“Whatever you may think about the impeachments of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, they were at least impeached for things they verifiably did.
But Joe Biden may become the first president to be impeached entirely because of an unproven theory.
Republicans, and allies of Donald Trump in particular, have spent five years searching for the proof that will vindicate their long-held assertion that Joe Biden was corruptly in cahoots with his son, Hunter — being paid off by foreign interests and skewing US policy to support them.
Yet while much has emerged about Hunter’s sordid personal life and dubiously ethical behavior, Republicans have been unable to hang anything significant on his father.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who wrote this month: “What’s missing, despite years of investigation, is the smoking gun that connects Joe Biden to his ne’er-do-well son’s corruption.”
Of course, the GOP’s impeachment effort isn’t really about what the evidence shows — it’s political. What’s really behind this is that the hard right has been demanding aggressive action against Biden, Trump wants payback for his own two impeachments, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy is struggling to hold off threats to his speakership. The evidence is largely beside the point.”
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“As far as Joe’s relationship with Hunter’s business partners, the investigation has revealed the following: the vice president occasionally spoke to some of Hunter’s business associates at golf outings and dinner events. Sometimes he called Hunter to say hello during Hunter’s business meetings, and Hunter put him on speakerphone, but Joe wouldn’t talk business. Officials in Biden’s office forwarded information about White House events to Hunter. Joe once wrote a college letter of recommendation for the son of a Chinese executive in business with Hunter.”
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“did Joe actually make Hunter give him half his salary?
In the laptop material, there are many resentful tirades from Hunter about how much he does for his family and how unappreciated he is, often laden with exaggerations and persecution fantasies (usually coming when family members were trying to get him off drugs).
There is evidence of some intermingling of Joe’s finances with Hunter’s. Eric Schwerin, who Hunter had hired to help with his finances in the mid-2000s, also assisted Joe Biden with managing his finances when he was vice president. Hunter covered some expenses for Joe, like home repairs and cell phone bills.
And Hunter claimed in another text that his dad had long used one of his accounts. “My dad has been using most lines on this account which I’ve though the gracious offerings of Eric [Schwerin] have paid for past 11 years,” he texted in 2018.
But there’s no documentation of anything remotely near half Hunter’s (sizable) income, or any sort of set percentage, going to Joe. The covering of expenses that’s been documented seems to have been more informal — Hunter, the highest-earning Biden, picking up the tab for his dad, or setting some bills on autopay.”
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“there’s no evidence that the US policy of pushing for Shokin’s ouster was meant to protect Burisma. As many US officials testified back during the Trump impeachment inquiry, the US government had concluded Shokin was corrupt for other well-documented reasons, and wanted him gone.”
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“if Zlochevsky had secretly agreed to pay Joe Biden $5 million while he was vice president, that would be a huge scandal. But did it actually happen?
Currently, there’s not a shred of evidence that it did happen. Of course, Zlochevsky did say it was done so amazingly secretly that it will be impossible to find, which is… convenient.
Here’s another problem. The FBI document states that the informant had already briefed the Bureau on one of these talks with Zlochevsky several years ago. Back then, though, the informant didn’t mention any salacious bribe claims. Only years later, well after Trump had publicly been trying to make Biden and Burisma a huge scandal, and that the Justice Department was investigating it, did the informant “recollect” these juicy Zlochevsky claims.
Another issue is that the informant says he barely knew Zlochevsky, so this level of purported candor may seem odd. “CHS explained it is very common for business men in post-Soviet countries to brag or show-off,” the document reads.
In any case, all we have here is a claim. No evidence has emerged to prove that claim true.”
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“Hunter messaged back, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” He continued in a threatening vein: “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
It reads like a shakedown, and indeed, the Chinese company would send over $5 million a few days later. Was Hunter actually speaking on behalf of his father, as he appeared to imply, or again simply throwing his name around without his knowledge? When these messages emerged, an attorney for Hunter said that “any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.””
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“All of this is extremely messy and shady on Hunter’s part. It’s clear Hunter Biden wanted people to think his father was deeply involved in his dealings.
But again, evidence of Joe Biden’s actual involvement is absent.”
“There’s a reason rural and small-town dwellers have less access to the sort of fast internet connections that urban dwellers enjoy: It costs a lot of money to lay fiber-optic cable—”an average cost of $1,000 to $1,250 per residential household passed or $60,000 to $80,000 per mile,” according to Dgtl Infra’s Jonathan Kim. It’s easier to limit and recover costs in densely populated areas where a lot of potential customers live along paved roads than in sparsely settled areas where there’s rough terrain and empty space between each household served. Costs rise dramatically in rural areas.”
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“The Alaska Telephone Company, which won a $33 million grant, is planning to run fiber to 211 homes and five businesses at a staggering cost of nearly $204,000 per passing.””
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“wireless internet offering 10-50 Mbps and (increasingly) satellite connections such as HughesNet, Viasat, and Starlink are how we connect to the world in my piece of Arizona. It’s a tradeoff you accept if you want open space around you. Well, you accept that tradeoff unless you can rope other people into paying the cost of laying cable.”
“”If you’re spending $50,000 to connect a very remote location, you have to ask yourself, would we be better off spending that same amount of money to connect [more] families?””
