I do think it was good that Shapley was given whistleblower protection and can testify and speak on this publicly. Also for those saying the media is trying to bury this the story including an interview with Shapley was just on CBS news.
they're certainly trying to "frame" the story, including Anna Navarro crying on MSNBC, and the times burying the lede in the 21st paragraph.
Whistleblower protection is a good thing. Let's wait and see how valid their claims are. We don't want this to be another Durham-type debacle.
...we don't? ...I actually kinda liked the Durham debacle. ...who wouldn't want some more of that? Remember, my friend: nothing's a lie until it's proven it isn't true. ...even the Donald is struggling to wriggle his way out from under that...
Even if it’s proven not true you still see people double down on it and just repeating the same claims. It’s obvious that there are many who won’t accept evidence that goes against their ideological view. The Durham thread here is a good example. In this case there is not just smoke regarding Hunter Biden as he has pleaded guilty to some charges already. How much more there is to Hunter Biden we don’t know but that is why it think it is correct for Shapley and others to get whistle blower protection and have an airing of the evidence against him. I would have no problem if Congress called Weiss and / or Garland to testify either.
Turley Was Garland Lying? New York Times Confirms Weiss was Blocked from Bringing Additional Charges https://jonathanturley.org/2023/06/...was-blocked-from-bringing-additional-charges/ excerpt: I am not sure what is worse: that Garland was clueless or duplicitous. Despite my support for his nomination, Garland has not been a success at Justice. Indeed, from the start, he seemed to shrink from view. There is also a danger of willful blindness on the part of Garland in avoiding such knowledge as underlings undermined Weiss. We simply do not know, but we need to know. In speaking with people at Justice, Garland does not appear to be a hand on manager in the model of Bill Barr. While he cannot be called a figurehead, he is certainly not someone who conveys operational or active control of the department. If Weiss was refused the ability to charge in two other jurisdictions, the key question is whether he did in fact ask for special counsel status. If so, Garland could be facing serious consequences, even an impeachment effort. The coverage by the New York Times suggests that the media may be forced to cover this story albeit reluctantly. For Democratic members, it is now becoming even more embarrassing. Democrats unanimously opposed the release of the recent evidence and have opposed efforts to investigate the Biden corruption scandal. more
Republicans may have a case for impeaching Biden. This isn’t it. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-h...ave-a-case-for-impeaching-biden-this-isnt-it/ "This isn't it" refers to the Boebert effort. Here is what Dershowitz believes might be actionable: The irony is that there might actually be constitutionally valid grounds for impeaching President Biden under two possible circumstances: 1) if it turns out that Biden’s son, Hunter, was actually sitting next to his father and was aware that he invoked the former vice president’s name when he communicated a threat to a Chinese businessman; and 2) if a high crime committed by a former vice president and future president during his interregnum as a private citizen can satisfy the criteria for impeachment. The first is a question of fact; the second is a matter of constitutional interpretation. I personally doubt that Joe Biden was aware that his son was invoking his name and power when and if he sent that possibly extortionate message. But if that message is real, it certainly requires that Hunter Biden be placed under oath to A) admit or deny he sent the message; B) admit or deny that he was telling the truth when he said his father was sitting next to him; C) admit or deny that his father was aware he was sending the message; D) admit or deny that his father was aware of the content of the message. The allegation that a former vice president and current president may have been complicit in an arguable extortion plot is a serious one that requires further investigation. In the unlikely event that it were to be confirmed, it would raise a profound, difficult and unresolved question of constitutional interpretations: namely whether a president can be impeached and removed for a high crime committed before he assumed the presidency. Extortion or attempted extortion is a high crime akin to bribery and thus – if proved – would be a constitutional ground for impeachment if it had been committed by a sitting president during his presidency. But what if it had been committed earlier? Vice President Spiro Agnew was accused of engaging in extortion and bribery. Although the accusation was made during his vice presidency, the alleged bribery occurred while he was still governor of Maryland (though he allegedly received some of the payments while vice president). He pleaded no contest to a tax felony as part of a plea bargain that included his resigning the vice presidency. Accordingly, we do not know whether he could have or would have been impeached for conviction while vice president of a serious felony he committed before assuming that office. It is unlikely that this question will be presented in the Biden case, because credible evidence may not exist proving that Biden committed any impeachable offenses between the time he served as vice president and president — or at any other time. But we won’t know that unless the current allegations, which include claims of incriminating recordings, are thoroughly investigated. more at the link
