Subject: Military Service Requirements
Trey Gowdy, a former South Carolina Congressman, responded to a question from a CNN reporter about the ban of transgenders from joining the U.S. armed forces. As Trey typically does so very well, he nailed it rather succinctly.
Question: How can President Trump claim to represent all U.S citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, when he banned transgenders from joining the military? Isn't that discrimination?
Trey Gowdy's Response: “Nobody has a right to serve in the Military. Nobody! What makes you people think the Military is an equal opportunity employer? It is very far from it - and for good reasons - let me cite a few: The Military uses prejudice regularly and consistently to deny citizens from joining for being too old or too young, too fat or too skinny, too tall or too short. Citizens are denied for having flat feet, or for missing or additional fingers." he went on to explain: "By the way, poor eyesight will disqualify you, as well as bad teeth. Malnourished? Drug addiction? Bad back? Criminal history? Low IQ? Anxiety? Phobias? Hearing damage? Six arms? Hear voices in your head? Self-identification as a Unicorn? Need a special access ramp for your wheelchair?" "Can't run the required course in the required time? Can't do the required number of push-ups? Not really a morning person? and refuse to get out of bed before noon? All can be legitimate reasons for denial
"The Military has one job: Winning War. Anything else is a distraction and a liability. Did someone just scream? That isn't Fair? War is VERY unfair, there are no exceptions made for being special or challenged or socially wonderful." "YOU must change yourself to meet Military standards and not the other way around." "I say again: You don't change the Military - you must change yourself. The Military is not about being fair, it is about taking advantage of others and about winning. The Military doesn't need to accommodate anyone with special issues. The Military needs to Win Wars and keep our Country safe - PERIOD!"
"If any of your personal issues are a liability that detracts from readiness or lethality... Thank you for applying, and good luck in future endeavors."
"Any other questions?
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Biden continues to suck eggs with blacks and is building a stature to Emmett Till. Emmett lived in Atlanta no tfar from where we lived, I believe he wss gay but not sure, and was killed. His killer has never been discovered to the best of my knowledge.
Meanwhile, Biden is reluctant to send F16's to Ukraine so they can defend themselves and win the war.
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Andy Rooney:
At the end of '60 Minutes' he usually had his own 10-minute segment that, unbelievably, was never censored by CBS. He's probably the only one who could have gotten away with this.
May he rest in peace. . .
“I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except
numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory
are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black
Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America.
Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what happens....Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.
Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.
I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, which is why
there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts!
ARE YOU LISTENING MARTHA BURKE?
I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion.
I have the right 'NOT' to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off.
When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling; it is the Law of Probability.
I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen, you should have to speak English!
My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.
I think the police should have every right to shoot you if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can't understand the word 'freeze' or 'stop' in English, see the above lines.
I don't think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business.
We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document; and open to their interpretations.
I don't hate the rich; I don't pity the poor. I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That doesn't stop you from watching them.
I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that's better, and put your name on the building.
It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid; and smack their little behinds when necessary, and say 'NO!'
I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals. I don't want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me French fries!
I am sick of 'Political Correctness.' I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa; so how can they be 'African-Americans'? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don't go aroundsaying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great,great, great grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from America and nowhere else, and if you don't like my point of view, tough...”
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!
I was asked to send this on if I agree or delete if I don't. It is such that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, I have a very hard
time understanding why there is such a problem in having 'In God We
Trust' on our money and having 'God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to BE QUIET!
And:
Can you answer these questions?
By: Victor Davis Hanson
What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?
Since when did borrowed money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?
When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent of dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?
Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then, and with impunity, did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas—furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes, with placards declaring “Off with their d—s”?
Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?
How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?
When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it suddenly legal for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?
Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women even asked to redefine the very sports they had championed?
When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during a quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?
Since when did the people decide that 70 percent of voters would not cast their ballots on Election Day? Was this revolutionary change the subject of a national debate, a heated congressional session, or the votes of dozens of state legislatures? No, of course not.
What happened to Election Night returns? Did the fact that Americans created more electronic ballots and computerized tallies make it take so much longer to tabulate the votes?
When did the nation abruptly decide that theft is not a crime, assault not a felony? How can thieves walk out with bags of stolen goods, without the wrath of angry shoppers, much less fear of the law?
Was there ever a national debate about the terrified flight from Afghanistan? Who planned it and why? And today, the current administration (Biden) is blaming former President Trump for that disaster!
