Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a little exasperated with Fox News and with House Republicans after one of the loudest, Rep. Lauren Boebert, was thrown out of a theater production of Beetlejuice after vaping, recording the performance, and fondling her date. That's normally the sort of behavior that would result in a humiliated resignation, but as we all know, Republicans can break basic social norms with abandon.
And it is just so, so tiring. In a TikTok video, she said:
All I gotta say is, I can't go out to lunch in Florida in my free time, not doing anything, just eating outside, and it's wall-to-wall Fox News coverage. And then you have a member of Congress engaging in sexually lewd acts in a public theater—and they got nothing to say.I danced to [the band] Phoenix once in college, and it was, like, all over the place. But putting on a whole show of their own at Beetlejuice and it's—and there's nothing? I'm just saying be consistent. That's all I'm asking for. Equal treatment. I don't expect it—but come on.
Yes, we all know the same people shrieking over books about crayons or that Anne Frank once wrote "penis" in her diary won’t have a thing to say about a Republican being tossed out of a theater for pawing her date in an audience full of families. Fascism means you get to break rules far in excess of what you'd tolerate from the powerless. That's the whole deal.
And yes, we know it won't change. Democrats can't throw Boebert out of Congress, and Republicans won't have a peep to say about it, but at the least Democrats need to avoid the news channel that's as infamous for brushing off repulsive Republican behaviors as it is for creating faux-scandals when a Democrat goes to lunch.
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We did it! And it's all thanks to Molech! We're devoting this week's episode of "The Downballot" to giving praise to the dark god himself after New Hampshire Democrat Hal Rafter won a critical special election over Republican Jim Guzofski, the loony toons pastor who once ranted that liberals make "blood sacrifices to their god Molech." Democrats are now just one seat away from erasing the GOP's majority in the state House and should feel good about their chances in the Granite State next year. Republicans, meanwhile, can only stew bitterly that they lack the grassroots fundraising energy provided by Daily Kos, which endorsed Rafter and raised the bulk of his campaign funds via small donations.
To everyone’s horror, this weekend's big news revolved around video of Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert and her date vaping, taking flash photos, and groping each other in public during a performance of “Beetlejuice The Musical.” She got booted from a Denver theater for that, then ended up lying her ass off about it before she realized there was video, then shoved out a half-assed apology after the video was released and it showed much, much more than any of the rest of us wanted to see.
It’s no surprise that her colleagues on the right have responded with radio silence. In recent years, Republicans have honed an intentional strategy of “whataboutism” whenever one of their own gets caught in a scandal that would have political leaders calling for someone's resignation back when we all pretended politicians had a shred of decency. It's rote.
Russia boosted Trump's 2016 election with a bit of strategic hack-and-dump; Rudy Giuliani comes back with a new theory that Russia's enemy Ukraine was behind it all. Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scores $2 billion in "investments" from Saudi royals immediately after departing the White House; suddenly House lawmakers are frothing with impeachment-level rage over the thought that President Joe Biden's son might have gotten a board position years ago based more on his name than his qualifications. Some Republican gets caught in a sex scandal, and that's enough for another two weeks of every other Republican in politics calling some other subset of Americans "groomers."
I'm not one who has much patience for "this thing is meant to be a distraction from that other news" claims, but a new Republican outrage at somebody not following The Esteemed Senate Dress Code came on conspicuously close to the weekend's video-assisted news of Boebert getting tossed from a theater for acts of public indecency that she would likely be prosecuted for if she wasn't a state big shot.
That's right: The latest Republican push is expressing public horror over a Democrat not meeting Senate dress code standards. Engaging in mammalian rutting behavior while the adults and children around you are trying to enjoy a high-priced musical production might count as a bit uncouth, in the same way that ransacking the Capitol might count as an ordinary tourist visit in Republican minds. But the sheer indecency of not following the dress code? Well, I never.
Axios reported that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has told the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms not to enforce the dress code anymore. This led to thinly veiled as well as direct jabs at Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who is known to favor hoodies and gym shorts. The Pennsylvania senator was not particularly in the mood to take etiquette lessons from the House Revenge Porn Caucus.
