Biden allies move to intimidate witnesses ahead of GOP’s coming Hunter probe

Jonathan Turley  "Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family “allies” planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes.

"Republicans will see it more like the gathering of the Legion of (Democratic) Doom. Some of the most controversial political operatives are involved in the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect the Bidens.

"The California meeting’s host was none other than Hunter Biden’s friend, agent and lawyer Kevin Morris. After Hunter was placed under investigation for, among other possible charges, tax evasion, Morris reportedly paid off as much as $2.8 million in back taxes for Hunter.

"Morris, per the Washington Post, called for a “more aggressive” response to those seeking to investigate the alleged influence peddling. That plan includes hitting critics, such as Fox News, with possible defamation lawsuits. (For full disclosure, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.)". . .

. . ."Morris could also be taking a real risk. There are already questions about whether he was acting as counsel, agent or friend in reportedly paying off tax debts for Hunter Biden. Rules of professional ethics demand clarity in legal representation.

"The Post described the meeting as a “glimpse into a sprawling infrastructure that is rapidly, almost frantically, assembling to combat Republicans’ plans to turn Hunter Biden into a major news story when the GOP takes over the House next year.” It also discussed an array of well-known lawyers the Biden family has assembled as well as plans by the White House and Democratic National Committee.

"Various Democratic groups plan to attack efforts to disclose the Bidens’ multimillion-dollar efforts by attacking Donald Trump’s family. These include the Congressional Integrity Project, which recently hired Jeff Peck, the chief of staff to Biden when he was a senator. These talking points are already appearing in the media, which are heavily invested in denying any scandal connected to the family."

Viktor Bout Mocks U.S. on Russian TV and Shows How Bad the Griner Swap Truly Was

"He also mocked the U.S. and the “72 genders” with which he said our society was obsessed. What are the LGBTQ people going to think about this guy that Biden just released?"

Image by D Gray.

RedState  "The reactions to the lopsided Brittney Griner/Viktor Bout swap are still coming in.

"Here’s Derek Maltz, former DEA Special Operations Director, talking with Fox News, describing the effort they made to put Bout in jail, what a danger he was to the world, and that he was convicted on serious terrorism charges. He notes that even the Obama administration got how serious this was and Joe Biden was the Vice President at the time, so he had to know what a danger Bout was to the world.

“ 'Putin has just established a new tool,” Maltz said, and others will “take advantage of the weakness” that Joe Biden just displayed with this trade. Maltz also pointed out how Joe Biden is “pro-gun-control.” Yet, Biden just released the biggest arms dealer Maltz had ever seen back to Russia in the middle of the war with Ukraine. 

“ 'How ironic and how disgusting is that?” Maltz said. Maltz notes how Bout is going to be mad at the U.S. for holding him in jail and he’s going to owe Putin for bringing him back home — just the type of guy that Putin needs to help him in his war.

"Russian television is already laughing about the swap, as we reported.

"John Kirby didn’t seem to think that the deal posed any real risk to national security, saying the Biden team thought it was “manageable” and that Bout was going to be let out at some point in the future anyway. Yes, he said that, as a justification for letting him out in exchange for Griner.

"Kirby may want to reevaluate that assessment as Bout is already talking to Russian television and mocking the United States. Bout said he was very supportive of the invasion of Ukraine — indeed, he said he didn’t know why they hadn’t done more earlier, and if he had been around, he said he would have been involved.". . .

Recently freed from jail in the US, the "merchant of death" Viktor Bout tells Maria Butina how horrified he was to learn in America that there are 72 genders

"Not just gay people and normal people, but 72!" pic.twitter.com/nMw7k0hpvl

— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) December 10, 2022 

Brittney Griner, "a basketball player who openly hates our country" - Voz Media

That the Biden Administration went into action over a woman who spat on our flag and anthem, but left behind a Marine who would die for that same flag and anthem, and they see nothing wrong with that? An exchange??. A convicted Russian arms dealer, also known as the merchant of death, in exchange for a drug-addicted lesbian who hates America.

So Michelle Obama was behind Twitter's ban of Trump all along

Monica Showalter

Being good puppets for the Democrats, Twitter did as it was told, and banned the president of the United States, happily leaving Vlad Putin, the Taliban, Hezb'allah, Antifa, child porno purveyors, assorted child groomers, and Iran's mullahs to tweet their tweets without him.

"Michelle Obama, wife of President Obama, was one of the Democrat outsiders who pressed Twitter to make the unprecedented move to ban President Trump, then a sitting United States president, from that company's platform.