What happened to the once-trusted FBI? Why almost overnight did its directors decide to mislead Congress, to deceive judges with concocted tales from fake dossiers and with doctored writs? Did Congress pass a law that our federal leaders in the FBI or CIA could lie under oath with impunity?
Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? How did that happen in America?
How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?
We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare of a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we neither knew about nor recognized.
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Changes to reasonability standard pass second and third Knesset readings
Knesset approves changes major step in judicial reform, with majority of 64 MKs.
The Knesset plenum on Monday afternoon approved changes to the reasonableness standard, passing the bill with a majority of 64 Knesset members.
As the bill passed its second and third Knesset readings, opposition MKs yelled, "shame!" and "destruction!
And:
Israel and the New America
By Caroline Glick
On the surface, Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to the White House on Tuesday felt like old times. U.S. President Joe Biden warmly greeted Israel’s ceremonial head of state and repeatedly stated that the U.S.’s commitment to Israel is “ironclad.” Biden mentioned that he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the day before and arranged a visit for Israel’s actual leader.
So, are we back to normal? Were the last seven months of unprecedented U.S. hostility towards Israel, its elected government, its parliamentary deliberations, its senior ministers and its prime minister a blip on the screen, now undone?
Apparently not. Shortly after Herzog left the White House, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote that Biden met with him at the White House after Herzog departed and claimed that Biden read Netanyahu the riot act in his conversation with the premier on Monday.
Biden did so because of the Netanyahu government’s intention to pass parts of its judicial reform program without the support of its political opponents. The White House also told reporters that Biden didn’t invite Netanyahu to the White House, he just agreed to meet him somewhere.
Israeli National Security Adviser Tzahi Hanegbi told reporters that Friedman’s report of the Biden-Netanyahu conversation is simply wrong. It probably is. All the same, it’s hard to imagine Friedman invented the story out of whole cloth. In all likelihood, Biden decided to put out a hostile readout of the conversation at odds with both the White House account and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office’s account of the phone call.
In other words, the hostile policy geared towards undermining the Netanyahu government at home and abroad remains in place.
For close observers of the Biden administration, this is not surprising. From the outset, like the Obama administration, the Biden administration has distinguished itself for its institutional hostility to Israel and other U.S. Middle East allies, particularly Saudi Arabia.
In an important analysis by the Endowment for Truth in the Middle East (EMET) published this week under the title, “Robert Malley and the Call from the Third World,” EMET demonstrated two important aspects of the Obama-Biden foreign policy worldview.
The analysis focused on Robert Malley, Biden’s envoy for negotiations with Iran and Obama’s chief Middle East strategist, who was recently compelled to leave his position due to undisclosed security breaches.
The article showed first that Malley is the product of a radical anti-American upbringing. Second, it demonstrated that Malley’s radical views have become the establishment views of the Democratic Party.
Malley’s father Simon Malley was a leading advocate and true believer in Leninist anti-imperialism, which perceived the U.S. and its allies—as well as the Jews of Israel—as evil corruptors of mankind. Malley’s father championed anti-American Third World dictators and terrorists including Yasser Arafat as paragons of the new humanity who would purify the world of its Western imperialist roots.
In his key roles in both the Obama and Biden administrations, Malley transformed his father’s anti-American belief system into U.S. policy.
Until Obama rose to power, a man with Malley’s pedigree and professional record would never have received a security clearance, much less serve as the architect and chief executor of U.S. Middle East policy. But under Obama and in the intervening years, Malley’s positions became the establishment position of the Democratic Party. As the EMET analysis noted, Malley was even made a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ground zero of the liberal foreign policy establishment in America.
Malley is not a fringe figure in the administration. His childhood friend is Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Malley’s views are shared by every senior administration official responsible for Middle East policy. Even after Malley was forced out for unnamed security violations—and is allegedly the subject of an FBI investigation—U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stood by Malley and defended him in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last weekend.
Malley’s radical, anti-imperialist worldview guides and shapes the Biden administration’s analysis of events in the Middle East. Under these circumstances, temporary political conditions may force the administration to drop its boycott of Netanyahu and reaffirm its “ironclad” commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship before elections. But the fundamentals of the policies and the hostility that informs them won’t change.
In practice, this means the administration’s Iran policy entails empowering the Iranian regime through nuclear appeasement and sanctions relief. With the Biden administration not enforcing U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, Iran’s energy exports rose to a five-year high in 2023. According to The Wall Street Journal, Iran shipped 1.6 million barrels per day in May and June, up from 250,000 barrels per day in 2019 and 2020 after the U.S. imposed sanctions on its oil and gas exports.
