A White House board of intelligence experts made the case Monday for reauthorizing one of the intelligence community’s most controversial tools, arguing failure to do so could be “one of the worst intelligence failures of our time.”
Congress has until the end of the year to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a process looking more in doubt amid growing lawmaker mistrust of the FBI as well as concern the practice unnecessarily sweeps up information on Americans.
“The Board strongly believes that Section 702 authorities are crucial to national security and do not threaten civil liberties, so long as the requisite culture, processes, and oversight are in place,” the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) wrote in its report.
“The cost of failure is real. If Congress fails to reauthorize Section 702, history may judge the lapse of Section 702 authorities as one of the worst intelligence failures of our time.”
Section 702 allows intelligence outfits to undertake warrantless surveillance of foreigners located outside of the U.S., but their communications with American citizens are often captured in the process. That creates a database officials can query that critics have likened to backdoor searches of U.S. citizens.
Much of the consternation around Section 702 has been focused on the FBI, the intel agency with the most domestic scope of work but also a history of improperly using the tool — a problem the bureau has acknowledged and done some work to address.
That issue surfaced anew when a FISA court opinion from April released earlier this month revealed 702 searches were improperly done on a U.S. senator, state lawmakers and a state court judge.
“The Board, however, found no evidence of willful misuse of these authorities by FBI for political purposes,” PIAB wrote in the report.
“To date, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has only identified three incidents of intentional misconduct from among millions of FBI queries of Section 702 information and FBI has addressed the incidents appropriately.”
However, many of the board's proposed reforms are directed at the FBI, including directing the attorney general to limit the bureau’s ability to conduct some 702 queries for non-national security-related crimes.
The board also recommends establishing a more rigorous preapproval process for those wishing to use 702 to search for information related to U.S. citizens.
In a call with reporters, however, officials stressed they would not back any plan that would require getting a warrant to use the 702 database for information concerning Americans, noting that it's been used to assess whether an American is the victim of a crime or the target of foreign intelligence services.
“One thing we do not recommend is a warrant for every U.S. person inquiry … That issue of U.S. personal inquiries, particularly by the FBI, has been a dominant issue in this discussion. We do not recommend that in part because obviously, when you're first assessing whether or not the U.S. person is the victim of cyberattack or an effort by a Chinese intelligence officer for recruitment, you have no probable cause to believe that that person is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power,” a PIAB board member said.
“So there are legal limitations to getting a warrant each time, not to mention the burdensome nature.”
The FBI in a Monday statement said Section 702 should be “reauthorized in a manner that does not diminish its effectiveness,” a sentiment backed by the White House on Monday.
“We also agree with the Board’s recommendation that Section 702 should be reauthorized without new and operationally damaging restrictions on reviewing intelligence lawfully collected by the government and with measures that build on proven reforms to enhance compliance and oversight, among other improvements,” it said in a joint statement from national security adviser Jake Sullivan and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer.
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.
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.
Republican senators say they’re worried that conservative populism, though always a part of the GOP, is beginning to take over the party, becoming more radical and threatening to cause them significant political problems heading into the 2024 election.
GOP senators are saying they’re being increasingly confronted by constituents who buy into discredited conspiracy theories such as the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election or that federal agents incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Growing distrust with government institutions, from the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, make it more difficult for Republican lawmakers to govern.
Republican senators believe their party has a good chance to take back control of the White House and Senate, given President Biden’s low approval ratings and the favorable map of Senate seats up for reelection, but they regularly face political headaches caused by populist members of their party who say the rest of the GOP is out of step with mainstream America.
“We should be concerned about this as Republicans. I’m having more ‘rational Republicans’ coming up to me and saying, ‘I just don’t know how long I can stay in this party,’” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “Now our party is becoming known as a group of kind of extremist, populist over-the-top [people] where no one is taking us seriously anymore.
FILE - Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks a question during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
“You have people who felt some allegiance to the party that are now really questioning, ‘Why am I [in the party?]” she added. “I think it’s going to get even more interesting as we move closer to the elections and we start going through some of these primary debates.
“Is it going to be a situation of who can be more outlandish than the other?” she asked.
Some Senate Republicans worry the populist winds are downgrading their chances of picking up seats in 2024.
“There are an astonishing number of people in my state who believe the election was stolen,” said one Republican senator who requested anonymity to talk about the growing popularity of conservative conspiracy theories at home.
