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Life Not so Peachy for Biden as Impeachment Looms

By James Tweedie – Sputnik -13.09.2023

Joe Biden is now facing a congressional probe into his alleged influence-peddling abroad. Ted Harvey, a former senator in the Colorado state legislature, said the allegations were more damaging than impeachment proceedings would be.

Moves to impeach US President Joe Biden will undermine his political support and leadership of the Democratic Party, says a former state legislator.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s shady business dealings abroad — including in Ukraine during Biden’s time as vice-president to Barack Obama.

Files on Hunter Biden’s abandoned “laptop from hell” and testimony by whistleblowers indicate that the Democrat president sat in on online meetings with his son’s partners where payments in return for political influence were negotiated.

Fellow Republican Ted Harvey told Sputnik that the three main grounds for impeaching a president were “treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors,” and there was copious evidence Biden was guilty of “one of the top two, bribery.”

“The more that comes out about what then Vice President Joe Biden did and his son did and his family did, it rises to the level of bribery and there’s bank statements that show the money coming in,” he pointed out. “There’s bank statements showing that they were distributing the money to various family members.”

“Though most speakers don’t want to do an impeachment, I think that the evidence is getting to a point where they have no other choice than to at least do a very serious investigation and all of the subpoena powers that come along with that,” Harvey said. “And I think it’s only going to get worse for Biden and the Democrats as this unfolds over the next year.”

The pundit argued that Biden’s grip on power was looking more tenuous as Democrats were now “getting very nervous with where the president is in his poll numbers.”

“And then he goes on his trip to Vietnam and Asia, and he is embarrassing not only the country, but he’s embarrassing himself,” Harvey said. “I’m as a partizan of a Republican as you can get, but I felt sorry for the president. Our country is in a terrible position right now where somebody who is obviously lost his cognitive abilities is leading the free world.”

He said Democrats were reluctant to “throw him overboard” before the next election as “Kamala Harris isn’t much better, and it puts their party in even worse position from a public polling perspective.”

But McCarthy continues to drip-feed damaging information on the Biden family to the media — a move seemingly focused on attacking Biden politically, not legally.

“It’s good politics to not provide all of the information that they have on the president until it gets closer to the election, and puts the Democrats in a bind where they already have their horse that they’ve chosen to ride into the 2024 election” Harvey said. “And I think he’s going to be a very compromised the more information that comes out.”

An impeachment may backfire, especially as the Republicans lack the numbers in the Senate to carry it through.

“You don’t want to strengthen Joe Biden. If you look at Bill Clinton when he was impeached, he left office as the most popular president ever and still is the most popular president ever from a polling perspective,” Harvey noted. “Look at Trump — he was impeached twice, and now he’s winning the Republican nomination by 60 percent and he’s beating Joe Biden.”

September 13, 2023 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

Nonstop Media Bias From Russiagate to the Biden-Crime-Family Coverup

By Victor Davis Hanson | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 4, 2023 

Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter’s influence-peddling businesses.

The president further prevaricated that he had no involvement in Hunter’s various shake down schemes.

Yet, the media continued to misinform by serially ignoring these facts.

Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election.

The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.

Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.

Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.

They again discounted Hunter’s laptop that explicitly demonstrated that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father Joe — variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.

They played dumb about Joe Biden’s use of pseudonyms and alias email accounts to hide thousands of his communications to Hunter and associates.

They attacked the former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who now claims Biden was likely bribed by Ukrainians.

Yet the media can no longer hide the reality that the president of the United States likely took bribes to influence or alter US policy to suit his payers.

Those two crimes — bribery and treason — are specifically delineated in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.

In denial, the media has instead pivoted with hysterical glee over various weaponized prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.

But now, to use a progressive catchphrase, the proverbial “walls are closing in” on Joe Biden.

So will we at last expect the media finally to confront the truth?

Answer — only if Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health continues to deteriorate geometrically to the point that he can no longer finish his term or run for reelection — and thus becomes expendable.

Such a cynical view of the media is justified given their record of both incompetence and unapologetic deceit.

From 2015 to 2019, we were suffocated 24/7 with lies like “Russian collusion,” “Putin’s puppet,” “election rigging” and the “Steele dossier.”

When all such “evidence” was proven to be a complete fraud cooked up through Hillary Clinton’s stealthy hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution and a Clinton toady in Moscow, did the media apologize for their untruth?

Was there any media confessional that perhaps Robert Mueller and his leftwing legal team (the giddy media-dubbed “all-stars,” “dream team,” and “hunter killers”) proved a colossal waste of time?

Not at all.

Instead, the media went next right on to “the phone call” and “impeachment.”

The country then wasted another year.

The same biased reporters now claimed that the heroic Andrew Vindman had caught Trump fabricating lies about the Bidens — given Joe Biden was a possible 2020 opponent — to force Ukraine to investigate them or lose American foreign aid.

On that accusation Trump was impeached.

A group of 51 former intelligence agency officials claimed that The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

Then the truth emerged that unlike Joe Biden, Trump never threatened to cancel aid, but merely to delay it.

