Day Of Reckoning: In Pursuit Of All The Ex-President’s Crimes

Check Out The Elites Tied Up With FTX Con Artist And Mega-Democrat Donor Sam Bankman-Fried

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/18/check-out-the-elites-tied-up-with-ftx-con-artist-and-mega-democrat-donor-sam-bankman-fried/

While riding high as a crypto bro, Bankman-Fried utilized his fortunes to finance both left-wing causes and Democrat candidates. During the 2022 midterms, he was the second-largest donor to Democrat candidates, spending roughly $37 million throughout the election cycle. Among the beneficiaries of his mega-dollar donations were left-wing political action committees, such as Protect Our Future, and the Democratic National Committee.

And while Bankman-Fried’s financial donations certainly deserve to be scrutinized, it’s also worth taking a glance at the numerous public figures, especially Democrats, who surrounded themselves with the former crypto tycoon over the years — as well as those who plan to do so in the near future.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Open Secrets, Bankman-Fried’s total contributions this cycle amounted to $39,826,856. That included a whopping $36,793,956 given to Democratic candidates, with just $235,200 to Republicans.

In August, Politico championed Bankman-Fried as a "potential Democratic savior" to help them hold back a red midterm wave. According to the outlet, he "hired a network of political operatives and spent tens of millions more shaping Democratic House primaries" in what was "a shocking wave of spending that looked like it could remake the Democratic Party bench in Washington, candidate by candidate."

Bankman-Fried, who donated more than $10 million to Joe Biden’s campaign ahead of 2020, estimated he could spend anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion looking ahead to the 2024 election. By October, he remarked to reporters that the $1 billion figure "was a dumb quote on my part."

Oops. Sam Bankman-Fried’s implosion took down Democrats’ second-biggest donor with it as the party gears up to regulate crypto

https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-biden-democratic-party-second-biggest-donor/

Copy of what's believed to be Hunter Biden's laptop data turned over by repair shop to FBI showed no tampering, analysis says

https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/hunter-biden-laptop-data-analysis/

Data from a laptop that the lawyer for a Delaware computer repair shop owner says was left by Hunter Biden in 2019 – and which the shop owner later provided to the FBI under subpoena – shows no evidence of tampering or fabrication, according to an independent review commissioned by CBS News.

Brian Della Rocca, the lawyer for the shop owner, provided to CBS News what he called an "exact copy" of the laptop data provided to federal investigators nearly three years ago.

The independent analysis, by two cyber investigators from Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Services, found no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated or tampered with. Nor did it find any new files originating after April 2019, when store records indicate Biden dropped it off for repair.

This digital forensic analysis was undertaken because the laptop data, as well as bank records, are at the center of the looming Republican-led House investigation into Biden family businesses.

In a statement, an attorney for Hunter Biden said "there have been multiple attempts to hack, infect, distort, and peddle misinformation regarding Mr. Biden's devices and data." The attorney, Christopher Clark, said Hunter Biden's team believes, "there are ongoing efforts to utilize the infected and distorted data to spread disinformation. At no time did any individual…have Mr. Biden's consent to access his computer data or share it with others."

Clark's statement did not address questions related to the specific data, documents and personal identification analyzed for CBS News' independent review, or Computer Forensics Services' findings. Clark also referred CBS to Hunter Biden's recent memoir.

After two years of scrutiny, the laptop has produced mountains of material about Hunter Biden's personal struggles, and his foreign business ventures in Ukraine and with China.

"There is such a vast amount of data that was accumulated over time that is personal in nature. Everything from pictures, to personal documents to photographs, and text messages, and and emails. And just the sheer volume of what we're dealing with it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fabricate," said Sean Lanterman, the company's incident response director.

Lanterman said the data was accumulated over time in a manner "consistent with normal, everyday use of a computer."

That everyday use of the laptop appears to have come to an abrupt halt in March 2019, according to the audit. That was a few weeks before the computer was brought in for repairs, apparently the result of liquid damage.

The audit turned up more than 120,000 emails, approximately 30,000 text messages, as well as pictures, video, personal forms of identification and voicemails from the user profile data.

Computer Forensics Services' chief technology officer, Mark Lanterman, said he believes it's clear the data was created by Hunter Biden.

"I have no doubt in my mind that this data was created by Hunter Biden, and that it came from a computer under Mr. Biden's control," he said.

In addition to analyzing the records' underlying data for potential anomalies, the audit also identified multiple voicemails apparently from future President Biden.  

When Republicans take the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in January, they promise to focus their investigatory powers on Hunter Biden's business deals. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley alleged last month in a letter to the attorney general, FBI director and the Delaware U.S. attorney that Hunter Biden and the president's brother James "profited from a $5 million wire from a company connected to CEFC (the Chinese Energy firm) in August of 2017."