"That's the latest revelation from the latest installment of the Twitter files, done by independent journalist Michael Shellenberger.

"According to Fox News:

Former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter the day after former first lady Michelle Obama and others demanded the company "permanently" remove him, according to the newest "Twitter Files" installment.

On Saturday, CEO Elon Musk and journalist Michael Shellenberger released the fourth batch of Twitter documents that show internal communications by the company’s executives between Jan. 6-8, 2021, including and shortly after the riot at the Capitol Building.

Among the files, Shellenberger reported "internal and external pressure," including from the former first lady, fell onto the company calling for Trump to be banned from using Twitter. . .

Karl Rove Who Ran PAC Ads Supportive of Top Democrat Candidate and Held a Fundraiser for Adam Kinzinger Blames Trump for Midterm Losses

 The Gateway Pundit

The Daily Mail reported:

Kinsinger, of Cheney- Kinsinger

Karl Rove, a senior White House adviser during the Bush Jr. presidency, squarely put the blame on Donald Trump for the GOP not taking the Senate and falling short of the predicted ‘red tsunami’ in the 2022 midterms.

The top GOP strategist explained on the Cats Roundtable radio show that Republican voters didn’t vote a straight red ticket because there were candidates endorsed by Trump for which they couldn’t in good conscience cast their ballot.

‘We had a lot of candidates, who, at the end of the day, Republicans… couldn’t vote for,’ Rove told host John Catsimatidis.

‘The reason was we ended up with some knuckleheads who were endorsed by President Trump without proper vetting,’ he continued.

Rove, who was former President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, listed some examples of candidates that Trump endorsed who he deemed unelectable.

‘Quality of candidates matters,’ Rove insisted. . .

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER: Biden’s catastrophic legacy in Afghanistan

 Bare Naked Islam

“So the whole world just became vastly more dangerous. The U.S. government – President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army,”

"Fox News contributor Gen. Jack Keane (Ret) slammed the Biden administration for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the damaging effects the U.S. absence has had in the region.

“It’s a year later, and it’s still hard to fathom what we did here. And now we have the Taliban in charge doing what they were doing 20-plus years ago: providing sanctuary to al Qaeda.”

BEYOND TRAGIC: Brother of U.S. Marine, who was killed in Afghanistan due to Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal, commits suicide at memorial for his fallen little brother

. . ."China is also poised to use Afghanistan’s wealth of minerals and natural resources as a way to “hit against the West,” he said.

“So the whole world just became vastly more dangerous. The U.S. government – President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army,” Kemp argued.". . .

Headlines you never would have seen just a few short years ago

  Eric Utter  . . .All but two of these headlines were gleaned from one day's worth of perusing the news.  That's correct: ten of the twelve were from reports of December 1.  Any one of them illustrates a profound change in society from not so long ago and portends potentially dire consequences.

"Taken together, they are quite a snapshot of America (and the West in general) circa 2022.  None of these would have been thinkable in 1972.  Or 1982.  Probably not in 2012, either.

"So-called progressives are winning the culture wars in a rout.  But this doesn't look like "progress" to me.  It looks like a harbinger of chaos and disaster."

For example:

*In too deep: John Fetterman's wife claims that swimming is 'very racist' —MSN      

That's correct.  Every time I go for a swim, I'm really trying to stick it to BIPOCs!  You've gotta be kidding me.  Mrs. Fetterman can go jump in the lake!  (Except that would be racist.) 

Tucker Carlson's onetime 'Liberal Sherpa,' Cathy Areu, is arrested and in jail in Miami

  Peter Barry Chowka  

 "In the early days of Tucker Carlson’s prime time Fox News show (from shortly after its premiere in 2017 until around 2020), before it found its current footing, a frequent guest, dubbed the “liberal sherpa,” was Cathy Areu. She served as an outrageous foil for Carlson, who debated her on her outrageous claims of support for a variety of bizarre radical left positions.

"On Friday, December 9, Areu was arrested and jailed in Miami, Florida, according to the Daily Mail which broke the story, for “kidnapping her own mom TWICE and scamming her out of $224,000.”

"The Daily Mail article, published on December 9, goes into detail about the alleged crimes of Areu – felonies – which landed her in jail in Florida.

"According to the Daily Mail, which often breaks stories in the U.S. that other media fail to report:

Cathy Areu, 51, was arrested on Friday in Miami and faces numerous charges

Prosecutors say she defrauded her own 88-year-old mom for at least $224,000

Areu allegedly tried to drag her mother to a nursing home against her will. . .