Yeah, this is the thing that will bring America down: not wearing formal attire when you're gleefully showing off stolen pictures of the president's son's penis on C-SPAN. Or wearing sweats when you're getting publicly mauled by your date in a manner that would get you fired as a strip club lap dancer, just after vaping in a pregnant woman's face, rather than wearing something classy.
This is the hill Republicans will die on rather than comment on the video that just 10 years ago would have resulted in the immediate resignation of any politician anywhere. Pay no attention to the humping couple in the theater: This guy over here doesn't have his tie on!
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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.
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.
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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.
It's too early to tell whether it's a temporary blip or a longer-term trend, but House Republicans vowing to "impeach Joe Biden" seem to be hitting more public pushback than usual from their fellow Republicans. The portion of the party not completely devoted to Rudy Giuliani-style hoax-peddling appears to be getting more and more concerned that holding an impeachment trial of President Joe Biden that includes exactly zero evidence of Biden doing anything wrong would not, in fact, convince Americans that the party can be trusted with government power.
There's probably going to be a real conflict there, because to House Republicans like Jim Jordan and James Comer, the thought of holding off on announcing an impeachment just because they haven't been able to dig up evidence for one appears inconceivable—and to date, it's not clear that anyone will be able to convince the House sedition caucus to back down.
As for the evidence that Republican patience with the impeachment carnival is wearing thin, the most colorful criticism comes from GOP political strategist Susan Del Percio, who allowed herself to be named and quoted by The Messenger as saying, "It's stupid. It's completely made up. They don't have anything," and, "This is not about impeachment for cause. This is a political stunt. And I have a feeling it's going to go very badly for Republicans."
That's the sort of sharp critique that strategists start dishing out when supposed allies start suggesting really bad ideas, ideas on the level of, "Hey, let's put Rep. George Santos in charge of the holiday gift exchange this year."
Then we had the amazing sight of Fox News hosts taking the stuffing out of the still-unindicted Rep. Matt Gaetz's impeachment threats. And not just any Fox hosts, mind you, but the “Fox & Friends” crowd. Do you have any idea how bad your conservative idea has to be to get “Fox & Friends” on the other side of it? These are people who would appoint George Santos chief wallet inspector!
Responding to Gaetz's threat to remove Kevin McCarthy from the House speakership if he stands in the way of an attempted Biden impeachment, host Brian Kilmeade roundly mocked him:
"Who would he put there?" he asked. "[House Majority Leader] Steve Scalise, who's dealing with blood cancer right now? Is there anybody else?""Matt Gaetz is just speaking into the wind," Kilmeade added dismissively. "Have Matt Gaetz pick up the phone and call some moderate Republicans and see if he can switch to his side. McCarthy would be more than happy to let him do that."
You have to be way, way over the line to lose Brian Kilmeade. And Kilmeade wasn't the only one dismissive of Gaetz's threats. Noting that Gaetz's fellow Republicans would probably be "all for" a Biden impeachment if Rep. James Comer and the other supposed investigators "can get proof" of Biden’s wrongdoing, co-host Ainsley Earhardt opined that "they definitely need that proof in order to start an impeachment."
That is not what Comer and the others want to hear. They've been pushing to have an impeachment vote without ever finding proof of what largely at this point has devolved into the usual bizarre conspiracy theorizing. And in doing so, they're going beyond even what the “Fox & Friends” morning crowd can stomach.
Not all signs of chaos in the Republican ranks are from people skeptical of the wisdom of proceeding without actual evidence; among hard-right conspiracy cranks, accusations are flying over Comer's inability to prove claims that started out as hoaxes to begin with. MAGA remora and nationally renowned crappy parker Seb Gorka is fuming over Comer's inability to deliver:
"Another press conference? I've had it, I'm sorry Comer, you don't know how to do a press conference. You have a press conference on 'Romanian businessman gave Hunter Biden $32' [...] And your oxygen thief members of the committee are standing in front of the visual aids! This is what we voted for? It's a joke!"
