Impeach Biden (and Harris)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/republican-lawmakers-vow-to-impeach-biden-if-gop-retakes-house_4709397.html?utm_source=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2022-09-05&utm_medium=email&est=zckjvmKibKyXRvlY0WpF3ufXUArLjqVFPY78VZqX4jNC%2F9xwL7vWHByamfXkmpRUugjY

[G M]

https://ace.mu.nu/archives/401429.php

[Crafty_Dog]

This deserves careful reading-- and the source materials as well!

[DougMacG]

This deserves careful reading-- and the source materials as well!

Small world.  The source at G M's link is ...
Andy McCarthy.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/grassley-chinese-government-front-company-paid-biden-for-work-done-while-he-was-vp/

[G M]

This deserves careful reading-- and the source materials as well!

Small world.  The source at G M's link is ...
Andy McCarthy.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/grassley-chinese-government-front-company-paid-biden-for-work-done-while-he-was-vp/

One of several.

[Crafty_Dog]

"This deserves careful reading-- and the source materials as well!"

"Small world.  The source at G M's link is ...
Andy McCarthy.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/grassley-chinese-government-front-company-paid-biden-for-work-done-while-he-was-vp/ "

How very crafty of me 

[DougMacG]

I thought I caught something there and you were miles ahead of me.  )

What do we call McCarthy here, 'on our side Andy'?

He (also) has called out the FBI for malfeasance more publicly than all of us combined.

[Crafty_Dog]

Just being playful with GM 

"He (also) has called out the FBI for malfeasance more publicly than all of us combined."

Careful, you risk triggering GM! 

[G M]

Just being playful with GM 

"He (also) has called out the FBI for malfeasance more publicly than all of us combined."

Careful, you risk triggering GM! 

 

[Crafty_Dog]

https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/25/guatemala-biden-immigration-border/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=uLp7FDlGa6oe2OmQv2mpDZbTpk_8S4JxJLbhnrViqBNmk2xuzjMcOCLgILo348b25fBi4p1l

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/impeach-biden-over-the-security-catastrophe-hes-caused-at-the-border/?bypass_key=R29yeVN2aFJsYUtYQURva2UycitQQT09OjpWRlJGUTA1WmRWWjRRa0ZDVDJKWUsyTllVR2hUVVQwOQ%3D%3D&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202022-12-31&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
Impeach Biden over the Security Catastrophe He’s Caused at the Border
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
December 31, 2022 6:30 AM

The president’s dereliction of duty has created a crisis. Congress must either impeach him or fix it.

President Biden should be impeached by the incoming House Republican majority over his ongoing destruction of the southern border.

Yes, I know, the votes for a conviction are not there at the moment, and probably won’t ever be: The Constitution requires a two-thirds Senate supermajority to convict and remove an elected official from office, and Biden’s Democratic Party will hold a two-seat majority in the upper chamber for the next two years.

Yet there must be an impeachment investigation and, if Biden fails to change course, articles of impeachment. That would forever stain him, which he deserves; more significantly, it would force the Senate to shut down other business and conduct a trial that would expose the depth of our security catastrophe and the fact that Democrats have willfully caused it.

If Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell don’t fancy that prospect, here’s a suggestion: Fix the friggin’ border. Oh, and stop ramming through omnibus boondoggles that spend billions on processing and sheltering illegal aliens but explicitly forbid shifting American taxpayer funds to protect Americans by securing the border.

The president’s dereliction of duty has abetted a foreign invasion of, so far, approximately 6 million illegal aliens. A large number of these aliens are released into our country in violation of American law. And mind you, we haven’t even faced the onslaught that awaits the rescission of Title 42, the Covid-era restriction on immigration that the courts have blocked Biden from lifting since May. As I detailed in a column earlier this week, although the Supreme Court has temporarily kept Title 42 in place, its rescission is inevitable because it is a pretext, not a policy. Once it is lifted, the current rate of illegal immigration — an eye-popping 6,785 apprehensions per day, with another 2,000-odd “got-aways” who evade capture as they enter — will grow to somewhere between two and three times as high as it is now.

To provide some perspective, during the Obama–Biden years, the Department of Homeland Security regarded it as a crisis if the number of illegal-alien encounters inched up to 1,000 per day, which computes to 365,000 per year. “A thousand [per day] overwhelms the system,” Obama’s former DHS secretary, Jeh Johnson, acknowledged in a 2019 interview. At the time, the Trump administration was dealing with four times that amount due to a surge in border arrivals by alien family units and unaccompanied alien minors. (The surge was caused by the refusal of congressional Democrats to cooperate in Trump’s signature border-security priority; it was quelled, as Rich Lowry related, because Trump induced cooperation from other countries.)

Thanks to Biden’s wholesale adoption of transnational-progressive radicalism, we are now at seven times the number that Johnson conceded would constitute a crisis. Post–Title 42, we could find ourselves at 18 times that amount, or perhaps even more — and remember, that’s just the apprehensions, not the got-aways.

By what multiple must a president intentionally metastasize a crisis, for the benefit of foreigners and to the ruin of the American people, before he is impeached?

Bear in mind that, to the limited extent illegal aliens are being barred from release into the United States upon being apprehended, Title 42 is the main reason. Most of the rest are released, in violation of American law. For example, in June, of the approximately 240,000 aliens apprehended, about 100,000 were barred under Title 42. That number should be higher, but Biden has watered down Trump’s Title 42 enforcement, admitting unaccompanied minors (including young men who convince border agents that they are under 18), along with most aliens who convince border agents that they are traveling as family units. Of the remaining 140,000 June apprehensions, over 95,000 (i.e., two-thirds) were released into our country. (Most of the rest were subject to expedited removal because of fraud or criminal records that make them instantly excludable.)

As I noted in the aforementioned column, if you counted only the apprehensions that will result when Biden rescinds Title 42 without putting any meaningful security plan in its place — i.e., if you omit hundreds of thousands of additional got-aways — you’d get a figure of around 6,570,000 illegal aliens arriving at our border per year, a population roughly the size of our 17th-largest state, Indiana, and a third again as big as our second-largest city, Los Angeles. But this just scratches the surface, for we must also factor in the approximately 6 million aliens, including got-aways, who’ve already illegally entered the country in the first two years of Biden’s presidency (the number had aggregated to nearly 5 million by July 2022, and entries have soared to new record levels in the five ensuing months). If Biden had gotten his way and lifted Title 42 already, the accumulated total could have exceeded 12.5 million by the end of 2023. That’s around the size of Illinois, the nation’s sixth-largest state by population, and larger than two-thirds of countries in the world. And again, Title 42 is going to be lifted — and the Supreme Court has no control over whether it is further gutted in the meantime.

