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Life under Putin.
A Russian military truck kills a man at a pedestrian crossing in occupied Lugansk. 12.09.2023https://t.co/PcGSlxzUQ5 pic.twitter.com/pHj4eFKMhK
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) September 15, 2023
Newer entertainment video. Just the normal GOP's lie, lie, lie. If that doesn't work, lie some more. Republican family trash values and caring about unborn children.
https://www.9news.com/video/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/lauren-boebert-wasnt-telling-the-truth-about-beetlejuice-ejection/73-bc109d37-e9af-415b-aaad-80ca1e8cc5e6
Your not totally wrong, there will be some beatings, but Johnny came and went taking the apples before the others saw what was left. His parents sent him over to a nice expensive private school protected from any fray.
Been reported and seems that Starlink shut down again for Ukraine's offensive against the Russian Navy last night. The drones that rely on Starlink got shot down while the missiles that weren't reliant on starlink made their mark.
https://downdetector.com/status/starlink/
September 13th, 2023 will be a day Ukrainians remember for ever.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 13, 2023
It was the first time they destroyed a Russian submarine.
Submarine B-237 "Rostov-on-Don" was destroyed in a Ukrainian missile strike agains the dry-docks of Sevastopol, Crimea this morning. pic.twitter.com/bv0BAhtqaa
With all the serious and complex analysis and political "lazy bums with 10 children on welfare" bs, we can boil it down to some simple grade school math. If there are 10 apples in a basket and Johnny comes in and takes 8 of them, how many apples do Tom, Dick, Harry, Susan, Mary, Theresa, and the rest of the class get?
GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert caused a 'disturbance' and was escorted out of a performance of 'Beetlejuice' in Denver
Hannah Getahun Sep 12, 2023, 8:07 PM MDT
https://www.businessinsider.com/lauren-boebert-escorted-from-denver-beetlejuice-performance-2023-9
Two patrons had to be escorted out of a performance of 'Beetlejuice' in Denver, local officials said.
The officials said that the patrons were vaping and 'causing a disturbance,' per the Denver Post.
The Denver Post confirmed that one of those patrons happened to be GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert.
"Boebert! Boebert! Boebert!"
It took more than saying her name three times to get disruptive GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert to leave a performance of the "Beetlejuice" musical in Denver.
According to incident reports filed by officials and obtained by the Denver Post, which broke the story, two theater-goers were asked to leave a performance of the Broadway musical on Sunday night at the Buell Theatre after causing a "disturbance" by singing, using her phone to record, and vaping.
One usher quoted by the Post said in the incident report that the two patrons, who remained unnamed by Denver Arts & Venues officials, refused to leave after being asked.
"I told them that they need to leave the theater and if they do not, they will be trespassing," the unnamed usher said, per the Post. "The patrons said they would not leave. I told them I would (be) going to get Denver Police. They said go get them."
While being escorted out, the patrons shouted "stuff like 'do you know who I am,' 'I am on the board' (and) 'I will be contacting the mayor,'" the Post reported, per the incident report.
The Post later confirmed that one of the patrons was the Colorado Republican after reaching out to her campaign manager Drew Sexton, who admitted she was kicked out while defending the representative.
Just part of the GOP creed now.
NEWSNEWSCHANNEL 5 INVESTIGATES
'Appalled!' Women say #MAGA mayoral candidate ripped off their images to claim them as supporters
Posted: 2:56 PM, Sep 11, 2023 Updated: 10:02 AM, Sep 12, 2023
By: Phil Williams
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/appalled-women-say-maga-mayoral-candidate-ripped-off-their-images-to-claim-them-as-supporters
A group of women from across the country say a candidate for Franklin mayor lifted their social media posts to falsely claim them as her supporters.
FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — "Appalled! Absolutely appalled!"
That's what a group of women from across the country are saying about how a candidate for Franklin mayor appears to have lifted their social media posts to falsely claim them as her supporters.
Franklin alderman Gabrielle Hanson, a controversial candidate who appears to relish her MAGA Republican ties, may not have thought that anyone would track down the women whose photos she posted last month on her campaign's social media accounts.
But that's exactly what NewsChannel 5 Investigates did over the weekend, and those women were outraged about how their images were used.
"I'm wondering how this person doesn't have other photos of other friends or actual supporters," said April, who asked us not to use her last name.
"It's a really far stretch to dig up a photo from social media from seven years ago of just what was a really delightful brunch of a group of women who just had met."
As this story was being posted, Hanson finally returned a phone call after NewsChannel 5's multiple attempts to reach her. In a bizarre and rambling conversation, Hanson and campaign aide Erin Mazzoni refused to answer any questions about the post, saying a federal court had upheld the rights of candidates to post whatever they want.
Hanson and Mazzoni suggested NewsChannel 5's questions amounted to "stalking."
"This is not appropriate towards a woman, Phil," Mazzoni said.
"We are doing this in the light, and we are doing this with God on our side."
While the Franklin city official has staked out some hardline Republican positions, if you believe her social media, she’s also getting support from a diverse group of people in her campaign for city mayor.
One photo shows a large crowd for an event that Hanson characterizes as "a vibrant and engaged community at the ‘this is your town’ meet and greet.’”
Then, there is the photo of the group of women where Hanson expresses “heartfelt appreciation” to an “Executive Women’s Club” for their “invaluable support and encouragement.”
Both images bear the hashtags “#FranklinTN” and “#VoteHanson.”
When we first contacted April, NewsChannel 5 asked: "So what do you make of this?"
"I honestly don't know," she answered.
The photo, it turns out, was taken in 2016 in Chicago.
"I am right in the front with the little top-knot bun and a little American flag sweater," April said.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates followed up, "Do you support Gabrielle Hanson?"
"I do not," April said.
"I actually do not know who that is."
A second woman, who asked not to be identified, described the reaction from several of the women in the group as “appalled, absolutely appalled.”
“It's not true," the second woman said. "It didn't happen, and everybody in that photo knows it.”
Phil Williams interviews April
We asked April, "So as far as you know you have never even met Gabrielle Hanson?"
"No," she said, "and I have a pretty good memory. I keep a tight circle of friends and colleagues, and I think I would have remembered someone like that.”
Instead of being an “Executive Women’s Club” as Gabrielle Hanson claimed, the women had all been selected for an ad campaign for the women’s clothing brand The Limited.
"That was a sort of brunch that came together just to celebrate each other and to celebrate the campaign," April remembered.
Looking back through old photos, some of the women concluded that Hanson may have been part of the ad campaign, but they insist she wasn’t at the brunch — and they never authorized her to use their images to boost her campaign.
After some on social media noticed the pic seemed to have been taken at a restaurant in Chicago, Hanson posted an update on Facebook and doubled-down on her claims.
“These are all my friends that have relocated to Nashville, Brentwood and Franklin, and they all support me.”
Again, the women say that’s a lie.
"I know some of those women are not located in the places that she named," April said. "Some of those women are still in Chicago and other parts of the country, but not Tennessee."
In the phone call with NewsChannel 5, Hanson again changed her story.
"They live all over the country, and we get together very regularly," she said.
This year, Hanson tried to block Pride Fest from being held at a Franklin park, she tried to pressure sponsors to drop funding for a Juneteenth celebration in Franklin and she opposed erecting historical markers to commemorate spots where lynchings had occurred.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked the second woman if she would ever support any of Hanson's positions.
"No, no, not if she were the last candidate on Earth — absolutely not!" the woman said.
"These are not positions that anyone that I am in touch with on the [advertising] campaign would condone or support."
April agreed.
"I do racial equity work that supports all people and all good, beautiful expressions that people show up in life," she explained. "So I certainly do not want to be associated with anything like that."
A third woman, who also asked not to be identified, provided NewsChannel 5 Investigates with a written statement.
"I am appalled at the misuse of this photograph and the inaccurate representation of what is happening in it," the woman wrote.
"Such blatant falsehoods being published exemplify the character of a candidate. As I've learned more about Gabrielle Hanson and her views, such an egregious attempt to show diverse female support is disgusting.
"Let this incident serve as a reminder of the importance of honesty, integrity, and respect for one another in the realm of public discourse and political engagement."
In addition, it turns out that the image from the so-called “meet and greet” also appears to have been lifted from the web.
Instead of being taken in Franklin, it was also from Chicago.
Comparison between Gabrielle Hanson tweet and image from Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra facilities
Hanson has now deleted it from her social media.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked April about Hanson, "Any message that you would have for her?"
"I would encourage her to go meet genuine friends so she can take photos with those folks if she's looking for supporters," she said. "There's no need to comb pictures on the Internet to make up a story. None of us need that."
Full interview with Gabrielle Hanson and Erin Mazzoni:
Suspended from X.Com: The Cult of the Genius Tech Bro
Heidi Siegmund Cuda investigates how we eradicate tech-troll domination
SEP 12, 2023
https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/suspended-from-xcom-the-cult-of-the?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
The author of this article was permanently banned from the site formerly known as Twitter for this comment on the basis it may “threaten, incite, glorify or express a desire for harm or violence”. In light of this ludicrous decision we are reposting the article without a paywall.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future, 1962
They were treated as special — tech wunderkinds who possessed magical powers.
Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel etc…
Awe-inducing cover stories in polished tech periodicals, which existed to exalt them on high. The faces of these special boys appear in chiaroscuro to ensure their canonisation.
But what was Mark Zuckerberg, really? A troll who created a website twenty years ago that judged if someone was hot or not. FaceMash, as it was known, evolved into Facebook, and its ‘move fast and break things’ ethos nearly broke democracy when the social media platform allowed Cambridge Analytica to hoover up all our data and target minds.
“It started with the dream of a connected world,” said digital rights activist Professor David Carroll in the film The Great Hack. “These digital traces of ourselves are being mined into a trillion dollar a year industry… we are now the commodity.”
No one read the terms and conditions, or checked the box for the part where the world becomes a deeply divided wreckage site, he said.
And it wasn’t that long ago when Elon Musk was a deified ‘star man’.
The world thought he was really special.
Then he bought Twitter, and starting posting Hitler memes and neo-Nazi references.
Many were shocked. Those who knew him from Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, and the plethora of dewy deifying tech cover stories couldn’t believe it was the same guy.
But those who’d been paying closer attention saw it coming, as we did here in our report Unmusked: How Elon Musk is Using Twitter to Destroy the Concept of Truth.
The Bag Men
The origin stories of Twitter and Facebook always seem to leave out its initial funding. As the Guardian reported in 2017:
“Two Russian state institutions with close ties to Vladimir Putin funded substantial stakes in Twitter and Facebook through an investor who later acquired an interest in a Jared Kushner venture, leaked documents reveal.
“The investments were made through a Russian technology magnate, Yuri Milner, who also holds a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.”
If money is coming from a mafia state — one that is consistently and relentlessly targeting the West with information warfare, that should be well-publicized in the terms and conditions that no one reads.
It was PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel who said in 2009 that he “no longer believed freedom and democracy are compatible”. To his point, he funds extreme anti-democratic candidates.
As democratic strategist Fred Wellman tweeted last year:
I think the media should cover these elections like they do business transactions:
“Billionaire investor Peter Thiel completed a key first step in his purchase of American democracy with the acceptance by the Ohio GOP of his $10M bid for the Republican Senate seat there.”
And the extremist candidate he funded, JD Vance, is now a sitting Senator.
Both Thiel and Vance are behind the platform Rumble, which functions as a pro-Kremlin propaganda and radicalization outlet, and extremist presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has benefited from his friendship with Vance and Thiel’s investments in his businesses.
Ergo, if the tech bro is a genius, then it feels more like Dr. Evil than Einstein.
‘The Myth of Meritocracy’
Jackie Singh, the former cybersecurity lead threat analyst for US President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and an information security specialist, blames the ‘myth of meritocracy’ for global tech dysfunction.
“This myth is often championed by influential tech bros to rationalize their own ascent and hoard,” Singh told Byline Supplement. “It conceals systemic barriers that benefit a select demographic. This narrative suggests that those who fail to rise have only their own shortcomings to blame, absolving the industry of any imperative for structural change and perpetuating a fatalistic, eugenic-adjacent view of society.”
She said this results in “the privileged continuing to amass opportunities and engage in toxic cultures without consequence, while underrepresented groups are left vying for basic recognition, inclusion, and equal treatment.”
She said the “lack of diversity in tech and its leadership has a ripple effect that extends to the very technologies we produce, including AI systems. Limiting the range of perspectives in the development process can only ever result in AI algorithms which reflect and perpetuate existing social biases. When deployed in critical societal sectors, these biased technologies further entrench disparities, often causing direct yet unseen harm to individuals.”
This concentration of power and perspective, she believes, creates a self-reinforcing loop.
“Technologies shaped by a biased lens inherently marginalize those not represented in their creation, thereby sustaining the existing power hierarchies,” she told Byline Supplement. “The myth of meritocracy, thus serves not only to rationalize current inequalities but also acts as a mechanism for their perpetuation in both the tech industry and society at large.”
Because the tech scene exploded out of the progressive waters of the San Francisco Bay Area, there was a time when people thought that meant Silicon Valley was progressive, too.
Lol. Images of the tech titans lining up to kiss Trump’s ring in 2017 put that false notion to rest.
Tech Bros Killed My Hometown
No one was more deified than the man in black — Apple’s Steve Jobs. His product is ubiquitous and has absolutely changed the world, but I see his face in chiaroscuro, and I think of how my hometown went from a melting pot of immigrants who bought nice homes on lower middle class salaries to the explosion of tech pricing out the lower middle class. Houses bought in the 1960s on one blue collar salary for $20,000 now selling for multiple millions. Gig workers delivering overpriced food, taxis unaffordable — the haves have it all, the have nots get $15 an hour.
It’s not his fault — he helped revolutionize the world but his success and the success of others killed my hometown. The hippies of the sixties have been replaced with yoga babble-spewing cutthroats that gave us a post-privacy world without so much as an ‘I’m sorry.’
And for every Jobs, there’s a Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, who was arrested last year in the Bahamas and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, campaign finance violations, securities and commodities violations, as well as other charges.
Or an Adam Neumann. Neumann — who was forced out of the collaborative office space company he co-founded, WeWork — told a reporter in 2019 he wanted to live forever, become a trillionaire, the president of the world, and expand WeWork to Mars.
Back to the Futurism
An Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published a manifesto in 1909 titled: The Manifesto of Futurism or Manifesto del Futurismo.
The poet’s philosophy — called Futurism — rejected the past, celebrated speed (‘move fast, break things’), machinery, violence, youth, and industry.
In a Medium report reprinted in the Guardian, Douglas Rushkoff — author of Survival of the Richest, Team Human, Program or Be Programmed, and host of the Team Human podcast, wrote about a personal experience he had with ‘Futurists’ when he was invited to lecture at half a year’s salary. He said he was brought to a room where five tech bros questioned him.
“That’s when it hit me,” he wrote, “at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.
“Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures – something to predict and make bets on. So nearly every speech, article, study, documentary, or white paper was seen as relevant only insofar as it pointed to a ticker symbol. The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.”
“This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities.”
Silicon Valley technologist Joshua C. Fidel, my co-host of RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, said any moral implications were always an illusion.
“Tech’s metastasizing amorality occurred because there were billions of dollars pumped into it to create the spectacle,” Fidel told Byline Supplement. “People see successful and wealthy people and idolize them, they want to be like them. And Silicon Valley was always a lie… If you look at everything they promised those two decades ago, nothing has come to pass.
“That Arthur C. Clarke comment — any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic — that's what they offered us as amazing advancements in technology. Instead, what we got was smoke and mirrors — entire industries destroyed. Money sucked out from the working class, and deposited in the bank accounts of venture capitalists.”
He said the shiny front was to hide the malevolence.
“They gathered our data, they processed it. And they turned it around and used it against us to drive some of us mad, some of us into radicalized extremists willing to kill for a political figure.”
