Political Roundtable Part XXXIII

[AFM]

when liberals are addicted to crack its tragic - ZonkerBL

[Zonkerbl]

what's tragic is our entire nation is addicted to crack and heroine and outrage

[closg00]

I always appreciate the breathless pearl-clutching and shameless hypocrisy of MAGA callers to C-Span, mind you these are people who hand waive Trumps criminality.

Read on Twitter

[TGW]

it's a gun charge. chill.

No, its three felony tax charges, six misdemeanor tax charges, and gun charges. You would be in a federal prison for all of this. PERIOD.

And since that typical whataboutisms are in full effect, let's look at Hunter Biden's highly corrupt acts as the first son:
https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/

1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.

2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.

3) China- Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR): More information will be provided in our upcoming Fourth Bank Memorandum.

4) Kazakhstan: On April 22, 2014, Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer would represent Burisma in Kazakhstan in May/June of 2014 as the company attempted to broker a three-way deal among Burisma, the Kazakhstan government, and a Chinese state-owned energy company.

5) Ukraine: Devon Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in spring of 2014 and was joined by Hunter Biden shortly thereafter. Hunter Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014. Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company. The total amount from Ukraine to the Biden family and their associates is $6.5 million.

6) Russia: On February 14, 2014, a Russian oligarch and Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, wired a Rosemont Seneca entity $3.5 million. On March 11, 2014, the wire was split up: $750,000 was transferred to Devon Archer, and the remainder was sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company Devon Archer and Hunter Biden split equally. In spring of 2014, Yelena Baturina joined Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to share a meal with then-Vice President Biden at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The total amount from Russia to the Biden family and their associates is $3.5 million.

Oh btw, this is a man that got his sister in law hooked on crack. What an upstanding citizen who deserves a pardon.

[AFM]

That's not even the worst thing he's done. Dude slept with his DEAD BROTHER'S WIFE

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/06/hunter-bidens-daughters-first-discovered-his-affair-with-brothers-widow-ex-wife-kathleen-buhle-writes-in-new-memoir

[pancakes3]

it's a gun charge. chill.

No, its three felony tax charges, six misdemeanor tax charges, and gun charges. You would be in a federal prison for all of this. PERIOD.

And since that typical whataboutisms are in full effect, let's look at Hunter Biden's highly corrupt acts as the first son:
https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/

1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.

2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.

3) China- Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR): More information will be provided in our upcoming Fourth Bank Memorandum.

4) Kazakhstan: On April 22, 2014, Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer would represent Burisma in Kazakhstan in May/June of 2014 as the company attempted to broker a three-way deal among Burisma, the Kazakhstan government, and a Chinese state-owned energy company.

5) Ukraine: Devon Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in spring of 2014 and was joined by Hunter Biden shortly thereafter. Hunter Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014. Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company. The total amount from Ukraine to the Biden family and their associates is $6.5 million.

6) Russia: On February 14, 2014, a Russian oligarch and Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, wired a Rosemont Seneca entity $3.5 million. On March 11, 2014, the wire was split up: $750,000 was transferred to Devon Archer, and the remainder was sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company Devon Archer and Hunter Biden split equally. In spring of 2014, Yelena Baturina joined Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to share a meal with then-Vice President Biden at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The total amount from Russia to the Biden family and their associates is $3.5 million.

Oh btw, this is a man that got his sister in law hooked on crack. What an upstanding citizen who deserves a pardon.

ok, so don't chill. whatever.

[Zonkerbl]

lol you're citing the oversight panel investigation led by Republicans? you may find such a thing persuasive, I don't. If you're trying to persuade me you're failing. Cite a source that isn't insanely self interested and well known to be big fat liars. What does Al Jazeera report about Hunter? What does the BBC say?

[FAH1223]

Biden pardoning his son was expected. The minute Kamala lost, he was going to do it. Kash Patel being nominated by Trump to lead the FBI probably set alarm bells off in the Biden household which got the old man to realize he needs to move on this.

Biden is obviously a hypocrite and should have never said what he'd do about his son one way or the other. If he was coherent, he'd pardon a bunch of people with similar criminal convictions as a sign of compassion and fairness or some other ideal. But he isn't coherent and the Biden administration as a whole has opposite directions it heads.