We’re talking here not merely about a border-security crisis. We’re leaps and bounds past that. This is an invasion — millions of aliens rushing our border in a manner that is illegal, and thus hostile. (How remarkable that Democrats, who never hesitate to describe a five-hour riot that posed no serious threat to the republic as an insurrection, scream bloody murder when someone uses the word invasion to describe millions of foreigners lawlessly storming our border, with tens to hundreds of thousands more currently staging to storm the gates the moment Title 42 is lifted.) Biden’s refusal to secure the border is potentially an existential crisis for the United States. It already is an existential crisis for border states, which are expected by their federal overlords not just to accept the onslaught but to bear the ruinous costs of public education and health care, in addition to exorbitant supplemental law-enforcement expenditures at a time when crime is already surging nationwide.

In Faithless Execution, my 2014 book on impeachment, I argued that it would be counterproductive for the House to impeach a president without having built a political case first — i.e., without having persuaded the country, across partisan and ideological lines, that the president’s misconduct was so egregious and threatening that removal was warranted. The Framers believed impeachment was an indispensable arrow in Congress’s quiver to ensure that the awesome powers of the presidency were not turned against the nation, particularly on behalf of foreign interests. But a premature or purely partisan impeachment can perversely embolden a president, who is apt to use Senate acquittal as vindication of his misconduct and thus to engage in more of the same and worse. The Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump bears this out: They carried out a strictly partisan process — exactly what the Framers sought to prevent — over behavior that, while censurable, was not significant enough to warrant impeachment; it begat a Trump who became even more audacious in 2020, culminating in the shocking Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.

But we’re in a different posture now. To begin with, even if Biden were emboldened by acquittal, the damage to the country could not get much worse: Without a border, we won’t have a country. If there were an armed invasion of just a few thousand foreigners — a bare fraction of the foreigners now pouring in, who, while mostly unarmed, are transporting not-insignificant amounts of deadly illegal narcotics — a president who refused to act would be impeached and removed forthwith. Biden is not merely refusing to act; he is intentionally doubling down on policies that exacerbate the crisis. To compare, the January 6 Committee convincingly contends that Trump is unfit for the presidency because he not only failed to respond decisively to the Capitol riot but took actions that exacerbated it.

Moreover, with Republicans poised to assume control of the House next week, there is already support growing in the caucus to move on impeaching Biden’s DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. True, an impeachment investigation of the president’s executive-branch subordinates can be useful in raising public awareness of egregious administration misconduct. On that score, there is a good case for impeaching both Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is putatively running point on the administration’s border nonenforcement policy.

Impeaching subordinates, however, won’t halt egregious administration misconduct. Mayorkas is not running his own show; he is carrying out Biden’s policy. One of the Framers’ principal objectives in crafting a unitary presidency — i.e., in vesting all executive power in a single official, the president — was to promote accountability, to prevent the elected chief executive from shifting blame for his administration’s misconduct to a privy council or unelected subordinates. What’s going on at the southern border is Biden’s catastrophe; Mayorkas and Harris are simply following orders.

By destroying the border, President Biden is destroying the country. That’s a bracing assertion, but I am not engaging in the habitual hyperbole with which our competing political parties customarily frame each other as monstrous. This is common sense. Defended borders are an ineliminable element of national sovereignty. A nation is a nation only if it has internationally recognized territory over which it exercises dominion and control. A rudimentary component of dominion and control is the power to exclude intruders — those who lack lawful authority to enter and to be present. One of Biden’s jobs, which he swore an oath to perform faithfully and in a manner consistent with the Constitution, is to defend the border. And he is violating that oath, exploiting the power of the presidency on behalf of non-Americans to strip the United States of its sovereignty. A clearer case for impeachment there has never been.

And the imperative of impeaching Biden is even more urgent than that. He did not start out this way. He has never been an original thinker, much less a visionary leader. He is a Democratic Party weather vane. If progressives changed their minds tomorrow and decided that illegal immigrants were likely to support Republicans, Biden, on a dime, would become the scourge of illegal immigration. He is not erasing the border because he believes in a progressive, post-Westphalian, internationalist order in which multilateral sovereigns roll out the eco-friendly carpet for citizens of the world. He is erasing the border because that is what he has to do to remain viable in a Democratic Party that is dominated by radical leftists who would tell you the very mention of the word “American” triggers them . . . except they don’t say “trigger” anymore, either.

Washington Democrats get away with this because they play a clever game. It’s the same sort of game they play with abortion: They tell the public they are for “choice” and a procedure that is “safe, legal, and rare,” but when pressed on the matter, they can’t actually describe any circumstances in which they’d outlaw the procedure. Here’s the border version of the game: They lament that “the system is broken” and insist that they favor “an orderly enforcement process.” But it turns out that the “system is broken” because they themselves oppose the enforcement of immigration laws that call for illegal immigrants (who are now “migrants”) to be detained and promptly deported. And the “orderly enforcement process” they favor is one in which “migrants” are logged and released at their point of entry, with a court date in the distant future or instructions to report to some immigration agency once they are quietly settled in the country. (While Democrats complain that the Republican governors of Texas and Florida are transporting illegal aliens to blue sanctuary cities or to Vice President Harris’s doorstep, the Biden–Harris administration — like the Obama–Biden administration before it — routinely consigns illegal aliens to communities throughout the country, often without alerting the locals in advance.)

Broadly speaking, the country does not know how bad the situation at the border is. As the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur points out, in recent polling by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies, just 13 percent knew that there were over 2 million illegal border crossings per year. Not only did the remaining 87 percent significantly underestimate the number of illegal entries, but more than half of them believed the number to be less than half a million.

By and large, Americans do not know the border is being erased. This is the paramount flaw in the federalization of immigration enforcement wrought by the courts over the past century: The duty to enforce the laws has been transferred from the people most affected by the lawlessness to Washington — i.e., to the people who don’t care about the lawlessness, who are thus abetting the lawlessness, who are quite content to keep the resulting chaos out of the news, and who are politically accountable to others for whom the border is a remote nonconcern. No surprise, then, that Americans are uninformed about the invasion and the havoc it is wreaking on the states bearing the brunt of the lawlessness. Nor is it widely understood that the crisis is occurring because Democrats do not believe the country should have an enforced border.

The objectives of impeaching Biden and perhaps other administration officials would be to illuminate the profound threat to our country, to place the blame for it squarely where it belongs, and to force Democrats either to reverse course or to publicly own their radical position that the United States should not have enforceable borders and that the government should prioritize the desires of aliens over the security of Americans. The Framers believed impeachment was indispensable not because they thought we’d make a habit of removing presidents but because the credible threat of impeachment and removal — the historical stigma and the prospect of losing power — would encourage presidents to honor the constitutional oath and execute the laws faithfully.

The crisis at the border is the direct result of President Biden’s impeachable dereliction of duty. That dereliction is a direct result of the Democrats’ core positions that our country should not have a border, and that illegal aliens are entitled to enter, remain at liberty, and exploit public services at the expense of American taxpayers. These matters need to be exposed and confronted. The way to expose and confront them is to impeach Biden. Otherwise, he will stay the course, Democrats will continue undermining border security, and the crisis will become existential.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY. @andrewcmccarthy

[ccp]

And I would add to above Andrew McCarthy's article

the MSM role in this.