False Gods
Author Neil Gaiman — in his book American Gods — created New Gods to worship — the god of technology, the god of the internet — as the Old Gods’ curb appeal had waned.
But what are these tech geniuses really? Carnival barkers — clever lads who invented 50 new ways to steal a buck?
“They draw you into the tent to take your money, but not just your money, your data,” said Fidel. “They know where you live, how many kids you have, how you tend to vote, what TV programs you watch, the brand of toilet paper you like to buy.
“They know how to put people around you if you're on social media. ‘Here's a group that you should join. Hey, have you read this new website that might just be run by a bunch of f**king Russians pretending to be Americans?’”
It appears no tech platforms run by the Gods of the Internet appear to be operating in good faith or proving they can regulate themselves, and Section 230 of Title 47 of the US Code — part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 — is weak tea, providing immunity for platforms from third-party content. So they go ahead and become accessories to global crimes against humanity — mass shootings are livestreamed, beheadings are uploaded, revenge porn continues to traumatise its intended targets, because… whatever… it’s the internet.
The most sensible thing I’ve heard is to move fast, and break up tech — turning these social media platforms into regulated public utilities. Like clean water, and clean air, we now rely on communications platforms, and rather than allow communication to be disrupted by Nazi trolls and bot farms or paid internet assassins hired to discredit reporters and politicians, we should be able to communicate without fear, emotional trauma, and death threats.
Yesterday, I was alerted that I was being targeted by a well-connected veteran abuse troll using AI and calling me ‘brainless’. After months of death threats and years of abuse for my work, I no longer care what is said about me by those with malicious intentions, but it leaves a lingering gray cloud that takes some time to pass.
I had to call a guest who is speaking at one of my upcoming ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salons for my Bette Dangerous Substack — author and progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann — and tell him when I announce our event, to expect malinformation trolls to slide into his DMs.
He told me, “We get trolls, death threats, and regular cyber attacks by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China. We’ll make it through.”
Although I am saddened to hear of his attacks, it’s a relief to know he understands the battlefield.
Here's the thing, we shouldn’t have to live this way. The Gods of the Internet should never have been pedestalled. When Musk let all the troll farms back on Xitter, it made things harder for those committed to the labor of democracy.
Investigative reporter Carole Cadwalldr posed these questions in the Ted Talk she gave in Silicon Valley to the tech bros:
“Is this what you want? Is this how you want history to remember you? As the handmaidens to authoritarianism? Is this what we want? To sit back and play with our phones as this darkness falls.”
I think it may be what they want, but it’s not what I want.
I want what Sacha Baron Cohen wants. The actor and activist just gave a speech on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Here is an excerpt:
“The forces of hate have a new weapon that was not available in 1963 — social media — these social media platforms deliberately amplify content that triggers outrage and fear, including fear of the other. This technology gives an unfair advantage to the intolerant. They’ve gone from Klan rallies to chat rooms, from marches to message boards — it’s how they spread their filth, recruit new members, and plan their attacks. And we’ve all seen the deadly results… hate and violence that should have no place in our pluralistic societies.”
Geopolitical analyst Dr Michael MacKay points out the hubris of those who pose as geniuses but have invented nothing, instead simply profit from and exploit the vision of others: “Real geniuses, not the tech bros, gave their ideas to the world to hopefully make it a better place”, he told Byline Supplement. “Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a genius who humbly acknowledges that none of his work would have been possible were it not for the great work of his colleagues and predecessors. I think the world would be a better place if we celebrated real inventors and creators like him.”
He reminds us that the internet “has the promise of being an online, global community in which all people participate freely, openly and without barriers like wealth. It should be like being able to speak a language and talk to other people – as simple as that.”
“The way we get to a better place with our technology,” Dr MacKay believes, “is to recognize how we got here. Let's celebrate the real geniuses who freely gave us the enormous benefit of their talents. Let's put the tech bros in their proper place and recognize they are merely commodities brokers who package and sell other people's ideas."
I agree. Let’s combat this hateful darkness in a sweeping new deal that ensures the cult of the tech bro genius no longer has the power to sabotage our world — it’s well past time for a tech troll reckoning.
Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about US politics for Byline Times, Byline Supplement, and at bettedangerous.com.
Heidi Siegmund Cuda reveals how Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter fits a disturbing global trendhttps://t.co/LBcVQKS2r1
— 𝕃𝕠𝕤𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕕 #LockHimUpAlready! 🇺🇸 (@losivad) September 12, 2023
If recession was to begin in Q4, the time to buckle up would be right now. Not measurable in real time, but the worst equity market outcomes begin ~2 months prior to recession until ~4 months prior to recovery
Not a forecast, just FYI
The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee maintains a chronology of US business cycles. The chronology identifies the dates of peak and trough months in economic activity. The peak is the month in which a variety of economic indicators reach their highest level, followed by a significant decline in economic activity. Similarly, a month is designated as a trough when economic activity reaches a low point and begins to rise again for a sustained period.
Q: What is a recession? What is an expansion?
The NBER's traditional definition of a recession is that it is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months. The committee's view is that while each of the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, we concluded that the drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that the downturn should be classified as a recession even if it proved to be quite brief. The committee subsequently determined that the trough occurred two months after the peak, in April 2020. An expansion is a period when the economy is not in a recession. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief. However, the time that it takes for the economy to return to its previous peak level of activity may be quite extended.
The NBER chronology does not identify the precise moment that the economy entered a recession or expansion. In the NBER’s convention for measuring the duration of a recession, the first month of the recession is the month following the peak and the last month is the month of the trough. Because the most recent trough was in April 2020, the last month of the recession was April 2020 and the first month of the subsequent expansion was May 2020.
More of Musk's bs.
What the hell is this? @X @Safety @lindayaX @elonmusk this is insane.
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) September 12, 2023
Free @Heidi_Cuda you cowards. pic.twitter.com/4Za6BUqJSF
Posting directly on X will get you suspended if you make a joke about the whiny little bitch that runs this website. https://t.co/W7W1NWEsYP
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) September 12, 2023
GOP1: I'm impeaching first
GOP2: BS, I already was impeaching first.
GOP1; You don't have any evidence.
GOP2: That doesn't matter, you don't either.
GOP1: Yea, but I have the trump bestist impeachment.
GOP3: Who's on first?
GOP unveils new rules for impeachment. To #ImpeachBiden the following evidence is required:
— 💙🌊 Zero Dark Twenty-Nine 🌊🌊🖋️🧫 (@herotimeszero) September 12, 2023
-Trump must be terrified of going to prison.
-GOP must be terrified of Trump.
-Marjorie Taylor Greene must be terrified of someone beating her to the punch.
-Matt Gaetz must be terrified… pic.twitter.com/9GzKTnk1DY
"Law enforcement officials have blamed much of the rise in grid assaults on white nationalist and far-right extremists, who they say are using online forums to spread tactical advice on how to shut down the power supply."
— Brandi Buchman (@Brandi_Buchman) September 11, 2023
LINK: https://t.co/XoBo2pkVb4 pic.twitter.com/hQrsq5g22v
As the House Returns to Session, Ranking Member Raskin Releases Statement on the ‘Overwhelming Failure’ of Republicans’ ‘Top Priority’ Investigation
Sep 11, 2023 Press Release
https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/as-the-house-returns-to-session-ranking-member-raskin-releases-statement-on-the
The First MAGA Congress Is Shamefully Beholden to Donald Trump and Utterly Derelict in Its Duties to the American People
Washington, D.C. (September 11, 2023)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, released the following statement on the status of Republicans’ failed investigation of President Biden as the House prepares to come back into session:
“By August 2021, in the first six months of the 117th Congress, House Democrats had helped kickstart our nation’s economy with the American Rescue Plan and passed a budget with historic investments in working families. We went on to pass legislation to reduce drug and energy costs, address the climate crisis, bring jobs back to America, and rebuild our country’s infrastructure with groundbreaking laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Even in the first six months of the 116th Congress, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the House Democratic Majority delivered meaningful reform for the American people by working across the aisle to pass more than 20 bills that were signed into law, including funding to end a 35-day government shutdown caused by Trump and congressional Republicans, legislation to help veterans and victims of natural disasters, and landmark enactments preserving public lands for future generations.
“By contrast, the first MAGA-directed Congress is by far the most reckless and least productive in decades. After holding the American economy hostage by threatening to default on America’s financial obligations, House Republicans are now eagerly pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown. Instead of working on legislation to promote the common good or even just keep the government running, House Republicans are weaponizing their offices and exploiting congressional power and resources to promote debunked and outlandish conspiracy theories about President Biden. This is a transparent effort to boost Donald Trump’s campaign by establishing a false moral equivalency between Trump—the four time-indicted former president now facing 91 federal and state criminal charges, based on a mountain of damning evidence for a shocking range of felonies, including lying to the FBI, endangering national security by illegally keeping classified documents, and conspiring to subvert the U.S. Constitution—and President Biden, against whom there is precisely zero evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever. To the contrary, Chairman Comer’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden.
“House Republicans constantly insist that they are investigating President Biden, and not his adult son. In that case, we can form an obvious judgment on their investigation: it has been a complete and total bust—an epic flop in the history of congressional investigations. The voluminous evidence they have gathered, including thousands of pages of bank records and suspicious activity reports and hours of testimony from witnesses, overwhelmingly demonstrates no wrongdoing by President Biden and further debunks Republicans’ conspiracy theories. Rather than admit this unavoidable truth about their failed investigation, House Republicans have mischaracterized, cherry-picked, and concealed evidence and recycled long debunked conspiracy theories originally peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Trump, all in humiliating subservience to Donald Trump’s petulant demand that they impeach President Biden.
“In the face of Republicans’ shameful perversion of congressional power and misuse of taxpayer dollars for this hopeless wild goose chase, Committee Democrats will continue to defend the truth, the rule of law, and the integrity of our Constitution and democratic institutions.”
Republicans have obtained enormous amounts of evidence as part of their probe. None of it shows any wrongdoing by President Biden; in fact, the evidence proves the opposite.
Chairman Comer has said over and over that his Committee is investigating Joe Biden, “Our investigation is of Joe Biden. It always has been.” As part of this investigation, Committee Republicans have received over 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, reviewed over 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports, and spent hours interviewing witnesses, including two former business associates of Hunter Biden.
Not only does this voluminous evidence fail to even suggest any wrongdoing by President Biden, it in fact proves the opposite. Specifically:
-None of the bank records Comer has released shows any payments to President Biden.
-None of the SARs the Committee reviewed alleges, or even suggests, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do the SARs show any
involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s financial or business relationships.
-Not one of the witness accounts provided to the Committee has shown any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, including accounts from
two IRS agents and a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent, who were involved in the DOJ’s investigation of Hunter Biden.
-Former business associates of Hunter Biden who have been interviewed by the Committee—Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer—explicitly stated
that they have no reason to believe President Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, much less any reason to believe
President Biden took any official action on behalf of his son’s business ventures.
-Mr. Schwerin, who performed bookkeeping and other administrative tasks for then Vice-President Biden and therefore had access to his bank
records, stated that he was not aware of any involvement by President Biden in the financial conduct of his relatives’ businesses, much less any
transactions into or out of the then-Vice President’s bank account related to business conducted by any Biden family member.
-Two IRS agents who testified before the Committee affirmed that they do not have any evidence of political interference by President Biden or
Attorney General Merrick Garland.
-The Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent interviewed by the Committee rejected Republicans’ claims that prosecutorial decisions by U.S.
Attorney David Weiss or his team were the result of any political interference.
Chairman Comer says the biggest “smoking gun” that he has uncovered is the money Hunter Biden, a private citizen, received from international business dealings.
-However, not only has Chairman Comer been criticized by independent fact checkers—for misrepresenting Hunter Biden’s companies as “shell
companies” when they in fact had “legitimate business transactions or investments” and falsely claiming that the Biden family received $20
million from foreign sources—public reporting has also confirmed that “the committee has not found any direct evidence that President Biden
personally benefited from any of his son’s business dealings.”
Rather than owning up to the fact that the evidence in his “top priority” investigation has established no wrongdoing by President Biden, Chairman Comer has resorted to misrepresenting and distorting this huge body of evidence to make baseless and sensationalistic claims.
-Chairman Comer has repeatedly, and without evidence, asserted the falsehood that President Biden has inappropriately received foreign money: “We’ve got a
President of the United States who’s taken millions and millions of dollars from bad people and bad countries around the world. […] We’ve got a President that’s
compromised. We’ve got a President who has violated laws, who should be treated as a criminal. He’s the one that’s a criminal.”
+These statements are plainly false with respect to President Biden—although they are almost certainly true of Donald Trump.
-Chairman Comer blatantly misrepresented Devon Archer’s statements to the Committee, falsely asserting that Mr. Archer “admitted that the Burisma executives
were squeezing Hunter Biden to try to do everything he could to get the prosecutor Shokin fired, because they were going after their corrupt energy company.
And lo and behold, a few days later, Joe Biden actually did that.”
+In actuality, Mr. Archer clarified that he was informed that then-Vice President Biden’s efforts leading an international coalition calling for the removal of
corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin were “bad for Burisma” because Burisma had Mr. Shokin “under control.”
+As PolitiFact reported: “Archer testified that he had no reason to believe Shokin’s removal was because of anything other than the U.S. government’s
anti-corruption policy in place at the time.” Further, “Archer said he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden, he didn’t witness the Bidens
discussing Hunter’s business, and that he’s not aware that any foreign policy was changed to benefit Hunter Biden—which goes against claims that
Republicans have long made about the Bidens.”
-Chairman Comer and other Committee Republicans have falsely suggested that Mr. Archer’s interview “confirms” that President Biden was “involved” in his
son’s business dealings.
+In fact, Mr. Archer established that over the course of his nearly decade-long business relationship and friendship with Hunter Biden, he never heard
Hunter Biden discuss business with his father and never knew the President to be involved in, or knowledgeable about, Hunter Biden’s business
activities.
+The Washington Post: “Devon Archer’s testimony was hailed as a central breakthrough in implicating Joe Biden. Instead, it has a top ally of Hunter
Biden stating under penalty of perjury that Joe Biden was not involved in Hunter Biden’s business and that Biden’s trip to Ukraine in 2015 was not
centered on protecting Burisma at all.”
-Chairman Comer has falsely stated that the alleged financial wrongdoing that Committee Republicans are investigating, including the information reportedly
contained in certain SARs, implicate “the entire [Biden] family.”
+None of the SARs reviewed by Committee staff allege, refer to, or even suggest, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do they show any
involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s financial or business relationships.
-Chairman Comer has repeatedly lied by saying, “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”
+The Washington Post fact checked this false claim and confirmed: “Only about $7 million can be directly attributed to Biden family members, mostly
Hunter, while the rest went to “associates,” according to the memos. […] No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden
himself.”
-Chairman Comer regularly lies about the business activities of Biden family members, for instance by claiming: “There are no legitimate businesses with the
Bidens, not a single one. There’s nothing of these 20 shell companies that you can say produced a good or service.” Similarly, Comer has dishonestly claimed:
“President Biden and his family have created 20 fake companies, 20 shell companies that all that we can tell on the House Oversight Committee over the past
seven months is that their sole purpose was to take money from foreign nationals and launder it down to at least nine different Biden family members in their
personal accounts.”
+A fact check by The Washington Post established that counter to Chairman Comer’s lies, “Virtually all of the companies (many of which now are defunct)
had legitimate business interests. Others had clearly identified business investments.”
+Further, there is no evidence that President Biden had any involvement, whatsoever, with any of these companies.
-Chairman Comer, on multiple occasions, has lied about then-Vice President Biden’s email addresses and scheduling with his son, saying, “Joe Biden was using
a pseudonym and he copied his son about a shady, shady transaction where Joe Biden was going to leverage American tax dollars to save his son’s butt. …
Along the same time period, we found a pseudonym where he copied Hunter Biden and it would lead one to believe that this was Joe Biden’s way of copying
Hunter Biden to say, okay, send it to the Burisma owners and tell them help is on the way, and five days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine to begin the process of
firing the prosecutor in exchange for America tax dollars in the form of foreign aid.”
+A fact check by The Washington Post found this was a “whopper” of a false statement and gave Chairman Comer “Four Pinocchios” for his false “claims
that Biden was sending a secret message to his son about how he was going to tell the Ukrainian president to fire the prosecutor—but the email was
sent two months after the firing. Skeptics may doubt whether Hunter Biden was copied on the email for family matters, but it’s certainly not because of
the nefarious purpose suggested by Comer.”
+The fact check also found Chairman Comer misrepresented then-Vice President Biden’s use of email aliases as unusual, pointing out it was a common
and well-known government practice among high-ranking government officials to avoid having inboxes flooded with messages.
Lacking real evidence, the Republicans’ investigation has devolved into a voyeuristic and sensationalistic obsession with Hunter Biden that, by Chairman Comer’s own account, is “counter to a credible investigation.” Chairman Comer has even resorted to targeting President Biden’s granddaughter and baselessly accusing President Biden of laundering money through his grandchildren to evade taxes.
This is just a small sampling of Chairman Comer and Republicans’ near daily distortions of and straight-up lies about key allegations at the center of their probe. These falsehoods have become the defining hallmark of their failed investigation.
The central allegation of Chairman Comer’s baseless investigation, the Burisma conspiracy theory, was peddled by Rudy Giuliani and former President Trump to distract from Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
Trump has repeatedly returned to the Burisma conspiracy theory and has made it a centerpiece of both of his reelection efforts.
-Trump and Rudy Giuliani pushed these debunked conspiracy claims when he was first impeached in 2019, then again during the 2020 election. Trump has
returned to these fabrications as part of his reelection campaign, often explicitly seizing on the misinformation promoted by House Republicans’ fantasy-like
investigation.
-Following Trump’s lead, in nearly every single one of Chairman Comer’s regular appearances on Fox News and Newsmax, the Chairman promotes the long
discredited Burisma conspiracy theory first pushed by President Trump and the notorious fabulist Rudy Giuliani.
-Just a few weeks ago, Chairman Comer doubled down once again, claiming the Burisma conspiracy is “100 percent correct.”
Contrary to Chairman Comer’s insistence that “this Burisma deal is not over,” this fictitious conspiracy has been debunked by years of investigations and independent reporting.
-It was debunked by the testimony of witnesses in Trump’s first impeachment.
-It was debunked by the witnesses interviewed as part of Senate Republicans’ investigation in 2020.
-It was debunked by a 2020 assessment conducted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department and entrusted to a U.S. Attorney hand-picked by then-Attorney
General Barr.
-It was debunked by Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma executive who allegedly partook in the bribery scheme, as evidenced by a document the Committee has
had in its possession since 2019.
-Earlier this summer, the same narrative was debunked and ridiculed by former key Giuliani associate Lev Parnas in his astonishing 10-page letter to Chairman
Comer, which Parnas offered to reaffirm under oath before the Committee.
In his recent interview with the Committee, Mr. Archer became the latest witness to debunk this exhausted conspiracy theory, explaining his understanding that
“Shokin being fired was a -- was not good, because he was like under control as relates to Mykola [Zlochevsky, Burisma’s owner].”
-Addressing years-old, second-hand bribery allegations in an unverified 2020 FBI Form FD-1023 tipsheet, Mr. Archer explicitly stated that he would disagree with
anyone concluding from the 1023 form that Joe Biden was bribed by Zlochevsky, dismissing the allegations as the kind of brag, exaggeration, and fib that are
common among Ukrainian businessmen. The confidential human source who originally reported the information to the FBI in 2020 himself noted it was not
unusual for Ukrainian business executives to brag and show-off and that he could not offer any opinion as to the veracity of the allegations he was relaying.
-Even Fox News’s own internal research unit, known as the “Brain Room” determined these attacks to be “disinformation.”
Unfazed by this overwhelming evidence of the truth, Chairman Comer has simply been urging America to drink from the badly contaminated well of conspiracy theories poisoned by Giuliani, Trump, and foreign agents advancing the interests of the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party. And just as President Trump has demanded, Chairman Comer has then used those conspiracy theories as ‘evidence’ in his probe and as a basis to threaten to withhold funding for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, even shockingly going so far as to call Ukraine an “adversary of the United States.”
In fact, much of the Republicans’ investigation consists of regurgitating old and disproven information and misrepresenting it as new evidence.
-Committee Republicans have argued that Hunter Biden was compromised by Elena Baturina, the wife of a former mayor of Moscow. This narrative was
undermined by independent reporting years ago, including by the Washington Post, CNN, and more recently, by Mr. Archer, who said in a transcribed interview
that Hunter “was not involved” with that transaction.
-Discussing some of the bank records that Republicans have touted as significant evidence, Sen. Ron Johnson admitted this spring, “There’s really no new
information […] this was all out there since before the 2020 election.” Sen. Johnson also made clear that these allegations are years’ old, “We laid this all out in
our September 2020 report, then followed up by a November 2020 add-on report.”
-Committee Republicans attempted to pass off Hunter Biden’s legal work on behalf of Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu as new evidence. However,
that work, which Hunter Biden performed while he was counsel at the law firm Boies Schiller, has long been known, and there is no evidence whatsoever that
President Biden took any official actions or was influenced in any way by his son’s representation of Mr. Popoviciu.
-Committee Republicans have sought to characterize a wire transfer from a Kazakh businessman used to purchase a sports car for Hunter Biden as a damning
revelation, but this was already evaluated as part of the 2020 Senate investigation as well as the investigation by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office. And, yet
again, Republicans have identified no link between this transaction and President Biden.
-Committee Republicans have repackaged old information about the business relationship between Hunter Biden, a private citizen, and a Chinese energy
company, and presented this as evidence of wrongdoing. Not only is there no evidence President Biden had any involvement in this business association, it
took place between the Obama and Biden Administrations, at a time when President Biden held no public office.
-Committee Republicans have also touted a $3 million transfer in March 2017 to Robinson Walker LLC, that they report was shared between Hunter Biden,
James Biden, and their business partner James Gilliar. This transaction, which does not involve President Biden, is neither new nor evidence of wrongdoing,
and was made public in 2020.
Earlier this year, Bill Hemmer pointed out to Chairman Comer that, “It’s been five years, and what do we have for it?” Hemmer later answered his own question, “Nothing just yet.”
Republican pundits, from Fox News’s Steve Doocy to MAGA extremists and former Trump advisors Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, as well as congressional Republicans, including members of the Oversight Committee, have conceded that Chairman Comer’s investigation has failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden and have called into question the credibility of Chairman Comer’s allegations and the integrity of pursuing an impeachment inquiry.
-Live on Fox News, Steve Doocy has repeatedly questioned Chairman Comer’s inability to point to “any evidence” that shows President Biden is compromised,
that any policy was ever influenced, or that any crime was committed, even stating: “You don't actually have any facts to that point. You've got some
circumstantial evidence […] And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is—there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything
illegally.” Last week, Doocy explained: “The Republicans in those districts that Joe Biden won, they’ve got to be able to say, look, I voted for it because look at
this. It shows that there was corruption, actual corruption, not just bank records, but things that show that laws were broken. So far, Comer and company have
not been able to put that together.”
-Former Trump official Sebastian Gorka tweeted that, “Comer is failing in his efforts to investigate” President Biden, called Chairman Comer’s supposed findings,
“crap—he’s reporting stuff that we knew 2 years ago,” and said that Chairman Comer’s Biden probe is “pathetic.”
-Breitbart editor Emma Jo-Morris criticized Chairman Comer for promoting bribery allegations against President Biden even though he has “not shown [proof] to
the public,” while Steve Bannon also lambasted Chairman Comer for failing to provide evidence to support his bribery allegations, saying of Chairman Comer,
“You’re not serious. It’s all performative.”
-Rep. Ken Buck argued, “This is impeachment theater. We right now are starting the appropriations process.” Rep. Buck added, “I don’t think it’s responsible for
us to talk about impeachment,” and described Speaker McCarthy as using impeachment as a “shiny object” to distract Members and “the public.”
-Rep. Buck has also said, “They are looking to see if there is a connection with Joe Biden. […] Right now, I’m not convinced that that evidence exists. And I’m
not supporting an impeachment inquiry” as well as, “I do not think that evidence has been presented, and I don’t think there’s a need to have an impeachment
inquiry.”
-Rep. Don Bacon acknowledged that Republicans have failed to prove any wrongdoing by President Biden, “If you wanna get any progress in the Senate, you’re
gonna have to show not potential wrongdoing, but wrongdoing. I don’t think we’re there yet.” Rep. Bacon also said that he thinks “we need to have more
concrete evidence to go down” the impeachment inquiry path.
-Sen. Ron Johnson conceded that Republicans have not found any “direct evidence” or “hard proof” of wrongdoing by President Biden.
-Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Chairman Comer’s bribery allegations, “If you ask me, ‘Is Joe Biden the type of guy who would take a $5 million bribe?’ My
answer is, based on my experience, no.”
-Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said, “I don’t know what the basis of this call for impeachment is. It just sounds like a lot of noise to me.” Sen. Capito also
responded "I do not" when asked if she thinks there is evidence to support an impeachment.
-Sen. Mitt Romney acknowledged, “I haven’t seen any evidence” that meets the “constitutional test for impeachment.”
-Kris Kolesnik, former senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Grassley, wrote that Chairman Comer and Chairman Jim Jordan “struggle mightily
with the concept of credibility.”
-Terry Sullivan, a former advisor to congressional Republicans, said in regard to impeachment, “I would caution Republicans on this. Going after Biden seems
like a really poor decision.”
-Maura Gillespie, a former House GOP leadership aide, and other veteran senior GOP congressional aides argued that “rather than caving to mounting pressure
from conservative hardliners demanding to impeach President Joe Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his lieutenants should focus on issues that affect
everyday Americans.”
-Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican Member of the Oversight Committee, admitted: “I’ve heard over and over that President Biden has not been implicated or
proven for any wrongdoing here, and I acknowledge that for now.”
-Rep. Nick Langworthy, a Republican Member of the Oversight Committee, “tried to defend the GOP investigation into Joe Biden’s alleged corruption—only to
end up admitting that they still don’t have any proof.”
-Rep. Mike Lawler said, “The question me [sic] right now is, the investigations, are they producing enough facts and evidence that warrant taking it to the next
step? [...] I don’t think it’s there at the moment.”
-Rep. Tony Gonzales criticized some of his conservative colleagues’ impeachment calls as being a distraction from “real issues” important to the American
people, “The people back at home in my district are worried about inflation, worried about the border, their kids being safe in school — you know, real issues.”
-An anonymous GOP lawmaker offered the following assessment to CNN: “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed
to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that. And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the
evidence exists.”
-In a memo, Chairman Comer’s own staff begrudgingly conceded that they had no evidence of “direct payments to Joe Biden,” contradicting the Chairman’s own
claims to the contrary.
Despite the contention from many of his fellow Republicans that an impeachment inquiry would lack any basis in fact, Speaker McCarthy has said that an impeachment inquiry is nevertheless necessary for Republicans to uncover the evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden that they baselessly insist exists—effectively admitting that any such inquiry would amount to nothing more than a wasteful ‘second bite at the apple’ to try to find support for a theory that Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation and Chairman Comer’s own investigation have already disproven.
In essence, Speaker McCarthy has likewise admitted that such an inquiry would be nothing more than a taxpayer-funded, opposition research fishing expedition for the sole benefit of the Trump campaign.
Rather than acknowledging that the voluminous documents they have reviewed—including over 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, over 2,000 pages of SARs, and hours of interviews with witnesses—have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, House Republicans—once again shifting their focus when their previous allegations come up empty—are advancing a false claim of “obstruction” to justify an impeachment inquiry.
Chairman Comer has made meritless accusations that his investigation has been the victim of “obstruction” by the Biden Administration.
-This false narrative has been contradicted by Chairman Comer’s own statements touting the vigor and comprehensiveness of his investigation: “Every
subpoena that I have signed, as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we have gotten 100% of what we requested, whether
it’s with the FBI or with the banks or with Treasury.”
-Even Steve Bannon has emphasized the emptiness of Chairman Comer’s claims of obstruction saying, “Comer, you’ve got the power.”
The truth is that Chairman Comer has collected and reviewed an extraordinary volume of materials as part of his investigation. Chairman Comer does not lack evidence—he has substantial evidence, but it shows no wrongdoing by the President and undermines the false GOP allegations.
The Biden-Harris Administration has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans’ often ridiculous and transparently political demands.
-When Committee Republicans demanded that the FBI produce an unverified tipsheet, a Form FD-1023 containing allegations that have been repeatedly
debunked, the FBI brought the form to the Hill, repeatedly, for all Members of the Committee to see. Senior FBI officials also provided several informational
briefings.
-When Committee Republicans issued a broad request to the Treasury Department for any Suspicious Activity Report mentioning Hunter Biden and other
members of the President’s family, as well as several other individuals and entities, the Treasury Department promptly complied and made them available.
Chairman Comer himself, along with a number of Republican Members of the Committee, reviewed these materials and tweeted about their review outside the
Treasury building.
-Republicans’ claims of “obstruction” appear to be based on documents they never requested from the White House or Administration.
-Just last week Chairman Comer made false claims of obstruction and referred to “government agencies that are refusing to turn over valuable information like
the National Archives.” The Archivist has been working with Chairman Comer to identify and provide the requested documents in accordance with the
Presidential Records Act.
-Chairman Comer’s claim of “obstruction” rings especially hollow when compared to the deliberate, across-the-board stonewalling of congressional
investigations by the Trump Administration—a point on which Chairman Comer and his Republican colleagues have been conspicuously silent.
The fact that Republicans are now resorting to false and absurd claims of “obstruction” because they have been unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden further demonstrates that this impeachment effort is entirely illegitimate and that Republicans are misleading the American people about the facts and wasting our tax dollars.
Republicans’ probe is a transparent effort to weaponize Congress to do Trump’s bidding.
It is clear that Republicans’ unfounded investigation and baseless impeachment effort amounts to nothing more than using taxpayer dollars to help reelect Donald Trump, who, over a year and a half ago, was already demanding that House Republicans investigate President Biden and help him “kick the Biden crime family out of the White House in 2024.” Former President Trump has recently made his demands more explicit, threatening Republican House Members who refuse to impeach President Biden with retaliation at the polls, “Impeach the bum or fade into oblivion. They did it to us.”
-Before the 118th Congress even started, Chairman Jim Jordan was already promising that Republican-led investigations would “frame up the 2024 race, when I
hope and I think President Trump is going to run again. And we need to make sure he wins.” Chairman Comer, for his part, assured Fox News viewers last
year that impeaching President Biden was already “on the table.”
-Republicans have said themselves that they “aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not.”
-Chairman Comer has admitted the Committee’s investigations are aimed at propping up Donald Trump’s reelection efforts: “You look at the polling and right
now Donald Trump is 7 points ahead of Joe Biden and trending upward. Joe Biden is trending downward. […] The American people are keeping up with our
investigation, and they realize something is wrong here.”
-These statements register an historical echo of House Republicans’ weaponization of the House Select Committee on Benghazi in the 114th Congress to attack
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and explicitly to hurt her campaign for President.
Independent reporting has confirmed that, “Not only are Trump, his aides and close allies regularly apprised of Republicans’ committee work, they also at times exert influence over it.”
-This is a “familiar playbook” for House Republicans, “who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority—which includes the ability to launch
investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding—to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles.”
-Republican representatives have even proposed using the appropriations process to defund prosecutions of former President Trump.
+Rep. Andrew Clyde, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, announced in August plans to introduce amendments to the Senate’s Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies fiscal 2024 appropriations bill that would “prohibit any federal funds from being used in federal or state courts to
prosecute major presidential candidates prior to the 2024 election.”
+Other Trump allies, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Andy Ogles have communicated their intent to take similar steps.
-Recently, Rep. Greene asserted that, “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe
Biden.” The MAGA playbook is to shut the government down unless the failed probe of President Biden is turned into an impeachment drive on Trump’s behalf.
Republicans’ use of congressional resources to help elect Trump is part of a pattern dating back many months.
-Throughout the 118th Congress, Chairman Comer has only released the full transcripts of transcribed interviews on days when Trump was arraigned or indicted
—once after ignoring Ranking Member Raskin’s calls to release a transcript for an entire month, and in another case, broke with Committee practice, rushing out
a transcript in just three days without affording the witness’s attorney a reasonable opportunity to review it.
-Chairman Comer has also impeded investigations that have uncovered actual evidence of corruption. Upon taking the Committee gavel, he allowed Trump’s
personal attorneys to act on behalf of the Committee and relieve the former President’s accounting firm, Mazars, from its obligation to produce additional
financial records pursuant to a Committee subpoena and a court-supervised settlement agreement.
-In a now familiar pattern of political reprisal against law enforcement authorities who investigate or charge Donald Trump, we know from New York Times
reporting that congressional Republicans—interfering in a state law enforcement proceeding—announced an investigation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin
Bragg after Trump’s attorney wrote a letter demanding Chairman Jordan do so, in light of growing speculation Mr. Bragg was about to indict the former
President.
Following news of a plea agreement between Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss and Hunter Biden in the DOJ investigation in Delaware, Trump took to Truth Social to baselessly attack the DOJ, writing, “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!”
-On cue, Republican Members quickly parroted Mr. Trump’s attack. Speaker McCarthy claimed that the plea agreement was the result of “the two-tier system in
America,” and stated: “If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the
president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”
-This claim has been conclusively refuted by witnesses before the Committee, including a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent who rejected Republicans’
claims of political interference and two IRS agents who testified before the Committee and affirmed that they had no evidence of political interference by
President Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland.
-Chairman Comer has openly discussed his efforts to interfere with Hunter Biden’s ongoing criminal matter and, indeed, has repeatedly taken credit for a federal
judge’s decision not to immediately approve Hunter Biden’s plea agreement, stating at a July 26, 2023, hearing: “I think that you’re seeing our investigation
that’s shined a light on the many wrongdoings of the Biden family has picked up a lot of credibility today, because now we see that there are a lot of crimes that
this family’s committed and that played out in court today.”
When former President Trump’s indictment for willfully retaining classified documents became imminent, Chairman Comer fabricated a reason to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress.
-Despite Wray’s extensive efforts to accommodate Chairman Comer’s subpoena, the Chairman inexplicably moved to hold Director Wray in contempt of
Congress because the FBI, based on plainly reasonable concerns about the safety of its confidential human sources and integrity of its investigations, did not
give Chairman Comer an unredacted, physical copy of a single document—a document that Senator Grassley already had in his possession and Chairman
Comer had already viewed.
-Also in obedience to Trump, Chairman Comer has repeatedly attacked the FBI and the DOJ as they investigate and prosecute former President Trump for
jeopardizing national security by retaining and lying to the FBI about classified documents and attempting to undermine American democracy by overturning the
2020 presidential election, calling for FBI funding to be “significantly cut,” Director Wray and AG Garland to be ousted, the entire FBI be “dismantled,” and their
budget held “hostage.”
House Republicans’ probe into the Biden family and baseless attacks on President Biden are a transparent and desperate attempt to distract the American public from the unmatched and pervasive corruption of President Trump and his Administration.
-In stark contrast to the fact that Republican investigations have demonstrated no evidence of any wrongdoing by President Biden, there is overwhelming
evidence that President Trump personally and repeatedly committed crimes while in office and used the power of the presidency for personal gain.
-On CNN, Chairman Comer said that he would investigate “Trump and some of his family members including Jared Kushner” and later acknowledged the billions
of dollars Jared Kushner received from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies—including a $2 billion investment by a Saudi sovereign wealth fund only
months after leaving the White House— “crossed the line of ethics.” Chairman Comer even conceded, “I don’t disagree with the Democrats and their criticism
of the previous administration.”
-Yet, despite his professed concerns about presidential corruption, instead of investigating President Trump and his Administration, including the 500 LLCs that
President Trump refused to divest from and used to receive millions of dollars from foreign governments while President, Chairman Comer has allowed Donald
Trump’s attorneys to speak on behalf of the Committee to block the production of financial documents related to those very foreign payments.
-Despite claiming, “I’m not defending Kushner,” Chairman Comer has also allowed Jared Kushner to ignore and defy Committee Democrats' request for
documents for over a year and recently rejected Ranking Member Raskin’s request that he issue a subpoena to Mr. Kushner’s investment fund to compel their
compliance.
-Chairman Comer candidly told the New York Times that, despite his agreement with criticism of self-dealing in the Trump Administration, investigating the Trump
family is “politically unsustainable.”
-Congressional Democrats, as well as state and federal prosecutors, have set forth overwhelming evidence of the endemic corruption of former President Trump
and his Administration, which was unprecedented in American history in both scale and frequency. Yet congressional Republicans have continued to empower
Trump while he calls for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” and promises to weaponize the federal
government against his political opponents and their families.
Over the past eight months, congressional Republicans’ have consistently taken to right-wing cable television to make wild and baseless accusations about President Biden while distorting the actual evidence in the Committee’s possession and concealing it from the American people. Republicans have used this strategy to consume congressional resources for months, desperately and repeatedly shifting their focus among baseless theories and false ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing by President Biden.
The truth is that the mountain of evidence Republicans have gathered and reviewed shows no wrongdoing, in any respect, by President Biden. Republicans’ lust to move forward with an impeachment inquiry on the basis of this utterly failed investigation is a transparent effort to boost former President Trump’s reelection prospects and distract from the overwhelming evidence of his criminal and corrupt conduct during his term of office.
If House Republicans vote to open an impeachment inquiry in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, let alone the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required under the Constitution, they will once again be enabling former President Trump’s efforts to subvert American democracy and achieve his desired “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” in order to return to power and avoid being held accountable for his pervasive crimes and corruption.
As the House Returns to Session, Ranking Member Raskin Releases Statement on the ‘Overwhelming Failure’ of Republicans’ ‘Top Priority’ Investigation
Sep 11, 2023 Press Release
https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/as-the-house-returns-to-session-ranking-member-raskin-releases-statement-on-the
The First MAGA Congress Is Shamefully Beholden to Donald Trump and Utterly Derelict in Its Duties to the American People
Washington, D.C. (September 11, 2023)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, released the following statement on the status of Republicans’ failed investigation of President Biden as the House prepares to come back into session:
“By August 2021, in the first six months of the 117th Congress, House Democrats had helped kickstart our nation’s economy with the American Rescue Plan and passed a budget with historic investments in working families. We went on to pass legislation to reduce drug and energy costs, address the climate crisis, bring jobs back to America, and rebuild our country’s infrastructure with groundbreaking laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Even in the first six months of the 116th Congress, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the House Democratic Majority delivered meaningful reform for the American people by working across the aisle to pass more than 20 bills that were signed into law, including funding to end a 35-day government shutdown caused by Trump and congressional Republicans, legislation to help veterans and victims of natural disasters, and landmark enactments preserving public lands for future generations.
“By contrast, the first MAGA-directed Congress is by far the most reckless and least productive in decades. After holding the American economy hostage by threatening to default on America’s financial obligations, House Republicans are now eagerly pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown. Instead of working on legislation to promote the common good or even just keep the government running, House Republicans are weaponizing their offices and exploiting congressional power and resources to promote debunked and outlandish conspiracy theories about President Biden. This is a transparent effort to boost Donald Trump’s campaign by establishing a false moral equivalency between Trump—the four time-indicted former president now facing 91 federal and state criminal charges, based on a mountain of damning evidence for a shocking range of felonies, including lying to the FBI, endangering national security by illegally keeping classified documents, and conspiring to subvert the U.S. Constitution—and President Biden, against whom there is precisely zero evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever. To the contrary, Chairman Comer’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden.
“House Republicans constantly insist that they are investigating President Biden, and not his adult son. In that case, we can form an obvious judgment on their investigation: it has been a complete and total bust—an epic flop in the history of congressional investigations. The voluminous evidence they have gathered, including thousands of pages of bank records and suspicious activity reports and hours of testimony from witnesses, overwhelmingly demonstrates no wrongdoing by President Biden and further debunks Republicans’ conspiracy theories. Rather than admit this unavoidable truth about their failed investigation, House Republicans have mischaracterized, cherry-picked, and concealed evidence and recycled long debunked conspiracy theories originally peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Trump, all in humiliating subservience to Donald Trump’s petulant demand that they impeach President Biden.
“In the face of Republicans’ shameful perversion of congressional power and misuse of taxpayer dollars for this hopeless wild goose chase, Committee Democrats will continue to defend the truth, the rule of law, and the integrity of our Constitution and democratic institutions.”
Republicans have obtained enormous amounts of evidence as part of their probe. None of it shows any wrongdoing by President Biden; in fact, the evidence proves the opposite.
Chairman Comer has said over and over that his Committee is investigating Joe Biden, “Our investigation is of Joe Biden. It always has been.” As part of this investigation, Committee Republicans have received over 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, reviewed over 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports, and spent hours interviewing witnesses, including two former business associates of Hunter Biden.
Not only does this voluminous evidence fail to even suggest any wrongdoing by President Biden, it in fact proves the opposite. Specifically:
-None of the bank records Comer has released shows any payments to President Biden.
-None of the SARs the Committee reviewed alleges, or even suggests, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do the SARs show any
involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s financial or business relationships.
-Not one of the witness accounts provided to the Committee has shown any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, including accounts from
two IRS agents and a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent, who were involved in the DOJ’s investigation of Hunter Biden.
-Former business associates of Hunter Biden who have been interviewed by the Committee—Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer—explicitly stated
that they have no reason to believe President Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, much less any reason to believe
President Biden took any official action on behalf of his son’s business ventures.
-Mr. Schwerin, who performed bookkeeping and other administrative tasks for then Vice-President Biden and therefore had access to his bank
records, stated that he was not aware of any involvement by President Biden in the financial conduct of his relatives’ businesses, much less any
transactions into or out of the then-Vice President’s bank account related to business conducted by any Biden family member.
-Two IRS agents who testified before the Committee affirmed that they do not have any evidence of political interference by President Biden or
Attorney General Merrick Garland.
-The Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent interviewed by the Committee rejected Republicans’ claims that prosecutorial decisions by U.S.
Attorney David Weiss or his team were the result of any political interference.
Chairman Comer says the biggest “smoking gun” that he has uncovered is the money Hunter Biden, a private citizen, received from international business dealings.
-However, not only has Chairman Comer been criticized by independent fact checkers—for misrepresenting Hunter Biden’s companies as “shell
companies” when they in fact had “legitimate business transactions or investments” and falsely claiming that the Biden family received $20
million from foreign sources—public reporting has also confirmed that “the committee has not found any direct evidence that President Biden
personally benefited from any of his son’s business dealings.”
Rather than owning up to the fact that the evidence in his “top priority” investigation has established no wrongdoing by President Biden, Chairman Comer has resorted to misrepresenting and distorting this huge body of evidence to make baseless and sensationalistic claims.
-Chairman Comer has repeatedly, and without evidence, asserted the falsehood that President Biden has inappropriately received foreign money: “We’ve got a
President of the United States who’s taken millions and millions of dollars from bad people and bad countries around the world. […] We’ve got a President that’s
compromised. We’ve got a President who has violated laws, who should be treated as a criminal. He’s the one that’s a criminal.”
+These statements are plainly false with respect to President Biden—although they are almost certainly true of Donald Trump.
-Chairman Comer blatantly misrepresented Devon Archer’s statements to the Committee, falsely asserting that Mr. Archer “admitted that the Burisma executives
were squeezing Hunter Biden to try to do everything he could to get the prosecutor Shokin fired, because they were going after their corrupt energy company.
And lo and behold, a few days later, Joe Biden actually did that.”
+In actuality, Mr. Archer clarified that he was informed that then-Vice President Biden’s efforts leading an international coalition calling for the removal of
corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin were “bad for Burisma” because Burisma had Mr. Shokin “under control.”
+As PolitiFact reported: “Archer testified that he had no reason to believe Shokin’s removal was because of anything other than the U.S. government’s
anti-corruption policy in place at the time.” Further, “Archer said he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden, he didn’t witness the Bidens
discussing Hunter’s business, and that he’s not aware that any foreign policy was changed to benefit Hunter Biden—which goes against claims that
Republicans have long made about the Bidens.”
-Chairman Comer and other Committee Republicans have falsely suggested that Mr. Archer’s interview “confirms” that President Biden was “involved” in his
son’s business dealings.
+In fact, Mr. Archer established that over the course of his nearly decade-long business relationship and friendship with Hunter Biden, he never heard
Hunter Biden discuss business with his father and never knew the President to be involved in, or knowledgeable about, Hunter Biden’s business
activities.
+The Washington Post: “Devon Archer’s testimony was hailed as a central breakthrough in implicating Joe Biden. Instead, it has a top ally of Hunter
Biden stating under penalty of perjury that Joe Biden was not involved in Hunter Biden’s business and that Biden’s trip to Ukraine in 2015 was not
centered on protecting Burisma at all.”
-Chairman Comer has falsely stated that the alleged financial wrongdoing that Committee Republicans are investigating, including the information reportedly
contained in certain SARs, implicate “the entire [Biden] family.”
+None of the SARs reviewed by Committee staff allege, refer to, or even suggest, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do they show any
involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s financial or business relationships.
-Chairman Comer has repeatedly lied by saying, “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”
+The Washington Post fact checked this false claim and confirmed: “Only about $7 million can be directly attributed to Biden family members, mostly
Hunter, while the rest went to “associates,” according to the memos. […] No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden
himself.”
-Chairman Comer regularly lies about the business activities of Biden family members, for instance by claiming: “There are no legitimate businesses with the
Bidens, not a single one. There’s nothing of these 20 shell companies that you can say produced a good or service.” Similarly, Comer has dishonestly claimed:
“President Biden and his family have created 20 fake companies, 20 shell companies that all that we can tell on the House Oversight Committee over the past
seven months is that their sole purpose was to take money from foreign nationals and launder it down to at least nine different Biden family members in their
personal accounts.”
+A fact check by The Washington Post established that counter to Chairman Comer’s lies, “Virtually all of the companies (many of which now are defunct)
had legitimate business interests. Others had clearly identified business investments.”
+Further, there is no evidence that President Biden had any involvement, whatsoever, with any of these companies.
-Chairman Comer, on multiple occasions, has lied about then-Vice President Biden’s email addresses and scheduling with his son, saying, “Joe Biden was using
a pseudonym and he copied his son about a shady, shady transaction where Joe Biden was going to leverage American tax dollars to save his son’s butt. …
Along the same time period, we found a pseudonym where he copied Hunter Biden and it would lead one to believe that this was Joe Biden’s way of copying
Hunter Biden to say, okay, send it to the Burisma owners and tell them help is on the way, and five days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine to begin the process of
firing the prosecutor in exchange for America tax dollars in the form of foreign aid.”
+A fact check by The Washington Post found this was a “whopper” of a false statement and gave Chairman Comer “Four Pinocchios” for his false “claims
that Biden was sending a secret message to his son about how he was going to tell the Ukrainian president to fire the prosecutor—but the email was
sent two months after the firing. Skeptics may doubt whether Hunter Biden was copied on the email for family matters, but it’s certainly not because of
the nefarious purpose suggested by Comer.”
+The fact check also found Chairman Comer misrepresented then-Vice President Biden’s use of email aliases as unusual, pointing out it was a common
and well-known government practice among high-ranking government officials to avoid having inboxes flooded with messages.
Lacking real evidence, the Republicans’ investigation has devolved into a voyeuristic and sensationalistic obsession with Hunter Biden that, by Chairman Comer’s own account, is “counter to a credible investigation.” Chairman Comer has even resorted to targeting President Biden’s granddaughter and baselessly accusing President Biden of laundering money through his grandchildren to evade taxes.
This is just a small sampling of Chairman Comer and Republicans’ near daily distortions of and straight-up lies about key allegations at the center of their probe. These falsehoods have become the defining hallmark of their failed investigation.
The central allegation of Chairman Comer’s baseless investigation, the Burisma conspiracy theory, was peddled by Rudy Giuliani and former President Trump to distract from Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
Trump has repeatedly returned to the Burisma conspiracy theory and has made it a centerpiece of both of his reelection efforts.
-Trump and Rudy Giuliani pushed these debunked conspiracy claims when he was first impeached in 2019, then again during the 2020 election. Trump has
returned to these fabrications as part of his reelection campaign, often explicitly seizing on the misinformation promoted by House Republicans’ fantasy-like
investigation.
-Following Trump’s lead, in nearly every single one of Chairman Comer’s regular appearances on Fox News and Newsmax, the Chairman promotes the long
discredited Burisma conspiracy theory first pushed by President Trump and the notorious fabulist Rudy Giuliani.
-Just a few weeks ago, Chairman Comer doubled down once again, claiming the Burisma conspiracy is “100 percent correct.”
Contrary to Chairman Comer’s insistence that “this Burisma deal is not over,” this fictitious conspiracy has been debunked by years of investigations and independent reporting.
-It was debunked by the testimony of witnesses in Trump’s first impeachment.
-It was debunked by the witnesses interviewed as part of Senate Republicans’ investigation in 2020.
-It was debunked by a 2020 assessment conducted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department and entrusted to a U.S. Attorney hand-picked by then-Attorney
General Barr.
-It was debunked by Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma executive who allegedly partook in the bribery scheme, as evidenced by a document the Committee has
had in its possession since 2019.
-Earlier this summer, the same narrative was debunked and ridiculed by former key Giuliani associate Lev Parnas in his astonishing 10-page letter to Chairman
Comer, which Parnas offered to reaffirm under oath before the Committee.
In his recent interview with the Committee, Mr. Archer became the latest witness to debunk this exhausted conspiracy theory, explaining his understanding that
“Shokin being fired was a -- was not good, because he was like under control as relates to Mykola [Zlochevsky, Burisma’s owner].”
-Addressing years-old, second-hand bribery allegations in an unverified 2020 FBI Form FD-1023 tipsheet, Mr. Archer explicitly stated that he would disagree with
anyone concluding from the 1023 form that Joe Biden was bribed by Zlochevsky, dismissing the allegations as the kind of brag, exaggeration, and fib that are
common among Ukrainian businessmen. The confidential human source who originally reported the information to the FBI in 2020 himself noted it was not
unusual for Ukrainian business executives to brag and show-off and that he could not offer any opinion as to the veracity of the allegations he was relaying.
-Even Fox News’s own internal research unit, known as the “Brain Room” determined these attacks to be “disinformation.”
Unfazed by this overwhelming evidence of the truth, Chairman Comer has simply been urging America to drink from the badly contaminated well of conspiracy theories poisoned by Giuliani, Trump, and foreign agents advancing the interests of the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party. And just as President Trump has demanded, Chairman Comer has then used those conspiracy theories as ‘evidence’ in his probe and as a basis to threaten to withhold funding for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, even shockingly going so far as to call Ukraine an “adversary of the United States.”
In fact, much of the Republicans’ investigation consists of regurgitating old and disproven information and misrepresenting it as new evidence.
-Committee Republicans have argued that Hunter Biden was compromised by Elena Baturina, the wife of a former mayor of Moscow. This narrative was
undermined by independent reporting years ago, including by the Washington Post, CNN, and more recently, by Mr. Archer, who said in a transcribed interview
that Hunter “was not involved” with that transaction.
-Discussing some of the bank records that Republicans have touted as significant evidence, Sen. Ron Johnson admitted this spring, “There’s really no new
information […] this was all out there since before the 2020 election.” Sen. Johnson also made clear that these allegations are years’ old, “We laid this all out in
our September 2020 report, then followed up by a November 2020 add-on report.”
-Committee Republicans attempted to pass off Hunter Biden’s legal work on behalf of Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu as new evidence. However,
that work, which Hunter Biden performed while he was counsel at the law firm Boies Schiller, has long been known, and there is no evidence whatsoever that
President Biden took any official actions or was influenced in any way by his son’s representation of Mr. Popoviciu.
-Committee Republicans have sought to characterize a wire transfer from a Kazakh businessman used to purchase a sports car for Hunter Biden as a damning
revelation, but this was already evaluated as part of the 2020 Senate investigation as well as the investigation by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office. And, yet
again, Republicans have identified no link between this transaction and President Biden.
-Committee Republicans have repackaged old information about the business relationship between Hunter Biden, a private citizen, and a Chinese energy
company, and presented this as evidence of wrongdoing. Not only is there no evidence President Biden had any involvement in this business association, it
took place between the Obama and Biden Administrations, at a time when President Biden held no public office.
-Committee Republicans have also touted a $3 million transfer in March 2017 to Robinson Walker LLC, that they report was shared between Hunter Biden,
James Biden, and their business partner James Gilliar. This transaction, which does not involve President Biden, is neither new nor evidence of wrongdoing,
and was made public in 2020.
Earlier this year, Bill Hemmer pointed out to Chairman Comer that, “It’s been five years, and what do we have for it?” Hemmer later answered his own question, “Nothing just yet.”
Republican pundits, from Fox News’s Steve Doocy to MAGA extremists and former Trump advisors Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, as well as congressional Republicans, including members of the Oversight Committee, have conceded that Chairman Comer’s investigation has failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden and have called into question the credibility of Chairman Comer’s allegations and the integrity of pursuing an impeachment inquiry.
-Live on Fox News, Steve Doocy has repeatedly questioned Chairman Comer’s inability to point to “any evidence” that shows President Biden is compromised,
that any policy was ever influenced, or that any crime was committed, even stating: “You don't actually have any facts to that point. You've got some
circumstantial evidence […] And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is—there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything
illegally.” Last week, Doocy explained: “The Republicans in those districts that Joe Biden won, they’ve got to be able to say, look, I voted for it because look at
this. It shows that there was corruption, actual corruption, not just bank records, but things that show that laws were broken. So far, Comer and company have
not been able to put that together.”
-Former Trump official Sebastian Gorka tweeted that, “Comer is failing in his efforts to investigate” President Biden, called Chairman Comer’s supposed findings,
“crap—he’s reporting stuff that we knew 2 years ago,” and said that Chairman Comer’s Biden probe is “pathetic.”
-Breitbart editor Emma Jo-Morris criticized Chairman Comer for promoting bribery allegations against President Biden even though he has “not shown [proof] to
the public,” while Steve Bannon also lambasted Chairman Comer for failing to provide evidence to support his bribery allegations, saying of Chairman Comer,
“You’re not serious. It’s all performative.”
-Rep. Ken Buck argued, “This is impeachment theater. We right now are starting the appropriations process.” Rep. Buck added, “I don’t think it’s responsible for
us to talk about impeachment,” and described Speaker McCarthy as using impeachment as a “shiny object” to distract Members and “the public.”
-Rep. Buck has also said, “They are looking to see if there is a connection with Joe Biden. […] Right now, I’m not convinced that that evidence exists. And I’m
not supporting an impeachment inquiry” as well as, “I do not think that evidence has been presented, and I don’t think there’s a need to have an impeachment
inquiry.”
-Rep. Don Bacon acknowledged that Republicans have failed to prove any wrongdoing by President Biden, “If you wanna get any progress in the Senate, you’re
gonna have to show not potential wrongdoing, but wrongdoing. I don’t think we’re there yet.” Rep. Bacon also said that he thinks “we need to have more
concrete evidence to go down” the impeachment inquiry path.
-Sen. Ron Johnson conceded that Republicans have not found any “direct evidence” or “hard proof” of wrongdoing by President Biden.
-Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Chairman Comer’s bribery allegations, “If you ask me, ‘Is Joe Biden the type of guy who would take a $5 million bribe?’ My
answer is, based on my experience, no.”
-Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said, “I don’t know what the basis of this call for impeachment is. It just sounds like a lot of noise to me.” Sen. Capito also
responded "I do not" when asked if she thinks there is evidence to support an impeachment.
-Sen. Mitt Romney acknowledged, “I haven’t seen any evidence” that meets the “constitutional test for impeachment.”
-Kris Kolesnik, former senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Grassley, wrote that Chairman Comer and Chairman Jim Jordan “struggle mightily
with the concept of credibility.”
-Terry Sullivan, a former advisor to congressional Republicans, said in regard to impeachment, “I would caution Republicans on this. Going after Biden seems
like a really poor decision.”
-Maura Gillespie, a former House GOP leadership aide, and other veteran senior GOP congressional aides argued that “rather than caving to mounting pressure
from conservative hardliners demanding to impeach President Joe Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his lieutenants should focus on issues that affect
everyday Americans.”
-Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican Member of the Oversight Committee, admitted: “I’ve heard over and over that President Biden has not been implicated or
proven for any wrongdoing here, and I acknowledge that for now.”
-Rep. Nick Langworthy, a Republican Member of the Oversight Committee, “tried to defend the GOP investigation into Joe Biden’s alleged corruption—only to
end up admitting that they still don’t have any proof.”
-Rep. Mike Lawler said, “The question me [sic] right now is, the investigations, are they producing enough facts and evidence that warrant taking it to the next
step? [...] I don’t think it’s there at the moment.”
-Rep. Tony Gonzales criticized some of his conservative colleagues’ impeachment calls as being a distraction from “real issues” important to the American
people, “The people back at home in my district are worried about inflation, worried about the border, their kids being safe in school — you know, real issues.”
-An anonymous GOP lawmaker offered the following assessment to CNN: “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed
to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that. And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the
evidence exists.”
-In a memo, Chairman Comer’s own staff begrudgingly conceded that they had no evidence of “direct payments to Joe Biden,” contradicting the Chairman’s own
claims to the contrary.
Despite the contention from many of his fellow Republicans that an impeachment inquiry would lack any basis in fact, Speaker McCarthy has said that an impeachment inquiry is nevertheless necessary for Republicans to uncover the evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden that they baselessly insist exists—effectively admitting that any such inquiry would amount to nothing more than a wasteful ‘second bite at the apple’ to try to find support for a theory that Senate Republicans’ 2020 investigation and Chairman Comer’s own investigation have already disproven.
In essence, Speaker McCarthy has likewise admitted that such an inquiry would be nothing more than a taxpayer-funded, opposition research fishing expedition for the sole benefit of the Trump campaign.
Rather than acknowledging that the voluminous documents they have reviewed—including over 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, over 2,000 pages of SARs, and hours of interviews with witnesses—have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, House Republicans—once again shifting their focus when their previous allegations come up empty—are advancing a false claim of “obstruction” to justify an impeachment inquiry.
Chairman Comer has made meritless accusations that his investigation has been the victim of “obstruction” by the Biden Administration.
-This false narrative has been contradicted by Chairman Comer’s own statements touting the vigor and comprehensiveness of his investigation: “Every
subpoena that I have signed, as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we have gotten 100% of what we requested, whether
it’s with the FBI or with the banks or with Treasury.”
-Even Steve Bannon has emphasized the emptiness of Chairman Comer’s claims of obstruction saying, “Comer, you’ve got the power.”
The truth is that Chairman Comer has collected and reviewed an extraordinary volume of materials as part of his investigation. Chairman Comer does not lack evidence—he has substantial evidence, but it shows no wrongdoing by the President and undermines the false GOP allegations.
The Biden-Harris Administration has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans’ often ridiculous and transparently political demands.
-When Committee Republicans demanded that the FBI produce an unverified tipsheet, a Form FD-1023 containing allegations that have been repeatedly
debunked, the FBI brought the form to the Hill, repeatedly, for all Members of the Committee to see. Senior FBI officials also provided several informational
briefings.
-When Committee Republicans issued a broad request to the Treasury Department for any Suspicious Activity Report mentioning Hunter Biden and other
members of the President’s family, as well as several other individuals and entities, the Treasury Department promptly complied and made them available.
Chairman Comer himself, along with a number of Republican Members of the Committee, reviewed these materials and tweeted about their review outside the
Treasury building.
-Republicans’ claims of “obstruction” appear to be based on documents they never requested from the White House or Administration.
-Just last week Chairman Comer made false claims of obstruction and referred to “government agencies that are refusing to turn over valuable information like
the National Archives.” The Archivist has been working with Chairman Comer to identify and provide the requested documents in accordance with the
Presidential Records Act.
-Chairman Comer’s claim of “obstruction” rings especially hollow when compared to the deliberate, across-the-board stonewalling of congressional
investigations by the Trump Administration—a point on which Chairman Comer and his Republican colleagues have been conspicuously silent.
The fact that Republicans are now resorting to false and absurd claims of “obstruction” because they have been unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden further demonstrates that this impeachment effort is entirely illegitimate and that Republicans are misleading the American people about the facts and wasting our tax dollars.
Republicans’ probe is a transparent effort to weaponize Congress to do Trump’s bidding.
It is clear that Republicans’ unfounded investigation and baseless impeachment effort amounts to nothing more than using taxpayer dollars to help reelect Donald Trump, who, over a year and a half ago, was already demanding that House Republicans investigate President Biden and help him “kick the Biden crime family out of the White House in 2024.” Former President Trump has recently made his demands more explicit, threatening Republican House Members who refuse to impeach President Biden with retaliation at the polls, “Impeach the bum or fade into oblivion. They did it to us.”
-Before the 118th Congress even started, Chairman Jim Jordan was already promising that Republican-led investigations would “frame up the 2024 race, when I
hope and I think President Trump is going to run again. And we need to make sure he wins.” Chairman Comer, for his part, assured Fox News viewers last
year that impeaching President Biden was already “on the table.”
-Republicans have said themselves that they “aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not.”
-Chairman Comer has admitted the Committee’s investigations are aimed at propping up Donald Trump’s reelection efforts: “You look at the polling and right
now Donald Trump is 7 points ahead of Joe Biden and trending upward. Joe Biden is trending downward. […] The American people are keeping up with our
investigation, and they realize something is wrong here.”
-These statements register an historical echo of House Republicans’ weaponization of the House Select Committee on Benghazi in the 114th Congress to attack
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and explicitly to hurt her campaign for President.
Independent reporting has confirmed that, “Not only are Trump, his aides and close allies regularly apprised of Republicans’ committee work, they also at times exert influence over it.”
-This is a “familiar playbook” for House Republicans, “who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority—which includes the ability to launch
investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding—to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles.”
-Republican representatives have even proposed using the appropriations process to defund prosecutions of former President Trump.
+Rep. Andrew Clyde, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, announced in August plans to introduce amendments to the Senate’s Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies fiscal 2024 appropriations bill that would “prohibit any federal funds from being used in federal or state courts to
prosecute major presidential candidates prior to the 2024 election.”
+Other Trump allies, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Andy Ogles have communicated their intent to take similar steps.
-Recently, Rep. Greene asserted that, “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe
Biden.” The MAGA playbook is to shut the government down unless the failed probe of President Biden is turned into an impeachment drive on Trump’s behalf.
Republicans’ use of congressional resources to help elect Trump is part of a pattern dating back many months.
-Throughout the 118th Congress, Chairman Comer has only released the full transcripts of transcribed interviews on days when Trump was arraigned or indicted
—once after ignoring Ranking Member Raskin’s calls to release a transcript for an entire month, and in another case, broke with Committee practice, rushing out
a transcript in just three days without affording the witness’s attorney a reasonable opportunity to review it.
-Chairman Comer has also impeded investigations that have uncovered actual evidence of corruption. Upon taking the Committee gavel, he allowed Trump’s
personal attorneys to act on behalf of the Committee and relieve the former President’s accounting firm, Mazars, from its obligation to produce additional
financial records pursuant to a Committee subpoena and a court-supervised settlement agreement.
-In a now familiar pattern of political reprisal against law enforcement authorities who investigate or charge Donald Trump, we know from New York Times
reporting that congressional Republicans—interfering in a state law enforcement proceeding—announced an investigation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin
Bragg after Trump’s attorney wrote a letter demanding Chairman Jordan do so, in light of growing speculation Mr. Bragg was about to indict the former
President.
Following news of a plea agreement between Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss and Hunter Biden in the DOJ investigation in Delaware, Trump took to Truth Social to baselessly attack the DOJ, writing, “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!”
-On cue, Republican Members quickly parroted Mr. Trump’s attack. Speaker McCarthy claimed that the plea agreement was the result of “the two-tier system in
America,” and stated: “If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the
president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”
-This claim has been conclusively refuted by witnesses before the Committee, including a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent who rejected Republicans’
claims of political interference and two IRS agents who testified before the Committee and affirmed that they had no evidence of political interference by
President Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland.
-Chairman Comer has openly discussed his efforts to interfere with Hunter Biden’s ongoing criminal matter and, indeed, has repeatedly taken credit for a federal
judge’s decision not to immediately approve Hunter Biden’s plea agreement, stating at a July 26, 2023, hearing: “I think that you’re seeing our investigation
that’s shined a light on the many wrongdoings of the Biden family has picked up a lot of credibility today, because now we see that there are a lot of crimes that
this family’s committed and that played out in court today.”
When former President Trump’s indictment for willfully retaining classified documents became imminent, Chairman Comer fabricated a reason to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress.
-Despite Wray’s extensive efforts to accommodate Chairman Comer’s subpoena, the Chairman inexplicably moved to hold Director Wray in contempt of
Congress because the FBI, based on plainly reasonable concerns about the safety of its confidential human sources and integrity of its investigations, did not
give Chairman Comer an unredacted, physical copy of a single document—a document that Senator Grassley already had in his possession and Chairman
Comer had already viewed.
-Also in obedience to Trump, Chairman Comer has repeatedly attacked the FBI and the DOJ as they investigate and prosecute former President Trump for
jeopardizing national security by retaining and lying to the FBI about classified documents and attempting to undermine American democracy by overturning the
2020 presidential election, calling for FBI funding to be “significantly cut,” Director Wray and AG Garland to be ousted, the entire FBI be “dismantled,” and their
budget held “hostage.”
House Republicans’ probe into the Biden family and baseless attacks on President Biden are a transparent and desperate attempt to distract the American public from the unmatched and pervasive corruption of President Trump and his Administration.
-In stark contrast to the fact that Republican investigations have demonstrated no evidence of any wrongdoing by President Biden, there is overwhelming
evidence that President Trump personally and repeatedly committed crimes while in office and used the power of the presidency for personal gain.
-On CNN, Chairman Comer said that he would investigate “Trump and some of his family members including Jared Kushner” and later acknowledged the billions
of dollars Jared Kushner received from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies—including a $2 billion investment by a Saudi sovereign wealth fund only
months after leaving the White House— “crossed the line of ethics.” Chairman Comer even conceded, “I don’t disagree with the Democrats and their criticism
of the previous administration.”
-Yet, despite his professed concerns about presidential corruption, instead of investigating President Trump and his Administration, including the 500 LLCs that
President Trump refused to divest from and used to receive millions of dollars from foreign governments while President, Chairman Comer has allowed Donald
Trump’s attorneys to speak on behalf of the Committee to block the production of financial documents related to those very foreign payments.
-Despite claiming, “I’m not defending Kushner,” Chairman Comer has also allowed Jared Kushner to ignore and defy Committee Democrats' request for
documents for over a year and recently rejected Ranking Member Raskin’s request that he issue a subpoena to Mr. Kushner’s investment fund to compel their
compliance.
-Chairman Comer candidly told the New York Times that, despite his agreement with criticism of self-dealing in the Trump Administration, investigating the Trump
family is “politically unsustainable.”
-Congressional Democrats, as well as state and federal prosecutors, have set forth overwhelming evidence of the endemic corruption of former President Trump
and his Administration, which was unprecedented in American history in both scale and frequency. Yet congressional Republicans have continued to empower
Trump while he calls for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” and promises to weaponize the federal
government against his political opponents and their families.
Over the past eight months, congressional Republicans’ have consistently taken to right-wing cable television to make wild and baseless accusations about President Biden while distorting the actual evidence in the Committee’s possession and concealing it from the American people. Republicans have used this strategy to consume congressional resources for months, desperately and repeatedly shifting their focus among baseless theories and false ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing by President Biden.
The truth is that the mountain of evidence Republicans have gathered and reviewed shows no wrongdoing, in any respect, by President Biden. Republicans’ lust to move forward with an impeachment inquiry on the basis of this utterly failed investigation is a transparent effort to boost former President Trump’s reelection prospects and distract from the overwhelming evidence of his criminal and corrupt conduct during his term of office.
If House Republicans vote to open an impeachment inquiry in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, let alone the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required under the Constitution, they will once again be enabling former President Trump’s efforts to subvert American democracy and achieve his desired “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” in order to return to power and avoid being held accountable for his pervasive crimes and corruption.
Twitter appears to throttle New York Times
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/10/2023/twitter-appears-to-throttle-new-york-times
Sep 10, 2023, 6:15pm MDT
X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times.
Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X.
The drop in engagement in Times posts seems isolated to X: NewsWhip data showed that engagement with Times links shared on Facebook remained consistent relative to other outlets.
“There was a drop off in engagement for NYT compared to the other sites in late July/early August,” NewsWhip spokesperson Benedict Nicholson told Semafor.
Times employees had already taken note of the pattern, as high-profile attempts to share Times articles failed to travel on the platform. For instance, earlier this week, former President Barack Obama shared multiple New York Times articles on X about healthcare costs, which the service said reached fewer than 900,000 and 800,000 users respectively. The number was far lower than any other post shared by the former president since X began sharing that data publicly earlier this year — for comparison, a Politico link shared by the president got nearly 13 million views.
The shift hasn’t gone unnoticed at the Times. Two newsroom higher-ups at the paper said that Times leadership was aware of the issue and was examining the root of the drop off.
A spokesperson for the paper declined to comment.
Title iconMAX’S VIEW
It’s unclear why Times engagement on Twitter has been throttled. X did not return a request for comment. But the move reflects a broad shift in platforms over the last five years, away from platforms attempting to portray themselves as neutral distribution channels to competing media outlets, and toward a splintering in which Facebook has largely gotten out of the news business, Twitter has shifted increasingly toward becoming a conservative media company, and Google and Apple are the remaining the platform giants interested in distributing other outlets’ news. X recently objected to a California law requiring the disclosure of content moderate, for instance, by citing first amendment protections for its editorial decisions.
The dip in engagement is not a major audience problem for the Times. Like other major news orgs, the paper gets the vast majority of its traffic and readership from other sources (a lot of people still read the physical paper, as we’ll discuss later in the newsletter).
But it appears that the Times has been singled out for some reason on X. It wouldn’t be the first time that the platform has focused on the Times since Musk took over. Twitter briefly suspended Times tech reporter Ryan Mac last year. Earlier this summer, X briefly imposed a several second delay on traffic from Twitter to links to the Times, Reuters and social media rivals including Facebook and Instagram. The move came after Musk criticized the paper’s coverage of events in his native South Africa, advising users on how to skirt the Times paywall. Several days later, he said that the Times was a “declining, once-powerful, but fundamentally doomed to be regional & increasingly archaic legacy publication.”
At the time, a spokesperson for the paper said it had not received an explanation, but that it “would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons.”
The recent history of Musk needling the Times on Twitter and the fact that the paper’s engagement is unaffected on Facebook and other outlets makes other explanations harder to believe.
Title iconNOTABLE
Musk’s social media network has tinkered with bans and disruptions to links. After blocking links to the newsletter platform Substack, quietly reversed the move following protests from Substack writers.
X’s entry into the subscription business isn’t going particularly well: Since rolling out a paid subscription service, the platform has garnered only 40,000 subscribers.
Ok, the last beating over the head with it. For tonight anyway. Mother Nature will never get tired of FAFO and has other plans.
Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F for the 54th consecutive day
Saturday’s temperature had triggered an excessive heat warning across Arizona as lows were expected to range between 80F and 86F
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/09/phoenix-breaks-heat-record-as-city-hits-110f-for-the-54th-consecutive-day
Maya Yang
Sat 9 Sep 2023 18.35 EDT
The temperature in Phoenix, Arizona continues to rise as the city broke its previous record of the most consecutive days at or above 110F (43C).
On Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service announced that the temperature at Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport reached 110F, making it the 54th day this year with temperatures of at least 110F.
A traffic warden works in the hot sun in Las Vegas, Nevada
Deadly humid heatwaves to spread rapidly as climate warms – study
Read more
Saturday’s temperature breaks the previous record of 53 days that was set in 2020. From 1991 to 2020, the average consecutive days of 110F or above is 21 days, the NWS said.
An excessive heat warning has been issued for south central and south-west Arizona until 8pm on Sunday as weekend highs are expected to range between 108F and 114F. Meanwhile, lows are expected to range between 80F to 86F.
The NWS has warned of high risk of heat stress or illnesses to people or animals and urged residents to stay hydrated. It also advised against sun exposure from 10am to 6pm and for residents to wear light and loose fitting clothing. Moreover, it warned that fans may not be adequate and urged residents who have access to air conditioning to use it.
Earlier this summer, Phoenix grappled with a 31-day streak of temperatures at or above 110F as a blistering and historic heatwave swept across numerous states including Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California.
The previous record was set in 1974 during which the city saw 18 consecutive days of at or above 110F.
According to Nasa’s global temperature analysis, June 2023 was the hottest June on record.
This summer’s heat has led to millions of residents being placed under extreme heat advisories. It has also fanned wildfires across western parts of the country while heat-related deaths soared.
On Wednesday, officials from Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, reported that there have been 194 confirmed heat-associated deaths this year as of 2 September. An additional 351 are under investigation.
In 2022, the county saw 153 heat-associated deaths during the same week last year while another 238 remain under investigation.
This year, the majority of heat-associated deaths occurred among people between 50 and 64 years old. Additionally, 59% of the heat-associated deaths in the county have been among white non-Hispanics, making it the most number of deaths by race and ethnicity.
In mid-August, governor Katie Hobbs declared a state of emergency after 30 consecutive days of excessive heat warnings across Coconino, Maricopa and Pinal counties, which would allow the state to reimburse various government entities for expenses used on heat relief.
...and it continues. I think Ramaswamy better quit while he's behind, he only digs himself a deeper hole at this table. Again though, he doesn't need to really make the numbers work for the American citizens, just has to make the political pandering story work and satisfy the required spoils going back into the Republican doners and backer's pockets.
Mark Cuban
@mcuban
.VR: You reference my biggest donor. That’s me. 😉. **
MC: Ok your next biggest donors and the republicans you need to make happy to get the nomination. I apologize for not knowing the obvious.
VR:Our education system gets most of its work done at the local level & what we’ll do with the former federal funds is support parents to access better schools that teach children instead of serving their union clients. A novel idea, I know.
MC: “support parents” is far different than distributing 80b to them.
MC: if I’m reading your plan right, you end the DOE and reassign those functions to other departments?
You save 9b from closing DoE.
What I dont understand is why you think it will be cheaper and more efficient in treasury over education ? Particularly given the added dollar and time risk of moving it from one bureaucracy and adding it to another ? Isn’t there a real risk it could be more expensive and take years, requiring you to keep it in Ed till it can be moved ?
And maybe I’m reading it wrong, but you say you are reassigning $52b to the states. Isn’t that part of the $80b you said you were giving to parents ? And same with the 20b dollars for armed Marshalls. Is this not distributing the same money 3 times (parents /states/Marshall’s) ? What am I missing ?
And I’m not sure what you are doing in response to your position that 62b is going to loans /grants for college educations that are not offering a return to those students. etc. Are you going to stop them or ?
If you stop it , what happens to public universities when 62b is pulled from the market ?
Personally, I would rather see a single free 4 year school in each region.
I do agree with you that having states send money to the feds and then sending it back is ridiculous. Automating it so it’s just netted out is more efficient
Quote
Vivek Ramaswamy
@VivekGRamaswamy
·
3h
.@mcuban, I’m glad you wrote this in 30 minutes while watching a game. It shows. You reference my biggest donor. That’s me. 😉
Our education system gets most of its work done at the local level & what we’ll do with the former federal funds is support parents to access better… twitter.com/mcuban/status/… Show more
https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1700682623847399871
Just love the ongoing slaughter of Ranaswamy's brain by Mark Cuban. But then Ranaswamy doesn't really need a brain for entering the most like trump contest and GOP culture wars.
Mark Cuban
@mcuban
I'll play along
@VivekGRamaswamy
.
80b will fund your UBI for school age parents program? Let's do the math on a per child basis.
There are about 75m kids 17 and under, and 25m 0 - 5 yrs old. Do the parents of those kids under 5 get anything ? I'll presume not
So your 80b is allocated across 50m kids. That's 1600 per kid right? Per Year. Right $800 per semester ?
How do you think that $1600 gets spent?
But wait there's more.
Let's say parents are efficient buyers and schools go along with letting any child in. Do you think the best public schools will accept any child for $1600 ? Possibly over-flowing their schools? Requiring more local and state tax money to expand ?
And,I'm guessing your biggest donors will have something to say about who goes to their kid's school. My NIMBY-dar is strong on this one.
So let's pretend that parents and schools figure out some equilibrium and there are schools that will add the children for 1600.
Who is going to pay for make those schools bigger ? Do you think $1600 per additional child will cover the capital and ongoing expenses bill ?
How happy do you think taxpayers w no kids will be about that ?
But wait there is more... at first glance giving $1600 to parents may sound great, but the reality is not every parent can take their kids to school across town.
So now you have kids who can only go to the closest school with only 1600 per yr to contribute. But those same schools may have really needed the funds that the DOE offered them . That money is gone. And they are now getting just $1600 per student. Think that covers what they lost ? If not, what happens to the kids that go to those schools ?
Do your economics advisors believe that the long term cost to American taxpayers for kids that go to underperforming schools increase or decrease state and federal deficits ?
Just for clarification.
I think there is unlimited room for improvement in how we handle education in this country. I just think your approach is really dumb
PS. I did all this in about 30 minutes while watching the end of the Ole Miss Tulane game. It's a great game
Quote
Vivek Ramaswamy
@VivekGRamaswamy
·
7h
Replying to @mcuban
I won’t hold it against you for not knowing the first thing about the U.S. Dept of Education. Here’s how it’ll work: I’ll take the $80BN spent by a useless & toxic agency & put that $$ in the pockets of parents to send their kids to better schools. It’s quite sensible, actually.
https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1700645219744772140
Anybody up for a road trip to Morocco.
Almost at the same time, flash floods in Greece, Morocco and Hong Kong, new high temperatures and record rainfall in many regions of the world.
Look at what happens at 1.2 degrees and then think about what's going on here at 3 degrees...
Moulay Brahim v. Al Haouz, Morocco
Fast zeitgleich Sturzfluten in Griechenland, Marokko oder Hong Kong, neue Hitzehöchstwerte und Rekordniederschläge in vielen Regionen der Welt.
— Peter Jelinek (@Peter_Jelinek) September 9, 2023
Schaut hin, was bei 1,2 Grad passiert und dann überlegt, was bei 3 Grad hier los ist...
Moulay Brahim v. Al Haouz, Marokko 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/8gjMy8yjOj
Of course everything the GOP accuses and bloviates about are only confessions and their own inadequacies.
Marcy does a pretty good writeup about one of the GOP's meek attempts to drag attention away from their traitor trumps criminalities. Trying to stretch a small anthill into El Capitan, but all they can manage is some annoying dirt pile that the gopher quickly swipes out of it's way. But I guess they really don't need much to entertain the blind sheep cult club.
DAVID WEISS MAY HAVE MORE BLUSTER THAN TACTICAL LEVERAGE
September 9, 2023/41 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Hunter Biden /by emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/09/09/david-weiss-may-have-more-bluster-than-tactical-leverage/
There’s something missing from coverage of the claim, made in the second-to-last sentence of a Speedy Trial filing submitted Wednesday, that David Weiss will indict Hunter Biden before September 29, when — according to calculations laid out by prosecutor Leo Wise in the filing — the Speedy Trial Act mandates an indictment.
None of the coverage has considered why David Weiss hasn’t already charged the President’s son.
The filing was submitted in response to an August 31 order from Judge Maryellen Noreika; its very last sentence politely asked her to butt out: “[T]he Government does not believe any action by the Court is necessary at this time.” Given the unusual nature of this legal proceeding, there may at least be question about Wise’s Speedy Trial calculations. One way or another, though, the Speedy Trial clock and the statute of limitations (which Wise said in July would expire on October 12) are ticking.
It would take probably half an hour to present the evidence for the weapons charge — which would consist of the form Hunter signed to purchase a gun, passages from Hunter’s book, a presumed grand jury transcript from Hallie Biden, and testimony from an FBI agent — to a grand jury. It would take maybe another ten minutes if Weiss wanted to add a false statements charge on top of the weapons charge. There certainly would be no need for a special grand jury.
Any tax charges would be more complicated, sure, but they would be in one or another district (probably Los Angeles), ostensibly severed from the weapons charge to which the misdemeanors planned as part of an aborted plea deal were linked.
So why wait? Why not simply indict and avoid any possible challenge to Speedy Trial calculations?
The answer may lie in something included in a long NYT story citing liberally from an anonymous senior law enforcement official who knew at least one thing that only David Weiss could know. That story explains that Weiss sought Special Counsel status, in part, to get, “added leverage in a revamped deal with Mr. Biden.”
If Weiss indeed sought Special Counsel status to get leverage for a deal, then at least last month when he asked for it, he wasn’t really planning on indicting Hunter Biden. He was hoping to get more tactical leverage to convince Hunter Biden to enter into a plea agreement that would better satisfy GOP bloodlust than the plea that failed in July.
Now he has used the opportunity presented by Noreika’s order to claim he really really is going to indict Hunter, a claim that set off predictably titillated reporting about the prospect of a Hunter Biden trial during the presidential election.
Again, if you’re going to charge Hunter Biden with a simple weapons charge, possibly a false statements charge, why not do it already, rather than threatening to do it publicly? Why not charge him in the week after Noreika entered that order, mooting all Speedy Trial concerns?
Abbe Lowell appears unimpressed with Weiss’ promised indictment. He repeated in both a separate filing and a statement to the press that Weiss can’t charge Hunter because he already entered into a diversion agreement pertaining to the charge.
We believe the signed and filed diversion agreement remains valid and prevents any additional charges from being filed against Mr. Biden, who has been abiding by the conditions of release under that agreement for the last several weeks, including regular visits by the probation office. We expect a fair resolution of the sprawling, five-year investigation into Mr. Biden that was based on the evidence and the law, not outside political pressure, and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that.
I think few stories on this have accounted for the possibility that that statement — “we’ll do what is necessary … to achieve” a fair resolution of the case — is as pregnant a threat as DOJ’s promise to indict in the next several weeks. That’s because everything leading up to David Weiss obtaining Special Counsel status actually squandered much of any leverage that Weiss had, and that’s before you consider the swap of Chris Clark as Hunter’s lead attorney for the more confrontational Lowell, making Clark available as a witness against Weiss.
As Politico (but not NYT, working off what are presumably the same materials) laid out, Hunter’s legal team has long been arguing that this investigation was plagued by improper political influence.
But even before the plea deal was first docketed on June 20, the GOP House started interfering in ways that will not only help Abbe Lowell prove there was improper influence, but may well give him unusual ability to go seek for more proof of it.
It appears to have started between the time the deal was struck on June 8 and when it was docketed on June 20. AUSA Lesley Wolf, who had negotiated the deal, was replaced by Leo Wise and others. When Weiss claimed, with the announcement of the deal, that the investigation was ongoing and he was even pursuing dodgy leads obtained from a likely Russian influence operation, it became clear that the two sides’ understanding of the deal had begun to rupture. This is the basis of Lowell’s claim that Weiss reneged on the deal: that Weiss approved an agreement negotiated by Wolf but then brought in Wise to abrogate that deal.
Whatever the merit of Lowell’s claim that the diversion agreement remains in place — the plea deal was such a stinker that both sides have some basis to defend their side of that argument — by charging Hunter, Weiss will give Lowell an opportunity to litigate the claim that Weiss reneged on the diversion agreement, and will do so on what may be the easier of the two parts of the plea agreements to make a claim that Weiss reneged on a deal, with Judge Noreika already issuing orders to find out why this stinker is still on her docket. I’m not sure how Lowell would litigate it — possibly a double jeopardy challenge — but his promise to do what’s necessary likely guarantees that he will litigate it. He’ll presumably do the same if and when Weiss files tax charges in California. It’s not necessarily that these arguments about reneging on a deal will, themselves, work, but litigating the issue will provide opportunity to introduce plenty more problems with the case.
That’s part of what was missed in coverage of this development this week. Weiss promised to indict. Lowell responded, effectively, by challenging the newly-minted Special Counsel to bring it on, because it will give Lowell opportunity to substantiate his claim that Weiss reneged on a deal because of political influence.
And those IRS agents claiming to be whistleblowers have only offered gift after gift to Lowell to destroy their own case. In their own testimony they revealed:
From the start, a supervisor documented concerns about improper influence and Sixth Amendment problems with this investigation
Joseph Ziegler, the IRS agent who improbably claims to be a Democrat, treated such concerns as liberal bias, evincing political bias on his own part
DOJ didn’t do the most basic due diligence on the laptop and may have used it in warrants, creating poisonous fruit problems
Ziegler treated key WhatsApp messages obtained with a later warrant with shocking sloppiness, and may even have misidentified the interlocutors involved
Ziegler didn’t shield himself from the taint of publicly released laptop materials (and Shapley was further tainted by viewing exhibits during his deposition)
Gary Shapley is hiding … something … in his emails
These two self-proclaimed whistleblowers have made evidence from this case public — all of which would never have seen the light of day if Weiss had honored the plea agreement — without the filter of a prosecutor to clean it up in advance.
All that’s before you consider the rampant leaking.
In both their depositions and their giddy public testimony before the House both Shapely and Ziegler did plenty of things that will provide basis to impeach them, not just as witnesses, but even as investigators, as did their anonymous FBI agent colleague’s laughable claim in his deposition that this was not an investigation riddled with leaks. James Comer seems intent on inviting all the other investigators who have complained they weren’t able to bulldoze rules designed to protect sensitive investigations to be deposed in an adversarial setting, which will provide still more surface area that Lowell can attack.
The gun charge is simple. But what investigative witnesses would present any tax case against Hunter Biden and would their testimony be impressive enough to sustain a case after Lowell serially destroyed Ziegler as the key investigator? And because Weiss has left Lowell with a viable claim that the diversion remains valid, he may be able to introduce the taint of the tax case into any gun prosecution.
Some of this shit goes on in any case, though not usually this much with politically exposed people like the President’s son. But prosecutors have a great number of tools to prevent defendants from learning about it or at least keeping it off the stand. Many of the IRS agents’ complaints were really complaints about Lesley Wolf’s efforts to preserve the integrity of the case. By bitching non-stop about her efforts, the IRS agents have ensured that Hunter Biden will get access to everything that Wolf tried hard to stave off from the investigation.
And there’s something more. Ziegler provided the name of his initial supervisor, who documented concerns that this case was politicized from the start. Both IRS agents identified for Lowell a slew of irregularities he can use to undermine any case. Republicans in Congress have bent over backwards to expose witnesses against Hunter to adversarial questioning (and both IRS agents got downright reckless in their public testimony). The way in which this plea collapsed provides Lowell reason to challenge any indictment from the start.
But the collapse also provided something else, as described in the NYT story: a David Weiss associate told the NYT that Weiss told them that any other American would not be prosecuted on the evidence against Hunter.
Mr. Weiss told an associate that he preferred not to bring any charges, even misdemeanors, against Mr. Biden because the average American would not be prosecuted for similar offenses. (A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.)
If this witness makes themselves available to Lowell, it provides him something that is virtually unheard of in any prosecution: Evidence to substantiate a claim of selective prosecution, the argument that Weiss believes that similarly situated people would not have been prosecuted and the only reason Hunter was being prosecuted was because of non-stop GOP bloodlust that originated with Donald Trump. It is darn near impossible for a defense attorney to get discovery to support a selective prosecution claim. Weiss may have given Lowell, one of the most formidable lawyers in the country, a way to get that discovery.
And all that’s before Lowell unveils whatever evidence he has that Joseph Ziegler watched and did nothing as Hunter Biden’s digital life was hijacked, possibly by people associated with the same Republicans driving the political bloodlust, possibly by the very same sex workers on which the case was initially predicated. That’s before Lowell unveils evidence that Ziegler witnessed what should have been clear alarms that Hunter Biden was a crime victim but Ziegler chose instead to trump up a weak criminal case against the crime victim. I suspect that Weiss doesn’t know what Lowell knows about this, either, adding still more uncertainty to any case he charges.
Over four weeks ago, Leo Wise asked Noreika to dismiss the misdemeanor tax charges against Hunter so they could charge them in another venue.
In light of that requirement, and the important constitutional rights it embodies, the Government moves the Court to dismiss the information without prejudice so that it may bring tax charges in a district where venue lies.
Now he and Weiss have made promises of another upcoming indictment, without yet charging it. At the very least, that suggests that there are a number of challenges to overcome before they can charge Hunter.
They likely still have time on any 2019 tax charges — the ones where, reportedly, both sides agree that Hunter overstated his income, which will make a tax case hard to prove. I’m not saying that Weiss won’t charge Hunter. Indeed, he has backed himself into a corner where he likely has to. But with each step forward, Lowell has obtained leverage to make Weiss’ own conduct a central issue in this prosecution (and even Wise may have made himself a witness given the centrality of his statements during the plea colloquy to Lowell’s claim that the diversion remains valid).
The Speedy Trial filings seem to have hinted at an intense game of chicken between Weiss and Lowell. And thus far at least, Weiss seems more afraid of a Hunter Biden indictment than Lowell is.
That's good to know. Thanks.
Ironically with the Greek floods that their top import is crude petroleum ($19.7B in 2021) and top export of Greece is refined petroleum ($23.1B in 2021), making it the 11th largest exporter of refined petroleum in the world. Can't even begin to count the cost of damage, loss, human toll, and time to recover. I can imagine it might be as much or more than those fossil fuel profits. Profits that went to the fossil fuel industry and will continue to go to, not anything that could cover all the people literally under water.
Yea, I never had the desire or need to invest in that or even trade it. To me it's just 95% fraud, corruption, tax evasion, criminal activity, and grift.
At a party for a project called Degenerate Trash Pandas, I asked one coder if crypto would ever be helpful for regular people. “Why is it that you think that is important?” he said to me, in total sincerity.
A couple more videos on fossil fuel heat and ice melt in the last few days.
Catastrophic floods have absolutely devastated Central Greece.
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) September 8, 2023
Zagora, Greece received 30 inches of rain in one day. That’s more rain than London typically sees in a year.
🎥 @RomainChvtpic.twitter.com/z7j5ISdPbz
158.1mm (6.22 inches) of rain was dumped on Hong Kong in just one hour. Just think about that!#ClimateEmergency #ClimateActionNow pic.twitter.com/M9iTT2B6eE
— Volcaholic 🌋 (@volcaholic1) September 9, 2023
I responded on the other board with Florida's crap, but here's another response.
Pfizer is having an ad appear in newspapers across America.
https://www.pfizer.com/about/responsibility/misinformation
Fighting Misinformation
The spread of rumors and falsehoods can be dangerous. It is a threat to truth that misleads and manipulates people’s perceptions. We are dedicated to helping people find accurate, science-based information as they make healthcare decisions that impact their lives.
Home
About
Responsibility
Misinformation
The Problem with Misinformation
grandmother
On October 30, 1938, CBS Radio aired a series of reports describing a Martian invasion. It turned out to be a dramatization by Orson Welles of H.G. Wells’ science-fiction novel “War of the Worlds.” And the day after the broadcast, legitimate news outlets across the United States reported that real mass hysteria was caused by the broadcast. The problem is, according to modern accounts, it isn’t true and it never was. That is how powerful and potentially dangerous misinformation can be. After 85 years, the myth of a panic that never was persists, even with ample access to the truth.1
So when misinformation about healthcare enters the public discourse, the result can be more than bizarre. It can be dangerous, causing confusion and instilling mistrust that could keep people from getting much-needed help.
“Health misinformation is not a recent phenomenon,” according to an advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General. “In the late 1990s, a poorly designed study, later retracted, falsely claimed that the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. Even after the retraction, the claim gained some traction and contributed to lower immunization rates over the next twenty years.”2
The Rise of Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic
people gathering
“Just a few days after the widespread coronavirus outbreak, unfounded rumors circulated on social media that drinking or gargling alcohol could prevent or cure COVID-19. Subsequently, hospitals encountered a spike in the referral of poisoning cases for the ingestion of industrial-grade ethanol, resulting in an unprecedented high death toll due to alcohol poisoning. As of April 20, 2020, at the time of writing this letter, 700 people have died as a result of ingesting denatured alcohol in an attempt to fight the novel coronavirus. This catastrophe has affected many cities throughout Iran and at least 3,100 people have been hospitalized.”3
From the earliest days of the pandemic, the world has been inundated with misinformation. The World Health Organization calls this phenomenon an “infodemic,” “a flood of information on the COVID-19 pandemic. Infodemiology is the study of that information and how to manage it.”4
What began with unhelpful, unhealthy, and sometimes fatal advice about how to prevent COVID-19 evolved into false information about scientifically developed COVID-19 vaccines and treatments that have been created in accordance with regulatory processes, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Most misinformation and disinformation that has circulated about COVID-19 vaccines has focused on vaccine development, safety, and effectiveness, as well as COVID-19 denialism.”5
Pfizer’s Approach to Fighting Misinformation
Scientific knowledge saves lives. It is how we fight disease and help patients. It is how we encourage our loved ones and neighbours to take the best care of themselves and their health, and promote public health broadly.
Pfizer, as an established brand, is committed to being a source for credible and objective information about medical advancements and trailblazing science. We use our scientific resources and world-class experts to educate and inspire; to provide facts, news, and content that will inform and empower readers, and maybe even make the world a healthier place.
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Pfizer Responds
No, Pfizer is not purposely mutating the COVID-19 virus.
In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research. Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required. Read more: Pfizer Responds to Research Claims
No, the Zantac litigation did not apply to Pfizer Products.
Pfizer sold Zantac only between 1998 and 2006, and the withdrawal of Zantac products from the market in 2019 and 2020 did not involve any Pfizer products. Read more: Pfizer Statement on Zantac Litigation
Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?
How can I tell if information is true?
Who owns Pfizer?
Did Albert Bourla resign from Pfizer?
Does Albert Bourla want to “reduce the number of people in the world by 50%”?
What are Pfizer’s official social media pages?
COVID-19 Misinformation
What is mRNA and how is it used in vaccines?
Does an mRNA vaccine change your DNA?
Did the FDA unauthorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine?
If the COVID-19 vaccine is effective, why do I need additional shots?
Are there bad batches of the COVID-19 vaccines?
Are rumors of Pfizer mutating viruses true?
Why was the Pfizer vaccine not tested for transmission?
Is there graphene oxide in the COVID-19 vaccine?
Does Pfizer use microchips in vaccines?
Is it true that Albert Bourla didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine?
Does the COVID-19 vaccine impact fertility?
What are the side effects of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines?
Pfizer apparently believes this is necessary.
“I think that is really fulfilling of a dream that we had, together with our leadership team when we started in '19, the first week we met in January of '19 in California to set up the goals for the next five years. And one of them was by 2023, we will reduce the number of people in the world that cannot afford our medicines by 50%.”
Anybody use Mark Cuban's CostPlus drug company? I just priced the wife and I prescriptions without insurance and it came out a few bucks cheaper than what we pay with insurance for exact same medications.
https://costplusdrugs.com/
So you want us to be a deadbeat country that doesn't pay it's bills or fulfill it's contractual obligations committed to by the 3 letter agencies you would close and instead spend that money on hiring ten thousand+ lawyers to handle the thousands of lawsuits that will end with billions in settlements ? (Maybe start a Dept of Lawyers?)
As opposed to putting together a results driven plan that defines where efficiencies and improvements can be implemented that result in our country being better educated and more energy efficient at a lower cost to taxpayers ?
Unless of course you don't believe in any of this and you are just pandering like a politician ?
https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1700557442214699220
Smart people first in line for COVID-19 vaccines, study suggests
Nothing to see here, just a dem hoax, nothing to do with fossil fuels/big oil paid for politicians, misinformation and junk science campaigns. Politics at it's worst. Admittingly climate science is complex, takes years of education, studies, and analysis. Science at it's best. But if one just burns a little fossil fuel, plug a heat lamp in and point it on a block of ice or heat some water up and put the block of ice in it and look at the results, it might give one some thoughts.
Science and this planet is writing it's own living book "Climate Science for Dummies", if only people would read it. Instead, the GOP supports and gives our taxes to propaganda books forcing them into the schools and on our children, reaping profits for corrupt republican politicians and certain corporate and fossil fuel friends (e.g. Prager U). Millions given to buy the corrupt justices and so called "leaders" of our government.
First it was total denial, now not being able to deny, they say it's only normal climate change and not any fault of theirs. As Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel al-Jubeir said at COP27: "We don't see this as a discussion about fossil fuels." You know the ones giving billions of dollars to Traitor trump and family et al.
Videos denying climate science approved by Florida as state curriculum
Prager University Foundation’s animations cast doubt over renewable energy and liken climate activists to Nazis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/10/florida-ron-desantis-climate-vidoes-school-curriculum
US ‘university’ spreads climate lies and receives millions from rightwing donors
PragerU is not accredited but has become a key tool in pushing false claims to youngsters – and raked in $200m from 2018 to 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/06/prageru-climate-change-denier-republican-donors
"Among PragerU’s leading financiers are the oil and gas fracking billionaire brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have ponied up at least $8m over the past decade, according to Texas financial records."
‘Propaganda to infect children’s minds’: Climate misinformation textbook mailed to 8,000 US science teachers
The book claims to show that “earth is not experiencing a climate crisis”
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-misinformation-books-teachers-schools-b2315454.html
Louise Boyle
Senior Climate Correspondent, New York
Thursday 06 April 2023 22:12
Real science has published thousands of studies over the years and continues to publish about unprecedented extremes, fossil fuel burning effects, projections of heat extremes, global warming rates (pathway dependent as apposed to warming levels) . One of the measurements talked about is standard deviations and the probabilities and projections to break records by three or more standard deviations in the coming decades (major extreme numbers). This again was stated in some studies just last year.
Brief Communication Open Access Published: 05 October 2021
Increasing heat and rainfall extremes now far outside the historical climate
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-021-00202-w#change-history
Article Published: 26 July 2021
Increasing probability of record-shattering climate extremes
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9
This year;
Antarctica warming much faster than models predicted in ‘deeply concerning’ sign for sea levels
Study finds ‘direct evidence’ of polar amplification on continent as scientists warn of implications of ice loss
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/antarctica-warming-much-faster-than-models-predicted-in-deeply-concerning-sign-for-sea-levels
Antarctica is likely warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and faster than climate change models are predicting, with potentially far-reaching implications for global sea level rise, according to a scientific study.
Numbers on the right are the standard deviations above the norm. Some areas with unprecedented off the chart readings way over projections. And that big block of ice that cools the earth and other needed processes? Say goodbye and hello to hell.
Why haven't we acted more quickly to slow climate change?
It’s not b/c the technology to reduce carbon isn’t ready.
It’s because the people who profit from carbon aren’t ready—and never will be, until we make them.
This was not measured in the normal inches but up to 3 feet in 48hrs.
The data is now official: 3 years’ worth of rain fell within two days. Scientists on Greek TV discussing the possibility of the formation of new, permanent lakes in the area. It is a new planet. #ClimateAction #ClimateCrisis #climatecatastrophe
— George Tsakraklides (@99blackbaloons) September 9, 2023
pic.twitter.com/SuSa52c1iI
In Chai Wan, Hong Kong, under the heavy rain of 150 mm in one hour, the streets have turned into raging rivers! pic.twitter.com/nZrG1t8cQG
— Jim (@yangyubin1998) September 7, 2023
Und hier noch eine weitere Grafik, die den Ausnahmesommer 2023 (global) unterstreicht. https://t.co/LCxWEhfPJY pic.twitter.com/cvUl8Tgoj3
— Karsten Schwanke 🌦️ (@KSchwanke) September 6, 2023
Earth had the hottest three-month period on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and extreme weather.
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) September 6, 2023
🗣️: #StateOfClimate
🔗: https://t.co/Mnt7t1g2VU
📷: @CopernicusECMWF pic.twitter.com/Chje3zZ4A0
How Lindsey Graham escaped charges in Georgia
BY AL WEAVER - 09/08/23 5:54 PM ET
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4194966-lindsey-graham-escaped-charges-georgia/
A long-awaited Georgia grand jury report released Friday provides a look at how Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) avoided being charged in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) election interference case against former President Trump and 18 other defendants.
The report shows that the jury recommended taking the enormous step of bringing charges against the sitting U.S. senator, as well as two former Georgia senators, both of whom were defeated in runoff elections held the day before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
In fact, a majority of the grand jury — 13 members — backed bringing charges against Graham “with respect to the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
But seven other members voted against doing so, exhibiting for the first time the split in the Fulton County grand jury. In contrast, the report showed 20 of 21 jurors recommended charges against Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Legal experts The Hill spoke with after the release of the report said the split vote, along with other factors involved in charging a sitting member of the Senate in the interference plot, likely convinced Willis she would have a steep hill to climb to win a conviction.
“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement that they’re going to be able to prosecute him and get a grand jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed an offense,” said Josh Stanton, an attorney with Perry Law who has penned analyses of various Trump cases.
Graham was a key figure in the case in large part because of his phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who alleged the senator asked him about possibly throwing out votes that were legally cast — a claim Graham dismisses.
That seven grand jury members who didn’t find the charges against Graham convincing would have been a problem for Willis, Stanton said. And that jury, he noted, “heard Lindsey Graham talk about his actions during the election and his effort to maybe speak with Raffensperger, to suggest that he take a particular course of action to help Donald Trump.”
Graham on Friday said he was surprised that charges were even considered.
“I was totally surprised. … I never suggested anybody set aside the election. I never said ‘go find votes.’ I never said anything other than trying to find how the mail-in balloting system worked,” Graham said.
Graham said his call to Raffensperger was “consistent” with his job as a senator and as the then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“At the end of the day, nothing happened,” Graham said. “What I did was consistent with my job as being a U.S. senator, chair of the Judiciary Committee. … I think the system in this country is getting off the rails and we have to be careful not to use the legal system as a political tool.”
The South Carolina Republican added that if he has questions after the 2024 election takes place, “I’ll do the same thing.”
Some legal observers noted that there’s a range of reasons why Graham and those who were listed in the special grand jury report were not charged, including possible cooperation with the investigation, especially for some of the fake electors.
But Clark D. Cunningham, the chair of law and ethics at Georgia State University, said the fact that the special grand jury heard the sitting senator testify and subsequently deemed him to be a criminal was notable.
“That’s astonishing,” Cunningham said.
In addition to Graham, former Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) were also recommended for prosecution. The pair of ex-Senate Republicans called for Raffensperger to resign after the 2020 election.
Special jurors voted 17-4 to recommend an indictment for Loeffler. They also voted to recommend charges for Perdue in a 14-6 vote.
“Trying to jail your party’s leading political opponent ahead of 2024 is election interference. Speaking out in defense of election integrity is not,” Loeffler said in a statement. “I make no apologies for serving my state by giving voice to millions of Americans who felt disenfranchised in 2020 — and I refuse to be intimidated by a two-tiered system of justice that seeks to systematically destroy conservatives across this country.”
As for Graham, one group of individuals that have stayed mum on his situation are his Senate colleagues, including those across the aisle.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee with Graham, declined to comment on the Senate Republicans’ situation during an appearance on MSNBC, adding that he had not yet read the special grand jury’s report.
“Before I talk about one of my colleagues and friends, I’ll take a look [at the report],” Murphy said.
She's extremely good at her job, very thorough. Here's another 25 page response for Clark.
Fani Willis and her team have responded to Jeffrey Clark’s bid to move his prosecution to federal court.
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) September 9, 2023
Read the filing here: https://t.co/Zsecf9x7NA
Practicing or training? For all the people who sneak in or just a big show for the masses I wonder?
You could post that over at SA comments. I've only traded AMZN with quite amount of success. Made more than I ever could holding long even after taxes and it's way out of my criteria to hold for any length of time at my stage of the game now. Over a 100 PE, no divys, just is too much for me to think about it even if it does outperform the market, I'm confident that I can outperform the market without a stock like AMZN. Same reasons I just got rid of the last of my Nvidia, it probably will go to 2000 now. I could have made more if I held all of my shares (it was breaking my rules then) when it less than half of what it is now, but it just doesn't bother me and even all the pros didn't see what it ended up doing. It would bother me more to go against my rules and there's too many things to make money on instead with more conservative plans.
I'm not sure if it's a good comparison between Amazon and Standard Oil over a hundred years ago. I realize Amazon is a powerful player in their industry, but if you compare to big oil now, it's minimal compared to how much power oil has over the world. Back then about that time, industry and ICE really took off in demand for it. There was already a demand of course, but not anything that followed that time. Also if I'm remembering correctly, US at the turn of the century was supplying over 50% of all the worlds oil. You could probably give more exact numbers or corrections. But breaking up large companies has had mixed results, but I don't think it's usually really hurt the top dogs in the long run. Maybe some shorter term effects might happen.
I've purchased my share of items from Amazon too, but have been disappointed in the direction it has gone with the massive amount of China alphabet companies selling the same shit with fake reviews and fake items. At least quite different than years ago. I already have 100s if not thousands of hours of music and access to any and all tv around the world, way more than any interest I have or need. Also access to all the grass fed and ranch meat and organic garden goods in season, with the normal freezing and canning and access by other means off season. Amazon doesn't really offer me as much as many get from it.
To each there own though, I wish you the best of luck with it.
On the subject of traitors and the evil some people will do with the following thread of other clips;
Vladimir Solovyov interviewed Alex Jones and went into a meltdown over technical difficulties (this footage was later deleted from the show, but you can see it here). Jones cried, complained and almost vomited. Here are some of the cringiest moments:https://t.co/Iriq33di2y
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) September 8, 2023
That's only the half of it. Since he and Saudi Arabia took over twitter, he has allowed, supported, and retweeted Russian misinformation organizations (among other adversaries) propaganda and lies with the support of the GOP leadership's backing. He continues to do so.
Twitter once muzzled Russian and Chinese state propaganda. That's over now
April 21, 2023 11:59 AM ET
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171193551/twitter-once-muzzled-russian-and-chinese-state-propaganda-thats-over-now
Besides giving out private information to SA, he also shadow bans, blocks, cancel accounts, messes with certain people's followers, threaten lawsuits with the only purpose to drain watchdog groups resources, hide valid news sources and dissenting voices reporting him. Just to name a few.
An example to some of Musk's shenanigans is this thread reader from a person who Musk closed the account on for revealing and putting together Musk's own posts. Only a small portion of the tweets, there was many more worse than these few from Diesel3 at the time.
https://threadreaderapp.com/user/EricJohnDiesel3
Musk has his own cult, mostly the same as the traitor trump cult, but just as much bs. At least his rockets have got grounded for the time being.
FAA orders SpaceX to take 63 corrective actions on Starship and keeps rocket grounded
In order for SpaceX to resume Starship launches at its facility in Texas, the company will need to “implement all corrective actions that impact public safety,” according to the FAA.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/faa-orders-spacex-take-63-corrective-actions-starship-keeps-rocket-gro-rcna104070
Sell Amazon Before FTC Sues To Break Up The Company Soon
Sep. 07, 2023 2:59 PM ETAmazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)183 Comments
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4633758-sell-amazon-before-ftc-sues-to-break-up-company-soon?feed_item_type=article
Paul Franke
21.31K Followers
Summary
According to reports, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission may sue Amazon soon, an effort to break up the company and promote ecommerce retail competition.
Amazon's business practices are also under scrutiny in the EU, further adding to regulatory concerns.
The share valuation remains excessive/unreasonable vs. 5% risk-free cash yields, amid a slowdown in annual sales growth into the single digits during 2022-23.
Old traitor trump is definitely worried and going to be more worried on the 14th Amendment push. If he loses ballot validity, he loses his income. No lawyer, but it seems he is disqualified to be president even if he's write in. Just another court case he will be having adding to all the others, but definitely is something to give him more stress and expense. Good, in this case, more is better.
Trump Files Removal in 14th Amendment Case over his Eligibility to Run
Donald Trump has filed to remove to federal court a case currently pending in Colorado seeking to prevent him from appearing on the ballot
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-seeks-removal-in-14th-amendment-case
Aaron Parnas3 hours ago
The 14th Amendment has officially entered the chat — and Trump appears to be worried.
After a Washington-based advocacy group filed a petition to prevent Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 GOP primary ballot in Colorado, Trump's attorneys have filed a notice of removal to send the state court case to federal court.
Here's how it works: The removal notice automatically sends the case to federal court, whereby the federal court will decide whether or not it has jurisdiction. If the federal court decides it does not have jurisdiction over the matter, it will remand (send back) the case to state court.
Senior editor of Lawfare, Roger Parloff notes, "An attempt to remove a similar 14th Am, §3 petition to federal court failed last year. That case was remanded to state court, where the defendant official—NM Co. Com'r Couy Griffin, head of Texans for Trump, was then ousted as insurrectionist for his involvement in J6."
In recent weeks, the topic of the 14th Amendment's application to Donald Trump has garnered significant attention as several legal scholars, including Republican scholars, have argued that the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause bars Trump from appearing on the ballot during the 2024 election. Now, whether Trump is barred from the ballot is officially in front of a court — it's now just a matter of which court.
In any event, this is just the beginning of any potential litigation to remove Trump from the ballot. Read the full removal filing here.