House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer has sent a seven-page letter (below) to invite President Joe Biden to testify in the Republican impeachment inquiry. The letter is the latest, and best, reduction of the glaring contradictions in the President’s past statements on his family’s well-documented influence peddling operation. President Biden is not expected to testify. However, the media should be interested in his answering the questions presented by the Committee. It is now clear that the President lied during his campaign and during his presidency on his lack of knowledge of his son’s business activities as well as his denial of any money gained from China. Yet, the White House responded, again, with mockery — a sense of impunity that only exists due to an enabling media.
Chairman Comer reduces the past testimony and evidence acquired by the Committee in the corruption scandal. In the last hearing, Democratic members simply refused to acknowledge that evidence. There was a bizarre disconnect as members mocked the witnesses for not supplying evidence of the President’s knowledge or involvement. They then did so and the members declared that there was no evidence.
Various members also misrepresented my earlier testimony during the hearing on the basis for the impeachment inquiry. Members like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) stated that I joined other witnesses in stating there was nothing that could remotely be impeachable in these allegations. That is demonstrably untrue. My testimony stated the opposite. I refused to pre-judge the evidence, but stated that there was ample basis for the inquiry and laid out various impeachable offenses that could be brought if ultimately supported by evidence. I also discussed those potential offenses in columns. The purpose of the hearing was not to declare an impeachment on the first day of the inquiry. Unlike the two prior impeachments by many of these same Democratic members, this impeachment inquiry sought to create a record of evidence and testimony to support any action that the House might take.
Now, the Committee has laid out the considerable evidence showing that the President had lied, knowingly and repeatedly.
Interspersed with specific evidentiary findings, the Committee presents ten questions that the President should be able to answer directly and unequivocally:
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Jonathan Li of Bohai Industrial Fund and/or Bohai Harvest Rosemont?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Ye Jianming of CEFC?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Henry Zhao of the Harvest Fund?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Vadym Pozharskyi of Burisma Holdings?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Mykola Zlochevsky of Burisma Holdings?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Kenes Rakishev of Novatus Holding?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Yelena Baturina?
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Have you met, spoken to, or otherwise interacted with Yuriy Luzhkov?
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Did you ever ask your brother James Biden about the source of the funds he used to pay or repay you?
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Did Eric Schwerin have insight into all your bank accounts until December 2017?
In response, the White House Counsel’s office again responded with mockery and taunting. I have previously discussed (including in my testimony in the Biden hearing) how the role of the White House staff in these denials can raise serious questions under the impeachment inquiry.
That has not deterred White House Counsel spokesperson Ian Sams, who has been previously accused of misrepresenting facts and engaging in heavy-handed treatment of the media. Sams responded to the letter:
“LOL. Comer knows 20+ witnesses have testified that POTUS did nothing wrong. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations. This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment. Call it a day, pal.”
The involvement of a member of the White House Counsel’s staff issuing such a disrespectful and taunting message would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Yet, the media has enabled such denial and deflection by showing no interest in the answers to any of these questions. It is part of the genius of the Biden management of this scandal. The White House quickly got reporters to buy into the illusion, making any later recognition impossible for these reporters. It is Houdini’s disappearing elephant trick applied to politics.
Even if most of the media refuses to demand answers, the public has a right to hear directly from the President on these specific questions. President Biden can still deny all of this countervailing evidence and “say it ain’t so,” but he should say something.
Here is the letter: 2024-03-28-CJC-letter-to-JRB
Biden should just them ‘em that he has better things to do…
While Republicans are busy trying to save our constitutional rule-of-law for the American people, Democrats are busy trying to save their democracy (power and control) for the Blob. The former uses facts, evidence, truth, honor, integrity, equal justice. The latter uses deceit, lawfare, propaganda, gas-lighting, bribery, violence, intimidation, obstruction, corruption, and so on. The Blob lost in 2016. But they bounced back in 2020. They will not leave anything to chance this November. Prepare.