Say nothing about the Biden and Democrats causing the crises by simply not enforcing our laws etc.
and thus encouraging it
and then when they come by the hundreds of thousand simply scream this is a HUMANITARIAN CRISES - thus playing on emotions
with the obvious intent we are supposed to feel sorry for the illegals expecting a call to let even more in -
it is only HUMANE

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/republicans-investigate-possible-impeachment-joe-biden/671859/

[Crafty_Dog]

Impeachment Is the Only Weapon Left to Fight Biden’s Border Sabotage

President Biden speaks about U.S.-Mexico border at the White House in Washington, D.C., January 5, 2023. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
February 18, 2023 6:30 AM

Either Republicans use the best tool they have to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors.

You probably don’t want to hear this again, but at this stage, the only thing that might — might — turn the tide and establish a semblance of security at the southern border would be for House Republicans to impeach President Biden for first causing the border crisis and then, over the course of the next two years, willfully exacerbating it, not out of incompetence but because it’s what his radical base demands.



The Supreme Court was never going to relieve congressional Republicans of their burden. The Court is powerless to secure the border. Its institutional legitimacy and, hence, its power lie in rendering sound judgment rooted in law and fact. Republican attorneys general were pleading with the justices to sustain a lie, namely, that we are still in the throes of a pandemic calling for extraordinary measures that include turning aliens away based on the Title 42 exclusion — an infectious-disease pretext, not a border-security policy.

Sound judgment can never be founded in such falsehoods. The justices wrung their hands for a couple of months. Sure, they knew the Title 42 claim was bogus, as Justice Neil Gorsuch bluntly said it was in a dissenting opinion in late December. But like any other rational person, they did not want to be blamed — as they knew they would be by our insidious, AWOL political class — for the overrunning of the border that even the Biden Justice Department admits will inevitably follow the lifting of Title 42 (specifically, section 265 of Title 42, U.S. Code). So a narrow majority settled on some hocus pocus meant to string matters out for a few more months.


Then, however, the administration announced that the Covid emergency would be formally ended on May 11, 2023, and there was no longer even a fig leaf for retaining the Title 42 fiction in the litigation.


The Court has not yet granted the Biden administration’s plea that it dismiss the case brought by 19 states — states that are desperate not for Title 42 to remain in place but for real border security. This week, though, the justices quietly informed the parties that oral argument would not take place as scheduled on March 1. Beyond that, the Court will likely do nothing for now. The matter will hang in limbo so the justices can see whether the president actually follows through and allows the Covid emergency to expire. Biden has been known to exploit the fiction of a lingering emergency when it serves the Left’s objectives, so prudence says you should believe the end of this one when you see it. But once Title 42 is conclusively lifted, the case will be dismissed as moot.

Of course, the border won’t be moot. It will be erased, even less visible than the palimpsest barrier over which 6 million pairs of footprints have stomped since Biden took the oath of office 25 months ago.


That’s why you can’t blame the states for their desperate but meritless pleas to the Court. For over a century, judicial rulings and congressional Democrats have nullified their powers to uphold the rule of law against trespassers. If the Court won’t help them, the states must rely on Biden, and it is Biden who has quite intentionally left the border defenseless, knowing full well that the states would be besieged.

This is no longer just a problem for red states, either. The costs of unchecked illegal immigration — the drain on health-care systems, schools, welfare services, sanitation, police departments, courts, etc. — now plague even states whose Democratic ruling classes have encouraged Biden to ignore the catastrophe. Their “sanctuary cities” now mewl about deepening budget crises that are entirely of their own making. Witness New York, where Mayor Eric Adams suddenly finds a $4.2 billion hole in his budget because the Big Apple somehow believed it could keep a safe 2,000-mile distance from the inferno Democrats were stoking.

Mark Krikorian of the invaluable Center for Immigration Studies explains in the New York Post that the lifetime cost to American taxpayers of each illegal alien is about $80,000. By conservative estimates, the 3 million or so illegal aliens Biden has lawlessly paroled into the country (out of the additional millions who have been enticed by his non-enforcement policies to seek entry, exhausting security resources) will cost about $200 billion. Even if the siege stopped today, that would not be sustainable. And it is most definitely not stopping today; if anything, it will only get worse once Title 42 ends in the coming weeks. The resulting surge could multiply the influx by a factor of two or three. How much more do you suppose a country $31 trillion in debt (and on a trajectory to reach $51 trillion in debt over the next decade) can handle?

Congressional Republicans seem to grasp that, at this point, the only solution is impeachment, the position advocated by three former government officials and top Heritage Foundation analysts — Hans von Spakovsky, Lora Ries, and Steven G. Bradbury — in a recent Fox News op-ed. But my friends are aiming too low — specifically, at Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security (as applied to him, an Orwellian title if ever there was one).


Mayorkas may be the architect of a policy that stands federal immigration law on its head, transmogrifying it from a statutory presumption that illegal aliens must be detained in order to discourage more unlawful immigration into an administration policy that illegal aliens must be invited to enter our country at liberty, then live and work here indefinitely while they press their claims for asylum, no matter how baseless. Nevertheless, this is not Mayorkas’s policy; it is Biden’s policy. The Framers’ objective in vesting all executive power in a single constitutional officer, the president, was to ensure that the elected president be held accountable — i.e., to make certain that the president, not the unelected minions who carry out his commands, would be answerable for critical policy decisions.

To repeat, yes, we know, there are not sufficient votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate — i.e., the required two-thirds’ supermajority — to remove Biden from office. But neither are there enough votes to remove Mayorkas, who is facing impeachment anyway. Nor for that matter, are there enough votes to remove Vice President Kamala Harris, whose portfolio ostensibly gives her control over border policy. But there were not enough votes for the removal of then-president Trump over the Ukraine kerfuffle in 2019, either — and that didn’t stop House Democrats from doing what they claimed was their duty, nor all Senate Democrats and one Republican from voting to convict him.

The Senate votes are not what matter right now. Biden does not want to bear the historic stigma of House impeachment articles, especially as he gears up to seek reelection. Moreover, an impeachment over the border catastrophe would not remotely resemble the aforementioned impeachment of Trump a year before the 2020 election. The Ukraine episode was a trifle, the impeachment was driven by nothing more than partisanship, and the whole exercise was so flippant that it was barely mentioned in the ensuing presidential campaign — even at the Democratic convention. In stark contrast, the destruction of the southern border is an existential national crisis that is already inflicting harm on millions of Americans.


That is the last thing to which Biden and Democrats want attention called. Border security is an 80–20 issue, favoring not so much Republicans (who are far from uniformly solid on upholding immigration law) as individual candidates and officials who demonstrate seriousness about it, most of whom happen to be Republicans. That’s why even Adams and his Windy City counterpart, the deeply unpopular Lori Lightfoot, have found religion on it of late.

