by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.
Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.
None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.
Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.
Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:
While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.
Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.
“I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”
He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.
Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.
“I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”
Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)
Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.
“On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”
Some inside the GOP are expressing frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.
“You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”
One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”
The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.
But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.
“I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”
House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.
House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.
Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.
Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”
The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.
The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.
Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.
“The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.
Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”
Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.
Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.
The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.
House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.
That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.
Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.
“I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”
In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”
Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.
The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.
by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US aviation system is bracing for two simultaneous disruptions at the end of this week – a looming government shutdown and the expiration of a key aviation law.
Officials say the double-barrel threat would result in millions of dollars in losses daily, scramble efforts to rebuild the air traffic control system, set back technology improvements and further strain the already-stressed aviation system that suffered a series of runway close calls this year.
Rep. Steve Cohen, the top Democrat on the House Aviation subcommittee, warned Wednesday the shutdown may mean “cancellations at airports will occur, and it will negatively impact the flying public.”
Government officials are particularly concerned about how a shutdown would disrupt the air traffic control training pipeline, which is still recovering after the Federal Aviation Administration closed its controller academy at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Intensive training takes years and would pause during a government shutdown. Delaying the current crop of students could create a backlog for the next round of new hires.
“The complexity of the hiring and training process means even a shutdown lasting a few days could mean we will not hit our staffing and hiring targets next year,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday. “There is no good time for a government shutdown. But this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown.”
The shutdown would also put strain on the Transportation Security Administration. Nearly all – 58,000 – of the agency’s 61,000 employees would continue to report to work, including those screening airplane passengers. But they would do so without getting paid.
A shutdown could cost the travel industry $140 million daily, according to an estimate from the US Travel Association, which analyzed industry losses from a major government shutdown several years ago. That includes direct losses from government officials foregoing travel, but also canceled trips as attractions like national parks close.
There is also concern that the Saturday expiration of a dense set of policy instructions will leave the FAA unable to conduct important business.
The law gives the agency permission to collect fees and taxes – including on airline flights and airplane fuel – and sets the boundaries for spending that money. If the law expires at the end of September without renewal, the FAA will be able to neither collect nor spend.
“It’s kind of like a tax holiday for airline charges that never come in,” Buttigieg said.
That would cost the FAA trust fund about $54 million every day, the agency told CNN – funds for airport infrastructure projects and improving FAA technology.
Work would halt, for example, on upgrading the critical safety notice distribution system – known as NOTAMs – that failed in January, causing the first nationwide ground stop since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It would also halt a set of efforts announced just this month to reduce runway close calls. The $26 million in technology projects will help controllers see where planes and vehicles are on the ground at airports, verify incoming planes are aiming for a runway rather than taxiway, and remind controllers to double-check runways are clear before directing aircraft.
Congress was on track to pass the reauthorization bill this summer. The House passed its version of the bill with broad bipartisan support – a level of support rarely seen in the chamber, a Republican committee aide noted.
But the bill stalled in the Senate.
Sen. Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the committee that oversees the FAA, said at the Regional Airline Association conference this week that he and the committee’s Democratic chairwoman, Sen. Maria Cantwell, held marathon negotiations to develop a compromise bill. But it fell apart on the mid-June morning when the committee was scheduled to vote.
Democrats say a controversial proposal to change pilot training and qualification rules gummed up the process; Cruz said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made the decision to block the bill
Months later, the problem is still unresolved.
“I don’t know where we are now. I think we’re very close on every issue, but we still have an impasse on the Thune-Sinema amendment and with Chuck Schumer,” Cruz said Wednesday, referring to the proposal.
An aide to Cantwell said Wednesday that the legislation is “in a state of limbo.”
“But rest assured, I think everyone understands, at least from the Senate majority perspective, that we’ve got to keep the lights on and they have to keep the FAA authorized,” said Ronce Almond, the Cantwell aide, at the RAA conference.
Lawmakers are working out temporary legislation to keep the FAA operational while lawmakers haggle over the larger policy points. One plan would extend the FAA’s authorities for three months – setting a holiday-season deadline for Congress to work out major policy issues. Some lawmakers think more time is needed.
“They probably do need six months, because the next three months are going to be a lot of issues about the budget, and about Ukraine, and about disaster relief, and about the border,” Cohen said.
