The juxtaposition of the Department of Justice’s handling of Hunter Biden with its outrageous treatment of Donald J. Trump justifies Scott Adams's view: "We can now see all of the machinery of government, from influence peddling to fake news to intel-supported hoaxes to political persecutions.” Diving even deeper, as have Jonathan Turley, James Freeman, Dan Bongino, and David Samuels, it’s beginning to look as if Barack Obama knew of Hunter’s corruption and the danger it posed to national security and did nothing about it. In exchange, he’s serving a third term as president behind the scrim while the demented present officeholder serves as a front.

Giving Hunter a pass does more than underscore the Administration’s double standard, it explains why the Democrats worked so tirelessly to weaken 2020 election procedures to advance to the highest office a man demonstrably unfit to carry out its duties: They had him on a short rope -- he either ceded the powers of office to Obama or Hunter’s illicit dealings would land both Hunter and him in jail.

The Latest Indictment of Trump

The latest indictment of Trump -- I believe there have been three in the past four months -- is not only clearly political, designed to obstruct his campaign, but it is seriously flawed as a legal matter. Reams have been published on this point, but I think the most complete is that of Will Scharf.  I’ll summarize his key points but urge you to read it all.

The charges depend on Trump’s state of mind and “proving the requisite intent on the part of Trump and his alleged co-conspirators on all of these charges is likely impossible, at least in front of a fair jury in a fair courtroom.” More troubling is that “Jack Smith’s theory of the case necessarily requires criminalizing political speech,” a core protection of the First Amendment. Trump is surely not the first candidate to claim elections were stolen from them: In 1824 Andrew Jackson claimed John Quincy Adams cheated him out of the election. More recently Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, to name but two, made that claim.  “After the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections Democrats attempted to interfere with the electoral count process” and one can argue that Smith’s theory of the case would make those claims and acts criminal matters. The capper is Smith’s using a statute designed to deal with the Ku Klux Klan -- a statute criminalizing efforts to deprive people of their rights under the Constitution. Recent cases in the Supreme Court make clear that the statute is not violated unless the prosecution proves that Trump and his co-conspirators “acted with specific intent to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted’ (emphasis added).  The count alleging fraudulent conspiracy is no better than the other counts: 

Smith’s theory is that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators conspired to “defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government.” But in light of the requirements for proving fraud conspiracy under § 371, Smith needs to show that Trump and his team knew their theories were groundless when they promoted them to state legislators and other decision-makers in the electoral count process and encouraged those officials to take various official actions. And that Trump and his team agreed this was the plan -- promoting theories they knew were groundless, based on facts that they knew were false, to these legislators and officials.

The fact that Trump received advice to the contrary just doesn’t cut it, from a legal perspective, when it comes to proving a fraud conspiracy under § 371. This charge appears to be dead on arrival from a legal perspective. 

Nor does the Obstruction Count justify the prosecution, for the same inability to prove intent to “obstruct an official proceeding” to benefit himself by means he knew to be unlawful.

Of course, whatever infirmities there are in this case, the most obvious is that the facts in this case were known in 2020, and timing it now while demanding a speedy trial has “all the appearances” of Smith arrogating to himself the right to pick the next president.

A similar but shorter take from Professor Alan Dershowitz, who is skeptical of Trump getting a fair trial in D.C. "The Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional, because there was no actual speech to defraud an election or interrupt congressional procedure. There are no actions he took. No one is prepared to testify there was. You are allowed to contest an election. You are allowed to doubt the results of the election.”

Others have argued that this case is essentially the rehash of the partisan J6 findings and an impeachment for which he was not convicted, and is therefore barred by the constitutional provision against double jeopardy. Criminal trial lawyers also observe that the nature of the charges permits Trump to seek from every agency of the government potentially exculpatory matters in their files, a process which would very substantially delay matters. (The prosecution has already admitted error when they claimed it has produced certain records to the defense which they had not.) Later last week, further shredding the constitutional rights of the defendant, Smith has asked the judge to order away Trump from disclosing witness testimony he received in discovery -- this after extensive poisoning public opinion and the jury pool with his own pre-indictment comments.

How Much Did the Department of Justice and Obama Know of Biden Corruption?

In March of this year, Paul Sperry detailed how much of the Biden corruption was known to the Department of Justice, evidence in DoJ documents, and federal court records.

Much of the documentation relates to the 2016-2017 raid on the offices of Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho, “a Chinese national suspected of espionage even as he was negotiating business deals with …Hunter and [Joe Biden’s] brother James.” The article provides extensive proof of the breadth of the government’s knowledge of the Biden’s corrupt dealings with corrupt Chinese business partners. The government declined to “tap into this trove of evidence… to explore the connections between Ho and the Bidens who received millions of dollars from Ho and a Chinese intelligence front.” In fact, at Ho’s trial in 2018 they hid Hunter’s connection to Ho. Hunter never registered as required by law as an agent of Ho’s company and neither Biden disclosed the $6 million they received from it. One former government agent stated: 

“It’s strange how there was no curiosity [at Justice] whatsoever about foreign influence on a potential president of the United States, especially from this country’s greatest threat -- China,” Swecker said. 
 
Stranger still is that DOJ prosecutors knew the Bidens’ partner was a dangerous Chinese agent with “powerful” military and political ties, including to the leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Biden Corruption Handed Obama His Third Term as President

As the absurd diversion agreement rejected last week by the Delaware judge shows -- the Department of Justice is still doing everything in its power to bury the story.

I don’t think it’s just because of partisanship. 

Here’s a striking video showing with what great, open disdain Obama regards Joe Biden.

It is an unscripted tell, of what is more fully developed in this amazing interview by David Samuels with Obama’s biographer, David Garrow. This is an interview I consider a must read if you are to have a clue on Barack Obama (And, as well, a lesson on how to conduct a truly outstanding interview). Except for Woodrow Wilson, who was confined here by illness, no other former president besides Obama has maintained a principal  private residence in the capital.

The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a politician who had always been gaffe-ridden. Yet as President Biden continued to fall off bicycles, misremember basic names and facts, and mix long and increasingly weird passages of Dada-esque nonsense with autobiographical whoppers during his public appearances, it became hard not to wonder how poor the president’s capacities really were and who was actually making decisions in a White House staffed top to bottom with core Obama loyalists. When Obama turned up at the White House, staffers and the press crowded around him, leaving President Biden talking to the drapes -- which is not a metaphor but a real thing that happened.

Seems to me that someone not in “cognitive decline” and not under threat of prosecution for his crimes, and those of his brother and son, might well have resisted ceding power and control to his out-of-office predecessor, and that may best explain why the Democrats finagled election laws so hard to put Biden in the White House, and why the Department of Justice has worked so hard to keep the Biden family corruption concealed and unpunished.