Impeachment would grip the nation’s attention. House impeachment proceedings would rivet Americans nationwide to the shocking scenes at the border, to the disaster Biden’s policies have wrought for affected communities, and to an administration and its radical cheerleaders that urge still more millions of illegal aliens to invade, lawlessly “paroling” them into the country, secretly flying and bussing them in the dead of night to loose them on communities unprepared for the burdens — even as Democrats complain about red-state governors who transport aliens to the Democratic havens that exhorted the law-breakers to come . . . and now find themselves deluged.

Under Senate rules, if the House impeaches the president, the Senate must put all other government business aside and conduct an impeachment trial. So a trial would be the only game in town, guaranteeing weeks of coverage of Biden’s self-created border crisis. The destructiveness of administration policy, the president’s malevolent refusal to execute the laws faithfully, and congressional Democrats’ futile efforts to rationalize the sabotage would be on display for all to see.


You say the Senate would never convict Biden? I say: Who cares? The impeachment trial would frame the 2024 election, leaving voters to deal with Biden and Democrats.

The Framers believed impeachment was indispensable to the proper functioning of our government, because the credible threat of impeachment would induce presidents to honor their oaths — to enforce the laws, to safeguard the homeland from alien threats, and to elevate American interests over foreign interests. Joe Biden is not honoring his oath, and with Congress in a stalemate and state sovereignty nullified, only he can solve the border crisis he’s created. It’s that simple: Either Republicans use the only tool available to them to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors. There is no middle ground.

[G M]

Still nothing about the Fedsurrection from DSA, right?

Impeachment Is the Only Weapon Left to Fight Biden’s Border Sabotage

President Biden speaks about U.S.-Mexico border at the White House in Washington, D.C., January 5, 2023. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
February 18, 2023 6:30 AM

Either Republicans use the best tool they have to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors.

You probably don’t want to hear this again, but at this stage, the only thing that might — might — turn the tide and establish a semblance of security at the southern border would be for House Republicans to impeach President Biden for first causing the border crisis and then, over the course of the next two years, willfully exacerbating it, not out of incompetence but because it’s what his radical base demands.



The Supreme Court was never going to relieve congressional Republicans of their burden. The Court is powerless to secure the border. Its institutional legitimacy and, hence, its power lie in rendering sound judgment rooted in law and fact. Republican attorneys general were pleading with the justices to sustain a lie, namely, that we are still in the throes of a pandemic calling for extraordinary measures that include turning aliens away based on the Title 42 exclusion — an infectious-disease pretext, not a border-security policy.

Sound judgment can never be founded in such falsehoods. The justices wrung their hands for a couple of months. Sure, they knew the Title 42 claim was bogus, as Justice Neil Gorsuch bluntly said it was in a dissenting opinion in late December. But like any other rational person, they did not want to be blamed — as they knew they would be by our insidious, AWOL political class — for the overrunning of the border that even the Biden Justice Department admits will inevitably follow the lifting of Title 42 (specifically, section 265 of Title 42, U.S. Code). So a narrow majority settled on some hocus pocus meant to string matters out for a few more months.


Then, however, the administration announced that the Covid emergency would be formally ended on May 11, 2023, and there was no longer even a fig leaf for retaining the Title 42 fiction in the litigation.


The Court has not yet granted the Biden administration’s plea that it dismiss the case brought by 19 states — states that are desperate not for Title 42 to remain in place but for real border security. This week, though, the justices quietly informed the parties that oral argument would not take place as scheduled on March 1. Beyond that, the Court will likely do nothing for now. The matter will hang in limbo so the justices can see whether the president actually follows through and allows the Covid emergency to expire. Biden has been known to exploit the fiction of a lingering emergency when it serves the Left’s objectives, so prudence says you should believe the end of this one when you see it. But once Title 42 is conclusively lifted, the case will be dismissed as moot.

Of course, the border won’t be moot. It will be erased, even less visible than the palimpsest barrier over which 6 million pairs of footprints have stomped since Biden took the oath of office 25 months ago.


That’s why you can’t blame the states for their desperate but meritless pleas to the Court. For over a century, judicial rulings and congressional Democrats have nullified their powers to uphold the rule of law against trespassers. If the Court won’t help them, the states must rely on Biden, and it is Biden who has quite intentionally left the border defenseless, knowing full well that the states would be besieged.

This is no longer just a problem for red states, either. The costs of unchecked illegal immigration — the drain on health-care systems, schools, welfare services, sanitation, police departments, courts, etc. — now plague even states whose Democratic ruling classes have encouraged Biden to ignore the catastrophe. Their “sanctuary cities” now mewl about deepening budget crises that are entirely of their own making. Witness New York, where Mayor Eric Adams suddenly finds a $4.2 billion hole in his budget because the Big Apple somehow believed it could keep a safe 2,000-mile distance from the inferno Democrats were stoking.

Mark Krikorian of the invaluable Center for Immigration Studies explains in the New York Post that the lifetime cost to American taxpayers of each illegal alien is about $80,000. By conservative estimates, the 3 million or so illegal aliens Biden has lawlessly paroled into the country (out of the additional millions who have been enticed by his non-enforcement policies to seek entry, exhausting security resources) will cost about $200 billion. Even if the siege stopped today, that would not be sustainable. And it is most definitely not stopping today; if anything, it will only get worse once Title 42 ends in the coming weeks. The resulting surge could multiply the influx by a factor of two or three. How much more do you suppose a country $31 trillion in debt (and on a trajectory to reach $51 trillion in debt over the next decade) can handle?

Congressional Republicans seem to grasp that, at this point, the only solution is impeachment, the position advocated by three former government officials and top Heritage Foundation analysts — Hans von Spakovsky, Lora Ries, and Steven G. Bradbury — in a recent Fox News op-ed. But my friends are aiming too low — specifically, at Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security (as applied to him, an Orwellian title if ever there was one).


Mayorkas may be the architect of a policy that stands federal immigration law on its head, transmogrifying it from a statutory presumption that illegal aliens must be detained in order to discourage more unlawful immigration into an administration policy that illegal aliens must be invited to enter our country at liberty, then live and work here indefinitely while they press their claims for asylum, no matter how baseless. Nevertheless, this is not Mayorkas’s policy; it is Biden’s policy. The Framers’ objective in vesting all executive power in a single constitutional officer, the president, was to ensure that the elected president be held accountable — i.e., to make certain that the president, not the unelected minions who carry out his commands, would be answerable for critical policy decisions.

To repeat, yes, we know, there are not sufficient votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate — i.e., the required two-thirds’ supermajority — to remove Biden from office. But neither are there enough votes to remove Mayorkas, who is facing impeachment anyway. Nor for that matter, are there enough votes to remove Vice President Kamala Harris, whose portfolio ostensibly gives her control over border policy. But there were not enough votes for the removal of then-president Trump over the Ukraine kerfuffle in 2019, either — and that didn’t stop House Democrats from doing what they claimed was their duty, nor all Senate Democrats and one Republican from voting to convict him.