Trump was right that the Bidens were knee deep in Ukrainian bribes and influence peddling.

And that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the Trump call but was spoon fed a script cooked up by the gadfly Vindman and California Rep. Adam Schiff.

The result was journalistic glee that we impeached a president for crimes that he did not commit but exempted another president, Biden, who had likely committed them.

Then came the next hoax of the Russian fabricated facsimile of Hunter’s laptop.

The FBI later admitted it had verified the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop.

The 2020 Biden campaign along with an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.

Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.

The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and by extension Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.

No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.

Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.

For the last eight years, a discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again, when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.

September 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Use of Aliases in Emails is a ‘Problem’, High-Flying DC Lawyer Says

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 02.09.2023

The chairman of the Republican-controlled House committee investigating the Biden family over an alleged large-scale pay-to-play influence peddling scheme indicated this week that a formal impeachment probe may be “imminent.” The White House responded by mustering a lawyer-packed ‘war room’ to push back against any investigations.

Joe Biden’s use of an array of aliases during his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president to communicate with his son Hunter “could cost him” politically, renowned Washington, DC-based attorney and legal analyst Jonathan Turley has suggested.

In an op-ed commentary on the revelations by the National Archives this week that there were over 5,000 emails potentially linked to Biden pseudonyms, which House Republicans want released ASAP, Turley indicated that the problem isn’t so much his use of aliases, as why the president may have used them.

“For many Americans, it is understandably unnerving to learn that their president has more aliases than Anthony Weiner. However, while the number seems unusual, the practice is not unprecedented,” Turley wrote, pointing to the use of fake names in communications between other Obama-era officials, including former Attorney Generals Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

“The problem” with the aliases used by the Bidens “is that there was ‘work’ being discussed on some of these emails, including official foreign travel plans and the hiring of associates of Hunter for high-level positions,” the legal analyst added.

“Most importantly, some emails are relevant to the clients of Biden’s son. Biden has previously lied that he knew nothing of those dealings, but these emails could reveal even more about his knowledge and involvement,” Turley stressed.

If they were somehow released, the emails could severely undermine the pro-Biden talking point being peddled by some Democrats that Hunter’s pay-to-play scheme was about selling the “illusion” of access to his powerful father, rather than access itself.

But foreign clients “obviously” thought that they were “buying more than an illusion for the millions they spent,” Turley argued, pointing to the example of a Ukrainian businessman who characterized Hunter as someone who was “dumber than his dog, but… paid him anyway for access to his father.”

The congressional testimony of former Hunter business associate Devon Archer also challenges the ‘illusion’ talking point, Turley added, recalling Archer’s recollections of Burisma executives “calling DC” for assistance while being probed for corruption by a Ukrainian prosecutor, who was subsequently fired after Biden’s personal intervention.

The National Archives and Records Administration could easily continue its “review” of the alias-based communications “until after the next election,” Turley indicated. On the other hand, Biden or former President Barack Obama could “easily allow the release of these emails to Congress” if they thought they could help prove the former vice president’s innocence.

“After all, the use of aliases has been defended on the basis that these emails are trivial or personal matters. If so, transparency will put all the allegations to rest. If it is not true, it would mean that Biden was using false names to convey important information to third parties, and the question would be why,” Turley stressed.

“The added resistance to the review of the emails only adds to an already strong case for an impeachment inquiry,” i.e. that “there is enough evidence to warrant an investigation into whether the Bidens were selling the illusion or the reality of influence.” Using its impeachment inquiry powers, Congress may be better able to “force” disclosures, and thus find “answers on the alleged corrupt practices,” he added.

“There should be no reason why the president would not want to clear the record, particularly in an election year. Otherwise, the effort to withhold this evidence could itself prove damaging, if material evidence of corruption or false statements are found,” Turley argued.

Representative James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating the Biden family, said this week that “there’s consensus” among Republicans on an impeachment inquiry, pending House Speaker McCarthy’s approval. “I feel like that is imminent,” Comer said.

The White House reacted by hiring a team of two-dozen lawyers, legislative assistants and communications staffers for an “aggressive response” to any potential inquiry.

September 3, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Google buries websites of Trump, RFK Jr, Republican challengers

RT | August 26, 2023

Google is suppressing the 2024 campaign websites of all serious challengers to Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden, a report from the Media Research Center claimed on Thursday.

Searching the web for ‘presidential campaign websites’ using Google returned results that did not include a single Republican candidate on the first page the day before the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 season, according to the MRC.

Not even former US President Donald Trump, who is polling neck-and-neck with Biden, appeared in the first few pages of results, the media watchdog observed.

Nor did Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chief threat to Biden’s candidacy from within his own party, appear in the results at all, even though a recent poll had him at nearly 20% in a matchup against Biden.

Indeed, the only non-Biden Democrat to feature on the first page was lifestyle guru Marianne Williamson, who has never polled above the low single digits.

However, the websites of prominent Democrats who are not running for president in 2024, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, were more prominently featured at 29th, 12th, and 9th place in the results, respectively.

