Why does Biden want the U.S., and not Singapore, to pay for a U.S. bridge that was destroyed by a Singaporean ship?
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1772756791408959611
I’m against using taxpayers’ money to fly rapists into the U.S.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jordan-opens-house-probe-haitian-114007862.html
Jordan opens House probe into how Haitian migrant charged with raping girl at Massachusetts shelter came to US
By Danielle Wallace, Chad Pergram, and Kelly Phares
March 20, 2024
House Judiciary Committee Republicans are demanding that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas provide information on how a Haitian migrant charged with raping a disabled teen girl at a Massachusetts state shelter entered the United States and who sponsored him to come here.
Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., who chairs the Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security and Enforcement, jointly penned a letter to Mayorkas on Tuesday regarding their investigation into 26-year-old Cory Alvarez. On March 13, police in Rockland, Mass., arrested Alvarez, a Haitian national, “in connection with a vicious assault on a disabled ‘15-year-old girl,’” the letter obtained by Fox News says.
“According to press reports, in June 2023, Alvarez was ‘fl[own] directly from Haiti to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City’ as part of the Biden Administration’s illegal categorical parole program known as CHNV that ‘allows up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to fly into the U.S.’ each month,” the letter says.
Fact check: Biden makes three false claims about his handling of classified information
Fact check: Biden makes three false claims about his handling of classified information
By Daniel Dale
February 9, 2024
President Joe Biden gave a press conference Thursday night after the release of a report from special counsel Robert Hur, who announced that Biden would not face charges over his handling of classified information from prior to his presidency.
Biden was combative, forcefully rejecting Hur’s claims that he has a poor memory. But the president was also repeatedly inaccurate, making three claims that were clearly contradicted by Hur’s report.
Here is a fact check.
Where the classified material was stored
Biden sought to contrast his handling of classified material with that of former President Donald Trump, who faces felony charges for willfully retaining classified documents. (Hur agreed that there were major distinctions between the two cases.) But while Biden correctly noted that the documents were in a private home that is very different from the Mar-a-Lago social club where Trump lives, Biden embellished his argument with a false claim.
Biden said: “All the stuff that was in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim is not true. The special counsel’s report says that while some of the classified documents were found in cabinet drawers in Biden’s Delaware home, other classified documents, about Afghanistan, were found in an “unsealed” and “badly damaged” box sitting in his garage alongside an assortment of other items the special counsel described as “household detritus.” The report includes a photo of the box.
Hur wrote that investigators looked into the possibility that the Afghanistan-related documents found in the box were previously stored in a filing cabinet when Biden lived in a rented home in Virginia before moving out in 2019. Hur called that line of inquiry “inconclusive.” Regardless, Biden’s Thursday claim that “all” of the documents in his home were in locked or lockable filing cabinets is not true of his current home.
According to the special counsel, even classified documents Biden was storing elsewhere in his home were insufficiently secure. Hur wrote that Biden notebooks containing classified information from his vice presidency were found by investigators in “unlocked drawers in the office and basement den” of the home. Hur wrote that Biden “should have known” that as a private citizen as of 2017, “he was not permitted to keep handwritten notes about the President’s Daily Brief and other classified information in unlocked drawers in his home.”
At a White House briefing on Friday, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, would not directly answer when asked about Biden’s claims about the security of the documents held at his home.
“Look, I think the president was trying to address a number of inaccurate allegations in this … report,” Sams told CNN’s MJ Lee. “I don’t have anything … to add on what he said last night.”
Asked later whether he was saying the special counsel’s report was inaccurate about the storage of documents, Sams again avoided responding directly.
“The report lays out in 400 pages of detail all of the evidence and all of the review that they conducted in looking into this matter,” he said. “The president made sure that all of the classified documents that were found were returned promptly to the government, which is what you’re supposed to do, which is why this is the inevitable conclusion that there is no case here.”
When the reporter pressed Sams, saying that wasn’t a response to his question, Sams replied: “I understand what you’re trying to ask.” He did not respond further to the question.
The classification level of the documents Biden had in his possession
Biden claimed of the documents he possessed: “None of it was high classified. It didn’t have any of that red stuff on it, you know what I mean, around the corners? None of that.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim that none of the classified material found in his possession was highly classified is false, according to details provided by the special counsel. Hur reported the discovery of documents in Biden’s possession that had markings identifying them as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” a very high level of classification – plus handwritten notebooks from Biden’s time as vice president that weren’t marked as classified but that “contain information that remains classified up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level.”
It’s not clear whether any of the marked classified documents found in Biden’s possession had the colored borders seen on some of the marked classified documents found in Trump’s possession, which is what Biden appeared to be referring to when he spoke about “that red stuff…around the corners.” Regardless, Hur explained at length that some of the documents were marked as Top Secretand some with other notations identifying them as highly classified.
For example, Hur wrote, the open box in Biden’s garage contained an Afghanistan-related memo from the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 marked “TOP SECRET/SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information). Hur wrote that experts in the intelligence community said the document contains “highly sensitive information about the military programs of the United States and a foreign government. The unauthorized disclosure of this information, both today and in 2017 when Mr. Biden was no longer vice president, reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
Hur wrote that the box in the garage contained another 2009 memo from the National Security Adviser to Obama marked “TOP SECRET WITH TOP SECRET/NOFORN/CODEWORD ATTACHMENTS” with attachments, one of which was marked “TOP SECRET//HUMINT/COMINT//ORCON/NOFORN//FISA.”Hur wrote that experts said “portions of this document contain national defense information about sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
In addition, Hur wrote that notebooks with handwritten notes Biden took during his vice presidency contained information on “U.S. intelligence sources, methods, and capabilities,” “U.S. intelligence activities” and “the activities of foreign intelligence services,” among other things. Hur wrote that when investigators looked into a sampling of 37 excerpts from Biden’s handwritten materials that appeared to be classified, they found that “eight are Top Secret with Sensitive Compartmented Information, seven of which include information concerning human intelligence sources,” while six are Top Secret alone, 21 Secret and two Confidential.
“Mr. Biden wrote down obviously sensitive information discussed during intelligence briefings with then President Obama and meetings in the White House Situation Room about matters of national security and military and foreign policy,” Hur wrote.
What Hur said Biden said to his ghostwriter
Hur said in the report that Biden disclosed classified material from his notebooks to the ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who worked with him on a 2017 memoir called “Promise Me, Dad.” But Biden categorically denied that he had shared classified information with the ghostwriter, saying he can “guarantee” he didn’t.
When a reporter responded that the special counsel said he did, Biden responded, “No, they did not say that. He did not say that.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. Hur did say that, writing explicitly that “Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information, from those notebooks with his ghostwriter.” He elaborated that Biden shared classified information with his ghostwriter by reading “nearly verbatim” from his notebooks “on at least three occasions,” including his “notes from meetings in the Situation Room.”
Hur did find, however, that Biden “at times” tried to avoid sharing classified information, by stopping at or skipping over certain material from the notebooks. And he wrote that “the evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared the specific passages with his ghostwriter, Mr. Biden knew the passages were classified and intended to share classified information.”