The Senate votes are not what matter right now. Biden does not want to bear the historic stigma of House impeachment articles, especially as he gears up to seek reelection. Moreover, an impeachment over the border catastrophe would not remotely resemble the aforementioned impeachment of Trump a year before the 2020 election. The Ukraine episode was a trifle, the impeachment was driven by nothing more than partisanship, and the whole exercise was so flippant that it was barely mentioned in the ensuing presidential campaign — even at the Democratic convention. In stark contrast, the destruction of the southern border is an existential national crisis that is already inflicting harm on millions of Americans.


That is the last thing to which Biden and Democrats want attention called. Border security is an 80–20 issue, favoring not so much Republicans (who are far from uniformly solid on upholding immigration law) as individual candidates and officials who demonstrate seriousness about it, most of whom happen to be Republicans. That’s why even Adams and his Windy City counterpart, the deeply unpopular Lori Lightfoot, have found religion on it of late.

Impeachment would grip the nation’s attention. House impeachment proceedings would rivet Americans nationwide to the shocking scenes at the border, to the disaster Biden’s policies have wrought for affected communities, and to an administration and its radical cheerleaders that urge still more millions of illegal aliens to invade, lawlessly “paroling” them into the country, secretly flying and bussing them in the dead of night to loose them on communities unprepared for the burdens — even as Democrats complain about red-state governors who transport aliens to the Democratic havens that exhorted the law-breakers to come . . . and now find themselves deluged.

Under Senate rules, if the House impeaches the president, the Senate must put all other government business aside and conduct an impeachment trial. So a trial would be the only game in town, guaranteeing weeks of coverage of Biden’s self-created border crisis. The destructiveness of administration policy, the president’s malevolent refusal to execute the laws faithfully, and congressional Democrats’ futile efforts to rationalize the sabotage would be on display for all to see.


You say the Senate would never convict Biden? I say: Who cares? The impeachment trial would frame the 2024 election, leaving voters to deal with Biden and Democrats.

The Framers believed impeachment was indispensable to the proper functioning of our government, because the credible threat of impeachment would induce presidents to honor their oaths — to enforce the laws, to safeguard the homeland from alien threats, and to elevate American interests over foreign interests. Joe Biden is not honoring his oath, and with Congress in a stalemate and state sovereignty nullified, only he can solve the border crisis he’s created. It’s that simple: Either Republicans use the only tool available to them to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors. There is no middle ground.

[Crafty_Dog]

C'mon GM, give props where due

[G M]

C'mon GM, give props where due

When does he call for the impeachment of his buddy (who he endorsed) Merrick “Gulag” Garland?

When does he retract his criticism of Tucker over Tucker’s reporting on the FEDsurrection?

[Crafty_Dog]

Move to strike as non-responsive.

The is that HERE there should be acknowledgement of agreement.

[G M]

Move to strike as non-responsive.

The is that HERE there should be acknowledgement of agreement.

Anyone halfway sane recognizes the need to impeach and remove Zhoe Biden from his figurehead position.

DSA is the NR version of Qanon. He fosters happy illusions, like the rule of law still matters and your vote matters.

He serves to lull people into passive acceptance of the status quo.

[Crafty_Dog]

That is not quite accurate.  Most of the Republican and the right of center chattering class (including a goodly portion of the talent on FOX) are opposed to/want to ignore impeachment.

[G M]

That is not quite accurate.  Most of the Republican and the right of center chattering class (including a goodly portion of the talent on FOX) are opposed to/want to ignore impeachment.

I thought we voted harder and got a red wave! No?

The republicans don't want to impeach, that's shocking!

AFTER the FBI - Twitter information came out, the house republicans voted  to INCREASE the FBI's budget!

Vote harder, and read DSA!

[ccp]

The republicans don't want to impeach, that's shocking!

well they could not convict in the Senate so what is the point?

better to focus on things that are constructive not a waste of time in. the end anyway

[G M]

The republicans don't want to impeach, that's shocking!

well they could not convict in the Senate so what is the point?

better to focus on things that are constructive not a waste of time in. the end anyway

Like giving the FBI MORE MONEY?

[DougMacG]

We did not get the red wave.

[G M]

We did not get the red wave.

Yes, because there was no fraud, right?

The FBI would arrest them, right?

We have fair and honest elections!

[DougMacG]

Please point to the exit poll that says it was a red wave (before the steal).

Failure to persuade is what happened.

[G M]

Please point to the exit poll that says it was a red wave (before the steal).

Failure to persuade is what happened.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/politics/polls-us-wrong-direction/index.html

Deeply unhappy electorate = Dems keep the senate!

[G M]

Please point to the exit poll that says it was a red wave (before the steal).

Failure to persuade is what happened.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/midterms-2022-polls-today-kari-lake-big-lead.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/midterm-elections-2022/voting-machine-malfunctions-maricopa-county-b2220746.html?amp

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/kari-lake-slams-katie-hobbs-recusal-refusal-close-arizona-governor-race

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/richard-baris-maricopa-county-kept-gop-heat-map-expected-voters-hanging-wall-voting-centers-heavy-gop-areas-just-happened-election-day/

Pure coincidence!

[Crafty_Dog]

GM:

You are jumping all over the place man-- this is not the place for the 2022 AZ governor race.

So, returning to the subject at hand, you said AMcC did not deserve props for favoring impeachment because:

"Anyone halfway sane recognizes the need to impeach and remove Zhoe Biden from his figurehead position."

yet shortly thereafter you say:

"The republicans don't want to impeach, that's shocking!"

Cognitive dissonance there,, clearly the latter means that AMcC stood apart from the Washington Republicans.

So instead, how about we accept the win and be glad that AMcC is with us on this issue?  You have made your case about him many times, we all know already what it is, so really there is no need to run through the litany yet again every time his name comes up.  And please let's not turn every thread into a discussion of the lack of integrity in the 2020 election.  To your heart's content you have the Electoral/SEIU thread for that.   Thank you. 

[G M]

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/135/827/153/original/8fbdcdf7037e2ab4.png

[G M]

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/135/945/423/original/564d8a1e5cdab388.jpeg

[G M]

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/135/945/423/original/564d8a1e5cdab388.jpeg

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/136/147/369/original/5a32457314ac8079.jpeg

[Crafty_Dog]

Off the top of my head I do not agree that failure to defend our border (Art. 4 Section 4) is not grounds for impeachment.


https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/30/opinion-the-case-for-impeaching-joe-biden-alan-dershowitz/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=u6M7Vj4ab6QWgKjRpWToHI7Xsh2yD8VzLvfmzrUyrkNml_GdF_UEzPxbTKV5XyT7OAow7do7

[Crafty_Dog]

Where Are Republicans’ Biden Probes Headed, and Is Impeachment Possible?
Here are answers to questions about what is going on with the GOP’s various investigations
July 4, 2023 10:00 am ET


House Republicans are conducting a series of probes that could lead to the impeachment of President Biden and administration officials. Democrats deride the investigations as politically motivated and baseless. Here are answers to some of the most common questions about what is going on, and what might happen next.