It has populists and trust busters on one end. It has corporatists and status quo folks on the other end.

But the voters don't and won't care that a Dem POTUS is using the pardon power to help his family. Our president-elect and former POTUS will be doing the same in January and he did it during his first term. This is the new reality now.

Maybe Dems will stop pearl clutching about norms and realize power needs to be wielded. If power was wielded in 2021, Trump wouldn't be the president-elect right now.

[Benjammin]

I do like how it goes back to 2014 though. That was a nice touch.

Sent from my Pixel 9 Pro XL using Tapatalk

[TGW]

Well duh.

https://apple.news/A1g9c2DWgQiCIQ2f_O5YZHw

President Biden faces criticism over controversial pardon of his son Hunter

Some Democrats fear that Trump will use the pardon to criticize the justice system and bolster his own efforts to remake it.
President Joe Biden faced mounting criticism Monday for his decision to issue a sweeping pardon of his son, with a number of Democrats expressing concern that it would undercut faith in the justice system and provide ammunition to President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to remake it.
In the hours after Biden’s announcement, several Democrats said that while they understood his decision on a personal level to protect his son Hunter — who has lost a baby sister and an adult brother, suffered from addiction and faced relentless scrutiny because of his father’s position — they also worried about the broader signal the pardon sends, that the politically connected have rights not available to all Americans.
“As a father, I get it,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) wrote on social media on Monday. “But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it’s a setback.”
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Arizona) also weighed in to criticize the president’s decision. “I respect President Joe Biden, but I think he got this one wrong,” he said. “This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.”
Trump presidential transition
Biden, a president who has often said “no one is above the law,” was effectively shielding his son from the consequences of a jury’s decision to find him guilty, some Democrats noted. A man who takes public pride in “my word as a Biden,” he was reversing his oft-stated commitment not to pardon his son or commute his sentence.
Democrats’ concerns come against the backdrop of Trump’s promises to use the justice system to punish his perceived enemies and help his allies after he takes office Jan. 20. His picks for attorney general, Pam Bondi, and for FBI director, Kash Patel, have urged retribution against Trump’s political adversaries and critics.
Biden, in contrast, presents himself as a leader who embraces the norms of American democracy.
The controversy erupted after Biden signed a “full and unconditional” pardon Sunday for Hunter Biden, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.
The decision came in the waning days of Biden’s presidency, at a time when he faces few political ramifications. But while only a few Democrats were critical, their quick, sharp reaction signaled a newfound willingness by some in his party to publicly challenge his decisions.
Biden himself appeared to anticipate the criticism in his announcement Sunday night. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” he wrote in a statement.
Biden announced the pardon shortly before leaving on a multiday trip to Africa, and he has ignored shouted questions about the pardon as he boarded Air Force One.
“Of course I support the pardon of my son,” first lady Jill Biden said Monday, responding to a shouted question while unveiling the holiday decor at the White House and speaking to National Guard families.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who had repeatedly said that Biden would not pardon his son, faced numerous questions on the flight during a briefing with reporters.
She declined to say whether the president discussed the decision with his son while they were together on Nantucket for the Thanksgiving holiday. “He wrestled with it. It was not an easy decision to make,” Jean-Pierre said.
Some in Biden’s circle have expressed fear that Trump would target Hunter Biden once he enters the White House, but Jean-Pierre declined to say whether the pardon would have been issued had Vice President Kamala Harris won last month. “I’m not going to get into the election,” she said. “I can’t speak to hypotheticals.”
She also brushed aside questions about Biden’s assertion that his son faced “selective prosecution,” and whether Biden himself bears any responsibility for a Justice Department that he now claims has allowed “raw politics” to infect the process.
“Two things can be true,” Jean-Pierre said. “The president does believe in the justice system and the Department of Justice. And he also believes that his son was singled out politically.”