Hur wrote that in one recorded conversation with the ghostwriter in 2017, at the Virginia home where Biden then lived, Biden read from his notebook about a National Security Council meeting about Iraq in 2015, then told the ghostwriter about a 2009 memo he had written to Obama arguing against the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan – and then said, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Hur noted that more than five years later, investigators found classified documents about the Afghanistan troop surge in Biden’s Delaware garage.
Hur wrote that he has not heard of any allegations that classified material actually appeared in Biden’s 2017 memoir.
Biden won’t be charged in classified docs case; special counsel cites instances of ‘poor memory’
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna96666
Biden won’t be charged in classified docs case; special counsel cites instances of ‘poor memory’
The decision caps off a yearlong saga and means Donald Trump remains the only president in history to face criminal charges.
By Ryan J. Reilly, Ken Dilanian, and Megan Lebowitz
February 8, 2024
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Hur has declined to prosecute President Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents but said in a report released Thursday that Biden’s practices “present serious risks to national security” and added that part of the reason he wouldn’t charge Biden was that the president could portray himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory” who would be sympathetic to a jury.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report said, but added that the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The report from Hur — who previously appointed by former President Donald Trump as one of the country’s top federal prosecutors — also made clear the “material distinctions” between a theoretical case against Biden and the pending case against Trump for his handling of classified documents, noting the “serious aggravating facts” in Trump’s case.
Biden said in remarks from the White House after the report was made public that he was pleased that the report cleared him.
“The decision to decline criminal charges was straightforward,” Biden said.
He also said: “My memory’s fine.”
Hur’s report included several shocking lines about Biden’s memory, which the report said “was significantly limited” during his 2023 interviews with the special counsel. Biden’s age and presentation would make it more difficult to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the now-81-year-old was guilty of willfully committing a crime.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” it said. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Later in the report, the special counsel said that the president’s memory was “worse” during an interview with him than it was in recorded conversations from 2017.
In a Monday letter to Hur and his deputy special counsel, Richard Sauber and Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal counsel, disputed how the report characterized the president’s memory.
“We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate,” Sauber and Bauer wrote in the letter, which was also released on Thursday. “The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.”
“He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report said.
Biden also had difficulty remembering the timing of his son Beau’s death, as well as a debate about Afghanistan, the report said.
“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report said.
Defenders of the president quickly pointed out that he sat for the interview in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Biden, giving previously scheduled remarks on Thursday, appeared to nod to that, saying, “I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.”
He also added that he was “especially pleased” that the special counsel “made clear the stark differences between this case and Donald Trump.”
Andrew Weissman, who served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, said on MSNBC on Thursday that Hur’s decision to lodge criticisms of Biden’s memory problems was “gratuitous” and reminded him of when former FBI Director James Comey held a press conference criticizing Hillary Clinton in the months before the 2016 election.
“This is not being charged. And yet a person goes out and gives their opinion with adjectives and adverbs about what they think, entirely inappropriate,” he said. “I think a really fair criticism of this is unfortunately, we’re seeing a redux of what we saw with respect to James Comey at the FBI with respect to Hillary Clinton in terms of really not adhering to what I think are the highest ideals of the Department of Justice.”
Separately, Sauber responded to the report by saying the White House is “pleased” it has concluded and that there were no criminal charges.
“As the Special Counsel report recognizes, the President fully cooperated from day one,” he said in a statement. “His team promptly self-reported the classified documents that were found to ensure that these documents were immediately returned to the government because the President knows that’s where they belong.”
Sauber went on to appear to criticize the report but raised no specific points.
“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report,” Sauber said in his statement. “Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made — that no charges are warranted — is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”
Hur’s report said there were “clear” material distinctions between a potential case against Biden and the pending case against Trump, noting that unlike “the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts.”
Most notably, the report said, “after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite.” In contrast, it said, “Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”
Some of the report focuses on documents about Afghanistan, from early in Barack Obama’s presidency. About a month after Biden left office as vice president, in a recorded conversation with his ghostwriter in February 2017, Biden remarked that he “just found all this classified stuff downstairs,” the report said. He told him, “Some of this may be classified, so be careful,” in one recording. Biden was believed to have been referring to classified documents about the Afghanistan troop surge in 2009, which Biden opposed.
The announcement tops off a lengthy saga that began in November 2022, after one of Biden’s personal attorneys found classified documents that appeared to be from the Obama administration at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which Biden had used as a personal office after his vice presidential term concluded. Classified documents were later also found at Biden’s Delaware home.
The existence of classified documents at Biden’s home and former office were first reported in January 2023. CBS News first reported the existence of the documents at the Penn Biden Center.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 announced that he would appoint Hur as special counsel to oversee the investigation into Biden, saying the appointment authorized him “to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter.”
Biden was interviewed in October as part of the investigation, the White House said. The interview was voluntary, according to White House spokesman Ian Sams.
“As we have said from the beginning, the President and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Sams said at the time.
NBC News has also previously reported that the special counsel had interviewed Hunter Biden as well, according to a source familiar with the matter.
With Hur’s announcement, Donald Trump remains the only president in history to face criminal charges, which include seven criminal charges in connection with mishandling classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. According to the indictment in that case, Trump had more than 100 classified documents at his Florida home, including documents with “Top Secret” classification markings.
These rioters should be treated the exact same way as Ashli Babbit
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1746507098467299684
Liberals are total hypocrites when it comes to illegal immigration
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 5, 2023
Check out these three recent news articles and videos:
Associated Press: “Biden administration waives 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in South Texas”
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-administration-waives-26-federal-224723792.html
New York City Mayor Adams sounds exactly like Trump when he talks about illegal immigrants:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLHRgAdQwqg
Chicago citizens who voted for Mayor Johnson are angry at him because he kept his campaign promise to be kind to illegal immigrants:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRrdS6AvGrM
All of these Democrats who are now complaining were perfectly happy with illegal immigration when it overwhelmed the small border towns in Texas. But now that it’s coming to the big blue cities, they have decided that their own “sanctuary city” policy is a bad idea. I absolutely hate this kind of hypocrisy. Either you’re in favor of illegal immigration, or you’re against it. You can’t have it both ways.
It’s also hypocritical how liberals called Trump racist when he talked about illegal immigrants, but now liberals are saying the exact same thing that Trump said. And they’re even building the same border wall which they said was “racist” when Trump wanted to build it.
My only criticism in all of this is their hypocrisy. To me, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration, and everything to do with the fact that these liberals are not willing to live under the same conditions that they were willing to force on to the red state of Texas. I hate, hate, hate their hypocrisy.
95-year-old veteran kicked out of nursing home to make way for migrant housing, lawmakers say
https://www.yahoo.com/news/95-old-veteran-kicked-nursing-205910143.html
95-year-old veteran kicked out of nursing home to make way for migrant housing, lawmakers say
By Elizabeth Elkind
September 26, 2023
A 95-year-old Korean War veteran said he was given less than two months’ notice to figure out where he was going to live after the nursing home he resided in was sold to become a facility for undocumented migrants.
Veteran Frank Tammaro joined Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a vocal critic of New York City’s handling of the migrant crisis, at a press conference on Monday to discuss the reported deal.
“The thing I’m annoyed about is how they did it, it was very disgraceful what they did to the people in Island Shores,” Tammaro said, referencing the assisted living facility he was in.