The money has made no impact on Iran’s economic woes. So, there is reason to believe that Iran is spending its oil wealth on its proxy armies and terror groups—first and foremost Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Judea, Samaria and Gaza—as well as its nuclear program.
Last week, for example, the Associated Press reported that Iran is building a nuclear installation a hundred meters underground in the Zagros mountains in central Iran near Natanz. The site is allegedly so deep that it is immune to conventional bombing. These actions are enabled by the Biden administration’s non-enforcement of sanctions.
In Lebanon, the Biden administration continues to skirt U.S. law prohibiting funding of foreign terrorist organizations in order to pay the salaries of Lebanese soldiers and officers in the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese Armed Forces. The U.S. similarly pays the salaries in cash of members of Lebanon’s intelligence service, whose chief occupation is rooting out Israeli spies and spy networks.
In response to Hezbollah’s cross-border penetration of Israel and other provocations on the border, Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein has begun pressuring Israel to bow to Hezbollah’s territorial demands, just as he coerced the Lapid-Gantz government to surrender to Hezbollah’s maritime border demands following Hezbollah’s drone assaults on Israel’s Karish gas platform last July.
As for the Palestinians, in recent weeks, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces and Fatah faction terrorists have bragged on their official media outlets that their personnel carry out the majority of terror attacks against Israel from northern Samaria. All the same, after the IDF carried out a brief counterterror operation against the growing terror infrastructure in Jenin two weeks ago, the administration demanded that Israel agree to carry out no further operations in the terror hub and stand back as those same P.A. forces “assert control” over the city.
In his remarks at the Oval Office, Herzog played up Israel’s close military and intelligence ties with the United States and used them to send a message to Israel’s enemies.
“There are some enemies of ours that sometimes mistake the fact that we may have some differences as impacting our unbreakable bond. And I truly believe that had they known how much our cooperation has grown in recent years, and it’s achieved new heights, they would not think that way,” he said.
Statements like Herzog’s made sense a generation ago. At the end of the Cold War, Israel’s position as Washington’s favored client state was the basis of an unprecedented diplomatic upgrade. Nations like China, Russia and India, who believed that the road to Washington went through Jerusalem, reinstated diplomatic relations with Israel that they had abrogated in the 1960s and 1970s in submission to the Arab boycott.
Today, the situation is different on many levels. First, Israel is much more powerful than it was a generation ago. In terms of what it has to offer the states of the Middle East and the world, Israel is far more comparable to Japan than to Taiwan.
Second, under the Biden administration, the U.S. has lost its strategic credibility as an ally in the eyes of its spurned Arab allies—first and foremost Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia agreed to have China mediate its dispute with Iran because it does not trust Washington to protect it from Iran.
The more Israel behaves as a U.S. client, the more profusely Israeli leaders thank the U.S. for its military support and “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security, the less the Saudis and others view Jerusalem as a credible ally against Iran.
Likewise, to the extent that China believes the U.S. has Israel under its thumb in relation to Iran, the regime in Beijing will be unwilling to take Israel’s concerns and warnings about Iran’s nuclear weapons program into consideration as it expands its strategic ties with the Islamic Republic.
Clearly recognizing this state of affairs, speaking at a memorial ceremony for Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky on Tuesday, Netanyahu said, “Like Jabotinsky, who believed that the Jewish state’s natural alliance was with the Western powers—so we believe that our first and most important alliance is with the U.S. However, we always remember that the ultimate responsibility for our destiny and our security lies with us—with the sovereign Israeli government in Jerusalem.”
The path forward in U.S.-Israel ties was carved out this week by authors Jacob Siegel and Liel Liebowitz in an article in Tablet magazine calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. As Siegel and Liebowitz demonstrated, the opportunity costs of the $3.8 billion annual assistance outweigh its benefits across the board. Not only does Israel take a direct and devastating hit to its military industries and strategic independence, the aid is tied to U.S. platforms like the F-35 that are ill-suited to Israel’s threat environment.
The aid is used as a weapon by anti-Israel lawmakers and policymakers to coerce Israel to toe the line on U.S. policies in relation to the Palestinians, Iran and Lebanon that are antithetical to Israel’s security and national interests. Rather than empower Israel, particularly in light of the Biden administration’s foundational hostility towards Israel, Israeli dependence on U.S. military aid undercuts Israel’s standing as a regional power and empowers its enemies to attack, with the knowledge that the U.S. stands with them against Israel.