Kicking the can down the road has its own risks. Election years do not have a strong track record of producing significant policy legislation, said Bryan Bell, the Democratic staff director for Cohen’s subcommittee.
“They just don’t get done,” Bell said.
After a previous FAA reauthorization expired in 2015, Congress strung together multiple short-term measures – one lasted a year – that guided the FAA for three years.
Even if the Senate works out its internal differences, it will take time for the House and Senate to reconcile their bills, aides noted.
In the meantime, air traffic controllers and other aviation officials deemed essential would continue to report to work – but without pay.
“Our people are pros. They come in, they do what’s required, but they’re also human beings,” Buttigieg said. “And the pressure that they’re under grows and mounts each passing day that they’re in this scenario.”
Air traffic controllers are already under increased scrutiny after a series of barely avoided airliner collisions on US runways this year. While the causes are under investigation, the incidents prompted the FAA to require additional controller training and supervision.
But air traffic controllers have put pressure back on lawmakers and the White House, too. Former President Donald Trump called off a 35-day government shutdown in January 2019 after 10 air traffic controllers – who at that point were missing two paychecks – called out sick, snarling air traffic nationwide.
by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US State Department issued a striking warning in a report on Thursday accusing the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information, disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.
“President Xi has significantly expanded PRC efforts to shape the global information environment,” the report says, alleging that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation. Xi has “pressed PRC state media to strengthen their propaganda efforts and tailor “precise communication methods” to influence foreign audiences globally.
The report from the Global Engagement Center, which combats foreign propaganda and disinformation, warns China has the “potential to reshape the global information environment.” It underlines US concerns about China not just as its main military competitor but as a key rival in the battle over ideas and disinformation globally.
“Beijing would develop a surgical capability to shape the information particular groups and even individuals consume. And the international information landscape would feature significant gaps and inherent pro-PRC biases,” the almost 60-page report concludes.
CNN has reached out to the Chinese embassy in Washington for a response to the report.
“What we’ve learned is that there is a dark side to globalization, and if we don’t allow this information manipulation to be stopped, there’s going to be a slow steady destruction of democratic values, and the secure world of rules and rights,” said Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center James Rubin at a press briefing on Thursday.
The Chinese efforts are both overt and covert and the promotion of its control tactics have a particular focus on Asia, Africa and Latin America, the report says while detailing several examples and their effects.
According to the report, as of late 2020 the owner of the massively popular social media app TikTok, ByteDance, “maintained a regularly updated internal list identifying people who were likely blocked or restricted from all ByteDance platforms, including TikTok, for reasons such as advocating for Uyghur independence.”
“ByteDance directed that specific individuals be added to this list if they were deemed to pose a public sentiment risk, likely to prevent criticism of the PRC government from spreading on ByteDance-owned platforms,” it adds.
In an East African country, the Chinese government struck an agreement with a local newspaper “and the newspaper agreed that the [PRC-] paid articles would not have a direct connection to the PRC.” In Lithuania, phones made by PRC company Xiaomi were pre-programmed to remotely censor around 450 phrases used by users, including “Free Tibet” and “democracy movement.” In 2021, 24% of European smartphones were Xiaomi.
“Between 1997 and 2022, Beijing initiated cyberattacks against and threatened the families of more than 5,500 overseas Uyghurs,” the GEC report says, citing a study from the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Governments mainly across Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa detained 1,150 Uyghurs and returned 424 to the PRC, according to the Woodrow Wilson Center”
The PRC has also ratcheted up cooperation with Russia to spread disinformation about Ukraine, the report says, and Beijing routinely echoes the Kremlin’s claims like its argument it is “de-nazifying” Ukraine.
The report attempts to conclude on a hopeful note, saying that Bejing’s efforts “have encountered major setbacks” in democratic countries. But if the PRC’s vast operations are not countered, it finishes, China “will encounter less resistance to reshaping the international order to the detriment of individual liberties and national sovereignty around the world.”
“We don’t want to see an Orwellian mix of fact and fiction in our world that will destroy the secure world of rules and rights that the United States and much of the world relies upon,” said Rubin.
by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
Tensions erupted as House Republicans met behind closed-doors on Thursday, the latest sign of deep divisions and infighting as the House GOP conference has failed to coalesce around a plan to avert a shutdown.
GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and Speaker Kevin McCarthy got into a testy exchange during the meeting, according to a source in the room. Gaetz stood up and confronted McCarthy about whether his allies were paying conservative influencers to bash Gaetz in social media posts – an allegation circulating on social media and one the speaker’s office has denied.
McCarthy’s response, according to the source in the room, was that he wouldn’t waste his time or money on Gaetz. Another source said McCarthy also shot back that he doesn’t know what Gaetz is spending time on, but he (the speaker) is donating $5 million to help keep the majority.
“I asked him whether or not he was paying those influencers to post negative things about me online,” Gaetz told CNN’s Manu Raju – and confirmed that McCarthy said he wouldn’t waste time on him.
McCarthy and Gaetz have long had a tense relationship and Gaetz has led the charge in threatening to force a vote to oust the speaker as pressure on McCarthy builds during the shutdown spending fight and hardline conservatives balk at the prospect of passing any kind of short-term funding extension to keep the government opening.
After the exchange, members in the room could be heard complaining about Gaetz, with one member calling him a “scumbag” and another saying “F**k off,” according to a third source in the room.
McCarthy’s outside counsel earlier this week sent a cease and desist letter to the person soliciting influencers to bash Gaetz and claiming to be doing so on behalf of McCarthy, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN.
With only three days to go before government funding expires, House Republican divisions have been on full display with the conference at odds over the path forward as Congress barrels toward a shutdown.
The Senate has put together a bipartisan proposal to avert a shutdown and is working to advance it through the chamber to final passage. But House Republicans have thrown cold water on that plan, leaving the two chambers at an impasse.
Instead, McCarthy is gearing up to have the chamber vote Friday on a GOP stopgap bill, but he appears to lack the votes from his own members to pass the measure.
House Republicans are planning late night votes Thursday on a series of separate spending bills, though it’s not clear if the measures have enough GOP support to pass and at least one is expected to fail. Even if any of the bills pass, they would be dead on arrival in the Senate.
Any failed bills could provoke another chaotic scene on the House floor that would put the divisions within the House GOP conference front and center, and hand another embarrassing defeat to GOP leaders.
A number of House conservatives oppose any kind of stopgap measure because they argue that Congress needs to focus instead on enacting full-year appropriations bills.
House GOP leaders put full-year funding bills on the floor hoping that if they can demonstrate progress on the measures, it could help them make the case to conservative holdouts that they are working to complete the regular appropriations process, but more time is needed to finish the work.
On the other hand, if any of the spending bills fail, GOP leadership may point to that to make the case to the holdouts that a short-term funding extension is the only viable path forward.
House GOP leadership has now decided to keep an Agriculture appropriations bill on the schedule for Thursday evening, despite roughly 50 members indicating they will vote against the bill, according to a Republican aide.
The bill is expected to fail dramatically on the floor at this point, though – as always – the schedule is flexible and could change.
And despite the fact that House GOP leadership does not currently have the votes for their short-term spending bill, the plan remains that the House will vote tomorrow on a measure, three sources told CNN.
McCarthy has been saying all week this was the plan but as the hardliners have dug in, it remained an open question if he’d go through with it, risk a potentially embarrassing vote and be seen as unable to pass a bill out of his chamber before a Saturday midnight deadline.
Meanwhile, the Senate is working to advance a bipartisan stopgap bill that would keep the government open through November 17 and provide additional aid to Ukraine and disaster relief. McCarthy has so far dismissed that bill.
It could take until Monday to pass the Senate’s bill to keep the government open if GOP Sen. Rand Paul slows down the process over his demand that the bill drop the $6.2 billion in aid to Ukraine it contains, according to senators. That would put it past the Saturday evening shutdown deadline.
GOP senators are trying to cut a deal to give Paul an amendment vote in exchange to let the process speed up. Any one senator can slow down the process, and it takes unanimous support to expedite a vote in the chamber.
The Senate took a procedural vote to advance the bipartisan stopgap bill on Thursday, though it’s still not clear when a final passage vote will take place. The vote was 76 to 22.
A small group of Senate negotiators are frantically working to find a series of amendments that could boost border security and be added to the Senate’s short-term spending bill and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of that group, said on Thursday that they are making progress.