As an example, some Republicans point to Arizona, where Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), an independent who left the Democratic Party last year, is up for reelection.
Sinema is likely to face a challenge from the left in the likely Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) as well as a GOP nominee. If that nominee is former TV anchor Kari Lake, who has embraced conspiracy theories about elections and lost a gubernatorial race last year, many in the GOP think they’re in trouble.
One senior Senate Republican strategist, assessing the race, lamented that “the Republican Party in Arizona is a mess.”
Republican senators say they are alarmed at how many Republicans, including those with higher levels of education and income, buy the unsubstantiated claims that the last presidential election was stolen.
A second Republican senator who spoke with The Hill said the growing strength of radical populism “makes it a lot more difficult to govern, it makes it difficult to talk to constituents.”
“There are people who surprise me — I’m surprised they have those views. It’s amazing to me the number of people, the kind of people who think the election was stolen,” the lawmaker said. “I don’t want to use this word but it’s not just a ‘red-neck’ thing. It’s people in business, the president of a bank, a doctor.”
The lawmaker, who requested anonymity to discuss the political challenge posted by surging conservative populism, accused some fellow Republicans of trying to exploit voter discontent to gain local or national prominence.
“In my state there are a lot of folks who see Washington as disconnected, they see their way of life threatened. There’s something that generates discontent that elected officials take advantage of,” the senator said.
Tuberville’s controversies
Some of the biggest populist-linked headaches recently have come from Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a staunch ally of former President Trump who is now holding up more than 260 nonpolitical military promotions to protest the Defense Department’s abortion policy.
Tuberville caused an uproar early last week by defending the idea of letting white nationalists serve in the military and disputing the idea that white nationalism is an inherently racist ideology.
Tuberville later reversed himself after Senate Republican colleagues ranging from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) forcefully denounced white supremacy and white nationalism.
GOP senators also have to regularly distance themselves from the radical proposals of populist conservatives in the House, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who earlier this year proposed cutting Department of Justice and FBI funding in response to federal investigations of Trump.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) pushed back on calls to defund the Justice Department, telling reporters: “Are we going to get rid of the Justice Department? No. I think defunding is a really bad idea.”
Thune later explained to The Hill: “There are seasons, swings back and forth in politics and we’re in one now where the dominant political thinking is more populist with respect to national security, foreign policy, some domestic issues.”
But he said “that stuff comes and goes and it’s built around personalities,” alluding to the broadly held view that Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016 and his lasting influence over the party has put his brand of populism at the forefront.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an advisor to the Senate Republican leadership, said bread-and-butter conservative economic ideas still resonated with voters, but he acknowledged “the cable news shows” continue to keep attention on themes that Trump likes to emphasize, such as election fraud and the “deep-state” control of the federal government.
“So there are some people paying attention to that but most people are trying to just get on with their lives,” he said. “There’s a lot of distrust of Washington, and who can blame people.”
“It concerns me that people lose faith in their institutions, but this has been a long story throughout our history. It’s nothing new although it’s troubling,” he said.
Waving off impeachment
Senate Republicans tried to wave off their House colleagues from advancing articles of impeachment authored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) against President Biden and rolled their eyes at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) attempt to expunge Trump’s impeachment record.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) warned, “I fear that snap impeachments will become the norm, and they mustn't.”
Asked about efforts to erase Trump’s impeachment record, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) quoted the popular show “Succession”: “Logan Roy made a good point. These are not serious people.”
Romney, who was the GOP nominee for president in 2012 before Trump took over the party four years later, last year called Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) “morons” for speaking at a white nationalist event in Florida.
Asked this week about Tuberville’s defense of white nationalism and how it reflected on the GOP, Romney said: “Our party has lots of problems, add that to the list.”
The party of Reagan has transformed into the party of Trump, and to the dismay of some veteran Republican lawmakers, it doesn’t look like it’s going back to what it was anytime soon.
One ascendent young conservative leader, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who supported objecting to certifying Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, thinks the Republican Party’s embrace of populism is more than a passing fad.
He says the new era of politics is more than a battle between Trump allies and Trump haters, or even between Republicans and Democrats.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference two years ago, he declared: “We have been governed by a political consensus forged by a political class that has lost touch with what binds us together as Americans. And it has lost sight of the basic requirements of liberty.”