Yeah, that's what would have sold your press conference, James: being able to better see the visual aids for the $32 check. Forget evidence—first, y'all need to practice your choreography.
So things really do appear to be heating up as Comer and Jordan continue to produce substanceless circus performances with parades of clowns whostill can't come up with even the most basic evidence for the party's conspiracy claims. The far right is mad because they don't understand why Comer can't find evidence that doesn't exist, and the more sedition-agnostic members of the party are increasingly wary of attaching themselves to a show that consists of little more than Comer and Jordan continually tripping over their own feet.
Does it portend a shift in Republican tolerance for the House seditionists obsessed with impeaching Joe Biden out of sheer spite? Hard to say. But it's something to keep an eye on.
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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she will run for reelection to another term in Congress as Democrats work to win back the majority in 2024.
Pelosi, 83, made the announcement before labor allies in the San Francisco area district she has represented for more than 35 years.
“Now more than ever our City needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery,” Pelosi said in a tweet. “Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection — and respectfully ask for your vote.”
First elected to Congress in 1987, the Democratic leader made history becoming the first female speaker in 2007, and in 2019 she regained the speaker's gavel.
Pelosi led the party through substantial legislative achievements, including passage of the Affordable Care Act, as well as turbulent times with two impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
The announcement quells any talk of retirement for the long-serving leader who, with the honorific title of speaker emeritus, remains an influential leader, pivotal party figure and vast fundraiser for Democrats.
It's clockwork at this point. Whenever seditionist Donald Trump is accused of another crime, House Republicans rise up to obstruct justice. It's been happening since before Trump's first impeachment. It happened the very moment government agencies began looking into possible connections between Russian hacks of Trump's Democratic opposition and multiple members of Trump's own inner circles. (See: Stone, Manafort.) Trump has been indicted three times now on nearly 100 felony charges, and House Republicans have immediately jumped in to crookedly target his prosecutors every time.
CNN reports that the House Judiciary Committee, led by professional crime enabler Rep. Jim Jordan, is expected to open an investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis "as soon as Thursday." The reasons are as shallow as the ones given for the attempts to obstruct the criminal cases levels against Trump in New York and by special counsel Jack Smith. Jordan and the rest of the House organized crime bunch say they want to know whether Willis used federal money to investigate Dear Leader or whether her office was secretly conspiring with Smith in filing the charges against Trump.
But the real reason for House Republican interference is spelled out just as boldly: Jordan is again demanding that law enforcement turn over evidence in the case to Jordan and other Republicans who have remained in contact with Trump after his coup attempt.
That those Republicans have been coordinating with Trump himself is already known. The purpose of demands that prosecutors hand over their evidence is, of course, so that Trump's seditionist allies in Congress can leak the prosecution's evidence to Trump directly.
It's the same play these same Republicans have used throughout each of Trump's numerous scandals. They use their government powers to uncover the witnesses and agents who brought evidence against Trump, then publicly demonize those witnesses to the point of fomenting death threats.
Campaign ActionJordan's been running an organized crime ring from inside Congress for a good long time now, inheriting the role from Rep. Devin Nunes, who ducked out of Congress under suspicious circumstances only to turn up in a cushy Trump-provided job. The players include the alleged coke orgy guy, otherwise known as Rep. Matt Gaetz; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; and the whole assortment of House Republicans who sought to invalidate Trump's reelection loss with an assist from a Trump-provided rioting mob.
I'm not sure what it's going to take for journalists to start treating Jordan as the chief toady of an organized attempt to sabotage law enforcement from inside Congress itself. None of it is being hidden: We know House Republicans are coordinating with Trump in attempts to sabotage the criminal cases against him.
This is how CNN puts it, and it sure doesn't illuminate much:
It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.
