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They Need the Indictment to Beat Trump 2024
Get it yet? The point of the raid on Mar-a-Lago and the J6 hearings is aimed at one man. Nope, not Donald Trump, Merrick Garland. It is aimed at one end: get Garland to indict Trump for something and failing that, to indict the highest ranking person near Trump in hopes it will rub off on the near-certain-to-be Candidate.
The reason for this is that nothing else worked. Democrats pointed the full national security apparatus at Trump, with the FBI doing yeoman-like duty, and turned Robert Mueller loose with unlimited resources for a full year to find something Russian to indict Trump on, going as far as to suggest he obstructed an investigation which found him innocent. Alice in Wonderland stuff, that. After wading through reams of FBI investigative malfeasance to include but not limited to lying to get FISA warrants and accepting an obviously wholly-fictitious dossier as fact for months, Mueller could not find a single issue worthy of bringing to an actual court. So Democrats impeached Trump, twice, one of which was little more than a policy difference over a Ukraine few outside the DC Bubble cared about then but sure as hell do now. The aggressive Southern District of New York (SDNY) was unleashed on Trump’s finances and real estate work, given a grand jury to take testimony, and still came up with nothing indictable. And that is leaving aside the reality the IRS has had Trump’s full tax records for decades of audits and again came up with nothing indictable.
Dems’ whole remaining strategy for 2024 is to make people believe Trump does not support America’s democracy. Propaganda/journalism/TV hearings failed to sway many minds. To succeed it’s going to require something real, an actual court finding Trump actually guilty of an actual crime that meets the expectations set after flinging around words like treason and sedition like angry monkeys. Some goofy tax problem in a state court or empty process crime will not be enough. It is hard to imagine Trump taking with him some classified documents will be enough, despite the high-profile raid on Mar-a-Lago.
With the Democratic midterm massacre scheduled for November, Dems know they now have about 12 weeks left to indict Trump or someone near him. Republicans are already drooling over the prospect of shutting down the FBI and the J6 Headline Committee Machine and opening their own investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden’s financial tomfoolery in Ukraine and China. So it is now or never for the Last Man Who Can Trump Trump, Merrick Garland.
Garland seems a rare person in 21st century Washington, a man with a moral compass. Appointed Attorney General by Joe Biden, many Dems expected Garland to be an angry beast of a prosecutor. After all, the only reason he does not now sit on the Supreme Court (he might have saved Roe!) after being nominated at the end of the Obama administration was Republicans refused to allow him a Senate hearing. The unfairness of it all is supposed to be eating at him, and he should be out of blood to take down the Republicans once and for all by slashing Trump at the knees.
Garland instead seems lost in a kind of Jeffersonian Zen state, promising to follow the law and respect the civil liberties of all. In an interview’s worth of softball questions on NBC Nightly News, Garland sounded more like Mr. Rogers than a prosecutor atop his fiery pulpit. Yes, the DOJ is investigating Trump, et al, alongside the J6 Committee. Yes, it’s a criminal investigation, that’s what DOJ does. No, he has not decided to prosecute because all the information is not in. No, it doesn’t matter Trump is a former and maybe future president, the law is blind to that. Listeners were left waiting for him to say “And now anything else troubling you, young fella?”
The problem is despite all the cries about democracy under attack, there seems little to indict Trump over, and Garland seems to sense that. The original Great Dem Hope, incitement (often expressed as treason or sedition by pundits) is not mentioned much anymore. Among other problems, incitement requires a showing of intent — that the speaker wanted the crowd in this case to attack the Capitol not just protest there — and no witness has come up with anything remotely applicable and Trump’s own words fall far short. The idea that Trump spoke and the mob rioted seems attractive on TV (one thing followed another so they must be related, right?) but does not meet any legal test worthy of actual indictment. Merrick Garland knows that, even if Liz Cheney pretends she does not. The J6 people can pitch a criminal referral but that changes nothing for the man who has to actually decide if there is anything legally actionable he can take to court. It’s the gap on display between no standards and very high ones. It is very unclear anything Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago would rise to the level of indictment after he blames staff and the movers for inadvertently packing the wrong stuff.
What will be left for Garland is some sort of charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States. This would have to take the form of persons planning to set in motion some sort of process which would have negated or at least scrambled the results of the 2020 election sufficiently that Trump could have claimed a victory and see what happens next. Garland is under huge pressure from the Democratic left, who know their time in power is numbered in weeks, to squish and squeeze the goofy rhetoric Trump’s lawyers were spouting into an indictment along those lines.