“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider said on Thursday, recalling how Google had “pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House” and “has continued to interfere in our elections ever since.”

As of Saturday, the phenomenon appeared to have actually worsened. While Biden’s site was the fourth listed on the search engine and Williamson’s the fifth, Sanders remained at 12th, while Clinton had actually moved up to 13th.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s site was the highest-ranked Republican in a search run on Saturday morning – though even his page was listed several places behind an Atlantic article informing the casual browser that 1996 Republican candidate and now-deceased former Senator Bob Dole’s campaign website “is still online.”

Kennedy has been widely disparaged by the media establishment and online factcheckers for his work on vaccine safety. He sued Google earlier this month for violating his First Amendment rights, arguing its subsidiary YouTube had blocked his content on orders from the Biden administration.

Trump also sued Google in 2021 for infringing on his free speech after he was deplatformed from YouTube along with most other mainstream social media platforms following the January 6 Capitol riot.

Over a dozen government agencies were found to be issuing content-based censorship orders to social media platforms last year in Missouri v. Biden, leading a judge to issue a restraining order forbidding the administration from contacting the platforms.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Ukrainian chief prosecutor claims Biden took bribes

RT | August 26, 2023

Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has claimed that Joe Biden, while serving as US vice president, received a bribe from a Ukrainian energy company in exchange for helping to get him fired in 2016.

In an interview with Fox News released on Friday, Shokin said that Biden pressured then-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko to fire him over his investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden, the incumbent US president’s son, served at the time.

The ex-prosecutor argued that both Poroshenko and Joe Biden understood that if he had been allowed to continue his probe into Burisma, it could have provided “the facts about the corrupt activities” by Hunter Biden, Devon Archer – another American executive with Burisma – and other people involved.

However, Poroshenko offered a different version of events, insisting that Shokin was fired because of his failure to fight corruption in Ukraine.

Shokin said that he had a “firm personal conviction” that both Joe and Hunter Biden had their palms greased in connection with the Burisma case. “They were being bribed. And the fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in US money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asked.

The ex-official was referring to a 2018 interview in which Joe Biden boasted that in 2015 he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from Poroshenko unless Shokin was let go. “Well, son of a b***h, he got fired,” Biden said.

However, White House spokesperson Ian Sams dismissed Shokin’s claims, chiding Fox News for “giving a platform for these lies to a former Ukrainian prosecutor general whose office his own deputy called ‘a hotbed of corruption.’”

The allegations of quid pro quo involving Joe and Hunter Biden were raised by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley in June, when they released a bombshell FBI informant file. According to the document, a “highly credible” confidential source was allegedly told by Burisma owner Nikolay Zlochevsky that Joe and Hunter Biden received $5 million each to use their political influence in Kiev.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

New Memos Hint at Biden’s Personal Interest in Firing Ukraine Prosecutor Targeting Burisma

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.08.2023

New memos indicate that then-Vice President Joe Biden did not act in concert with the US government when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in Ukraine aid unless the Poroshenko government fired the prosecutor general who targeted Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian employer at that time.

Joe Biden and Democrats have repeatedly stressed that his insistence on firing Ukrainian then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokhin back in December 2015 was consistent with the US policy of stamping out corruption in Ukraine.

At the time, then-Vice President Joe Biden even went so far as to threaten then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Washington would deprive Ukraine of a much-needed $1 billion loan guarantee in case the latter did not fire Shokhin. The conversation reportedly occurred in December 2015. Biden openly bragged about the incident to the Council on Foreign Relations gathering in January 2018:

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

However, memos by Treasury and Justice Department officials obtained by Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, indicate that the US government held Shokhin in high regard at the time and concluded that Ukraine had made progress in fighting endemic corruption, thus deserving the loan guarantee.

“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” read an October 1, 2015, memo by the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), a Barack Obama task force.

Moreover, Senior State Department officials sent Shokhin a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work and invited him and his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session prior to his sacking.

Remarkably, an audio tape from March 2016 which appeared to record Biden and Poroshenko’s conversation showed that the Ukrainian president pointed out that there was no evidence that Shokhin and his office were anyhow mired in corruption:

“Despite the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko allegedly told Biden in a tape released in 2020 by then-parliamentarian Andrii Derkach.”

Per Solomon, Biden’s political maneuver stemmed from the fact that the latter had been aggressively investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm that hired Joe’s son Hunter in 2014 and paid him a hefty salary of $83,333 a month despite Hunter having no expertise or experience in the energy sphere.

What’s more, Hunter’s business associate Devon Archer, who was also employed by Burisma at the time, testified to the House Oversight Committee on July 31 that Shokhin’s investigation was rattling the Ukrainian gas firm and that the Burisma leadership was putting pressure on Hunter to deal with it.

Joe Biden’s role in firing Shokhin created much controversy in 2019, when House Democrats pushed ahead with the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump who asked Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, to look into the Bidens’ conduct in a phone conversation.

Democratic lawmakers and officials testified during Trump’s first impeachment that Joe’s actions in withholding the $1 billion in aid had nothing to do with Hunter and were thoroughly consistent with the US government’s Ukraine policy. Per Solomon, this narrative appears to be false.