What are House Republicans’ investigations focused on?
The House Judiciary Committee has been investigating what Republicans portray as the weaponization of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while the House Oversight Committee has been focused on the financial dealings of the president and his family, notably his son Hunter. The Homeland Security Committee is investigating the Biden administration’s handling of the border and immigration.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, meanwhile, released transcripts of interviews in which Internal Revenue Service employees alleged that the Justice Department hindered the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, just days after a plea agreement was announced in the case.


Hunter Biden reached a deal in June to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay income taxes. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
How does Hunter Biden figure into the GOP probes?
Republicans are looking into whether President Biden played a role in, or benefited from, Hunter Biden’s overseas business affairs. The Wall Street Journal has reported on how the younger Biden ramped up his foreign business dealings—receiving a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China and consulting arrangements with a Romanian real-estate magnate—as his father exited the vice presidency.

Repeated previous investigations haven’t revealed any role by President Biden, who has denied involvement in his son’s business affairs.

Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said his panel has uncovered evidence that the Biden family engaged in a pattern of influence peddling and corruption. But he conceded in May that the committee hasn’t found evidence of a specific corrupt action President Biden took in connection with his son’s business dealings.

In May, House Republicans released financial records detailing how Biden family members, their business associates and companies received more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017. House Republicans have pointed to a web of shell companies used for the transactions as evidence of money laundering and influence peddling, in which members of the president’s family allegedly traded on the Biden name.

Hunter Biden Agrees to Plead Guilty to Tax Crimes
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President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he willfully failed to pay federal income taxes. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News
What about the Justice Department investigation of Hunter Biden?
A Justice Department investigation, which began in 2018, examined the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings but in more recent years focused on his taxes and his false claim, on a form to purchase a gun, that he wasn’t using or addicted to drugs. Hunter Biden reached a deal in June with the Justice Department to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018. As part of the plea deal, Biden is also set to enter a so-called diversion program in which he would avoid prosecution on a gun possession charge if he remains drug-free and agrees to never own a firearm again, according to people familiar with the terms.

What is the WhatsApp message that Hunter allegedly sent to a potential Chinese business partner?
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In an interview transcript recently released by the House Ways and Means Committee, an IRS supervisory agent said his team had uncovered a 2017 WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden invoked his father’s name in pressuring a potential Chinese business partner, saying he was “sitting here with my father.”

It wasn’t known whether Hunter Biden was, in fact, with his father or if Joe Biden was aware of his son’s negotiations. Asked on June 28 whether he was involved in his son’s dealings, President Biden said, “No, I wasn’t.”

A lawyer for Hunter Biden, Abbe Lowell, questioned the authenticity of the text message in a June 30 letter to House lawmakers. In that letter, Lowell said President Biden wasn’t with his son on the day of the text message and that no transaction ultimately occurred.


Rep. James Comer said his House panel uncovered evidence that the Biden family engaged in a pattern of influence peddling and corruption. PHOTO: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
What is an FD-1023, and why did House Republicans ask for one related to the Biden family?
The House investigation thrust into the spotlight an FBI form known as an FD-1023. FBI agents use the form to record unverified, raw information from confidential human sources. The FBI stressed to House Republicans that the mere recording of information in an FD-1023 doesn’t establish its credibility or reflect the conclusions of investigators.

House lawmakers requested access to an FD-1023 that, they said, contained allegations that President Biden and Hunter Biden engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national during his vice presidency. The FBI ultimately provided all lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee with access to requested records in a secured facility at the Capitol.

Emerging from the review, Comer, the Oversight chairman, said the bribery allegations came from a “trusted, highly credible” confidential human source who has been paid “over six figures” in 10 years as an FBI informant.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the document contained allegations that the Justice Department reviewed in 2020, at the direction of then-Attorney General William Barr, before determining there were no grounds for further investigative steps. Barr had tasked the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in western Pennsylvania, Scott Brady, with reviewing allegations involving Ukraine, including materials Rudy Giuliani was circulating about the Biden family.

A White House spokesman called Comer’s focus on the document a “fact-free stunt.”

What other details are known about the alleged bribery scheme?
The FD-1023 form summarized conversations in which a foreign national alleged that an executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma offered Hunter Biden and his father bribes of $5 million.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) said that the foreign national who allegedly bribed the Bidens claimed to have 17 audio recordings of their conversations. Grassley and other Republicans have acknowledged that it is unclear if the recordings actually exist.

Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the bribery accusations largely repeated what Giuliani had previously shared with the FBI. Raskin pointed to an interview in which the foreign national at issue, Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevsky, rebutted the allegations. Zlochevsky also denied that Joe Biden or his staff helped him or Burisma “in any way,” according to a transcript of an interview taken by one of Giuliani’s associates, which was produced to the House in the 2019 impeachment of former President Donald Trump.


Attorney General Merrick Garland has pushed back on claims that DOJ officials stymied attempts to charge Hunter Biden with felonies. PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS
Why do some Republicans say they think Attorney General Merrick Garland lied and could be impeached?
Garland said during a March congressional hearing that he had given the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, broad independence to pursue charges against Hunter Biden and that he “has been advised he is not to be denied anything he needs.” Weiss was kept on under the Biden administration to continue overseeing the investigation into the president’s son.

IRS employees have challenged that, telling lawmakers that Justice Department officials stymied and slow-walked attempts to charge Hunter Biden with felonies. One IRS supervisor said officials blocked his efforts to bring charges against Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and in California and that Weiss was denied special counsel status in the course of the investigation. Garland has pushed back on those claims, saying Weiss “was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own.”

“The only person with authority to make somebody a special counsel or refuse to make somebody a special counsel is the attorney general,” Garland added. “Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.” Weiss, in a recent letter to lawmakers, said he was “granted ultimate authority” in the Biden case.


Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in May discussed the lifting of Title 42, a measure that allowed the government to rapidly turn away migrants seeking asylum. PHOTO: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Why do some Republicans say they want to impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas?
Republicans have made Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the face of what they call the “Biden border crisis.” They argue that Mayorkas didn’t do enough to curb record illegal crossings at the southern border and prepare for the coming end of Title 42, a pandemic-era measure that allowed the government to rapidly turn away migrants seeking asylum. But since the policy ended in May and the Biden administration rolled out new measures, illegal crossings at the border have unexpectedly plummeted by about 70%.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What questions do you have about the House GOP probes of President Biden? Join the conversation below.

Republicans have also linked record illegal immigration with illicit fentanyl being smuggled into the country, which also crosses the border from Mexico, but nearly all of it is carried by U.S. citizens rather than migrants, according to government data and analysts.

What is the likelihood that the House will impeach Biden or one of his cabinet members?
GOP leaders have said they want to see what evidence the probes yield before committing to impeachment votes, but many rank-and-file Republicans say they are convinced that the president has committed impeachable offenses.