“The great divide of our time is not between Trump supporters and Trump opponents, or between suburban voters and rural ones, or between Red America and Blue America,” he said. “No, the great divide of our time is between the political agenda of the leadership elite and the great and broad middle of our society. And to answer the discontent of our time, we must end that divide.”
Justice Department officials and Hunter Biden’s attorneys are ramping up their pushback against Republican claims the president’s son received preferential treatment during the investigation into his failure to pay taxes.
Republicans released a transcript from an IRS whistleblower who questioned the integrity of the Biden tax probe just days after his attorney announced they reached an agreement with DOJ officials in Delaware that would mean no jail time but require Biden to plead guilty in relation to two tax crimes.
The deal — which has yet to be approved by a judge — and the investigation are already the subject of a three-committee probe after IRS investigator Gary Shapley alleged the criminal investigation was slow-walked by the DOJ.
But the GOP focus on Biden is now generating a firmer response, particularly since Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested the episode could be grounds for impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland.
One of Biden’s attorneys late last week penned a blistering letter accusing House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) of violating provisions that protect the confidentiality of tax information in his rush to release Shapley's testimony.
“Since taking the majority in 2023, various leaders of the House and its committees have discarded the established protocols of Congress, rules of conduct, and even the law in what can only be called an obsession with attacking the Biden family,” Biden attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a 10-page letter.
“The timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent — they came shortly after there was a public filing indicating the disposition of the five-year investigation of Mr. Biden. To any objective eye your actions were intended to improperly undermine the judicial proceedings that have been scheduled in the case. Your release of this selective set of false allegations was an attempt to score a headline in a news cycle — full facts be damned,” the letter continued.
Lowell complains the agents who spoke to the panel — Shapley and another unidentified person — had an “axe to grind” and assumed they knew better than prosecutors managing the five-year investigation.
Shapley asserts in his testimony that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss asked for a special counsel to charge Biden in the District of Columbia, where more egregious tax conduct occurred, but was denied. Shapley also said D.C. District Attorney Matthew Graves opposed bringing charges in the District of Columbia.
But Weiss has strongly rejected any claims his office did not zealously pursue the case, pushing back on the whistleblower’s claims. Weiss, a Trump appointee who was one of the few U.S. attorneys asked to stay on after President Biden took office, told lawmakers in June he had complete authority over how to handle the investigation.
Weiss late Friday said in a letter to Congress that he could have asked for special counsel status if he wished to bring charges in Washington, and he was assured that option was available.
“In my June 7 letter I stated, ‘I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.’ ... I stand by what I wrote and wish to expand on what this means,” Weiss said.
“As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district. If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” he added.
“If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary after the above process, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”
Weiss has agreed to meet with the committee to discuss the investigation further “at the appropriate time.”
Graves has denied stymying the Hunter Biden investigation, while Garland has said Weiss had full control to make any decisions he deemed necessary in the case.
The contradiction between the whistleblower and Weiss about where to charge Biden, and whether a special counsel and charging in D.C. was denied, is at the core of the House Speaker’s interest in an impeachment inquiry targeting Garland.
McCarthy said Garland’s assertion before Congress and the public that Weiss had full control over the investigation could be grounds for impeachment if it’s determined that Shapley’s testimony is true.
“He didn't get charged for some of the highest prosecution. They want to have a special counsel. And now we're seeing that the DOJ, the attorney general, declined that, even though he's saying something different,” McCarthy said on Fox News last week. “None of it smells right, and none of it is right.”
Republicans have ramped up their investigations since the plea deal.
Smith, along with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requested interviews with more than a dozen figures involved in the investigation to determine whether there was “equal enforcement of the law.”
The panel wishes to speak with numerous FBI, IRS and DOJ employees.
“It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law. These whistleblowers bravely came forward with allegations about misconduct and preferential treatment for Hunter Biden — and now face attacks even from an army of lawyers he hired,” Smith said in response to the letter from Lowell.
“Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with [the] rest of Congress. It doesn’t even address concerns that counsel for Mr. Biden was regularly tipped off about potential warrants and raids in pursuit of evidence that implicated him, as well as his father. We will continue to go where the facts take us — and we will not abandon our investigation just because Mr. Biden’s lawyers don’t like it,” Smith added.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Wednesday spearheaded a letter signed by the three House chairmen asking for the Office of Special Counsel to review any potential retaliation against Shapley and the other whistleblower since they came forward.
