Below is my column in new research published in the Washington Post that turned up an interesting case involving the prosecution of the great-great-grandfather of President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. What was interesting about the account was not the criminality, which can be found in the history of many families. Rather it was the intervention of allies and negating of the conviction of Mose Robinette that was so ironic in light of the current controversies.
Here is the column:
The Bidens have shown a legendary skill at evading legal accountability. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, Biden family members often marshal political allies and media to kill investigations or cut sweetheart deals.
The Bidens swim in scandal with the ease and agility of a bottlenose dolphin. From his own plagiarism scandal to his brother’s role in killing a man to his son’s various federal crimes, Bidens have long been a wonder in Washington.
It turns out that it may be something of a family trait acquired through generations of natural selection.
A historian recently discovered that Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather, Moses J. Robinette, was accused and found guilty of attempted murder. The case followed a strikingly familiar pattern.
Fittingly, Robinette was a government contractor. He was paid to give veterinary care for the horses of the Union army during the Civil War, taking the job after his hotel was burned down.
At 42, Robinette sounded like his great-great-grandson. He was married and described as “full of fun, always lively and joking.” But the good times ended on March 21, 1864 in Beverly Ford, Va., Robinette got into a fight with another contractor, John J. Alexander, who overheard Robinette bad mouthing him to a female cook. When Alexander confronted him, Robinette pulled a knife and, in the ensuing fight, cut Alexander repeatedly.
It was an early version of President Biden’s “corn pop” story where he faced a gang member wielding a straight razor. However, in this version “the Bad Dude” was a wagon master, and it was the Biden family member wielding the knife. Robinette left Alexander bleeding from multiple cuts. His trial noted that he was intoxicated and had incited “a dangerous quarrel.” (It appears that back then it was a Biden arguing over what truly constitutes “incitement.”)
Robinette argued a lack of intent to commit murder, insisting “I had no malice towards Mr. Alexander before or since. He grabbed me and possibly might have injured me seriously had I not resorted to the means that I did.”
The argument would make Abby Lowell blush, since there was no evidence that Alexander had even been armed. Robinette was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to two years’ incarceration at hard labor.
That is when the case took another familiar turn. Friends of Robinette interceded with the Army and powerful political figures.
There were long delays. It took three months for the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George G. Meade, to confirm Robinette’s sentence. His friends then went to Waitman T. Willey, the senator from West Virginia, who went to bat for Biden. Willey pressured President Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, who then leaned on the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, to send over a report and full accounting of the case.
Biden’s associates argued that, although Robinette had been the only person armed, the victim was a teamster “much his superior in strength and Size, all under the impulse of the excitement of the moment.”
They beseeched Lincoln to “think of his motherless Daughters and sons at home! … [Praying for] your interposition in behalf of the unfortunate Father…and distressed family of loved Children, Union Daughters & Union Sons.”
Their final argument was the one quintessentially Bidenesque. They told Lincoln that he was a political ally who was “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government.” (It appears, even back then, the Bidens were union men.)
It worked. Lincoln was known for leniency in pardons, and he signed a “Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln.” on Sept. 1. 1864. Robinette was a free man.
So Robinette was found guilty at trial, severely cut an unarmed man, but was freed with the help of a U.S. senator with a plea that he was a loyal political ally.
Whatever the true merits, it showed the importance of having friends in high places. Or, as the president once put it more bluntly, “No one f**ks with a Biden.” It is family scripture that runs from Moses to James to Joseph.
Now, 160 years later, Moses’s great-great-grandson was found by a special counsel to have willfully retained classified material, mishandled that material for decades, and to have probably shown the classified material to a ghostwriter who lacked clearance. He was spared any criminal charge in part because he would make a sympathetic defendant due to his diminished mental faculties.
If that is not enough, political allies are rallying to his side to stop any corruption investigation while calling his detractors “traitors” and “Putin lovers.”
After charges were brought against a former FBI asset for his false claims about bribing President Biden, Democratic operatives and media figures went into full conspiracy-theory mode to end any further investigation into the Biden family.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) went so far as to declare that anyone now looking into the Biden corruption scandal is by definition “a knowing asset of Russian intelligence” and “acting as an agent of Vladimir Putin.”
It is, of course, perfectly absurd. The charges against Alexander Smirnov have no bearing on dozens of allegedly corrupt payments and hundreds of emails that are being investigated by Congress. Try to ask the Bidens about the millions they have pocketed from foreign sources, and you are some kind of Russian dupe.
