Mere months after taking office in 2015, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton surrendered to authorities on three felony counts related to securities fraud. But after getting his mugshot taken and posting a $35,000 bond, Paxton spent the next nine or so years making sure that the law was a bludgeon to be used against other people. People who are not rich, white, politically empowered Republican men.
On Tuesday, weeks before that 2015 case was finally set to go to trial, the special prosecutors handling Paxton’s case announced a very special deal. Rather than facing a pair of first-degree felonies, each of which could have brought a minimum sentence of five years, and a third-degree felony that might have added at least two more, Paxton will face … zero years. Also zero months, zero days, and zero charges.
Instead, Paxton will agree to pay back the money he allegedly defrauded, attend a class on “legal ethics,” and do 100 hours of community service. He doesn’t have to pay a fine to the state. He doesn’t even have to plead guilty. Instead, all charges are dropped and Paxton can carry on with the vital work of threatening hospitals and protecting Texas’ right to drown children with razor wire.
Paxton’s get-out-of-felony-free deal comes six months after the state Senate acquitted him in an impeachment trial where he was clearly guilty. Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached in the Texas House in May 2023, on charges that included bribery, obstruction of justice, dereliction of duty, and misappropriation of public resources. In the middle of those charges was a scheme in which a wealthy donor reportedly provided a job to Paxton’s mistress and seven members of Paxton’s staff resigned.
But immediately following his impeachment, Donald Trump pressured Texas state senators to show their loyalty by acquitting Paxton, and in behind-the-scenes negotiations, none were willing to stand up and provide the critical vote that would have impeached the Texas AG.
Paxton was also allowed to skate by the state bar association, which said it couldn’t discipline Paxton for supporting false claims of election fraud. An almost four-year-old FBI investigation that began in relation to charges leveled by some of those who resigned from Paxton’s office has yet to result in any charges.
While benefiting from the immunity of the wealthy and politically connected, Paxton has continued to use the law as a club against those who aren’t so lucky. That includes his infamous war against Kate Cox, who sought to end a nonviable pregnancy that threatened her health and potentially her life. Cox was ultimately forced to leave the state to seek relief after Paxon appealed a district court decision that would have allowed her to obtain a medical abortion.
Paxton has also been on the forefront of claims about an immigrant invasion. That includes issuing a reply to a Supreme Court ruling in January, claiming that it “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America,” and seeking to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which can protect from deportation children who were brought into the country illegally. Paxton not only sued the federal government for cutting through barriers of razor wire, he also refused to consider removing that wire after a woman and two children drowned.
Like a lot of Republicans, Paxton seems to have a very strict view of the law when it is being used against someone else, and an absolute disdain for it when it’s turned his way.
But considering how many things he's gotten away with over so many years, Paxton has a right to feel like Texas law is a joke. And he always seems to get the last laugh.
Campaign ActionA cartoon by Clay Bennett.
Campaign ActionOn Wednesday, the Republican Party attempted, once again, to slander President Joe Biden. Using their control over the House Oversight Committee to hold yet another stunt hearing, ostensibly in their investigation of the president for possible impeachment. The hearing went so poorly that many are calling the evidence-free impeachment shenanigans officially dead.
The fact that Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz wore a Vladimir Putin Halloween mask to the committee hearing, in a playful bit of political theater, illustrated how absurd this farce has become. Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz pointed out that even Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Donald Trump’s bestest buddy, chose to bury the hearing on his nightly show. If you can’t get the same bozos who ran your evidence-free propaganda to run it anymore … them’s the breaks.
Rep. Eric Swalwell used his time to pronounce the sham inquiry “Dunzo. Bye bye. Rigor mortis. Lights out. Curtain drop. Mic drop. Peace. Adios. Sayonara. Au revoir. Or a language that you all understand, ‘Do svidaniya.’”
Swalwell even put a time on the death of the impeachment!
Like previous Republican-led hearings on the matter, this latest hearing was one Democratic representatives pulled no punches. Rep. Jasmine Crockett took her time to remind everyone that Hunter Biden testified for hours, and the GOP got nothing out of it. Crockett pointed out that the only person Republicans seem to be unwilling to subpoena is the person who generated the “evidence” they claim they are investigating: Rudy Giuliani.