Tillis said negotiators are eyeing separate amendments on more funding for border security and changes in border policy. One would be an amendment that would increase funding and would require just a simple majority of votes to pass. The other that deals with policy would be at a higher 60 vote threshold.
“Time is of the essence,” Tillis said when asked how long this would take.
As the September 30 shutdown deadline rapidly approaches, the federal government has begun preparing for its effects.
A shutdown could have enormous impacts across the country, in consequential areas ranging from air travel to clean drinking water, as many government operations would come to a halt, while services deemed “essential” would continue.
The nearly 4 million Americans who are federal employees will feel the effect immediately. Essential workers will remain on the job, but others will be furloughed until the shutdown is over. None will be paid during the impasse. For many, a shutdown would strain their finances, as it did during the record 35-day funding lapse in 2018-2019.
Democratic and Republicans alike have been highlighting the potential impacts of a shutdown as they warn against a lapse in funding.
“It’s important to remember that if we shut down the government – for those of us who are concerned about the border and want it to be improved – the border patrol … have to continue to work for nothing,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said at a news conference Wednesday.
US Border Patrol agents are considered essential and will continue to perform their law enforcement functions, including apprehending migrants crossing the border unlawfully, during a government shutdown – but without pay.
The White House is sounding alarms about massive disruptions to air travel as tens of thousands of air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration personnel work without pay. During the 2019 shutdown, hundreds of TSA officers called out from work – many of them to find other ways to make money.
The White House has warned that a shutdown could risk “significant delays for travelers” across the country.
The White House has also warned of impacts to national security, including the 1.3 million active-duty troops who would not get paid during a shutdown.
by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.
Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.
Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”
Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that the majority of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.
So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)
The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Annie Grayer and Marshall Cohen
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.
Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.
“Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.
Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”
When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”
When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”
Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.
A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.
“We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”
Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.
The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.
The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”
Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.
From CNN’s Marshall Cohen
Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”
Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”
“This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”
Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Annie Grayer and Marshall Cohen
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.
Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”
According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.
Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Marshall Cohen and Annie Grayer
by tyler | Sep 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Chinese hackers who breached multiple US government agencies in May stole some 60,000 emails from senior State Department officials, including information on officials’ travel itineraries, a Senate staffer briefed on the matter told CNN.
The new details from a briefing to senators and their staffers illustrate how the Chinese operatives allegedly scoured the inboxes of senior US diplomats focused on diplomacy in the Pacific ahead of a high-stakes trip to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June.
The hackers raided the unclassified email accounts of nine State Department officials focused on East Asia and the Pacific, and another official who works on European issues, according to a staffer in the office of Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri. The staffer, who declined to be named, attended a briefing on the hacking campaign that senior State Department IT officials gave the Senate on Wednesday.
The hackers were also able to access a list of every State Department email address, according to the Senate staffer. That kind of reconnaissance could be useful information for any follow-on hacking efforts aimed at the State Department.
At a press briefing Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed that the hackers accessed about 60,000 State Department emails.
“[T]his was a hack of Microsoft systems that the State Department uncovered and notified Microsoft about,” Miller told reporters. The State Department has not formally attributed the hack, but Microsoft has blamed a “China-based” hacking group. “We have no reason to doubt [Microsoft’s] attribution in this case,” Miller said.
The stealthy hacking campaign exploited Microsoft email software and began with the hackers breaching a Microsoft engineer, the company has said. The cyber intrusions have showcased the leaps China has made in its cyber capabilities, according to experts, and have prompted US lawmakers and Biden administration officials to scrutinize the US government’s reliance on Microsoft technology.
The cyber-espionage campaign breached the unclassified email accounts of US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of State for East Asia who traveled with Blinken to China in June, CNN previously reported.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has been critical of the Chinese government, said he was also breached by the hackers.
The State Department declined to comment on the Senate briefing.
Chinese government officials have responded to the hacking allegations by accusing the US government of conducting cyberattacks against China.
In a statement to CNN, Schmitt welcomed the briefing but said his investigation into the hacks is “far from over.”
“We need to harden our defenses against these types of cyberattacks and intrusions in the future, and we need to take a hard look at the federal government’s reliance on a single vendor as a potential weak point,” Schmitt said.