Yes, the "some resistance" part of "some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters" part is because such interference is brazenly illegal, and Jordan and team are skirting a very fine line in relying on congressional protections to dodge prosecution for what would have already landed them with felony indictments themselves if anyone not in the U.S. Congress was foolish enough to try it. It is broadly known that Congress does not have jurisdiction over state-level investigations, which is why the only real threat Jordan can make is to defund any law enforcement office that investigates potential Trump crimes.
But there's simply no question that it's all very crooked, and that the crookedness is specifically aimed at letting an indicted political ally skate free if there's any skating to be done. Jordan's been staking most of his political power on extended efforts to make sure Republicans can commit felonies without repercussions. It's what he wants to be known for. His signature accomplishment.
CNN also obliges the Republican narrative with a now-rote section about how all of this is meant to be "keeping the spotlight on Biden," and as usual doesn't point out that the Republican "spotlight" on Biden is overtly another tactical move to allow Republicans to get away with felonies.
What are Republicans "investigating" Biden over? Well, they've charged him with having a son with addiction struggles who has used his proximity to his important father to land some too-sweet gigs or sell some paintings for more than his talent deserves, while being simultaneously unable to prove that the aforementioned father had a damn bit to do with any of it. It's an unusual focus for a party brushing off a $2 billion foreign investment in another struggling failson, one simultaneous to big foreign gifts to the ex-president who carted the failson into international politics.
Unless, of course, you're trying to blur the lines of "corruption" so that the public considers one to be equivalent to the other, just politics as usual as opposed to post-coup foreign purchases of loyalty.
C'mon. It's been self-evident from the first moments Rudy Giuliani oozed his way through Europe looking for "evidence" that it was Ukraine and Biden who were crooked, not Russia and Donald. The media has been in broad agreement from the first day that Giuliani's push was a transparent stunt, dishonest in premise and vouched for by international criminals. What's with this media insistence on hiding information from the public under layers of fawning quotes and cheap mental shrugs?
More than anything else, this latest House Republican attempt to intervene on behalf of a Trump-led criminal conspiracy should be a reminder that among House Republicans, there are many co-conspirators who assisted in a plan to nullify a United States presidential election rather than abide by a temporary loss of party power. Many. They promoted hoaxes to discredit the election's valid and certified results. They pushed state legislatures to override the vote totals in their states and declare Trump to be the winner by fiat. They supported the plan to "object" to the electoral counts from Biden-won states, a plan that would have seen the fraudulent slates prepared by Republican co-conspirators introduced instead if Trump's vice president could have been convinced to present the forged versions.
This isn't a case of House Republicans looking to let Trump skate from a crime they were uninvolved with. The majority of the caucus were in on the very conspiracy they're now obstructing the prosecution of.
You'd think that'd be front and center in these stories. "House Republicans still working to cover up their own criminal conspiracy" is a hell of a lot bigger a story than whatever bluster Jordan might be offering up to keep his cover-up going.
Everyone always talks about redistricting, but what is it like to actually do it? Oregon political consultant Kari Chisholm joins us on this week's episode of “The Downballot” to discuss his experience as member of Portland's new Independent District Commission, a panel of citizens tasked with creating the city's first-ever map for its city council. Kari explains why Portland wanted to switch from at-large elections to a district-based system, how new multimember districts could boost diversity on the council, and the commission's surprisingly effective efforts to divide the city into four equal districts while heeding community input.
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By Frank Miele for RealClearWire
A truism that came out of the Watergate scandal is that often the coverup is worse than the crime. But that is not the case in the unraveling Bidengate scandal. The alleged crime here is so bad that it is probably the worst ever committed by an American president.
Yet the coverup should be studied, too. It deserves superlatives for its longevity, inventiveness, and sheer audacity. The strategy has been simple: deny, deflect, destroy. Deny the facts. Deflect with distractions, and when all else fails, work tirelessly to destroy Trump, who was among the first to raise questions about the Biden family’s shady dealings. At Year 5, it may be the most successful coverup in modern history, especially since so many of the facts have been in plain sight for the entire time.