Olly: egad, are you delusional? What, exactly, have Republicans done to benefit the American people? They scotched the Border Security Bill because Trump told them to–so he’d have an issue to attack Biden for, proving they don’t care about drugs crossing the border or the humanitarian crisis or backlog of immigration cases. They have blocked dozens of judicial appointments, contributing to backlogs in federal courts. They drag their feet on bills to fund the government and only provide short-term funding. They refuse to honor our commitment to help Ukraine, again, because that’s what Trump told them to do–to pay back Putin for helping him cheat in 2016. Take a look at Trump, who is sloppy fat, with an enormous waist and flabby belly hanging over his belt, and Biden, who is slim and rides a bicycle and tell me which one comes closer to being described as”The Blob”. And, to the extent that skin tone is related to health–look at Trump’s saggy, wrinkly skin and double chin–compare that to Biden. And, Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020. The one who is preparing to cheat this fall is Trump–they are already recruiting and training election officials in states, especially swing states, to try to challenge as many probable Democrat ballots as possible.
One of the great idiots of all time, our beloved dodo bird, old Gogoi goes to town.
And Mr. Dementia is a whiz at ripping people off. You really need to put the crack pipe down. Oh and go get another COVID booster.
Gigi – you do realize, don’t you, that the “Border Security Bill” would have continued to allow illegal immigration of an average of 5,000 per day, until the border would be shut down in that area? That would still allow at least 1,825,000 illegal immigrants into the country per year. Totally unvetted. It did not address the tsunami of literally millions of unvetted asylum seekers, who were released directly into the country, with a court backlog of years and years.
It was called the “Border Security Bill” so that vulnerable Democrats running for reelection could pretend that they want to stop illegal immigration, when anyone who actually read the bill would have known it did no such thing. Trump had secured the border. Through executive actions, Biden undid all of Trump’s immigration policies, resulting in 10 million illegal immigrants entering the United States in less than 4 years. As border states became overwhelmed and began shipping some illegals to Democrats sanctuary states, so they could finally do their fair share, Democrats began repeating the exact same lines that they deemed xenophobic in Republicans. Illegals were unvetted. Many were gang members and pedophiles. They overwhelmed city infrastructure. They necessitated cuts in all city services to care for them. They were housed in hotels, which then became centers for increased crime and violence. Democrat voters began to get angry, so Democrats called a bill that actually would allow another 7.3 million illegal immigrants in over the next four years, a “Border Security Bill” and when Republicans refused it, they ludicrously blamed Republicans for the illegal immigrant catastrophe Democrats created. That dog won’t hunt. Trump secured the border. Joe Biden deliberately opened it.
Why do you ignore the opposition to the Bill?
Joe Biden has reduced Border Patrol to an illegal immigrant concierge service. Border funding is just used to process illegal immigrants, and shockingly, even to fly some of them into the US direct from other countries. I have seen border patrol, on site, in interviews, say directly into the camera that Joe Biden caused this immigration mess, and they are not allowed to keep them out. They just let them in the country.
Democrats created an open border, called building a wall xenophobic under Trump, and this allowed the fentanyl crisis which has killed 100,000 Americans, most of them young. The open border allowed the sex trafficking of women and minors. Democrats defending police lead to increased murder rates.
Karen S,
Well said and epic take down of Natasha!
Say what?!? The Republicans are the ones who want to give the President absolute immunity for criminal acts. And they are the ones who tried to violate the constitution in 2021 an install an unelected president. The Republicans have also bent over backwards to shield Trump from consequences of his crimes. The Republicans don’t give one hoot about rule-of-law.
This president slaps the faces of Supreme Court justices, you think he cares about what republican lawmakers want?
He’s more likely to sic his AG on them.
Oh, wait.
Another fine example of Professor Turley’s art of distraction. At the public hearing last September, Turley testified “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment.” So did Turley condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene for filing articles of impeachment against Biden on his second day in office? Nope. Did Turley condemn other House Republicans for prejudging the evidence & filing 16 articles of impeachment during Biden’s first 2 years in office? Of course not.
Instead he rages at Raskin for citing Turley’s testimony that the current evidence didn’t support articles of impeachment. At the House impeachment inquiry Turley testified at, Nancy Mace said “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma.” Mace was citing claims made by Alexander Smirnov, who was later arrested for lying to the FBI about Joe & Biden receiving $5 million in bribes from Burisma. Has Turley ever condemned Mace for citing Smirnov’s false claims at a House hearing? Nope.
Last year, Turley wrote a blistering NY Post op-ed: “Joe Biden’s Ukraine Defense Falls Apart.” Turley insisted Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired by Biden to stop him from investigating Burisma–because that’s what Shokin told a Fox News interviewer. What Turley refuses to acknowledge is Brian Kilmeade’s follow up interview with Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s President when Shokinn was fired. When Kilmeade told him Shokin’s claim about Biden pressuring Ukraine to fire him because he was investigating Burisma, Poroshenko replied ““First of all, this is the completely crazy person. There is something wrong with him. Second, there is no one single word of truth.”