The US investigative journalist specifically quoted lawyers who worked on Trump’s impeachment defense. They said that they didn’t have access to the memos unearthed by Just the News, showing that the Obama government was satisfied with Shokhin’s work. As per Trump’s former legal team, the documents in question would have made a significant difference to the Trump impeachment case.

The Democratic Party’s apparent attempts to shield Biden, who announced his presidential bid on April 25, 2019, seemingly fit into a broader set of actions by US officials, Biden campaign aides, intelligence operatives, Big Tech and Big Media to suppress any narrative which could cast a shadow on the Bidens’ conduct.

In October 2020, a concerted action by the former top brass of US intelligence agencies, Silicon Valley giants and the US mainstream press smeared a legitimate story by the New York Post stemming from files of a so-called “laptop from hell”, belonging to Hunter Biden, as “Russian disinformation”. It turned out later that the damning materials on the infamous laptop were genuine.

August 22, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Desperate U.S. Hawks Face Tough Choice in Ukraine

By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | August 22, 2023

Even during the period of wild optimism in the United States during 2022 and early 2023 about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russian forces, there was a small, dark cloud of doubt about what the Joe Biden administration would do if the prospects of victory unraveled. That question has now become more pertinent and urgent as Kiev’s vaunted offensive clearly is faltering. Territorial gains in Russian-occupied regions are minimal, and they have occurred only with great cost in the lives of Ukrainian troops. For Ukraine’s forces, the war has become a meat grinder reminiscent of the fighting in World War I. Attacks on entrenched Russian defenses have proven to be horrifically costly in terms of both personnel and military hardware.

Hawks in the United States and other NATO members are reacting in two rather different ways. One faction, typified by the latest propaganda campaign undertaken by Defending Democracy Together, headed by Bill Kristol, has redoubled lobbying efforts to give Kiev more potent weapons with longer ranges so that Ukraine can launch larger and more frequent attacks inside Russia. Through a new front group, Republicans for Ukraine, neo-conservative stalwarts insist, “Supporting Ukraine is in the best interests of the United States and the best traditions of the Republican Party. Now is no time to give up the fight.”

At the same time, there are noticeable leaks in the news media, apparently from high-level sources, about Ukraine’s fading chances of victory. One especially important foray was a leaked report from U.S. intelligence agencies that Kiev’s current military offensive has failed to achieve its objectives. The report also expressed dissatisfaction with a growing unwillingness of Ukrainian forces to follow the advice of NATO advisers and continue to mount frontal assaults on Russian defenses. There was grousing from American sources about the Ukrainians becoming excessively “casualty averse.”

Even some staunch congressional supporters of Ukraine concede that the war may not be winnable. A corollary to that grudging acknowledgement are the hints coming out of Europe that peace negotiations may need to commence soon, even if the ultimate settlement requires Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to make territorial concessions to Russia. Perhaps even more indicative of the shifting attitude among portions of America’s opinion elite is a mounting whisper campaign, as epitomized by the leaked intelligence report, to denigrate Ukraine’s military strategy and “willingness to fight.” As yet, there are only a few trial balloons conveying that message, but they hint at the onset of an effort to prepare the American public for possible abandonment of a U.S. client.

Either doubling down on the commitment to Ukraine or conducting a policy retreat entails serious perils for America’s foreign policy establishment. The Biden administration and NATO already have escalated their proxy war against Russia to reckless levels. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO responded by sending large quantities of weapons to Kiev. Initially, though, those items were defensive weapons, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, designed to thwart Russian invading forces. A gradual—and dangerous–escalation in the NATO commitment has taken place since then. Indeed, it has reached the point of equipping Ukraine’s military with heavy battle tanks and other offensive weapons. The Biden administration has been deeply involved in that process, sending Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles to Kiev. Washington has also now authorized NATO allies to transfer U.S. F-16 fighters in their arsenals to Ukraine, and U.S. officials flirt with the idea of sending such planes directly from the United States.

A key problem for establishment types who are looking for an exit from the Ukraine morass is that the Biden administration has hyped the alleged importance of events there to stratospheric levels. The president and his key advisers have insisted from the outset that the war is an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism and between a “rules-based” international order and the law of the jungle. It is now difficult for those same officials and their supporters to call for negotiations and a compromise peace accord.

Indeed, the Biden administration and its supporters may be doubling down on the Ukraine commitment. In mid-August, the president asked Congress to approve another $24 billion in economic and military aid to Kiev, despite public opinion polls showing rapidly declining support for that option.

If the administration chooses a more prudent approach (however belatedly), the nightmare of a direct military clash between NATO and Russia would fade. The cost in terms of credibility for Western foreign policy hawks would be considerable, however. They would have to implicitly admit yet another U.S.-led interventionist crusade had failed. Coming on the heels of the fiascos in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, public (and even congressional) discontent with that approach to world affairs could rise sharply. The images of the humiliating, chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 are especially fresh.