NBC News correspondent Ken Dilanian absurdly declared that the long ago-debunked letter by intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop is a fake and part of a Russian disinformation campaign must now be accepted as true. He must have missed that the laptop has been authenticated separately, irrespective of Smirnov’s lies.
Not only do Biden allies want to end any further discussion of the family corruption, but former Democratic Sen Claire McCaskill has angrily demanded that the media stop any more fact checks of Biden on any subject. She previously attacked witnesses exposing the Biden censorship system, including calling some “Putin lovers.”
It really has very little do with the Russians. This is what Bidens do best.
When Hunter previously threatened a Chinese businessman by warning that his father was “sitting next” to him and waiting for money, Hunter stressed that he should tell the head of his company that “the Bidens are the best at doing exactly what the chairman wants.”
After generations, the Bidens are still showing the same nimble qualities of great-great-granddad Moses. Indeed, they could replace the legend on their family crest with “Manus manum lavat, “one hand washes the other.”
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
N.B.: Notably, after this column ran the usual suspects are gathering around a “readers added context” that briefly appeared (before being taken down by Twitter). It suggested that I was arguing in the column that the Bidens are genetically prone to crime in discussing Biden’s great-great-grandfather’s conviction for attempted murder. That is manifestly untrue. (The “trait” was actually a reference to their ability to deal with scandal, not criminality itself). It takes an utter lack of sense of humor to interpret the reference to natural selection in managing legal controversies as a literal argument a genetic preposition toward crime. However, humor like reason is a stranger in an age of rage.
The column was obviously drawing ironic, not genetic, comparisons to the current allegations. In anticipation of the next spin, I also referred to the “scripture” of the Bidens but I was not suggesting that they are divine or prophets. I also compared the Bidens to bottlenose dolphins but I do not believe that they are aquatic mammals. Finally, I do not believe that there is a genetic loss of humor. The faux outrage is merely adaptive behavior in this political ecosystem.
Somebody, please buy the Left a mirror:
The Left is in a tizzy because JT allegedly “blamed [Joe Biden] for the sins of his great-great grandfather.” (Which, of course, he did not do.)
Then we have, pushed by the Left: affirmative action, white guilt, reparations, systemic racism, white fragility, . . .
What do you think is the premise behind all of those “anti”-racism policies?
More than that. Men’s brains are exactly the same according to the left. However, trans people have the ‘wrong body for their male/female’ brain. Feminism does much of the same, ‘women are strong as men’ yet ‘women are delicate flowers and need protection.’
The worst, to me, is that ‘conservatives are racists and think Blacks are inferior,’ also liberals ‘Blacks don’t know how to use the Internet’ or ‘get state issued IDs to vote.’ Unironically, they do both quite well.
And it goes on and on…
whoops ‘Men’s brains are exactly the as women’s…
Jonathan: Breaking news! DJT just filed an appeal of Judge Engoron’s $355 million judgement. But what is missing from Alina Habba’s filing is that DJT DID NOT post a bond which almost always happens when a debtor wants to appeal. So if DJT does not post a bond in the next 30 days what is going to happen? For sure AG James will commence enforcement proceedings and will seize some of DJT’s assets–his properties and bank accounts–to pay off the judgment. And DJT’s assets are not hard to find. Alina Habba’s latest filing comes after she promised her client would post a bond because, well, he is a billionaire at least twice over. Notice some cognitive dissonance?
Now if you live in DJT’s alt universe, as many do on this blog, you think he will win in the appeal of Engoron’s judgment. That appeal could probably take a year or two. Even if DJT is successful and gets the judgment either overturned or the damages significantly reduced by the NY Appellate Division, which is highly unlikely, AG James will already have collected on the judgment and any higher court decision will be moot. If the amount of damages is reduced below what AG James has already collected she simply has to return the difference. In the meantime DJT has lost a lot of his valuable assets.
What is curious about all this is that in the first E. Jean Carroll defamation award DJT posted a CASH bond of $5.6 million for his appeal in that case. Of course, that was over a year ago when DJT was apparently “flush” with cash. Not so much any more because DJT can’t even come up with a bond amounting to $90 million on the second award of damages.
