There is no laptop: Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani

Hunter Biden has filed a civil suit against Rudy Giuliani, a number of shell companies through which Giuliani does business, and Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello. The suit charges Giuliani and Costello with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, specifically accessing Hunter Biden’s personal information “without authorization or exceeding authorized access,” resulting in the “total annihilation” of his digital privacy.

Additionally, the suit reminds the court—and everyone else—that for all the talk of “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” there is no laptop. There never was. Instead, “Defendants themselves admit that their purported possession of a ‘laptop’ is in fact not a ‘laptop’ at all. It is, according to their own public statements, an ‘external drive’ that Defendants were told contained hundreds of gigabytes of Plaintiff’s personal data.”

According to Giuliani, the data on that drive came from John Paul Mac Isaac, the former owner of a computer repair shop, who claimed to have data taken from one of Hunter Biden’s laptops and who offered to send it to Giuliani. According to the lawsuit, neither Isaac nor Giuliani ever maintained any kind of chain of custody on this data, and the data they have has been not just accessed but also tampered with, manipulated, altered, and damaged.

The basis of the lawsuit is the claim that Giuliani and Costello violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing the data stored on the external drive sent to them by Isaac. Hunter Biden specifically does not admit that all the data on the drive was ever in his possession, or that Isaac was ever actually in possession of a laptop that Biden had owned.

What the lawsuit alleges of Giuliani seems patently obvious.

Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges for the past many months Defendant Giuliani has spent many hours hacking into and manipulating data that he claims to have been obtained from Plaintiff, making copies of the data for himself and others to access and analyze, and further altering, impairing and damaging the data through his unlawful hacking and manipulation. In public interviews and media appearances and during podcasts, Defendant Giuliani has not only admitted but bragged about downloading data from Plaintiff’s “laptop” (even though he only had a hard drive) onto his own computer; about using his own computer to access, tamper with and manipulate the downloaded data; and about maintaining multiple copies of the data for his and Defendant Costello’s personal use.

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The bigger challenge for Hunter Biden will be showing that the case belongs in California, where he has made the claims in part because of that state’s greater protections for digital privacy, and showing that Giuliani and Costello violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

It’s clear that both men have repeatedly accessed the information, that Giuliani has hired others in an attempt to recover more information from the hard drive, and that the data has been altered and tampered with at least to the extent of being edited into pieces that Giuliani has provided to the media or used on his own podcast.

The move to try the suit in California is particularly important for the second claim made in the suit, which addresses how Giuliani obtained information from the hard drive that allowed him to access more information that was stored on Hunter Biden’s “cloud” accounts. That kind of violation is specifically addressed in California’s penal code. Hunter Biden also notes that this data came from a computer used for business purposes, a critical point in providing protections under both federal and California law.

As relief from the distress generated by Giuliani and Costello’s actions, Hunter Biden is seeking unspecified damages, any money that Giuliani has made related to his misuse of the information, legal fees, and an order that both requires Giuliani to dispose of any copies of the data he holds, and prevents him, his companies, or his attorney from accessing or distributing any of the data in the future.

Earlier his month, Hunter Biden filed a similar suit against former Donald Trump assistant Garrett Ziegler. He has also sued the IRS after agents there, specifically “whistleblowers” Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, discussed details of Hunter Biden’s tax returns in open hearings and statements.

Fox News host did not expect his Biden conspiracy to get blown apart on live TV

At the heart of every single Republican conspiracy about both President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine is a single claim. The claim is that Joe Biden got Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin sacked in order to protect energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board.

That was the claim former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani brought back from Ukraine, and the basis on which Donald Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine and earned his first impeachment. Also, because Republicans keep saying things long after they know, we know, and they know we know that they’re lying, this claim is also behind the hearings being led by Rep. Jim Jordan in the House. It’s behind the messages being pushed by Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley. And it’s the basis of an improbable number of stories at Fox News.

The idea that Shokin was fired to protect Burisma has been debunked so many times that de bunk is exhausted, but it has seldom gone down with as much grim satisfaction as it did on Sunday when Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade interviewed former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

amazing - during a Fox News interview w/ Brian Kilmeade, former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko denounces Victor Shokin, who plays as a leading role in Kilmeade's conspiracy theories, as a "completely crazy person" & says "there's something wrong with him" as Kilmeade melts pic.twitter.com/MXedG1FmrB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2023

Kilmeade: Is that why he got fired? Because of the billion dollars and the former vice president, now president?