Escalation, though, would likely prove futile as well as excessively dangerous. Ukraine has served effectively as NATO’s bloody pawn, but its usefulness in the campaign to weaken Russia is drawing to a close. The apparent failure of Kiev’s current military offensive confirms that future significant gains are improbable. It is uncertain, though, if America’s foreign policy hawks are smart enough to abandon a used pawn. The danger still exists that they may instead succumb to their own propaganda and conclude that the Ukraine war really is an existential struggle requiring the West to double down on its commitment to Kiev.

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. Dr. Carpenter also served in various policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. He is the author of thirteen books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs and the threat that the U.S. national security state poses to peace and civil liberties at home and around the world. Dr. Carpenter’s latest book is “Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy” (2022)

August 22, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

As Maui Burns, Biden Demands Another $24 Billion… For Ukraine!

By Ron Paul | August 14, 2023

I am not a big fan of Federal Government disaster relief. Too much of the time the money never gets to those who need it most, and too often Washington’s armies of disaster “experts” are more interested in pushing people around than helping them.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to look at recent footage of the devastation in Maui and then hear President Biden tell Congress that he needs another $24 billion for Ukraine. How can this Administration continue to justify tens of billions of dollars for this losing war that is not in our interest while the rest of the United States disintegrates?

Biden’s new $24 billion request comes on top of well over $120 billion already spent to fight the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. Heritage Foundation budget expert Richard Stern has done the math and determined that Biden’s spending on the Ukraine war thus far will cost each and every American household $900. How many Americans would rather have those $900 dollars back in their pocket rather than in the pockets of Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and Ukraine’s oligarchs?

Recent surveys have shown that a majority of Americans could not afford to cover a sudden $1,000 emergency. Will Americans connect the dots and realize that the reason they can’t find that $1,000 for an emergency is because the neocons have already sent it to Ukraine?

Ukraine has long been known as among the most corrupt countries on earth and not long ago investigative journalist Seymore Hersh wrote that Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky has embezzled at least $400 million in aid from the American people. Corruption scandals continue to break in Ukraine. Just last week Zelensky fired the heads of all local draft boards for corruption. Some press reports suggest that sales of luxury cars in Ukraine have broken all previous records. I wonder why.

No wonder the tide of US public opinion is turning against further involvement in the war. Recently CNN found that among all Americans, more than 55 percent are opposed to continued aid to Ukraine. Among Republicans the number opposing more aid to Ukraine rises to three-out-of-four. That is why we are finally starting to see more Republican Members raising concerns. I’d like to think they have seen the light that an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy is not in America’s interest, but most likely they are worried about losing elections. Whatever their motivation, this turning tide should be welcomed.

Yet the Biden Administration persists in backing Ukraine even as the US mainstream media is increasingly pointing out the obvious: Ukraine is not winning and cannot win, and continuing to pour money into a losing cause will just result in bankruptcy at home and more dead Ukrainians overseas.

Last week Newsweek published an article asking, “Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?” In the article, Northeastern University Professor Max Abrahms wonders out loud whether Biden’s continued support for Ukraine might be related to compromising information held in Kiev about the many Biden family shady business ventures in Ukraine and the region. It is certainly worth considering.

Meanwhile, the residents of Maui that survived the recent horrific fire will take little comfort knowing that the Biden Administration is more interested in sending their money to Ukraine than in helping them recover.

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

How Team Biden Hurts US Prestige and Credibility By Walking Into Ukraine Trap

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 14.08.2023

US observers have raised the question whether President Joe Biden could shift from his maximalist aims in Ukraine which threaten to turn into a trap for Washington.

Prior to the much-anticipated 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, American politicians and mainstream press had drawn a picture of what the endgame in Ukraine should look like, with Kiev forces seizing as much territory as it could to gain the upper hand in negotiations.

Citing White House officials, the US media suggested that by the end of summer, Ukraine would tip the balance in its favor. However, the reality on the ground does not match expectations.

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a DC-based think tank, has raised the question as to whether Team Biden has a Plan B for a face-saving exit after it persuaded everyone in the West that anything short of Kiev’s victory would be a global catastrophe.

In fact, the Biden administration set a trap for itself by employing a “hyperbolic rhetoric” in order to sell the idea of Washington’s Ukraine war to the American public and the world’s community. President Biden raised the stakes as high as possible while claiming in February 2023 during his speech in Poland that “what literally is at stake is not just Ukraine, it’s freedom.”

Another talking point of the US foreign policy establishment, lawmakers and academia was that Russia’s victory would not only “embolden” Moscow for new “invasions” but also encourage Beijing to “take military action” against Taiwan – something that has been repeatedly denied as nonsense by China which has always seen the island as its inalienable territory.

Republican presidential contender Chris Christie has even gone so far as to claim that China’s potential “invasion” of Taiwan would inevitably necessitate putting American boots on the ground.

As a result, the hyped-up narrative deprived Team Biden of room for maneuver: should the US president decide to pull out, he would have to explain to the international community why he is “giving up” on democracy and human values, bowing down to “dictators”, and leaving the world in “danger.”