Republican lawmakers noted one particular May 2017 email that promises to be at the core of their congressional probe.

The email, with the subject line, "Expectations," outlines a "provisional agreement" for "equity" in a deal with a Chinese energy company.

Two of Hunter's former business partners, including Tony Bobulinski, who received the email, have told CBS News that "10 held by H for the big guy?" is shorthand for 10% held by Hunter for his father.

But when the email became public in 2020, the author, James Gilliar, told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved. Gilliar has not responded to CBS News' questions.

Bobulinski had a falling out with Hunter Biden, and has been a critic of the president and his son. His appearance and interview on Fox News came on the heels of the initial reports in the New York Post about the laptop. While Republicans — including then-President Donald Trump and allies such as Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani — championed the newspaper's reporting, then-candidate Joe Biden called it disinformation, and a "Russian plant."

The president has also said that he has "never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."  (A proven lie now)

The White House declined to comment on the contents of the computer and claims made by Bobulinski..  

"They're going to look at every part of the Joe Biden administration," said Republican strategist Doug Heye. "A lot of this is also going to be aggressive on Hunter specifically. We're gonna hear a lot about the laptop."

Heye said he expects Congressional investigations to look at "Who profited? Was the law broken? Was it not broken? Were there serious national security issues?"

Hunter Biden will always be remembered as the son of our greatest president.

Trump Organization Found Guilty in Tax Fraud Scheme

The former president’s company had been accused of providing off-the-book benefits to executives. The testimony of its former chief financial officer proved crucial to the case.

The guilty verdict is a stern rebuke for a company that fostered crime.
Image
Former President Donald J. Trump speaks behind a lectern at a rally.
The family business that nurtured Donald J. Trump’s fame has been branded a felonious enterprise.Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Donald J. Trump’s family real estate business was convicted on Tuesday of tax fraud and other financial crimes, a remarkable rebuke of the former president’s company and what prosecutors described as its “culture of fraud and deception.”

The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, resulted from a long-running scheme in which the Trump Organization doled out off-the-books luxury perks to some executives: They received fancy apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, even private school tuition for relatives, none of which they paid taxes on.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which led the case against two Trump Organization entities, had previously extracted a guilty plea from the architect of the scheme, Allen H. Weisselberg, the company’s long-serving chief financial officer. Mr. Weisselberg, one of the former president’s most loyal lieutenants, testified as the prosecution’s star witness, but never implicated Mr. Trump.

While prosecutors stopped short of indicting the former president, they invoked his name throughout the monthlong trial, telling jurors that he personally paid for some of the perks and even approved a crucial aspect of the scheme. The prosecution also sounded a drumbeat of damning evidence that spotlighted his company’s freewheeling culture, revealing that pervasive illegality unfolded under Mr. Trump’s nose for years.

The company’s conviction — coupled with the prosecution’s explosive claim at trial that Mr. Trump was “explicitly sanctioning tax fraud” — could now reverberate through the 2024 presidential race, providing early fodder for opponents and their attack ads.

It also might lay the groundwork for the district attorney’s office to intensify its broader criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s business practices — and hush money paid to a porn star who said she had an affair with him — an inquiry that gained momentum in recent months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

For now, the verdict against Mr. Trump’s company provides a win for the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat who came under fire early this year when he declined to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump in the broader investigation. The conviction of the company marks the height of Mr. Bragg’s young tenure.

“The former president’s companies now stand convicted of crimes,” Mr. Bragg said outside the courtroom after the verdict was delivered. “That is consequential. It underscores that in Manhattan we have one standard of justice for all.”

The conviction on charges of tax fraud, a scheme to defraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records is hardly a death sentence for the Trump Organization. The maximum penalty it faces is $1.62 million, a rounding error for Mr. Trump, who typically notched hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during his presidency.

Yet the verdict represents a highly public reckoning for the Trump Organization, forever branding it as a felonious enterprise. A company that served as a launching pad for the former president’s tabloid celebrity, his star turn on “The Apprentice” and ultimately his political career, might now be best known for its conviction, rather than the hotels and golf clubs that Mr. Trump spent a generation building.

The former president has blamed it all on a politically motivated witch hunt. But while his attacks on prosecutors might appeal to his most loyal voters, lenders and the broader business world might now shun his company.

In a statement after the verdict, the company took aim at Mr. Weisselberg, noting that he “testified under oath that he ‘betrayed’ the trust the company had placed in him.”

“The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employee’s actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous,” the company said in the statement.

Alan Futerfas, one of the company’s lawyers, said the Trump Organization would appeal the verdict. Another company lawyer, Susan Necheles, called the case “unprecedented and legally incorrect,” adding that, “We disagree with the jury’s verdict.”

