About the Hunter Biden emails...

 A couple of people have asked me why I haven’t written about the Hunter Biden email brouhaha. One reason I haven’t is that I wasn’t sure about the authenticity of the find. I’m still not, but the recent statements from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and the FBI make this seem like a good time to address the issue.

To recap, the story of the laptops is pretty shady. David French does a good job of summing up the problems with the scenario in The Dispatch. These problems include inconsistencies in the repair shop owner’s story, questions about why Hunter would repair his computer in Delaware when he lives in LA, and why, if the FBI has had the computer for months, the emails were omitted from the Senate report on Hunter’s activities that was released in September and failed to find criminal wrongdoing. The top line of the report is that Hunter’s activities were “very awkward.”

But problems with the story don’t mean that the laptop trove is not authentic. There is evidence to support the claims as well, such as the Fox News report that Hunter Biden’s signature matches the signature on paperwork at the repair shop, although Fox notes that the signature has not been verified. Fox News also claims to have verified one email with one of its recipients, an anonymous source, who claims that a reference to “the big guy” means Joe Biden.

Now, we also have Ratcliffe’s statement that the emails are “not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.” That was confirmed by the FBI yesterday that the agency had “nothing to add at this time” but would “evaluate the need to provide defensive briefings” to Congress “if actionable intelligence is developed.”

So, it appears that at least some of the emails are genuine but that the investigation is ongoing. It isn’t impossible that incriminating emails were manufactured and salted away among the genuine emails, but let’s assume that all of the emails are genuine. What do they tell us about Hunter Biden and, more importantly, Joe Biden?

The evidence for wrongdoing is pretty thin. What the New York Post originally called a “smoking gun” was an email in which an advisor to the board of Burisma thanked Hunter for “giving an opportunity to meet your father.” That’s it. There is no allegation that anything improper happened at this meeting and, aside from the email, there seems to be no evidence that the meeting ever took place.

In the past, Joe Biden has claimed that he never spoke with Hunter about his “overseas business dealing.” The email does raise questions but does not disprove that claim.

The Biden campaign responded to the Post’s report with a statement that no meeting with Vadym Pozharskyi, the alleged author of the email, was on Biden’s official schedule. The campaign did not rule out the possibility of a brief, informal meeting. If true, that casts doubt on the Post’s claim that the email was a smoking gun for corruption.

For example, if Biden and Pozharskyi were introduced and shook hands, the brief exchange could be considered “meet[ing] your father” as described in the email, but it would fall far short of the nefarious plotting that the Post report implies.

Likewise, the “big guy” email is also not conclusive. The allegation that “the big guy” is the former vice president seems to be based solely on the unsworn testimony of an anonymous source.

There might be supporting evidence out there, but so far we have not seen it. There are no pictures of Biden shaking hands with Pozharskyi. Unlike Donald Trump, Joe Biden has released his tax returns and there is no evidence of questionable transactions. Biden has earned millions since leaving office, but that money is easily traceable to speaking fees in which he earned a minimum of $10,000 per event and lucrative book deals.

In my view, the specifics of the Biden campaign’s denials are telling. Although it has been pointed out that the Bidens have not denied that the emails are legitimate, they have denied the underlying conspiracy theory that the Post report paints. I think that is the core truth of the matter.

In a statement, a Biden spokesman flatly called out the Post’s reporting, saying, “We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

The statement continued, “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”

And that claim is accurate. Numerous organizations on both the right and left have fact-checked the Trump claims about Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and found them to be false. Biden, who was vice president at the time that he pressured Ukrainian authorities to fire the country’s head prosecutor. In other words, Biden didn’t make US policy on the issue, he carried it out. Further, US policy matched that of our allies who agreed that the prosecutor needed to go. The US and other Western European nations were pushing for a prosecutor who would be tougher on corruption, rather than more lenient. Ironically, this would have put Burisma and Hunter Biden in legal jeopardy if they had been engaging in shady activities.

Taken in its entirety, the trove has so far been much ado about nearly nothing. For people who were already convinced that Biden was corrupt, the emails are a smoking gun. For others, there is so far no “there” there, even though there was an appearance of impropriety that was, as the Senate Republicans said, “awkward.” If there was firm evidence, the Trump Administration would have investigated and prosecuted Biden years ago rather than waiting until two weeks before the election.