“But, you know, kind of like when we were trying to get his cell phone, they shut it down, right?” Crockett said. “Like, they don't want the facts.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin allowed former Trump aide Lev Parnas to give some of the most damning testimony, casting absolute doubt on Giuliani’s “fact-finding” mission in Ukraine, and highlighting the complicity of right-wing propaganda operators like Sean Hannity in spreading misinformation.
The GOP “case” against the Biden family has consisted of disappointing "bombshell" evidence and star witnesses who contradict the Republican narrative. Last week, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee brought in former special counsel Robert Hur in an attempt to characterize the president as mentally unfit for office. It went poorly. Democratic members of Congress put together not one, not two, but three supercuts showing how bizarre Donald Trump is, once again making Biden’s competency as a world leader that much more striking.
Thoughts and prayers.
The president of the Center for American Progress, Patrick Gaspard, joins us to give his thoughts on what the Republican Party’s actual message is.
Campaign ActionIf Rep. Jared Moskowitz hadn’t won election to the House for Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, he might have been a roast master. Moskowitz has a special knack for mocking MAGA House Republicans, particularly Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
On Wednesday, Moskowitz wanted to make a point about just whose bidding Comer was doing before heading into a hearing on “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office.” The hearing was yet another chapter in House Republicans’ failing and increasingly embarrassing attempt to use allegations about Hunter Biden’s business dealings to impeach the president.
Moskowitz showed up for the hearing wearing a mask of Russian President Vladimir Putin as he walked down the hallway. House Democrats have accused Comer and other Republican committee members of spreading Russian disinformation about the Bidens.
RELATED STORY: House GOP can’t wait to have hearings on how old Biden really is
A reporter asked Moskowitz: “Congressman, can you explain what you are wearing?”
And acting in character, Moskowitz replied: “I just came to thank James Comer for taking all of our intelligence and using it in the committee. Maybe he can come see the technology in our grocery stores. Thank you.”
That reference to grocery stores was a dig at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who, during his visit to Moscow to interview Putin, posted a widely mocked video in which he praised a Russian grocery store for its low prices.
Another reporter then asked Moskowitz: “Congressman, don’t you think this behavior is kind of immature?”
Moskowitz did not reply and could be seen removing the mask as he entered the chamber.
Moskowitz’s masking was intended to draw attention to recent developments in the Biden impeachment inquiry when Republicans’ key witness, Alexander Smirnov, was arrested and accused of lying to authorities about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine. Then prosecutors revealed that Smirnov claimed extensive foreign contacts, including to officials linked to Russian intelligence, portraying him as part of an ongoing foreign plot to spread disinformation and interfere with U.S. democracy.
So far, the exhaustive and lengthy investigation by House Republicans has not turned up any substantial evidence showing that President Biden engaged in any wrongdoing.
All joking aside, Moskowitz can be serious too. This is what he said about the impeachment inquiry in February during a CNN Interview:
But Moskowitz, a member of the committee, often uses humor to make his point. After Smirnov’s arrest was revealed, Moskowitz mocked Comer with a gif of the “you sit on a throne of lies” line from the movie film “Elf.”
“The witness of the FD-1023 form was just indicted for making it all up,” wrote Moskowitz, who quoted a post by Comer where he cited an FBI form that documented Smirnov’s claims.
And back in November, when Moskowitz brought up allegations about Comer’s own business dealings with his brother, Comer said the Florida Democrat looked like a “Smurf.” To which Moskowitz responded on X: “Gargamel was very angry today.”
During another hearing, Moskowitz expected that one of the Republicans on the committee might attack Hunter Biden for naked photographs reportedly found on his laptop, The Daily Beast reported. So he was prepared when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia whipped out the nude photos of Hunter Biden at the January hearing. Moskowitz then held up an enlarged photo of Trump with his arm around convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
He told Greene: "You come up here and talk about Hunter Biden’s behavior, and you’re so disgusted, but the guy that you all kneel to associates himself with a pedophile.” Moskowitz told The Daily Beast at the time that it’s the Democrats’ job to give the committee’s Republicans a “taste of their own medicine.”