This indictment, if it comes at all, will probably not include Trump who, like any client, is not responsible for what his lawyers (or the movers) said or did. Instead, Trump lawyers John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark will likely bear the brunt of any legal opinions rendered, while the press and Dems try to drag the stain off them on to Trump. Both men recently were aggressively served with search warrants. Both men came up with complex schemes to negate the 2020 election, with no chance of success, just to placate their client, Trump. Eastman mumbled about old election law to “spin a yarn” the vice president might be able to exclude state-certified electoral votes based on speculative vote-fraud suspicions. Clark said even though the Justice Department found no evidence of voter fraud the fact that it was still investigating while Trump’s campaign claimed other election irregularities could be used to nudge contested states into auditing their elections.
If Garland is pressed to indict Eastman and Clark, he’ll face accusations that his jurisprudence is politically motivated. He’ll also face practical problems such as seating an unbiased jury. But if he thinks the cases will lead him to Trump, he’ll hit a stone wall. Trump’s conversations and interactions with his lawyers — the stuff that can reveal intent and state of mind — are protected by both attorney-client privilege and by executive privilege. The latter will also cover nearly every official who directly interacted with Trump. Garland could easily find himself facing a Supreme Court fight over the limits of such privilege which would run past 2024.
As for the work of the lawyer’s themselves and their possible indictment, Orwell would call what they might be accused of thought crimes. The legal advice was frivolous. It had no connection to the riots. It was never acted on. It is unclear what impact the opinions made anywhere, even their impact on Trump himself. In any normal world drafting a legal memo is hardly a crime. Yet they may yet prove just barely enough to bring an indictment against Trump’s lawyers and minimally satisfy the Democrats’ blood lust. The last hope is their indictment will stick to Trump and that — that — will dog him into defeat where everything short of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue has not. Call it a long shot.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Trump (and Georgia) On My Mind
One of my kids is studying law, and I’ve read a bit over her shoulder as she prepped for exams. Two critical things stand out: unlike in literature, words in the law have very specific meanings (lie, fraud, possess, assault), and intent matters quite a bit. The latter is very important, because people say things all the time they do not mean, such as “If Joe in Sales misses that deadline I’m gonna kill someone.” No one’s life is actually in danger, we all understand. Same for all those neighbors who were going to but never did move to Costa Rica if Trump was elected.
Misunderstanding words as moving from the general to the very specific when you pull them out of a conversation and try to bring them to court, and determining intent based on what you “believe,” are really at the root of the ever-growing string of failed legal actions against Trump (there are some 19 still pending.) We have, and this is just hitting the highlights, all of Russiagate, the Mueller Report, Impeachment I, Impeachment II, Stormy Daniels, failed accusations of real estate valuation fraud in New York and most recently, a grand jury seated to look into election fraud in Georgia.
For example, in Impeachment I, the Ukraine caper, the entire brouhaha hinged on Donald Trump’s own words in the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president. But did they mean Trump was demanding foreign interference in the 2020 election? Or was he asking an ally to run down unethical actions by Joe Biden as a public service before he might become president? What was Trump’s intention when he said “A lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.” Later in the call Trump suggested some aid to Ukraine might be withheld, though not in specific reference to any investigation into Biden.
The people who brought the impeachment proceedings decided all that constituted an illegal solicitation of a foreign in-kind contribution to Trump’s re-election campaign, maybe even extortion. The allegation was referred to the Justice Department, which declined charges. Many Democrats though that unfair, failing to see the lack of anything coming of it (i.e., no investigation by Ukraine), the lack of anything withheld (the aid was eventually delivered) and overall the lack of intent to commit a crime by Trump. The legal definition tests for words like solicit and extort were not met and Justice correctly dumped the case and there was no conviction in the Senate.
Same story in New York, where the facts seemed to support Trump valued real estate at a lower price for tax purposes and a higher price when used as loan collateral. It’s called valuation and is legally done all the time. But some decided saying one thing to one person and another to another person to gain something was “fraud,” and everyone pursuing the case forgot that they also had to prove intent, that Trump lied with the intention to commit a crime and gain by ill begotten methods. The case rightfully collapsed.
