The decision by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden is drawing predictable howls from Democrats and their media handmaidens.
Some faint-heated Republican representatives also are whimpering, as if playing nice would help them keep their jobs. They should step away from the Kool-Aid.
The truth is that if McCarthy had opted against an inquiry, he wouldn’t deserve to keep his job and the GOP wouldn’t deserve to hold the House majority.
The role of the opposition party is to oppose, not to surrender to the White House, especially a corrupt one. And it’s long past time for Republicans to play hardball because it’s the only game Democrats understand.
Nothing but the truth
As McCarthy said, an impeachment inquiry is “the next logical step” in an investigative process that is inherently both political and legal. And it is the only way the American public will ever get the full truth about the president’s role in his family’s corrupt schemes.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced he will open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden Tuesday. AP
Anyone who believes otherwise hasn’t been paying attention.
Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice has become a key cog in the White House’s political machine. It is prosecuting the GOP’s leading presidential candidate, a move that began after Biden told aides that’s what he wanted.
As I previously noted, on April 2 of 2022, The New York Times reported this: “Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.”
Here’s what the Biden family business scandal impeachment inquiry would look like
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Biden — turbocharging congressional power to acquire documents and testimony about Biden’s role in his family’s foreign business dealings while he was vice president.
House Republicans already have issued an array of demands to executive branch agencies relating to Joe Biden’s involvement with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden’s international dealings — in many cases setting September deadlines that could soon escalate into litigation.
Hunter Biden claimed in his abandoned laptop that he has to give “half” of his income to his father.AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File
The inquiry aims to answer a number of questions:
What’s in Joe Biden’s vice presidential emails?
While vice president, Joe Biden used the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “Robin Ware” to communicate with staff members — leaving a paper trail of nearly 5,400 written records.
The House Oversight Committee demanded those communications from the National Archives with an Aug. 31 deadline, but a source tells The Post the agency did not comply.
What do Hunter Biden’s bank records show?
Congressional Republicans are preparing to issue subpoenas to banks for accounts held by Hunter and James Biden — after previously subpoenaing some of the associates’s bank statements.
The records could show whether any money was transferred to Joe Biden from his relatives’ foreign income streams and also whether they covered a substantial portion of his expenses. It’s possible the House will later seek the president’s bank records too.
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Notice the fig leaf that Biden never told Garland directly what he wanted. He told The New York Times instead, and its story delivered the message.
White House aides have never disputed that report.
No wonder, because two separate federal indictments soon followed, with Trump scheduled to go on trial during the campaign. Attaboy, Merrick.
That’s hardball.
Meanwhile, the same Justice Department has been caught covering up the crimes of Hunter Biden, with the prosecutor on the case prepared to let him walk without charges until two disgusted IRS whistleblowers emerged to tell the GOP House that the president’s son was getting preferential treatment.
Foreign business
Soon after that, a federal judge blew up a sweetheart deal between Hunter and Justice that contained a concealed immunity agreement that many veteran prosecutors called unprecedented.
I’ve also quoted a well-placed insider who tells me top FBI officials never saw the plea agreement before it was submitted to the court, a departure from the usual practice. The insider says FBI leaders would have objected to the deal because they viewed it as far too lenient.
Even now, there is zero interest by Justice officials in running down the reams of credible evidence that Joe Biden, as vice president, participated in schemes that brought his family as much as $20 million from corrupt foreign businesses and individuals.
For example, an informant as far back as 2017 alleged that both Bidens, father and son, each got a $5 million bribe from the owner of Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that put Hunter on its board for $1 million a year.
There was no investigation, and so the same informant made the same charge in 2020. Again, there was apparently no investigation.
Yet the Delaware prosecutor who ignored the bribe allegations and wanted to let Hunter Biden walk is still on the case, albeit with an inflated title.
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That’s David Weiss and, thanks to Garland, he is now a special counsel, a cynical promotion for his slimy efforts to shield the president’s son from prosecution and see no evil about the president’s role.
The designation ostensibly lets Weiss file charges against Hunter Biden nationwide. More conveniently for the White House, the special counsel tag will also let Weiss avoid talking to Congress about the case until after next year’s election.
That’s hardball, too.
Contrast that with how the same agencies chased every implausible rumor about Donald Trump colluding with Russia and leaked it to the media, and you have a snapshot of how Justice plays by a double standard.
Yet largely because of the congressional findings, the public is catching on to the Bidens’ grift. A recent CNN poll showed a clear majority believe the president was inappropriately involved in his son’s business.
The Ukraine mystery
Still, James Comer of Kentucky, head of the House Oversight panel, and other Republican leaders know they have work to do before they can move to an actual impeachment case. Their Tuesday demand that the State Department release all information about the government’s position on a Ukrainian prosecutor gets to the heart of an important mystery.
Because Joe Biden later boasted of it publicly, we know he, as vice president, successfully demanded in 2016 that Ukraine fire a prosecutor charged with rooting out corruption as a condition for getting $1 billion in US aid. Chief among prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s targets was Burisma, regarded as unscrupulous even by Ukrainian standards.
Comer, in his letter to State, demands all information about “sudden foreign policy decisions related to” the Shokin firing. Following reports in The Post and elsewhere that the US and Europe were happy with Shokin’s work, Comer wants to know if the firing was the result of a legitimate policy decision by the Obama administration, or if Joe Biden was acting as part of a corrupt scheme to shield Burisma.
Although the White House reflexively calls every hearing a stunt and disparages every new piece of evidence as a political talking point, it is starting to feel the heat.
One sign is that the president was forced to move off the outrageous lie he hid behind for years — that he never even spoke to his son about the son’s foreign business. He repeated that lie even as it became clear Hunter’s laptop showed numerous pictures of the father with the son’s partners and paymasters.
But when former Hunter partner Devon Archer testified to Congress that Joe Biden, then VP, was patched by phone into business meetings with Hunter and his paymasters more than 20 times, the White House gave ground.
Suddenly, the new defense was that the president “was never in business with his son.”
That’s a curious fallback, as if the new stance is that there was never a formal agreement or partnership between father and son. But nobody ever said there was.
Recall the evidence by Tony Bobulinski, another former Hunter partner and the first to blow the whistle. He identified Joe as the “big guy” who was slated to get a 10% cut of a deal, with Hunter holding it for his father — secretly.
Dubious love story
Another sign the White House is getting nervous is the appearance of sob stories in The New York Times and other protective outlets. Their common theme is that Joe Biden got himself in this jam because he loves Hunter and indulges him too much.
Nice try, but the logic doesn’t pass the smell test.
Is it love that led the father to work with his son in selling the office of the vice president to the highest foreign bidder? Is it love when the father compels the son to turn over half his salary, as the son complains in an email?
Joe Biden deserves no special quarter or pity. Shame on the media for trying to hide the sordid truth.
Besides, the Washington press corps is supposed to uncover scandals, not cover them up to protect Democrats.
If McCarthy or any Republicans are already cowed by the attacks, they better grow a thicker skin. The closer they get to the truth about Joe Biden, the more vicious the other side will become.
Love it or hate it, that’s the Washington way.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/time-to-stop-joe-bidens-power-play-to-protect-himself-and-his-family/