Shapley on Monday also submitted an affidavit saying he was not the source of leaks to the media about the Biden investigation, a possibility Lowell raises in his letter.
Biden last month struck a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to tax crimes and enter into a pretrial diversion program relating to unlawful possession of a weapon. The charges come after a five-year investigation into him.
Weiss said in a statement at the time the investigation was “ongoing.”
Garland has said he remained uninvolved in Weiss’s investigation, arguing the U.S. attorney’s independence was key to ensure a proper investigation was led by the facts.
He also defended the integrity of the Justice Department more broadly, pushing back on GOP claims of political bias.
“Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming we do not treat like cases alike. This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people,” Garland said in a recent press conference. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday shrugged off criticism of President Biden's son Hunter Biden attending a state dinner at the White House last week just after pleading guilty to tax crimes.
"You know, I think as the president explained, that's his son. That's a separate thing," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press," when asked if she thinks it was appropriate for Hunter Biden to be at the state dinner, which Attorney General Merrick Garland also attended.
The president's son was in attendance at the dinner held during the official state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. Court documents last week also revealed Hunter, who has been under investigation for tax matters for several years, will plead guilty to tax crimes in a plea deal with prosecutors, and reached a diversion agreement relating to unlawful possession of a weapon.
"And I would like to say about that, that decision was made by an independent prosecutor, who is a Trump appointed U.S. attorney, who had 10 years of experience, well-respected. [The] Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he was a registered Republican. He looked at the facts and evidence and made that decision," Klobuchar said of the legal development.
"And by the way, if that's what the Republicans want to run on, in the coming election, good luck," Klobuchar said.
Asked whether she wished the "perception" were different, Klobuchar said, "You always wish there are different perceptions."
Republicans have bashed the deal as too lenient on the president's son, with many attacking the Justice Department. Garland, who was also at the state dinner, has denied allegations of political interference in the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden.
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday weighed in on former President Trump’s indictment in connection with an investigation into his handling of classified documents, with many arguing that the news shows the former president and current 2024 candidate isn’t above the law.
“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who played a central role in Trump's first impeachment.
Trump, who is running for president in 2024, said on Thursday that his legal team had been told he was indicted and summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
“For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been,” Schiff said of Trump.
The California Democrat was also among the lawmakers who sat on the last congressional session’s House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, which criminally referred Trump to the Justice Department.
“The former twice-impeached president is now twice-indicted,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
“Twice impeached. Twice indicted. The only former president in history to face federal charges. This man is a national embarrassment,” wrote Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.)
Trump was also indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan earlier this year on criminal charges.
Democrats on Thursday took to Twitter to echo sentiments that the former president’s federal indictment proves the rule of law.
“No one is above the law,” wrote Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
“Never before has a former president been indicted for a federal crime," Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) tweeted. "By indicting Trump & holding him accountable for his actions, America’s justice system is once again showing its strength & reminding us all: No one is above the law in this country, not even former presidents."
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Trump will "have his day in court, in Miami and Manhattan and Atlanta too if it comes to it," celebrating the indictment from the Justice Department's special counsel.
He was referring to the latest federal indictment, the Manhattan indictment and a district attorney's probe in Georgia into 2020 election interference.
"But I am grateful to live in a nation where no man is above the law," he said.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) also called Trump "a con man who damaged our institutions, turned us against each other, and who will be finally held accountable by the country he tried to destroy."
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene confidently predicted President Joe Biden “will be impeached” following a bombshell report alleging he engaged in criminal activity.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced Wednesday that a whistleblower had come forth claiming the DOJ and FBI possess a file describing an alleged “criminal scheme” between Biden and a foreign national while he was serving as Vice President.
Comer subpoenaed the form in question which the accuser claims “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”
They claim the DOJ has the document in their possession.
Axios describes the claims as “the most direct allegation against President Biden himself.”
Comer’s subpoena is demanding the document within a week.
@RepJamesComer & @ChuckGrassley reveal the existence of an FBI record alleging then-VP Biden engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.
According to a whistleblower, this record details an alleged arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.… pic.twitter.com/6yLwPLi8Hw
Could Biden Be Impeached Over Alleged ‘Criminal Scheme’?
