By Mike Huckabee
March 21, 2024
|
|
It wasn’t just Hunter Biden’s ears that were burning during Wednesday’s first public hearing in President Biden’s impeachment inquiry. It must’ve been President Biden’s ears, too. Because two of Hunter’s former business partners made it clear that the family’s whole money-making operation was centered around Joe. It could be summed up in five words:
“Be good to my boy.”
That was part of witness Jason Galanis’ paraphrase of a particular exchange Joe Biden had during a 2014 speakerphone call with Hunter, business partners Devon Archer and Galanis, and two Russian oligarchs, Yelena Baturina and her husband, the late Yuri Luzhkov, former mayor of Moscow, at a New York bar.
It’s hilarious now to look back at Joe Biden’s fervent denials, like this one in 2019 when he was running for President: “There will be an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government. There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there. And I will impose the same kind of strict, strict rules. That is why I have never talked with my son or my brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period.”
It’s interesting, given what we know now, to look back: https://apnews.com/united-
Anyone who could look a reporter in the eye and lie this hard could lie about anything.
Hunter was “invited” to appear at Wednesday’s hearing, along with former partners Tony Bobulinski and Galanis, but he was a no-show once again, after professing to WANT the chance to speak publicly. Either something changed between then and now, or that was a lie, too. Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell expressed concerns about the partisan nature of the inquiry, but Hunter has known all along that he’d be testifying before GOP-led committees. The problem is likely that Hunter has now gone on the record in a closed-door session, making it harder to fudge the facts in public and not get charged with perjury.
Galanis, like fellow former Hunter business partner Devon Archer, is currently in the pokey in Alabama for defrauding a Native American tribe in a bond scheme. With permission from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, he appeared virtually for Wednesday’s hearing. Archer could have done the same, but he, like Hunter, declined to appear after participating in a closed-door session. Bobulinski seems to be the one Hunter associate named here whose hands are clean. (Of those who’ve testified in person, he’s also the only Republican --- coincidence??)
As for that speakerphone call, after then-VP Biden said, “Be good to my boy,” Hunter said, “Everything is good; we are moving ahead,” and Joe Biden concluded by saying something about “being helpful,” according to Galanis. “It was clear to me,” he said, “this was a pre-arranged call with his father meant to impress the Russian investors that Hunter had access to his father and all the power and prestige of his position.” Devon Archer has previously testified that he recalled about 20 of these speakerphone calls with guests.
Galanis went on to testify that a few days after this meeting, Baturina committed to a $10-20 million “hard order” in a Hunter-affiliated business.
There’s no need to re-hash all we know about Hunter’s business dealings and the millions of dollars that flowed through various accounts. It’s become clear that the Biden family was raking in money by selling access and turning the Biden “brand” into a commodity. Here’s just one example, from earlier this month, involving a Chinese businessman, Henry Zhao. It’s all in the emails, which say that Zhao thought of their pending deal primarily as an “access vehicle.”
Here’s JUST THE NEWS from the day before the hearings, shedding light on what the committee needed to clarify from these witnesses and suggesting specific questions to ask them...
And here’s their full report from after Wednesday’s hearings...
The highlight of the day was probably the passionately ignorant questioning by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who had a meltdown when Bobulinski dared to say in answer to her question that, yes, he’d seen Joe Biden commit crimes. She railed against witness Bobulinski, apparently thinking she had him cornered, yelling at him to name “what crimes” he had “personally witnessed” Joe Biden commit.
AOC --- “Is it your testimony today that you personally witnessed Joe Biden commit a crime?”
Bobulinski --- “Yes.”
AOC --- (not the answer she was looking for; she asks for specifics but interrupts his answer)
Bobulinski --- “...corruption statutes, RICO, conspiracy, FARA…”
AOC --- “What is the crime, sir, SPECIFICALLY??”
Bobulinski --- “...you asked me to answer the question, I answered the question, RICO, you’re obviously not familiar with, corruption statutes…”
AOC --- “Excuse me, sir? Excuse me, sir, RICO is not a crime, it is a cat-e-go-ry!! WHAT IS THE CRIME??”
It went on, ridiculously, but Democrats on the committee ate it up, or pretended to. The committee member who followed her, Katie Porter of California, praised her, saying that if impeachment “was on life support, [AOC] just killed it.” It’s more likely that if any viewers’ brains were on life support, she killed them.
The video of this exchange is not to be missed…
Another low-IQ committee member who can always be counted on to humiliate himself, Dan Goldman of New York, was similarly prickly yesterday, even snapping at Bobulinski to “be quiet!” when the witness was just trying to correct the record. One has to wonder if the reason for all this sourness is that the Democrats know how bad this looks for their President and (for now) 2024 candidate. The video is here…
Tony Bobulinski, when not being yelled at, offered some examples yesterday that he said were Hunter Biden’s perjury in his closed-door session. FOX NEWS’ Kevin Corke put the alleged lies into three categories:
1) the timeline of his business relationship with Chinese energy company CEFC. (It apparently started much earlier.)
2) Joe Biden’s interactions with Hunter’s business associates. (Well, we already knew Joe lied about that.)
3) the threatening WhatsApp message sent to a Chinese businessman. (Hunter had said he didn’t even recall making it --- but he somehow KNEW his dad wasn’t really with him at the time!)
What Bobulinski has told the committee about Biden finances has been borne out by bank records. Hunter’s former business partner Rob Walker received $3 million from Chinese-linked company State Energy HK, $1 million of which was distributed to bank accounts linked to Hunter Biden and various family members.
As Trace Gallagher reported late Thursday night, Tony Bobulinski asked the committee one “big question”: “If there’s no evidence of corruption here today, if Joe’s conduct and the conduct of his family were fully legal and proper, then why are they so dishonest about it? Not just slight misrepresentations of fact, but deep untruths about the entire corrupt enterprise?”
Guest John Yoo, law professor at U.C. Berkeley, said that “Tony has it exactly right.” If the business is above-board, there’s no need to create all those shell companies for secretly funneling money into Biden accounts. And you don’t see anything that anyone’s buying. “What are the Bidens actually providing in terms of honest goods and services?” he asked. “If it’s just influence-peddling, well, of course that’s what they would want to hide.” That’s especially true when the people trying to buy access are from businesses in countries that are our “worst rivals,” he said.
“So the problem is, how much of that is criminal and how much of that is impeachable?” Yoo said. “That’s the hard question that the committee has to answer now.”
Yoo also laughed that “I don’t think AOC should go to law school any time soon.” He gave her an “F.” RICO, after all, is the name of a specific federal statute. It is not a cat-e-go-ry.
Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees are saying the impeachment inquiry isn’t going to go anywhere from here, but they didn’t defend the conduct of anyone in this story. (Even AOC didn’t do that.) Their attitude was that since the votes for impeachment aren’t there, everybody should just pack it in. Mainstream media accounts took the same tone. But Oversight Chair James Comer disagreed, saying, “In the coming days, I will invite President Joe Biden to the House Oversight Committee to provide his own testimony and explain why his family received tens of millions of dollars from foreign companies with his assistance.”
Don’t hold your breath on that ever happening. At this point, though, Comer should subpoena Hunter for a re-do of the public hearing he skipped --- due in part to a “scheduling problem,” according to his lawyer --- and this time charge him with contempt of Congress if he doesn’t show. If (when) the DOJ refuses to enforce it, that will just point up the two-tier system of “justice” under which we currently operate, in case anyone still can’t grasp the obvious (see Peter Navarro.)
In the meantime, let’s end on a high note: Tony Bobulinski’s remarkable opening statement.
https://oversight.house.gov/
Leave a Comment
Note: Fields marked with an * are required.