My prediction is that the Hunter Biden saga will have very little impact on the election unless more damning evidence comes to light. I say this for two reasons. First, Hunter Biden is not on the ballot. The allegations are an attempt to tar Joe Biden with Hunter’s activities but so far the evidence does not support the claims. The allegations are not sticking to the candidate.

Second, this election is about Donald Trump, not Joe Biden. In April 2019, long before the impeachment and the pandemic, 52 percent of voters said they would never vote for Trump. Since then, the revelations of Donald Trump’s real – not imagined – corrupt activities with respect to Ukraine and his failing grade on the pandemic have not swung many votes in his direction. In an August poll, by an almost two-to-one margin, Biden voters said that their vote was against Trump rather than for Biden.

Donald Trump is not going to overcome the objections to his character and competence by attacking Hunter Biden. At best, the Hunter Biden story may slightly depress Democratic turnout and motivate some lackluster Republican voters. With Joe Biden leading by double-digits in many polls, it probably won’t be enough to sway the outcome of the election although it could shift some very close states such as North Carolina and Ohio.

Further, Trump’s own erratic behavior is likely to overshadow the already thin claims against the Bidens. Trump is already shifting the focus of the news by walking out of an NBC interview and attacking Anthony Fauci. The upcoming debate will also change the focus of the conversation. The president has little discipline for staying on message and the Hunter Biden story is not very compelling to most voters anyway.

Originally published on The First TV

Brace For The Bolton Book Brouhaha

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton tossed a hand grenade into the presidential race this week with a press release for his upcoming book. In the memoir of his time in the Trump White House, Bolton will reportedly detail “Ukraine-like transgressions … across the full range of his foreign policy.” 

The book, titled “The Room Where It Happened,” is scheduled to be published on June 23, but has been delayed numerous times by the Trump Administration citing security concerns. The White House still has not yet signed off on the book, which it claims contains classified information.

Bolton’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, issued a press release that said the book covers the “President’s inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike”

“What Bolton saw astonished him,” the release continues, “A president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.”

Bolton is quoted as saying, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”

While Bolton’s book has been long-awaited, its publication is not going to make anyone look good. Both parties committed major errors with respect to impeachment. Democrats rushed the impeachment through based on the Ukraine allegations when there were many more avenues of investigation to be explored. In Bolton’s words, “the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy.”

The Republican error was one of shortsightedness. When the impeachment trial moved to the Senate, Republicans refused to seek the truth and allow witnesses. As a result, they helped the president to remain in office in the short term but they merely delayed the inevitable reckoning for the president’s bad behavior.

Back in January, Bolton agreed to testify before the Senate impeachment hearings, but Republicans didn’t want to hear from him. Instead, it seems that Republicans assumed that if they didn’t hear Bolton during impeachment that they would never have to deal with his testimony. Now, that miscalculation is coming back to haunt them.

Less than five months before the election, the Republican nightmare of Administration insiders telling-all about the shenanigans inside the Trump White House is coming true. The hints of what is to come from John Bolton were revealed only days after James Mattis and a bevy of military leaders openly criticized the president for his handling of the race riots and protests.

Ambassador Bolton does not escape with his reputation intact either. Many Trump critics believe that Bolton should have come forward during impeachment, rather than waiting to offer his testimony to buyers of his book.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill), who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico, “At the time the country needed him most, and history will reflect, he chose to sell books. It wasn’t a question in his mind of whether or not he should talk about it. It’s whether or not he should profit from talking about it. Not exactly ‘Profiles in Courage.'”

The 2020 election is shaping up to mirror the 2016 election in some ways. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was beset by a continuous drip of bad luck and scandals. After the hacking of the DNC in the spring, the release of stolen emails by WikiLeaks dogged the campaign for months.

The summer of 2020 is looking a lot like that for President Trump, albeit without the Russian hacking. President Trump has been dogged by bad news, some of it of his own making and some not, for the entire year, which began with impeachment and was followed by the pandemic, the economic crisis, and now nationwide riots and demonstrations against police brutality. The biting criticism from former members of the Administration is only the icing on the cake.

There is more to come. In addition to the release of Bolton’s book, there is a looming Supreme Court decision on whether the president’s tax returns must be turned over to Congress, the expiration of the CARES Act in September, which could trigger a deeper recession, and the possibility of a second wave of Coronavirus infections. There are also many other officials who left the Trump Administration under a cloud and may speak out against the president before the election.

The timing of many of these items, including the publication of Bolton’s book and the release of the tax returns, shortly before the election is directly linked to Trump’s efforts to delay and obfuscate. The Trump Administration is finding out, as so many others have, that the coverup is often worse than the underlying crime.

