden allegedly did before he was president that the Trump Justice Department couldn’t substantiate at a time when Trump was looking for ways to discredit Biden has now become an exhibit in a push to impeach him.

Another of the Republican claims, that "Biden has participated in his family's global business ventures with America's adversaries,” was directly refuted by testimony from two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners—witnesses House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer bragged were going to help him show Biden’s corruption. No such ties have been revealed in the thousands of pages of bank records House Republicans have obtained.

Everything the White House offers there is exhaustively documented, with many of the sources coming from the same media organizations the letter is begging to fairly cover this impeachment inquiry. The facts are widely available, and now they’re neatly summarized in a very transparent 14-page document with lots of links. Reporters and their editors need to use those facts—and not in the eighth paragraph following seven paragraphs of Republicans lying, but right up front, every single time.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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Mitt Romney, one-time GOP presidential nominee who voted to convict Trump, won’t seek reelection

Posted on by Associated Press

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he will not run for reelection in 2024, creating a wide-open contest in a state that heavily favors Republicans and is expected to attract a crowded field.

Romney, a former presidential candidate and governor of Massachusetts, made the announcement in a video statement. The 76-year-old said the country is ready for new leadership.

“Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders," he said. "They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in."

Romney noted that he would be in his mid-80s at the end of another six-year Senate term. While he didn’t directly reference the ages of President Joe Biden, 80, or former President Donald Trump, 77, who are the leaders for their parties' 2024 presidential nominations, he accused both men of not responding enough to the growing national debt, climate change and other long-term issues.

Romney easily won election in reliably GOP Utah in 2018 but was expected to face more resistance from his own party after he emerged as one of the most visible members to break with Trump, who is still the party’s de-facto leader.

Romney in 2020 became the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from their own party in an impeachment trial. Romney was the only Republican to vote against Trump in his first impeachment and one of seven to vote to convict him in the second.

Trump was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Romney was booed by a gathering of the Utah Republican Party’s most active members months after his vote at the second impeachment trial, and a measure to censure him narrowly failed. Members of the party even flung the term “Mitt Romney Republican” at their opponents on the campaign trail in 2022’s midterm elections.

Still, Romney has been seen as broadly popular in Utah, which has long harbored a band of the party that’s favored civil conservatism and resisted Trump’s brash and norm-busting style of politics.

The state is home to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project; the anti-Trump Republican Evan McMullin, who launched a longshot 2016 presidential campaign; and GOP Gov. Spencer Cox, who has been critical of Trump and is also up for reelection in 2024.

More than a majority of the state’s population are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The faith arrived in the western state with pioneers fleeing religious persecution and spread globally with the religion’s missionaries, a legacy that’s left the church’s conservative members embracing immigrants and refugees.

Romney, a Brigham Young University graduate and one of the faith’s most visible members after his 2012 presidential campaign, had been a popular figure in the state for two decades. He burnished his reputation there by turning around the bribery scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, making it a global showcase for Salt Lake City.

The wealthy former private equity executive, who served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, moved to Utah after his 2012 loss to President Barack Obama. During his White House campaign, he struggled to shake the perception that he was out of touch with regular Americans. The image crystallized with his comment, secretly recorded at a fundraiser, that he didn’t worry about winning the votes of “47% of Americans” who “believe they are victims” and “pay no income tax.”

In 2016, he made his first extraordinary break with Trump, delivering a scathing speech in Utah denouncing Trump, then a presidential candidate, as “a phony, a fraud” and who was unfit to be president.

After Trump won, Romney dined with Trump to discuss Romney becoming the president-elect’s secretary of state. Trump chose Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson instead.

Romney accepted Trump’s endorsement during the primary race for his 2018 Senate run but also pledged in an op-ed that year that he would “continue to speak out when the president says or does something which is divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”