Yep, same with the Stormy Daniels saga, where the facts seemed to be Trump, via Michael Cohen, paid money to Stormy to keep quiet about their affair. Sleazy enough, but paying someone as part of a non-disclosure agreement is not illegal. It would be a crime if the money was paid by Trump with the intent of influencing an election, which he suggested was not true, the cash-for-silence was maybe to protect his marriage. Campaign finance laws require proof a person was willfully violating the law. Prosecutors would have to demonstrate that willingness by Trump alongside showing his principal goal was to influence the election. If this kind of case would have ever reached court, Trump would have simply denied intent.
Another example can be found in the incitement allegations surrounding the speech Trump made just before his supporters entered the Capitol building January 6. A democracy can’t lock up everyone who stirs up a crowd. Speech which inspires, motivates, or warms the blood cannot be illegal as it is the very stuff of democracy. Trump thought the election was unfair and had a right to say so. Brandenburg v. Ohio refined the modern standard to 1) the speech explicitly or implicitly encourages the use of violence or lawless action; 2) the speaker intends their speech will result in the use of violence or lawless action, and 3) imminent violence or lawless action is the likely result of the speech. Brandenburg is the Supreme Court’s gold standard on what government may do about speech that seeks to incite others to lawlessness.
The key is always intent. You have to prove, not just speculate, the speaker wanted to cause violence. Listeners’ reaction to speech is not alone a basis for taking action against a speaker. You’d need to prove Trump wanted the crowd to attack the Capitol and set out to find the words to make that happen. It ain’t gonna fly for the January 6 Committee.
Which brings us to Georgia, where the NYT asks “Will Trump Face a Legal Reckoning in Georgia?” On January 2, 2020, facing an election loss, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State to demand he “find 11,780 votes,” one more than Joe Biden’s tally. Did Trump encourage the secretary to commit election fraud? That prosecution will fail, as did all of the ones above, for the same two reasons: words are not solely what they seem, and intent is hard to prove.
For example, to the Democratic lay person “find” means commit election fraud to come up with votes. But well before anything goes to court, it will be made clear that “find” in this context can also mean, in just one example, recount all legal ballots to see if a mistake can be found which legitimately sends more votes to Trump. The other issue is again intent; to prove solicitation of election fraud, Georgia law requires a person intentionally “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause” another person to engage in election fraud. Trump and his associates need only to maintain they meant “find” as in recount, not as in cheat. Case closed.
In seeing the same mistakes made over and over, you’d start to think maybe the Democrats need some better lawyers. But don’t worry. Democratic lawyers know just as well as Republican lawyers none of these cases ever had a chance in a real court. Their purpose was purely political, to manufacture some headlines, to influence voters, to create the impression Trump has to be guilty of something if only he could be stopped from wriggling away. The goal is to convince voters to ignore the rule of law and take matters into their own hands in 2024 to stop Trump.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Hunter Biden’s Laptop Stole the Last Election
With the November midterms coming, the media will soon pivot to who will be trying to steal the next election. Democrats are obsessed with the idea that when they lose elections it must be because of outside forces, usually some sort of Russian lifeform at work. But what we know now is that if anyone has been manipulating our once dear democracy, it has been the Democrats.
The latest findings by the Durham investigation make it clear the 2016 Clinton campaign paid for and implemented a massive disinformation strategy to falsely link Trump to Russia, and then worked the intelligence services of the United States and the MSM to shove that narrative deep into the American psyche. When Trump won, Democrats immediately used that same strategy to try and drive him from office. That that too failed is not the point; the playbook was being worked out for manipulating an election within the boundaries of the American system. The Dems/Intel services/MSM proved to be fast learners; when it came to 2020, the basic plan did work, deep sixing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop to glide Joe into the White House.
I can say with great conviction had the laptop been front paged it would have affected the election, perhaps seeing Trump reelected. How can I say that? Unlike almost everyone else in America, I read the contents of the laptop in 2020. Here is why you didn’t.
On October 14, 2020, three weeks before the Trump-Biden election, the nation’s oldest newspaper, founded by Alexander Hamilton himself, The New York Post, published reports about the business dealings of Hunter Biden in Ukraine and China. Hunter took large sums of money from businesses in Ukraine that were part of his father’s official portfolio as vice president, and took large sums of money from Chinese shell companies with ties to the Chinese oligarchy. Hunter performed no work in return for the money. In the case of China, he appeared to launder money, taking in six figures, skimming off a percentage, then handing the remainder over to a US corporate entity of the Chinese organization. That got around Chinese government currency export regulations.
