Twilight’s Last Gleaming

by Andrew P. Napolitano

 

When a presidential debate devolves into an argument over golf scores and afterward the public argues about the candidates’ mental acuity or personal honesty, when the question for voters is who is the sharper debater rather than who would be more faithful to the Constitution, when both major party candidates support mass surveillance, undeclared foreign wars and borrowing trillions of dollars a year to fund a bloated government, nearly all of which is nowhere countenanced by the Constitution, we can safely conclude that personal liberty in our once free society has been radically diminished and is in the twilight of its existence.

Two hundred and forty-eight years ago this week, Thomas Jefferson was fuming in his rented rooms in Philadelphia as the Continental Congress was softening the tone of his final draft of what would become the most critical document and most precise statement of the origins of human freedom in American history.

The Declaration of Independence — which is dated July 4, 1776, but was signed and released days afterward — is both an indictment of King George III and his government as well as a manifestation of limited government and maximum individual freedom. Though the final version dropped some of Jefferson’s more bellicose language, the document as we know it is largely his — not only his lofty language but also the three principal Jeffersonian values that it manifests.

The first of those values — forgotten in the government today — is the consent of the governed. Jefferson argued, and Congress agreed, that no government is licit or moral or consistent with the natural law unless it enjoys the consent of all those it governs. Yet, historians today believe that at the time he wrote this, about one-third of the adult, white, land-owning males in the colonies supported revolution, about one-third opposed it, and about one-third were neutrals or undecided. So, the very Congress that declared that no government is moral without the consent of the governed itself lacked that consent.

The breakdown in public opinion would change dramatically in the years during and following the Revolutionary War, but it would never exceed 90% in favor of self-government. The remaining 10% were largely folks who had emotional or financial ties to the British Crown, and many stood to lose fortunes if self-government came — and many of them did.

The second value that Jefferson wove into the Declaration was that of natural law. The natural law teaches that our rights come from our humanity and our humanity is a gift from God. Jefferson recognized this when he wrote that we are all created equal and endowed by our “Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Recognizing the origin of human freedom in the Creator and referring to our rights as inalienable expressly accepts the concept of natural law and thereby rejects the theory embraced by government today, which claims itself as the fountain and origin of our rights. We know the government believes this because it takes away our rights to life, free speech, religious liberty, assembly, private property, travel, self-defense and privacy every day.

At the outset of the document, Jefferson appealed to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” He could have appealed to the British tradition of individual rights. He could have appealed to the Magna Carta. He could have appealed to numerous acts of Parliament that stated — but pretended — that all men are equal and their rights are natural. But he didn’t. He appealed to the natural law.

The third Jeffersonian principle — it, too, has been discarded by government today — is that the proper role of government is not to do for the people whatever they want and they cannot do for themselves, as Abraham Lincoln would argue while he was waging war on the civilian population of half the country. Rather, the proper and limited role is to protect the natural rights of those who consent to the government.

Moreover, Jefferson wrote, that whenever the government — even one consented to by the governed — is destructive of natural rights, it is the right and the duty of the governed to alter or abolish it.

That was July 4th 1776. On July 4th 2024, the Jeffersonian principles that animated the just war for self-government called the American Revolution have all been discarded. Think about it: Do you know anyone today who has consented to the monster government we have today? A government that claims out of its own belly that it can right any wrong, regulate any behavior, tax any event, borrow any amount, and kill any person, friend or imagined foe? Surely, voting or walking on a government sidewalk is not consent. If you think it is, then the victims of Nazism and Communism consented to those dreadful forms of government. Of course they didn’t.

Consent today is a myth just as much of government today is a myth. We pretend that we have self-government. We pretend that we consented to it. We pretend that our elected officials actually do represent us. We pretend that we are all created equal. And we pretend that elections actually do change things in a material and substantial way. We even pretend that we have rights that the government protects. And we embrace these pretenses knowing all along that it is the government that assaults our rights, takes our property and kills in our names.

The former American republic is now an empire, with an annual military budget larger than those of the next nine countries combined; and with troops on more than 1,000 American military installations around the globe. As George III once boasted of his empire, the sun never sets on our empire. Empire: That would be the form of government against which Jefferson and his colleagues violently and successfully rebelled.