“The New York Post first reported in 2021 that Biden used at least three pseudonyms—”Robin Ware,” “Robert L. Peters,” and “JRB Ware”—on emails that mixed family and government business. The aliases were reportedly discovered in emails found on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
The Southeastern Legal Foundation, a legal nonprofit group, filed a FOIA request in June 2022 for all emails associated with the aliases. In its initial response to SLF’s FOIA request, NARA said it had identified roughly 5,400 records potentially responsive to its request. However, NARA has yet to turn over those records. On Monday, the SLF filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel production.
“All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it,” SLF General Counsel Kimberly Hermann said in a press release. “The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them.””
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“Whether or not those emails contain government business or evidence of impropriety that Republicans have been searching for, the use of multiple pseudonymous email addresses and aliases, at the very least, creates suspicion for FOIA requesters. How are watchdog groups and records requesters supposed to know the government is performing complete searches if the existence of alternate or private email addresses isn’t revealed?
However, despite criticisms from transparency groups, the practice has been fairly widespread for at least the past few administrations. Obama-era EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used the alias “Richard Windsor” and her private email address in messages with lobbyists. Former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch also used alias email addresses. Trump-Era EPA administrator Scott Pruitt had four government email addresses.
The Obama administration defended using alternate government email addresses as necessary for high-level political appointees since the flood of emails to their public inboxes made those accounts unreasonable to manage.
At a 2013 press conference, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney assured reporters that “this is a practice consistent with prior administrations of both parties, and, as the story itself made clear, any FOIA request or congressional inquiry includes a search in all of the email accounts used by any political appointee.””
“When National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan relayed the news to Biden that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, he writes, Biden exploded in frustration and said, “Give me a break.”
In the excerpt, Foer depicts a scene that went viral of the withdrawal: when dozens of Afghans climbed onto the side of a jet to escape the country.
“Only after the plane had lifted into the air did the crew discover its place in history,” Foer writes. “When the pilot couldn’t fully retract the landing gear, a member of the crew went to investigate, staring out of a small porthole. Through the window, it was possible to see scattered human remains.””
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“When former ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass touched down in Afghanistan after the plane’s departure to lead the evacuation effort, he toured the gates of the airport where he was greeted “by the smell of feces and urine, by the sound of gunshots and bullhorns blaring instructions in Dari and Pashto.”
“Dust assaulted his eyes and nose. He felt the heat that emanated from human bodies crowded into narrow spaces,” Foer writes.
Biden would shower Bass with ideas to evacuate more people.
“The president’s instinct was to throw himself into the intricacies of troubleshooting,” Foer writes. “‘Why don’t we have them meet in parking lots? Can’t we leave the airport and pick them up?’ Bass would kick around Biden’s proposed solutions with colleagues to determine their plausibility, which was usually low. Still, he appreciated Biden applying pressure, making sure that he didn’t overlook the obvious.”
“In total, the United States had evacuated about 124,000 people, which the White House touted as the most successful airlift in history,” Foer writes. “Bass also thought about the unknown number of Afghans he had failed to get out.””
“President Joe Biden’s pick to run the National Institutes of Health has agreed to a pair of major ethics demands made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to help jumpstart her stalled candidacy for the top medical research job.
Monica Bertagnolli, who was nominated more than three months ago, pledged to not seek employment or compensation from any of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies for four years after she leaves government”
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“Warren has made it a practice to push Biden nominees to adopt stronger ethical standards, in a bid to address the “revolving door” between government agencies and the industries that they supervise.
Last year, she secured similar commitments from Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf not to seek employment or compensation from pharmaceutical or medical device companies he interacts with at the agency for four years after leaving government.
Warren, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee and Armed Services Committee, has also sought to extract ethics concessions from nominees that come up in front of those panels — including top Federal Reserve officials and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
“Going above and beyond what federal law requires, as you are doing here, sends a powerful message that you are working on behalf of the American people and no one else,” she told Austin in 2021, after he committed not to become a defense contractor or lobbyist following his stint in the administration.”
“The 3,000 sailors and Marines arrived in the Middle East on August 6 alongside a deployment of US fighter jets to the region.
What exactly they’ll be doing isn’t yet clear: If US troops were to board commercial ships, the details would need to be worked out with the companies and countries in question. US officials told the Associated Press that such a policy is under consideration. (The Department of Defense did not respond to Vox’s questions for this story by press time.)
The Biden administration says that the Iranian threat to tanker traffic is the reason for the deployment of sailors and Marines. Iran seized two oil tankers in a week this past spring. Iran also intercepted a Tanzanian-flagged tanker on July 6, a day after the US Navy intervened to dissuade Iran from nearly seizing two ships. Iran has said that it sees itself as responsible for the security of the Gulf, not least because of its long coastline, and claimed it has not illegally seized tankers.
Other factors may be contributing to Biden’s decision-making: The US might be thinking about balancing China’s increased presence in the Middle East, as epitomized by the spring’s surprise rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The US also might be responding to concerns from other partners in the region, especially as the US is pushing for Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. “The noise has increased a lot from Gulf partners, especially as the [Biden] administration is pressuring Gulf partners on a number of different issues, including normalization with Israel,” Simone Ledeen, who served as a senior defense official in the Trump administration, told me. “It’s certainly connected.”
Above all, Iranian actions in the Gulf could affect oil prices. For President Biden, keeping oil prices low has been a priority of utmost importance. It’s partly why he traveled to Saudi Arabia last summer to make up with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. And since then, the Biden administration has sought to reassure Gulf partners like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of US commitment to the Middle East.
This “forward-deployed presence provides US officials with options,” writes analyst Bilal Saab, that would make Iran “think twice before using violence to achieve its political aims.””