While Donald Trump faces dozens of felony charges in New York and Florida and grand juries in Georgia and the District of Columbia are considering more felony charges relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, Trump and his Republican henchmen and women are increasingly desperate to implicate President Joe Biden in criminal activity to keep up the “both sides do it” charade.
Trump’s rants on his “Truth Social” website became increasingly unhinged after he received a “target letter” from the Department of Justice July 16, indicating a grand jury in Washington was close to indicting him over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and broader efforts to overturn the election results.
“Every time you see these Radical Lunatics and their partners in the Fake News Media talking about the ‘Trials and Tribulations’ of President Donald J. Trump, please remember that it is all a coordinated HOAX… in order to STEAL ANOTHER ELECTION through PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT at levels never seen before in the U.S.,” Trump ranted July 23, adding, “[Attorney General] Merrick Garland, Deranged Jack Smith, and coordinating Democrat ‘Prosecutors’ in New York and Atlanta, have become the Campaign Managers for the most corrupt and incompetent President in United States history, Joe Biden!”
Republicans in Congress have tried to dig up evidence implicating President Biden through Hunter Biden’s business activities while Joe Biden was vice president. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Judiciary chairman, and other Republicans have spent months chasing conspiracy theories in their probe of what Republicans call “the Biden crime family.”
In May the Trumpists found an informant they believed could provide incriminating details. Comer scheduled a press conference to unveil “devastating” information about Joe Biden’s imagined corruption. It would be “judgment day” for Biden, Comer said, predicting the scandal would make “Watergate look like jaywalking.”
The next day, Republicans released financial documents that showed Hunter was paid more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017. But they had no evidence of any corrupt action by Joe Biden in connection with any of his son’s business deals.
Later, Comer told Maria Bartiromo at Fox “News” the problem was an important anti-Biden witness had disappeared. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there,” he said. Asked if his anti-Biden informant “is now missing,” Comer replied, “Well, we’re hopeful that we can find the informant.” He added, “Remember these informants are kind of in the spy business.”
Two months later, it turned out that the Republicans’ elusive informant was Gal Luft, a dual citizen of the US and Israel who has been charged with being an unregistered agent for China, trying to broker secret arms deals, violating US sanctions against Iran, and lying to federal agents. And he’s on the lam.
Of course, Republicans offered this as proof that federal law enforcement is part of an elaborate conspiracy to protect Democrats.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released an FBI document relating to the Hunter Biden investigation July 20, in a reckless effort to hurt President Biden. The FD-1023 is used to record “raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources,” the FBI explained. The forms “do not represent the results of investigations, and “recording this information does not validate it [or] establish its credibility.” Releasing the forms could lead to threats against informants, the FBI warned. Grassley didn’t mind running that risk.
The form Grassley released, dated June 26, 2020, claims to be sourced from an unidentified businessman who was introduced to leadership at Burisma energy holdings in Ukraine in “late 2015 or early 2016” to help the company find a US company to purchase. During a meeting with Burisma leadership, the source claims he was told Hunter Biden was put on the company board to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” When he asked why Hunter wasn’t doing the job of locating a US firm to purchase, he’s told that “Hunter is not that smart.”
Finally, the source reported that Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevsky told him the company had to pay $5 million to Joe Biden and another $5 million to Hunter Biden because Burisma was being investigated by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, and Burisma needed Biden to “deal with Shokin.”
However, there are a number of problems with these claims. First, Hunter Biden was not just the son of the vice president when he was placed on the board of Burisma in 2014; he had years of experience in lobbying, investment banking and corporate governance, which could help an energy company looking to expand internationally. And Shokin was fired in 2016, voted out by the Ukrainian parliament after Joe Biden made it clear that the US might withhold or delay assistance to Ukraine unless Shokin was removed. But Shokin was fired because he was not investigating cases of corruption when Ukrainian oligarchs were making off with billions. Both the US and UK governments had been pressuring Ukraine about Shokin for over a year before Joe Biden’s visit. In fact, what upset the UK government most was that Shokin was refusing to investigate Burisma.
The FBI had nearly seven months, under Trump’s DOJ, with his hand-picked FBI Director Christopher Wray, to check out the informant’s allegations, but agents apparently found nothing to back it up.
Marcy Wheeler also explored the peculiarities of the legend of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which claims Hunter wandered into a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019, handed over a damaged laptop, completely forgot about it afterward, and the computer repairman eventually turned over the laptop to Rudy Giuliani.
Wheeler noted that in 2018 or early 2019, Hunter Biden was the target of a hack that gave an outside party access to his iCloud account, email accounts, and other data. While Hunter was receiving addiction treatment, with “limited” access online, someone was making technical changes to Hunter’s iCloud, Venmo and email accounts, raising doubts about the provenance of items found on the laptop.
Hunter Biden made some bad decisions, and he may have profited off his father’s name, but he was not representing the US, and the only crimes traced to him by a federal prosecutor were failure to pay taxes and making a false statement to get a gun — which was not used in a violent act. Hunter Biden reached a plea bargain with the federal prosector to pay the back taxes and plead guilty on the gun charge. A fine and probation was expected, before a US District Judge in Delaware refused to accept the plea bargain July 26.
We wouldn’t support Hunter for public office, but we don’t blame Joe Biden for continuing to support his only surviving son’s recovery from addiction. Republicans of good faith should turn their attention to actual crimes committed by Trump and his family. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2023
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