Unchecked government is the archenemy of personal liberty. And a government that rejects its founding values, recognizes no limits to its powers and assaults the liberties of those it governs should be altered or abolished before liberty’s last gleaming turns to a long cold darkness.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

 

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/twilights-last-gleaming/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

The Real Meaning of July 4th and the Heresy of Lincolnian Interpretation    BY BOYD D. CATHEY 

 

A headline in a news story caught my attention the other day. It reads: “Louisiana now requires the 10 Commandments to be displayed in classrooms. It’s not the only terrifying state law.” The column appears in The Independent, July 1, 2024, and is by one Gustaf Kilander.

Notice that the author uses the word “terrifying” to characterize the public display of one of, arguably, the bedrock documents that shaped the formation of the American nation and the thinking of its Framers. Indeed, to read the debates leading to the adoption of the Constitution is to plainly understand how deeply influenced the Framers were by not only the Ten Commandments, but by the weight of Christian and Western tradition. (See Elliott’s Debates, a compilation of the debates over the new Constitution).

A brief survey of the writings of such distinguished historians and researchers as Barry Alan Shain, Forrest McDonald, M. E. Bradford, and George W. Carey, plus a detailed reading of the commentaries and writings of those men who established the nation, give the lie to the claim that those men assembled in 1787 sought to outlaw individual state religious tests or establishments.

They did not.

Many of the original thirteen states had religious establishments and tests, including Massachusetts (Congregationalist), Virginia (Anglican/Episcopal), and North Carolina (requiring office holders to be Protestants, and after 1835 up until the War Between the States, only Christians). The US Constitution clearly acknowledged this, and only forbade the establishment of a “national” church. But even then, the Framers assumed that the new nation would reflect its Christian roots, going so far as providing for paid chaplains in the Northwest Territories at the same time they were formulating the Constitution.

Yet, this fundamental misunderstanding characterizes much of modern American thinking, both on the part of liberals AND conservatives.

And thus this 4th of July, I think it helpful to look once again at the 1776 declaration, which preceded the Constitution by eleven years, what exactly it is and what it is not. For far too many Americans confuse the two documents.

We celebrate July 4th each year as the anniversary of America’s declaration of independence from Great Britain. The day we set aside commemorates when representatives from the thirteen colonies took a momentous step that they knew might land them on the scaffold or suspended by the hangman’s noose. They were protesting that their traditional rights as Englishmen had been violated, and that those violations had forced them into a supreme act of rebellion.

For many Americans the Declaration of Independence is a fundamental text that tells the world who we are as a people. It is a distillation of American belief and purpose. Pundits and commentators, left and right, never cease reminding us that America is a new nation, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Almost as important as a symbol of modern American belief is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It is not incorrect to see a link between these two documents, as Lincoln intentionally placed his short peroration in the context of a particular reading of the Declaration. Lincoln bases his concept of the creation of the American nation in philosophical principles he sees enunciated in 1776, and in particular on an emphasis on the idea of “equality.”

The problem is that this interpretation, which forms the philosophical base of both the dominant “movement conservatism” today – neoconservatism – and the neo-Marxist multicultural Left, is basically false.

Lincoln’s opens his address, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth …” There is a critical problem with this assertion. It was not the Declaration that “created” the new nation; the Declaration was a statement of thirteen colonies, announcing their respective independence from the mother country, binding themselves together in a military and political alliance. It was the Constitution, drafted eleven years later (1787), after the successful conclusion of the War for Independence, that established a new nation. And, as any number of historians and scholars have pointed out, the American Framers never intended to cobble together a nation based on the proposition that “all men are created equal.”

The Framers of the Constitution were horrified by “egalitarianism” and “democracy,” and they made it clear that what they were establishing was a stratified republic, in which most of the “rights” were left to the respective states (with their own particular arrangements), and in which serious restrictions and limitations on voting and participation in government were considered fundamental. A review of The Federalist Papers confirms this thinking; and a survey of the correspondence and the debates over the Constitution add support to this anti-egalitarianism.