Trump has spent the past 3 1/2 years repeatedly lying about winning the 2020 election “by a lot” yet Turley is apparently more concerned about whether Joe Biden ever talked to Hunter about his business deals.
Anonymous – do you think Poroshenko might have been influenced by the milliions of dollars in military aid provided to his country by Biden?
However, let’s assume that Shokin was “crazy”; what right did a VP of the United States have in using the threat of cutting off Congressionally-granted military aid as a means to interfere in Ukraine’s justice system. Aren’t the J6 protestors charged with “interfering with an official proceeding”? Who authorized Biden to make such a demand?
edwardmahl, you appear to have evidence that 5 years after Poroshenko left office, he now isn’t telling the truth about Shokin being fired for being a corrupt prosecutor who failed to do his job.
Republicans attacked Obama for not providing military aid to Ukraine. Trump claimed Obama only sent Ukraine “pillows & sheets.” If you believe Obama sent millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, then you also apparently believe Republicans & Trump weren’t being honest with the American public about Obama supposedly not providing military aid to Ukraine.
Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, confirmed that Trump withheld Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine for months while pressuring Zelensky to launch an investigation into Joe & Hunter Biden.
123 J6 protestors were charged with using deadly & dangerous weapons & assaulting police officers. 140 police officers were injured during the J6 Capitol attack. Not sure how that relates to Shokin or Ukraine.
1) Obstruction of Justice. “More than 332 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.” https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/36-months-jan-6-attack-capitol-0 Except for trespass, “impeding an official proceeding” seems to be most common charge laid against the J6 protestors. By contrast, Biden did not simply interrupt a proceeding, but undermined the operation of the whole department by getting the prosecutor fired.
2) Poroshenko. Even if this gentleman was out of office, he still had a motive to encourage military aid to Ukraine.
3) Military aid to Ukraine. “By March 2015, the Obama administration had provided more than $120 million in security aid for Ukraine and promised $75 million worth of equipment, including counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Defense Department. The U.S. also pledged 230 Humvee vehicles. . . . Ultimately between 2014 and 2016, the Obama administration committed more than $600 million in security aid to Ukraine.”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-donald-trump-ap-fact-check-barack-obama-981ef7feb11053c1340a9d028d6f357b
Military aid does not need to be lethal weapons. In WW II, the USA supplied food and trucks, inter alia, to the Soviet Union to keep it fighting.
4) Trump’s withholding of aid. Trump did suggest that military aid might be delayed if Ukraine did not provide information about the Biden family corruption. That was not an issue raised in your comment. If it had been raised, I would have said that Trump was justified in doing so. After all, Biden claims that he got Shokin fired because he was concerned about corruption in a foreign country. Trump was more justifiably concerned about corruption in this country.
edwardmahl, so I now discover Turley is blocking my response to you. When I noticed my response wasn’t posted, I tried posting it again & received a message saying my post had already been posted, even though there was no sign of it. So I tried posting it again, received the same message & again there was no sign of it.
I’ll keep this in mind the next time the professor attacks the media, Democrats & RINO’s for opposing Americans 1st amendment, freedom of speech rights.
Anonymous,
The WordPress automated system blocked your comment because you used a word screened by the profanity filter. If you refrain from using profanity, the profanity filter will not block the posting. Keep that in mind next time you submit a comment.
Darren, I now see that the profanity in my post was when I included Biden’s famous quote: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” Well, son of a b**ch. He got fired.”
So here’s the post you blocked with Biden’s profanity eliminated:
edwardmahl, one of Biden’s biggest & most provable gaffes was his story about telling Ukraine “you’re not getting the billion dollars”… I looked at them and said: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” Well, son of a b***ch. He got fired.'” That’s a complete fanstasy on Joe’s part. In reality, Biden’s last trip to Ukraine was in December, 2015. The Ukrainian legislature voted to terminate Shokin 4 months later in March. 2016.
Two months before Biden’s last trip to Ukraine, 100 members of Ukraine’s legislature called for Shokin to be fired. Two months after Biden’s last trip to Ukraine, GOP Senators Rob Portman, Ron Johnson & Mark Kirk joined Democrats to urge Poroshenko to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office. Johnson said “The whole world felt that Shokin wasn’t doing a good enough job. So we were saying hey you’ve…got to rid yourself of corruption.”