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics, the politics and economics of health care, popular culture, and media for over five decades.  His web page with links to his work is http://peter.media. 

The Fourth Installment Of ‘The Twitter Files’ Is Released

 The Daily Wire  . . ."The first several tweets offered no new information and rehashed prior releases from The Twitter Files. The fourth set, released Saturday night, took place over a long-winded four-hour period and resulted in the release receiving the lowest engagement numbers compared to the other three releases.

"Even Twitter CEO Elon Musk did not seem overly thrilled by the release as he took 6 hours and 7 minutes to promote it on his Twitter account, a far cry from the other three releases, which he amplified after 10 minutes (Part I), 50 minutes (Part II), and 173 minutes (Part III).

"Starting with tweet #7, blogger Michael Shellenberger showed examples of pressure from major outside figures calling on the company to ban the former president. Shellenberger noted in tweets #8 and #9 that then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation at the time and that “Twitter’s staff & senior execs were overwhelmingly progressive.”

"Shellenberger then noted tweets from former Twitter Global Lead of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth that were derogatory towards conservatives, which has been public knowledge for years and has previously been reported on.

"The next several tweets showed internal discussions between Roth and other Twitter employees, who Shellenberger shielded by not disclosing their names, that showed Roth and his team were excited about “progress!” that the company was making toward taking action against Trump’s Twitter account.

"The next couple of tweets rehashed Twitter’s public statement about why the company ultimately decided to ban the former president.". . .

MSNBC Slammed Over ‘Disgusting Racist Rant’ Attacking Black Republican: ‘Unbelievably Insidious’

 Daily Wire

Becket Adams, commentator: “It’s a scandal of its own that not a single on-air personality at MSNBC has the balls even to suggest this stuff may be out of line.”

"MSNBC host Joy Reid and frequent guest Michael Eric Dyson faced backlash online late on Thursday evening after a video clip went viral from Reid’s show that was widely panned as blatantly racist.

"Dyson purportedly made the remarks about Virginia Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears, a Republican, who won her election on Tuesday night as Republicans dominated across the state.

Dyson said:

The problem is here they want, they want white supremacy by ventriloquist effect. There is a black mouth moving, but a white idea through the, running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the white supremacist practices. We know that we can internalize in our own minds, in our own subconscious, and in our own bodies, the very principles that are undoing us. So, to have a black face, speaking in behalf of a white supremacist legacy is nothing new. And it is to the chagrin of those of us who study race that the white folk on the other side and the right wingers on the other side, don’t understand this is politics 101 and this is race, not even 101. What’s beneath 101? It’s the it’s the pre-K of race, you should understand the fact that if you tell black people, look, I support a negro Look, there is a person of color that I am in favor of and that person of color happens to undermine and undercut and subvert the very principles about which we are concerned, you do yourself no service by pointing to them as an example of your racial progressivism.

White Supremacist Plots to Blow Up Texas High School! No, Wait…

Robert Spencer

"The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs said it again in a report it published in November, “The Rising Threat of Domestic Terrorism”: “National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland. This increase in domestic terror attacks has been predominantly perpetrated by white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” Conspicuously lacking from this oft-repeated claim are actual white supremacist terrorists, but a recent case in Texas may help: a man who is most certainly not black or Hispanic plotted to blow up a high school in Amarillo. There’s just one catch: in a bracing little reminder of the actual terror threats that the Left’s propaganda and fantasies have obscured, he’s a Muslim, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran.

"Amarillo’s KVII reported Thursday that Erfan Salmanzadeh, 33, pleaded guilty on Monday to “use and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.” The “use” part of that stems from a July 2021 incident that brought Salmanzadeh to the attention of police. KVII noted Tuesday that Salmanzadeh “recorded multiple videos in which he referenced the high school.” In one of these videos, which Salmanzadeh recorded on July 22, 2021, he was “standing in his backyard speaking in a mixture of English and Farsi, said he was going to blow up Tascosa High School,” a public high school in Amarillo.". . .

So now we know: Twitter secretly erased conservative voices - and let terrorists and vile vermin tweet freely. It's savage proof the left fears ideas more than actual killers

Not my family's Democrat Party

What else did a few liberals in Silicon Valley deem off-limits for the rest of us?

 

UK Daily Mail   "If free speech is a pillar of democracy, then Twitter should be charged with sabotage, because they've taken sledgehammer to it. And every American has the right to be absolutely outraged.

"The latest 'Twitter Files' drop on Thursday night revealed that partisan extremists at one of America's most influential social media platforms wrapped a torniquet around the vein of free thought and wrenched it tight.