Poroshenko: First of all, this is a completely crazy person. This is something wrong with him. Second, there is not one single word of truth. And third, I hate the idea to make any comments and to make any intervention in the American election. We have very much enjoyed bipartisan support. Please do not use such person like Shokin to undermine the trust between bipartisan support and Ukraine.

It helps to get the laughter flowing if you know that Kilmeade is a near-constant spouter of this false claim who has been treating Shokin as a fount of wisdom. As for Shokin, in his portion of the recording, he states the Republican claim quite succinctly.

“Poroshenko fired me,” said Shokin, “at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma. There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job.”

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Well, that seems like something that might be checked out. We can start with this Financial Times article where officials from a number of nations (not just the U.S.) sought the removal of Shokin for months before Biden ever became involved because Shokin was not investigating potential corruption cases, including Burisma, and was suspected of being corrupt himself. In addition to U.S. and E.U. officials, senior officials from the International Monetary Fund called for reforms because widespread corruption in Ukraine was seen as the country’s biggest obstacle to growth and stability.

And there was one other group really pushing for Shokin’s removal, as CNN reported in 2019. That group was the Senate Ukraine Caucus, where Republican member Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter urging Poroshenko to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's Office.”

Shokin’s own deputy testified that there was no active investigation into Burisma at the time of Biden’s actions. And not only was all this looked into as part of Trump’s impeachment, a Republican investigation launched in 2020 specifically to find any wrongdoing by Biden ended in an 87-page report that “contained no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden improperly manipulated American policy toward Ukraine or committed any other misdeed.”

The claim that Biden did something wrong in Ukraine wasn’t true, isn’t true, and can’t be made true through repetition. Shokin was fired because he was corrupt, bad at his job, and everyone complained.

As The Washington Post points out, Fox News and Republicans come out of this looking extremely foolish, though no one should expect them to admit it. They are deeply invested in this lie. In 2020, Republicans looked into this idea and realized it was baseless. But then, 2020 was a year when some Republicans still thought they could pull their party away from Trump and chart a course back to a world where they had both policies and a platform. Connections between Republicans and reality have become much more tenuous since then.

They’ll keep promoting the lie, because without it everything that Jordan, Comer, Grassley, and the rest are doing is revealed as pointless political theater in support of a lie. They know that we know that they know they are lying.

It helps that they don’t care.

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.

John Fetterman has a message for the ‘jagoffs in the House’

In the constant Republican hunt for some kind of scandal that will equal being a Republican, attention has recently been turned on the vital national issue of how Sen. John Fetterman likes to dress casually. This is clearly an unprecedented national tragedy that is hastening the downfall of Western civilization. In fact, according to erratic right-wing pundit Erick Erickson, a senator in a hoodie is just as bad as the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. So there.

Somehow, despite having their heads (or other parts of their anatomy) handed to them repeatedly, people can’t seem to resist having a go at the 6-foot-8-inch Democratic senator. It’s almost as if Republicans would rather talk about Fetterman’s gym shorts than try to explain their evidence-free impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, the increasingly nasty crossfire within Republican ranks, or their complete inability to get the simplest thing done.

Now, in a highly diplomatic statement sure to please everyone, Fetterman has delivered a simple proposal right from the big chair at the front of the Senate. "If those jagoffs in the House stop trying to shut our government down, and fully support Ukraine, then I will save democracy by wearing a suit on the Senate floor next week,” he said.

Fetterman’s bipartisan outreach comes even as Republicans keep lining up to get knocked down. Whether it’s ding-a-ling pic-waver Marjorie Taylor Greene or expert on dumbing things down Ron DeSantis, Fetterman is seeming to take delight in dismissing all comers with a single, deftly applied jab.

Since announcing his candidacy in 2022, Fetterman has had to deal with both recovering from a stroke and wrestling with depression while being under heavy public scrutiny. At every turn, he’s displayed high levels of bravery and an unwillingness to let others tell his story. And whatever Fetterman’s position when it comes to dealing with those highly publicized problems, they haven’t stopped him from firing back sharply and powerfully when attacked.

Most of all, Fetterman seems to have zero tolerance for bullshit. He’s more than willing to dig in and work on issues. He’s absolutely unwilling to engage in the kind of nonsense that seems to consume most of the time and effort on Capitol Hill.

However, that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to have a little fun with it all. In response to the critics of his sartorial splendor, Fetterman has issued a line of merchandise that includes hoodies for all occasions. He’s also had a good time laughing over an ongoing right-wing conspiracy theory that claims Fetterman was replaced at some point by a “body double.” (And yes, you can buy a T-shirt that says “John Fetterman’s Body Double.”)