It is less clear that House Republicans would have the votes to succeed in impeaching Biden or any cabinet officials. Impeachment requires a simple majority in the GOP-controlled House. The Democratic-controlled Senate would then need to vote with a two-thirds supermajority to convict and remove them from office.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com, C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com, Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com

[Crafty_Dog]

https://nypost.com/2023/07/05/missing-biden-corruption-case-witness-dr-gal-luft-details-allegations-against-presidents-family-in-extraordinary-video/?&utm_campaign=devineonline&utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230706&lctg=649c637ec7c6527b1b0fe213&utm_term=NYP%20-%20Devine%20Online

‘Missing’ Biden corruption case witness Dr. Gal Luft details allegations against president’s family in extraordinary video
By Miranda Devine
July 5, 2023 10:52pm  Updated
MORE FROM:
MIRANDA DEVINE
Most voters say Hunter Biden got sweetheart deal because of dad Joe, poll shows
Blowing the lid off the cover-up of Hunter Biden's cushy plea deal
Allegations against Biden and his family are too credible to wipe away with 'father's love' sob story
Heroic IRS whistleblower testimony ensnarls Hunter and Joe Biden in bribery scheme
This businessman — who went to prison for 2 years for corrupt donations to Biden — received jail time from the feds because he had wrong last name
The “missing witness” from the Biden corruption investigation, Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft, has laid out his bribery allegations against the president’s family in an extraordinary video filmed in an undisclosed location while he’s on the run.

In the 14-minute recording, obtained exclusively by The Post, the fugitive former Israeli army officer claims he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying to the House Oversight Committee that the Biden family received payments from individuals with alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence and that they had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their benefactors from the China-controlled energy company CEFC.

The self-proclaimed fall guy says he provided the incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice in a secret meeting in Brussels in March 2019 — but alleges that it was covered up.

“I, who volunteered to inform the US government about a potential security breach and about compromising information about a man vying to be the next president, am now being hunted by the very same people who I informed — and may have to live on the run for the rest of my life on the run …”

“I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I have no political motive or agenda … I did it out of deep concern that if the Bidens were to come to power, the country would be facing the same traumatic Russia collusion scandal — only this time with China. Sadly, because of the DOJ’s cover-up, this is exactly what happened …”

Dr. Gal Luft

Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft laid out his bribery allegations against President Biden’s family in an extraordinary video filmed in an undisclosed location while he’s on the run.


Luft claims he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying to the House Oversight Committee that the Biden family received payments from individuals with alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence.
AP
“I warned the government about potential risk to the integrity of the 2020 elections … Ask yourself, who is the real criminal in this story?”

The House Oversight chairman, Republican James Comer, who was preparing to interview Luft before Luft disappeared, says the Israeli remains a “potential witness” in the Biden family probe, despite his fugitive status.

It remains to be seen whether Luft is the man who will bring down the Bidens, but he is not going quietly into the sunset.

He is determined to tell the American public his version of the truth.

Calling himself “patient zero of the Biden family investigation,” Luft, 57, says he is innocent of charges of conspiring to sell Chinese weapons to Kenya, Libya and the UAE, of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and of making a false statement.

He says he was forced to skip bail in Cyprus in April while awaiting extradition “because I did not believe I will receive a fair trial in a New York court.”

Hunter Biden
The self-proclaimed fall guy says he provided the incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice in a secret meeting in Brussels in March 2019 but alleges that it was covered up.
CNP / Polaris
‘Make evidence public’
Now he is challenging the government to release the minutes of the Brussels meeting and make public the evidence against him.

“Why did the DOJ choose to unseal the indictment on Nov. 1, 2022, the very same week of the midterm elections?” he asks.

“Could this have anything to do with the fear that once Republicans gain control over Congress and begin to investigate, [the DOJ] cover-up would be on full display?”

Luft says he told the DOJ and the FBI in Brussels that Joe Biden, soon after his vice presidential term ended, had attended a meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC, with his son Hunter and officials from CEFC.

Luft’s account of the former VP’s presence at that meeting was corroborated 21 months later when the FBI interviewed another attendee, Biden family associate Rob Walker, according to recent testimony before Congress.

Luft disclosed during the Brussels interview that CEFC was paying $100,000 a month to Hunter and $65,000 to his uncle Jim Biden, in exchange for their FBI connections and use of the Biden name to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative around the world — and that the money was being funneled through Walker.

The Oversight Committee has written to Walker demanding he submit to questioning about his role in distributing more than $1 million from China to at least three of President Biden’s relatives.

The DOJ sent a delegation of six people to meet Luft in Brussels, he alleges: four FBI agents and two prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, Daniel Richenthal and Catherine Ghosh.

Among the FBI contingent was Special Agent Joshua Wilson from the Baltimore field office, who would go on to sign a subpoena later that year to seize Hunter’s abandoned laptop from a Delaware repair shop.

“Why did the government dispatch to Europe so many people?” asks Luft.

“They knew very well I’m a credible witness and I have insider knowledge about the group and individuals that enriched the Biden family.

“Over an intensive two-day meeting, I shared my information about the Biden family’s financial transactions with CEFC, including specific dollar figures. I also provided the name of Rob Walker, who later became known as Hunter Biden’s bagman.”

James Comer
Rep. James Comer, who was preparing to interview Luft before he disappeared, says the Israeli remains a “potential witness” in the Biden family probe, despite his fugitive status.
Getty Images

Think-tank ties
He also told the DOJ and the FBI in Brussels that Hunter had an FBI mole named “One Eye” who had tipped off his CEFC associates, Dr. Patrick Ho and Chairman Ye Jianming, that they were under investigation.

Luft is well connected in intelligence circles in Washington, DC, where he ran a think tank, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, with former CIA Director James Woolsey and former national security adviser Robert McFarlane as advisers.

He learned in 2017 that Hunter and Jim Biden were being paid by CEFC because Luft was in partnership at the time with a nonprofit think tank associated with the Chinese company.

When Ho was arrested in 2017 in New York on bribery charges, the first person he tried to call was Hunter Biden, whom he had paid $1 million as a “legal retainer.”

But at his trial, Ho was blocked by prosecutors from mentioning the Bidens, according to Luft.

Ho “paid Hunter Biden a million dollars for God-knows-what [but] was not allowed to mention the word Biden before the jury,” says Luft.

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden
Luft also told the DOJ and the FBI in Brussels that Hunter had an FBI mole named “One Eye” who had tipped off his CEFC associates, Dr. Patrick Ho and Chairman Ye Jianming, that they were under investigation.
WireImage

“Prosecutor Daniel Richenthal told the judge at the time that mentioning the name Biden would ‘add a political dimension’ to the case, and the judge agreed. Which means if I was brought before a New York court, I would not be allowed to utter the word Brussels or Biden.”