"And to add insult to injury, the whole time, Twitter was lying about it.

"Then-CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress that he had no idea why conservatives were moaning about being silenced – a.k.a. 'shadow banned.'

"Well, guess what? Conservatives were right.

"We learned that in addition to shutting down bombshell reporting, like the New York Post's exclusive on Hunter Biden's laptop, Twitter executives were also suppressing individual Americans who didn't blindly parrot liberal orthodoxy.

"The account of Stanford professor, Dr. Jay Battachyara's was muffled for sharing thoughtful criticism of COVID lockdowns.". . .

America's kids were kept out of school and in masks. Businesses were destroyed and churches shuttered, and our dying were kept from seeing family, but Twitter pronounced these ideas verboten.

No wonder famously unprofitable, woke Twitter had trouble making money. ". . .

Jackson Lee: Arms Dealer Freed in Griner Swap ‘Has Not Killed Americans’ — ‘His Weapons Might Have Been Used to Kill Americans’ Plus a RedState Update

A silly nation chooses silly leaders

Breitbart  "On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) stated that Viktor Bout, the arms dealer who was serving time in prison for agreeing to supply weapons to U.S. agents posing as Colombian terrorists to kill Americans, freed by the Biden administration in the prisoner swap to secure the release of Brittney Griner from Russia, is “a nasty, bad” person, but “He has not killed Americans.” Although, Jackson Lee noted that Bout’s “weapons might have been used to kill Americans.”

"Jackson Lee stated, “Let me say this, no one knows the story of Paul — of the weapons dealer, if you will. And — as the facts would tell them, he was sentenced to 25 years, he served 11 to 16 years, I don’t know the — I can’t remember the exact number. But in actuality, his weapons might have been used to kill Americans. He has not killed Americans. I’m not saying he’s not a nasty, bad guy. But I will tell you that I believe that Americans should know that the sovereignty of their nation will always be behind them and they’ll never be forgotten. Brittney Griner deserved this fight to be put forward. So does Paul Whelan.' ”. . .

According to an original article from NBC, the negotiations for the prisoner swap included an exchange for either LGBTQ+ hero Brittany Griner or U.S. former marine Paul Whelan.

The Russians would swap either U.S. citizen for the return of arms dealer Viktor Bout; however, the White House would have to decide which American they wanted in return.  The White House decided there was greater benefit to getting LGBTQ+ hero Brittany Griner returned, and left Paul Whelan in a Russian prison"

In the original version: “the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan — or none.”

In the stealth revised version: “the Kremlin ultimately gave the White House the choice of either Griner or no one after different options were proposed.”

Even with the modified and carefully worded changes, it looks like Joe Biden chose the trans basketball player over the former U.S. marine, which, given the arc of history, does seem to make sense.

UPDATE:  Even Russian State TV Ridicules Biden and US for Lopsided Brittney Griner Trade

                                    Russia-1 anchor Margarita Simonyan (Credit: Russian Media Monitor/YouTube)

Russia TV quoted: “His first problem is that he is white,” Solovyova retorted, meaning that Whelan wasn’t given priority in negotiations because of his skin color. Simonyan continued:

"His second problem is he is a man. His third problem: He is a heterosexual.

"This is not something that can be forgiven today. It’s just a catastrophe. Yes, here Griner beats him in every aspect.". . .

. . ."Simonyan is a regime puppet, to be sure, and the YouTube site

 Russian Media Monitor (which uploaded the footage) points out several lies in the segment. I’m not here to be a cheerleader for the communist dictatorship or its lying media. The point is, however, that Biden and his cohorts have made a mockery out of the U.S. with this ill-considered trade because of their obsessive focus on “identity”–even when we’re dealing with dire geo-political events—all the while failing to negotiate the release of Whelan.". . .

UPDATE:Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on Russian Arms Dealer Viktor Bout: “In Actuality, His" Weapons Might’ve Been Used to Kill Americans, But He Has Not Killed Americans”  "Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the dumbest women in Congress, appeared on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” with Joy Reid to discuss the Brittney Griner swap.

"Joe Biden on Thursday announced he traded the world’s most wanted fugitive, Russian Viktor Bout, for pot-smoking anti-American baller Brittney Griner.

"Meanwhile, Paul Whelan, a former Marine who is now 52, is still imprisoned in Russia.

"Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee defended the trade on Sunday.

“I 'n actuality, [Viktor Bout’s] weapons might’ve been used to kill Americans, but he has not killed Americans.” Sheila Jackson Lee said.". . .