So what exactly is Bidengate? A decade-long influence-peddling scheme that saw Joe Biden, the former vice president, using his son Hunter as a conduit for millions of dollars in payoffs from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere in exchange for favorable treatment. The most famous instance of this scheme was the millions of dollars paid to Hunter Biden for his role as a board member of the corrupt Burisma energy company in Ukraine. Even Hunter acknowledged that his only qualification for being on the board was his last name.
Trading on one’s name to gain employment is not a crime in itself, but using your father’s public office to influence U.S. policy is definitely against the law – especially when the clout is used to protect your corrupt foreign employer.
That’s just what happened in March of 2016 when Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if prosecutor general Viktor Shokin were not immediately fired. Biden even bragged about this escapade a few years later when he told the story to the Council on Foreign Relations.
It’s hard to know whether Biden’s threat to withhold aid was approved by the State Department or whether it was “on the fly” diplomacy, but we do know that Shokin has publicly stated that he was fired because he was investigating Burisma’s alleged corruption, and that after he was fired there was no further substantial investigation of Burisma. Quid pro quo.
Another famous mantra from the Watergate era is “Follow the money.” It almost makes you think Biden was taunting his accusers, quipping to a reporter on June 8, “Where’s the money?” when asked about allegations of corruption.
“That’s what we want to know,” the reporter should have demanded, but of course there was no follow-up question. There never is.
Biden’s cheeky response suggests he had reason to think that he could count on the source of any ill-gotten wealth being kept private. And he may have had good reason for that belief.
On July 20, a little more than a month after Biden asked “Where’s the money?”, Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified FD-1023 FBI informant form alleging that Biden and his son Hunter had split a $10 million payment from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma. Among the many intriguing breadcrumbs in that document was the informant’s claim that the payment to the Bidens was so well disguised that it would take years to uncover:
Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which [the FBI source] understood was a reference to Joe Biden). [The source] asked Zlochevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).
So that’s one possible answer to Joe Biden’s taunt: “Where’s the money?” Perhaps it’s well-hidden.
There are so many flashing red warning lights in the Biden scandal that a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming he was in Amsterdam. Case in point: The FBI informant reported in his June 2020 statement that Zlochevsky had called Joe Biden the “Big Guy” in 2019.
That’s the same gangster nickname that one of Hunter Biden’s business associates used to refer to Joe in an infamous email on the “Laptop from Hell” when discussing what percentage of capital equity was being held by Hunter for Joe in a Chinese investment scheme. The laptop was in FBI hands since December 2019, but the email in question wasn’t circulated in public until the New York Post published it on Oct. 15, 2020. The informant’s use of the phrase prior to that time is strong circumstantial evidence that the FBI’s trusted human source was indeed privy to confidential and damning information about Biden.
But what’s truly maddening about the Biden coverup is just how long it has lasted while more and more evidence has mounted. Recent congressional hearings unearthed a trove of detail about bank payments to Biden family members, and IRS whistleblowers have laid bare the protection racket that the FBI and DOJ have been running for the Bidens. Most of that is just confirmation of what we already knew.
Remember, the first time most Americans heard about the Bidens’ bribery schemes was in September 2019 when the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and then-new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was released. In it, Trump raised the issue of former Vice President Biden’s alleged corruption and asked Zelensky to cooperate with U.S. authorities by “looking into” rumors of criminal activity by the Bidens.
Imagine if Congress had opened an inquiry then into the question of Hunter Biden’s huge salary for sitting on the board of Burisma Energy, the company controlled by oligarch Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden might be in prison now, and his father would have retired to Delaware to live out his final years in shame.
Instead, Democrats in Congress put Trump on trial for daring to notice that which must not be named – the influence-peddling scheme run by Joe Biden and his kin. The impeachment was America’s crash course on Ukrainian corruption, but somehow the mainstream media missed the story and tried to convince the public that Biden was the victim. They hid the evidence then, just as they did last week when Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal fell apart.
