Another Very Heimische Zalman Bernstein TGIF (5): Tikvah Tablet The Scroll Ignores Benzadrine Sedition Committee Hearing, Promotes Matt Taibbi "Journalism" (9/22)
David Shasha
The Big Story
Former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper—both of whom signed the fraudulent letter labeling news reports about Hunter Biden’s laptops as “Russian disinformation” two weeks before the 2020 election—were enlisted as national security experts on a new board inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The mission of the new panel is to tackle “threats tied to an array of different terrorist and violent extremist ideologies and narratives,” according to DHS Counterterrorism Coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen.
Clapper continued to defend his support for the infamous letter, also signed by 50 other top U.S. national security officials, even after its claims were disproved, telling the New York Post, “I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME … I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.” During Brennan’s tenure as CIA director, the agency spied on the computers of members of Congress, and Brennan lied about it.
“The DHS setting up a new ‘intelligence experts working group’ with John Brennan and James Clapper—two of the most shameless liars and flouters of civil liberties in recent American history—shows the utter contempt the current administration has for the population,” journalist Matt Taibbi wrote on X.
It’s time for clarity on Hunter Biden (and his dad)
By: Rick Newman
Is there a smoking gun? Or just an inert one?
The American public may soon find out, now that the Justice Dept. will reportedly indict President Biden’s son Hunter on charges of felony gun possession. Federal prosecutors could also charge Hunter Biden with tax evasion, for failing to pay about $200,000 in federal tax on income of more than $3 million in 2017 and 2018.
These would be nothingburger cases generating zero public interest if Hunter Biden weren’t the son of the president. As it is, however, Hunter Biden’s messy life has become a political liability for his father, and there’s a chance it could even sink Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection bid.
So there are merits to a public trial, or trials, that will air out issues that would have broadly escaped public scrutiny under the plea deal Hunter Biden thought he had worked out on the gun and tax charges. That deal fell apart in July, which is why Hunter now seems to be headed to trial — assuming another plea deal doesn't emerge.
A Hunter Biden criminal trial would also even the stakes somewhat in the Trump-Biden Family Corruption Sweepstakes. Former President Donald Trump is now a defendant in four criminal prosecutions, including two brought by Biden’s Justice Dept. The evidence against Trump is compelling, yet Trump claims he’s the victim of political persecution. A criminal prosecution against the president’s son by the same Justice Dept. would establish a kind of symmetry in the handling of presidential scandals.
The scope and gravity of the Trump charges swamp Hunter Biden's alleged crimes. But charges aren’t convictions, and since it will be up to a jury to decide if Trump is guilty in each of his criminal cases, then a jury outcome is appropriate for Hunter Biden, too.
Hunter Biden’s misbehavior falls into two categories: business dealings that were unseemly but not illegal, and other acts that were criminalish enough for Hunter to acknowledge guilt in the plea deal that unraveled. The biggest question for the American public isn’t what Hunter Biden did, but whether his father Joe had any complicity in his son’s efforts to cash in on the family name and use his pull in Washington to enrich himself.
So far, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden, and that’s after five years of digging dating back to Trump’s presidency. Trump was obviously desperate to find dirt on Biden that he could use to discredit his 2020 presidential rival, and he knew Hunter was the most likely conduit. Trump didn’t find anything.
Still, Hunter Biden’s shady dealings as a drug-addicted consultant and board member for businesses in China and Ukraine do raise red flags. It’s clear, for instance, that Hunter Biden’s main qualification for lucrative employment by Ukrainian and Chinese business was his last name. The most questionable conduct occurred when Joe Biden was vice president. Hunter Biden and two partners set up an investment firm in Shanghai in 2013, for instance. Then in 2014, Hunter joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Republicans have been trying to prove that Joe Biden, as vice president, somehow intervened in US policy to aid Hunter’s businesses.
So far, there’s zero evidence of that. There is evidence that Joe Biden, who talked with his son on the phone frequently, had a few conversations with Hunter while others were in the room. He also had dinner a couple of times with Hunter and some of his business associates. But that’s as far as it goes, and nobody has been able to link phone conversations and dinners with any action Biden ever took or tried to take to benefit Hunter’s businesses.
