LaxPower Back-Up Stick

The Hunter Biden laptop people are now telling us we can’t hold the activities of Clarence Thomas’ wife against him.

drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

This is awesome; a two-fer. You get to advance right wing talking points and Kremlin talking points aimed at upsetting the West's coalition all at once. Another great find.

Ask your GOP buddies to literally outlaw the family of elected officials from this sort of work? No? Complaining about it is better.

seacoaster wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:22 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

This is awesome; a two-fer. You get to advance right wing talking points and Kremlin talking points aimed at upsetting the West's coalition all at once. Another great find.

Ask your GOP buddies to literally outlaw the family of elected officials from this sort of work? No? Complaining about it is better.

Nevermind these "biolabs" (a great way of naming them if you want to make them sound bad) are basically research labs into those pathogens that cause disease to make sure that the public health apparatus is prepared for what things are coming their way. A perfectly legitimate kind of research, in spite of the attempt to portray them as nefarious.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

Drip, drip, drip https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... raine.html

Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 10:14 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

Drip, drip, drip https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... raine.html

Nice!! And good to know YA is always at the vanguard looking for and repeating Russian talking points.

When’s Obama getting indicted? Or are he and Michelle stuck on a barge off Gitmo? Ginni? YA?

seacoaster wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 11:29 am

Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 10:14 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

Drip, drip, drip https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... raine.html

Nice!! And good to know YA is always at the vanguard looking for and repeating Russian talking points.

When’s Obama getting indicted? Or are he and Michelle stuck on a barge off Gitmo? Ginni? YA?

What is funny is that YA and my former colleague often reference the same articles within a day or so of each other. They eat the same tripe.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

No one cares, YA. Do I need to remind you why?

RedFromMI wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 10:01 am

seacoaster wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:22 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

This is awesome; a two-fer. You get to advance right wing talking points and Kremlin talking points aimed at upsetting the West's coalition all at once. Another great find.

Ask your GOP buddies to literally outlaw the family of elected officials from this sort of work? No? Complaining about it is better.

Nevermind these "biolabs" (a great way of naming them if you want to make them sound bad) are basically research labs into those pathogens that cause disease to make sure that the public health apparatus is prepared for what things are coming their way. A perfectly legitimate kind of research, in spite of the attempt to portray them as nefarious.

Why do we need to fund them abroad?

seacoaster wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:22 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

This is awesome; a two-fer. You get to advance right wing talking points and Kremlin talking points aimed at upsetting the West's coalition all at once. Another great find.

Ask your GOP buddies to literally outlaw the family of elected officials from this sort of work? No? Complaining about it is better.

Last I checked....your favorite newspaper the NYT and the FBI confirmed Hunters laptop and the emails in it. Makes you wonder how the Russians started their propaganda campaign as far back as 2015, then uncovered in 2020; man those Russians are good, and patient . Maybe its actually the US doing all the bullshirting to everyone, but Nah....could never be, the US is fully transparent in everything we do.

It is fun seeing you all come out of the woodwork collectively to defend the Biden Crime Syndicate, and at the same time are also first in line to say a dossier about golden showers was factual, without the NYT confirming it...oh wait, I believe they did say it was all true, silly me. It's okay to admit each party has corruption, really...you'll be okay. Have a great weekend.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:18 pm It is fun seeing you all come out of the woodwork collectively to defend the Biden Crime Syndicate

Oh, I'm fully behind any and all Biden corruption. I hope Hunter fleeced taxpayers out of billions.

You guys told us this sort of thing was sooper-cool, remember? And that posters like me were stupid to get angry at political corruption.

So I'm doing what you told us to do-----cheer it on, ask for more, and mock anyone who dares to call out corruption.

So, in doing my part, YA: you're stupid for caring about what the Biden family does with their political power.

a fan wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:35 pm

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:18 pm It is fun seeing you all come out of the woodwork collectively to defend the Biden Crime Syndicate

Oh, I'm fully behind any and all Biden corruption. I hope Hunter fleeced taxpayers out of billions.

You guys told us this sort of thing was sooper-cool, remember? And that posters like me were stupid to get angry at political corruption.

So I'm doing what you told us to do-----cheer it on, ask for more, and mock anyone who dares to call out corruption.

So, in doing my part, YA: you're stupid for caring about what the Biden family does with their political power.

See, I knew you'd understand.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:39 pm

a fan wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:35 pm

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 3:18 pm It is fun seeing you all come out of the woodwork collectively to defend the Biden Crime Syndicate

Oh, I'm fully behind any and all Biden corruption. I hope Hunter fleeced taxpayers out of billions.