The jurors delivered their decision after spending about 10 hours deliberating, at times appearing to methodically work through charges as they returned to the courtroom on several occasions to request information. But when their deliberations had concluded, the jurors seemed eager to report. They buzzed the courtroom four times to notify the judge that it was time to be heard.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/06/nyregion/trump-organization-trial-verdict?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20221206&instance_id=79471&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=57249491&segment_id=115197&te=1&user_id=003b223a2f944c5ae2f41b9b0936a70e

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Stay tuned... aaaaand don't forget Joe's 5.2M in unexplained/unreported income.

Elon Musk threatens to release more 'smoking guns' after exposing Hunter Biden laptop censorship

https://www.audacy.com/knss/news/national/musk-threatens-more-smoking-guns-after-biden-laptop-censored

Elon Musk is putting the Democratic National Committee on high alert.

The billionaire called the censorship of news stories regarding Hunter Biden's laptop, "tantamount to interfering in the 2020 election."

Musk, who recently became Twitter CEO, has released never-before-seen information regarding the social media platform's decision to suppress news stories about Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020.

The information was released via a thread from writer Matt Taibbi, which Musk shared along with the caption "Here we go" followed by popcorn emojis.

Here we go!! https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022
"On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop," Taibbi wrote. "Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be 'unsafe.' They even blocked its transmission via direct message."

The suppression of the Biden story took place three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. According to the New York Post, the laptop contained emails that show Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company,

Taibbi's characterization of the internal documents amounted to a sharp criticism of how Twitter's previous management handled the situation and ran the company, alleging without clear evidence that it was biased toward Democrats, NBC News reported.

Musk says his goal is, after showing how Twitter suppressed information, that legacy media will be more committed to the truth. He is also threatening to expose more "smoking guns" in his efforts to release internal communications and documents to the public.

"If Twitter is doing one team's bidding before an election, shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, that is the definition of election interference," he said during a roundtable discussion on Twitter Spaces.

He also called Twitter the "arm of the Democratic National Committee."

"It's absurd," he said. "It's just obvious there's been a lot of control of information, suppression of information, including things that affected elections."

Mark Meadows Exchanged Texts With 34 Members Of Congress About Plans To Overturn The 2020 Election

The Messages Included Battle Cries, Crackpot Legal Theories, And ‘Invoking Marshall Law!!’

(Oh, my!)

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

More in this series

A Plot To Overturn An American Election
Dec 12
TPM Has Obtained Explosive Evidence Uncovere...

Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry’s Work To Overturn 2020 Election Included A ‘Cyber Team’ And An Italian Job
Dec 12

Those messages are being fully, publicly documented here for the first time.

The texts are part of a trove Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that was obtained by TPM. For more information about the story behind the text log and our procedures for publishing the messages, read the introduction to this series. Meadows’ exchanges shed new light on the extent of congressional involvement in Trump’s efforts to spread baseless conspiracy theories about his defeat and his attempts to reverse it. The messages document the role members played in the campaign to subvert the election as it was conceived, built, and reached its violent climax on Jan. 6, 2021. The texts are rife with links to far-right websites, questionable legal theories, violent rhetoric, and advocacy for authoritarian power grabs...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/mark-meadows-exchanged-texts-with-34-members-of-congress-about-plans-to-overturn-the-2020-election

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Dec 19, 2022
Today, for the first time in the history of the United States, a congressional committee referred a former president to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. After an exhaustive, 18-month-long investigation of January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, the committee referred Trump for prosecution on four federal felony crimes. This video summarizes some of what the J6 committee concluded in the 154-page executive summary released to the public today.

First time? That reflects a divergent set of standards.

U.S. attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden's vice presidency found at Biden think tank

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-center-classified-documents/

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney's inquiry.

Biden aides find second batch of classified documents at new location

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-aides-find-second-batch-classified-documents-new-location-rcna65371

WASHINGTON — Aides to President Joe Biden have discovered at least one additional batch of classified documents in a location separate from the Washington office he used after leaving the Obama administration, according to a person familiar with the matter.

I smell a rat. I hope there are cameras in these locations. I strongly suspect someone planted these documents to take the heat off Trump.

Floridatexan wrote:
I smell a rat.  I hope there are cameras in these locations.  I strongly suspect someone planted these documents to take the heat off Trump.

HAHAHAHA excellent take clownshoes. A conspiracy theory.

Biden team informs DOJ of third classified document discovery

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-team-informs-doj-of-third-classified-document-discovery/ar-AA16hNJC

President Joe Biden's personal counsel informed the Justice Department of a third classified document discovery Thursday morning.