“They’ve decided to turn it into Cirque du Soleil Oversight where literally, it’s just a total show,” Moskowitz said. “If that is the game that they are going to play, then game on.”
RELATED STORY: GOP seeks new way to attack Biden since impeachment scheme is a bust
Campaign ActionThe House Republicans’ big plans to impeach President Joe Biden have imploded, forcing them to acknowledge they don’t have the votes to impeach on the flimsy evidence they’ve scraped together. So they’re trying to figure out how to make 14 months of wasted time investigating Biden look like it was serious, and have come up with the idea of packaging it all up in a criminal referral and sending it to the Department of Justice.
That’s coming straight from House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s mouth. You know Comer, the hapless bumbler who admitted last spring that he couldn’t find any Biden crimes, but kept on “investigating” anyway, only to see all those months of nonsense blown out of the water when it was revealed last month that one of his star witnesses was being fed false information by Russian agents.
So it’s time to pivot. “At the end of the day, what does accountability look like? It looks like criminal referrals,” Comer recently told Fox New host Sean Hannity. “It looks like referring people to the Department of Justice. … If Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice won’t take any potential criminal referrals seriously, then maybe the next president, with a new attorney general, will.”
This new strategy seems to come at the direction of Donald Trump, who’d love to have locking Biden up as a central campaign theme this year. Comer’s interview with Hannity came shortly after Comer just so happened to run into Trump while having lunch with Trump donor Vernon Hill at one of Trump's Florida properties. What a coincidence they bumped into each other!
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Republicans took their marching orders from Trump. One MAGA lawmaker, Texas Rep. Troy Nehls, even admitted that the motivation for him on impeachment was to give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” at Biden in this year’s presidential race. Just like how Republicans killed the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill, on Trump’s orders.
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirms they are talking about criminal referrals, but he won’t commit to it. He told CNN he’s just been too busy to keep up with the investigations. “To be very frank with you, very honest and transparent because I’ve been so busy with all my other responsibilities, I have not been able to take the time to do the deep dive in the evidence, but what has been uncovered is alarming,” but that there’s “more deliberation to be done on it that’s for sure.”
There sure is. The decision to make a criminal referral against a sitting president—knowing that the Department of Justice would almost certainly have to defer it—isn’t something all Republicans relish. Even the hard-line conservative and very shady California Rep. Darrell Issa is throwing cold water on the idea, telling The New York Times, “We don’t refer a seated president for criminal charges.” He added that maybe they could make criminal referrals for Biden family members, “but most of what we’ve discovered they already knew.”
Vulnerable Republicans, whom Johnson desperately needs to keep the House majority, likely want to distance themselves from the whole thing. One of them, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, told CNN that he has way more important things to deal with. “I’m focused on five or 10 things other than that right now,” he said.
What happens next will have to be decided by the whole conference, and Johnson is going to have to lead. With Trump and MAGA members pressing for criminal referrals and plenty in the conference just wanting to forget the whole thing, it’s going to cause even more dissension in the ranks.
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The ripple effects of the Dobbs decision are impacting not only the right to an abortion but also abortion funding, IVF, and even recreational sex. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is Grace Panetta, a political reporter at The 19th who has closely covered the electoral consequences of this ever-widening set of issues. Panetta highlights key races this year where reproductive rights will take center stage, including ballot initiatives in multiple states, efforts to repeal bans on public funding of abortions, and an upcoming special election in Alabama, the state that just thrust IVF into the limelight.
Campaign ActionTuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with special counsel Robert Hur showcased Republican desperation to find some way to attack President Joe Biden.
Despite the release of a full transcript of the interview between Hur and Biden that showed complaints about the president’s memory to be exaggerated, if not outright lies, many Republicans continued to pursue the Biden-so-old route. Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran went so far as to suggest that Biden should be placed under guardianship for diminished mental capabilities.