“Even if officials don’t truly believe US and European security is on the line, it’s clear something else might be: The prestige and credibility of the United States and NATO,” the think tank’s report said. “Worse, any Russian successes — whether real or perceived — could be viewed as politically unacceptable or even humiliating for NATO’s leadership, along with exposing divisions that have until now been largely suppressed.”

According to the think tank, the fear of losing prestige and credibility was one of the factors behind the US protracted involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other wars.

To complicate matters further, Biden will run for re-election in 2024 with Kiev’s expected win in the counteroffensive having been seen as a selling point for the incumbent’s campaign. Now that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost over 43,000 troops, and 20% of the NATO weaponry and got bogged down, the Biden administration has found itself between a rock and a hard place, as per the think tank.

On the one hand, Biden’s calls for another $20 billion for Ukraine came at a time when a majority of Americans, including 71% of Republicans and 55% of independents, oppose further military assistance to Ukraine, according to recent polls. Under these conditions keeping the conflict going is fraught with the risk of a growing negative sentiment and, subsequently, worse election odds.

On the other hand, Biden’s pull-out from Ukraine as the latter is losing would evoke strong memories of the US’ humiliating and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Furthermore, in any event of the Ukraine conflict being ended on terms less favorable to Kiev than earlier promised, a storm of criticism against Team Biden could be expected, as per the think tank.

On top of this, the longer the US administration waits to lay the groundwork to end the conflict diplomatically, “the harder it will be to do, with the steepest costs borne by the Ukrainian people,” the think tank warned.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Unscrupulous attacks on China make US nastier and nastier

Global Times | August 12, 2023

At a political fundraising event in Park City, Utah on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said China was “in trouble” because of economic and population issues and slammed China’s economic situation as “a ticking time bomb” in many cases. He also said, “When bad folks have problems, they do bad things.” The remarks have been splashed across the American media. Bloomberg described the comments as “some of his most direct criticisms yet about the US’s top geopolitical and economic rival.”

As well-known American writer Mark Twain revealed in his book Running for Governor, American elections are full of shameless tricks such as lies, fraud, smears and slander. As some activities related to the US general election are kicking off, multiple candidates are not offering good strategies in terms of national governance, but focusing a lot on attacking each other and attacking China.

As the atmosphere in American society toward China has been severely poisoned by Washington, speaking harshly about China has become one of the cheapest ways for politicians to quickly attract attention, and Biden is no exception. We need to view Biden’s shocking remarks in this context, which are of the same nature as the more intense remarks on China by Republican candidates such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Based on past experience, as the election campaign progresses, Washington’s bottom line will sink lower and lower, and more sensational claims are likely to come out. The unscrupulous smearing and attacking of China has made the US nastier and nastier.

But it must be said that Biden is not only a candidate, but also the incumbent president of the US and the head of state of a superpower. It is highly inappropriate for him to make inflammatory statements that go against basic facts and do not match his identity. It is not difficult for us to understand that Biden’s purpose in saying these words is nothing more than to score points for his campaign, to show his tough stance toward China, and to boast about his ability to deal with “threats and challenges” from China.

From Donald Trump to the current President Biden, the US presidents, like many politicians in Washington, keep talking tough about China. But what is interesting is that Trump and Biden, who are at odds with each other on many issues, have similar tones and arguments when it comes to China, and they talk more about what China is doing better than the US and in what aspects China is about to surpass the US, so as to stimulate the sense of crisis and urgency in the US to support the White House’s strategic competition against China.

As a result, the sum of Biden’s remarks on China contain obvious contradictions. Washington just issued an “unprecedented” administrative order to curb and suppress the development momentum of China’s high-tech, then it turned around and insisted that “China is in trouble.” A stronger China is a threat in the eyes of the Americans, while a “weaker” China has become a “ticking time bomb.” What then should China do so the US can have a healthy mentality toward China? The reality is that China not only has to be blamed for the frustration of US’ development, but also bear the belittling when Washington boasts of its achievements, and finally has to be responsible for the mental disorder of the US.

Unlike the US, China never threatens other countries with force, does not form military alliances, does not export ideology, does not go to other countries’ doorsteps to provoke troubles, does not infringe on other countries’ territories, does not initiate trade wars, and does not suppress the companies of other countries for no reason. China insists on putting the development of the country and the nation on the basis of its own strength. In the face of a turbulent and changing world, China has always stood in the right direction of historical progress and has always been a positive force for world peace and development. If there are “ticking time bombs,” they are planted by the US around the world.

Some people summed up the seven laws of American diplomacy, one of which is, “If the US suspects that you have done something bad, the US must have done it itself.” This can explain the strange logic of the US that no matter if China is strong or weak, it is a threat. When the US became strong, it launched the Iraq War and the Afghan War; when it declined relatively, it began to engage in unilateralism and camp confrontation. The inner world of Washington’s politicians may be dirty, but they should not think that everyone else is like them.

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

The appointment of a special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case is just a trick to better shield the US president and his son

By Tony Cox | RT | August 12, 2023

US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who works for President Joe Biden, desperately wants the world to know that the government’s investigation of his boss’ son is utterly apolitical. America’s top law-enforcement official is so desperate, in fact, that he has appointed a special counsel to handle the case.