Senator Guy Incognito (D-PA) https://t.co/8liXJd4lL0 pic.twitter.com/ku6hZM5CNO

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) September 19, 2023

Really, if you are going to claim anyone in the Senate has been replaced by a double, Fetterman should be the last choice. Because he’s definitely one of a kind.

Sign and send the petition: Pass a clean funding bill. No GOP hostage taking.

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.

Merrick Garland appearing before Jim Jordan clown show

Tuesday was an absolute debacle for the Republican-led House. The ultra-extremist right of the Republican Party is engaged in open war with the merely radical right Republicans, resulting in the shoot-down of a defense funding bill, another round of everybody hates Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and fun things left in bathrooms. At the end of the day, McCarthy was left showcasing the kind of whining you never saw from Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

But just because Republicans can’t manage to accomplish anything on the normal agenda of the House doesn’t mean they’re not all in on the most important item for the Republican House: inventing reasons to be mad at President Joe Biden. After all, the pretense of their “impeachment inquiry” allows Republicans to send out fundraising letters with lots of teeth-gnashing, foot-stomping, tough-guy rhetoric all about how they are getting that rascal Biden. And really, how much fundraising potential is there in a smoothly running House that funds the military, passes legislation, and keeps the government functioning? Boring.

On the Wednesday schedule for this farcical inquiry is an appearance by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland is popping into the House Judiciary Committee so Rep. Jim Jordan can lead the chorus in making false claims about the Department of Justice protecting the president’s son Hunter Biden. It’s the opposite of the truth, but this is a day ending in “y,” so lying is definitely on Jordan’s schedule.

As The New York Times reports, the normally low-wattage attorney general is expected to find second gear and raise his voice in defense of the DOJ. Excerpts from his opening remarks show that Garland is prepared to face down false claims and wild complaints from Jordan and company.

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“We will not be intimidated,” Garland is expected to say. “We will do our jobs free from outside interference. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

Additional excerpts released by The Hill and CNN indicate that Garland intends to forcefully push back at the idea that the DOJ is in the service of either Congress or the White House.

“Our job is not to do what is politically convenient. Our job is not to take orders from the President, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” says one portion of the remarks. “As the President himself has said, and I reaffirm here today: I am not the President’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor.”

None of this is likely to hold back Republicans eager to spend the day hammering Garland with lies about President Biden’s actions in Ukraine; false claims about the actions of U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who has led the investigation into Hunter Biden; or threatening the public with more revenge porn.

According to the Times, it’s the five-year investigation into Hunter Biden that will be the primary focus of Republicans as they grill Garland. That investigation, conducted by a Donald Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who started looking into the president’s son two years before Biden’s election, failed to generate the kind of big, salacious charges that Republicans wanted. Overnight, Weiss went from a Republican hero who was surely going to uncover material Republicans could use to smear President Biden in 2024, to a wimp completely under the thumb of Garland.

Last week, Hunter Biden was charged with three felonies related to his purchase of a firearm in 2015. The charges are a travesty, greatly exceeding what would be applied to anyone else in a similar situation. In fact, Weiss chose not to prosecute three other cases from the same year Hunter Biden made his purchase, even though those cases involved the same offense. Hunter Biden is getting very special treatment—just not the kind that Republicans claim.

The festivities started at 10 AM ET and are expected to continue for hours. Don’t expect Garland’s opening remarks, or the facts, to slow Republicans down. After all, they have things to say.

And it’s not like the House has anything else to do.

C-SPAN is carrying the hearing live.

Latest arrest puts a big Jan. 6 conspiracy to rest. Who will they blame now?

On Tuesday, former Marine, former wedding venue operator, and current hermit Ray Epps was indicted for his actions during the Jan. 6 riot. This single charge should lay to rest an elaborate conspiracy theory that originated with online supporters of Donald Trump and spread across right-wing media. It should … if conspiracy theories were affected by facts.

Epps, a 61-year-old former president of the Arizona branch of the Oath Keepers militia and adamant supporter of Trump, flew from Arizona to Washington, D.C., in response to Trump’s call for a ‘wild’ time. Videos of Epps on Jan. 5 show him shouting for Trump supporters to take the Capitol. On Jan. 6, he marched toward Congress, urging others to do the same.

When the FBI created a website where it posted photos of individuals being sought for their involvement in the insurgency, Epps’ face was one of the first to appear. But when Epps’ photo was taken down and no charges immediately followed, claims emerged that Epps was secretly a government agent who had infiltrated Trump supporters to entice them into breaking the law. Those claims spread from QAnon to right-wing media and may have reached a peak when Sen. Ted Cruz and then-host Tucker Carlson parroted the claim on Fox News.