You guys told us this sort of thing was sooper-cool, remember? And that posters like me were stupid to get angry at political corruption.

So I'm doing what you told us to do-----cheer it on, ask for more, and mock anyone who dares to call out corruption.

So, in doing my part, YA: you're stupid for caring about what the Biden family does with their political power.

See, I knew you'd understand.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 2:59 pm

RedFromMI wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 10:01 am

seacoaster wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:22 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

This is awesome; a two-fer. You get to advance right wing talking points and Kremlin talking points aimed at upsetting the West's coalition all at once. Another great find.

Ask your GOP buddies to literally outlaw the family of elected officials from this sort of work? No? Complaining about it is better.

Nevermind these "biolabs" (a great way of naming them if you want to make them sound bad) are basically research labs into those pathogens that cause disease to make sure that the public health apparatus is prepared for what things are coming their way. A perfectly legitimate kind of research, in spite of the attempt to portray them as nefarious.

Why do we need to fund them abroad?

Knowing what is out there allows us to be much better prepared for what we might see at home, and it is very cost beneficial as foreign aid.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics ... index.html

Maybe someday we will find out who the mysterious "big guy" was?

Aren't we all willing to match hour for hour on committee hearings on Hunter‘s laptop as long as we can do committee hearings on how Jared and Ivanka made hundreds of millions of dollars while working is humble White House aides?

CU88 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:32 am Aren't we all willing to match hour for hour on committee hearings on Hunter‘s laptop as long as we can do committee hearings on how Jared and Ivanka made hundreds of millions of dollars while working is humble White House aides?

At least with Jared it was always clear who the "big guy" was. Any guesses from the FLP peanut gallery who Hunter meant when he used the term "big guy" ??? Maybe he was referring to his shlong?? That would not be out of character for Hunter. He thinks with it why should he not want to pay it off???

a fan wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 12:26 pm

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

No one cares, YA. Do I need to remind you why?

I felt a buzzing in my dental fillings, then this transmission came through, ...for afan's reading pleasure.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine ... ero-module

Does Hunter Biden Face Indictment?
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, March 31, 2022
Probably

Will President Joe Biden’s son be indicted? Probably.

There is less in that an­swer than you might suppose. It has been widely known for years that Hunter Biden has tax problems. In 2020, the District of Columbia slapped Biden fils with a $450,000 lien, stemming from tax delinquencies that stretched back to at least 2017. The lien was filed in July, as the presidential campaign was heating up.

That was six months after then-president Donald Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House over pressuring the Ukrainian government to conduct an investigation of the Biden family. As a result, Hunter’s penchant for landing big paydays in corrupt and au­thoritarian countries where his father wielded influence over American policy had drawn attention — though not nearly the attention it would have attracted had Hunter been the drug-addled, ne’er-do-well son of a Republican candidate. As the press looked the other way, the tax liens sank into an increasingly jam-packed black hole. In the Trump–Biden contest of 2020, there was no meaningful public consideration of two relevant questions: If Hunter can’t pay his bills, what happened to the millions of dollars he was paid by shady Ukrainian, Russian, and Chinese businesspeople? And what is the extent of Joe Biden’s knowledge of and participation in Hunter’s machinations?

The tax liability is so undeniable that Hunter Biden himself felt compelled to acknowledge it — but only after his father was elected, naturally. Justice Depart­ment prosecutors in Delaware, he ex­plained, had advised his lawyers that “they [were] investigating my tax af­fairs.” The liens notwithstanding, Hunter insisted that “a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” Recently, though, the New York Times reported that Hunter had finally paid his back taxes, an action, the paper observed, that lawyers frequently advise clients to take, the better to improve their chances of avoiding prosecution, or at least imprisonment, on tax-evasion charges.

What’s more interesting, though, is that what has long been obvious to many Americans is now explicit even in the media–Democrat complex: The Hunter Biden probe is about far more than what he gingerly calls “my tax affairs.”

The Justice Department, it turns out, has been investigating him since 2018. The FBI is involved, which signals that the probe is not confined to tax violations, the purview of the IRS. And sure enough, the Times’ 1,700-word bombshell report — a CYA special buried on page A20 — related that a grand jury is examining whether Hunter violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register with the Justice Department regarding his work for, and copious revenue from, foreign mag­nates and conglomerates, some with cozy ties to Beijing and Moscow. Money-laundering, for which the federal penal code prescribes severe incarceration sentences because criminal syndicates habitually resort to it, is also a subject of the grand jury’s scrutiny.

A mere 23 paragraphs into the Times article, it also emerges that investigators are poring over data from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. Suddenly, almost a year and a half after the New York Post broke the news — or tried to — with a series of hair-raising reports about Hunter’s exploiting his father’s influence to strike lucrative deals with foreign partners, the “paper of record” decided that the laptop story was “news that’s fit to print,” after all.