Let's say they message is 100% verifiable. Just because Hunter said Joe is sitting right there it doesn't mean he was. Hunter could be using it as clout or some kind of leverage. Like people telling an employeee "I'm friends with the owner and I am going to tell them you aren't giving me what I want." That is 100% different than Trump on an actual voice recording saying multiple times he is showing people classified documents.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/throw-...botage-shapley-4ae9aef0?mod=opinion_lead_pos5 Throw Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal in the Trash The IRS whistleblowers say Justice sabotaged the investigation, so how can the agreement stand? By Eileen J. O’Connor June 27, 2023 at 6:31 pm ET Supervisory Special Agent Gary A. Shapley Jr., a 14-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division, sat on May 26 for hours of sworn and transcribed testimony with members of the majority and minority staffs of the House Ways and Means Committee. On June 1, an IRS criminal investigator who chose to remain anonymous did the same. These whistleblowers came forward because they believe that Attorney General Merrick Garland gave false assurances to Congress when he testified that he had empowered U.S. Attorney David Weiss with full authority to investigate Hunter Biden’s alleged criminal activity and bring any resulting charges. The plea agreement reportedly reached between Mr. Weiss and the president’s son gives credence to the whistleblowers’ statements. The judge to whom that agreement is presented on July 26 ought to consider rejecting it. IRS special agents are the agency’s criminal investigators. They are the best in the world at tracking down the proceeds of crime. Because of this, they are frequently invited by other federal law-enforcement agencies to participate in matters far removed from tax crimes. They work hand-in-glove with assistant U.S. attorneys and Justice Department tax prosecutors to obtain search warrants and other authorizations necessary to explore leads. The IRS opened its investigation into Hunter Biden in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation it was conducting of a foreign-based amateur online p*rnography platform. In October 2019 the Federal Bureau of Investigation learned of certain devices, including laptops, that had been abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. According to Mr. Shapley, FBI agents had confirmed within weeks that the devices belonged to Mr. Biden and that their contents were authentic. After taking possession of the devices in December 2019, FBI agents notified the IRS that they likely contained evidence of tax crimes. Notwithstanding this notification and that the FBI had legitimate possession of the devices and unfettered access to their contents, Mr. Shapley’s testimony describes how prosecutors never permitted the IRS special agents to examine them. This is only one of the roadblocks the whistleblowers claim prosecutors threw in the way of their investigation into Mr. Biden’s financial dealings. The IRS special agents testified that they requested and were denied permission to search the guest house at Joe Biden’s Delaware mansion and the storage locker Hunter Biden maintained in Northern Virginia. The whistleblowers claim they had reason to believe they would find records in those locations of at least some of the numerous pass-through entities that reportedly served as conduits for illicit and likely unreported payments to Hunter Biden and possibly other members of his family. Federal rules provide that the government generally must prosecute an offense in the district in which it was committed. Charges brought in an improper venue can be dismissed. U.S. attorneys are the chief federal law enforcement officers for their districts. When a U.S. attorney discovers crimes that need to be charged in another district, he generally transfers the case and, if necessary, details some of his own staff to handle it. By June 2021, Mr. Weiss’s prosecution team had gathered enough evidence to understand that Delaware wasn’t the proper venue in which to prosecute Hunter Biden’s tax crimes. Crimes allegedly committed in 2014 and 2015 would have to be charged in the District of Columbia and those allegedly committed 2016-19 would have to be charged in the Central District of California. According to the whistleblowers’ testimony, the U.S. attorneys in the capital and Central California refused Mr. Weiss’s requests to charge Hunter Biden in their districts. Mr. Shapley testified that Mr. Weiss then asked “Main DOJ” to name him special counsel and was denied—possibly not for the first time. In March testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee the attorney general said that although he hadn’t made Mr. Weiss special counsel, he had given Mr. Weiss all the authority he needed to bring charges in any district he deemed