The finding came at Biden's personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, and follows two other classified batches from his vice presidential days that were flagged last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed Thursday.

Garland made the disclosure during a press conference in which he announced the appointment of former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to serve as special counsel and oversee an inquiry into whether Biden mishandled classified documents. He did not provide more specifics on the nature of that document.

So far, there have been at least three distinct classified document discoveries. The first came on Nov. 2 of last year, while a Biden lawyer was clearing out a closet in the president's old office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a foreign policy-focused think tank. Biden "periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign," according to White House counsel Richard Sauber.

More classified documents found at Biden's Wilmington home, White House counsel says

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/classified-documents-found-bidens-wilmington-home-white-house/story?id=96437750

Richard Sauber said DOJ officials "immediately took possession of them."

January 14, 2023, 12:12 PM

You do know that the Hillary campaign orchestrated the Russian collusion theory by now... right? LMAO... she even started the Obama birth certificate scandal. You don't seem to have any grasp on reality. What will they tell you to believe next? That Trump planted the Biden documents? That Trump paid Hunters rent? You really ought to take a shot of reality. Even cnn is turning on Uncle Joe the pervert.

FBI searches Biden’s Wilmington home and finds more classified materials

By Betsy Klein and Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 8:33 PM EST, Sat January 21, 2023

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/politics/white-house-documents/index.html

CNN
—
FBI investigators on Friday found additional classified material while conducting a search of President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, said in a statement that during the search, which took place over nearly 13 hours Friday, “DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President. DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

There’s no hiding Biden’s fright over classified document scandal

https://nypost.com/2023/01/22/theres-no-hiding-bidens-fright-over-classified-document-scandal/

The no-there-there defense may have worked for Biden back in the 2020 campaign, when he repeatedly claimed to know nothing about his son’s overseas business dealings, and when the mythology of “Honest Joe” hadn’t collapsed, but no more. Too much evidence has emerged from Hunter’s laptop, from Hunter’s former business partners, from the “Twitter files” and from FBI whistleblowers alleging a cover-up of staggering proportions.

The first tranche of at least 10 classified documents reportedly was found in the fall at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, and were kept secret by the White House until after the midterm elections. They were dated between 2013 and 2016 and included US intelligence memos and briefing materials on Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to CNN.

This is the thread that links the president to the long-running Delaware federal investigation into his son’s foreign business dealings.

That three-year period corresponds to the most frenetic influence-peddling activity overseas by his son Hunter and brother Jim Biden, who made millions of dollars from shady interests in Ukraine, China, Russia and elsewhere.

How much more valuable their product would be if they had access to classified documents?

Their activity is documented in the Hunter laptop, in financial documents held by the Treasury, and in testimony from Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski, who said Joe was the “big guy” slated to get 10% from a particularly lucrative Chinese deal.

Hunter traveled on Air Force 2 with his father to do private business during that period, including to China in December 2013. He organized the infamous Cafe Milano dinner for Joe to meet his business partners from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan in April 2015.

After his separation from his wife in July 2015, Hunter lived off and on at his father’s Delaware mansion and listed it as his residence on official documents. He was photographed in 2017 driving his father’s Corvette, which was housed in the very garage where classified documents have been found.

Hunter also had free rein in his dad’s White House office, and his privileged access meant his name never showed up on visitor logs. For instance, he took the infamous photo of his then-“best friend in business,” Devon Archer, with his father in the VP’s office in April 2014, shortly before the pair joined the board of the corrupt Ukrainian oil company Burisma, which paid Hunter $83,000 a month. That photo ended up briefly on the Burisma website before being taken down on the instructions of a White House lawyer.

One striking email during this period stands out. It was from Hunter to Archer on April 13, 2014, a week before Joe Biden visited Ukraine to meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and refers to “my guys upcoming travels.”

For Hunter, it was an uncharacteristically lengthy email, listing 22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s “destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk.

“The strategic value is to create a land bridge for RU to Crimea. That won’t directly affect Burisma holdings but it will limit future UK exploration and utilization of offshore opportunities in particular,” Hunter wrote.

“It will also result in further destabilization of UK nationally and for whatever govt is in power. And the US will respond with even stronger sanctions. Those sanctions will threaten the tenuous support of the EU which does not have the political will to incur steep energy price increases.”

In point 22, Hunter instructed Archer to buy a “burner phone,” presumably to keep their conversations private. “Buy a cell phone from a 7/11 or CVS tmrw and ill do the same.”

It’s a prescient and very well-informed email, unlike anything else Hunter wrote in the nine years covered in the laptop, and it has the distinct flavor of an official briefing, perhaps even a classified one.

If special counsel Robert Hur does his job properly, he will be comparing notes with Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who has been investigating Hunter since 2018.