One of Hunter’s business partners, Devon Archer, said in August testimony before the House Oversight Committee that in the phone chats he overheard with Joe Biden, “there was no business conversation. … It was, you know, just general niceties and, you know, conversation in general, you know, about the geography, about the weather, whatever it may be.” Archer said that what Hunter Biden really brought to the table wasn’t any kind of ability to influence activities in Washington, but “an illusion of access to his father.”
Joe Biden may be guilty of one thing: bad judgment.
He must have known his son was trading on the family name to earn at least $11 million from 2013 to 2018. As far as we know, Dad never told Junior to knock it off and find honest work. We also know that Beau Biden, Joe’s son and Hunter’s brother, developed brain cancer in 2013 and died from it two years later. Hunter Biden, an alcoholic, relapsed after his brother’s death and entered a deep depression compounded by a crack cocaine addiction. This is around the same time Joe Biden called his son frequently to talk about niceties and such. So compassionate critics might think the Biden family deserves a bit of a break.
Is there more? Is Joe Biden so devious he really provided government favors for his son, enriching his family while burying the evidence? If so, the best chance of finding out is going through a trial and giving prosecutors the authority to dig up everything relevant. Attorney General Merrick Garland has set the stage for that, elevating Biden prosecutor David Weiss to special-counsel status, which will give him more leeway and authority to do a wide-ranging investigation. The Bidens may resent that, but if Joe Biden is truly innocent, then a thorough investigation attesting to that would be beneficial to him.
Trump currently leads in the Corruption Sweepstakes, but Biden isn’t that far behind. In a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 53% of respondents said Trump and his family are corrupt, while 45% said Biden and his family are corrupt. There’s a big difference, however: Impressions of Trump family corruption come largely from Donald Trump himself, who’s running for president again. Impressions of Biden family corruption come largely from Hunter, who’s never been an elected official and probably will never be.
Not all voters blame Joe Biden for the sins of his son, but Republicans may have had some success, so far, in broadly tarring “the Bidens” as shady, without distinguishing who did something and who did nothing. A Hunter Biden trial would clarify that. It may or may not benefit the Bidens, but it would be good for voters who care enough to understand whether Joe Biden is corrupt, or merely related to somebody who is.
From Yahoo Finance, September 7, 2023
Fact check: Jim Jordan makes false claims about Trump, Hunter Biden to begin hearing on handling of the federal cases against them
By: Daniel Dale
House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan made false claims in his opening remarks at a Wednesday hearing at which Jordan and other Republicans pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland about the Justice Department’s handling of investigations into former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
Here is a fact check of two inaccurate remarks from Jordan, plus one from Rep. Thomas Massie and another from Rep. Chip Roy.
Criticizing the FBI search of Trump’s home in Florida in August 2022, Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, falsely claimed in his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing that Trump did everything the Justice Department had asked him to do prior to the search.
Among other acts of compliance, Jordan said, Trump immediately turned over 38 documents he discovered prior to the search, then complied with a Justice Department request to further secure the storage room where official documents were being stored.
“Everything they asked him to do, he did. And then what’s the Justice Department do? August 8, last year, they raid President Trump’s home,” Jordan said.
Facts First: Jordan’s claim that Trump did “everything” the Justice Department asked him to do is incorrect. When the Justice Department obtained a May 2022 grand jury subpoena demanding that Trump turn over all documents with classification markings, Trump did not do so. Instead, Trump’s indictment alleges, he turned over just 38 documents with classification markings in June 2022, far fewer than he possessed; the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago found 102 additional documents with classification markings. In addition, the indictment alleges that, upon producing the 38 documents, Trump intentionally had one of his lawyers sign a document that falsely certified that all the documents demanded by the subpoena had been produced.
The indictment, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, also alleges that Trump committed multiple other acts of obstruction to try to avoid complying with the May 2022 subpoena.