The Trump campaign seems on the verge of imploding as the president bungles crisis after crisis and as a growing list of former White House officials come forward to say that voters should tell Trump, “You’re fired.” The president’s average approval rating has already dropped sharply since it received a Coronavirus bump in mid-March. The drop is largely driven by the president’s response to the pandemic and the racial crisis. Despite the country’s economic problems, President Trump’s biggest strength remains the economy. However, with a number of crises percolating, Trump’s approval may collapse even further before the election.

If President Trump’s antics cost Republicans the White House and their Senate majority, they will have no one to blame but themselves. If they had listened to Bolton six months ago, they might have made the difficult but correct decision to remove President Trump. The result would have been that the GOP would have fielded a competent candidate, probably incumbent Mike Pence, who would not be trailing “Sleepy Joe” Biden in the polls while waiting helplessly for the next shoe to drop.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Law And Order President

Earlier this week, President Trump declared himself “your president of law and order.” In the June 1 speech in the Rose Garden, the president sought to draw a distinction between himself and the rioters around the country, but, after three years of the Trump Administration, it may be too late to pivot to law and order. Thus far, the Trump presidency has been anything but a law and order administration.

Mr. Trump first got himself into legal trouble when he admitted firing FBI Director James Comey over “this Russia thing” on national television. The statement was tantamount to an admission that Trump had been attempting to interfere with a federal investigation.

When the Mueller report on the Russia investigation was completed two years later, it did not find conclusive evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, although it noted that members of the Trump campaign and Russian government agents did attempt to share information on several occasions. The report did, however, set out 10 separate counts of obstructive behavior by the president. Mueller could not indict the president due to longstanding Justice Department guidelines.

The ink was no sooner dry on the Mueller report than President Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos “I think I’d want to hear it” if a foreign government offered information on an opponent to his campaign. The interview prompted FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub to tweet that it is “illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a US election.”

Ellen L Weintraub

✔@EllenLWeintraub

I would not have thought that I needed to say this.

115K

7:11 PM - Jun 13, 2019

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Of course, we now know that Donald Trump was already actively soliciting help from another foreign government by that point. By June 2019 when the interview took place, Trump and his subordinates were already working to get dirt on Joe Biden from Ukraine. In the course of trying to use military aid to pressure the Ukrainian government, the Trump Administration violated the Impoundment Act, which regulates how money appropriated by Congress must be spent.

President Trump also played fast and loose with the law when Congress didn’t accede to his demands. In February 2019, the president declared an emergency in order to divert military funds toward building a border wall. A few months later in May 2019, the president declared another national emergency to enable the sale of $8.1 billion of military items to several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In both cases, the only emergency was the inability of Donald Trump to negotiate a favorable deal with Congress.

President Trump has also abused his authority to protect some of his loyal footsoldiers. Last month, the president persuaded the Justice Department to drop the charges against former National Security Advisor and longtime Trump friend, Mike Flynn, who had pled guilty to lying to the FBI. Just a few days ago, Trump signaled his intention to protect another longtime ally, Roger Stone. Stone was convicted of seven counts relating to obstructing the Russia investigation including witness tampering and lying to investigators. Trump retweeted a Charlie Kirk tweet calling for a pardon for Stone, who Trump said could “sleep well at night.”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

No. Roger was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night! https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1267905498784821248 …

Charlie Kirk

✔@charliekirk11

Never forget:

Roger Stone will serve more time in prison than 99% of these rioters destroying America

All because he supports Donald Trump.

This isn’t justice.

RT for a full pardon of Roger Stone!

46.9K

6:48 AM - Jun 4, 2020

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Finally, the president has left a trail of destroyed careers in his attempts to cover his tracks and exact revenge on people who stood up for “law and order.” Most recently, President Trump has fired four inspectors general including the man who vetted the Ukraine whistleblower claim, the woman who revealed the Administration’s poor early response to the pandemic, the man who would chair the board providing oversight for the Administration’s disbursement of pandemic relief funds to businesses, and the man who was investigating both Secretary of State Pompeo’s use of government employees for private errands as well as the national emergency declaration relating to the Saudi arms sale. The common thread in all four cases was that the IGs were doing their jobs in ways that were embarrassing to Donald Trump.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Trump’s ideas often included violating the law.