He said that Island Shores “gave us time to get out,” but not enough time to protest the decision to boot residents – which Tammaro said he tried to do.
“Then one day there was a notice on the board. I think that gave us a month and a half to find out where we were going to go,” he said. “I thought my suitcases were going to be on the curb because I’m not that fast.”
“If it wasn’t for my daughter, they would’ve been on the curb. That was it. I said, ‘No, no, no, no, you’re not moving me,’ and they said, ‘Yes, yes, yes we are.’ Everything was done behind closed doors – we didn’t have a chance to actually make any attempt to stop them because there wasn’t enough time.”
New York City Councilman David Carr confirmed to local outlet SI Live that he was informed by the city’s Department of Social Services that the migrant facility would open there this week. Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Social Services for confirmation but did not immediately hear back on Tuesday.
Fox News Digital’s attempt to contact a number associated with Island Shores Senior Residence could not be completed. The facility is listed as “permanently closed” online.
Malliotakis said the reported deal was “showing our country and our city’s priorities are backwards.”
“My blood pressure went through the roof when I found out Homes for the Homeless cut a deal with the City of New York to turn Island Shores into a migrant shelter,” the GOP lawmaker said.
“Our tax dollars as citizens of New York should not be utilized to house citizens of other countries, especially at the expense of our senior citizens and veterans who put their lives on the line, paid taxes their whole lives and built our communities.”
Tens of thousands of migrants have come to New York City over the last year, buckling the city’s infrastructure and overwhelming housing officials.
A judge sided with Staten Island lawmakers on Tuesday in ruling that a migrant facility in the borough, converted from a former Catholic school, should close.
Judge pumps the brakes on Hunter Biden’s guilty plea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/26/hunter-biden-plea-deal/
Judge pumps the brakes on Hunter Biden’s guilty plea
Expected guilty plea by the president’s son is in jeopardy because of concerns about a novel provision in the deal
By Perry Stein, Karl Baker, Devlin Barrett, and Matt Viser
July 26, 2023
WILMINGTON, Del. — A federal judge on Wednesday delayed accepting a guilty plea from President Biden’s son Hunter, saying the terms of the deal may not be constitutional but could be salvaged in the coming weeks if prosecutors and defense lawyers can show her it is on solid legal footing.
The deal that had been struck in June began to unravel near the start of the three-hour hearing, which the White House and allies of the Biden family had hoped would help close a painful chapter in Hunter Biden’s life that has cast a pall over the First Family.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked questions that revealed the extent of a long-standing dispute between federal prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers over whether the agreement — in which he would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and probably avoid jail time — would protect him from the possibility of additional criminal charges. She later questioned the structure of the deal itself, saying lawyers had crafted a two-step plea deal in which some key features may not be reviewable or enforceable by the court.
The complications marked another twist in a case that has been dogged by questions about possible political bias, prosecutorial delay, and debate over whether Hunter Biden was being treated too harshly or too gently because of who his father is. The judge’s skepticism also thrust Biden back into the spotlight, renewing questions over what investigations may be ongoing and how that might affect his father ahead of a presidential reelection campaign, and reanimated congressional Republicans, who have spent months focusing on the Biden family in what have often been fruitless pursuits.
Prosecutors had proposed that Hunter Biden plead guilty to the tax charges in a fairly standard agreement that requires the judge’s approval. Separately, they crafted a “diversion agreement” with Biden’s attorneys in which the president’s son would admit to wrongdoing in a gun case and agree to certain conditions, including not purchasing a firearm and not using drugs, to avoid actually being charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.
That type of agreement is not typically approved by a judge. But this diversion agreement referenced the proposed plea, and prosecutors submitted it to Noreika, creating a bifurcated deal in which the assurances Biden wanted — that he will not be pursued for other tax or foreign lobbying charges — were not part of the tax case, but part of the gun diversion agreement, lawyers said in court.
A provision of the gun diversion agreement said that if Biden, a recovering addict, failed to remain drug-free and meet other conditions for the next two years, Noreika would determine whether he had broken the terms of the deal and tell prosecutors they could revive the gun charge against him.
Biden’s attorney argued the case had been politicized and hinted that such language could protect him if a biased prosecutor unfairly accused Biden of breaching the agreement at some point. The judge said she understood that reasoning but added that if the agreement is unconstitutional, prosecutors could just try to void it and charge Biden anyway.
Noreika also questioned whether she could lawfully make the kind of determination spelled out in the documents, given that she is not a party to the diversion agreement and that judges generally are not responsible for pursuing criminal charges.
“I have concerns about the constitutionality of this provision, so I have concerns about the constitutionality of this agreement,” she said in court.
The judge also asked prosecutors if there was any precedent for a provision constructed this way. No, the prosecutor replied.
At one point, appearing exasperated, she said the lawyers seemed to expect her to simply “rubber-stamp” the agreement they had struck.
She told the two sides to work on the issue, a process that could take weeks.
In the meantime, as the unresolved situation means the criminal charges laid out in the proposed plea deal are still active against Biden, he entered a not guilty plea — for now.
The disagreement over immunity that surfaced at the start of the hearing had been publicly known since the deal was struck: Biden’s attorney said it would resolve the investigation of his client, and David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, said the probe was ongoing.
In court, Biden said he was prepared to plead guilty. But then Noreika asked whether he would still do so if it was possible additional charges might be filed against him in the future.
Biden answered no.
Prosecutors again described the federal investigation around Biden as ongoing but, when pressed by the judge, would not reveal any details.
“As far as I’m concerned, the plea agreement is null and void,” Biden lawyer Chris Clark told the judge at one point.
A quick side discussion between the prosecutors and defense lawyers didn’t help.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish by blowing this up,” Clark told prosecutors. One of those prosecutors, Leo Wise, pointed to papers related to the case and said he was bound by the terms in them.
Clark shot back: “Then we misunderstood; we’re ripping it up.”
Later in the day, the two sides appeared to agree that the deal would provide immunity for certain tax, drug and gun charges between 2014 and 2019.
Wearing a dark suit, Hunter Biden responded, “Yes, your honor,” to questions that ensured he understood the details of what he would be agreeing to and the wrongdoing at the crux of the case. He detailed to the judge his history of drug abuse, saying that he has received inpatient drug and alcohol addiction treatment at least six times since 2003 and that his addiction ruined his business relationships.
The federal investigation of his business dealings was opened in 2018, during the Trump administration, and has been a favorite talking point for Republican critics of the current president and his family. Republican politicians have repeatedly accused Hunter Biden of broad wrongdoing in his overseas business deals and, since his father was elected, predicted that the Biden administration would be reluctant to pursue the case.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has insisted politics would not interfere with the criminal investigation, noting that it was being led by Weiss, a holdover from the Trump administration, and that Weiss had complete discretion over whether to bring charges.
Those assurances have come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, however, since Republican lawmakers released interview transcripts from two whistleblowers from the Internal Revenue Service who were part of the investigation. They told the House Ways and Means Committee that the Justice Department slowed and stymied the probe, whittling away the most serious evidence of alleged tax crimes. And they alleged that Weiss had told the investigative team his charging options were limited.
Officials said Monday that Weiss, who has pushed back against the whistleblower allegations, is willing to testify to Congress about the investigation in the fall.