A month before Shokin was terminated by Ukraine’s legislature, Shokin’s senior prosecutor resigned & condemned Shokin: “The General Prosecutor’s office is a brake on the reform of criminal justice, a hotbed of
corruption, an instrument of political pressure, one of the key obstacles to the arrival of foreign investment in Ukraine.”
You clearly disagree with the GOP Senators, Shokin’s senior prosecutor & Ukraine’s legislature that Shokin was corrupt & needed to be terminated. But it’s still unclear what source you’re relying on to believe Shokin was wrongly terminated, edwardmahl.
I believe you are dating yourself with “Say It Ain’t So”. Also, the implication of that statement by a young boy questioning Shoeless Joe Jackson’s participation in the Chisox scandal to throw the World Series may be for you an unconscious admission of your belief that our President was engaged in wrong doing, at least, of an ethical nature.
Another Clown Show
Law and Order is meaningless without enforcement. Lawyers would argue the meaning of “hung by the neck until dead” as the noose was being slipped around their own necks and the trap door sprung.
This information is forever entered into the public record. Historians who are not yet born will have access to the larger body of information. I suspect that when all the dust settles he will be considered one of the worst presidents (if not the worst)in the history of the United States.,
Worst president to occupy the White House… but far and away the best criminal.
Biden is an amateur compared to the Clintons.
Oh ya absolutely. The Clinton’s were quite dirty. Still are.
Old School, he is the most brazen criminal but he is not the best. The only reason he is getting away with his crimes is because the Dems and the media are letting him. This is the same as saying the guy mugging women on the subway is the best at it because Alvin Bragg isn’t indicting him. It is a fixed game and fixed games do not make a champion.
E.M., I agree with your sentiment but sadly the leftists are taking over the colleges and the media and it is these fascist liberals that will be writing the history. See Orwell, George.
The Dems, and the compliant mainstream media, will fall on their collective swords and scream until November 5th that those 20 non-existent Biden shell companies that little Hunter used to collect his foreign bribes flying around the world on Air Force Two with his father are absolute PROOF that Lunch Box Joe didn’t get anything. Proof mind you !! Biden will thumb his nose at the House Oversight Committee’s request much like his son did with his recent performance with Eric Swalwell. The Bidens are confident if nothing else Jonathan.
In Other Future News (2029): “Shrinkflation: Candy Bar Maker Switches Size Measurements from Ounces to ‘Parts per Million’.”
~+~
One of the nation’s largest manufacturers of candy bars and sweets finally conceded the impracticality of using ounces to measure its products’ continual downsizing due to shrinkflation. CEO Charlie Schweizer-Schokolade admitted in a leaked e-Mail that it was no longer practical to use hundred thousandths of an ounce for its current king sized bar and asked for suggestions from the board of directors. One measuring option seriously considered was Moles but it was feared this might lead to confusion as to whether it would be an ingredient or a measurement.
The measurement change will coincide with the latest shrinkage of their candy bar products, which are now measured in parts per million. The design of the candy bars took on a new strategy where marketing would instruct the customer that what appears to be an empty wrapper was not so. Marketing proposed the following serving suggestion:
“The customer opens one end of the wrapper. They would then experience the essence of a candy bar by sampling the scent of the flavorings. The aroma would evoke memories of younger days of having a candy bar and the fun and excitement it brought them. They then turn the wrapper inside out and lick the inner side of the package where the flavoring would provide them the taste they crave.”
The CEO continued, “Our latest offering provides 45 parts per million of the candy bar experience customers hold dear; a good value for only $17.90.”
The change to a virtual candy bar comes with labeling certain to attract more of an audience as the bar can be labeled “Organic”, since the candy is now composed entirely of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), something users of cheap, scented laundry detergent will be familiar with.
Trump + Gabbard, Vance, or Donalds would go a long way towards fixing this.
I love that the only defense the Left can come up with for this corrupt, incompetent bum is that “lying and influence-peddling are not impeachable offenses”. So those two of the President’s most notable traits have entered the realm of “undisputed facts”.
As soon as President Biden sells some more Bibles or golden sneakers or maybe get some of that 2 billion from his son-in-law, he’ll get right on it Turley.