That’s right. No mere employee of Garland’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to be leading the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden. Garland on Friday assigned a special counsel to the case because he wanted to demonstrate to Americans the DOJ’s “commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

Make no mistake: This is definitely one of those “particularly sensitive matters.” The president’s son has been accused of a litany of crimes – from failing to pay taxes to making an illegal gun purchase to transporting women across state lines for prostitution. It turns out he’s the sort of guy who was brazen enough to take pictures of himself smoking crack and driving his Porsche at 172 miles per hour, then to leave those images and countless other incriminating files on a laptop computer that he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop.

Most sensitive politically is the evidence suggesting that Hunter Biden ran an influence-peddling operation in which he allegedly solicited bribes in Ukraine and other countries by selling the family “brand.” The brand was then-Vice President Joe Biden and the political clout that he could wield for the family’s friends.

Those claims are the most serious because they connect the commander-in-chief to the alleged conspiracy. In fact, Hunter Biden allegedly patched in his father on conference calls with overseas business associates and once tried to coerce a Chinese businessman to resolve a payment dispute by claiming that Joe Biden was sitting next to him and would make the partner regret failing to comply.

President Biden has angrily denied having been with his son when the shakedown message was sent. He also has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of or involvement in his son’s business dealings. As evidence continues to mount to the contrary, it’s easy to see why Garland is concerned about public perceptions heading into the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans have accused the DOJ of giving the president’s son preferential treatment and of trying to protect the Biden family as Joe Biden seeks re-election. Two-thirds of US voters polled by Rasmussen Reports agreed, saying Hunter Biden got favorable treatment from federal prosecutors because his father is the president.

If all that doesn’t make the investigation politically sensitive enough, the cherry on top is that a DOJ special counsel has filed dozens of felony charges against Biden’s chief 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, in two separate cases. Trump, the first ex-president in US history to be criminally indicted, has claimed that politically motivated prosecutors are trying to interfere in the election because Biden can’t defeat him in a rematch of their 2020 battle.

Garland’s solution was to appoint a special counsel in the Biden case. However, it turns out that the prosecutor assigned to the role is the same DOJ employee who has been running the Hunter Biden investigation since 2019. David Weiss, US attorney for the district of Delaware, was elevated to special counsel status at his own request. “Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.

The Pro-Biden press corps – meaning pretty much the entire US legacy media – nodded approvingly. For example, the New Republic was quick to claim that Biden’s attorney general had “annihilated several main Republican talking points.” The move “fully insulated the investigation from accusations of government interference,” the outlet added. NBC News said “distrustful” Republicans were still critical of the appointment.

As Garland pointed out, as special counsel Weiss will no longer be subject to “day-to-day supervision” by any Department of Justice (DOJ) official. And if the administration were to torpedo the investigation or block the filing of any charges, Garland would be required to inform Congress. The attorney general and Biden’s media backers also have noted that Weiss was appointed to his job by Trump and was allowed to continue leading the Hunter Biden investigation when the new president came into office.

But what really changed? Garland has repeatedly claimed that Weiss was given full authority all along to make prosecutorial decisions without any interference from higher-ups. If Garland is to be believed, Weiss merely has the same authority now, and his prosecutorial decisions will still have to conform with DOJ policies. He will have broad authority to file charges in any jurisdiction he chooses, but his boss insisted that he had that latitude before.

Weiss has backed up Garland’s claims that the investigation has been free of political interference. He denied allegations from IRS whistleblowers that the administration had declined to give him special-counsel status and that he had been prevented from filing indictments against the president’s son in Washington and Los Angeles, where some of the alleged crimes supposedly occurred.

Republican lawmakers were unimpressed by the fact Weiss was appointed as a US attorney by Trump, pointing instead to actions that suggested he was trying to protect the Bidens. The Delaware prosecutor’s investigation dragged on for four years, during which the DOJ declined to set the record straight when former US intelligence officials falsely claimed the laptop scandal was a Russian disinformation operation, deceiving voters just before the 2020 election. When Weiss finally did file an indictment in June, it was limited to tax and gun matters.

Weiss made a deal with defense lawyers that called for the felony gun charge to be dropped if Biden adhered to the terms of a diversion agreement. The president’s son also was enabled to avoid jail time on the two misdemeanor tax charges to which he agreed to plead guilty. It was a political happy ending that would allow Hunter Biden to move on, free of any felonies on his record, and end the distraction he was creating for his father’s re-election campaign.

Unfortunately for the Bidens, US District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika was taken aback by the deal, at least partly because it appeared that Weiss had given Hunter Biden immunity from prosecution for other possible crimes. The judge refused to accept the plea bargain late last month and sent the lawyers back to the drawing board to work out a revised agreement. Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks on a new plea deal were at an “impasse,” suggesting that the case was headed for trial.