Papers filed in court when the plea agreement was reached indicate that Hunter Biden had agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. A court document says that in both those years, Biden was a resident of D.C., received taxable income of more than $1.5 million and owed more than $100,000 in income tax that he did not pay on time.
Prosecutors planned to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, according to people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe elements of the case that are not yet public. Hunter Biden’s representatives have previously said that he eventually paid the IRS what he owed.
A second court filing is about the charge of illegally possessing a weapon, which involves a handgun Biden purchased at a time when he was abusing drugs. In that case, the letter says, “the defendant has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement with respect to the firearm information.”
Diversion is an option typically applied to nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems. Hunter Biden has written and spoken openly about being addicted to cocaine during the years in question. People close to him, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid about a sensitive issue, said he was looking at the potential conclusion of the criminal case against him through the lens of an addict and was hoping to use the guilty plea to admit to past mistakes, make amends and move on.
But even if the legal turmoil that has surrounded Hunter Biden for years is wrapped up in coming days or weeks, the political battle will continue in the form of congressional investigations, attacks via social media and attempts to shape public opinion as the president seeks reelection in 2024.
The whistleblower testimony brought forth new allegations, including a text message that Hunter Biden allegedly sent on July 30, 2017, that invoked his father — at that time a former vice president — as the younger Biden tried to get a business partner to fulfill some expected promise.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking at the start of a White House briefing on Wednesday that began just as proceedings were concluding in Wilmington, attempted to keep a distance from the case.
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen and this was a personal matter for him,” she said. “As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”
She emphasized that “this case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the Justice Department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president, President Trump.”
President Biden, who generally tries to refrain from commenting on his son’s criminal case but has also repeatedly stated that Hunter “did nothing wrong,” had no public events Wednesday and offered no public reaction to the new developments.
The court appearance took place a few miles from where Hunter Biden grew up and went to high school — just blocks from the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station, the station from which his father commuted to Washington for decades as a member of Congress.
Giuliani, Researchers Ask Judge To Reject Hunter Biden Plea Deal, Saying Laptop Proves Hundreds Of Crimes
Giuliani, Researchers Ask Judge To Reject Hunter Biden Plea Deal, Saying Laptop Proves Hundreds Of Crimes
By Luke Rosiak
July 24, 2023
A nonprofit research group which combed through Hunter Biden’s laptop has sent a letter to the judge overseeing the First Son’s tax fraud case, urging her to reject the plea deal offered by prosecutors.
Marco Polo, which put emails from the laptop online and wrote a 630-page report summarizing its contents, said that judges are not obligated to accept plea deals even if prosecutors and the defendant agree on them, and that “not only will the plea deal in front of you, if accepted, make a mockery of the phrase ‘slap on the wrist,’ but it will also send a sobering message to citizens which demonstrates that nepotism and proximity to political power determines outcomes in our criminal justice system.”
It said “there is evidence for, at the very least, 459 violations of state and federal laws and regulations on the device. The breakdown is as follows: 140 business-related crimes, 191 sex-related crimes, and, lastly, 128 drug-related crimes. These instances of criminal wrongdoing are supported by primary source evidence: emails, photos, videos, text messages, audio files, et al. The plea deal for your consideration is so meager that the phrase ‘limited hangout’ does not describe the situation.”
It said a “limited hangout” is a public relations technique in which someone who wants to cover up something major admits to a very small portion in order to claim that the issue has been put to rest.
Joining Marco Polo in the letter was Rudy Giuliani, the former Donald Trump attorney who played a role in disseminating the laptop after the FBI appeared to sit on it.
By virtue of having been the United States Attorney (‘USA’) for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Giuliani is uniquely capable of spotting a ‘sweetheart’ deal reserved for those such as Biden, whose father is the president. Without Biden’s familial connections, there is no way any USA or AUSA would have proposed two misdemeanors and essentially a non-prosecution on the felony gun charge,” the letter said.
Robert Costello, Giuliani’s own lawyer and a former deputy in the New York prosecutor’s office, also signed the letter to Judge Maryellen Noreika of the District of Delaware federal court.
The letter said that congressional oversight and whistleblower disclosures have provided information that suggests that the plea deal, which is limited to misdemeanor tax charges, would allow a felony gun charge to go away under a diversion program, and carries a penalty of only probation, was the result of prosecutorial misconduct.
It said that then-Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf prevented investigators from getting more evidence by tipping the Bidens off that a raid on a storage unit was imminement.
“This egregious leak from Wolf-and her Department of Justice colleague and lawyer, Mark Daly-infuriated the IRS investigators (i.e. two of the whistleblowers) and likely violated Pennsylvania Bar rules (where Wolf is barred) in addition to federal statutes. Furthermore, Wolf apparently concealed evidence from the investigators, demanded that investigators avoid inquiring about ‘the big guy,’ a moniker for the U.S. president, Joe Biden, and was improperly concerned about the ‘optics’ regarding a search warrant of the U.S. President’s guest house. Suffice it is to say that ‘optics’ should not dictate investigative steps.”
It said according to congressional testimony from IRS whistleblowers, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark told prosecutors that their “careers would be ruined if they brought various charges against Hunter.”
Further, “the District of Delaware has never — going back to 1995 — charged 26 USC §7203 as a standalone misdemeanor, as is the case with Biden. This proposed plea deal is, quite literally, unprecedented; we hope you will recognize that it is unprecedented because it is unjust,” the letter said.
“Lastly, the Chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives has announced that Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, will be testifying before his Committee early next week. It is imperative that this Court be apprised of that testimony to consider whether to accept this plea offer. At the very least, Your Honor’s consideration of this proposed plea should not be made until you are aware of all the salient facts likely to be revealed,” it said.
Collin Rugg: “I’m not saying Hunter Biden snorted cocaine at the White House but if he did, I would expect it to look exactly like this.”
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1676697464118681601
Collin Rugg: “I’m not saying Hunter Biden snorted cocaine at the White House but if he did, I would expect it to look exactly like this.”
CBS: “Two IRS whistleblowers alleged sweeping misconduct in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, new transcripts show”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whistleblowers-hunter-biden-tax-investigation-new-transcripts/
Two IRS whistleblowers alleged sweeping misconduct in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, new transcripts show
By Catherine Herridge and Robert Legare
June 22, 2023
Two IRS whistleblowers allege sweeping misconduct, including interference in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, according to the GOP House Ways and Means Committee chairman and newly released transcripts of congressional interviews with the whistleblowers.
Earlier this week, Biden agreed to enter guilty pleas for two misdemeanor tax charges that related to his failure to pay tax on more than $3 million in income. As part of the deal with Delaware U.S Attorney David Weiss — who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump and was kept in the position by the current administration to continue the probe — Biden will avoid full prosecution on a separate gun possession charge. A Delaware judge must approve the agreement at a hearing currently set for July 26.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who recently spoke exclusively with CBS News’ Jim Axelrod, told congressional investigators the IRS findings supported more severe penalties.
“This recommended felony tax evasion charges, that’s 7201, is tax evasion, and 7206(1) is a false tax return, also a felony, for the tax years 2014, 2018, and 2019. And for Title 26 7203, which is a failure to file or pay, that is a misdemeanor charge for ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, and ’19,” Shapley said.