Republicans quickly seized on the move, criticizing Biden for protecting a family member and for going back on his word. The pardon proves that Biden, not Trump, is weaponizing the justice system, they said.
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Trump, in a social media post, said that his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win should also receive pardons. Calling the cases against them “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice,” he referred to the rioters from that day as “the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years.”
Trump has not made clear who among the group of 1,500-plus people charged with crimes related to that assault might receive pardons after he enters the Oval Office. His representatives have previously said he would weigh clemency for the rioters “on a case-by-case basis,” and a transition spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about who would be considered. During his campaign, Trump did not rule out pardoning members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Many of the Jan. 6 riot defendants have made it clear they believe that Trump will grant them clemency, celebrating his victory, preparing for pardons and in some cases seeking postponements of their criminal cases.
Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which spent years investigating Hunter Biden as part of an impeachment inquiry into the president, slammed Biden’s decision. “President Joe Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said. Comer’s investigation failed to turn up significant evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) on Monday morning also criticized the pardon, pointing to the president’s assurances that he would not issue one.
“Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it,” Johnson wrote. “Real reform cannot begin soon enough!”
It is the risk of playing into those arguments that concerns Democrats who are uneasy with Biden’s decision. Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) said that while he understands the president’s desire to help his son, “this is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
“Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son,” Polis wrote on social media.
Biden was also defended by many Democrats. Former attorney general Eric Holder said the pardon was warranted because it was clear Hunter Biden would not have been prosecuted for such offenses if his father were not president, given how such crimes are typically handled.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) said that Republicans were being deeply hypocritical, since they forcefully defended Trump when he was charged with multiple felonies and convicted last May of falsifying records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film actress.
“If you defended the 34x felon, who committed sexual assault, stole national security documents, and tried running a coup on his country … you can sit out the Hunter Biden pardon discussion,” he wrote.
Before the pardon, some Democrats and progressives had criticized Biden for not using his powers of clemency more often.
Rachel E. Barkow and Mark Osler, two law professors, wrote an op-ed in September calling on Biden to improve what they called “his paltry record on clemency.” They noted that recent presidents have used the waning weeks of their tenures in the White House to issue sometimes sweeping or controversial grants of clemency — including Trump, who issued a volley of pardons and commutations to people with personal connections to him shortly before leaving the White House in 2021 — in urging Biden to do more.
So far, Biden’s administration had received more than 11,000 petitions for clemency, according to statistics released by the Justice Department. Those statistics, which were last updated in October, show that Biden had granted by that point 25 pardons and 132 commutations.
Biden still has nearly two months left in office, and it remains unclear how many more pardons and commutations he may grant. Trump pardoned 144 people and commuted an additional 94 sentences, including to allies and others who had ties to him or his associates.
Many of those clemency grants came after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, including in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.
In a letter after the presidential election last month, dozens of members of Congress pleaded with Biden to “use your executive clemency power to reunite families, address long-standing injustices in our legal system, and set our nation on the path toward ending mass incarceration.”
They said Biden’s previous grants of clemency “demonstrates your understanding of its life-changing impact,” and asked him to “help broad classes of people and cases,” including people on death row and individuals “with unjustified sentencing disparities.”
Meryl Kornfield, Kara Voght and Mark Berman contributed to this report.