The funds sent to Hunter were obscured in a number of ways. They passed through paper companies Hunter set up. They traversed numbered Cypriot bank accounts, came in the form of prepaid VISA cards, and as gifts including diamonds and Apple products. Some money was routed through Joe Biden’s brother’s law office, Hunter’s uncle. Hunter illegally did not report much of the income, and recently paid one million dollars in back taxes (fraud charges may be pending.)
In return for all this money, Hunter introduced a Ukrainian energy businessman to his daddy, the VP, and promised other global characters similar access. He met with oligarchs in Beijing alongside his father’s official meetings, having flown to China aboard the same Air Force plane. In correspondence with his clients, Hunter regularly referenced his access to the “Big Man,” Papa Joe.
Aside all this financial filth on the laptop was evidence of Hunter’s own filthy life, actions simply screaming to a foreign intelligence service “Blackmail me!” Hunter’s laptop was chocked with video showing him smoking crack. Hunter spent money on escorts, some $21,000 on cam sites, big plays on all sorts of depravities. Correspondence referencing Hunter’s affair with his dead brother Beau’s widow for goodness sakes. The blackmail fodder is so clear Chinese intelligence would probably assign the case to an intern to run.
But the public never saw any of this, thanks to the collaborative efforts of the American intelligence services and the MSM working, for the Democratic Party.
Soon after the New York Post broke the laptop story, the disinformation campaign began with a Politico piece headlined “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” Lacking proof, they wrote “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case. [It] has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” And that was good enough for the MSM to take the handoff.
The emails were a “hoax” said fact-check site NewsGuard, discredited by “many, many red flags” according to NPR. Twitter locked The New York Post‘s account after the Post refused to obey Twitter’s orders to delete its own reporting. Twitter also blocked all references to the laptop story by all users, even banning links to the story in DMs. Facebook announced it would suppress discussion of the reporting pending a “fact check” which never came. Compare this Orwellian treatment of the laptop story with the way the same organizations handled the Russiagate dossier, slathering it across the media. The irony is any fact checking would have proved the laptop story true, and the dossier completely false. The ultimate irony is while you can read the full dossier online, the laptop emails are still not available to the general public.
So how do we know now the laptop story was always true? Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski confirmed his emails were legitimate months ago. Last week the New York Times agreed, reporting on an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into Hunter’s business and tax activities based in part on the contents of the laptop. The FBI’s use of the laptop finally forced the Times so send out its own reporters so it could claim this year what it said was bunk last year, that the emails “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” Politico now, too, admits the emails are real, not Russian disinformation, based on a book by one of its own writers. The President of the United States for his part claims to have known nothing about his own son’s and brother’s business dealing and name dropping, and is sticking, loosely, to the Russian disinformation version of things. Biden’s defense has always been sweeping: “My son did nothing wrong.” The most charitable reading of that is Joe Biden, one of the most powerful men in the world, is an idiot.
Surveys suggest the information could have swung the election if voters had known about it. One showed enough people in battleground states would have changed their votes to give Trump the electoral votes needed for reelection. Russiagate. Alfa Bank. The laptop. All coordinated disinformation campaigns run by the Democrats involving the MSM and intelligence communities, all aimed at defeating Donald Trump. You see how it works now. Watch for the same pattern as we approach the midterms, and in 2024.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Wishing Trump Away from 2024
The Democrats only possible path forward is to ensure Trump does not run in 2024. They want to lock him in jail.With only three years left to go, the 2024 race is narrowing quickly to Trump versus Some Democrat. By election day President Biden will be a vaguely sentient 82, VP Harris likely will have left the country, and the Dem’s rainbow coalition of identity claimants will quickly winnow itself down to nobody as their collective lack of experience devalues their various claims of victimhood. What to do about Trump?
You can convince a group of Americans for awhile Trump is a Russian agent, or violated an Emoluments Clause thingie they never heard of, just by saying it over and over. The problem is once the accusation reaches the judicial system, the Maddow-Goebbels Gambit withers. Once in the courts, words like “fraud” have very specific meanings. Treason, and anything that brushes against free speech such as incitement, have long trails of precedence. Even for something as basic as the Kyle Rittenhouse self-defense case, any first year law student will tell you there are five elements that need to be met. If the jury agrees they were met, the defendant walks, whether BL really M or not. The rule of law means those tests apply no matter how certain the public is that Rittenhouse is a murdering white supremacist. Or Trump an immoral misogynist. Of course what the Dems really want is a law making “being Trump” illegal. But in America those things are still weighed by elections.
