[guest post by JVW]

Not that this comes as a shock to any readers here, but the news about the manifest corruption and general sleaziness of the Biden family — embodied most particularly by First Son Hunter Biden and First Brother James Biden — continues to trickle out in the news. We discussed a while back how the New York Times was at long last forced to acknowledge that, yeah, the computer left in a Delaware repair shop with a harddrive full of sordid photos of Hunter and emails which suggest a hitherto unrealized level of family rottenness, including perhaps involvement by The Big Guy, likely does indeed legitimately belong to Mr. R. Hunter Biden.

Now comes the Washington Post, a notorious water-carrying outlet for Democrats and progressive policy which pretends to be a just-the-facts journalism shop, probably having concluded that there is no longer any advantage to protecting the heavily-compromised First Family and thus now willing to report on emerging details of their connection to troublesome overseas agents. In a story published today, which for the time being seems to be available to non-subscribers, they lay out the details

The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.

Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands.

Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.

The article catalogs Hunter Biden’s business deals with an outfit called CEFC China Energy, the outline of which has been known since at least 2020 when a GOP Senate report mentioned the arrangement. But it would seem that very recently the office of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has released financial information listing the payments that the Biden Boys received from the contract: a $1 million retainer and $3.8 million in consulting fees to various enterprises led by Hunter and James Biden, despite the fact that, as the Post puts it, “[t]he potential energy projects Hunter Biden discussed with CEFC never came to fruition.” That didn’t stop Patrick Ho, another CEFC exec, from invoking the retainer when he was arrested in the U.S. for masterminding a bribery scheme and demanding help from the son of the then-former Vice President of the United States. (It should be noted that the seeds of the Biden Family-CEFC China Energy partnership germinated while Joe Biden was still serving alongside of President Barack Obama.) Patrick Ho was ultimately represented in his criminal case by Edward Y. Kim, an attorney at Krieger Kim and former Assistant U.S. Attorney, with Ho being found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Ho’s downfall, and the early 2018 detainment in China of CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming (who had earlier gifted Hunter a diamond reportedly worth $80,000) on the suspicion of unnamed “economic crimes,” seems to have precipitated the fall of CEFC China Energy. But before things circled down the drain, there was one more opportunity for looting. The Post explains:

By March 2018, Hunter Biden’s uncle was seeking access to the $1 million retainer that he was owed for the Ho representation. James Biden on March 21, 2018, wrote to CEFC officials with “wiring instructions,” providing the address and routing numbers for how to transfer to the account linked to Hunter Biden.

“Received and will take care of this ASAP,” Mervyn Yan, one of the CEFC officials, wrote back in a verified email.

[. . .]

JiaQi Bao, an assistant with whom Hunter Biden had worked closely on CEFC business, wrote in a March 26, 2018, email that the company was being dissolved and she would lose her job — but that Hunter Biden should “take whatever money you can take, as long as the money is available to claim.”

“Take as much as possible, or figure out a way to spend them for your own benefit,” she wrote.

Bao did not respond to numerous phone and email messages.

Over the next six months, nearly $1.4 million was transferred to Hunter Biden’s account, according to bank records.

The story also contains telling character details regarding Hunter Biden, pertaining to arguments he had with his partners over his questionable expense reports; his threat to sue them in Delaware court where, he warned them, he was “privileged to have worked with and know every judge in the chancery court”; and his employment of Lunden Roberts, the Arkansas stripper who would give birth to Hunter’s daughter (the New York Post claims that to this day Hunter Biden has never met his youngest daughter).

One very small but it seems to me significant item is buried deep within the Washington Post’s story. When moving into new offices in the Swedish Embassy, Hunter Biden made an eye-raising request [bolded emphasis by me]:

On Sept. 21, 2017, Hunter Biden wrote to a building manager requesting new office signage to reflect a new family enterprise and a new business relationship: “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC- US),” he wrote in emails to the property manager.

He also requested keys for his new office mates: his father, Joe; his mother, Jill; his uncle James; and the Chinese executive, Gongwen Dong.

As part of the request, he provided what he said was his father’s cellphone number, saying an office representative could use it to contact his new office mates.

Though Joe Biden apparently never picked up the office key his son had cut for him, how does Hunter’s request square with the White House’s insistence that Joe Biden had nothing at all whatsoever to do with his son’s shady business dealings?

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

This week, the Washington Post reported that Sen. Ted Cruz told then-President Donald Trump that he would help with efforts to overturn the 2020 election results:

Sen. Ted Cruz was dining near the Capitol on the evening of Dec. 8, 2020, when he received an urgent call from President Donald Trump. A lawsuit had just been filed at the Supreme Court designed to overturn the election Trump had lost, and the president wanted help from the Texas Republican.

“Would you be willing to argue the case?” Trump asked Cruz, as the senator later recalled it.

“Sure, I’d be happy to” if the court granted a hearing, Cruz said he responded.

The call was just one step in a collaboration that for two months turned the once-bitter political enemies into close allies in the effort to keep Trump in the White House based on the president’s false claims about a stolen election. By Cruz’s own account, he was “leading the charge” to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as president.

An examination by The Washington Post of Cruz’s actions between Election Day and Jan. 6, 2021, shows just how deeply he was involved, working directly with Trump to concoct a plan that came closer than widely realized to keeping him in power. As Cruz went to extraordinary lengths to court Trump’s base and lay the groundwork for his own potential 2024 presidential bid, he also alienated close allies and longtime friends who accused him of abandoning his principles.

As a result of this, the Jan. 6 Committee is very interested in the details of Cruz’s efforts on behalf of Trump:

As [John] Eastman outlined a scenario in which Vice President Mike Pence could deny certifying Biden’s election, Cruz crafted a complementary plan in the Senate. He proposed objecting to the results in six swing states and delaying accepting the electoral college results on Jan. 6 in favor of a 10-day “audit” — thus potentially enabling GOP state legislatures to overturn the result. Ten other senators backed his proposal, which Cruz continued to advocate on the day rioters attacked the Capitol.

The committee’s interest in Cruz is notable as investigators zero in on how closely Trump’s allies coordinated with members of Congress in the attempt to block or delay certifying Biden’s victory. If Cruz’s plan worked, it could have created enough chaos for Trump to remain in power.

U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, for whom both Eastman and Cruz clerked, said that he believes that Cruz played a prominent role leading up to the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol:

“Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump’s claim that the election was stolen,” Luttig said in a statement to The Post. “He was also the most knowledgeable of the intricacies of both the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution, and the ways to exploit the two.”

In light of this report, it’s just more than a bit rich and tone-deaf to read that Cruz, responding to Nancy Pelosi’s comment about the upcoming midterms (“It is absolutely essential for our democracy that we [Democrats] win. I fear for our democracy if the Republicans were ever to get the gavel”), responded thusly:

“They know they’re gonna lose and Nancy Pelosi’s not gonna go quietly. She’s gonna scream, she’s already preparing to scream the election was stolen. And by the way, what she means by ‘stolen’ is people showed up to vote against Democrats. That’s what stealing the election is. And remember, Democrats don’t believe in democracy.”

C’mon, we can all see that Pelosi didn’t say a word about a stolen election [if Democrats lost]. While Cruz’s statement was a dishonest reading of what Pelosi said, he also conveniently ignored that it is he who has misleadingly “screamed” about the election results and “led the charge” to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as president. And just because Cruz and his Republican cronies pushed the Big Lie about a stolen election and made plans to overturn the results doesn’t mean that Democrats will stoop as low [if they lose the midterms].

Geez, for a really smart guy, he sounds pretty dumb at times.

–Dana