“The testimony we have just released details a lack of U.S. attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation,” Chairman Jason Smith told reporters.
“Testimony shows that U.S. Attorney of Delaware David Weiss tried to bring charges in the District of Columbia around March of 2022 and was denied,” Smith asserted. “Weiss sought special counsel status from the [Justice Department] in the spring of 2022 and was once again denied. Weiss sought to bring charges in the Central District of California in the fall of 2022 and had that request denied in January of 2023.”
A spokesperson for Weiss declined to comment, but earlier this month, in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Weiss wrote, “I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
“Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations,” Weiss said.
In a statement issued Thursday, the Justice Department said, “As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”
“Two interviews do not make an investigation when more than 50 employees were named, especially when you consider that one recanted key elements of his testimony earlier this week,” House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Democrat Richard Neal wrote after the release of the interview transcripts, “It’s all premature, and the rush shows how pretextual this is in this stunning abuse of power.”
This week, after Biden’s plea deal was announced, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Justice Department leadership had no role in the charging decision. “As I said from the moment of my appointment as attorney general, I would leave this matter in the hands of the United States attorney who was appointed by the previous president,” referring to Weiss.
Since gaining the majority in the House, Republican members of Congress have focused their investigatory powers on Hunter Biden’s business deals, in some cases as far back as when his father was vice president.
During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden consistently maintained that he was not involved in any of his son’s business dealings and the White House has continued to deny any connection exists.
Congressional Republicans have alleged that Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden were involved in a deal with Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy in August 2017. And in particular, GOP lawmakers are interested in an email that became public in 2020, when Republicans obtained information from a laptop alleged to have belonged to Hunter Biden.
The message, which bore the subject line “Expectations,” outlines a “provisional agreement” for “equity” in a deal with a Chinese energy company.
Two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners who received the message, including Tony Bobulinski, told CBS News that a line in the email, “10 held by H for the big guy?” is shorthand for 10% held by Hunter Biden for his father.
According to the now-public transcripts of the interview with the committee, Shapley told congressional investigators that interest in references to “dad” and “the big guy” was blocked by a senior prosecutor working for Weiss.
When the email became public in 2020, the author, James Gilliar, told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved. Gilliar did not respond to CBS News’ questions.
Hunter Biden’s team did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News. One of his lawyers, Christopher Clark, has in the past denied that Biden ever gave his consent “to access his computer data or share it with others,” alleging “there have been multiple attempts to hack, infect, distort, and peddle misinformation regarding Mr. Biden’s devices and data.”
In his congressional interview, Shapley also alleged that there was a recovered WhatsAPP message from Hunter Biden dated July 30, 2017, that was addressed to a Chinese businessman with whom he was involved at the time about an outstanding payment.
“I am sitting here with my father..we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote, according to the transcript. He added, “I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand” and “now means tonight.”
In a statement, Shapley said of the now public transcript, “I believe Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate should come together to examine these facts by interviewing other witnesses and reviewing documents to fully understand what happened during this five-year long investigation. I fulfilled my oath of office by participating in this process, following the rules, and telling the truth to the best of my ability — despite the risks.”
The White House referred CBS News to an earlier statement to reiterate only that the president has not been involved in the investigation into his son. “President Biden has made clear that this matter would be handled independently by the Justice Department, under the leadership of a U.S. Attorney appointed by former President Trump, free from any political interference by the White House,” the statement said. “He has upheld that commitment.”
CBS News asked Hunter Biden’s legal team for comment and there was no immediate response.
NBC: “IRS agent tells House committee there was meddling with Hunter Biden case”
IRS agent tells House committee there was meddling with Hunter Biden case
Gary Shapley testified last month before the House Ways and Means Committee, and the transcript was made public Thursday.
By Tom Winter
June 22, 2023
A former IRS employee told the House Ways and Means Committee that U.S. Attorney David Weiss sought authority to charge Hunter Biden in two federal districts with charges broader than the tax-related misdemeanors the president’s son agreed this week to plead guilty to, according to a 212-page transcript of his interview.
The whistleblower, Gary Shapley, says Attorney General Merrick Garland was not telling Congress the truth when he asserted in earlier testimony that Weiss, who is based in Delaware, had the authority to charge in other jurisdictions, including California and Washington, D.C. Shapley said bringing charges in those districts is not something the U.S. attorneys there, who were appointed by President Joe Biden, would do.
The Justice Department denied Shapley’s assertions.
“As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, the deputy director of the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs.
Shapley told the committee that as an investigator for the IRS, he obtained messages Hunter Biden sent on the WhatsApp platform, including one that he read demanding payment from a Chinese businessman named Henry Zhao. In the message, Biden appeared to suggest that he was sitting with his father, then the former vice president, saying, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Shapley, a supervisory special agent with IRS criminal investigations who has worked for the agency since July 2009, testified in May, and the committee made the transcript available Thursday.
The Justice Department has insisted that Weiss, who remained the U.S. attorney in Delaware after having been appointed by President Donald Trump, was allowed to act with independence and that no pressure was put on him to go easy on Biden.
Weiss’s office declined to comment but pointed to his June 7 letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he said his decisions were made independently.
“Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations,” he wrote.
However, critics of the president have charged that he put his thumb on the scale in favor of his son and that Hunter Biden’s agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanors and avoid jail time was a “sweetheart” deal.
In his opening statement before the Republican-controlled Ways and Means Committee, Shapley said, “I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”
He added, “The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.”
Biden pleaded guilty in connection with his 2017 and 2018 tax filings. Shapley said he saw evidence that Biden should also have been charged in connection with his tax filing for 2014 — a year his father was vice president.
The Justice Department would have charged in “any other case I ever worked with similar fact patterns, similar acts of evasion and similar tax due and owing,” Shapley told the committee.
In his interview with the committee, he was shown an email — first reported by NBC News in December — from Biden’s business associate stating that Biden needed to re-state his income on his tax returns in large part because of his Burisma payments.
Shapley said that the email is important to that case but that it was not brought because the statute of limitations was allowed to expire.
In addition, Shapley says efforts to search Biden-associated properties and a public relations firm named Blue Star Strategies were not approved. The latter “was a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation,” referring to the law that requires people working in the U.S. on behalf of foreign governments to register.
Shapley said he participated in the investigation of the 2018 tax filing. Court filings in Delaware indicating that a plea agreement is forthcoming have been sparse on detail, but Shapley testified under oath that Biden was listing personal expenses as business expenses.
“He was expensing personal expenses, his business expenses,” Shapley said. “So, I mean, everything, there was a payment that — there was a $25,000 to one of his girlfriends, and it said, ‘golf membership.’ And then we went out and followed that money, it was for a sex club membership in L.A.”
Shapley says travel costs to visit prostitutes were also improperly booked as business expenses.
He says he thought it was valuable for the FBI and the IRS to ask questions about the now infamous e-mail “10 for the big guy,” an apparent reference to money for Joe Biden out of one of Hunter Biden’s attempted businesses with a Chinese firm.