Everyone is familiar with the litany of such failures to turn belief into crime over the last four years — Emoluments Clause, Russiagate, impeachments I and II, Stormy Daniels, obstruction of justice, and incitement. On the sidelines were extra-judicial attempts connected with the 25th Amendment, having doctors who never examined the man declaring Trump mentally ill, and even accusations of incest. The Southern District of New York previously failed to indict Trump’s children and failed to prosecute Paul Manafort. E. Jean Carroll’s rape-cum-defamation case was so egregiously lousy even the Biden DOJ took Trump’s side.
One of the latest rumored prosecutions-to-come involves Trump under-valuing properties for tax reasons, then over-valuing them to get loans, which despite the banks involved being happy enough with the terms after their own due diligence, Dems think maybe could be some kind of fraud. This kind of property valuation switch is practically New York City’s official sport, and is often and well-played by many property owners a few billion dollars short of Trump. The regulations governing how one values a NY property are thick. Built into the law is an automatic fudge allowing the same property to have both a high market value and a lower asset value. Problems are sorted out as civil matters and usually settled with the city sending out a bill, especially if the bank is not claiming fraud, only the DA, as in Trump’s case. “New York’s property tax system,” wrote Bloomberg, “is demonstrably inaccurate and unfair.” Michael Cohen, recently in prison for being a liar, is trying for another round in the spotlight claiming he has the evidence. To think the Dems will ignite righteous anger among voters with something this dense is quite funny.
All the smoking guns fired blanks. Behind every attempt to overturn the election was a certainty by the zealots that Trump must be guilty of something. Yet it all failed. Trump served out his term. He is not in jail. But “just you wait!” remains an ever-weaker rallying cry heard by ever-fewer diehards.
Like bad poker players, the Dems have all too obviously tipped their hand on their 2024 strategy. The full-court press will, sadly, focus on January 6, an out-of-hand riot wished into a second life as a coup, an insurrection, or an overthrow attempt. The characterization is silly; among other things, a coup must have some path towards success, in this case, preventing Joe Biden from becoming president. The rioters at best might have delayed the largely ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes until the next day. They didn’t even get that done.
As before, the truth is of little importance. The Daily Beast is one of many outlets claiming “If Merrick Garland Doesn’t Charge Trump and His Coup Plotters, Our Democracy Is Toast.” The article does not mention any specific, chargeable crime Trump is to be charged with, though it mentions the words coup and abuse of power a lot. Like all of its lot, it does not address the gaping question of why the actual Capitol rioters have only been charged with things like trespassing, and not treason or sedition. Surely as what one journalist called the armed wing of the Republican Party (comparing them to the IRA and Sinn Fein) some of the January 6 cosplayers should by now be charged with something serious enough to warrant fears the Republic itself hangs by a thread.
Since the Democrats have no viable 2024 candidate, and since Trump’s support remains high, the only way to defeat him is by some non-electoral process just short of Dealey Plaza. Political prosecutions are not new in America. Political pogroms are. There has never in our history been a more sustained yet unsuccessful judicial effort to oust or destroy one man.
The Democrats, so used to failing at this, are also not looking at the secondary effects of their dirty work, specifically wearing out the public they seek to influence against Trump. After four years of faux scandals being spiked into the public’s veins, how many more times can they try the same game before voters simply stop listening? Meanwhile, every shot at Trump that misses only increases support among his own followers as the candidate brags about beating the charges again. When non-supporters begin to ask themselves if indeed Trump is right when he claims persecution, the Dems have already lost.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
The Guilty Conscience of Hunter Biden’s Laptop
I read the files on Hunter Biden’s laptop. They paint a sleazy picture of multi-million dollar wire transfers, potential money laundering, and tax evasion. They raise serious questions about the judgment and propriety of Jim Biden, the president elect’s brother, and Joe himself. Call it smoke not fire, but smoke that should not be ignored. The files were supplied to TAC by a known source previously established to have access.
Joe Biden is lucky a coordinated media effort kept Hunter out of the campaign. In the final weeks of the campaign, Hunter’s laptop fell into Republican hands. The FBI had had it since 2019, when they subpoenaed the files in connection with a money-laundering investigation. The story went public in the New York Post, revealing Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President, to a top executive at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. The meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, sent Hunter Biden about a year after Hunter himself joined the Burisma board at a salary of $83,000 a month with no obvious work duties past making such introductions.