appropriate. But on Oct. 7, 2022, Mr. Shapley claims, Mr. Weiss declared in a meeting of the prosecution team that in fact he wasn’t the final decision maker with respect to charges that might be brought against Hunter Biden. It was this statement that shocked and troubled Mr. Shapley such that he braved the consequences of becoming a whistleblower and sought legal counsel on how to do so. The Justice Department’s alleged foot-dragging and refusal to permit IRS special agents to follow the evidence allowed the statutes of limitations for 2014 and 2015 to expire, notwithstanding that Mr. Biden’s defense counsel had, according to Mr. Shapley, agreed to more than one extension. Far worse, Mr. Garland’s failure to designate Mr. Weiss a special counsel essentially guaranteed that Mr. Biden wouldn’t be prosecuted for any of his alleged tax crimes. The “criminal information”—the charging document in the absence of an indictment—prepared by Mr. Weiss’s office, to which Hunter Biden will reportedly plead on July 26, states that Mr. Biden received but didn’t pay federal taxes on “taxable income in excess of $1,500,000.00” in 2017 and in 2018. House Oversight Committee Republicans claim to have seen Treasury Department suspicious-activity reports suggesting that Mr. Biden received vastly more than that during the years the IRS was investigating. Judges can reject plea agreements. That would be an appropriate disposition here. And Congress, in fulfillment of its oversight obligation, must learn and share with the American public what evidence the IRS gathered, what evidence its agents weren’t permitted to obtain, and what charges might have been brought if they had. Ms. O’Connor, a Washington lawyer, headed the U.S. Justice Department’s tax division, 2001-07. Jay Starkman contributed to this article. Appeared in the June 28, 2023, print edition as 'Throw Hunter’s Plea in the Trash'.
https://thespectator.com/topic/walls-closing-joe-biden-corruption-hunter-irs-white-house-trump/ Are the walls closing in on ol’ Joe? You don’t have to choose between the allegations against Biden and Trump. Both sets could both be true June 27, 2023 | 5:18 pm by Charles Lipson Confronted with devastating evidence of Biden family grifting, the president’s advocates are abandoning their old defenses and trying some new ones. Some are attempting to change the subject. Nancy Pelosi offers a sterling example. Asked about the latest evidence connecting Joe Biden with Hunter’s corrupt schemes, she replied that she was too busy defending women’s reproductive rights. Not exactly a full-throated defense of the president. Still others are repeating the familiar refrain, “But Trump is worse.” (More on that in a minute.) Finally, a shrinking band of Biden supporters are sticking with their old line: you may have caught everyone who shares Joe’s DNA, but you haven’t caught ol’ Joe himself. That’s true, but the evidence of the president’s involvement is mounting and the allegations are detailed. The charges are so obvious and the evidence so serious that even mainstream reporters are asking about them. The president’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, stands mute. So does her more competent stand-in, John Kirby. KJP not only told the press she knows nothing, she told them she would not privately ask the president about the charges so she could respond to press inquiries. What Joe’s defenders are increasingly reluctant to say is, “He had absolutely nothing to do with the vast sums raked in by his son, brother, daughter-in-law and minor grandchildren. He knew nothing. He had no knowledge of the intricate web of shell companies his family used to move money around and hide its sources and recipients. He doesn’t know any honest business people who have used these covert methods. He did nothing to help his son, Hunter, his brother, James, or other family members. The president is completely ignorant of anything they did and did nothing to help them.” That’s his story. Many of Joe’s defenders have backed away from a straightforward declaration that “he’s innocent,” and instead render the Scottish verdict, “Not proven.” So far, they are right — the case isn’t proven yet. But the walls are closing in, both on Joe himself and on his defenders at the Department of Justice, IRS and FBI. As the evidence builds, so does the stench surrounding Hunter’s sweetheart deal with the US Attorney for Delaware, David Weiss. The charges Weiss filed could have been made after a month’s investigation, not the five years it took as the statutes of limitation ran out on various, more serious charges. The proposed deal looks less like justice and more like insider favoritism. The deal comes before a federal judge on July 26, and she may have the same questions. She has the authority to reject the deal. The Biden family’s problems go beyond this deal and beyond the latest revelation: Hunter’s threatening WhatsApp message to his Chinese business partner, which states that Joe was in the room with Hunter and joined in the threat. We now know that the message itself was real, but we don’t know if Joe was really sitting beside Hunter or participating in the transaction, as Hunter claimed. We do know the threat worked. The business partner, who is closely tied to senior members of the Chinese Communist Party, quickly sent another Hunter