Obviously, then, Lincoln could not found his “new nation” on the US Constitution; it was too aristocratic and decentralized, with non-enumerated powers maintained by the states, including the implicit right to secede. Indeed, slavery was explicitly sanctioned, even if most of the Framers believed that as an institution it would die a natural death, if left on its own. Lincoln thus went back to the Declaration of Independence and invested in it a meaning that supported his statist and wartime intentions. But even then, he verbally abused the language of the Declaration, interpreting the words in a form that its Signers never intended.

Although those authors employed the phrase “all men are created equal,” and certainly that is why Lincoln made direct reference to it, a careful analysis of the Declaration does not confirm the sense that Lincoln invests in those few words. Contextually, the 1776 authors at Philadelphia were asserting their historic — and equal — rights as Englishmen before the Crown, which had, they believed, been violated and usurped by the British government, and it was to parliament that the Declaration was primarily directed.

The Founders rejected egalitarianism. They understood that no one is, literally, “created equal” to anyone else. Certainly, each and every person is created with no less or no more dignity, measured by his or her own unique potential before God. But this, egregiously, is not what most contemporary writers mean today when they talk of “equality.”

Rather, from a traditionally Christian viewpoint, each of us is born into this world with different levels of intelligence, with different areas of expertise; physically, some are stronger or heavier, others are slight and smaller; some learn foreign languages and write beautiful prose; others become fantastic athletes or scientists. Social customs and traditions, property holding, and individual initiative — each of these factors further discriminate as we continue in life.

None of this means that we are any less or more valued in the judgment of God, Who judges us based on our own, very unique capabilities. God measures us by ourselves, by our own maximum possibilities and potential, not by those of anyone else — that is, whether we use our own, individual talents to the very fullest (recall the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of St. Matthew).

The Founders and, then after them, the Framers understood this, as their writings and speeches clearly indicate. Lincoln’s “new nation” would have certainly struck them as radical and revolutionary, a veritable “heresy.” Even more disturbing for them would be the specter of modern-day neoconservatives — that is, those who dominant the conservative movement and claim to rigorously defend the Constitutional republic against the abuses of the “woke” multiculturalist left — enshrining Lincoln’s address as a basic symbol of American political and social order.

They would have understood the radicalism implicit in such a pronouncement; they would have seen Lincoln’s interpretation as a contradiction not only of the meaning of the Declaration, but also an undermining of the fundamental document of the American nation, the Constitution of 1787; and they would have understood in Lincoln’s language the content of a Christian and millennialist heresy, heralding a transformed nation where the Federal government would become the father and mother and absolute master of us all, and where a weaponized Executive and its judicial arm could engage in fanatical “lawfare” against any opponent of its goal of totalitarian control.

Thus, as we commemorate the declaring of American independence 248 years ago, we should lament the mythology about it created in 1863, and recall the generation of 1787, a generation of noble men who comprehended fully well that a country based on egalitarianism is a nation where true liberties are imperiled.

This nation is dying a painful death because it has ignored and rejected what our forefathers brought forth.

https://www.unz.com/article/the-real-meaning-of-july-4th-and-the-heresy-of-lincolnian-interpretation/

 

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.theinteldrop.org/2024/07/04/frederick-douglass-on-july-4th-a-timeless-critique-of-democracy-in-this-country-full-speech/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

Jill Biden has tried to reassure people that Joe Biden's debate bomb was just a blip. Will she do what is right for her husband?

By Julia Baird

 

It's just what any woman needs when she's under immense, global, skull-cracking pressure: your ex-husband to weigh in with some unsolicited criticism.

Bill Stevenson, who was married to Jill Biden decades ago, from 1970 to 1975, decided to have a chat to reporters this week, proffering his view that Jill Biden has changed. She's "not the same person I married", he told a reporter. "She's matriculated into a completely different woman."

Leaving aside the dubious use of the word matriculated, Stevenson, a Trump supporter, says he can't understand why his ex is still supporting her husband, "since it appears that he's struggling" (which is surely precisely the time you should support your spouse?).

Half a century after he broke up with Jill, Stevenson says there are "no hard feelings", but that his wife had "always been very driven" (except the bit where she had totally changed into a different person) and that "people say she's the one who wants to be president now". Can't wait for his entirely objective, up-coming, self-published book "The Bidens: The Early Years".