At the same time, committee Chair Jim Jordan was one of multiple Republican members who asked Hur to envision fantasy scenarios in which the president was 15 or 20 years younger. That was part of an extended, and sometimes laughably desperate, effort by Republicans to get Hur to say that somehow, somewhen, somewhere in the multiverse, he might have considered charging Biden. They did not succeed.
But the biggest reason for the Hur hearing wasn’t just to give a chance to alternate between asking whether Biden should be in a care facility or if he’s a criminal mastermind. The reason that the Republicans called in Hur is that their big impeachment scheme has fallen apart. Now they are madly searching for something, anything, that they can throw against the walls of the White House.
As Politico reported on Wednesday, the Republican plan to impeach Biden appears to be all but dead. That effort began as soon as Republicans had their hands on the machinery of the House, with Rep. James Comer chairing the House Oversight Committee running a parallel “investigation” with Jordan on the Judiciary Committee and Chairman Jason Smith on the Ways and Means Committee. It reached its ludicrous peak on Sep. 12, 2023, when then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry in a blatant effort to hang onto his big office. That didn’t work.
By the time Hunter Biden made his way to a closed-door meeting of the inquiry on Feb. 28, 2024, it seemed clear Republicans were only spinning their wheels. Despite hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Republicans had produced nothing more than some truck payments, family loans, and a heavily debunked claim from an indicted foreign agent.
However, as the Politico article notes, Republicans see it as a high priority to “antagonize the White House.”
It might seem that getting some legislation passed after a session in which Republican infighting resulted in just 27 bills escaping the House (that includes renaming some Veterans Affairs clinics and issuing a commemorative coin). But Republicans are convinced that demonstrating competence in governing doesn’t matter to their voters.
So they are just going to throw crap against the walls of the Capitol in the hopes that some of it might stick.
Among the Republican Plan Bs under consideration are:
Sending criminal referrals for Hunter Biden to the Justice Department.
Keep investigating, but save any announcements for closer to Election Day.
Just keep investigating and making false claims—because that’s worked so well so far.
There’s also a plan to sue the Department of Justice, though it’s not clear why.
There’s even a suggestion that Republicans might do something that seems anathema to them so far—draft legislation. In this case, it would be legislation to tighten rules for financial reporting and foreign lobbying.
However, not only would this require them to break out a pencil stub and do the work they’ve resisted since taking control of the House in 2023, it would also mean drafting something that would pass the Senate. It could be exceedingly difficult to craft a bill on financial reporting that didn’t have a much bigger impact on Donald Trump than Biden. Ditto on issues of foreign lobbying.
The problem for Republicans is that Trump and his family did all the things they’ve been attributing to Biden and his family. Which would seem to make the legislative route difficult without netting the wrong fish.
Other options, like the idea of making a criminal referral on Hunter Biden, would be an obvious exercise in toothless grandstanding. But that hasn’t seemed to bother Republicans so far, so this is likely what they’ll do.
Republicans are reportedly so far away from mustering enough support for a Biden impeachment that even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson can see that such a move would fail. But they’re unwilling—and possibly incapable—of trying to dig their way back to respectability by passing legislation that addresses the nation’s needs.
So they’re going to sit among the ashes of their very fine impeachment inquiry and try to find something else ugly enough to please MAGA voters. So far, they’ve got nothing.
The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell joins Kerry to discuss the State of the Union and what President Biden needs to do to soundly defeat Donald Trump in Novembe.
Campaign ActionHouse Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan has grasped at every straw in his quest to avenge Donald Trump and impeach President Joe Biden, including the one straw held out to him by an alleged Russian mole. That having blown up embarrassingly in his face, Jordan appears to be leading his committee into another fiasco.
Jordan’s latest effort is his investigation into just how old Biden is, with a hearing Tuesday. His star witness is special counsel Robert Hur, the Department of Justice official who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents and found that no criminal charges were warranted. Hur did, however, throw in some gratuitous hits on Biden’s age in his report, which legal experts have called “a partisan hit job.”