Nice work if you can get it, and to get it your dad better be vice president. If all that alone does not meet the test of impropriety, we need a new test. Hunter Biden’s value to clients was his perceived access to the White House. His father Joe was at least a passive participant in the scheme, maybe more than that.
The problem was many Americans never heard this story. Twitter led a social media charge to not allow the information online. After years of salivating on every bit of Trump family gossip, MSM claimed the Biden story did not matter, or was Russian disinfo. Surveys suggest the information could have swung the election. One showed enough voters in battleground states would have not voted for Joe Biden that Trump would have scored 311 electoral votes and re-election.
No mind really. As soon as it became clear Joe Biden was going to win, the media on all sides lost interest in the laptop. The story became about the story. It devolved into think pieces about the Orwellian role of social media and some online giggling about the Hunter Biden sex tapes on the laptop. But our short attention spans have consequences. The laptop still has a lot to tell us.
Hunter’s laptop was chock-a-block with video that appears to show Hunter smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with a woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images. There’s evidence there Hunter spent money on escorts, some $21k on cam sites, big plays on all sorts of depravities. There is also Joe’s car insurance information, Hunter’s SSN, pages of call logs, and lots of email addresses, bank account numbers, and personal information of prominent people. None of the material is encrypted, just dumped on a standard MacBook Pro using the password “Hunter02.” The machine was regularly connected to the Internet and might as well have had an electronic sign on it saying “My dad is important, here’s what you’ll need to blackmail me and others to get to him.”
But there is more. The laptop shows Hunter, through a number of front companies, accepted money from Chinese and Ukrainian entities and moved that money to the U.S. where it was parceled out to other entities, including Joe Biden’s brother. Some of it then went back to Chinese hands. There is no way a simple read-through can tell if the money was legal consulting fees or illegal money laundering and tax fraud. But it all smells bad — multi-million dollar transfers to LLCs without employees, residences used as multiple business addresses, legal tricks from Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and even a minor CIA connection. Ask yourself if this demands more investigation. Ask yourself if we’re in part judging a man’s character in choosing a president, if voters might not have benefited from knowing more about Joe Biden’s side of all this.
The majority of the contents of the laptop are a jumbled record of Hunter’s international business ventures and financial records. Outstanding in the haystack are a large number of wire transfers. Those with traceable addresses appear to be mostly anonymous shell companies run out of lawyers’ offices, with no employees and fuzzy public paper trails. One off the top involved $259,845 traveling on April 2, 2018 from the Hudson West III in New York to a numbered bank account held by Cathay Bank. Hudson West was created by Hunter Biden’s own law firm, Owasco, with several Chinese nationals, including a Jianming Ye associate, Gong Wendong. Ye Jianming is chairman of CEFC China Energy, who reportedly had close ties to both the Chinese government and the PLA. He’s been arrested in China on corruption charges and has conveniently disappeared.
Biden in August 2018 also returned $100k back to CEFC in China via its own New York subsidiary LLC, Hudson West V, whose listed address is 12 Foxwood Road, Great Neck, NY 11024. That address is not a business office but instead a single family home worth over $6 million. Phone records suggest two people live there, including Gong Wendong. Money appears to move from physical China to virtual Hunter back to virtual China in the U.S., starting and ending in accounts tied to Gong Wendong after touching base with Hunter, a potential indicator of laundering. Chinese money in China changed into Chinese money in America. Caution is needed; while what looks like money laundering at first glance may indeed be so, but designed to hide the cash from the Chinese government while staying inside American law, a quasi-illegal service Hunter possibly supplied.
That 12 Foxwood address shows up again on Biden’s laptop as the mailing address for another Gong Wendong venture, ColdHarbour Capital, which sent and received money to Biden. It is also listed as the residence of Shan Gao, who appears to control accounts in Beijing tied to Hudson, CEFC, and 12 Foxwood.
But the most significant appearance of 12 Foxwood was as the mailing address for a secured VISA card in the name of Biden’s company, Hudson West III. The card is funded by someone unnamed through Cathay Bank for $99,000 and guaranteed by someone’s checking account held by Cathay worth $450,000. Shared users of the card are Hunter and Gong Wendong. The card was opened as CEFC secured a stake in a Russian state-owned energy company. Biden and others subsequently used the credit card to purchase $101,291.46 worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple stores, pharmacies, hotels, and restaurants. A Senate report characterized these transactions as “potential financial criminal activity.” Putting money on a secured VISA card in lieu of a direct wire transfer to Biden may be seen by some as an attempt to hide the source of the money and thus allow Biden not to claim it as income.