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a ‘breaking news’ video along with a copy of the joint letter from Grassley and Comer suggesting she now has “evidence” to prove President Biden’s alleged “criminal scheme.”
While the House Oversight Committee has not procured the document claimed to be in possession of the DOJ as of yet, Greene insists the group will continue to investigate Biden’s potential pay-for-play scheme with foreign nationals.
Greene claims the material would allegedly contain “proof and information that Joe Biden, as Vice President of the United States, actually interacted with a foreign national and made a deal with a foreign national in exchange for money.”
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) May 3, 2023
In a subsequent interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Greene suggests impeachment might finally be on the table.
“Now on the Oversight Committee, because we have real subpoena powers, we have the power to investigate and we have the power to do what we’re doing now,” she said.
“And that form shows the proof that Joe Biden took a money payment from a foreign national in exchange for policy decisions while he was vice president of the United States,” Greene claims.
She added: “This means that Joe Biden will be impeached.”
BREAKING: Chuck Grassley discusses the letter sent to the FBI after a Whistleblower revealed existence of an FBI record alleging then-VP Joe Biden engaged in a CRIMINAL bribery scheme with a foreign national. pic.twitter.com/bBL4Wc8zlo
Grassley, in an interview with Fox News’ Sandra Smith, reiterated that the whistleblower is viewed as “credible” by the Committee.
“So the Justice Department, the FBI needs to come clean to the American people, what they did with the document, because we know the document exists from very credible whistleblower information that we got,” insists Grassley.
“We really need to know what steps did the Justice Department and FBI take to investigate and to vet the document to determine if it’s accurate or not?”
If they saw the name Biden and viewed it as evidence of a ‘criminal scheme’ those steps most likely involved burying it as deep as humanly possible.
Where are 51 former intelligence officials when you need them! Quick, someone get Blinken on the phone!
“If the Justice Department and the FBI have any hopes of redeeming their once trusted position with the American people, Garland and Wray must answer this subpoena and tell us what they’re doing with this information that we think is very credible based upon what whistleblowers are telling us,” added Grassley.
The Iowa congressman has been at the forefront of investigating corruption in the Biden family.
Prior to this report, Grassley accused the FBI of hiding ‘potential criminal conduct’ by the Biden family.
Representative Comer recently suggested at least a dozen relatives of President Biden could be exposed in foreign money deals.
A statement from the White House does not expressly deny any of the accusations but blows off the whistleblower claims as more of the same from Republicans.
“For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against [Biden] without offering evidence for their claims,” tweeted spokesman Ian Sams.
For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against @POTUS without offering evidence for their claims. Or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested the allegations of criminal activity involving the “big guy” are so prevalent that he’s transferring the nickname ‘Crooked’ from Hillary Clinton to ‘Crooked Joe Biden.’
Comer has been indicating a press conference may come early this month where he intends to discuss the committee’s findings regarding “influence peddling” by Biden family members.
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Former President Trump responded Monday to the breaking news that the Justice Department is reviewing classified documents from President Biden’s tenure as vice president that were found last fall in a private office Biden had previously used.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump said on his Truth Social account, sharing an article on the document discovery from CBS News.
The Obama-Biden era documents were found by the president’s attorneys while clearing out an office he used when he served as an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, according to Biden’s special counsel Richard Sauber.
Biden’s legal team notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials, Sauber said. The documents are now reportedly being looked at by the U.S. attorney general for Chicago, with cooperation from the White House.
Trump was referring to the FBI’s execution of a search warrant last summer at his Mar-a-Lago residence, where investigators found more than a hundred classified documents kept past his time in the White House.
Trump is now under investigation for his handling of the classified materials.
“We were told for months that this was treasonous… grounds for impeachment... & meriting the death penalty, yet I have a feeling nothing will happen!?” wrote Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, retweeting the CBS article.
Notably, Biden’s team notified the Archives and turned over the documents upon discovery, while Trump apparently kept classified materials even after requests from the Archives to return them.
The Presidential Records Act requires that presidential and vice presidential records be turned over to the National Archives at the end of a given administration for preservation and to protect classified material.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, mocked conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
“This is not an Agatha Christie novel, we know exactly whodunnit,” he told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in an interview on Friday.