CNN: “Whistleblowers say IRS recommended far more charges, including felonies, against Hunter Biden”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/politics/irs-whistleblower-hunter-biden/index.html
Whistleblowers say IRS recommended far more charges, including felonies, against Hunter Biden
By Marshall Cohen, Evan Perez, Alayna Treene, Lauren Fox, and Holmes Lybrand
June 22, 2023
Two whistleblowers told Congress that IRS investigators recommended charging Hunter Biden with attempted tax evasion and other felonies, which are far more serious crimes than what the president’s son has agreed to plead guilty to, according to transcripts of their private interviews with lawmakers.
The IRS whistleblowers said the recommendation called for Hunter Biden to be charged with tax evasion and filing a false tax return – both felonies – for 2014, 2018 and 2019. The IRS also recommended that prosecutors charge him with failing to pay taxes on time, a misdemeanor, for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to the transcripts, which were released Thursday by House Republicans.
It appears that this 11-count charging recommendation also had the backing of some Justice Department prosecutors, but not from more senior attorneys, according to documents that the whistleblowers provided to House investigators.
In a deal with prosecutors announced earlier this week, Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to just two tax misdemeanors.
The allegations come from Gary Shapley, a 14-year IRS veteran, who oversaw parts of the Hunter Biden criminal probe, and an unnamed IRS agent who was on the case nearly from its inception. Shapley approached Congress this year with information that he claimed showed political interference in the investigation. He and the entire IRS team were later removed from the probe.
“I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation,” Shapley told lawmakers.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Delaware who oversaw the Hunter Biden criminal probe, eventually reached a plea deal where the president’s son will plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes on time. The plea agreement will also resolve a separate felony gun charge, if Hunter Biden abides by certain court-imposed conditions for a period of time.
Hunter Biden isn’t pleading guilty to any felonies, and he wasn’t charged with any tax felonies. CNN reported that prosecutors are expected to recommend no jail time. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Delaware on July 26.
It isn’t uncommon for there to be internal disagreements among investigators over which charges to file against the target of an investigation, much like the disagreements that the IRS whistleblowers described. CNN reported last year that some FBI and IRS investigators were at odds with other Justice Department officials over the strength of the case, and that there were discussions over which types of charges were appropriate and whether further investigation was needed.
Sources familiar with the criminal probe told CNN in April that prosecutors were still actively weighing a felony tax charge against Hunter Biden. And it is common for prosecutors to strike deals with defendants where they plead guilty to a small subset of the possible charges they could’ve faced.
Alleged roadblocks inside DOJ
The Justice Department probe into Hunter Biden was opened in November 2018, and was codenamed “Sportsman.” According to Shapley’s testimony, federal investigators knew as early as June 2021 that there were potential venue-related issues with charging Hunter Biden in Delaware. Under federal law, charges must be brought in the jurisdiction where the alleged crimes occurred.
If the potential charges couldn’t be brought in Delaware, then Weiss would need help from his fellow US attorneys. He looked to Washington, DC, where some of Hunter Biden’s tax returns were prepared, and the Central District of California, which includes the Los Angeles area where Hunter Biden lives.
But Shapley told the committee that the US attorneys in both districts wouldn’t seek an indictment.
A second whistleblower, an IRS case agent who also testified to the committee but hasn’t been publicly identified, also told lawmakers that this is what happened. He agreed that Weiss was “was told no” when he tried to get the cooperation of the US attorneys in in DC and Los Angeles, who are Biden appointees.
Hunter Biden’s eventual plea agreement was filed in Weiss’ jurisdiction, in Delaware.
Shapley contends in his interview that Attorney General Merrick Garland was not truthful when he told Congress that Weiss had full authority on the investigation.
Shapley recounted a meeting on October 7, 2022, where, according to Shapley’s notes memorializing the meeting, Weiss said, “He is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden. This undermines what Weiss and Garland have publicly said about Weiss’ independence on the matter.
Shapley also testified to committee investigators that it was during this October 2022 meeting that he learned for the first time that Weiss had requested to be named as a special counsel, but was denied.
In testimony to Congress in March, Garland said Weiss was advised “he is not to be denied anything he needs.”
Regarding the claims of political interference with the Hunter Biden criminal probe, Weiss told House Republicans in a recent letter that Garland granted him “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
After the transcripts were released Thursday, spokespeople for the US attorney’s offices in DC and Los Angeles issued near-identical statements reiterating that Weiss “was given full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction he deemed appropriate.” The Justice Department echoed those comments in a statement saying Weiss “needs no further approval” to bring charges wherever he wants.
The whistleblowers also allege that at multiple key junctures, investigators were thwarted in their efforts because prosecutors were concerned about interfering in the 2020 presidential election.
In 2020, IRS investigators sought to conduct search warrants and take other overt steps. But according to Shapley, several weeks before the election, in September 2020, a Justice Department prosecutor questioned the optics of searching Hunter Biden’s residence and Joe Biden’s guest home.
Later that year, other planned searches were delayed because then-President Donald Trump was refusing to concede and was continuing to contest the results.
Republicans claim unequal justice
Republicans have slammed the plea agreement Hunter Biden struck as a “sweetheart deal,” and said it amounted to “a slap on the wrist.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith said earlier Thursday that the transcripts reveal “credible whistleblower testimony alleging misconduct and abuse” at the Justice Department that “resulted in preferential treatment for the president’s son.”
The Missouri Republican highlighted the whistleblowers’ allegations that the Justice Department “overstepped” in their efforts to intervene in the Hunter Biden criminal probe.
“The testimony … details a lack of US attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation, a lack of transparency across the investigation and prosecution teams, and bullying and threats from the defense counsel,” Smith said.
Democrats on the committee said the transcripts were “a premature and incomplete record” of what happened with the Hunter Biden probe and accused the GOP of a “stunning abuse of power.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement Friday against the whistleblowers claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.
“A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be,” attorney Chris Clark said. “It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document.”
Hunter Biden invoked dad’s name to get paid, text shows
Shapley, the IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower, told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document Shapley gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.
The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.
Shapley told House investigators that a Justice Department attorney insisted that the FBI not ask directly about Joe Biden when doing interviews. But the FBI did manage to ask one key witness about Joe Biden, and Shapley said the witness told investigators that some suggestions of the president’s involvement were overstated.
An email sent among business partners of Hunter Biden said an equity stake should be held “for the big guy,” an apparent reference to Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time. But one of the associates told the FBI that it was probably just “wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting” that Joe Biden would get involved if he did not run for president in 2016.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied having any involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings, where he made millions of dollars from China, Ukraine and other countries. House Republicans have used their oversight probes to look for evidence that Joe Biden was actually involved.
New York Times: “I.R.S. Agent Told Congress of Hunter Biden Invoking His Father in Business Deal”
I.R.S. Agent Told Congress of Hunter Biden Invoking His Father in Business Deal
A whistle-blower said the tax agency found a message from 2017 in which Hunter Biden pressured a Chinese business partner by saying he was with his father, who was then out of office.
By Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt
June 22, 2023
The lead I.R.S. agent investigating whether Hunter Biden committed tax crimes told Congress his team uncovered evidence that Mr. Biden had invoked his father, who was then out of office, while pressing a potential Chinese business partner in 2017 to move ahead with a proposed energy deal, House Republicans said.