The U.S. veto on Israeli technology and arms sales owing to the aid constrains Israel’s freedom to develop security ties with states like India.
Just as importantly, Israel and the U.S. have complementary capabilities and interests. To maintain healthy relations, Israel must end its position as client state and act instead like a junior partner, along the lines of Britain, in its cooperative dealings with Washington.
Such a transformative shift would shield Israel from sudden shocks to its long-term strategic planning and procurement goals that are currently vulnerable to election results.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal declared that “vilification of Israel has gone mainstream in the Democratic Party.” Israel’s challenge is to adapt its relationship with the U.S. in a manner that factors in this state of affairs. The first step towards accomplishing that goal is to quickly wean Israel off U.S. military assistance.
Originally published at JNS.org.
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What I have consistently warned about is now upon us:
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Interest On The National Debt Poised To Rise At An Alarming Rate
Since the end of the fake debt ceiling fight on June 2, the Treasury has borrowed an additional $700 billion pushing the national debt over $32 trillion. Looking at the interest rates on this new debt, it becomes clear that the US government has a big problem.
The debt ceiling deal supposedly cut spending, but we know actual spending will continue to rise. Given that the Biden administration is blowing through an average of $500 billion each month and running massive deficits month after month, it’s clear the misnamed “Fiscal Responsibility Act” did nothing to address the root problem.
The problem isn’t purely a function of more debt. The bigger issue is that this new debt comes with a much steeper price tag. Interest on the national debt is rising at an alarming clip.
The trailing 12-month (TTM) interest on the debt clocked in at just under $600 billion in May. This was up from $350 billion at the start of 2022, less than 18 months ago. The government has added an extra $250 billion in expenses per year on just debt service.
This is just the beginning of an upward trend. Based on the current interest payments, the Treasury is paying less than 2% interest on the total debt. But a lot of the debt currently on the books was financed at very low rates before the Federal Reserve started its hiking cycle. Every month, some of that super-low-yielding paper matures and has to be replaced by bills, notes and bonds yielding much higher rates. That means interest payments will quickly climb much higher unless rates fall.
If interest rates continue to rise and remain elevated for an extended amount of time, interest expenses could climb rapidly into the top three federal expenses.
This calls into question the Fed’s ability to stay in the inflation fight. Eventually, it could be forced to cut rates in order to keep the US government solvent. And it also may need to go back to quantitative easing in order to artificially boost demand for Treasury securities.
*Information contained within this email should not be construed as Legal, Accounting, Tax or Investment adviceial Planners and do NOT give investing or tax advice.
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Hunter at it again.
Presidents have been under the sway of others but never has a president been on the take and thus compromised as Biden. Senior China business men and Chinese Intelligence officials have the goods on him as do several other nations because he has received money from them. This is not only treasonous but outrageous and beyond impeachment. Yet, we simply sit like mutes and sacrificial lambs as we buy the prattle of Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and others.
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Hunter Biden put then-VP dad Joe on the phone with business associates at least 2 dozen times, ex-partner Devon Archer to testify
By Miranda Devine
Hunter Biden's former business partner Devon Archer is expected to testify to Congress this week about how Hunter would call then-Vice President Joe Biden during meetings with foreign business associates.Hunter Biden's former business partner Devon Archer is expected to testify to Congress this week about how Hunter would call then-Vice President Joe Biden during meetings with foreign business associates. Alec Tabak
Hunter Biden would dial in his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on speakerphone into meetings with his overseas business partners, according to testimony expected before Congress this week from Devon Archer, the first son’s former best friend.
Archer, 48, who is facing jail for his role in a $60 million bond fraud, is scheduled to testify to the House Oversight Committee about meetings he witnessed that were attended by Joe Biden either in person or via speakerphone when Hunter would call his father and introduce him to foreign business partners or prospective investors.
“We are looking forward very much to hearing from Devon Archer about all the times he has witnessed Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners when he was vice president, including on speakerphone,” says Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the committee chairman.
One such meeting was in Dubai late in the evening of Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, after a board meeting of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which was paying Hunter $83,000 a month as a director.
Archer, who also was a director, is expected to testify that, after dinner with the Burisma board at the Burj Al Arab Hotel, he and Hunter traveled six miles north to the Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach to have a drink with one of Hunter’s friends.
While they were sitting outside at the bar, Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior Burisma executive, phoned to ask where they were because Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky needed to speak to Hunter urgently.
