Whew! At Least He Wasn't Implicated In Criminal Charges

Second h/t of the day to a reader--first was re Kilimnik. 

Not implicated in the criminal charges--that's the point, isn't it? What isn't forbidden by the law is allowed, and honi soit qui mal y pense. It seems pretty pointless to even comment on this. It simply illustrates where we've arrived as an empire. The Daily Mail has all the news that's not fit to print in our own MSM. Wikipedia has the bio:

Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.

What can I say? My career trajectory was different. OTOH, Freeh's career isn't much different than that of subsequent FBI Directors. Public service, private sector--in the big picture it all tends to meld into self service. There's a particularly shameless quality to both sides of this equation, but it's The Way We Live Now. Tom Wolfe is dead, so who will be the Trollope for our era?

The Biden Inc. Scandal Deepens

Commenter Cassander posted a link to Andrea Widburg's article at AmThinker this morning. As it happens, I've been spending some time this morning listening to Dan Bongino interview Rudy Giuliani while reading Widburg's article (Forget the Hunter Biden sex tapes. The real news is much bigger than that.) and a companion piece. Here's Cassander's summary of the allegations we're hearing about. I hasten to add that Widburg, a lawyer, isn't prone to wild speculation. Moreover, what's been documented so far makes these new allegations all too probable:

First: China has long owned Biden thanks to its having compromising information about his family (and possibly about him too).

Second: Biden identified CIA assets in China. The back story is that, between 2010 and 2012, China executed or imprisoned 18 to 20 assets who had bravely worked with the CIA, destroying a critical intelligence network.

Third: [A dissent Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, controls 'outlets' which] have “millions of videos and photos” of people who have worked with the Chinese against their own countries, implying] that Guo managed to get into China’s “blackmail” database and can release that information.

As you can see from #3, these allegations come from Guo Wengui, a "dissident Chinese billionaire" and friend of Steve Bannon. As you can see, however, Widburg's title is a bit misleading. There's no "forget[ting] the Hunter Biden sex tapes." Because the sex blackmail is key to the whole thing. Here's Widburg's summary of Guo's background and the leadup to these allegations:

Biden Inc.

Commenter TexasDude has provided a link to a year old article in Politico that is guaranteed to leave you a bit slack jawed. It reminds me a bit of what Tom Fitton said last night, to this effect: "The dirty little secret about DC is that nothing's really secret. If Biden was into all these things you can count on it that lots of other people knew about it and were probably participating."

Here's the article and the beginning few paragraphs:

Biden Inc.

Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER August 02, 2019

The day the Bidens took over Paradigm Global Advisors was a memorable one.

In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present.

After the firing, the two large men escorted the fund’s president out of the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, and James Biden laid out his vision for the fund’s future. “Don’t worry about investors,” he said, according to the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation. “We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”

At the time, the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid. According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We've got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.

At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden, who was then running for attorney general of Delaware, turned bright red. He told his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”

A spokesman for James and Hunter Biden said no such episode ever occurred. Beau Biden died in 2015, at 46.

But the recollection of an effort to cash in on Joe’s political ties is consistent with other accounts provided by other former executives at the fund.

 

And that's just the beginning.

In The News: Biden - China Corruption, Trader Joe's

Right, Trader Joe's. You may have read yesterday's story about BLM in Seattle disrupting TJ stores and demanding "15% at least". Monica Showalter has a good rundown on what's going on today:

Coming soon, food desert: BLM shakes down Seattle Trader Joe's for a 15% cut

Except that TJ's hasn't caved. We know that DoJ's various entities, as well as Homeland Security, have been gathering intel for months on Antifa and BLM. For you RICO fans, a RICO action against these activities looks fairly promising. In the meantime, get out and vote.

There's more news out about Biden - China corruption. Steve Bannon is putting out interesting information that's incomplete--but suggestive, and worth acquainting yourselves with: Why Did Hunter Biden Extend Loan in China – What is this Deal About? The deal itself is somewhat convoluted, which raises suspicions in and of itself.

Bannon suggests that IF this loan agreement was not made known to the SEC and IRS it would be illegal. My guess is that it should be very easy to make that determination.