[AFM]

I don't like it either but it also affects my life in zero ways. I wont even remember it happened a week from now

[Zonkerbl]

Lol at Democrats on the deck of the titanic complaining about the music the orchestra is playing

[Zonkerbl]

This is a really interesting, if long, summary of a lot of arguments I have been trying to make, except this article does a much better job than I ever did, about why the Dems should embrace the radical left and find the courage to risk losing non existent Democrat "moderates" to make a case about why the status quo is broken and needs to change. That is the only path left forward for them, and if they follow it they will lose about as badly as they lost to Trump at the national level, so why bother, but there it is.

I will also say that the Dems were justifiably worried about losing moderates because Fox News has brainwashed the entire nation into shifting wildly to the right. But the answer is not to surrender to Fox News but to create an alternate to Fox News, more than just MSNBC, but to make actual, measurable changes to tangibly reduce expenditures on the military in favor of expenditures on the UBI that we experimented with during COVID, to stop sending US military assets to support the genocide of Palestinians, and to full throatedly support the defund the police movement and all the associated changes in accountability for the rich that that would entail.

Yes it's too late and why bother. It doesn't matter anymore and democracy is lost. I don't even know why I'm posting this. But for what it's worth:

https://eladnehorai.substack.com/p/the-deeper-reasons-democrats-lost?r=1443i&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

[pancakes3]

the idea that there are people out here talking about the lost of public trust in the office, the precedent this would set, that it opens the door for "the next guy" to abuse, all over the exercise of a pardon power, when we're not even 12 months removed from Trump, who wasn't even in office at the time, got the Court system to rule on Presidential immunity and kill multiple ongoing felony indictments?

like what are we even talking about?

[Fairview4Life]

the idea that there are people out here talking about the lost of public trust in the office, the precedent this would set, that it opens the door for "the next guy" to abuse, all over the exercise of a pardon power, when we're not even 12 months removed from Trump, who wasn't even in office at the time, got the Court system to rule on Presidential immunity and kill multiple ongoing felony indictments?

like what are we even talking about?

Ford pardoning Nixon, Bush 1 Pardoning everyone involved in Iran Contra, Clinton pardoning Mark Rich, Bush 2 pardoning a bunch of right wing rat ****, Trump himself pardoning a hilarious number of people that went on to actively help him storm the capital...no one gives a **** about any of this.

[closg00]

Biden deserves to be blasted for pardoning Hunter, but only because he kept saying he wouldn’t do it, the charges were farcical and almost handled the way most of these cases are which is to not charge or slap on the wrist…until politics entered, one could argue the same for the Trump hush money trial (although it was unfair that Cohen did time for the same crime)

However, look who is clutching their pearls over this, MAGA…laughable!!!

[TGW]

the idea that there are people out here talking about the lost of public trust in the office, the precedent this would set, that it opens the door for "the next guy" to abuse, all over the exercise of a pardon power, when we're not even 12 months removed from Trump, who wasn't even in office at the time, got the Court system to rule on Presidential immunity and kill multiple ongoing felony indictments?

like what are we even talking about?

So you liberals are fine with continuing the banana republic-esque precedent set by Trump because it's your side doing it? Got it.

The liberals never cease to amaze me with their hypocrisy. It just amazes me the mental gymnastics from the left when they are caught defending the same **** they accuse Trump of doing. Unbelievable. Thank goodness there are several Dems with a little bit of integrity that are calling this out, because this is the definition of abuse of power.

[Zonkerbl]

the idea that there are people out here talking about the lost of public trust in the office, the precedent this would set, that it opens the door for "the next guy" to abuse, all over the exercise of a pardon power, when we're not even 12 months removed from Trump, who wasn't even in office at the time, got the Court system to rule on Presidential immunity and kill multiple ongoing felony indictments?

like what are we even talking about?

So you liberals are fine with continuing the banana republic-esque precedent set by Trump because it's your side doing it? Got it.

The liberals never cease to amaze me with their hypocrisy. It just amazes me the mental gymnastics from the left when they are caught defending the same **** they accuse Trump of doing. Unbelievable. Thank goodness there are several Dems with a little bit of integrity that are calling this out, because this is the definition of abuse of power.

That doesn't make any sense. The argument is whether Biden is the one setting the precedent, not whether we approve of Biden doing it. It's 100% fact that Trump set the precedent already. It's weird and insane to argue that Biden is setting some sort of precedent by doing it now.

Should he be doing it? That's a separate argument. And goalpost shifting.

If anything, the discourse should be about what a terrible precedent that Trump set, that Biden feels comfortable doing this.

[dobrojim]

Plus, if you're getting out the corruption measuring stick, for Biden you need
an elementary school 12 inch ruler. For Golfy, you need a measuring wheel.
No previous president (none) has had as many Cab Secretaries resign under ethical
clouds as Golfy 45 did. Not Nixon (watergate), not Harding (teapot dome),
not Reagan/Bush (Iran contra) or Dubya. Republicans do crime much more
thoroughly, and shamelessly, than Dems do crime.

Does anyone think the current AG nominee will investigate Golfy-47's admin
in a serious way? Since the primary and really sole qualification for his cab is loyalty
to Golfy himself, and the GOP, the answer is clearly no.

[Zonkerbl]

I don't like it either but it also affects my life in zero ways. I wont even remember it happened a week from now

gatdaym it confuses the hell out of me that AFM and TGW's handles are so similar

I mean, and they're not even that similar