It’s unlikely that such a trial would ever be allowed to happen, making a public spectacle of the allegations against Hunter Biden at a time when his father is asking voters for another four-year term in the White House. Even as Garland assures the public that the investigation will be guided “only by the facts and the law,” Weiss will have other concerns. Whether he carries the title of special counsel or US attorney for the district of Delaware, his job is to give the appearance of enforcing the law without causing any serious harm to the Bidens.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Illusion of Scandal: How Washington is Attempting to Dismiss $20 Million as an Illusion

By Jonathan Turley | August 10, 2023

I previously wrote a column marveling at the success of the Bidens in pulling off one of the neatest tricks in political history. I analogized it to how Houdini used to make his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear on a stage in front of a live audience. The media and political establishment is now striving to top that performance by declaring $20 million in payments to Biden family members as an “illusion” of influence. At the heart of this scandal is the BFF, the Biden Family Fund.

Here is the column:

This week, President Joe Biden responded to calls for greater access to the media with a blockbuster interview with . . . the Weather Channel.

The interview immediately prompted critics to speculate that the president wanted to continue to talk about the weather — the same claim made after the disclosure of his participation in various dinners with his son’s foreign associates.

As the number of these dinners, meetings and outings increase, Joe Biden appears to have covered more meteorological subjects than Al Roker.

The problem is that conditions are worsening in Washington.

This week, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released a third report on the ongoing investigations into the Biden corruption scandal.

The latest bank records indicate the Biden family has received more than $20 million, including from corrupt Kazakh figures.

Some of this money provided Hunter Biden with extravagant toys. On April 22, 2014, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai bank account.

That account then shows the exact same amount being wired to a New Jersey car dealership for a Fisker sports car for Hunter. Finding the Fisker unsuitable, Hunter traded it in for a Porsche.

Notably, these payments often coincided with dinners and meetings with Joe Biden.

Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, the widow of Moscow ex-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton Feb. 14, 2014.

She later attended a dinner with Joe and Hunter Biden at Washington, DC, hotspot Café Milano.

For weeks, Joe Biden’s prior claims have been collapsing as his allies in the media and Congress struggle for an alternative spin on these new disclosures.

The president’s denials of any knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings finally have been exposed as a lie.

Even the Washington Post has acknowledged Biden lied when he insisted that Hunter never made any money in China.

It was always a boldfaced falsehood (and a confusing claim from a man who insisted that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings).

But the testimony of associate Devon Archer and new bank records forced the paper and others to recognize the falsehood.

There is also the confirmation that Biden’s long denials that he attended key dinners with Hunter’s business associates were false.

Most notably, the media are grudgingly admitting that Hunter was openly selling influence peddling and access to his father as part of what Archer called “selling the brand.”

The final line of defense is now that Hunter Biden was selling access to Joe Biden but it was an “illusion.” The reason, they claim, is there is no evidence of direct payments to Joe and Jill Biden.

There is, of course, nothing “illusionary” about tens of millions moving to Hunter and other family members.

But political spins are often built on illusions. The latest is that Joe Biden only benefits from these payments if they were directly deposited in his accounts.

For a family that Hunter explained was “the best” at this type of dealing, it is absurd to expect a deposit slip from a corrupt Ukrainian official to the account of Joe and Jill Biden, one of the most vulnerable accounts in the world to review and monitoring.

These claims, moreover, ignore emails discussing Hunter’s and his father’s use of joint accounts to pay for expenses, including how one account was used to pay Joe’s taxes. There is also Hunter’s complaint that he was using half of his earnings to support his father. Indeed, one trusted FBI informant said that, in planning a bribe, one foreign figure was told to avoid direct payments to Joe Biden. Today, that is as amateurish as an envelope of cash and the Bidens have been in the business of influence peddling for decades.

Responding to the new evidence, Washington Post columnist Phillip Bump led the charge in asking: Where’s the bribe?

In other words, as long as Hunter got the luxury car, Joe didn’t benefit or receive a bribe.

(Notably, Bump did not have the same high standards when he pushed the false claim over a photo op in Lafayette Park and later refused to concede with the rest of the media on the lack of Russian collusion with Donald Trump.)

Not even millions to Biden children and grandchildren would seem to satisfy Bump as an inducement for the then-vice president.

Yet the greatest illusion is the claim Joe Biden would only be motivated by a direct payment to one of his accounts.

Biden clearly benefited from millions going to the Biden Family Fund (BFF). Even grandchildren received some of the transfers funneled through a labyrinth of accounts.

Joe Biden is 80 years old. Despite holding only government jobs in his career, he is worth an estimated $8 million.

Forbes reported he earned $17.3 million over the four years he was out of office. He will never spend his fortune. Any additional money would have to pass to his descendants.

For most wealthy people in their final years, the challenge is not raising more money but getting that money to your children without heavy taxes or delays.

This money was going to his BFF. That is a benefit and probably of greater value to a man of Joe Biden’s age and wealth.

None of this has stopped politicians, press and pundits from insisting that absent a direct payment to the president’s account, there is no corruption or crime.

After all, $20 million going to a president’s family is like complaining about the weather in Washington.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

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