Hur probably won’t deliver what Jordant wants, according to sources involved with preparing Hur’s testimony who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. Hur is “intent on turning down the political temperature surrounding his report,” the Journal reports, and to try to explain why he included the extraneous bits about Biden’s memory. Those details, Hur is expected to say, “were necessary to explain his team’s decision that charges weren’t justified.”
That’s problem No. 1 for Jordan. Problem No. 2 is that Biden himself blew the “Biden is too old” narrative clear out of the water with last week’s State of the Union address. Biden adeptly scrapped with Republican hecklers, forcefully laid out his agenda and earned news reports declaring him aggressive, energetic, fiery, feisty, and forceful. Biden’s speech didn’t just wow the pundits—it seems to have impressed voters. Public opinion soared in quick polls conducted after the speech.
That’s going to make arguing that this man is too doddery and feeble to be trusted with the nation’s security a little tough for Jordan and team. It also gives Democrats on the committee a chance to swing for the fences on Donald Trump’s fitness to lead, particularly his alleged classified documents crimes.
Because what Republicans tended to ignore in Hur’s report was the part where he compared Trump’s and Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur pointed out that “after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” and that Trump “not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”
On the other hand, Hur wrote, “Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.” You can be sure that the Democrats on the committee are going to be teasing out every detail of that comparison, putting Hur on the record against Trump.
Thus Jordan’s star witness is shaping up to be a hostile one, the whole premise of the hearing has fallen apart, and he’s opening up the congressional record for more official testimony from a representative of the Department of Justice about Trump’s abuse of power. This might just be fun.
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Campaign ActionEver since they launched their “investigation” into supposed misdealings by members of President Joe Biden’s family, Republicans have clamored to get Hunter Biden behind closed doors. On Wednesday, that finally happened, but those same Republicans can’t be too happy about the results.
Thanks to the insistence of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who didn’t want the results of this appearance buried along with 91 other transcripts that Republicans have refused to release, the full transcript of Hunter Biden’s six-hour deposition is now available.
What it shows is by turns hilarious and infuriating. Republicans clearly have no evidence that President Joe Biden has ever done anything wrong in connection to his son or his son’s business. Hunter’s testimony only showed the tragedy of his experience with drugs, how far Republicans were willing to go to indulge conspiracy theories, and how trivial all Hunter’s business dealings were in comparison to something that really does deserve investigation: the $2 billion reward lavished on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Hunter Biden was 2 years old when his father became a senator, and everything he had to say about his professional relationship could be summed up in one response that Hunter gave to a question by Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Transcript quotations have been slightly edited for readability.
Hunter: There was one thing that we—that I was fully aware of my entire life, is that my dad was an official of the United States Government, and there were very bright lines that I abided to and that I was very, very cognizant of. And I made certain that I never engaged with my father in asking him to do anything on my behalf or on behalf of any client of mine.
Republicans spent a lot of the day repeating wild claims about Hunter’s business dealings and trying to get him to admit to at least some of the connections they have been alleging for months. That never happened. That single response by Hunter was never seriously challenged.
However, there were some satisfying exchanges, as when Hunter took questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz. Republicans have been claiming from the beginning that Hunter Biden had no value to the businesses where he worked beyond his last name, and Gaetz went right to this point.
Gaetz: What value did you bring to Burisma?Hunter: I would love to, again, read you the entirety of my resume.
Gaetz: No, that's the things you did before Burisma. I mean, when you were working at Burisma –
Hunter: Well, that's the value that I brought to Burisma. The things that I did before, my experience, the vast experience that I had. I was on over 13 different boards. I was the chairman of the board of the largest humanitarian organization, that supports the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I was the vice chairman of the board of the largest national passenger rail system.
Gaetz: Mr. Biden, I don't need you to go back through your resume.
Hunter: You just asked –
Gaetz. The question is, how did you deploy that experience for a million bucks a year for Burisma?
Hunter: How did I deploy that experience? By serving on the board in a transparent and ethical way, providing the best advice that I could give. Just like any other board member on any other company in any other organization, that's how you provide your value. And the value is your experience. The value is your ability to then transfer that experience into real-world action.
