Under attack
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he spoke to Attorney General Bill Barr on Sunday and that the Department of Justice has “created a process” to receive and verify information that Rudy Giuliani gathered about the Bidens in Ukraine.
He did, yes.
“Rudy,” he says, chummily, as if we’re all playing nicely in the sandbox together.
GRAHAM: “We’re going to make sure Hunter Biden’s conflict of interest is explored because this is legitimate. How could Joe Biden really fight corruption when his son’s sitting on the Burisma board?
MARGARET BRENNAN: “Can you clarify, you said you talked to Attorney General Barr this morning. Has the Department of Justice been ordered to investigate the Bidens?”
GRAHAM: “No, the Department of Justice is receiving information coming out of the Ukraine from Rudy. He told me that they’ve created a process that Rudy could give information, and they would see if it’s verified. Rudy Giuliani is a well-known man. He’s a crime fighter. He’s loyal to the president. He’s a good lawyer.”
The fact that he’s “loyal to the president” is not a recommendation! Loyalty to the pretend-president is why this country is falling off a cliff right now.
Is it hope or denial to imagine that President Warren might appoint Kamala Harris Attorney General and she will go after all these corrupt pricks until this again becomes a government of laws, not of men?
Hunter Biden has a conflict of interest? How so? Was Hunter Biden elected to a public position?
Given this:
I would classify this as “fantasy.” So “denial,” I suppose. Unless the Republicans are extremely inept, they are going to pack the deck, load the dice, invite the Russians, whatever, to steal the 2020 election. Short of widespread public action/civil disobedience/protest of some sort, I think the election is screwed. Even if they lose fair and square, the Republicans will concoct some story of tampering by the Democrats. 2016 was a dress rehearsal; they got away with it.
Biden is now damaged goods. Ophelia has pointed out how bad the optics were with his son’s appointment, and how he was willing to cozy up to racist Republicans in the name of “bipartisanism.” He is now a burden to the Democratic Party; he should step aside. Granted, this gives Trump a “win” in conceding that there was something there to step aside over, but Biden should have known better. The sooner he steps down, the sooner the party can focus attention on Trump and take the offensive. As much as they should be more than the party of “not Trump”, the Democrats have to sound the alarm that America is indeed under attack, and that a Trump re-election would continue the destruction of American political life. No more one-way “bi-partisan” compromise bullshit. Did the Obama experience teach them nothing? Trump is an enemy of the Constitution. If you want to save it, you’ll have to defend it.*
Easy for me to say as an outsider (Canadian) looking in, but the US is too important a country to allow it to go to hell, because much of the world will follow. American ideals, however incomplete, and inconsistantly implemented, represent, I believe, a net positive force in the world. To see those ideals ignored, subverted and destroyed from the inside by people who supposedly swore oaths to uphold them is scary, even from a distance, and right now, sharing the continent feels way too close…
Actually not the optics, because I think it’s more than just the optics. I really think Hunter B. really should never have taken that job, on the merits as well as how it looks. The only reason he was offered that job was because of who his father is, and people shouldn’t profiteer off elected office like that. It’s skeevy and bad and wrong.
I wish Biden would step down, but then I wish he had never run, too. He’s trying to use Obama as a slingshot, he has a scary facelift, he’s run before and failed, he’s 77, he treated Anita Hill like shit.
I was using “optics” as shorthand for the whole skeevy deal; my apologies. I’d also forgotten the Anita Hill story as well. Thanks for bringing it up again.
Oh quite all right, I was just clarifying (and fuming).
Hunter Biden did have his own conflict of interest. Sitting on the board as a fiduciary officer, he had a duty to avoid corruption, impropriety, and appearances and temptations of the same.
I thought that Barr called a halt to ANY election investigations of ANY candidates. WTF is he doing creating a process to receive “Biden” material?
Why isn’t this an open admission that the “perfect” phone call did EXACTLY the crime that DJT was accused of and bragged about committing DURING the “perfect” phone call?
My understanding of the directive/memo/whatever, as reported here on B&W, is that any such investigation would have to go through Barr and meet his approval before procedeing. So, likely a shield for Republicans, open season on Democrats,
I think hoping for criminal prosecution of Trump or Barr is unrealistic. We’re going to be lucky to get 50% of the country to agree that Trump is too much of a criminal to remain in the White House; I don’t know how you can hope to get a jury to unanimously agree that he is guilty of a crime beyond any reasonable doubt. Sure, juries convicted Manafort and Stone, but they were political operatives, not known to many non-politics junkies, and Trump immediately started distancing himself from them.
That doesn’t mean do nothing. A Democratic president can still call for an investigation, waive executive privilege (it’s not personal to the president, so the new president becomes the holder of the privilege), and expose the full extent of the wrongdoing.