Raskin referred to unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories that antifa was responsible for the attack, saying the proponents of such theories should “bring the evidence forward” if they have any, but the bipartisan committee found no evidence of antifa being involved.
“It’s just impossible to think of any of this happening without Donald Trump being the central instigator of the whole thing,” he said.
The four charges the committee referred to the DOJ against Trump are obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements and inciting or providing aid and comfort to those participating in an insurrection.
The committee has also released dozens of transcripts from its interviews with key witnesses, including Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, former Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Raskin said the committee believes it has “comprehensive and overwhelming documentary proof” of all the charges it referred against Trump.
“We were, if anything, very conservative and very cautious in the charges that we advanced,” he said.
He said the committee hopes and trusts that the DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the department’s investigation, will do their job to hold “kingpins” involved responsible.
“There needs to be a serious reckoning of individual accountability for the people that set all of these events into motion,” Raskin said.
He also noted that Trump was the one who got the Capitol rioters to protest on Jan. 6. He said the groups were originally going to protest on Jan. 21, one day after President Biden was inaugurated, but Trump pushed for the day that Congress was set to read the votes of the Electoral College.
“He was the one that galvanized the extreme right in the country to focus on the peaceful transfer of power as the target of their wrath and violence,” Raskin said.
He said he believes Republicans who voted to acquit Trump during his second impeachment trial over his involvement in the insurrection are having “quitter’s remorse” as Trump has been “exposed to the world as the person who orchestrated all of these events to try to topple our constitutional order.”
“They’re very afraid that if they don’t nominate him, he will take 30 or 40 percent of the party with him,” Raskin said, referring to Trump’s candidacy for president in 2024. “And that could be the end of the GOP.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemingly celebrated the January 6 committee announcement of criminal referrals made against Donald Trump.
The highly partisan committee voted Monday to refer four criminal charges against Trump to the Biden Department of Justice over his alleged actions during the Capitol riot.
The panel suggested that President Biden’s DOJ investigate the former President for inciting insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the government, and conspiring to make a false statement.
McConnell still seemed pleased with the results, throwing in his lot with the Democrats and the liberal media.
“The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day,” he wrote in a statement following the news. “Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations.”
Mitch McConnell Pleased With January 6 Committee’s Criminal Referrals Against Trump
Mitch McConnell, much like the Democrats, is pleased with the January 6 committee’s criminal referrals against former President Trump.
Mitch McConnell, much like the Democrats, believes there was an “insurrection” and that despite Trump urging protesters to make their voices heard “peacefully,” he is to blame.
Most Importantly, Mitch McConnell, much like the Democrats, views the Capitol riot as an opportunity to rid the nation of Trump once and for all.
Hours after a mob ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described himself as “exhilarated” about the potential damage to then-president Donald Trump. https://t.co/61mcyKKcmT
According to a book titled, “This Will Not Pass,” Mitch was “exhilarated” that Trump had “totally discredited himself” just hours after the Capitol riot on January 6th.
He also took joy that Trump seemingly had ‘committed political suicide’ that day.
“I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” McConnell said. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
Who else gets “exhilarated” at the thought of Trump committing political suicide? Democrats and weepy eunuchs like Adam Kinzinger. How is Mitch McConnell any different?
BREAKING: President Trump promises to PARDON Jan. 6 prisoners if he runs and wins in 2024 pic.twitter.com/teYbYNBcuB
Donald Trump responded to the criminal referrals put forth by the January 6 committee on his Truth Social media platform. In one comment he noted the fact that the process of impeachment had already acquitted him of charges involving a so-called insurrection.
“The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2,” he wrote. “I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!”
“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me,” Trump added. “It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
In another comment, Trump mocked the committee as the “Democratic Bureau of Investigation.”
The DBI “are out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was,” he said, “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”
As for McConnell melding his statement with the narrative of the January 6 committee, Trump has had numerous choice words for the “Broken Old Crow” in the past.
Trump has repeatedly taken shots at Mitch McConnell ever since the Senate Minority leader vowed to be “done with” him.
The former President described Mitch as an “absolute loser” who has been giving Democrats “everything they want” and pressed the GOP to oust the Republican leader.
With his latest statement on the criminal referrals, McConnell once again gave Democrats everything they want. A soundbite and affirmation that the committee’s work wasn’t a sham.
The GOP needs to repeal and replace him from leadership.
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