Why mention Stevenson? Aren't his views kind of irrelevant? Yes, and that's the point – there's a lot of smoke, a lot of baloney around right now, millions of views and takes, well-meaning and hostile, being proffered about the suitability of Joe Biden to be American president for second term after a shockingly poor, rambling and unfocused performance at the first candidate's debate.

Can Biden hear the truth?

The calls for Biden to stand aside for a younger, sharper candidate have come from all corners of the globe, the country and the media-sphere, from the New York Times to The Economist. Concerns about his age were cemented, going from pressing to urgent. The polls tilted further to Trump.

But Biden raised his fist in response.

"I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious," he said at a rally in North Carolina afterwards, as the crowd roared approval. "I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth."

But the vital questions are: can Biden hear the truth? And who will he listen to?

This is why, in the past few days, spotlights have narrowed and focused on one face above others: Jill Biden. Will she do what is right for her husband, the country? And what will this mean? Shielding him, pulling him out of the race and protecting him from being exposed as less a commanding leader and more a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory", as special counsel put it earlier this year? Or steadying his arm – literally – and staying the course, insisting he can win, continuing to ignore the polls, continuing a decades long quest of trying to deliver him his dreams?

Cue the headlines: "Jill Biden delusional after debate drama", "Jill Biden 'not coming across well' on a 'human level' amid husband Joe's struggles", "Only Jill Biden can save Joe Biden's presidency", "Jill Biden treats Joe like 'toddler' after debate".

This last headline has some truth. At a post-debate rally in Atlanta, Jill Biden articulated a very low bar for a presidential performer, saying to her husband: "Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!"

The day after the debate, she told donors at a fundraiser in NYC that the president had told her: "'You know, Jill, I don't know what happened. I didn't feel that great." She responded: "Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you've been president.'" She added, in a now familiar refrain: "When he gets knocked down, Joe gets back up, and that's what we're doing today."

A tough call at Camp David

It's been a particularly intense week for Jill Biden. Whilst continuing to campaign, in Pennsylvania and Michigan she has tried to reassure people it was all just a blip.

The first presidential wife to continue her own career, earning a doctorate at age 55, and teaching English at a community college, also just appeared on the cover of Vogue in a pricey Ralph Lauren silk tuxedo dress, next to a tag-line reading, "We will decide our future".

The fact that Jill Biden is widely recognised as the president's closest adviser should not be surprising, yet is often cast as having sinister overtones, with headlines like, "Cruel Jill Clings to Power".

Watching the president stumble, mumble, fade, and equivocate, the words "elder abuse" began circulating and on social media viewers could not help but wonder why she wasn't better preserving his legacy and his dignity.

After the debate, Joe Biden's family circled him at Camp David to assess the ferocious, near unanimous, condemnation of his performance, and reportedly all agreed he should keep campaigning, with son Hunter "among the most vocal". (Hunter, of all people, a man who has just been found guilty of three felony gun charges, hoist by his own memoir in which he detailed the timeline of his drug addiction, matched to the time he bought a gun and lied about drug use on a federal background check form.)

As I discussed with my Not Stupid podcast co-host Jeremy Fernandez this week, it was a tough call, but was it truthful?

This family has suffered, and conquered, suffered again and now seem to be bloody minded about the pursuit of a second term. The dynamics of a family riven with trauma, tragedy and addiction seem to be inspiring a perverse doggedness and loyalty.

Jill has encouraged Joe not to run before

Think of the deeper currents in Jill Biden's life: she marries Joe at 26, not long after his first wife and baby daughter died in a car accident, raises his two sons Beau and Hunter, alongside the daughter, Ashley, that she and Joe have together, as her husband works steadily in, and towards, the highest echelons of political life. In 1988, the year he runs for president for the first time, Joe Biden survives two brain aneurysms.

She has watched as public service has somehow sustained him during his darkest times.

Still, Jill Biden has encouraged her husband not to run before, most memorably in 2003. In her memoir, Where the Light Enters, she writes about a day where she was lying by the pool in a bikini as inside her house, key Democrats were urging Joe to begin campaigning for president. She got a felt pen and wrote "no" on her stomach, then walked through the middle of the meeting. Bikini diplomacy worked.