Anyone on this blog think DJT can come up with bonds to cover his appeals in either of the cases? If you do where is he going to get the money? In the Engoron judgment he can’t liquidate assets without the approval of Judge Barbara Jones. So where will he get the money? Hawking his signature “golden sneakers”? To get the money to get a bond on the $90 million alone DJT would have to sell 225,000 thousand pair of the sneakers. Do you think there are enough suckers out there who would do that?
Dennis McIntyre, Bribery Biden’s resident version of Baghdad Bob assigned to Turley, tried his latest “BBBBUUUTTTT MUH TRUMP!” moment with this:
“Alina Habba’s latest filing comes after she promised her client would post a bond because, well, he is a billionaire at least twice over. Notice some cognitive dissonance?”
Dennis the sophomoric pathological serial liar doesn’t see any cognitive dissonance in Bribery Biden: his paymaster that regularly talks about just having had conversations with people who have been dead for decades, can’t finish a sentence, and speaks in tongues in a manner that only Dennis claims he can understand.
And because one of Biden’s police state fascist prosecutors, Fani Hoe Willis, is filling the news these days while the world discusses her perjury and corruption in picking her unqualified stud to be the Trump prosecutor she funnelled almost a million dollars through to take her on sex tours of the world… Dennis wants to talk about Trump’s lawyer in a civil case instead. Not about Willis and her stud facing the real prospect of perjury charges and possibly disbarment.
Dennis would be more palatable if the lies and distractions he parrots were at least entertaining, but it’s always just the same old schtick.
Dennis got one thing right in his latest Baghdad Bob performance here: Does Dennis McIntyre think that readers here are equally as stupid as the Marxist Useful Idiot ranks that he came from?
Jonathan: Breaking news! DJT just filed an appeal of Judge Engoron’s $355 million judgement.
Better breaking news Dennis: the law partner of Fani Willis’s stud has been ordered to testify in court about their screwing each other before she appointed him the unqualified prosecutor:
“A judge has determined that Nathan Wade’s former law partner and divorce lawyer must tell the court what he knows about the special prosecutor’s relationship with District Attorney Fani Willis. Bradley’s testimony could be damning for Willis and Wade. McAfee has already heard testimony from a former friend and employee of Willis who said the romance began long before Willis hired Wade. A second witness contradicting Willis and Wade could provide further evidence to support the defendants’ assertion that Willis and Wade both committed perjury at the recent hearing.”
Jonathan has finally jumped the shark – time to either turn out the lights or take the full battery cognitive assessment before he embarrasses himself any further. I suspect he will claim this pathetic drivel was intended as humor when he is rightly called on it. I don’t buy it….
First, I want to acknowledge my White Privilege. One branch of the people in my family tree, both owned a slave, and fought for the Confederacy. As the Democrat Left says, I am tainted, even though I never actually owned a slave. In fact, I was actually a slave on two occasions in my life, with my then current wives each telling me that I had better do what they said or else! They made me do menial tasks, like taking out the garbage, and I was forced to work in the fields for them, mowing the yard and pulling the weeds out of the flower bed. They also took all my money. I had to say, “Yes, ma’am to them! Nonetheless, if I am tainted, by the actions of my ancestors, then it is not illogical for Biden to be tainted.
Is there black privilege in Africa?
I hear Africa is nice this time of year.
Lincoln thought Liberia was nice; Lincoln was very smart.
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The International Civil Aviation Organization reports that 3.5 billion passengers buckled up for takeoff in 2015, and the International Air Transport Association expects that number to jump to 3.8 billion next year [2016].
– Smithsonian Magazine
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To wit,
[“WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A WAY’]
“If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”5
One of Lincoln’s most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.6 In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas …
Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, “must be effected by colonization” of the country’s blacks to a foreign land. “The enterprise is a difficult one,” he acknowledged,
but “where there is a will there is a way,” and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.
– Robert Morgan
Professor Turley Writes:
“Try to ask the Bidens about the millions they have pocketed from foreign sources, and you are some kind of Russian dupe”.
……………………………
That $5 million bribe allegation was coming from Alexander Smirnov. So what other ‘millions’ are we talking about? And which Biden is ‘pocketing’ this money?
Sometimes Turley presumes that we, as readers, are well-versed on Fox News talking points and no explanations are needed to buttress these claims.
But one should note there have been multiple stories in mainstream media saying that without Smirnov’s testimony, the Biden impeachment inquiry is quite possibly dead. And Turley’s lack of specificity here lends credence to those mainstream reports.
“That $5 million bribe allegation was coming from Alexander Smirnov. So what other ‘millions’ are we talking about? And which Biden is ‘pocketing’ this money?”
The $millions represented by 150+ SAR filed with the United Stated Treasury.
That money flowed into Dozens of Biden shell companies., that sent $ to multiple off shore banks.
Another cowardly, faceless Anonymous Soviet Democrat sophomoric liar attempted this “Squirrel!” post of deflection: “That $5 million bribe allegation was coming from Alexander Smirnov. So what other ‘millions’ are we talking about? And which Biden is ‘pocketing’ this money?”
This is the best “nothing to see here” that the Soviet Democrats can hope succeeds if they repeat the lie often enough?
Not aware that The Big Guy’s three grandchildren and his nephew netted more than that? Well… got an excuse for what those minor grandchildren were doing for Biden customers that got them paid more than $5 million from the Chicoms?
The cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat Useful Idiot Apparatchiks seem to have a desperate hope that readers here aren’t well versed on the lies at CNN and elsewhere that they childishly parrot here. The claims that if Smirnov did indeed lie, then there is nothing else to see here regarding The Big Guy, Bribery Biden.
They demand you believe that the only evidence in public view is from Smirnov – who has yet to be convicted, by the same FBI who still covers Hunter Biden’s felonies as they have now for over a decade of corruption and unrelated felonies.
In Soviet Democrat world, that $5 million purchase of Biden’s White House Vice President’s office cancels out the rest of the $30+ MILLIONS of dollars that flowed from adversarial nations like the ChiComs and Russians into Biden pockets once he became Vice President.
That $5 million supposedly covers the total amount the 150+ Suspicious Activities Reports filed with the Obama Administration for the tens of millions of dollars that made it’s way into the Vice President’s family pockets. It doesn’t even cover the $6+ million dollars that one of Putin’s oligarchs put in the family bagman’s pockets.
But one should note there have been multiple stories in mainstream media saying that without Smirnov’s testimony, the Biden impeachment inquiry is quite possibly dead.
That’s a great line to finish this feeble attempt with! Are these the same ‘mainstream media’ who also told us that the laptop belonging to The Bagman Formerly Known As The Crackhead Kid was just “Russian election disinformation”?
Same ‘mainstream media’ who assured us their sources inside the FBI and DoJ had confirmed that the ‘Russia Dossier’ was actual US intelligence agency product? And all of it was verified?
Any of these cowardly anonymous (and not anonymous) Soviet Democrat apparatchiks assigned here to belittle Turley in hopes of defending Bribery Joe who can point to which ‘mainstream media’ who provided those lies for them to repeat (as they do this one) who publicly apologized for propagating those Soviet Democrat lies?
Old Dog, show us an article from established source itemizing those millions and ‘who’ they went to.
In more relevant news, a bushel of corn, which was trading at 635 a bushel in June is now trading at 394 this morning. A significant drop in price back into a normal historical range for corn. Party on. Solid economic policy…
Not sure if that is you mindless conclusion, or some other mindless leftist told you, But commodity prices are drive 95% by supply and demand.
Your “solid economic policy” has Iowa corn growers losing $220 per acre on 12.9 million acres thats $2.9 BILLION stripped from Main street purchases just in the State of Iowa
They are all the same; guilty of a multitude of crimes, many punishable by death.
So what’s up….
“[The “readers added context”] suggested that I was arguing in the column that the Bidens are genetically prone to crime…”
– Professor Turley
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It may have been barely noticeable to some, but what the Good Professor conclusively argued was the preponderance of corruption in one “Crazy Abe” Lincoln.
In the case of Moses J. Robinette, in unprincipled fashion, Lincoln overturned a valid verdict that had been accepted by a judge and confirmed by the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George G. Meade, in which the defendant was legally and competently tried, found guilty of attempted murder, and sentenced to two years’ incarceration at hard labor.
Lincoln similarly and illegitimately overturned the Constitution of the United States and denied not-prohibited and fully constitutional secession to a particular federation of States, ultimately, effectively, and perpetually nullifying the Constitution in large part, if not its entirety.
Lincoln’s egregious monumental transgression ultimately gave way to the incremental implementation of the principles of communism—the very communism that Americans have struggled under to this day, Lincoln being a confirmed fellow traveler of Karl Marx.
All acts of Lincoln and his successors subsequent to his illicit and unconstitutional denial of secession are similarly unconstitutional by extension and must be expunged with extreme prejudice.
Penal Type
Jonathan: Even some of your ardent supporters are having a hard time defending your spurious claim that Joe Biden should be blamed for the sins of his great-great grandfather Moses. It’s a sign you have lost the narrative. That said, let’s address two other of your claims.
First, you say the reason SC Hur could not charge Biden was only because he suffers from “diminished mental faculties”. That’s not the reason. As Hur says in his report it’s because, unlike DJT, Biden didn’t retain classified because he thought it was his “personal property”. Nor did Biden hide the material or try to obstruct the FBI investigation. He quickly returned everything his lawyers could find and then permitted the FBI to search his business office and his home. It didn’t require a subpoena. That is in stark contrast to the actions of DJT. That’s the real reason Hur could find no reason to charge Biden.
Second, the re-arrest of Alexander Smirnov is because he lied to the FBI claiming falsely that Hunter and Joe Biden received millions in bribes–a claim pushed by Smirnov’s Russian intelligence handlers. These are AS’s admissions and not what you call a “conspiracy-theory” by the Dems. But you continue to assert and ask–what about “the millions they [the Bidens] pocketed from foreign sources”? Every business associate of Hunter testified under oath that Joe Biden was not involved in their foreign business dealings nor did he get any financial benefit from them. This is the hard “conspiracy-theory” rock you and Comer are having a hard time pushing up hill!
Dennis McIntyre, ardent lying Soviet Democrat defender of Bribery Biden’s corruption and police state fascism tried this gambit: “Jonathan: Even some of your ardent supporters are having a hard time defending your spurious claim”
Always start out with a claim you cannot support with evidence. Yep, look at all the supporters here feeling the need to “defend” Turley – when what they are actually doing is agreeing that Turley’s observations are completely accurate. Dennis can’t seem to find any names of people engaged in defense – instead of engaged in agreement.
Dennis McIntyre, sent his by his paymaster Bribery Biden to ardently lie, distract, and deceive to defend his boss’s criminalty has exactly ZERO supporters here. Like his boss The Big Guy, pathological liars rarely find any kind of supporters. They also are pathetically inept (and usually absent) at defending their lies and distractions.
One could almost begin to seriously ask if the Bribery Biden’s family tree of similar traits doesn’t reach back to his great grandfather – but to a b*****d son we know as Dennis McIntyre. Serial pathological Lyin’ Like A Proud Biden is certainly a notable personal trait evidenced in both Bribery Biden and Dennis McIntyre, The Big Guy’s version of Baghdad Bob.
You idiot, its all about Trump, and that is what the globalist collectivist use you for, useful idiot
“It’s a sign you have lost the narrative.”
– Denniiiiis the DNCbot
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Professor Turley has “lost the narrative” and that’s why “Denniiiiis the DNCbot” and “Gigi the NUTCHACHACHA” are tasked to the Turley Blog by the DNC every single day.
The thing is-with Joe Buydin, at the outset he NEVER should have had classified documents, as a Senator out of the SKIF, and for decades. Someone removed them, and Biden had them in multiple locations. Remember, the FBI was at MLG on multiple occasions, investigated and inventoried the docs Trump had there. Trump did return 15 boxes, and other files. He was POTUS and had a right to have certain documents. A lock was even put on a door @MLG, in response to an FBI request. Biden “willfully” retained CDs, despite not having the legal right. And no charges-no surprise there. Jacked up Smith-in the news daily, making claims, charges with nasty rhetoric. A Dem paid for pit bull.
Regarding the arrest of Sminov, a former trusted CHS for like 10-12 years, paid informant and then when a claim comes-$5M for Joe, $5M for Junta ostensibly to remove Shokin-he’s persona non grata? I’m not buying it. Again-the bribery Shokin charge in the FB- 1023 is only one of the charges the R oversight committee is reviewing. Who is the Big Guy, and how does he fit into these dirty deals? Why would CCP, Ukrainian oligarchs, Romainians pay 9 Biden family members (at least, based on bank and wire records) and what did these folks get for said $ millions. That the jist of what needs to be answered.
In regard to Joe’s grandfather evading another crime, it seems to be a Biden thing-ironic? Prof. Turley is bringing to light this irony, that the Biden now and back then-have a history of skirting the law, and having their friends in high places protect them. That continues today…
Biden didn’t retain classified because he thought it was his “personal property”
His actions prove he did believe he owned them. But the Crime is to posses. Intent not required.