Like other Republican questioners, Gaetz failed to get an answer that handed him any ammunition he could use against Joe Biden or any reason for the farcical investigation to continue.
But Gaetz got some extra special feedback as he tried to spin out a ludicrous conspiracy that Hunter was going to provide his father with an office at his company based entirely on an email in which Hunter expressed a desire to show off some empty office space to his parents. After Hunter pointed out that he had never provided any office space to Joe Biden, Gaetz pounced … Or at least, he thought he did.
Hunter: My dad never took an office space with me.Gaetz. No, but you were contemplating it in this email.
Hunter: I contemplated a lot of things during that time.
Gaetz. And that's what—see, because earlier you say, "My father, firewall, had nothing to do with my business," and now you're contemplating giving him keys to your office to redeem yourself.
Hunter: How is contemplation … Let me ask a question. How is contemplation of something evidence of involvement? I alone contemplate. I contemplate that one day you and I are going to be great friends. Is that ever going to happen, Mr. Gaetz? I don't think so.
Gaetz also got some very direct pushback when he asked a question about Hunter’s drug use.
Hunter: Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?
Gaetz: Absolutely.
Hunter: Of all the people sitting around this table, do you think that’s appropriate to ask me?
Other Republican representatives repeatedly asked Hunter whether he had received money from foreign governments, including China, Ukraine, and ... Romania? To all of these questions, Hunter firmly answered that he had never worked for or received pay from any foreign government. Unlike someone else.
Hunter: The question being asked, that you're stating, is that my father said that I never received any money from China, the Government of China. Unlike Jared Kushner, I've never received money from a foreign government. He –
Hunter was cut off in his response on this occasion, as he was on a second occasion when he tried to point out that Kushner flew to Saudi Arabia and “picked up $2 billion.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no. Not ‘okay,’” Hunter replied after Rep. Harriet Hageman implied he had taken money from Romania. “I never worked for a country. I am not Jared Kushner. I never got money from a country. Not one foreign government ever gave me money, guys—none, zero, not one.”
When it came time for questions from Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, the back and forth showed just how small everything under investigation was when compared to what the Republicans refused to look into.
Swalwell: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?Hunter: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.
Swalwell: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?
Hunter: No.
Swalwell: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?
Hunter: No. And I don't think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.
Swalwell: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?
Hunter: No, he has not, thank God.
Swallwell: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion-dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?
Hunter: No.
Swalwell: That's all I've got.
A number of moments in the hearing are eye-rolling, and a number are heartbreaking. Hunter Biden never once shies away from explaining the devastating effect his addiction to drugs had on his life, how he struggled for recovery, and how he wanted to make his parents proud. Republicans constantly tried to get him to admit that his drug use made him worthless as a means of showing that he had no value to the companies he dealt with, but Hunter constantly refused to give them what he wanted.
In the end, two statements from Hunter Biden’s opening remarks may be the best representation of what this hearing was all about, and how despicable it is that this Republican smear campaign has gone on so long.
Hunter: You have built your entire partisan house of cards on lies told by the likes of Gal Luft, Tony Bobulinski, Alexander Smirnov, and Jason Galanis. Luft, who is a fugitive, has been indicted for his lies and other crimes; Smirnov, who has made you dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father, has been indicted for his lies; Bobulinski, who has been exposed for the many false statements he has made; and Galanis, who is serving 14 years in prison for fraud.Rather than follow the facts as they've been laid out before you in bank records, financial statements, correspondence, and other witness testimony, you continue your frantic search to prove the lies you and those you rely upon keep peddling. Yes, they are lies.
And finally, Hunter Biden gave what might be the most important statement of the day, one that should resonate with anyone in any party.
Hunter: During my battle with addiction, my father was there for me. He helped save my life. His love and support made it possible for me to get sober, stay sober, and rebuild my life as a father, a son, a husband, and a brother. What he got in return for being a loving, supportive parent is a barrage of hate-filled conspiracy theories that hatched this sham impeachment inquiry and continue to fuel unrelenting personal attacks against him and me.
If the goal of the deposition was to make Joe Biden seem like an even better father, Republicans succeeded.
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