That was not how the Gray Lady and other Biden allies saw it during the 2020 campaign. Twitter locked the account of the Post — the nation’s oldest con­tinuously published newspaper and its fourth largest by circulation — as well as accounts of Trump advocates who attempted to circulate reports on Hunter’s laptop. Other social-media platforms followed suit. Journalists speculatively questioned the provenance of the laptop data, emphasizing that Trump henchmen Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon were complicit in its trans­mission to the Post from an obscure Delaware information-technology specialist to whose repair shop the erratic Hunter, whose drug abuse is notorious, apparently brought a laptop that he then forgot about. (There were actually three water-damaged laptops, but reportedly only one for which data extraction was done.) Yet the IT guy had a receipt signed by Hunter, and he had reported the abandoned laptop to the FBI.

That inconvenience, however, did not stop dozens of Biden-friendly former intelligence officials from baselessly speculating that the laptop data could be “Russian disinformation.” Seamlessly, the media–Democrat complex then dismissed the matter, with the social-media giants rationalizing post hoc that their ban on the information’s dissemination was mandated by their rules of service against the use of their platforms to abet foreign interference in American elections.

All the while, the Biden campaign was tellingly muted in its response. Rather than deny, it invoked the “Russian disinformation” dodge, decried what it portrayed as mudslinging by the Trump camp, and, when the rare insolent question arose, resorted to Joe Biden’s hallmark evasion: The candidate lost his cherished older son Beau to cancer and deeply loves his troubled younger son.

As ever, Trump proved to be his own worst enemy. He railed at his own Justice Department for failing to arrest the whole Biden family, it seemed. This enabled the press to emphasize Trump’s abuse of power rather than elucidate the puzzling fact that regime-connected characters in countries where Biden played point man on Obama-administration policy had a curious habit of paying gargantuan sums of money to his inexperienced, unaccomplished son — even as Hunter’s life spun out of control in a maelstrom of alcoholism and drug abuse, a broken marriage, an affair with his brother’s widow, an affair with a stripper who won a paternity suit against him, a new wife whom he married six days after they began dating, financial woes, an investigation involving his having lost a handgun, and tainted transactions that have resulted in felony convictions of his closest business associates.

In truth, it was manifest that the laptop was Hunter’s. No one has seriously contended that the lurid photographs of Hunter that are stored on it are photoshopped — they appear among hun­­dreds of personal photos, and they comport with his known deviances (which Hunter concedes in Beautiful Things, the jarringly titled memoir of his claimed recovery from substance abuse). The data contain hundreds of emails to and from Hunter that were corroborated by easily verifiable meetings and transactions.

The original context of the New York Post’s reporting was Hunter’s association with Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian gas company that put Hunter on its board and paid him handsomely — despite his lack of relevant experience. Kyiv had become heavily dependent on the Obama administration, which, after the State Department–encouraged Maidan Revolution ousting the country’s demo­cratically elected but Kremlin-friendly government in 2014, was instrumental in standing up its new government. Vice President Biden later bragged about squeezing Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who claimed to have been investigating Burisma — the bravado that ultimately led to Trump’s pressuring Ukraine for a corruption probe, which triggered his first impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House.

In reality, Biden appears to have been characteristically exaggerating his negligible role: The ouster of the Ukrainian prosecutor, who was suspected of corruption, was actually spearheaded by International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who threatened to cut off $40 billion in funding. Nevertheless, the Hunter emails put the lie to Biden’s claim that he had no involvement in or discussions about his son’s business dealings. Burisma expected Biden to provide access to the Obama adminis­tration, and Hunter delivered — setting up meetings for company officials with the vice president and retaining a top Democratic consulting firm (Blue Star Strategies, which federal prosecutors are also reportedly probing) to lobby the Biden administration on Burisma’s be­half.

Further, with the media having worked overtime to suppress laptop revelations pre-election, those revelations now emerge at embarrassing junctures. Re­cently, Vladimir Putin’s regime sought to justify its monstrous invasion of Ukraine by claiming Kyiv was conducting bio­weapons research in secret labs. When the Biden administration dismissed the claim as more Russian disinformation, the Kremlin doubled down, insisting President Biden was complicit. And whaddya know: We’ve now learned that in 2014, Hunter’s investment firm raised millions to help a San Francisco pathogen-research business secure an Obama Defense Department contract that included funding for research in Ukraine on responses to bioterrorism attacks and potential pandemics. Hunter brought Burisma into what company executives called the “science project.” Of course the Kremlin is likely distorting this work, which appears defensive in nature — there is no known evidence of weapons production. But that Hunter played a role in brokering the potentially dangerous deal while his father was steering Ukraine policy is mind-boggling.