Comer’s letter is good, except that it fails to deal adequately with the firing of Shokin:
1. The letter says nothing about the call to D.C. of December 4 described by Devon Archer. The call was made by Hunter, Pozharski and Zlochevsky. The objective was to relieve legal pressure on the company. At one point Archer said the call was made to Joe Biden but he then fuzzied it up.
2. The State Department memo and talking points prepared ahead of Biden’s December visit to Ukraine are explicit that he “will sign” the $1b in loan guarantees. Separately, he is told to recommend that Shokin be replaced. Nowhere was the former conditioned on the latter. Yet, by his own admission years later, recorded on video, Biden imposed that conditionality.
Comer’s letter does not refer to 1 at all. As for 2, it says that a Biden staffer told the committee that conditionality was interagency policy but has provided no documentation to support that position. In fact, the documents that are public say the opposite, but Comer doesn’t mention this.
I continue to be puzzled by Comer’s failure to be more focused on these points. They are the most suggestive evidence we have seen that payments to the family actually led to actions by Biden as VP to benefit the paymasters.
The kickbacks from that billion probably help to pay some of these trolls.
The only good thing that will come out of this action in The House is that they may expose some of his already known criminal and corrupt activities to the light of day. But since they are already known to the citizens on the right it won’t amount to a hill of beans since the brainwashed prog/lefters won’t care and are blinded to the faults of their own kind. It will never see the light of day in the Senate so this is just campaign fodder for both sides and will only serve to put on record those egregious acts by him and his kith and kin and will be vociferously denied by his accomplices in the media etc. etc. etc. We, on the right will enjoy this public exposure of what we already surmise has happened but, unfortunately, it will also give public time for the pernicious left to deny any of these facts. I say it again, there is no available actions left, constitutionally, to rid us of this infestation of lying, corrupt prog/left America-haters – we must tack a new course to save this nation.
Your reporting is an essential service. Without it, how else would we know this and so many other issues are happening? Jonathan Turley, independent journalists scattered around the internet doing their thing are the thin thread that our democracy is hanging by now that the corporate, complicit media had abdicated their position and responsibility as the ONLY entity protected by name in our first amendment.
did they hand the $1.2 Trillion they JUST GAVE Democrats….for their ENDLESS Corruption and Crimes?
Nixon had his moment with it, but Biden’s “I am not a crook” is his whole presidency.
Biden is Nixon x Agnew X Harding with a dash of Wilson thrown in.
Yes, too many people ignore the fact that it was that progressive academic Wilson that enabled all those socialists streaming out of Europe after WWI to infiltrate and corrupt our institutions of higher learning. That and the WPA that turned over almost all of our cultural institutions to the wave of modern, European and socialist artists and pretty much dead-ended our original and, until then, vibrant American art traditions.
Oh, and another question for Biden, “Can you produce documentary evidence that you loaned your brother, Jim, $40,000?”
He can’t because it was done with cash. The Fanni Willis defense.
For the most part so called “news” from media outlets is nothing more than op ed pages spouting their warped and pathologic opinions…
Journalism as it was once practiced, has ceased to exist as the radical left usurped control of “higher education” in the US and instilled their mantra. That mantra has them promoting freedom of speech… so long as it is what they believe.
Any communication other than what is in their manifesto is considered racism, hate speech, or mysogyny, and that is really quite an oxymoron since they have great difficulty (thanks latest member of the SCOTUS) defining the word woman…
I don’t think the press “bought into the delusion” at all. They know Biden is a crook, just like everybody else. What the Press is, is the propaganda arm of the DNC – so of course they will take Biden’s side, until the Party indicates that it is time for Joe to go.
Prof. Turley – I think this is where you usually make a mistake – you ASSUME that people on the Democrat/Left operate in a good faith manner, and it is long past time for you to wake up to the fact that they do not operate in good faith. You would be wrong far less if you assumed the opposite.
I believe everybody in Washington knew and knows Joe Biden is corrupt. It’s all a game and the American people just keep paying. The republicans don’t care, they just want their fair share. The Democrats don’t care they just want their fair share. The media doesn’t care, they just want to part of the ‘cool kids’ club. Even Mr. Turley knows the game..and probably plays it. Until someone with some power is willing to stand up and hold people accountable…it doesn’t matter. Republicans blame democrats, democrats blame republicans and the media reports for whatever side pays the most. They win by making us divided. God help us.