The indictment says that Trump directed an aide, Walt Nauta, to move boxes before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran conducted a search for the documents in early June 2022 in response to the subpoena, “so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found – and in fact were not found – by (Corcoran).” The indictment also alleges that Trump suggested that Corcoran falsely represent to the government that Trump “did not have documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena” and that Corcoran “hide or destroy documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden has himself admitted that he was unqualified for his former role on the board of directors of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
“He wasn’t qualified to be on the board of Burisma. Not my words, his words,” Jordan said. “He said he got on the board because of his last name.”
Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”
When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”
When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”
Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.
A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.
Massie brought up Ray Epps, a participant in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, who has been the subject of baseless conspiracy theories alleging that he was a “false flag” provocateur working with the FBI to incite Trump supporters.
Epps was charged Monday with a misdemeanor, engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, and pleaded guilty on Wednesday. Massie, suggesting the charge against Epps was light, told Garland: “Meanwhile you’re sending grandmas to prison. You’re putting people away for 20 years for merely filming. Some people weren’t even there.”
Facts First: The Kentucky Republican didn’t explain who he was talking about, but it’s not true that anybody who has been sentenced in connection with the January 6 riot has received 20 years in prison “for merely filming.” In fact, the only January 6-related sentence to date that is at or above the 20-year mark was handed down to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of multiple felonies including seditious conspiracy. Though Tarrio wasn’t at the Capitol on January 6 – he had been ordered to leave Washington after an arrest two days prior – Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said, “Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader of that conspiracy” and “had an outsized impact on the events of the day.”
Other January 6 figures whose sentences were in the neighborhood of 20 years, such as senior Proud Boy Ethan Nordean (18 years), Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (18 years) and senior Proud Boy Joe Biggs (17 years), were also convicted of seditious conspiracy and other felonies.
January 6 rioters’ sentences have varied depending on the judge, the facts of the case and the defendant’s history, but many people who illegally entered Capitol grounds and did not orchestrate a conspiracy or commit acts of violence have been sentenced to fewer than six months in prison. Some have received sentences without any prison time.
Massie’s spokesperson did not immediately respond Wednesday for a request for an explanation of the congressman’s remark at the hearing.
Garland’s 2021 memo
Roy, a Texas Republican, revived a repeatedly debunked Republican claim about the contents of a memo Garland issued in October 2021 regarding what the memo called “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
Other Republicans have wrongly asserted that Garland’s memo referred to parents as “domestic terrorists” for speaking at or even just appearing at school board meetings. At the Wednesday hearing, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, told Garland, “I hold you accountable for the labeling of parents as domestic terrorists standing up for their proper education of their own children.
Later in the hearing, Roy went a step further – claiming that Garland’s memo labeled a particular Virginia parent a domestic terrorist.
The parent, Scott Smith, was convicted of disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice for his conduct at a 2021 school board meeting held the month after his daughter was sexually assaulted at school. Smith was pardoned by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this month.
Roy asked Garland, “Have you apologized for putting that memo out that implicated Scott Smith as a domestic terrorist?”
Garland responded, “The memo said nothing about him, nothing about parents being terrorists, nothing about attending school boards.”
But Roy continued, “So the answer is, it’s not been rescinded and you haven’t apologized for it…labeling an American citizen a domestic terrorist in a memo.”
Facts First: Garland was right and Roy was wrong. The memo did not mention Smith and did not label him or any other parent a domestic terrorist. In fact, the memo did not refer to “terrorists” or “terrorism” at all.
Multiple fact checks from CNN and other outlets have noted that various Republicans have distorted the contents of Garland’s memo. And in 2022, a Trump-appointed judge threw out a lawsuit from parents who accused Garland of stifling their free speech – writing in his decision that Garland’s memo “does not label anyone a domestic terrorist.”
Here’s what actually happened.
In September 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Joe Biden arguing that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” After a controversy over the letter, the association’s board of directors apologized in October 2021, saying that “there was no justification” for some of the letter’s language.
The week after the association sent the letter, Garland released a memo encouraging the FBI, federal prosecutors and federal, state and local leaders to convene meetings to discuss strategies to combat threats against education officials; the memo said the Justice Department would prosecute these threats “when appropriate.” The memo, however, never used the association’s “domestic terrorism” rhetoric and never endorsed the association’s suggestion that the Patriot Act could be used against perpetrators.
