Reading this week’s news of the Biden Administration, I kept thinking of the Three Stooges poking fingers in each other’s eyes. As I started to write this, I see that Kurt Schlichter also compares this administration to the same trio, wrapping up their doings as Beetlejuice the Musical. 

Here’s what reminded me of that slapstick routine and why I think the administration is just being aggressively stupid. Nothing seems to get through to them; their conduct is clear evidence that they believe they can get away with being completely outrageous because they suffer no consequences. (I know you probably can point to more examples -- apart from the open border through which the number of invaders now is the population equivalent of 17 states. But these are the ones -- in no particular order -- that struck me this week.)

The Suit Against Elon Musk

This litigation strikes me as this week’s most easily understood misuse of the law to pester opponents and make them dig into their pockets to defend.

The Department of Justice is suing Elon Musk for not hiring refugees to build advanced rocket technology. Why didn’t Tesla hire refugees? Tesla has hired non-citizens and non-green card holders for some positions but asserts that it could not for those projects that have national security implications because that is forbidden by law and they could face steep fines for employing foreign workers for those positions.   

Not satisfied with one attack, the Biden administration is also investigating Musk for building a glass house near the company’s Texas headquarters. A case as frivolous as the other, for no such house was built or even planned. Private counsel filing such frivolous lawsuits would be subject to sanctions. 

@elonmusk

Just want to reiterate that there is no glass house (metaphors don’t count lol) built, under construction or planned! I’m not building any house of any kind anywhere. Period.

Suing Musk for following the law and investigating him for a never-built glass house seems stupid unless you, like Congressman Thomas Massie, weren’t born yesterday:

“Elon Musk was a Democrat who admittedly supported Biden but then he became a critic of the administration and exposed the censorship regime. Now per public reports the DOJ has opened not one but two investigations of Elon Musk… These look like mafia tactics.”

The Homeland Intelligence Experts Group

DHS has created a Homeland Intelligence Experts Group to deal with national security issues. Appointed to this group are James Clapper, John Brennan, and Paul Kolbe, former intelligence officers who signed the October 2020 letter deceptively implying the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation.”  Kanekoa the Great asks the question on every thinking person’s mind: “Why select intelligence officials who intentionally spread misinformation to sway a U.S. election for a role in a DHS Expert Group tasked with national security?? Shouldn’t they be losing their security clearances?” Also selected for this group by DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas is Tashina Guahar who oversaw the fraudulent Carter Page FISA -- the fake claim that set off the illegal surveillance into the Trump campaign.

They’re just trying humiliate us by showing they fear no consequences for what they’ve done. It should come as no surprise, as Rasmussen Reports notes, that “More than two-thirds of U.S. likely voters are worried that their country is turning into a police state and a majority say the FBI is a danger to the freedom and security of law-abiding Americans.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Testimony Reveals Extensive Corruption by the Department of Justice

A number of online commentators have covered his testimony in depth. Julie Kelly and Jonathan Turley are particularly detailed and you can scroll through their posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Of particular interest was Garland’s claim he had no idea how many undercover federal agents participated in the January 6 event at the Capitol. He was evasive and not credible on the number and role of federal agents on that date.

During the hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) confronted Garland for refusing to answer in a hearing two years ago whether there were federal Agents present on January 6, 2021 and whether they agitated to go into the Capitol. Garland back then claimed he could not comment on “pending investigations.” [snip]  Massie: That was your answer two years ago when I asked how many agents and assets of the government were present on January 5 and January 6 and agitating in the crowd to go into the Capitol. Can you answer that now?

Garland: I don’t know the answer to that question.

Massie: You don’t know how many there were or there were none? 

Garland: I don’t know the answer to either of those questions if there were any or if there are…

Massie: I think you may have just perjured yourself when you just said you don’t know if there were any. You want to say that again?

Garland: I have no personal knowledge of this matter. I think what I just said the last time…

Massie: You’ve had two years to find out! By the way that was in reference to Ray Epps and yesterday you indicted him! Isn’t that a wonderful coincidence? On a misdemeanor! 

Former Assistant Director-in-Charge of the Washington Field Office has acknowledged in a letter released by the House Judiciary Committee “there were numerous FBI confidential human sources in the crowd.” In fact, there were so many and from so many different offices that they could not immediately ascertain how many there were. 

Garland’s selection of David Weiss as special counsel was a peculiar one. Weiss had previously worked with Hunter’s late brother Beau; he negotiated Hunter's absurd sweetheart plea agreement which the Federal District Court had refused to accept; and had earlier overseen an FBI probe of Biden’s Delaware fundraising operation in which a top bundler pleaded guilty to a straw donor scheme but Biden was never charged. Garland admitted that Weiss was the only person he ever considered for that position, and it would have been “disruptive" had he appointed anyone else. He refused to answer if he had had any conversations with Weiss about the Hunter matter. He couldn’t recollect discussing the matter with the FBI.

He declined to withdraw the incendiary memo that directed the FBI to use counterterrorism tactics on parents who raised objections to school board policies.

Worse, his testimony about why he failed to appoint a special counsel earlier and the claim Weiss had broad authority even before the appointment of him as special counsel is in direct contradiction to the testimony of now three whistleblowers to the contrary and the failure of the DoJ in response to a FOIA request to provide any evidence to support Garland’s claim that Weiss had broad authority. In fact, he accidentally admitted that the department thwarted the Hunter investigation.

U.S. Attorney, now Special Counsel, David Weiss did not have full charging authority during the bulk of his federal investigation into Hunter Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland slyly admitted in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Garland’s confession contradicts his previous under-oath insistence that Weiss possessed all of the authority he needed to properly charge President Joe Biden’s youngest son with various tax and gun crimes, some of which extended to other jurisdictions.[Ed: it is consistent  with Weiss’s most recent  June 30 acknowledgement  that his authority was “geographically limited to my home district.”]… 

Even after acknowledging Weiss’s attempts to charge Hunter were hampered by a U.S. attorney acting on behalf of the DOJ, Garland doubled down on his claims that the attorney “has full authority to conduct his investigation however he wishes.” He repeatedly invoked Weiss’s position as a Donald Trump appointee as proof that he was acting independently of the AG. 

Despite the potential penalty of perjury, Garland claimed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 1, 2023, that “the U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority… to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.” 

In a June 7 letter to Jordan, Weiss appeared to confirm that “I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.” In a subsequent June 30 letter, however, Weiss reversed his claim and declared that his charging authority “is geographically limited to my home district.”…

Weiss’s lack of jurisdiction was further confirmed in August when Garland named Weiss special counsel, an authority that allows the prosecutor to charge Hunter outside of Delaware. If Weiss truly did possess full autonomy in the Hunter case, as Garland dubiously declared on numerous occasions, he wouldn’t have needed the special counsel appointment to prosecute the president’s son.

Garland still claimed he had made it clear that Weiss could bring a case in any jurisdiction with the attorney general’s blessing via a Section 515 form.

For most of the hearing, Garland tried to appear as a hands-off department head who let Weiss independently conduct his investigation. Republicans quickly saw through that facade when Garland immediately refused to disclose whether he had communications with Weiss about Hunter’s case.

The advantages of the Weiss appointment to the administration is obvious. The President told prosecutors in May that his son should not be indicted because he’d done nothing wrong, Weiss is the cut out to hide the role of the DoJ in covering for Biden family bribery and corruption, and a thoroughly compromised Weiss’s work will only be known when he files his report, that is after the investigation -- something unlikely to be done before the 2024 election.

Nyuk! Nyuk!