Carlson’s embrace of the theory, which he repeated on multiple occasions, was enough to generate waves of harassment against Epps from his fellow Trump supporters. He and his wife were forced to sell their wedding-venue business in Arizona and live “in hiding” at a trailer somewhere in Utah. In an interview with People, Epps’ attorney said the couple “received a number of credible and serious death threats, which become worse each time someone on Fox or Tucker Carlson talk about Ray.”

Epps became such a fixture of the right-wing conspiracy landscape that Republican politicians weren’t just mentioning him on Carlson’s show. They were yelling about him in a House hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

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“I want to turn my attention now to this fella, this character, Mr. Ray Epps,” said Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls. “We’ve all heard of him. We’ve heard of Mr. Ray Epps. He was number 16 on your FBI most-wanted list. He was encouraging people the night prior and the day to go into the Capitol. And Mr. Ray Epps can be seen at the first breach of Capitol grounds at approximately 12:50 p.m.”

Epps was never on the FBI’s most-wanted list. When it comes to the FBI’s Jan. 6 website, Epps’ photo was removed because he reached out and turned himself in after seeing that the FBI was looking for him. Following that first contact, Epps was told he would likely face charges.

But when Wray refused to say that Epps would be arrested, Nehls responded angrily. “It appears to me you are protecting this guy! I strongly recommend you get your house back in order!”

In July, Epps filed a lawsuit against Fox News and Carlson accusing them of defamation. The lawsuit was filed in the same Delaware court where Fox News ended a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems by reaching a last-minute agreement to pay a $787.5 million settlement. Not long after that settlement, Fox News fired Carlson. But that move didn’t come in time to avoid another $12 million that Fox paid in June to settle a hostile workplace lawsuit by a former employee on Carlson’s show.

Carlson is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

In August, Fox News moved to dismiss Epps’ lawsuit, with a claim that Carlson painting Epps at the center of a fantastical conspiracy theory was “exactly what the First Amendment protects.” According to the Fox News motion, Carlson’s statements were “protected opinions, not assertions of fact.” That motion has not yet been decided. Fox News attorneys asked for a hearing on the motion in a court appearance on Monday afternoon.

While it’s safe to say that statements of fact were hard to find on Carlson’s show—and remain so on the programs of other Fox News pundits—it’s hard to see how viewers were supposed to get that just-an-opinion vibe from Carlson bringing up Epps in nearly 20 different episodes, in which he told his audience there was “no rational explanation” for the failure to charge Epps other than him being a federal agent.

In the indictment filed on Monday, Epps faces a single charge of engaging in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” in a restricted area with “intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business.” He is not known to have entered the Capitol, and no evidence has emerged that he assaulted the police or of any act of vandalism. He was one of several people photographed holding a very large Trump sign which was thrust toward the police line, but he hasn’t been charged with an offense connected to that action. One other man who was charged for being one of those holding the sign was found guilty on nine other counts, but acquitted for his part in holding the sign.

The method in which Epps was charged suggested he had already reached an agreement for a plea. NBC News has reported that Epps will enter his plea over a Zoom call on Wednesday afternoon.

The charges against Epps make him one of just a handful of people to be charged in relation to the insurgency who did not enter the Capitol or engage violently with the police. His wait for this charge is far from exceptional. Over 200 defendants have been charged in the past year, with 42 sentenced since July. There are still many more cases to come. The FBI seems to have simply prioritized those who entered the Capitol, assaulted the police, and engaged in violent conspiracies.

But don’t expect any of that to make it safe for Epps to leave his trailer. Conspiracy theories can always adapt to ignore facts. And don’t be surprised if Republicans in Congress continue to use Epps in their tirades. Unlike Fox News, the speech and debate clause of the Constitution is always there so they can defame and endanger anyone—as the founders intended.

Epps’ actions on Jan. 5 and 6, his ardent support for Trump, and most of all his involvement with the Oath Keepers show that he is anything but a model citizen. And maybe it’s only fitting that the MAGA crowd should turn on one of their own. But in the end, the conspiracy against Epps isn’t about Epps, or even the FBI. It’s about what’s most important to Trump supporters: avoiding any responsibility for their own actions.

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.

The sad, sordid legacy of Rudy Giuliani

On Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was sued by his own attorney over unpaid bills. It’s just the latest tumble in an avalanche of shame that began with one simple action: Giuliani signed on to try to keep Donald Trump in office, no matter what.