In testimony made public on Thursday, Gary Shapley, an I.R.S. agent since 2009 who supervised the tax agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden, said his team used a search warrant to obtain a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message from Mr. Biden to Henry Zhao, a Chinese businessman.
In the message, provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by Mr. Shapley, Mr. Biden told Mr. Zhao that he was sitting with his father and that “we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Mr. Biden wrote, referring to other participants in the proposed deal. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Taken at face value, the message would undercut President Biden’s longstanding claims that he had nothing to do with his son’s international business deals.
Coming days after Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to file his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, the release of the information underscored the determination of House Republicans to continue to try to tie his father to his business dealings and suggest that they were corrupt.
But it was not immediately clear whether Hunter Biden had been with his father when he sent the message or what his father — then a private citizen, having finished his term as vice president six months earlier — knew about his son’s negotiations with his potential Chinese partners.
It is also not clear whether Mr. Biden was using his father’s name without his knowledge to extract money in business deal. Mr. Shapley, in fact, also told Congress that his investigation had uncovered some evidence that some of the claims of the elder Mr. Biden’s involvement were mere “wishful thinking.”
He told of an interview conducted with Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker, who told investigators that it was “projection” that former Vice President Biden would get involved in their business ventures.
“I certainly never was thinking at any time the V.P. was a part of anything we were doing,” Mr. Walker said, according to Mr. Shapley.
Hunter Biden at the time was addicted to crack cocaine, engaging in tawdry and self-destructive behavior, and facing financial pressures. He had spent years pursuing ventures that raised ethical concerns about their intersection with his father’s career, especially during the eight years the elder Mr. Biden spent as vice president. And the death of his brother, Beau, in 2015 had contributed to his downward spiral.
Mr. Shapley said that investigators had received the WhatsApp message in response to a search warrant. But the message was not among those that Mr. Biden’s lawyers handed over to federal prosecutors in response to grand jury subpoenas during the lengthy investigation run by the Justice Department with help from the I.R.S., according to a person familiar with the matter, nor was the message one that prosecutors pressed Mr. Biden’s lawyers to explain.
It was also not among the trove of messages that have surfaced from a laptop Mr. Biden left at a repair shop in Delaware and was later made available to journalists.
The WhatsApp message was among a batch of documents released by the Ways and Means Committee along with the transcripts of interviews with Mr. Shapley and a second I.R.S. investigator whose name was redacted.
The two investigators, one of whom described himself as a Democrat, told Congress of a lengthy period of strife between them and others involved in the investigation. They said a particular prosecutor at the Justice Department blocked some of their efforts and communicated too much information to Hunter Biden’s legal team.
Mr. Shapley suggested that I.R.S. investigators believed there were grounds to charge Mr. Biden with more serious crimes than he ultimately agreed to plead guilty to as part of his deal with the Justice Department. Mr. Shapley told the committee that he was “alleging, with evidence, that D.O.J. provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”
House Republicans sought to portray the testimony as further evidence that Hunter Biden had gotten what they call a sweetheart deal from the Justice Department, even though his agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges appeared in line with how other first-time, nonviolent offenders were typically treated. Mr. Biden paid his back taxes and penalties in 2021.
In a letter to Congress this month, David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney from Delaware who charged Hunter Biden over his tax issues and a separate gun purchase, said he had “ultimate authority” over the case. Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and was kept on to complete the investigation under President Biden.
A Justice Department spokesman reiterated on Thursday that Mr. Weiss had “responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate,” and did not need any further approval to do so. The White House said President Biden had no involvement in the investigation and that it had been conducted “free from any political interference.”
“Hunter Biden profited off his father’s name. He didn’t report millions of dollars in income from foreign sources,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the Ways and Means committee. “Any ordinary American caught doing that would have faced severe consequences. Hunter Biden didn’t. Why not?”
Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, accused Republicans of rushing out piecemeal findings from their work without conducting a complete investigation.
Washington Post: “IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed, stifled Hunter Biden case: Tax investigator says prosecutor decisions whittled down the case against the president’s son”
IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed, stifled Hunter Biden case
Tax investigator says prosecutor decisions whittled down the case against the president’s son
By Devlin Barrett, Jacqueline Alemany, and Perry Stein
June 22, 2023
Washington Post
An IRS agent who supervised the investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter told lawmakers that Justice Department officials slowed and stymied the investigation, whittling away the most serious evidence of alleged tax crimes, according to a transcript of his account released Thursday.
The agent, Gary Shapley, offered a detailed and potentially damning account of prosecutors who were either timid or uninterested when it came to examining the financial misdeeds of Hunter Biden, which Shapley said included instances in which the president’s son treated prostitutes and their travel costs as his business expenses.
The agent’s account to the House Ways and Means Committee also directly challenged congressional testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, in which he said that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss — a holdover from the Trump administration — had full authority to lead the investigation into Hunter Biden and could do whatever he wanted in the case.
A Justice Department spokesman stood by Garland’s previous comments, and the lead Democrat on the House committee said the allegations should not have been released publicly while lawmakers are still vetting them.
The transcript almost certainly will fuel criticism of the Justice Department’s five-year investigation of Hunter Biden, which this week led to a proposed plea agreement on two misdemeanor charges that will probably allow him to avoid jail time. Biden is due in federal court in Wilmington, Del., on July 26 to enter his guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge.
The criminal probe of Biden was given the code name Sportsman, Shapley told lawmakers, and it was “an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.”
His account offers a host of new allegations, including a text message that Biden allegedly sent on July 30, 2017, that invoked his father — at that time a former vice president — as he tried to get a business partner to fulfill some expected promise.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the younger Biden allegedly told businessman Henry Zhao. “And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
It is unclear what specific commitment the message refers to. A spokeswoman for Hunter Biden’s legal team did not immediately comment.
Shapley sought whistleblower protections through his attorney in April and was interviewed by the committee in May, behind closed doors. Mark Lytle, Shapley’s lawyer, said his client “was brave and he stood up and he said something. He has endured some tough times because of it. But he said he would rather stand up and say something than not say something about it.”
Some of Shapley’s most eyebrow-raising allegations center on a meeting on Oct. 7, 2022. By that point, The Washington Post reported that federal agents had concluded there was enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax and gun violations.
That discussion at the U.S. attorney’s office in Wilmington, which included prosecutors, FBI agents and IRS agents, “ended up being my red-line meeting,” Shapley told lawmakers. He said Weiss claimed to the agents that he was not, in fact, the “deciding official on whether charges are filed.”
Weiss then surprised the agents, Shapley said, by saying that “the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his District.” Up until that point, Shapley said, he had expected Biden would face the most serious tax-related charges in Washington, because that’s where he was living in 2014, when Shapley said he believes Biden’s most serious misconduct occurred.
Weiss allegedly told the group that he had known for months that Graves’s office had rejected filing charges against Biden there. Shapley also said Weiss told the group that he had asked the Justice Department to appoint him as a special counsel, which would give him broader independence in the investigation, “and was denied that authority.”
Everyone at the meeting, Shapley said, “seemed shell-shocked, and I felt misled by the Delaware United States Attorney’s Office. At this point, I expressed to United States Attorney Weiss several concerns with how this case had been handled from the beginning. The meeting was very contentious and ended quite awkwardly.”