The stench of Hunter’s monetizing his father’s political influence prompted an investigation by Republican senators Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), which the media also sedulously ignored. The senators found that a Hunter investment vehicle received $3.5 million from Elena Baturina, widow of former Moscow mayor and Putin confidant Yury Luzhkov. When Trump awkwardly raised the payment at a presidential debate, Biden peremptorily dismissed it as disinformation, deriding his rival as a “clown.” Hunter’s camp has been more lawyerly, appearing to acknowledge the payment but claiming that Hunter was only tangentially in­volved in the investment vehicle. The transaction and its purpose remain murky.

Even more disturbing are Hunter’s ventures with businesspeople and entities tied closely to the Chinese government. In one, Hunter traveled with his father aboard Air Force Two to Beijing in 2013, then days later struck up a part­nership, Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), with investors backed by the regime-controlled Bank of China. Hunter’s American partners in the deal were (a) Devon Archer, his close friend and longtime business partner, who has since been convicted, along with another of Hunter’s business associates, Bevan Cooney, in a separate federal fraud case (in which Hunter was not accused of wrongdoing, though his name featured in the evidence), and (b) an entity called the “Thornton Group,” headed by James Bulger (nephew of the late, infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger). BHR has joined with an arm of the Chinese armed forces to purchase Amer­ican “dual use” items that have military applications. It also facilitated a Chinese company’s $3.8 billion purchase of a coveted cobalt mine in Congo. Cobalt is a key component in batteries that power electric cars.

The other venture was with CEFC, a regime-tied energy conglomerate, to construct a $40 million liquefied-natural-gas port on Monkey Island in Louisiana. CEFC was controlled by Ye Jianming, who rose — before his crash — through the graces of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. The partnership was formed in 2017, when Ye gifted Hunter with a 2.8-carat diamond. Ye eventually retained Hunter (who is a lawyer) to look into whether the U.S. government was investigating CEFC executive Patrick Ho — to whom Hunter refers in a laptop recording as “the f***ing spy chief of China.” Ho was in fact convicted by the Justice Department for his role in elaborate international bribery schemes, shortly after which Ye was called back to China and mysteriously disappeared. He has not been seen since 2018, and CEFC went bankrupt and closed shop — but not before transferring approximately $5 million in “consulting” payments to entities controlled by Hunter, a portion of which was funneled to President Biden’s brother Jim.

Anthony Bobulinski, a former naval officer and wealthy investor, was recruited to build the business structure of the CEFC–Biden partnership. He became disenchanted with the venture because of Hunter, who seemed to do no work to justify his big cut and lectured Bobulinski that this was because he was what CEFC mainly wanted: a connection to the Bidens. Bobulinski was cut out of the arrangement and says he did not benefit from the payments. He recalls having had several face-to-face meetings prior to that, though, with Hunter and Jim Biden, and two such meetings with Joe Biden — who was then out of government but planning his 2020 presidential run. Bobulinski says a 10 percent stake in the CEFC transaction was quietly reserved for Joe Biden. This corroborates a laptop document written by Hunter, in which the shares are divvied up, including 10 percent for “the big guy.” Bobulinski says Hunter and Jim Biden were adamant that Joe Biden’s name not be mentioned. It appears that Hunter furtively referred to his father as “the big guy” and “my chairman.”

This all smacks of grift, the selling of access and political influence, and the subversion of public trust and possibly American national interests. Whether any of it is actually illegal, however, remains to be seen. The Justice Depart­ment rarely prosecutes FARA violations, which are difficult to prove. Money-laundering is generally a nonstarter unless the funds were generated by activity that was clearly criminal — and sleazy is not necessarily criminal. So maybe Hunter is just looking at a tax case.

For the nation, though, the Hunter story is a great deal more than that. It must now get the scrutiny that the Democrats, aided by their media con­federates, evaded in 2020.

old salt wrote: ↑Sun Apr 03, 2022 10:11 pm

a fan wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 12:26 pm

youthathletics wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 7:30 am drip drip drip https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-bi ... e-e-mails/

No one cares, YA. Do I need to remind you why?

I felt a buzzing in my dental fillings, then this transmission came through, ...for afan's reading pleasure.

I take it this means you've come to your senses, and actually care about corruption in Government, OS?

All it took was a little D by the politicians name, and suddenly-----like magic------OS finds his morals.

Neat-o. Is this a permanent thing, OS, or are you planning to not care about corruption in governance the next time a R lands in the White House?

Wait...don't tell us.