For Giuliani, his prolonged self-abasement has meant multiple trips to meet with pro-Russian politicians and oligarchs with the help of convicted foreign agents. It has meant accidentally scheduling a major press briefing outside a landscaping service. It has meant endless public and private indignities. It has meant nearly losing his license to practice law. Most of all, it has meant years of toadying to Trump, only to end up broke, humiliated, and begging for help.

As The New York Times puts it, “He has seen a remarkable reversal of fortunes since going to work for Mr. Trump.”

When Giuliani first went to Ukraine in May 2019, he brought back a story claiming that then-candidate Joe Biden had helped to sack a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect his son Hunter. It took just 10 days to show that everything Giuliani was saying was a lie, which hasn’t stopped Republicans from using these claims as the basis of their effort to impeach President Biden four years later.

At first, Giuliani claimed to have made the trips to Ukraine on his own, with the kind help of a pair of guides who not only worked for a pro-Russian oligarch, but who were arrested and eventually pleaded guilty for their role in funneling foreign funds to U.S. politicians.

What the collection of crooks and Russia supporters who were feeding stories to Giuliani wanted was the removal of a U.S. ambassador who was interfering with their criminal schemes. They got what they wanted. But what Giuliani got out of it was the first of many criminal investigations.

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All through 2019, Trump denied that he had been behind Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine. It was only in February 2020, with his impeachment over events in Ukraine safely in the rearview, that Trump went on a podcast hosted by Geraldo Rivera to brag that he had been giving Giuliani his marching orders all along. “Other presidents had them,” Trump said in defense of using Giuliani as his personal tool in trying to extort a foreign nation for evidence against a political opponent. “FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, he was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers.”

None of them had lawyers like Giuliani. Because the ex-mayor didn’t let a little thing like being turned into a Russian intelligence asset get in his way. He made his own extortion call to Ukraine and continued to make trips to eastern Europe, meeting with increasingly low-level figures who were eager to get in on the scam, and produce increasing ludicrous claims—including the time Giuliani said that 92-year-old George Soros had personally tried to kill him on an airport tarmac.

A few months later, the former mayor was back in front of the cameras waving around a water-soaked laptop that he claimed belonged to Hunter Biden. That laptop, which according to Giuliani contained images of cocaine-fueled sex, was conveniently handed to him by a Delaware computer shop owner just weeks before the 2020 election.

What was actually on the laptop, and how it relates to any of the supposed contents released to the public—from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s revenge-porn stunt to the financial information posted online by a former Trump White House aide—remains unclear. Much of what has been posted in public may never have been on the laptop at all.

Even so, the two items that are at the heart of everything Republicans in Congress are doing today in their “impeachment inquiry”—the fabricated story of Biden’s role in Ukraine, and Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop—are both gifts provided to them by Giuliani.

And that was before Giuliani got down to his main task: helping Trump in his attempted coup. For months, Giuliani was there at every step. He was there for dozens of failed lawsuits, for an endless stream of false claims, and for a defamatory attack on campaign workers that led to Giuliani reluctantly admitting that he lied.

That admission came the same week that Giuliani became one of 18 co-defendants in the racketeering indictment handed up by a Georgia grand jury. In that indictment, Giuliani matches Trump in the total number of charges he is facing. The 13 charges against the disgraced attorney include: violations of Georgia’s RICO Act; making multiple false statements to investigators; multiple attempts to convince public officials to violate their oath; and a line of conspiracies involving forgery, impersonating a public official, and filing false documents. One of those counts involves a presentation Giuliani made to the Georgia Senate in which he repeated the claims against campaign workers that he has already admitted were a lie.

Conviction on any one of those charges could see the 79-year-old former prosecutor spend the rest of his life behind bars. Which seems like a pretty bad end for someone whose biggest claim to fame was that he started off using the RICO Act against mobsters.

Hair dye? Mascara? Shoe polish? Does it really matter?

That’s not even mentioning the endless public embarrassment—like this New York Times article, in which multiple experts weigh in on the nature of the black stuff dripping down the side of Giuliani’s face during one particularly sweaty press conference.

In the course of working for Trump, Giuliani has run up not just a fat stack of criminal charges but also a whopping pile of legal bills. That’s one inconvenient thing about violating the law repeatedly: It often means repeatedly needing to hire a lawyer. That rising stack of bills required Giuliani to go begging to Trump in an effort to get some of his debt paid down. However, as CNN reported last month, Trump responded in exactly the way one might expect when Giuliani tried to convince him that it was in Trump’s own interest to cover Giuliani’s seven-figure legal bills.

