More right wing propaganda, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies have been all debunked as House Republicans continue to find nothing on Biden. What a waste of time and money like we all knew it would be. But at least we are finding out more about Criminal Donald's past scandals.
House Oversight keeps catching Trump scandals and not Biden in its probes of White House
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) spent an evening together at the Treasury Department, where they said they were allowed to view bank transactions that they say proves President Joe Biden's family was being given cash from foreign countries. The problem they've run into is in showing that evidence and proving it.
For years, Republicans have claimed that Biden was on the take from China because his son helped negotiate 20 percent of the sale of a mine to a Chinese company. Greene claimed she saw the Bidens had a "web" of LLCs that they were getting money through, including Burisma, which at no time was ever owned or run by any Biden family members. His son Hunter was merely on the board.
As the GOP has desperately tried to tie Biden to his version of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearings, it's proved unsuccessful. But worse, according to Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, it only highlights questions about Donald Trump's administration.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) admitted that there might not be a "there" there in the GOP's probe. Speaking to Fox Business on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) confessed there will never be any proof of their claims.
"You're not gonna get necessarily hard proof," Johnson told Maria Bartiromo.
“The family’s getting money from various countries and foreign businesses through various shell companies and this web of LLCs?” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said, along with his colleagues, searching to find something to hang on Biden. “I mean, guys, you in the press, this is easy pickings. I’m giving you Pulitzer stuff here!”
As Bump explained, however, what is being found is Donald Trump-related and not Biden related.
"That line about LLCs — limited-liability corporations — stuck out for me because three years ago, I tried to document the cascade of companies that made up Trump’s personal web of pass-throughs and tax-avoidance structures," he explained. "There are scores of them, loosely clustered as ways of splitting corporate ownership that only a tax accountant could love."
It's so extensive that Bump made his own chart showing how they are linked and how they all track back to Trump.
The Republicans have used the first five months of Congress to chase down allegations that foreign governments are operating under a kind of pay-to-play influence program through Biden's corporations. The biggest problem Republicans have is that President Biden doesn't have a corporation. In fact, Biden's personal financial disclosure reports for decades showed Biden hasn't been among the wealthy members of the Senate. It was only after Biden was out of V.P. office that he began charging for speaking engagements and published a bestsellers book, the LA Times reported.
While his $15 million gained from that is a hefty sum, it's a far cry from the $1.5 billion cash that Trump alleged Hunter Biden "walked out of China" with.
Republicans held a big news conference on Wednesday that was supposed to reveal everything. But Bump explained it didn't.
"Comer presented allegations about money being paid from a Romanian who was later convicted of corruption to 'the Bidens' for a purported business relationship, including during the period when Joe Biden was vice president. But this use of 'the Bidens,' like his repeated use of 'the Biden family,' was simply an effort to use the involvement in these deals of Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James as a way of implying that the president himself benefited."
So, when reporters asked if President Biden directly received any cash, Comer was forced to hedge.
“We’re pretty confident that the president was very knowledgeable of what his family was doing,” Comer claimed.
Bump said it's a far cry from Biden "being a beneficiary of foreign contributions himself. If it’s even true, which Comer didn’t assert."
That they have found evidence of payments flowing from foreign nationals to Hunter Biden-linked LLCs and then (allegedly) to a number of members of Biden’s extended family is used by the Republicans as rhetorical evidence that Joe Biden must somehow be involved," he continued. "But the opposite argument seems more valid: After all this searching, no concrete link showing money going to the president has turned up. This seems exculpatory more than incriminating."
Meanwhile, the Trump side of things is very different.
He cited CREA (the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) reports that estimate Trump's businesses drew as much as $160 million while he was in office for four years. While a lot of the cash was coming through the overseas properties, Bump explained there was also foreign money directly linked to Trump's domestic hotels.
One report said guests that stayed at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., on or around the time that major decisions were being made at the White House that would impact their countries. At one point that Trump was working on a deal with Qatar when his top adviser Jared Kushner got a room in the hotel the same night as the Qatari officials. Kushner lived less than two miles from the White House at the time. It was then revealed that Qatar paid Kushner's company $1.2 billion for the 666 Fifth Avenue property when he was searching for a bailout.
Bump also cited "foreign money coming in domestically, as when Saudi interests repeatedly booked large blocks of rooms at his hotels. The House Oversight Committee itself found that foreign interests spent $750,000 at Trump’s D.C. hotel during his presidency — a report produced when Democrats still held the majority."
In Nov. 2022, that same Oversight and Reform Committee asked the National Archives for documents that would help link the Trump presidential schedules to the Trump hotel payments from officials. Just a few months later, Republicans took over and shifted the committee's focus to Biden. Kushner was given billions for his hedge fund from the Saudi funds immediately after leaving the White House.