Note that this agreement was made in 2018. That makes it one in a continuing series of deals between the Biden connected companies and China--deals that stretch back to the days when Joe Biden was still Vice President. Shipwreckedcrew has the rundown on one such transaction that dates to 2015--and that suggests a very good reason why Dems were so desperate to keep not just any Republican but specifically a China Hawk like Trump from winning the presidency: 

Was Obama In On The Action With The Bidens?

Kinda looks that way! H/T TGP.

James Biden writes to #HunterBiden about @JoeBiden meeting with “the O” about “outrageous acquisitions” and “the two biggest days of our business life” in an e-mail from October 1, 2017.

We know who “The Big Guy” is...

Who is “the O”?

Any idea @BarackObama?#LaptopFromHell pic.twitter.com/zrE2sLNbr2

— Steve Bannon’s War Room (@WarRoomPandemic) October 22, 2020

These guys sure had a lot to hide. 

Is It SHTF Time Yet?

While it's certainly beginning to look that way, what with the pace and seriousness of the ongoing revelations we still may not have reached peak SHittingTF time yet. For example ...

An e-mail to Hunter Biden's partner from a top Chinese official on July 26, 2017 shows the Chinese energy company CEFC proposed a $5 million "interest-free" loan to the Biden family "based on their trust on [Biden] family[.]"

"Should CEFC keep lending more to the family?" pic.twitter.com/MGFizPqOdm

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 22, 2020

Less than two weeks later, on August 8, 2017, $5 million was wired from a CEFC-affiliated investment vehicle to a Delaware LLC, which spent the next year transfering nearly $4.8 million directly to Hunter Biden's firm, according to Senate investigators. https://t.co/Byyo3FNp3T pic.twitter.com/8XHHVTuFml

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 22, 2020

Wait til you see how many well-known members of the media were emailing Hunter Biden

Now you know why they all tried to bury the story so hard

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 21, 2020

It just seems to keep coming, with no end in sight. At the rate things are going we may need to start a pool on whether SloJoe shows for the debate.

Would The Biden/Ukraine Laptop Info Have Been Exculpatory At Impeachment?

Over the last few days I've seen a large amount of criticism directed at AG Barr for not revealing some of the Biden/Ukraine scandal that we've seen was on the Hunter Biden laptop--information that we have to presume Barr knew about at the time of Trump's fake impeachment. The constant theme of the criticism is that the evidence on the laptop would have been "exculpatory" for Trump. But would that information really have been exculpatory?

The short answer--and there is a longer answer--is probably: No. At least not in a strictly legal sense. You can see the reasoning for this response in a twitter exchange from this morning:

@JCBarca11

@JCBarca11

Replying to

@shipwreckedcrew

Ok, while Joe Biden was not in office at the time (May 2017), it certainly calls into question the ethics of the Biden family & also validates

@realDonaldTrump

's concern re: Hunter in Ukraine. Ship, would this have been considered "exculpatory evidence" in the impeachment trial?

6:29 AM · Oct 22, 2020·

shipwreckedcrew

@shipwreckedcrew

No. The issue wasn't whether Trump was justified in his request to the Ukraine Pres, the issue was whether Trump improperly linked US gov't action - already approved by Cong - to something he wanted Ukraine to do. It was always a BS charge, but it was all the Dems had.

7:04 AM · Oct 22, 2020·

On the other hand ...

MAJOR UPDATES: Email Reveals Joe Biden Would Get Cut Of China Deal

The NYPost's latest email revelation regarding the Biden Crime Family makes it explicit that "the Big Guy" had a 10% share in a prospective deal with a shady Chinese energy company CEFC. The Biden involved company was later named Sinohawk and its CEO, Tony Bobulinski, has confirmed the authenticity of the email. Actually, he's gone a lot further than that. While the email itself doesn't make explicity whether the deal actually was consummated, a statement by Bobulinski seems to indicate that it was, while also indicating his perception of the motives behind CEFC's activities:

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial [return on investment].  They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me — it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn’t and wouldn’t do that to their partners.