James Biden and Sara Biden were also authorized users of the credit card though their business connection to Hunter and Gong Wendong is very unclear. Jim is Joe’s brother, Sara his wife. Jim over the years has been a nightclub owner, insurance broker, political consultant, and investor. When he ran into financial trouble having triple mortgaged his home, he was bailed out via loans from Joe and Hunter, and by a series of Joe’s donors. Jim also received a loan of $500k from John Hynansky, a Ukrainian-American businessman and longtime donor to Joe Biden’s campaigns. This all was in 2015, at the same time the then-vice president oversaw U.S. policy toward the country. As a senator, Joe Biden made use of a private jet owned by Hynansky’s son.
The 12 Foxwood address also appears on millions of dollars worth of bank transfers among Cathay Bank, CEFC, and multiple semi-anonymous LLCs and hedge funds. One single transfer alone to Hudson West III on August 8, 2017 represented the movement of $5 million from Northern Capital International, which appears to be a Chinese government-owned import-export front company.
Switch over to the CDB Bank folder and you see a wire transfer from Burisma for $36,000 Euros, run through a bank in Cyprus, to Biden’s own account on that island. Burisma is the one company from the laptop which made the news. Biden’s role, however, what he actually did besides introduce his father to other people, is unclear.
Burisma must be an interesting place. Hunter’s laptop partially exposes a complex web of sub-companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands such that figuring out who owns who is near impossible, speculates on using a Lithuanian bank to receive the Ukrainian money, and notes that Joseph Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, also sits on its board. Black previously served as Vice Chairman at mercenary provider Blackwater Worldwide (now Academi.)
All just business, right? Not everyone saw this that way. An email from Wells Fargo’s corporate compliance team (Wells Fargo handled many of the international wire transfers) asks on September 20, 2018 what the actual business of Hudson West is, who its owners are, and where it is located. Also asked is what the purpose of all the incoming wires is. It notes some business accounts appear to be for personal expenses. It also questions numerous outgoing wires to the Lion Hall Group (for example, on September 28, 2018, Hunter ordered $95,000 transferred without explanation), a “business” run by Jim Biden out of a residential address. Jim regularly invoiced Hunter for office expenses and employee costs, as well as a monthly retainer cost of some $68k, plus other fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.
There is no record of these questions being answered. It is possible to see the disbursal of funds via credit card to Jim Biden as a way to diffuse the amounts away from Hunter, and via Jim’s invoices, a way to convert income from China into deductible business expenses for Hunter in America, reducing his tax burden. The involvement of Lion Hall and Jim Biden also spreads the money around, lowering its profile. If the invoices were shown to be fraudulent (i.e., Jim did not actually consult for Hunter) the potential of tax fraud exists.
Besides Wells Fargo, others also had questions. Hunter’s own CPA preparing to file 2018 Federal taxes wrote to Hunter asking “As far as Owasco [Hunter’s law firm] is concerned there were some receipts we classified as loans. Owasco received approximately $550,000 from Burisma and paid about one half this amount to, I believe, someone named ‘Devon.’ I am not sure of the payee… The one half payment to ‘Devon’ was not recorded as income.”
Devon is likely Devon Archer, co-founder and managing partner of Rosemont Capital alongside Hunter. Who else was part of Rosemont? Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s son. And small world — Devon Archer sat on the board of Burisma alongside Hunter Biden. The CPA’s concern is the IRS is sensitive to the fact that some try to conceal income as loans to be written off as expenses later, especially if the amounts are large. This can trigger an audit. If the loans are “forgiven,” then they are income. If not declared, that is potential fraud.
The same note from the CPA indicates Hunter owes $600,000 in personal taxes and another $204,000 for Owasco and urges him to file a return even if he is not going to pay the taxes. Besides taxes, things did not always go well for Hunter. On March 6, 2019 he sent an email to a friend saying “Buddy do you have a cash app to send me $100 until wire goes. I have no money for gas and I’m literally stuck at a rest stop on 95.” He earlier had sought a $35k advance from his regular “draw” out of Owasco. And keep an eye on Hunter’s health — he pays close to $9,000 a quarter for life insurance.
Joe Biden is one lucky SOB. When the powers that be decided Barack Obama needed someone, you know, a little more, um, establishment, as his VP to calm voters, there was Joe, plucked into the White House which had otherwise alluded him. Joe, as whitebread as the state he represented. His only controversial points came from supporting the status quo for so many years it had changed underneath him. Are we tough on crime or do black lives matter? It didn’t matter to Joe, just point him in the right direction so he knows what to agree with. And so in 2020 when the Democrats realized exactly what kind of man they needed to wipe away the sins of two dishonest and chaotic primaries, well, there was Joe.