‘Can you ring your dad?’
Soon afterward, the two Ukrainians joined Hunter and Archer at the Four Seasons bar and Pozharskyi asked Hunter: “Can you ring your dad?” At the time it was early afternoon, Friday, in Washington, DC.
Hunter then called his father, put him on speaker, placed the phone on the table, and introduced the Ukrainians to Joe Biden by name as “Nikolai and Vadym.”
He also said words to the effect that the Burisma bigwigs “need our support.”
VP Biden greeted the Ukrainians but spoke only in vague pleasantries during the short call, and in other such interactions with Hunter’s overseas business partners, Archer is expected to testify.
Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky urgently asked to speak with Hunter before being put on the phone with Joe Biden.Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky urgently asked to speak with Hunter before being put on the phone with Joe Biden, according to Archer.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Congressional investigators are expected to probe the reasons for Zlochevsky requesting the urgent phone call with Joe Biden.
They will note the context, that three days after the speakerphone call, the then-vice president, who was the Obama administration’s point man for Ukraine, was due to fly to Kyiv to address the Ukrainian parliament, known as the “Rada,” on Dec. 9, 2015, about the “poison of cronyism, corruption, and kleptocracy.”
Ten weeks before the call, on Sept. 24, 2015, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt had given a speech about corruption in Odessa, in which he targeted Zlochevsky by name.
By then, Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption and, within two months, on Feb. 2, 2016, would seize four houses in Kyiv, two plots of land and a Rolls Royce belonging to Zlochevsky, who was living in exile in Dubai.
A month later, Shokin was fired, after Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US aid to Ukraine.
Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi pressured Hunter Biden to help get the investigation into the company by prosecutor general Viktor Shokin shut down, according to emails from Hunter’s laptop.Serge Illin
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden would brag to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
As Shokin’s probe gathered pace at the end of 2015, Pozharskyi ratcheted up the pressure on Hunter, emails on Hunter’s laptop show.
In an email to Hunter and Archer on Nov. 2, 2015, one month before the speakerphone call, Pozharskyi explicitly demanded that they use their influence to “close down” the criminal investigation against Burisma.
Archer also is expected to detail other speakerphone meetings in his testimony, including a dinner at a restaurant in Paris where Hunter whipped out his phone and put his father on speaker to impress prospective investors.
Sonny’s go-to party trick
Hunter performed the same party trick as many as two dozen times in Archer’s presence, the Long Island-born father of three is expected to tell congressional investigators under oath.
Another former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, recalls Hunter offering to get his father on the phone during a meeting by the pool at the Chateau Marmont in LA.
“I am also aware of other Biden family business associates confirming that Joe would take phone calls from Hunter in the middle of business meetings and would weigh in via speakerphone,” says Bobulinski.
“Sitting with Hunter at Chateau Marmont before I first met Joe Biden on May 2, 2017, Hunter was adamant that his father takes his calls at any time, no matter what his lawyers say or with gatekeepers like Kate Bedingfield [former Biden spokesperson] playing interference.
“The American people don’t fully appreciate yet the key role Joe Biden played in the Biden family global influence peddling . . . I would equate it to a chairman’s role in a traditional business structure.”
Former business partner Tony Bobulinski said that Hunter offered to get his father on the phone during a meeting in Los Angeles.Former business partner Tony Bobulinski said that Hunter offered to get his father on the phone during a meeting in Los Angeles.Fox News
Bobulinski met with Joe twice in LA in 2017, to be vetted as CEO of a joint venture Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden were planning with Chinese energy company CEFC, which would end up netting them millions of dollars for no discernible product or service
Both meetings at the Beverly Hilton were in May 2017, four months after Joe left office as VP.
Archer refused to comment yesterday, but a close associate said he is testifying because he believes it is his “civic duty.”
He has “nothing to hide, no revenge to enact nor anyone to protect other than his family and he feels he has been handcuffed by the absurdly bogus [fraud] case into remaining silent. In a forum where he has immunity he can at least start to speak truth.”
Since news broke that Archer would testify before the Republican-controlled committee, his family has been receiving death threats and warnings to “keep your mouth shut.”
During about one-quarter of the speakerphone calls witnessed by Archer, Hunter would introduce his father to the foreigners with whom he was transacting business.
But at other times he would just speak to Joe without acknowledging that other people were listening in, so is not clear how often VP Biden was aware that he was being used as leverage by his son.
Hunter told CBS News in 2021 that he spoke to his father “every night.”