another $5.1 million. The larger problem for Joe Biden is that two whistleblowers from the IRShave made extremely detailed charges that political influence was used to delay and suppress the investigation of Hunter Biden and to prohibit any investigation that would touch Joe Biden himself. The whistleblower allegations are not vague suspicions; they are specific charges that can be investigated by House Republicans, using their subpoena power. Attorney General Merrick Garland has denied all those allegations, both in press conferences and in sworn testimony before Congress. US Attorney Weiss also denied the allegations in a letter to Congress. Garland has said Weiss can speak publicly about this and testify, if needed. Some testimony and congressional inquiry are needed because the charges are serious and the responses by Garland and Weiss flatly contract the whistleblowers’ statements. If the DoJ, FBI and IRS stonewall the investigation, the House could launch an impeachment inquiry against Garland. The immediate goal would not be to remove Garland but to breach the stone wall. Courts have ruled that, when Congress launches an impeachment inquiry, it has a right to all the Executive Branch’s relevant information for that inquiry. The disadvantage for Republicans is that voters want Congress to deal with issues that affect them directly — the economy, immigration, crime, inflation, and more — not launch more partisan investigations. Joe Biden’s vulnerability here goes beyond the evidence turned up by the House Ways and Means and Oversight Committees, and by Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson. It’s that the lower Joe Biden sinks in the polls and the weaker he looks for reelection, the less other Democrats will want to support him in the corruption inquiries. Still, Joe’s defenders do have one last line of defense, and it’s a familiar one. “What about Trump? Isn’t he worse?” As evidence of corruption, they point to Jared Kushner’s extremely lucrative deals in the Middle East, made after Trump left office. They have support from at least one articulate Republican, with a lot of prosecutorial experience, Chris Christie. He jailed Jared’s father years ago and has said the son’s deals are another sign of corrupt, insider politics. Whether Christie is right or not, the allegations that both Biden and Trump are corrupt makes false comparisons and misses the larger point. Take the Kushner deals. Jared wasn’t simply a nameplate, as Hunter was. Jared was a senior White House advisor and played a central role in facilitating the Abraham Accords (a term the Biden administration will not even utter). Second, after the Trump administration ended and Kushner got his deal, it was clear Jared was no longer inside Trump’s political circle and was out of favor with the former president. Third, Trump himself made his money not by monetizing his public position, but by inheritance, real estate projects, and television fame. In fact, holding public office probably cost Trump money, which was only partially offset by people staying at his Washington hotel. By contrast, public office was the real source of Biden family wealth. There is a larger point here. The most damning allegations against Donald Trump are very different from those against Joe Biden. They are that Trump sought to undermine our constitutional democracy by refusing to accept the outcome of a legitimate presidential election. Those charges are true; what’s still unproven is whether he did anything illegal in the process. Trump did refuse to accept the 2020 outcome and still refuses, as he made clear in a recent interview with Bret Baier on Fox News. Whether that refusal involved illegal acts is the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s inquiries about “fake electors” and encouraging January 6 rioters. (Those are separate from the charges about holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and lying about returning them.) The allegations against Joe Biden are that he was the centerpiece of a family enrichment operation, monetized his public position, that he was well aware of his son and brother’s activities, and that his allies in the DoJ and IRS blocked inquiries in this tangle of corruption. You don’t have to choose between the allegations against Biden and Trump. Sadly for our country, they could both be true. Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, and a Spectator contributing writer.
well this is inconvenient. "The Biden’s {sic} are the best at doing exactly what Chairman wants from this partnership. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.” Pretty sure this means "Bidens" plural, not singular possessive although I suppose it's always possible he meant "me, myself, and I"
more for the headline than anything else Who let the dogs out? CBS goes after Hunter Biden and Garland https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sis...s-goes-after-hunter-biden-and-garland-n561131
The difference between jared and Hunter was trump put jared on the payroll so he didn't have to name drop daddy. He gave him a business card and jared made hundreds of millions off it. The MAGA @Salvy are always naive @Os Trigonum @basso Difference is trump put his kids in power so they didn't need to work on boards. They're just as corrupt if not more as they made taxpayers money.