You can read all the details (including Bobulinski's full statement) in a more readable format (than the NYPost) at Red State:

 

Joe Biden was the "Big Guy" Getting 10% of the Deal With Chinese Businessman Says Insider Who Was CEO

The Red State author, Shipwreckedcrew, spells out the implications of this. My version: It's not that the deal was per se illegal, but that (as Bobulinski says) there is a very strong appearance that the Bidens--including Joe--were trading on the Chinese expectation of future political influence. If this weren't the case, Biden wouldn't be denying involvement in his son's dealings with foreign governments. These denials are now a clear campaign issue as regards Biden's fitness to hold office--and especially because these false denials appear to open him up to blackmail:

How Long Has The FBI Been Investigating Hunter Biden?

Earlier today in Two Puzzles I suggested that the when the FBI sought Hunter Biden's laptop from the Delaware computer repair shop run by John Paul Mac Isaac, they opened an investigation based on Isaac's concern over sexually graphic images of underage girls stored on the laptop. I made that suggestion based on what I considered to be the inherent improbability that Isaac--even with the help of his father--could have sorted through a vast amount of data on the laptop and come up with a coherent understanding of all the transactions that Hunter Biden was involved in.

However, we now know, courtesy of Fox News, that that was not how the investigation developed. The FBI agents from the Wilmington Resident Agency (RA) who came to visit Isaac in November, 2019, returned in early December with a subpoena for the laptop. But the subpoena was issued under a 272D case file--money laundering:

Laptop connected to Hunter Biden linked to FBI money laundering probe

It is unclear, at this point, whether the investigation is ongoing or if it was directly related to Hunter Biden

 

I continue to question whether Isaac would have been able to articulate to the agents the elements of a money laundering violation, based on his perusal of the contents of the hard drive. And that raises the question whether Hunter Biden may have been implicated in some way in an already ongoing investigation--perhaps not as a main subject, but as involved in some way in money laundering. This isn't a far fetched idea, given that there are clear indications that Biden was, in fact, involved in laundering money to help influential Russians circumvent US sanctions.

Here's an excerpt from the Fox News account:

Smoking Gun Burisma Email Released

There are several places this new release in the Biden Crime Family case can be viewed online. Here's Shipwreckedcrew's article about it. It's all very simple and easy to understand. 

The email is from Burisma's Vadym Pozharskyi to Devon Archer--with a copy to Hunter Biden. Pozharskyi makes it crystal clear that Burisma is hiring Archer and Hunter Biden to make the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin's, investigation of Burisma go away. Here's SWC's succinct summary, which quotes from the email:

Joe Biden’s visited Ukraine on December 7, 2015, a Monday.  ...

Burisma’s interest could not be more plainly stated.  ...  They wanted meetings/communications with “high-ranking US Officials in Ukraine, and “US publicly or in private communications/comment expressing their “positive opinion” in support of Nikolay/Burisma….” and wanted that made to the highest level of decision-makers in Ukraine — the President, Chief of Staff, and Prosecutor General.

The “ultimate purpose was to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.”

...  According to Biden and others who supported the firing, there were no investigations and that’s why the prosecutor needed to be fired.

That was not Burisma’s view, as the email makes clear.  Burisma wanted Shokin’s investigations stopped — and Joe Biden did that on December 7 when he demanded that Shokin be fired.

 

Remember, that was Biden's famous ultimatum to the Ukrainian government: Fire Shokin or you don't get the $1 billion dollars the US had promised.

Burisma’s attorney, John Buretta, was able to meet with the Prosecutor General who replaced Shokin, and convinced him to drop the investigations of Zlochevskyi by resolving some tax issues.  And with that, Zlochevskyi was able to return to Ukraine in 2018.

It’s great when a plan comes together, AND everyone gets paid — including Hunter and Joe.

And here's the whole email:

Two Puzzles

Two things about the Biden Crime Family case puzzle me a bit. One of them I think I can explain, the other I'm not sure.