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-05/jill-biden-joe-biden-presidency-debate-blip-do-whats-right/104063330

 

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/35235

 

THE ARTICLE BY JULIA BAIRD GLOSSES OVER THE DREADFUL NUMEROUS LIES AND AGGRESSIVE MOMENTS FROM JOE BIDEN, WHICH ARE TOO NUMEROUS TO PLACE HERE, BUT WE WILL MENTION JOE'S LOVE FOR GOING TO WAR AGAINST IRAQ IN 2003, THEN HIS "REGRETS" AFTER SOME AMERICAN SOLDIERS CAME BACK IN BODY BAGS... HIS ANGRY OUTBURS AGAINST SCOTT RITTER — AND HIS WRITING OF THE "PATRIOT ACT". JOE IS CORRUPT BUT HE HAS BEEN PROTECTED BY THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA THAT CANNOT STAND THE THOUGHT OF DONALD TRUMP BECOMING PRESIDENT AGAIN...

Biden says he is proud to be a ‘black woman’The US president continues to stumble over his words while trying to salvage his reelection campaign  

US President Joe Biden has made several radio interview appearances and delivered a brief Fourth of July speech in an apparent attempt to reassure Democrat supporters about his mental capacity to serve following a disastrous debate with his Republican rival Donald Trump.

Biden openly admitted he “screwed up” the debate with Trump, but told The Earl Ingram Show on Thursday that he will “get back up,” rejecting any intention of dropping out of the presidential race.

“I had a bad night.... And the fact of the matter is that, you know, I screwed up,” Biden said bluntly, after his aides spent a week offering various excuses from an alleged preparation overload, to a minor cold and a jet lag from a trip 12 days ahead of the debate.

During a separate interview with Philadelphia’s WURD, the gaffe-prone US leader struggled to find the right phrase while apparently trying to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris and recall his time in Barack Obama’s administration.

“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman... to serve with a black president. Proud to be involved of the first black woman on the Supreme Court. There’s so much that we can do because... look, we’re the United States of America,” Biden said.

The US president also delivered a four-minute speech at the White House, focusing his remarks on his visit last month to Normandy, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, but seemingly veered off script and lost the train of thought several times, and at one point even called his rival Trump a “colleague.”

“And by the way, you know I was in that WWI cemetery in France, and.... the one that one of our colleagues, the former president, did not wanna go and be up there... I shouldn’t probably have said it anyway,” Biden said before abruptly cutting the story short, and continuing his prepared remarks.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/600465-biden-black-woman-interview/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

SEE ALSO: https://rumble.com/v55d0d5-system-update-show-292.html

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who confounded The Walt Disney Company, has announced that she plans to withhold donations to the Democratic Party until incumbent US President Joe Biden drops out of the presidential race following his dismal debate performance, CNBC has reported. 

 

"I intend to stop any contributions to the party unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket. This is realism, not disrespect. Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high," Abigail Disney said in a lengthy statement to CNBC. "If Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire," CNBC quoted Abigail Disney as saying on Thursday.

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240705/disney-heiress-announces-halt-in-donations-to-democrats-until-biden-drops-out---report-1119248256.html

 

READ FROM TOP.

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

America’s ‘news’-media have dropped whatever attention they had been devoting to the allegations and evidence concerning whether or not Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and others, were conspiring to solicit for bribes to be paid to them in order for the bribers to obtain, from the then U.S. Vice President (Joe Biden), decisions, statements, and official actions, that the briber sought (such as to get Ukraine to fire its prosecutor against Hunter’s Ukrainian Burisma boss Mykola Zlochevsky). At first, Democratic Party ‘news’-media denied the existence of the evidence (the laptop); then, when that failed to work, everything came down to the question as to whether the references in Hunter Biden’s laptop to “the Big Man” whom Hunter’s emails referred to as recieving a 10% cut from “H” which was the way that Hunter in the emails referred to himself, was, in fact, his father, Vice President Joe Biden. So, I present here the key latest available official evidences on this matter, and the Democratic Party ‘news’-media’s alleging that there is no absolute certainty that “the Big Man” referred to Hunter’s father:

——

https://web.archive.org/web/20230812141605/https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/

12 August 2023, the full 6-count charge against Biden issued (to which nothing has been subsequently added):

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability

THE BIDENS’ INFLUENCE PEDDLING TIMELINE

Since taking the gavel in January, the [House] Committee on Oversight and Accountability has accelerated its investigation of the Biden family’s domestic and international business practices to determine whether the Biden family has been targeted by foreign actors, President Biden is compromised, and our national security is threatened. Records obtained through the Committee’s subpoenas to date reveal that the Bidens and their associates have received over $20 million in payments from foreign entities.

Below is a timeline that details key dates in our investigation.

The main points of interest are:

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.

Beyond this timeline, here are links to our First, Second, and Third Bank Memorandums that provide detailed descriptions and show actual bank records and wires.

——

https://web.archive.org/web/20240324115827/https://oversight.house.gov/release/witnesses-confirm-joe-bidens-involvement-in-his-familys-influence-peddling/

20 March 2024

WITNESSES CONFIRM JOE BIDEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN HIS FAMILY’S INFLUENCE PEDDLING

WASHINGTON — At today’s House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office,” witnesses confirmed Joe Biden was involved with his family’s business dealings and their attempts to sell access to him:

At 1:33:50– Mr. Jordan [Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Ranking Member just said that, “Joe Biden was opposed to corruption.” Really? So opposed, he leveraged a billion dollars of American tax money to fire the prosecutor in Ukraine who was investigating Zlochevsky at Burisma, the company Hunter Biden sat on the board. Wow. And the prosecutor who replaced Shokin that Mr. Parnas referenced in his opening statement, Mr. Lutsenko, guess what he did? He took Zlochevsky off the wanted list and dropped the charges. Wow. He is really, really opposed to corruption there. Mr. Bobulinski, who is the “Big Guy’’ [referred to in the emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop as getting 10% of each cut]?

    Mr. Bobulinski. Joe Biden.

    Mr. Jordan. Are you sure about that?

    Mr. Bobulinski. Joe Biden.

    Mr. Jordan. You sure?

    Mr. Bobulinski. I am a thousand percent sure.

    Mr. Jordan. Because when Hunter Biden did his deposition under oath, he said, “I do not know who it is,” even though he was copied on an email that said, “H will hold 10 percent for the “Big Guy”.” You sure the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden?

    Mr. Bobulinski. A thousand percent, and there are other text messages that back that up that the brave whistleblowers, Shapley and Ziegler, had produced, not from my phones, not from my Blackberry that I took screenshots from. They took them from subpoenas directly from Apple’s iCloud that back up the fact that Hunter knew the “Big Guy” was Joe Biden.

    Mr. Jordan. The “Big Guy” is the brand. The “Big Guy” is the lift. The “Big Guy” is the one who showed up at golf outings, who took phone calls in meetings and lunches and dinners with Hunter Biden and his business associates. Is that right?

    Mr. Bobulinski. Correct.

    Mr. Jordan. Mr. Galanis, you referenced in your opening statement, May 4, 2014, you were at a party at a restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. Can you tell me who else was there?

    Mr. Galanis. Yes. It was a birthday party. So, there were more than a 100 people there, but amongst them was Devon Archer; myself; the host, Alex Makarski; Yelena Baturina; her husband; and then Hunter Biden joined after I arrived.

    Mr. Jordan. And tell us, I think you referenced a phone call that took place. Tell the Committee what happened with that phone call. Who was involved in that phone call?

    Mr. Galanis. As I testified in my opening statement, it was already said it was Yelena Baturina, her husband, myself, Hunter initiating it, Joe Biden on the speaker phone, and Devon Archer.

    Mr. Jordan. So, there is a little pull aside where that group of people you just described, pulled aside and Hunter Biden called his father or called the Vice President. Is that accurate?

    Mr. Galanis. That is accurate.

    Mr. Jordan. And then tell me what was discussed on the call.

    Mr. Galanis. As I testified, it was a relatively short discussion, but it was a discussion about Yelena and Yuriy coming to town. As I testified specifically, they talked about being good to his boy. And then it ended—-

    Mr. Jordan. Well, let me ask you this. Mr. Galanis, let me ask you this. Did you get the impression Joe Biden was expecting the call?

    Mr. Galanis. Yes. To me it was clearly set up ahead of time. It was an arranged call.

    Mr. Jordan. So, this was arranged. This was coordinated. Hunter Biden calls his father, then Vice President, and I think in your deposition, you said he said this, “I am here with our friends that I told you were coming to town.” So, it is “our friends” and “I told you this was going to happen,” which suggests that it was most definitely coordinated. Is that accurate?

    Mr. Galanis. That is accurate, yes.

    Mr. Jordan. And again, can you tell the Committee who Ms. Baturina is again?

    Mr. Galanis. A Russian billionaire, wife of the former mayor of Moscow, served for nearly 20 years as the mayor.

    Mr. Jordan. She is the wealthiest woman in Russia. She had already given money to Hunter Biden in his business before this meeting in May, and then subsequent to that meeting, she committed to give more money. Is that accurate? 

    Mr. Galanis. That is accurate. …

https://archive.is/yl5iR

https://web.archive.org/web/20230720191356/https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-obtains-and-releases-fbi-record-alleging-vp-biden-foreign-bribery-scheme

https://archive.is/VDUoK

 

Click to access fd_1023_obtained_by_senator_grassley_-_biden.pdf

 

07.20.2023

GRASSLEY OBTAINS & RELEASES FBI RECORD ALLEGING VP BIDEN FOREIGN BRIBERY SCHEME

WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released an unclassified FBI-generated record describing an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a Ukrainian business executive. Grassley acquired the record, an FD-1023, via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers.

“For the better part of a year, I’ve been pushing the Justice Department and FBI to provide details on its handling of very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme. While the FBI sought to obfuscate and redact, the American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats, thanks to brave and heroic whistleblowers. What did the Justice Department and FBI do with the detailed information in the document? …

“The FBI’s Biden Bribery Record tracks closely with the evidence uncovered by the Oversight Committee’s Biden family influence peddling investigation. In the FBI’s record, the Burisma executive claims that he didn’t pay the ‘big guy’ directly but that he used several bank accounts to conceal the money. That sounds an awful lot like how the Bidens conduct business: using multiple bank accounts to hide the source and total amount of the money,” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said. “At our hearing with IRS whistleblowers, they testified that they had never seen or heard of this record during the Biden criminal investigation, despite having potentially corroborating evidence. Given the misconduct and politicization at the Department of Justice, the American people must be able to read this record for themselves. I thank Senator Grassley for providing much needed transparency to the American people. We must hold the Department of Justice accountable for seeking to bury this record to protect the Bidens.”

Grassley first disclosed the FBI’s possession of significant and voluminous evidence of potential criminality involving the Biden family last year. He has since worked to unearth the FBI record, eventually partnering with Comer on a subpoena to compel its public disclosure. After delays, the FBI provided a highly redacted version of the document to select members of the House of Representatives, but it remained shielded from the public and omitted key details, including references to recordings. Following the FBI’s failure to fully comply with the congressional subpoena, Grassley received the legally protected disclosure with limited redactions to protect a trusted FBI source, handling agents, department whistleblowers and identifiers related to other ongoing investigations.

Read the FD-1023

[in which an FBI agent in Ukraine was told on 26 June 2020 by Burisma’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii in Kiev, that “they hired Hunter Biden to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems’.” I.e., it was protection money. So the FBI has at least that evidence — and perhaps much more.]

According to the FBI’s confidential human source, executives for Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, brought Hunter Biden on the board to “protect us through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” …

Zlochevsky claimed to have many text messages and recordings that show that he was coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Shokin was fired. Specifically, he claimed to have two recordings with Joe Biden and 15 recordings with Hunter Biden. Zlochevsky also retained two documents, presumably financial records, as evidence of the arrangement, but said he didn’t send any funds directly to the “Big Guy,” a term understood to be a reference to Joe Biden. References to the “Big Guy” surfaced in communications involving other Biden family business arrangements independent of the Burisma arrangement. Zlochevsky claimed it would take investigators 10 years to uncover the illicit payments to the Bidens, according to the document.

Related:

10.17.2022 | FBI Possesses Significant, Impactful, Voluminous Evidence of Potential Criminality in Biden Family Business Arrangements

05.03.2023 | Grassley, Comer Demand FBI Record Alleging Criminal Scheme Involving Then-VP Biden

05.10.2023 | Comer and Grassley on FBI Failing to Comply with Subpoena Deadline

05.24.2023 | Comer & Grassley Blast FBI for Refusing to Provide Subpoenaed Record Alleging Then-VP Biden Engaged in a Bribery Scheme

05.31.2023 | Grassley & Comer to Wray: Provide the Unclassified Documents or Face Contempt

06.06.2023 | Grassley’s Message to the Biden DOJ and FBI: Quit Playing Games with the American People

06.12.2023 | Grassley: FBI Redacted References to Recordings in Biden Allegation Shared with Congress

06.21.2023 | Grassley, Graham Lead Senate Judiciary Committee GOP in Seeking Unredacted FBI Record at Center of Biden Allegations

07.18.2023 | Grassley, Johnson, Senate Republicans Demand DOJ and FBI Protect Whistleblowers Alleging Biden Bribery Scheme: “Today, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) led a group of twenty-three Republican senators in calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to commit to protecting agency whistleblowers who disclosed the existence of FBI records alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national.”

——

WHERE THE INVESTIGATION STANDS NOW

The Administration is stonewalling it. The authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and of the evidence it contains, is no longer disputed by the Democrats, but the key point that Democratic Party ‘news’-media such as the AP and Politi-Fact [owned by the Poynter Institute, funded by 11 Democratic billionaires and one Republcan one] focus on, is that people such as Bobulinski and Galanis (and Zlochevsky in Kiev) have told lies in the past and consequently their testimony in the present case is worthless. (The evidence such as that the FBI reported that “they hired Hunter Biden to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems’,” is ignored by them.) The testimony to Congress alleges that “the ‘Big Guy’ was Joe Biden’,” but Democratic Party ‘news’-media question that allegation and demand proof of it. And Republican Party ‘news’-media are not pressing the matter. If you want to explore further what Democratic Party ‘news’-media say about this matter, click here.

So, that’s just about everything in a nutshell. If the matter will never be prosecuted, that’s what won’t be prosecuted, and you will have to judge if for yourself, since no jury then ever will. 

In the past, I have argued that Biden is the most corrupt President in U.S. history. Most of the examples I cited were from his time as a U.S. Senator, but that corruptness continued right into his Vice Presidency, and into his Presidency.

ON A RELATED TOPIC: I recommend this article about the extent of Biden’s rapidly degenerating mental capacity and the persons who have been making Presidential decisions during the past few months in his stead.

BACK TO THE MAIN TOPIC: One possible reason why the Republican Party hasn’t yet brought this issue of Biden’s brazen corruptness to the fore, is that they’re waiting to release it against him after he becomes nominated. If that’s the reason, it is smart politics. Also, it increases the likelihood that Biden, who is just about the most vulnerable nominee that the Democrats could possibly select, will become the nominee. Right now, after the June 27th debate with Trump, Trump can only be salivating at the prospect of the second debate being with the same person as before. The Republicans wouldn’t be wanting to tip their hand about the corruption issue against Biden at a time when the Democrats are considering to nominate an alternative candidate. However, if the Democrats do stick with Biden, then that would be very stupid, and would make Trump a very lucky man, because just about everyone who doesn’t already know that Biden is the most corrupt President in U.S. history will then come to learn about it before November 5th — and “sleepy Joe” will then grow to be known as “evil and sleepy Joe,” and so to go down with a thud, and bring his entire Party down with him. But frankly, I doubt that the Democratic strategists are that stupid. On July 3rd, I headlined “Powerful Evidence Democratic Nominee Will Be Whitmer or Buttigieg, Not Biden”.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://theduran.com/why-is-joe-biden-not-being-tried-for-bribery-conspiracy/

 

READ FROM TOP.