But the former president, who is notoriously strict about dipping into his own coffers, didn’t seem very interested. After Costello made his pitch, Trump verbally agreed to help with some of Giuliani’s legal bills without committing to any specific amount or timeline.

Trump’s hey, sure, I’ll do something, sometime, eventually morphed into what was reportedly a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser for the man who brought home the Ukraine lie, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and that memorable briefing at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Guiliani’s son claimed that the fundraiser was expected to raise “at least $1 million,” indicating that at least 10 people would show up. But there seems to be no post-event recap announcing the actual take.

Considering that Giuliani’s attorney says he only paid $214,000 of his $1.36 million debt in a lawsuit filed a week after the fundraiser … does that mean only two people showed up? It’s certain that Trump wasn’t cutting a check, and it wouldn’t have made any sense for Giuliani to pay. So perhaps there was an extremely uncomfortable foursome staring at each other across a very small table at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf property? Did they at least get in 18 holes while they were there?

The truth is that Rudy Giuliani was never a great man. Or even a good one. His record as a mayor was one of police violence, general incompetence, personal indulgence, taking credit for others’ actions, and getting tossed from Gracie Mansion after cheating on his second wife. That he was on hand to feature in bullhorn-toting photographs after 9/11 gained him a huge level of undeserved goodwill on which he might have retired as an ersatz saint.

Instead he pitched in his lot with Trump. And how did that go again?

Rudolph W. Giuliani, already under criminal indictment and at risk of losing his law license for his effort to keep Donald J. Trump in office after the 2020 election, is now being sued by his own lawyer.

That’s how Giulaini will be remembered in the future. And that really is all his fault.

The charges filed against Hunter Biden are a travesty

On Thursday, Hunter Biden was formally charged with three felony violations related to his purchase of a firearm in 2018. Should he be found guilty on all three charges, President Joe Biden’s son faces up to $750,000 in fines and a potential 25 years in prison.

There is absolutely no doubt that Hunter Biden was using cocaine when he filled out an ATF firearms transaction record. There’s no doubt that he lied about this both when he filled out the form and when he affirmed to the dealer that the form was accurate. There’s no doubt that while owning the gun over a period of just 11 days, Hunter Biden was in violation of regulations against owning a firearm while addicted to illegal drugs. Biden admits to his 2018 addition in his memoir. The law extends back to any time in the last year. So … case closed.

Except that part of what makes a justice system a justice system is equal application of the laws to everyone. And what’s happening in this case is the opposite. Hunter Biden isn’t really being prosecuted for lying when he filled out a form five years ago. He’s being prosecuted for being Joe Biden’s son.

Just one year before Hunter Biden scribbled his name on that Form 4473, the General Accounting Office carried out a review of how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was dealing with those who lied when applying for a firearm.

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In that year, 112,090 were denied a gun during the application process for submitting “falsified information.” Of those, 12,710 were referred to the ATF for further investigation. And of those, the total number actually prosecuted was … 12.

That’s just 0.01% of those whose forms were rejected for providing false information. What’s more, the cases were referred for prosecution “when aggravating circumstances exist, such as violent felonies or multiple serious offenses over a short period of time.” None of those circumstances apply to Hunter Biden.

But it’s worse than those numbers might indicate. Hunter Biden was not caught lying on his form during his application. He wasn’t really caught at all. The only reason that prosecutors know about his addiction to cocaine during this period is that Hunter Biden wrote about his struggles with addiction in a 2021 memoir. So he’s being retroactively prosecuted for being honest about the difficulties he experienced and being forthright about his failures.

Biden wasn’t one of 112,090 who were singled out as lying on his form. He was one of 27 million who filled out that form and went on. Now the Department of Justice is backing up five years to charge Hunter Biden with something—for the purposes of charging Hunter Biden with something.

The recommendation of that GAO review in 2017 was that the ATF was spending too much time investigating falsified forms since follow-up prosecutions were so rare. Instead, the GAO recommended that the agency concentrate on keeping track of false information and making information about rejected forms available to local law enforcement. The DOJ concurred with GAO's recommendation.

Following the recommendations of the GAO, the number of cases referred for investigation in the year Hunter Biden made his purchase was greatly reduced, from 12,710 to just 478 referrals. That’s 0.002% of those who applied for a gun that year. But wait. It gets worse.

When The Washington Post took a look at this issue last year, they did so because the ATF and DOJ were being bombarded with tweets insisting that Hunter Biden be charged.

The controversy prompted us to request statistics from the Justice Department to determine whether someone falsely filling out the form faced much of a risk of prosecution.

It took months to obtain the data. The answer, it turns out, is no.

According to the Post, most of the cases prosecuted for lying on the form “concerned obvious instances of ‘straw buyers’” where someone was sent into a store to buy a gun for someone else who couldn’t legally purchase a gun, because they had already been convicted of a violent crime. Which seems like exactly the sort of thing the law was designed to catch in the first place.

But of all the statistics that show just how selective “justice” is being in the case of Hunter Biden, the results of a Freedom of Information request sent to Delaware for the year in which the purchase was made may be the most damning.

The provided information shows that in fiscal year 2019, only three Form 4473 cases were referred for prosecution in Delaware. The U.S. attorney for Delaware—that would be David Weiss, the same U.S. attorney in charge of the investigation into Hunter Biden—opted to prosecute none of these cases. None.

Confronted with three other cases involving the exact same charge in the same state, in the same year, Weiss decided to file no charges. But Hunter Biden is getting three charges and the possibility of 25 years.

That really is some very special justice.

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.

Republicans use long-debunked scam to fuel impeachment inquiry

On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared that he was turning three Republican investigations that have already been running since January into “impeachment inquiries” on the basis of … of … well, on the basis of how McCarthy is scared sh--less that the members of his own party might come to collect on all the promises he made to get his big office.

The public could—and has—cheerfully ignored the performance art that three Republican-run committees have been executing with no obvious goal other than to allow them to send out daily fundraising requests that include the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop.” People expect Republicans to run pointless inquiries into the same thing over and over again. (See: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, or the other five investigations into Benghazi.) But an impeachment inquiry seems like it should have at least some tiny scrap of evidence to justify its existence.

It has apparently fallen to Rep. Jim Jordan to provide that scrap. Only what he’s trotting out for the Fox & Friends crowd has a slight problem: It’s all just a scam that blew up on Republicans four years ago.

Here’s what Jordan tried to sell on Fox & Friends as justification for an impeachment inquiry.

”[President Joe Biden] told Ukraine, ‘If you don’t fire the prosecutor, you’re not getting the money.’ That’s exactly what they accused President Trump of doing, which he didn’t do and they impeached him over that. He did it. And he did it — remember, Dec. 4, 2015, Devon Archer and Hunter Biden are meeting with the head of Burisma, Mr. Zlochevsky, and they called D.C. Now, Devon Archer says, ‘I stepped away. I don’t know who they talked to in D.C.’ Now, come on. They called D.C. And then five days later, the vice president of the United States, the current president of the United States, goes to Ukraine and starts the process into getting the prosecutor fired.”

It’s not really possible to feel sorry for Jordan, but it is possible to feel a level of astonishment over just what level of pathetic—patheticness? pathegnosity?—he is willing to reach in order to justify his actions.

To steal the opening from the last two “Spider Man” animated features: Let’s do this one more time.

All of this business about Joe Biden and Burisma goes back to May 2019 and an article that appeared in The New York Times that gave Rudy Giuliani an open mic to make a set of unchallenged claims. Trump immediately picked up those claims and leveled them at then-undeclared candidate Joe Biden. To see just how close they are to what Jordan is saying now, let’s look at what Daily Kos wrote then:

At the heart of the charge Trump is making against Biden is this: Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of an energy company called Burisma Holdings that was targeted by a Ukrainian prosecutor. This prosecutor was one of several figures whom Joe Biden railed against on a trip to Ukraine in which he complained about corruption in the country’s government, including a threat to withhold U.S. funds if Ukraine didn’t clean up its act. In the next election, the prosecutor was voted out, and Ukraine got its funds.

When that was written, on May 2, 2019, there was still some belief that Burisma might have actually benefited from the removal of that prosecutor, whose name was Viktor Shokin. However, just two weeks later, Bloomberg did something that The New York Times apparently never considered: They sent a reporter to Ukraine and checked up on Giuliani’s claims. What they discovered was that not one word held up to the slightest scrutiny.

It turns out that the problem with Shokin was that he wasn’t investigating Burisma, or much of anything else. In fact, as early as 2015, prosecutors in the U.K., who actually were trying to go after both Burisma and Zlochevsky, became convinced that Shokin was actively interfering with that investigation to protect Burisma. British officials didn’t just take their displeasure to the Ukrainian government, they also complained to the U.S.

It was those complaints that caused Joe Biden to include Shokin in a group of officials that the U.S. wanted removed due to suspected corruption, because eliminating corruption in the Ukrainian government was something both the U.K. and the U.S. were actively championing. In getting rid of Shokin, Biden was encouraging investigation of Burisma, but stopping it.