Joe got lucky again when the MSM memory-holed Hunter’s story, and conservative media lost focus looking for a tweetable smoking gun when the truth was a bit too complicated to parse out in a sentence or two. But there is still a story here.
The short version is there is a lot to suggest money laundering and tax fraud on Hunter’s part. The purpose of the money in/out was always unclear, with invoices for vague expenses and lots and lots of “consulting.” One could invent a legal explanation for everything. One could imagine many illegal explanations. There is no way anyone could know the difference without seeing Hunter’s taxes, asking him questions, and doing some serious forensic accounting. It is unlikely any of that will happen now that the election is over. Even to Guiliani, et al, it really doesn’t matter any more. They took one shot, missed, and walked away.
That will leave undigested the bigger tale of president-elect Biden, who ran in part on an anti-corruption platform following the Trump family escapades. While Joe Biden no doubt regrets what appears to have been a one-off meeting with the Burisma official, he did indeed take the meeting as VP. It’s always easier to apologize when caught than seek permission in advance in Joe’s world.
A 2017 email chain involving Hunter brokering an ultimately failed deal for a new venture with old friend CEFC, the Chinese energy company, described a 10 percent set-aside for the “big guy,” whom former Hunter Biden partner Tony Bobulinski publicly identified as Joe Biden. Joe also took Hunter to China with him on Air Force 2, and met with Chinese leaders while Hunter tried to make deals on his own. Joe also had Hunter and partner Devon Archer to the White House only two days before they joined Burisma. It was Joe’s donors and pals who bailed out brother Jim over the years with sweetheart loans.
A lot of appearance of improprietous malarkey from a senior statesman who knows better. In places like China and the Ukraine, where corruption is endemic, it is assumed the sons of rich and powerful men have access to their father, and that access is for sale. Hunter Biden traded on those assumptions for millions of dollars, and Joe stood by understanding what was happening. Every father wants to help his son, and Hunter one can imagine went to his dad time after time, pleading for just one more little favor to get him past his sordid past. Joe, a decent but weak man at heart, likely nodded. So a meeting. A handshake, an office visit, a posed photo, whatever would help but was still plausibly deniable. Until the next time. Sorry Hunter, once an addict always an addict and sure, sure, not like last time, I’ll really quit after Just. One. More. Dad. Please?
Joe’s larger role in all things Hunter needs to be questioned. Joe (as well as the Obama State Department) knew about Hunter’s antics. Joe pretended Hunter’s financial windfalls had nothing to do with their relationship and were simply a constant series of coincidental lucky breaks for a never-do-well drunk divorced drug using son who happened to fail upward just while his dad was VP. Joe says he and his son never talked about business, so we guess Joe just assumed Hunter’s Porsche (his car payments are on the laptop) was just a lucky find.
While of course Hunter is an adult with his own mind, his father was one of the most powerful men in the world and yet apparently did nothing to stop what was going on among himself, Hunter, his brother Jim, the Chinese, the Ukrainians — at minimum, the gross appearance of impropriety — over a period of years. Biden’s defense has always been sweeping: “My son did nothing wrong.” That alone raises questions of judgment on the part of Joe Biden, not the least of which is because in a few weeks he becomes President of the United States. And if the president does it it’s not illegal, right?
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Embassy Baghdad Employee Stole $250k
An Embassy Baghdad employee was found guilty yesterday of stealing nearly $250,000 intended for the payment of shipping and customs services. Criminal mastermind and Jordanian resident Osama “Dr. Evil” Esam Saleem Ayesh was hired by the Department of State as a shipping and customs supervisor at Embassy Baghdad. He oversaw shipments of personal property of embassy personnel.According to court records, Ayesh used his State Department office computer (Doh!) to create a phony email account in the name of a real Iraqi contractor and used that account to impersonate the contractor in communications with sharp-eyed embassy procurement officials (Doh!) in his own office (Doh!) He also cleverly established a bank account in Jordan under his wife’s name (Doh!) From November 2008 to June 2010, Ayesh submitted false invoices which he fabricated on blank stationery kept in his embassy apartment (Doh!) and caused the Department of State to wire money to his wife’s account in Jordan for almost two years without being caught (Doh!)
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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