Garland testified to the House Judiciary Committee in October 2021 that complaints about education are “totally protected by the First Amendment” as long as they are not threats of violence. He also said he cannot “imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”
“I want to be clear, the Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children, about the curriculum taught in the schools,” Garland said in his October 2021 testimony. “That is not what the memorandum is about at all, nor does it use the words ‘domestic terrorism’ or ‘Patriot Act.’”
From CNN, September 20, 2023
Ex–Ohio State Wrestler Says Rep. Jim Jordan Asked Him to Deny Abuse Allegations
By: Avery Yang
Ohio representative and former Ohio State University wrestling coach Jim Jordan aided and abetted in the university's cover-up of sexual abuse within the program, a former team captain said in front of Ohio state legislators on Wednesday.
"Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for a half-hour," DiSabato said Wednesday. "That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on there."
Adam DiSabato, captain of the team during the early 1990s, told members of the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee that Jordan and other officials ignored former Ohio State doctor Richard Strauss's sexual abuse of wrestlers from 1979 to 1997. DiSabato said that Jordan and other team officials knew about open-shower facilities that facilitated sexual harassment and abuse of team wrestlers. Jordan has previously denied the allegation.
Wednesday's testimony is a part of a hearing on legislation that would permit survivors of Strauss's abuse to sue the university for damages. Currently, the statute of limitations disallows them from doing so.
A university study found that Strauss abused at least 177 people during his tenure as the wrestling team's doctor. Strauss was never charged and died by suicide in 2005.
A former Ohio State wrestler told the university's lawyers in 2018 that, “Based on testimony from victim athletes from each of the aforementioned varsity sports, we estimate that Strauss sexually assaulted and/or raped a minimum of 1,500/2,000 athletes at OSU.”
In November 2019, NBC News reported that around 350 men were suing Ohio State, saying they were abused.
DiSabato and his brother, Mike, were among the initial whistleblowers that prompted the university to launch an investigation in 2018.
Jordan, who has represented Ohio's 4th congressional district since 2007, was once a contender for speaker of the House. He has denied all wrongdoing. President Donald Trump is among those who have spoken out in favor of the embattled legislator.
"I don't believe them at all," Trump told reporters in 2018 about those who have accused Jordan of covering up rampant sexual abuse at Ohio State. "I believe him."
Eight wrestlers have said publicly that Jordan was aware of—and did not do anything to stop—Strauss's systemic abuse.
One former wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, recounted to NBC News an instance in which he was abused and told Jordan directly. Another former wrestler, Shawn Dailey, later corroborated the story.
“I remember I had a thumb injury and went into Strauss’ office and he started pulling down my wrestling shorts,” he said. “I’m like, what the f--- are you doing? And I went out and told Russ and Jim what happened. I was not having it. They went in and talked to Strauss.”
Yetts said he and his teammates talked to Jordan numerous times about Strauss.
“For God’s sake, Strauss’s locker was right next to Jordan’s and Jordan even said he’d kill him if he tried anything with him,” Yetts said.
DiSabato has said that Jordan gave out a certificate each year called “King of the Sauna,” to the person with the most clever banter while in the shower—a shower where Strauss allegedly performed the bulk of his sexual abuse. Jordan, DiSabato said, hung out in the sauna daily.
A spokesman for Jordan previously confirmed to the Columbus Dispatch that he did give out that award, but denied allegations that the legislator saw any abuse take place in the sauna.
Since these allegations surfaced in 2018, Jordan has apparently tried to cover-up the cover-up.
In May 2019, Mike DiSabato stated in a Title IX lawsuit against Ohio State that Jordan's second cousin aimed to "intimidate and retaliate" against him for speaking out publicly. Later that year, Jordan, his younger brother and another former wrestling coach were accused of witness tampering and intimidation in their attempt to suppress accusations from a former wrestler, according to NBC News.
Jordan has, too, denied those allegations.
From Sports Illustrated, February 12, 2020