A reporter asked Comer about it, he admitted there was a broad problem of presidential family members seeking to make iffy foreign business deals." He claimed it stretched all the way back to Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who sold all of his interests so as not to appear unethical. Comer swore the Republicans would be searching "everything."
Bump recalled that earlier this year Comer told the press he was shutting down the investigation.
The main argument, Bump said, came from Donalds who told the press, “The Biden family doesn’t really have a business.”
“What are the Biden businesses?” Comer said. “ … What business are they in?”
Bump said that the lightbulb came on, and the distinction being made is "between family members of a president seeking to expand existing businesses with foreign investment and family members of a president creating new businesses with foreign investment. A huge web of LLCs is not nefarious, apparently, if it predates the president’s time in office. As did the LLCs linked to Hunter Biden highlighted by House Republicans, but let’s not fuss over details."
He closed by mocking the ordeal: "Now if they could only tie Biden to the 'Biden family' business."
Read the full column at the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/10/wider-house-oversights-net-more-often-they-catch-trump/Trump could get sued by E. Jean Carroll again over his Truth Social outbursts
As Donald Trump deals with the blowback from being found liable for the sexual battery and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, he has reportedly opened himself up for a new lawsuit through his rants on Truth Social.
Just after the former president was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million, he went on his own social media platform and once again called her a liar. This is the same conduct that led to her first lawsuit, and could in fact open him up to a second one on similar grounds, according to a Wednesday report from the New York Times.
"Hours after a Manhattan jury on Tuesday found that former President Donald J. Trump had sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Trump went on social media to call her a liar," the article states. "His unrelenting commentary on Ms. Carroll, her lawsuit and even the judge in the civil trial, Lewis A. Kaplan, raises questions about what repercussions Mr. Trump could face in any motions he makes before Judge Kaplan or in a promised appeal, or whether he could face a new defamation lawsuit."
The Times interviewed experts who said that, while Kaplan wasn't likely to impose sanctions for after-trial conduct, a new defamation lawsuit is entirely possible.
"Ms. Carroll could bring a new defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump based on his recent comments, experts said," the article states.
“He doesn’t get carte blanche to defame her because she sued him once and collected and won,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law, according to the New York Times.
"Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, and Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Mr. Tacopina, had no comment."
Read More Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/nyregion/trump-carroll-truth-social.htmlTrump family blasted for appearing alongside 'a modern-day version of Hitler’s American friends'
Donald Trump's second-born son is reportedly among right-wing figures scheduled to speak at Mike Flynn's "ReAwaken America" event in Miami, where he will be joined by Christian nationalists and those who promote anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
Eric Trump, who recently threatened to sue Rachel Maddow for highlighting his appearance alongside anti-Semites at an event at Trump National Doral in Miami, isn't the only big Trump world name to appear, according to Miami New Times.
"This weekend, throngs of Trumplandia figures — including Eric Trump, Alex Jones, Mike Lindell, and Roger Stone — are slated to pour into South Florida and join forces at the four-star Miami resort as part of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's 'ReAwaken America' tour," the outlet reported Wednesday. "Scheduled for May 12-13, the conspiracy-addled event promises to be a marathon affair packed with far-right figures, election deniers, and purveyors of QAnon narratives, featuring talks on topics that include 'Why Dr. Fauci Needs to Be Fired and In Jail,' 'Jeffrey Epstein 101,' and 'Are COVID Vaccines Now Being Put Inside Our Food?'
Miami New Times further reported on those who would be joining Eric Trump, including those who promote conspiracy theories based on antisemitic tropes and purported satanic ties.
"Listed on the event lineup along with Eric Trump and his wife Lara are Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, both of whom promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and preach to their followers that the world is being run by Satanic elites, a narrative similar to the QAnon conspiracy theory," it says. "As the website Media Matters for America reports, while Ward and McKay have not attained the notoriety of Infowars conspiracy don Alex Jones, they've carved out significant followings while refining their own brand of fiery rhetoric, largely centered on a fanatical narrative that Christians are at war with demonic world leaders"
Responding to the event, conservative columnist S.E. Cupp blasted the Trump family. She noted that Adolf Hitler had a number of supporters in the United States, who were profiled in a 2018 award-winning book by Bradley W. Hart called "Hitler’s American Friends."
These supporters included German-Americans who joined a group called the Bund, William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts, and right-wing radio host Father Charles Coughlin.
"Perhaps even more unimaginably, today we have a modern-day version of Hitler’s American friends," Cupp wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times.
"Eric Trump, Lara Trump, former California Rep. Devin Nunes, former Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Mike Flynn, My Pillow guy Mike Lindell and convicted felon Roger Stone may not actually call themselves Hitler’s American friends," she added.
"But they are, as of today, happy to appear alongside some self-avowed antisemites and Hitler promoters at an upcoming stop on the 'ReAwaken America' tour."
Read More Here: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/trump-national-doral-hosts-satanic-conspiracy-peddlers-at-reawaken-america-16944141
