A LOT happened this week and we were only able to write about a bit of it. So here comes the roundup!
Final thoughts on the Impeachment Hearing and subsequent developments, AOC doesn’t think that RICO is a crime, Blasey Ford is back, Hunter might be a CIA stooge, and so much more!
Here we go:
Fallout From This Week’s Impeachment Hearing
Despite some damning testimony from former Biden family business partners, all of whom seem to be some form of shady, BigMedia’s take on the hearing was to focus on the lone Democratic witness, Lev Parnas. He received praise all around the Corposphere (my new term for the large, mostly legacy media who all shill for the Democratic Party) for testifying about the silly things he and Rudy Giuliani were doing in 2019 and 2020, which has nothing to do with the $24M influence-peddling scheme the Bidens appear to have perpetrated. PBS Newshour put it this way:
Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who was convicted of fraud and campaign finance crimes in 2021, said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump and his allies had lied about President Joe Biden and his family’s ties to corruption in Ukraine to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election.
The statement by Parnas is self-evidently false. Burisma was corrupt; investigations into its money laundering schemes began as early as 2014. Hunter Biden was on the board of the company; the Biden family is therefore undisputedly, “tied to corruption in Ukraine.” The only question for investigators is, “to what extent?” So, Biden’s apologists across the news media’s best argument is to quote a known fraud in a clear lie? Well done.
In other fallout from the testimony, everyone’s favorite former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) made sure to beclown herself with shrill screams at Tony Bobolinkski that, “RICO is not a crime.” She continued to double down on this view throughout the week, which causes one to wonder if she knows that Fani Willis’ entire case in Georgia rests upon RICO statutes. Is AOC arguing for Trump’s acquittal in Georgia? Shall all of the mob bosses and drug kingpins in jail for RICO cases be exonerated? Either way, I think AOC just jumped the shark. I hear she has a primary challenge. Could this be it for her Congressional career? I am sure she’ll have no trouble taking a seat on The View.
In what is perhaps the strangest development yet, House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have written a letter to CIA director Burns about claims the IRS and FBI were hamstrung in their investigation of Hunter by the CIA. In a letter sent yesterday, the Committees wish to hear why the CIA told investigators that they could not interview Kevin Morris as part of their investigation. This is the same Kevin Morris that bought Hunter’s paintings and paid off his $5M in taxes owed. We’ve reported on the CIA’s clandestine efforts to build secret bases in Ukraine to spy on Russia, and there are emails from Hunter’s laptop that show his company Seneca Partners was involved in building biolabs in Ukraine. Perhaps the Hunter Biden story has a lot more to do with the CIA’s meddling in Ukraine than we previously knew? It is starting to sound like the case of Jeffrey Epstein, who did not kill himself.
Finally, if you still don’t believe there is evidence of corruption by the Bidens, watch this short video which depicts just one transaction. In it, Representative Donalds shares receipts of the following transactions: 1) CEFC - a huge conglomerate owned by the Chinese Communist Party with close ties to Premier Xi Jinping - sent Hunter Biden’s company $100,000. Hunter transferred that money to Jim Biden’s company. Jim Biden’s wife took out $50,000 in CASH from that company’s account, walked it to another bank and deposited it in another account, from which she then wrote a check to Joe Biden from in the amount of $40,000 with the memo “loan repayment.” Joe Biden’s accountant has stated he has no record nor knowledge of such a loan. Do these actions sound legitimate, or very much like an attempt to wash money in a criminal enterprise? Marty Byrde would be proud.
Christine Blasey Ford Sees Her Shadow
Like a poor Punxsutawney Phil whom, before elections, they trot out to see if there will be 6 more months of sophistry about women’s rights, Christine Blasey Ford has written a memoir. I have no desire to read it, and it sounds like those who have wish they hadn’t. The great Kat Rosenfield, writing in UnHerd, put it this way:
The New York Times, in its dutiful assessment of the book as "important" and "lucid", does little to obscure an overall tone of disdain; the Atlantic's review is headlined, dryly, "Christine Blasey Ford Testifies Again." What little praise Ford's effort has received is delivered with the forced cheerfulness of a person accepting a terrible hand-knitted wool sweater, in July, in a colour she wouldn't be caught dead wearing. How thoughtful of you, I... er, I can see you worked really hard on it.
Ouch.
The Haitians Are Coming!
Apparently the script writers are tired of Governor Abbott of Texas getting all the right wing credit (rightfully so) for his strong response to the invasion on our Southern border. Not to be outdone, Haiti is in a full collapse and Florida is panicked that thousands of Haitian refugees will be flooding our shores soon.
Governor DeSantis has already promised to send them on a free vacation to Martha’s Vineyard as the tragedy of another Western hemisphere country’s collapse plays out on live television. Has anyone considered our attention on Europe and the Middle East has been so misguided that we’ve completely neglected our neighbors at home? Where are the Monroe doctrine fans? The United States can not police the world if our own entire neighborhood looks like a post apocalyptic refugee camp. As Dr. Peterson would say, “before you begin to fix the world (in Ukraine, Israel, Yemen, Taiwan, etc.), is your room clean?”
Neuralink
In an amazing video released yesterday on X, Elon Musk’s Neuralink showed a paralyzed man controlling a computer with his mind (and their brain implant) to play online chess. It looks like a SciFi movie. While half the world constantly slags Musk, he just keeps delivering miraculous engineering feats for the benefit of humanity. Did you see the Starship test last week? Let this guy post all the silly trolling stuff he wants. Just let him cook.
Omnibust
Finally, in a move sure to stun no one, our illustrious Congress has once again delivered a secretly negotiated, 1,012 page Omnibus bill that spends $1.2T. As I write this, the vote begins at about 10:50 eastern time. This bill is delivered six months after the appropriations were due for this fiscal year that started October 1, 2023, with just 31 hours for members to review (it was released at 3am yesterday).
This is the exact same playbook Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have been running for a long time. It is a travesty of the legislative process, and a continuation of an oligarchic structure where only the Speaker, the Majority Leader, the Minority Leaders, and the Office of the President have any input as to what goes in the bill. There’s a litany of useless spending, pork barrel ear marks, and payoffs to donors rampant. Everyone should vote no.
Mr. Speaker, shut down this government.
A boy can dream.
Justin Weller is the Founder and Editor of The Country and host of the podcast The Country with Justin Weller. Prior to this, he was a general manager and sales leader in startup and big tech firms, interned at Capitol Hill, and was a contributing editor at mxdwn.com. This piece is republished from The Country.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Tampa Free Press.
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