Related: Hunter Biden Pleads Not Guilty After Plea Deal Falls Apart
The Democrat-adjacent media seem to have a hard time understanding the case against Hunter Biden – and Joe Biden – even after five years. It’s not uncommon to hear cable news anchors lamenting that the Republicans are persecuting Joe and that they haven’t proven the president did anything wrong.
Either they don’t understand the meaning of the word proven, or they don’t understand our system of justice. It is not the job of Congress or reporters to prove anything, but rather to investigate and unearth evidence. For anyone who has eyes to see, there is a mountain of evidence against both Hunter and Joe Biden. But what we are still waiting for – what the nation is waiting for – is justice. To get that, we need a prosecutor who will present the evidence to a jury and ask for a verdict. Then and only then will the president’s guilt be proven or unproven.
How many more years do we have to wait?
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
The post It’s Year 5 Of The Biden Crime Family Coverup appeared first on The Political Insider.
There are new signs today that the House Ethics Committee investigation into Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz may not be as dead in the water as most of us assumed it was, with Republicans in control of the House and laser-focused on obstructing investigations into Republican corruption rather than furthering them.
Gaetz must have royally pissed someone off, because CNN is now reporting that Ethics Committee investigators "have begun reaching out to witnesses as part of a recently revived investigation" into the Florida man. The original investigation began in 2021, when Democrats were still in control of the House.
As for which House "ethics" Gaetz is accused of, breaching, the CNN story evades the details so that stray internet children don't get an eyeful of them, but Gaetz was caught up in the corruption scandal centered on ex-Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for sex trafficking of a minor, wire fraud, bribery, and other crimes. That investigation resulted in accusations that Gaetz had, with Greenberg's assistance, paid at least 15 women for sex, including at least one who was underage at the time. Reporters soon found enough witnesses to report Gaetz's 2019 use of an Orlando hotel room for a cocaine-fueled sex party. Gaetz has also been caught in a bizarre bit of apparent campaign money laundering and, well, take your pick.
The Department of Justice originally asked the House Ethics Committee to suspend its own investigation while federal law enforcement investigated those and other charges, but eventually decided to close the investigation without charges. That frees House investigators to resume their work, and apparently they ... might actually be doing it now?
Before you get carried away, note that CNN reports House investigators focused their questions on "possible lobbying violations" in their interview with CNN's anonymous source. That doesn't necessarily mean that House Republicans are still holding off on investigating the charges that one of their most notorious members is a sex-trafficking cocaine fiend, but a cynic might point out that a Republican-neutered Ethics Committee might be more eager to launch a hard-nosed probe of financial violations than to poke the hornet's nest of who, in their House Republican ranks, is spending their off time attending conservative coke orgies.
We shall see. In the meantime, Gaetz himself seems quite eager to divert attention elsewhere. On Tuesday he appeared on conspiracy network Newsmax, where he engaged in another bit of Russian boosterism while sniffling at Ukraine's bid for NATO membership.
"Why would you pick Ukraine? Why not extend NATO to Russia and make it an anti-China alliance?" Gaetz asked stupidly. "Are we really thinking that we're more afraid of the broke-down tanks from Russia than the fact that China is building a secret military base on the island of Cuba, 90 miles away from the United States?"
I'm not sure he's going to win any Putin Points for mocking the Russian army as "broke-down," as accurate as that may be. But does Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida really not know why NATO might not be eager to add a kleptocratic mob state to the alliance's rosters? A kleptocratic dictatorship that is currently engaged in an attempted European war of conquest, no less?
Look, I think we can all understand why the alleged cocaine orgy guy still has a soft spot for Vladimir Freaking Putin, but he might want to rein it in a bit while his fellow Republicans are deciding what to do about him. It's still likely that Republicans will sweep every ethics allegation against Gaetz back under the rug, once they've done enough due diligence to assure themselves that his scandals remain sweepable, but Gaetz has clearly pissed enough of his colleagues off that it's not a sure thing.
It'd be a real hoot if House investigators decided to interview former Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn for his thoughts on Washington, D.C., cocaine orgies, while they're at it. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on that wall?
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