I thought this bit was funny, “I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.”
Things got pretty heated in the page 200 zone with Gaetz.
I found the met,meeting, have a meeting thing to be quite something. Apparently Gaetz believes if you are introduced to some one you had a meeting with them.
Stupid iPad won’t let me copy and paste. Pages 207-208.
By that measure I had a meeting with Nathan Fillion.
(I only briefly met him once at a convention, even got a photo, I’m sure that could be used as evidence against me someday.)
Hell, by that measure I’ve had a meeting with Eric Clapton and Charles Bronson, at different times.
(the first when I was working at Irving Mall, the second when I worked at Kroger)
The “paying the pool cleaner” thing later was even dumber. Hunter says money Joe paid him back was probably for something like Hunter paying the pool cleaner while Joe wasn’t around, so Gaetz comments on their “financial entanglements.” Biden’s lawyer says “will the record show we’re all laughing?”
Yeah, that was a good one. Turns out it was a phone thing and not a pool thing.
Similar to what is happening in ga. Republicans don’t seen to have an understanding of casual money exchanges between family and friends.
Meanwhile, in reality, people aren’t even sure where to start with all Trump’s LLCs. I have faith that, should it come down to it, someone like AG James or Jack Smith or a 10 year old will be able to sort out the rat’s nest of entanglements that is Hunter loaning or borrowing money from his dad to pay the pool cleaner, even if Gaetz can’t wrap his head around it.
Genuine question: if I’m working for a company based in, say, Argentina, but it’s owed by Germany, am I working for the company or Germany? Companies are independent from the country right? Or am I totally wrong somewhere? I feel like the answer is obviously “the company”, but I’m not feeling sharp.
In countries that are not democracies, there are many businesses and investment entities that are run by or owned by the government.
Kushner’s financial entanglements are with the Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, which is managed by MBS, the Saudi Crown Prince who was complicit in the murder of a Washington Post journalist. So his entanglements are with the Saudi government, not private entities owned by people of Saudi nationality.
China has both, government controlled business and private business. One of the points Hunter Biden made was that his business deals in China were with private companies owned by Chinese nationals, not companies controlled by the Chinese government.
I’m still working through the transcripts but here are my takeaways so far.
-
Hunter Biden was the smartest person in the room.
-
The allegations that Hunter Biden was unqualified to sit on the board of Burisma was an outright lie. Hunter had sat in the boards of over a dozen companies, charities and NGOs and he was an expert in both corporate governance and foreign policy. He was teaching foreign policy at Georgetown U at the time he was appointed. He took the board job at the urging of the President of Poland, who felt a western-oriented energy company was needed to counter the Russian domination of the Eastern European energy sector.
-
There was an clear explanation of the Tony Bobulinski bullshit. Apparently Bobulinski kept pushing for Joe’s involvement and Hunter kept shutting him down, which eventually led to an angry and bitter Bobulinski getting kicked off the deal.
I haven’t finished reading the transcript, but Hunter is the clear winner so far.
I agree I was impressed with how hunter dealt with the hours of questioning. Much better than kavanaugh.
No wonder they insisted on a closed hearing.
How dare they act like a normal family while we’re trying to indict them!
Better that the Bidens behave like the Trumps and not pay anyone anything.
Most normal families (as far as I know) don’t have a pool, but that’s a quibble.
Googling, “less than 8% of US homes currently have the luxury of owning a pool.”
So not something that most households have, but those in Congress (which what Joe Biden was for a very long time) are richer than most.
Thank you for the information (no sarcasm meant).
Well, dang!
(Gift link)
Facing the prospect that they may never be able to impeach President Biden, House Republicans are exploring a pivot to a different strategy: issuing criminal referrals against him and those close to him.
In recent weeks, a political and factual reality has set in on Capitol Hill. Despite their subpoenas and depositions, House Republicans have been unable to produce any solid evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden and lack the votes in their own party to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment.
Instead, top G.O.P. lawmakers have begun strategizing about making criminal referrals against Mr. Biden, members of his family and his associates, essentially sending letters to the Justice Department urging prosecutors to investigate specific crimes they believe may have been committed.
…
“The guy has to have done something, FFS! Talk to everybody he knows!”
So let me get this straight: After months of investigating and interrogating and bloviating about now, NOW they’ve got the goods on the Biden crime family, they still don’t have enough evidence (any evidence) to whip up a party-line impeachment vote, so…
Criminal referrals! Pass off the duty to come up with a provable case while we scream to the media about (a) Biden’s crimes and (b) his corrupt DOJ’s refusal to prosecute.
Is that about it?
I believe you are correct.
What? You say this doesn’t make sense?? 
Sigh. I know, I know; I shouldn’t bother trying to apply logic to the illogical, sense to the senseless.