“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ ” Tillerson said, according to the Houston Chronicle, “and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’”

A major problem since 2018 is that people like Tillerson, John Kelly, and James Mattis are no longer in the White House. That trio had the intestinal fortitude and independence required to tell a president “no.” Now that these adults are gone, few have enough gumption to tell the president harsh truths and the result has been a long chain of catastrophically bad decisions.

Donald Trump wants to be the law and order president but, for many voters, it is too late for that. For the past four years, we have seen President Trump twisting the law and abusing his office to protect himself and his friends. Sending troops to put down riots won’t erase those abuses of power. In fact, as the president claimed to be “your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters,” park police were clearing peaceful protesters out of Lafayette Park for the president’s photo-op at St. John’s church in what turned out to be one of the great public relations disasters of the Trump Administration (of which there have been many),

Donald Trump obviously believes that law and order are ideas that apply to others, but not himself or his friends. It is unAmerican for presidents, elected officials, and, yes, police, to have the attitude that the law is for thee but not for me.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Fires Inspector General Involved In Ukraine Scandal

President Trump took time out from his response to the pandemic to fire Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community. Atkinson was responsible for vetting the whistleblower report that broke the Ukraine scandal. The Washington Post reported that Trump sent a letter to Congress Friday night informing legislators that he intends to fire Atkinson within 30 days.

“It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general,’’ Trump said in the letter. “That is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”

Trump hired Atkinson for the IG job in 2017 but has considered firing him several times since the news of President Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky broke last September.

Presidents often announce controversial decisions on Friday afternoon to avoid bad press. In normal times, people don’t pay attention to political news n weekends. However, in the midst of a deadly pandemic with 95 percent of the country sheltering at home, many Americans will be watching the news on Saturday. Atkinson’s firing will likely bump the Coronavirus death toll from the top story spot at least temporarily.

Ironically, the pandemic had caused the Ukraine scandal and impeachment to fade from the public memory. Impeachment concluded with an acquittal for the president on February 5. It was only two months ago but it seems like a different lifetime.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt that the impeachment “diverted the attention of the government” from the looming threat of Coronavirus. However, the president is apparently able to multitask while steering the country’s response to the pandemic.

Even if no one else was thinking about Ukraine and impeachment, Mr. Trump was.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Fires Vindman And Sondland In Friday Night Massacre

In a move reminiscent of President Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions shortly after the 2018 elections, the White House has dismissed two prominent impeachment witnesses within days of the president’s acquittal by the Senate. Numerous sources are reporting tonight that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland have been fired from their jobs in the Trump Administration.

Lt. Col. Vindman, an army officer posted to the National Security Council as an expert on Ukraine, and his twin brother, Yevgeny, a lawyer serving on the NSC, were both reassigned back to the Defense Department.

In a statement, the army confirmed the firings of the Vindman brothers to Politico, saying, ” “We can confirm that both Lt. Cols. Vindman have been reassigned to the Department of the Army, out of respect for their privacy, we will not be providing any further information at this time.”

Hours after the news of Vindman’s firing, news also broke that Sondland had been recalled.

“I was advised today that the president intends to recall me effective immediately as United States Ambassador to the European Union,” Sondland said in a statement quoted in The Hill.

“I am proud of our accomplishments,” Sondland added. “Our work here has been the highlight of my career.”

The firings came shortly after Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told attendees at the Maine Chiefs of Police Association that retribution against witnesses who testified against the president would be “inappropriate” per a report by the Portland Press Herald. Collins voted to call witnesses but cast her ballot to acquit the president of the impeachment charges.

At this point, it is not known whether there will be additional firings. A number of witnesses have already left their government posts, but others are still in their Trump Administration jobs. Among the witnesses still serving are Laura Cooper, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and George Kent, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, and Tim Morrison have all left their government jobs while Jennifer Williams, formerly an advisor to Vice President Pence, was transferred to a new job with Central Command in January.  

It is not clear how the federal whistleblower statute will apply to the fired witnesses. However, the Government Accountability Project points out that “the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects public employee whistleblowers from retaliation when they make truthful statements while giving compelled testimony.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Can Lev Parnas Be Trusted?

Lev Parnas, an indicted Republican fundraiser, has dropped a bombshell into the impeachment hearing in the form of mountains of notes, text messages, voicemails, pictures, and other documents relating to Rudy Giuliani’s shadow diplomacy in Ukraine. Parnas is naming names from President Trump on down as he spills the beans on what happened behind the scenes as the Trump Adminstration allegedly pushed President Zelensky to announce an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. The big question is whether Parnas can be trusted.