Shapley said he was later told that another possible jurisdiction to bring charges, California, had also rejected them.
Asked about Shapley’s account, a Justice Department spokesman stood by Garland’s past remarks. “As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so,” the spokesman said in a written statement.
Weiss’s office declined to comment Thursday. But earlier this month, responding to a letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) seeking documents related to the Biden investigation, Weiss said the attorney general had granted him “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law.”
“I have fulfilled my responsibilities, consistent with Department practices and procedures, and will continue to do so,” the letter said, denying Jordan’s request for documents. “Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations.”
In an emailed statement, Patricia Hartman, a spokeswoman for Graves and the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C., wrote: “As the Attorney General has said, U.S. Attorney Weiss was given full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction he deemed appropriate. He did not need approval from this office or the U.S. Attorney to bring charges in the District of Columbia.”
Shapley said that in many ways, the Biden evidence was textbook evidence of tax evasion.
“He was expensing personal expenses, his business expenses,” Shapley said. “There was a $25,000 to one of his girlfriends and it said, ‘golf membership.’ And then we went out and followed that money it was for a sex club membership in LA. … There were multiple examples of prostitutes that were ordered basically, and we have all the communications between that where he would pay for these prostitutes, would book them a flight where even the flight ticket showed their name. And then he expensed those.”
A week after Shapley’s May 26 appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel heard from an IRS investigator who worked under Shapley. That transcript was also made public Thursday, though the investigator’s name was redacted. Both Democrats and Republicans participated in both interviews. The investigator largely echoed Shapley’s testimony, adding details about Biden’s alleged tax evasion and saying he had been barred from taking routine investigative steps in ways he had not encountered in other cases.
In one instance, the investigator said that when he expressed interest in interviewing Hunter Biden’s children about expenses deducted on their behalf on Biden’s tax returns, he was told by a prosecutor that “it will get us into hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren.”
“That was completely abnormal, out of the question,” the investigator said, according to the transcript. “And it’s a part of our normal process that we go and interview people, especially people who are receiving money or receiving payments related to a case like this.”
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard E. Neal (Mass.) criticized the chairman, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), for what he called a premature release of the two interviews.
“The Minority takes whistleblower allegations extremely seriously, but the fact is today’s exercise was not ready for primetime,” Neal said in a statement. “Two interviews do not make an investigation when more than 50 employees were named.”
Smith told reporters that the allegations were too significant to keep under wraps. “Not one, but two IRS employees are blowing the whistle with evidence that the federal government is not treating taxpayers equally when enforcing tax laws,” he said. “Let me emphasize: This was an investigation in the ordinary course of work at the IRS. It was not ordered by any individual, any chairman or any political entity.”
Wesley Hunt Uses Hunter Biden’s Crack Addiction to EXPOSE Two Tiered Justice System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuaqAmAoI8
Famous rapper’s lawyer blasts Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal after his client received prison for same crime
https://www.theblaze.com/news/kodak-black-lawyer-hunter-biden-plea-deal
Famous rapper’s lawyer blasts Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal after his client received prison for same crime
By Chris Enloe
June 21, 2023
The lawyer for a prominent rapper is speaking out over Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal that allows him to avoid prison for illegally possessing a firearm.
In 2019, rapper Kodak Black pleaded guilty to providing false information on a federal form when purchasing multiple firearms.
Black pleaded guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6), using false statements to obtain a firearm. Biden was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) and 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). The latter statute says that anyone who who “knowingly violates” several subsections of 18 U.S.C. § 922, including (a)(6), can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.
Thus in the eyes of the law, Black and Biden committed the same crime. They both provided false information on federal forms to acquire firearms despite being legally disqualified from making those purchases.
Yet Black was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for his crime. Biden, on the other hand, was given pre-trial diversion and the opportunity to expunge the charge from his record after 24 months.
Attorney Bradford Cohen, who represents Black, called out the glaring disparity in outcomes.
“There’s no such thing as not getting jail time on a gun charge, on any kind of gun charge,” Cohen told Fox News. “I’ve never seen anyone where this offense was charged and they didn’t get some sort of prison sentence. And in fact, most of the time in federal court, you very rarely see people get anything but a prison sentence.”
Cohen cited the college admissions scandal as evidence that federal authorities rarely let offenders off without spending time behind bars.
“So, in this Felicity Huffman case, to give the woman two weeks in prison, you know that you actually have to surrender yourself going for two weeks, change her clothes out to all this stuff, for literally 14 days. And this guy gets absolutely nothing? I’ve just never seen it happen,” Cohen said.
“A federal crime is supposed to be a federal crime,” he explained. “And federal crimes are supposed to be very serious federal crimes, and that’s why you look at prison sentences.”
Earlier in the day, Cohen suggested Biden’s plea deal showed there are two tiers of justice in America.
Cohen wrote on Instagram, “2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over 3 years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?”
Rapper Lil Wayne similarly faced significant prison time — up to 10 years — after he pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm, charged under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), the same subsection as Biden.
Wayne, however, never spent time in prison for the crime because Donald Trump pardoned him. Trump also commuted Black’s sentence before leaving office.
To be fair, Black and Wayne were repeat offenders with prior criminal histories. Biden, by contrast, does not, which mitigates potential criminal penalties. But to Cohen’s point, it’s jarring that federal prosecutors would let the gun crime slip away altogether.
IRS agent requests whistleblower protections in Hunter Biden tax investigation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ3i0Tdiaw
Biden’s nominee to lead FAA can’t answer a single question about aviation and air travel Ted Budd asks
At a March 1, 2023 Senate Commerce Committee Hearing, Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) questioned Philip Washington, nominee to be Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEj2Yq0okzU
I asked ChatGPT to list the mistakes of Presidents Biden and Trump. It gave answers for Trump, but said, “I don’t have personal opinions or make subjective judgments” on Biden.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 3, 2023
On February 3, 2023, I asked ChatGPT, “What mistakes did President Biden make?”
This was the response:
“As a language model AI, I don’t have personal opinions or make subjective judgments. However, it is widely acknowledged that all political leaders and their actions are subject to criticism and analysis. President Biden, like any other political figure, has faced criticism for various decisions and actions during his presidency. It is up to individual opinions to determine whether these are considered mistakes or not.”
Then, immediately afterward, I asked, “What mistakes did President Trump make?”
This was the response:
“President Donald Trump’s presidency was characterized by many controversial decisions and actions, and like any political figure, his actions were subject to criticism and analysis. Some common criticisms of President Trump include:”
“Racism and discriminatory comments”
“Handling of the COVID-19 pandemic”
“Relations with international allies and adversaries”
“Separation of migrant families and immigration policies”
“Climate change denial and rollback of environmental protections”
“Lack of response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021”
Here’s a screenshot:
MSNBC: New classified material found in Biden’s home ‘a real, real problem for the Democrats’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1nkz0kUYDk
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre doesn’t know how to pronounce the following words: “Em-er-eye-tis” – “Bicarmel” – “Noble” Prize – “Armtice” – “Nordstrom” pipeline
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1610452259917426688
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1610452308340375554
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1610452403832111108
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1610452492386504704
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 