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118th US Congress Rules & Investigations The Serious You: How Current Events Affect You
Started 2/11/23 by WALTER784; 40660 views.
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-13
James Comer Names the 9 Biden Family Members Who Got Business Payments
WENDELL HUSEBØ
10 May 2023
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday named the previously undisclosed Biden family members who received payments from the family’s foreign business ventures.
On April 17, Comer announced a total of nine Biden family members profited from the family’s international business schemes, six more than disclosed. Those identified on the payroll were Hunter, James, Hallie Biden — and a fourth unidentified Biden.
During Wednesday’s press conference, Comer described all nine family members as related to President Joe Biden:
Hunter Biden
James Biden, Joe Biden’s Brother
Sara Jones Biden, Joe Biden’s Brother’s Wife
Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s Widow and Hunter Biden’s Ex-Lover
Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden’s Ex-Wife
Melissa Cohen, Hunter Biden’s Current Wife
Two Children of Joe Biden’s Son [Names Unknown]
Joe Biden’s Brother’s Child [Names Unknown]
“The inclusion of Biden grandchildren in the list of family Biden members has not been previously disclosed,” Jonathan Turley posted on Twitter. “The spread of transfers to nine family members and the use of a complex array of LLC companies raise obvious concerns over an effort to conceal influence peddling.”
It is unknown exactly how much money each of the individuals received. But Comer previously detailed that Hunter, James, and Hallie Biden received a collective $1.3 million from entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
On Wednesday, Comer also showed that over $75,000 was sent to James Biden-related companies from China.
Moreover, Comer disclosed that Hunter Biden received $100,000 that was sent from Shanghai Huaxin in China. The money was apparently a part of a CEFC deal with Chairman Ye Jianming, who also paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye worth an estimated $80,000 in February 2017.
CEFC Infrastructure, a company affiliated with Ye, wired $100,000 to Owasco P.C., Hunter Biden’s law firm, Comer stated Wednesday.
In addition, Comer revealed that Biden family members’ accounts received approximately $1.038 million from schemes in Romania.
In total, Comer said the Biden family business — over the course of several years — received over $10 million from schemes in Romania and China. The Biden family business received some of that money, totaling $179,836.86, when Joe Biden was vice president, Comer revealed in March.
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China, less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Comer Names the 9 Biden Family Members Who Got Business Payments (breitbart.com)
FWIW
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-13
Oversight Committee: Biden Family Business Received over $10 Million from Romania, China for Unknown Work
WENDELL HUSEBØ
10 May 2023
The Biden family business over the course of several years received over $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling, bank documents obtained Wednesday by Breitbart News from the House Oversight Committee show.
In total, Biden family members and business associates designed a web of over 20 companies, many of which were formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency, the committee revealed. In total, the Biden family, business associates, and companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies, the committee found.
The funds appear to contradict President Joe Biden’s claims that his family received no money from China. The funds also raise questions about what the Biden family returned in terms of services or products for the money received.
Romanian Transactions
From November 2015 to May 2017, Bladon Enterprises paid Robinson Walker, LLC over $3 million. Bladon Enterprises is reported to be Gabriel Popoviciu’s Cypriot company that he used to conduct business in Romania. Robinson Walker is the Biden family business partner who collectedly sent the Biden family $1.3 million to the family.
The Biden family accounts received approximately $1.038 million from the Robinson Walker, LLC account after Bladon Enterprises deposits, the committee revealed based upon wire transfers. In total, 16 of the 17 payments from Bladon Enterprises to Robinson Walker, LLC were made while Joe Biden was vice president.
According to the committee, the payments began to flow to Robinson Walker, LLC just after Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House on September 28, 2015.
A readout of the meeting stated that the “Vice President welcomed President Iohannis’ focus on anti-corruption efforts and rule of law as a means to strengthen national security and promote greater investment and economic growth.” Iohannis said Joe Biden “voiced satisfaction over Romania’s progress with the fight against corruption.”
One year prior, on May 21, 2014, then-vice president Joe Biden visited Romania and delivered a speech addressed to the Romanian Prime Minister, judges, prosecutors, and leaders of the parliament. At the time of the speech, Romanian prosecutors were investigating Popoviciu, who was later charged and convicted with bribery-related offenses.
As Breitbart News previously reported, Hunter Biden began working for Popoviciu in the spring of 2015. According to Hunter Biden’s calendar, he met with Joe Biden three times from July 2015 to March 2016 about helping Popoviciu with a “conviction stemming from his purchase of a 550-acre parcel of government-owned land for a steep discount,” the New York Post reported.
Chinese Transactions
Bank records from the committee show that between August 2017 and October 2018, Hudson West III, a company co-managed by Hunter Biden, sent over $4 million to Hunter Biden related companies and over $75,000 to James Biden related companies. Gongwen Dong and Hunter Biden were each 50 percent owners of Hudson West II, bank records obtained by the committee show. According to an email verified by the Washington Post and Hunter Biden, Gongwen Dong served as “Chairman Ye[’s] CEFC emissary” in the United States.
Closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party, CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming also paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye worth an estimated $80,000 in February 2017.
In addition, the committee revealed that Hunter Biden received an additional $100,000 that was sent from Shanghai Huaxin in China. The money was apparently a part of a CEFC deal with Ye and Dong.
According to the committee, on May 11, 2017, Dong formed CEFC Infrastructure in Delaware. Hudson West V, a company that formed a partnership with Hunter Biden, was the sole equity member of CEFC Infrastructure. Dong identified himself as the Director of Hudson West V and listed its address as Xicheng District Beijing, China, banking documents show.
One week later, Hudson West V assigned 100 percent of its interest to Shanghai Huaxin Group Limited (Shanghai Huaxin), a company incorporated in China. On June 30, 2017, Shanghai Huaxin funded the CEFC Infrastructure bank account with an injection of $10 million.
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Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Pomerantz Pleads Fifth in Deposition, Claims GOP’s Trump Indictment Probe Is ‘Political Theater’
ASHLEY OLIVER
12 May 2023
Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, refused to answer any questions relevant to former President Donald Trump’s indictment during much of a deposition before Congress on Friday.
Pomerantz warned in an opening statement he would do as much, according to a copy of the opening statement leaked to CNN and other legacy media outlets.
“It gives me no joy to invoke my legal rights, but I am glad that the law allows me not to cooperate with this performance of political theater,” Pomerantz said, per his statement.
The deposition ran for roughly five hours.
A source with direct knowledge of the matter told Breitbart News that Pomerantz had invoked the Fifth Amendment for “most of his deposition.”
Pomerantz served for years as a special assistant on the Trump case but resigned from Bragg’s office in February 2022 out of frustration that Bragg, who had just taken office, was initially reluctant to pursue the case further.
Outside of Friday’s testimony, Pomerantz has been highly public about his opinions on the DA office’s investigation into Trump.
He wrote a book called People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account in which he expressed his grievances with Trump in vivid detail. He has discussed the case in media appearances. He opined in his resignation letter, which was leaked to the New York Times, that Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations.”
Throughout the drawn-out behind-closed-doors questioning, members of the House Judiciary Committee and Weaponization of the Federal Government Select Subcommittee, the two panels conducting the investigation into Bragg’s indictment of Trump, could be seen coming and going from the deposition room.
Congress’s ability to question Pomerantz came after Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump on charges of falsifying business records, unsuccessfully sued Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to block the chairman from enforcing a subpoena against Pomerantz.
Jordan issued the subpoena in April, contending the former prosecutor could provide “information that is relevant and necessary to inform the Committee’s oversight and potential legislative reforms” related to the historic indictment of a former president.
U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ruled firmly in Jordan’s favor, and although he quickly filed an appeal, Bragg relented days later and withdrew his suit under the agreement that he be allowed to send one lawyer with Pomerantz to accompany him during his deposition.
In response to his tight-lipped testimony, the Republican-led Judiciary Committee quoted from Vyskocil’s decision in a statement on social media.
Pomerantz’s subpoena “was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indespensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,'” the committee wrote.
Jordan spoke with reporters at the conclusion of the afternoon, saying rules restricted him from talking about the substance of the questioning but that he was “surprised at some of the positions [Pomerantz] took.”
The chairman would not say at this stage if holding Pomerantz in contempt of Congress, an option for lawmakers when witnesses do not comply with subpoenas, was on the table.
FWIW
Staff
From: WALTER784
May-14
Under oath, they cannot deny the existence, but they also refuse to hand it over!!!
DOJ Does Not Deny Existence of Record Alleging Criminal Scheme Involving Joe Biden
WENDELL HUSEBØ
11 May 2023
The Justice Department did not deny the existence of a record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden, the House Oversight Committee confirmed to Breitbart News Wednesday.
On May 3, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed the FBI for records alleging the criminal scheme. The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions between now-President Biden and a foreign national. Comer issued the subpoena following legally protected disclosures by a whistleblower to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office.
Wednesday was the deadline for the DOJ to submit the document allegedly in the agency’s possession. But instead of handing over the alleged information, Christopher Dunham, the DOJ’s acting assistant director in the office of congressional affairs, wrote to Comer that such information is “sensitive law enforcement” material and refused to readily provide it, a letter obtained by Breitbart News shows:
FBI Response to Subpoena 2023-05-10 by Breitbart News on Scribd
“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee,” Comer said in a statement. “We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both.”
Comer demanded the FBI comply with the subpoena. “The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable. We plan to follow up with the FBI and expect compliance with the subpoena,” said Comer.
Grassley issued a similar statement, noting that taxpayers bankroll the FBI’s salaries.
“So the question remains, what did the FBI do to investigate very serious allegations from an apparent trusted FBI source implicating then-Vice President Biden?” he questioned.
“Today’s letter from the FBI raises additional questions, including whether the FBI has an open investigation based on these allegations,” Grassley continued. “The American people pay the FBI’s salaries, and they’re entitled to a fulsome response.”
DOJ Does Not Deny Record Alleging Criminal Scheme Involving Joe Biden (breitbart.com)
FWIW
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