The short answer is no. Parnas lacks credibility and has plenty of incentive to bend the truth in order to ingratiate himself to Congress and bargain his way out his own legal troubles. The longer answer is that what Parnas lacks in credibility, he makes up for in documentation.

For those who haven’t been following the emerging situation, Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested last October at Dulles International Airport just prior to leaving the country on one-way tickets. The pair were charged with attempting to funnel money from foreign governments to American elected officials. Both men were associates of Rudy Giuliani and were involved in Giuliani’s Ukrainian fishing expeditions for dirt on Joe Biden. Though both men were US citizens, Parnas was born in Ukraine and Fruman was born in Belorus, both former republics of the Soviet Union.

In early November, Parnas agreed to cooperate with the House impeachment probe. It was only this week, however, that a trove of documents from Parnas was made public by House investigators after receiving judicial approval. The document releases can be viewed here.  

Since Parnas himself is not a credible character, the documents that he has presented are more important than his own testimony, which so far has not been under oath. Some of the documents are more credible than others. For example, Parnas’ handwritten notes are questionable but a letter from Giuliani to Zelensky is more compelling.

The Giuliani letter is important in that it undercuts one of President Trump’s strongest defenses, namely that he was acting in the national interest. In the letter, Giuliani specifically claims that he represents Trump “as a private citizen, not as President of the United States.”

https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1217213305166745602?s=20

Also compelling are the series of text messages between Parnas and Robert Hyde, another Republican donor who is currently running for Congress in Connecticut. The pair’s now-famous message exchange indicated that US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was under their surveillance to the extent that they knew not only her location but whether her phone and computer were on. If the messages are genuine, it is very difficult to explain why they were keeping tabs on Yovanovitch for any reason that is not either creepy or sinister. If the messages are not genuine, it is difficult to explain why they were constructed to include Hyde, an unknown.

Interesting but not as damaging is Parnas’ undated note on a Ritz-Carlton-Vienna pad. One item on the to-do list reads, “Get Zalensky [sic] to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.” The note supports previous testimony that Trump’s goal in withholding the Ukrainian aid money was to force the announcement, but without context such as a date, it is impossible to know if it is genuine or was created later.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1217211029421207552?s=20

While there may be some doubt about the note’s legitimacy, there is no doubt that Parnas himself is the real deal. Among the releases are text messages between Parnas and Giuliani, including one in which Giuliani told Parnas that he needed to get then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Lutsenko “on the record about the ambassador and Biden” and asked, “Can you make it happen?”

Parnas also appears in photographs with a veritable Who’s Who of Republican and Trump Administration officials including Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence, and numerous poses with President Trump. Most of these officials deny knowing Parnas and say that they don’t recall taking the photos.

The piece de resistance, however, is a copy of an email from Jay Sekulow in which the president’s personal attorney writes to John Dowd, another lawyer who was also once an attorney for Trump, on the subject of “Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.” Sekulow told Dowd, “I have discussed the issue of representation with the president. The president consents to allowing your representation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman [sic].” The obvious question here is why Donald Trump is involved at all in the legal representation of two low-level flunkies.

Lev Parnas is a sketchy character and his claims should be questioned and verified, but that does not mean that they are irrelevant. In the end, Parnas is one more link in the chain of evidence against Donald Trump along with the OMB and Pentagon emails released under the Freedom of Information Act that pointed to Trump as the source of the aid freeze, and the new GAO assessment that the president violated the law in withholding the aid. Parnas’ claims and evidence must be viewed within the context of other evidence and testimony to help complete the picture of what happened.

The revelations of the past few weeks both underscore the mistake Democrats made in rushing the impeachment vote and the fortunate decision of Speaker Pelosi in delaying the referral of the articles to the Senate. Without the delay, the new information would still be coming out but the Senate might already have dismissed the case. On the other hand, if Democrats had taken their time, they could have transmitted a more complete case to the Senate, where many Republicans seem determined to ignore any new information that has come out since December 18.

As the impeachment trial gets underway in the Senate, the one thing that seems is clear is that the more information that comes out, the worse things look for Donald Trump. While it is still extremely unlikely that Senate Republicans will vote for removal, Congress and the media will keep shining lights on the actions of Trump and his agents in Ukraine. If the president survives impeachment, the tales of his abuses of power and corruption may mean that his stay in the White House is only prolonged by a few months.

Originally published on The Resurgent