The first is simply this: Why would the FBI apparently not take action to "protect persons" (as Rudy Giuliani has said), based on what we're hearing from multiple credible sources regarding the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop? As we all know, Giuliani is referring to what appear to be graphic sexual images of underage females on the laptop. I initially wondered--based on the earliest rumors/reports--whether the FBI had been able to identify the persons who might need protection, or whether the FBI had jurisdiction over those persons. It now seems clear that at least one of those persons has been identified and may actually be related to the Biden family.

Obviously, if the FBI was conducting a sensitive investigation of the Biden Crime Family (BCF) they would prefer to avoid any action that would alert the BCF to their investigative interest. Taking steps to protect a minor who was at sexual risk from Hunter Biden might well be that alerting action. However, absent a compelling justification for not acting, Giuliani is correct: the FBI would have had a duty to act to protect persons at risk, if those persons--as seems to be the case in at least one case--can be identified and located within the FBI's jurisdiction (I'll skip over what might be done regarding foreign nationals, since there isn't a simple answer).

The possible explanations seem to be twofold. The first explanation would be that the FBI may have determined that the person at risk had been removed from risk by the time the FBI came to know of the situation. In other words, the FBI may have been able to determine that some adult had intervened to prevent access by Hunter Biden to the minor who was at risk. There are signs from the text that Giuliani displayed yesterday to suggest that this may, in fact, be the case.

The other possible explanation would have to do with the date of the incidents. The text that Giuliani displayed was redacted--including the date. The incidents of concern may have occurred long enough ago that the minor in question is no longer a minor--and may not have been a minor any longer at the time the FBI gained possession of the laptop. That might also explain why the Delaware State Police passed on the material Giuliani offered them yesterday.

Those seem the most plausible explanations. As we'll see, below, there would likely have been too many FBI and DoJ officials involved, with far too much to lose, for any corners to have been cut in this regard.

Adam Housely: Lots Going On Behind The Scenes

The tweets speak for themselves as far as the amount of investigation goes. It makes sense, but we'll have to wait and see. The fact is, so many politicians--but especially Dems like Pelosi and Schiff--have been getting money from Ukraine that the possibility that the Biden's wheeling and dealing there would provide an opening to a wider range of US political actors would have been at the forefront of every investigator's mind. Indeed, the milking of foreign relationships in exchange for influence--from China to Russia and every country in between--has become a major source of funding.

Nevertheless, two points remain:

1. To allow this to continue so close to a national election, with a presidential candidate as a major subject, without a heads up to the American people, is troubling. Maybe successful prosecution should be sacrificed for the good of the country, settling for exposure. That the American people should be allowed to go into an election without facts such as these just isn't right.

2. Now that the cat is out of the bag, shouldn't Barr make some statement to give the American people an idea of what's going on?

Be that as it may, notice the question Housely's agent sources say needs to be asked: Why wasn't Congress informed? The answer couldn't be more obvious: Because major subjects of the investigation--assuming the truth and accuracy of Housely's source information--are in Congress itself. Could be a world historic two weeks coming up.

H/T Commenter EZ:

Adam Housley

@adamhousley

1/2 Breaking: Multiple FBI sources ... The FBI investigation into the laptop has been ongoing since December of 2019 ... there's a lot going on behind the scenes. A lot. There is a massive amount of info.

From multiple agents: "They knew right away it wasn't a Russia operation. It went right to the top of the FBI because a Biden name was attached. That's normal with any well known name. The question that needs asking, why wasn't any info about Russia/Ukraine shared with Congress?"

7:54 PM · Oct 20, 2020·

CBS Confirms: FBI Says Biden Stuff Not Russian Disinfo

That's the real story--CBS breaks the MSM's code of Omertà to confirm that the FBI is in possession of the Hunter Biden laptop and says it's not Russian disinformation. I understand. You knew that already, but CBS. The question is, Will any other outlet break ranks?

Major Garrett

@MajorCBS

Via

@ClareHymes22

@CBSNews

The FBI & DOJ concur with DNI Ratcliffe’s assessment that Hunter Biden's laptop and the emails in question were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. FBI does has possession of the Hunter Biden laptop in question.

@DNI_Ratcliffe

@FBI

6:37 PM · Oct 20, 2020·