All of this was dutifully walked through during Trump’s first impeachment—an impeachment that happened because Trump tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into backing up Giuliani’s false claims.

Where did Giuliani’s faux scandal originate? Simple. Donald Trump sent him. It took until February 2020 for Trump to confess this openly, but he admitted sending Giuliani to Ukraine on a Geraldo Rivera podcast. Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine, not for any purpose to benefit the United States, but explicitly to talk to people who had run out of the government for being too corrupt to cook up something that could be used against Biden, who Trump saw as his biggest electoral threat.

Of course, those corrupt former officials and members of a pro-Russian faction within Ukraine had a price for giving Giuliani the story they wanted: the ouster of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. They wanted Yovanovitch out because she was regarded as both an effective advocate for the U.S. and a tireless fighter against corruption. Giuliani snapped up that deal. He sold Trump on the idea that Yovanovitch had said bad things about him—and that she was standing in the way of creating the narrative Giuliani was trying to create in Ukraine. Just like that, Yovanovitch was gone.

None of this is new. In fact, it’s not just four years old, but every aspect of the story has been covered again, and again, and again. Shokin’s deputy has even admitted that the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma.

Everything that Jordan was babbling about on Fox was sad, false, and ridiculous. Deplorable seems like the right word. But hey, he does seem to have convinced one person.

Tommy Tuberville says that Jim Jordan presented his impeachment “evidence” to him today and, after applying his very unbiased brilliant legal mind to the case, he has (shockingly) determined that it is overwhelming. pic.twitter.com/aQO5l0bu0p

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 13, 2023

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

Romney prepares for post-Senate career by showing he was no hero

On Wednesday, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah announced that he would not be running for reelection to the Senate in 2024. Well-known bus owner and patriarch of his own micro-state, Romney is now garnering praise for his willingness to bring down the “demagogue” axe on Donald Trump as he heads for the door.

In an Atlantic excerpt from an upcoming biography, released following Romney’s declaration of no mas, there is a story that takes place in the days just before Jan. 6, 2021. Romney was contacted by independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who had a warning about “online chatter among right-wing extremists.” King was mostly giving Romney a heads-up because Romney’s lack of vocal support for Trump had placed him closer to the Nancy Pelosi/Mike Pence threat territory than to the Jim Jordan/Matt Gaetz safe zone. Romney’s name was “popping up in some frightening corners of the internet,” according to McKay Coppins, who authored the biography.

So Romney wrote a note to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, warning him that there could be violence on Jan. 6, that Trump was the instigator, and that there were plans to storm the Capitol. McConnell did not reply. And when it came down to it, Romney did nothing else.

Here’s the text that Romney reportedly sent to McConnell on Jan. 2, 2021.

“In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th. There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator—the President—is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.”

Romney gets full marks both for outlining the scope of the threat and for predicting, accurately, that Trump would both encourage the insurgents and fail to provide resources to the police.

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But no one is a hero in this story. McConnell never responds to Romney and, as far as we are aware, never makes a move to ensure that additional security is in place. It also doesn’t seem that McConnell took any of these concerns to Trump or brought this information to others who were endangered by the violence Trump was summoning.

Romney doesn’t appear to have done anything more. He didn’t confront Trump. He didn’t step in front of a camera to give a warning. He kept what knowledge he had to himself and—very notably—doesn’t seem to have provided the text he sent McConnell to either the Jan. 6 investigation committee or the representatives conducting Trump’s second impeachment trial.

It’s also worth noting that King doesn’t seem to have taken action beyond warning Romney. That’s in spite of telling Romney that he had heard rumors about “gun smuggling, of bombs and arson, of targeting the traitors in Congress.” Maybe King called others. If so, those others have not spoken out. He certainly didn’t make any kind of public statement, and he also doesn’t seem to have taken this information to investigators, because his communications with Romney were unrevealed until the fragment of the biography was published.

Likewise, King’s Pentagon sources appear to have been content to sit on their discovery of plots to assault the Capitol and threaten the lives of lawmakers. Those sources may have a better following-the-chain-of-command excuse than either McConnell, Romney, or King. But if they were content to merely report a coming insurrection among Trump supporters to Trump, that excuse isn’t a good one.

There aren’t any heroes in this story. There are just a lot of Washington insiders who knew the storm was coming but whose concerns seemed to be limited to whispering about these threats among themselves. When the chips were down, Romney had a chance to go public with his concerns, to warn the nation of what was about to happen and express his disdain for Trump’s role in instigating violence. He didn’t do that.

So don’t hand him any accolades now.

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

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

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.