The Scoop On The Zhou Regime

Apologies. I'm still catching up on things, after some distractions.

In recent weeks there has been a steady stream of articles appearing at conservative sites, all detailing the continuing mental decline of Resident Zhou--a parable, it seems, for the degradation of a once proud republic. The latest Dem tactic seems to be to send Zhou out to the hinterlands to order ice cream cones, presumably in an attempt to convince Americans that this demonstrates Zhou is capable of handling his residential duties. Duties that include the rigors of eight day overseas trips--or was that ten days, or twelve days?

American Thinker today offers up two sample posts along these lines: President Dementia is getting worse and Video evidence suggests Biden is a Potemkin president, without real support. However, for my money, Jonathan Turley takes the Baked Alaska in two recent articles. Both articles are serious in intent, but the prof also indulges his sense of fun--because, one supposes, if he didn't laugh he'd cry.

All the way back in May Turley was on to this ice cream scam:

Hunter Baiden Is Back In The News. . . So The Media Goes Again For The Scoop

Here's Turley's intro:

Narrative Fail: Rudy As Foreign Agent Story Springs Serious Leaks

Yeah, little bit of a pun there--the leaks turn out to be in the narrative, and the leaks from "FBI sources" turn out to have been not so reliable.

I'm talking about the smear campaign against Rudy Giuliani. The WaPo and NYT were pushing the suggestion that Rudy was an unregistered agent for Ukraine, based on leaks from claimed "official" sources. This narrative was riding heavily on the claim that Rudy had received a "defensive briefing" from the FBI (or, more dramatically, had been "warned" by the FBI) that he was being targeted by the evil Russians. As if virtually any person of influence in any major government isn't targeted by other governments for influence purposes. Is that really supposed to stop our officials from talking with persons connected to foreign governments?

But the big story now is that both the WaPo and the NYT are having to consume a major helping of crow:

The retraction and correction by the Post:

“Correction: An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation. That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings.”

New York Times correction and retraction:

“Correction: May 1, 2021
An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.”

We'll have to see how this affects the search warrants that were executed against Giuliani, involving the seizure of electronic communication devices.

Of more interest to me is Giuliani's claim that his iCloud account had been accessed in some way by the FBI shortly after the 2020 election, i.e., on Bluto Barr's watch. Whether the access to Giuliani's iCloud account involved IDs for his contacts or content of his communications as well is unclear. 

In one way or another, this all has the appearance of a Deep State attempt to intimidate Giuliani with regard to his investigation of the Biden Crime Family. We shall see how this plays out. One certainly wonders what caused this very sudden volte face and climb down from the narrative.

RICO

For reasons that I don't fully understand--some sort of mystique, I guess--many conservative commenters on  the internet are convinced that RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) can be applied to all sorts of political corruption. This conviction is often accompanied by a conviction that a failure on the part of DoJ to charge under RICO is itself evidence of corruption in DoJ. This is simply not the case. 

Unfortunately, a number of commenters here seem to believe that the Biden Crime Family can be prosecuted under RICO. I have to take some responsibility for this, since I adopted Rudy Giuliani's colorful name, "the Biden Crime Family." Let me be clear. I am not now saying that a RICO prosecution of the Bidens and their associates is not possible. The possible criminal violations may, in fact, fulfill the technical requirements of the RICO statute. Nor do I claim any expertise in RICO matters.

However, I believe that longstanding DoJ guidelines make it unlikely that RICO would be applied to any of those persons who have committed crimes either--as with former officials of the FBI, DoJ, or the Obama White House--in the course of opposing the presidency of Donald Trump or simply committed crimes by enriching themselves by trading on their public positions of trust in the US government.

Here's why. Longstanding DoJ guidelines (DoJ Justice Manual) militate against any expansive use of RICO when the interests of justice can be served by prosecuting the underlying crimes. Here are some selections from the Justice Manual. As you will see, there is--in essence--a presumption against using RICO when there is no "special RICO purpose," which usually refers to "gang" type organizations in a traditional sense. You can disagree with DoJ's policy in this regard, but it is what it is. The DoJ view is that RICO was never intended to replace traditional conspiracy prosecutions. Please read these guidelines carefully: