Combating elite Manhattan political ideologies on climate change, the purpose of government, New York state news, and the basic principles of economics.
When a new President comes into office, there is quite properly a changing of the guard.
The people have voted for new policies. The norm is that all the Cabinet Secretaries, and all other Cabinet-level officials (like the heads of EPA, NSA and NASA, and the UN Ambassador) leave office, to be replaced by appointees of the new guy.
But there are exceptions. The two most notable are the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Director of the FBI.
Does the indictment of Eric Adams represent a bona fide prosecution of a dishonest politician, or is it mainly retribution against a political opponent by a deeply corrupt DOJ and FBI?
As several commenters on yesterday’s post noted, we have come to a very sad point when our first thought upon an indictment of a politician is that it may well represent the deep state using its powers to take out a political opponent. But after four years of the deeply politicized Biden-Harris-Garland Justice Department, that’s where we are. And it is entirely appropriate for the citizenry to evaluate the present indictment in light of the DOJ’s conduct throughout the course of this administration.
Unlike my usual approach, I wrote the post yesterday immediately after learning about and reading the indictment, and before allowing any time for things to settle down. Today many other voices have weighed in. In this post I’ll consider a few of them.
But the bottom line is, there is every reason to believe that this indictment is mostly politically motivated, and has little or nothing to do with fighting real corruption.
Around the world today, lots of countries claim to be “democracies”; but then the state thugs use various ploys to assure that no opposition can ever prevail. Among such ploys, the tactic currently in vogue is to gin up some collection of flimsy criminal charges to get the opposition leader and/or his/her supporters arrested or otherwise sidelined.
If you haven’t been following the subject closely in recent months, you may not realize how pervasive the use of this tactic has become.
Sure, imprisoning the opposition leaders has long been part of the playbook of the worst thugocracies. It’s what you would expect of a small-time African dictatorship or of a Central American banana republic, not to mention the likes of Russia or China.
But recently the tactic has been spreading like a case of poison ivy to countries otherwise pretending to grown-up, or semi-grown-up, status. Countries like India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. And, did I mention, the United States — once known for claiming to be the shining exemplar for the world of good governance, and for seeking to use its moral authority to induce others to follow its lead. Today, governing cliques in other countries are greatly emboldened by the brazen abuse of power orchestrated by Biden and the gaggle of Democratic prosecutors pursuing Trump. Hey, we’re just conducting business the same way you Americans do in your own country! You have no standing to criticize us!
Yesterday, Hunter Biden was finally indicted — on tax charges. Here is a copy of the indictment, filed by Special Counsel David Weiss in the Central District of California, and signed by his principal deputy Leo Wise. The nine counts include three felonies.
The indictment makes for moderately entertaining reading. The gist is that Hunter Biden, rather than paying taxes of about $1.4 million that he acknowledged he owed for years 2016-19, instead “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle.” Well, we all knew that.
A more important question is why it has taken until now to produce an indictment for crimes that were this obvious and on which the statute of limitations was running.
So where are the bribery charges?
A few days ago, on Friday September 22, the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted the senior Senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, for bribery.
A full copy of the indictment can be found at this link at the New York Times. There is also a detailed summary of the charges in a Department of Justice press release here.
The Menendez indictment gives us the opportunity to look at the conduct of Menendez claimed to constitute “bribery” and compare it to some of the well-known conduct of President Biden.
Is there any significant difference here that makes one bribery and the other not?
The Biden family corruption scandal gets deeper with every passing day. Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally opened an impeachment investigation in the House last week, and now the first hearing in that investigation has been scheduled for September 28 before the House Oversight Committee.
So what is the potential impeachable offense? You will undoubtedly recall, in the context of the two Trump impeachments, the endless semantic contortions that took place trying to shoehorn Trump’s conduct into the vague constitutional catchall of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that might support an impeachment.
Now, with Biden, the conduct at issue goes by various euphemisms like “the family business,” “business dealings with foreign nationals,” “influence peddling,” “selling access,” or maybe just “corruption.” Are these impeachable offenses?
Well, how about “bribery”?
Combating elite Manhattan political ideologies on climate change, the purpose of government, New York state news, and the basic principles of economics.
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