Hunter Biden claimed to Bobulinski that his father will take his calls at any time.Hunter Biden claimed to Bobulinski that his father will take his calls at any time.Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
DC business dinner
Archer also is expected to testify about two dinners Hunter organized for his VP father to meet business partners from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan in a private room at Georgetown restaurant Café Milano, one in April 2015, and another in early 2016.
Burisma executive Pozharskyi attended the first dinner, on April 16, 2015, along with Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.
The next day, Hunter received an email from Pozharskyi to thank him for introducing him to his father.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote. “It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
Joe Biden repeatedly has said he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings.
A bombshell FBI document released last week by Sen. Chuck Grassley described an allegation that Zlochevsky told an FBI informant in 2016 he had paid a $10 million bribe to Joe and Hunter Biden “to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”
Zlochevsky also allegedly claimed to have two recordings of conversations which included Joe Biden, and another 15 recordings involving Hunter, as well as “many text messages” and two documents that the informant “understood to be wire transfer statements, bank records” that record “payment(s) to the Bidens were made, presumably in exchange for Shokin’s firing.”
In the FBI document, known as an FD-1023, Zlochevsky is quoted calling Joe Biden “the big guy.”
Archer is expected to testify that “big guy” was a nickname used by Hunter’s business partners to refer to his father. Bobulinski also says Joe Biden is the “big guy.”
In a notorious 2017 email to Hunter and Bobulinski, their business partner James Gilliar outlined percentage equity breakdowns of a joint venture with Chinese firm CEFC, with “10 held by H for the big guy?”
The identity of the “big guy” also formed part of the grand jury investigation in Wilmington, Del., into Hunter’s business dealings.
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Business Is Caught in a Diversity Trap
Democratic AGs defend ‘aspirational’ hiring goals. Republican AGs suggest they’re illegal.
The Editorial Board
Big corporations are caught in a pincer. Earlier this month, 13 Republican state Attorneys General sent a letter to Fortune 100 companies, warning that their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices might be illegal. Now 21 Democratic AGs are telling the same CEOs that such policies are above board and should be expanded.
“We write to reassure you that corporate efforts to recruit diverse workforces and create inclusive work environments are legal and reduce corporate risk for claims of discrimination,” the Democratic AGs advise in their letter, dated Wednesday. “In fact, businesses should double-down on diversity-focused programs because there is still much more work to be done.”
The Supreme Court last month relied on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in striking down university racial preferences in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The Democratic AGs say the decision “does not directly address or govern the behavior or the initiatives of private sector businesses.” That’s true as far as it goes.
But as Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in a concurrence, such policies are independently banned by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, barring discrimination in federally funded programs. Title VII, which bans employment discrimination, is similar. That was the point of the Republican AGs: “Courts routinely interpret Title VI and Title VII in conjunction with each other, adopting the same principles and interpretation.”
If anything, judges have been more stringent about discrimination in the workplace. The Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter (2003) carved out a narrow exception for racial preferences in college admissions to promote the putative educational benefits of a diverse student body. The Justices have never upheld a similar rationale for corporate DEI. The Democratic AGs claim diversity is good for business. But even if true, this doesn’t fly as a legal defense.
The legality of DEI policies depends on how they’re structured. Truly race-neutral efforts, such as focused recruitment at colleges with diverse student bodies, aren’t illegal. But the Democratic AGs also defend “aspirational diversity goals” in hiring, which in practice appear to be quotas in disguise.
Microsoft in 2020 pledged to increase its black-owned U.S. partners by 20% over three years, while doubling the number of black managers and senior leaders in the U.S. by 2025. This certainly looks like the sort of racial balancing that courts have ruled illegal. As with college admissions, hiring and promotion is a zero-sum game. Giving an advantage to an applicant of one race put others at a disadvantage.
Some companies have adopted DEI programs to deflect progressive criticism, which is a reason such policies proliferated amid the protests after George Floyd’s death. But as the Democratic AGs note, another motivation is legal protection. In September 2020, Microsoft settled a Labor Department complaint that alleged, based on a statistical analysis, discrimination against Asian, black and Hispanic applicants. A month later, the same agency warned the company its diversity pledge could be illegal.
You have to feel some sympathy for CEOs who get accused of discrimination no matter what they do. So will the Democratic AGs sue if companies now scrap DEI pledges? That’s one implication of their letter. They accuse their Republican counterparts of intimidating business, but at the same time, the Democratic letter makes clear that the legal risks swing both ways.
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