Luft denies the charge that he is an arms dealer: “I was asked by a bona fide arms dealer, an Israeli friend, to inquire with a company I knew if they had an item and what would be the price of an item. This is where the conspiracy ended. No follow-up, no money, no brokering activity.”


He also faces FARA charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of CEFC.

“The DOJ says I caused a payment of $6,000 a month to former CIA Director James Woolsey in order to put his name on an article I had ghostwritten for the China Daily newspaper … Woolsey had been an adviser to my think tank since 2002 and nothing in the article represented Chinese interests.”

“Why am I being indicted … for ghostwriting an innocuous article for which I received no payment, let alone from a foreign government, when the mother of all FARA cases, the Bidens’ systemic influence-peddling on behalf of foreign governments, for which they raked [in] millions, goes unpunished?”

Attorney met with government
A curious addendum to Luft’s tale comes in October 2020, days after The Post’s bombshell revelations from Hunter’s laptop.

Luft dispatched his attorney, Robert Henoch, to Washington to meet the Trump administration’s acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to repeat the allegations he had made in Brussels.

Donoghue also had been assigned by Attorney General Bill Barr in February 2020 to coordinate federal investigations into all Ukraine-related corruption allegations against Joe Biden.

Unbeknownst to Luft, on Sept. 4, Donoghue had ordered the Delaware US attorney to pause the criminal investigation into Hunter to avoid leaks in the two months before the election, according to testimony before Congress.

Donoghue agreed to meet Henoch at a Starbucks near DOJ headquarters and corresponded on his private email, says Luft, who showed The Post the emails between his attorney and the senior official.

“The story is about corruption at the very highest levels of government/politics and I think it can all be corroborated,” Henoch wrote.

Nothing ever came of the meeting — until February of this year, when Luft was arrested in Cyprus.

[Crafty_Dog]

OMG-- is this coke baggie thing a set up to get rid of Kommiela?

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/white-house-cocaine-situation-room

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/images-show-men-armed-rifles-body-armor-coming-southern-border

Impeach and convict for Art. 4 Section 4!!!

[Crafty_Dog]

https://patriotpost.us/articles/100091-make-with-the-impeachment-inquiry-already-2023-08-30?mailing_id=7740&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7740&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/09/the-impeachment-risk/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=32690480

[ccp]

Good assessment as to risks

"recent experience with failed impeachments is that they are dismissed by voters as partisan exercises. This was true when Republicans impeached Bill Clinton and when Democrats impeached Trump the first time."

True perhaps but I did not perceive that it hurt either Repubs or Dems afterwards.

"Now that the issue has entered the realm of impeachment, it will be much easier for Democrats to sweep the charges away as mere retribution for the impeachments and indictments of Trump, and the details could be lost."


Well we know they will continue to do this impeachment inquiry or not.


"The speaker argues that having an open impeachment inquiry will provide more power to investigators to get more answers, but it also creates more pressure to produce a smoking gun and, potentially, to proceed further down the impeachment track regardless."

Agree this is a risk. If Repubs  don't find anything then we will hear Weissmann et al smuggly telling there is "no there there"
with his shit eating grin.


All in all I think it a good idea to do an inquiry to get more info.

[Crafty_Dog]

Or, blow off giving weight to the Trump indictments in return for blowing off the impeachment inquiry.

[DougMacG]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/images-show-men-armed-rifles-body-armor-coming-southern-border

Impeach and convict for Art. 4 Section 4!!!

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;"

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gopers-ready-to-give-impeachment-lead-to-jim-jordan-after-failed-james-comer-hearing/ar-AA1huWNB?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=b935fa4fa394414b88bc9e4185197847&ei=20

[DougMacG]

How does an Impeachment Inquiry end when you keep finding more evidence if wrongdoing, corruption, high crimes and misdemeanors?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/12/31/luxury-tax-everybody-loses/11141980-feda-4982-a43e-8fb4189e7b9a/

Answer to first question is vote to impeach and second question is when?

Before the first primary would be nice, if the evidence is there.

Impeach when the Impeachment managers are ready to bring a convincing case to the Senate, to the media and to the people.

I've changed my mind in this.  I opposed Impeachment in the House because it would certainly fail in the Senate and because I wouldn't prefer the Kamacackler in the Oval Office, but I was wrong.

Impeachment in the House forces the evidence out into the public sphere, including the DOJ and IRS looking the other way and blocking investigations.  Let the Dem Senators be wrong, especially in WV, MT, Ohio, and Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Joe enabled and benefitted from it all, now they put their stamp approval on it if that is their vote.

Let Joe face trial while Trump faces trials, funny coincidence, and judge which one is political with hunt and which involved real crimes.

The Biden family BTW declared no income and paid no taxes in all those millions, while stepping up the enforcement on all the rest of us. The closer you get to it, the more it reeks.

Welcome to 2024.  Democrats made this bed, now roll in it.

Meanwhile DeSantis and Newsom debate policy later this month. Weird

[ccp]

I opposed serious revenge Trump keeps speaking of.

But this makes me change my mind:

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/4304557-the-non-denial-denial-david-weiss-and-americas-first-nihilist-prosecutor/

It would not be "revenge", it would be justice.

Weiss Garland have to be held accountable.

We can't keep letting people like this keep getting away with it.

Of course we will need the House Senate and WH

[Crafty_Dog]

YES!

My disappointment in Speaker Johnson grows:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-johnson-faces-maga-fury/ar-AA1jM8Ml?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=63f0d32e19c04f3288cb4425c7d986c7&ei=5

[ccp]

Joe should be impeached by refusing to enforce immigration law which is etched in stone.

for the Hunter and family corruption I think it might be prudent to wait a bit longer for the Committe to uncover more evidence .

But who am I?   

[Crafty_Dog]

Surprised and disappointed to see McClintock on this list:

===========================================


EIGHT REPUBLICANS HELP DEMS SLOW MAYORKAS IMPEACHMENT VOTE… GOP Reps Vote With Dems To Kill Motion To Impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas

The U.S. House voted Monday to refer articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas to committee.

The resolution was introduced by Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Thursday. The House did not end up voting on the legislation as eight Republicans voted with Democrats to refer the resolution to committee. The vote was 209-201. […]

Here are the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats:

California Rep. Darrell Issa

North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx

Colorado Rep. Ken Buck

Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz

Ohio Rep. Mike Turner

North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry

California Rep. Tom McClintock

California Rep. John Duarte

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/feeble-biden-faces-little-threat-from-the-25th-amendment/?bypass_key=aDVHN0tVVk16c3kxazMxMU8zc0RmQT09OjpVekpqUnpBeFdHMVpXRGxzVVRKa1kweGFkbFpMZHowOQ%3D%3D

[Crafty_Dog]

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/17/jonathan-turley-connection-hunter-biden-corruption-evidence-impeachment/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=p7d8BSlBPbFFiuCduz6lCY_DvQ6qTMJ7P_G1x7tnvEFmhVp9TDCpoQDdgW3EtnZHebgSmGoR