One of the first things that Republicans are likely to do after they take control of the House of Representatives on January 3rd is to launch investigations into Joe Biden’s son Hunter and whether he used his father’s name and influence in some shady dealings. There is a laptop involved that purportedly has evidence of this. It is being portrayed as either a storm in a teacup or a big deal. These hearings are going to be a rerun of the notorious Benghazi hearings from 2014 to 2016.
If there is a prima facie case that Joe and Hunter Biden behaved illegally or even unethically, then of course it should be investigated. It seems very plausible that Hunter Biden used his connections to advance his own fortunes. Hunter Biden was appointed to a lucrative position on the board of directors of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma while his father was vice-president, even though he has little or no experience in that industry.
But people taking advantage of their relationship to politically powerful people is a long-standing practice in Washington, not to mention some congresspeople themselves taking advantage of the inside knowledge they have about pending legislation and actions to enrich themselves. A majority of members of Congress are millionaires. While some of them were wealthy before they entered Congress or are married to wealthy people, others became so, or increased their wealth substantially, after they were elected. After leaving Congress, many become lobbyists, making even more money.
One notable campaign promise that Trump made in his 2016 run was to ‘drain the swamp’ of such corrupt practices and suggested various ethics reforms. That resonated strongly with voters, many of whom suspect that corruption is rife. But in typical Trump style, after he got elected, that promise was ignored. In fact, he, his family, and his businesses were shameless about using his office to enrich themselves. In his speech announcing his intention to run again in 2024, he again resurrected his promise to attack entrenched interests and massive corruption in Washington.
Congress is a cess pool of influence peddling and if the Hunter Biden investigation is part of a general cleaning up of these odious practices, then it is to be welcomed. But I doubt that Republicans have anything so sweeping in mind, since they have so many skeletons in their closets, the most glaring examples being the Trump family’s behavior during the Trump presidency. They will likely use these hearings as a noise generating platform to undermine Joe Biden while avoiding taking any general concrete measures.
hahahahahahahahahaha, whew, people thought TRUMP was going to go after people using their family’s influence to get jobs? After he got his worthless daughter and her husband jobs? And security clearances even though the security experts all vetoed it?!?! hahahahahahaha
People using their family connections to find jobs is something that happens on every level of society.
And if this is the worst thing they can come up with, the R’s got nothin’.
@K:
Not to mention that Trump’s only rich because:
A) his father (Fred Trump) made a huge amount of money extending his father’s (Frederik Trump) real estate business,
B) Fred Trump did so in many cases by breaking the law and explicitly ensuring that black people wouldn’t even be shown openings in his more upscale sales areas.
C) Fred Trump gave most of that money to Donald as ‘business loans’ with no actual expectation of repayment, because making it a loan meant it wouldn’t be taxed like a payment or an estate transfer, and when the loans didn’t get repaid he could claim the losses on his own taxes. So cheating the tax system is a family tradition.
People have been saying for years that Donald Trump would probably have more money now if he’d just put the money from his father into safe mutual funds than he does as a result of all of his failed investments. The man is only where he is because he had all that money from his father to start with and he threw so much of it around that people thought he must actually be good at something to have ‘made’ that much.
People using family connections to get jobs happens at every level of society, true. And the Trump family has a long and particularly egregious history of it.
I can’t see why that would be a problem; if there’s something there, it was worth investigating, if there isn’t, nothing will come up and it will be a worthless endeavour.
@3: Whether or not they find anything worth talking about, the whole enterprise will be a deliberate diversion and a total waste of time, and the whole country will be worse off for it. So yes, it would be a “problem.”
How do you know it will be a total waste of time, Raging Bee?
For one thing, if it is shown that the investigation is without merit, then that can only be detrimental to its instigators.
Here’s an interesting analysis (from a neutral source with a good track record):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfIsxnb5-kc
(Timestamping doesn’t work in preview, so just start around the 7 minute mark)
Let them waste time on biden. Who cares? It will keep them (at least somewhat) from fucking other things up. Let them waste their time on nothing, in the last eight years or so thats about all they have accomplished anyway.
@ 5 John Morales
Dude, you just literally set the time parameter to whatever you want in seconds. This is cued to precisely 7 minutes:
Trump’s re-election campaign and the Special Counsel investigation | Planet America | ABC News -- YouTube
I know perfectly well how it’s supposed to work, Silentbob.
It’s just an added parameter in the form of
?t=xxmxxs.Still.
I just clicked on your link, worked exactly the same as mine.
My failed one, that is. Result was the video at its beginning.
(Mind you, I do run NoScript etc, so that’s maybe why.
Anyway.
I do trust readers to get it — the relevant bit begins about 7 minutes in)
Ahem. As I was saying, you just set the time parameter in seconds (and tell the stupid wordpress embed feature to fuck off X-D).
@3, the problem is that instead of prosecuting Trump and family for all the many, many laws they’ve broken and the crimes Trump has freely admitted to, we’re going round-and-round-and-round on a great big nothing. Classic narc distraction.
When one of my kids was in high school, they got a job at a local store that was just being built because their best friend’s father was the manager and was looking to hire. I got my first tech job out of college because I was tutoring the kid of one of the hiring managers at a company. People often get jobs based on people they know, which is one reason all the job-finding places encourage people to get out and meet other people.
@John Morales,
I’m fine with having an investigation into Hunter Biden’s activities. If there is a problem, even if what Hunter did wasn’t illegal, maybe some corrective action can be taken. An investigation should only take 2-3 months to reveal is there is any fire to the republicans reports of smoke. Or, more appropriately, if there is any smoke.
However, we’ve seen this show before (Benghazi!). The republicans will not be satisfied with ONE investigation. Regardless of the results of an investigation, the republicans will stop other business, the job they were elected to perform, in order to declaim how Biden is responsible for his son’s actions, and therefore Biden is a bad president. They will take repeated votes to censure and impeach Biden based on the actions of another adult person, regardless of whether that person did anything illegal.
At the same time republicans will ignore, and probably try to halt, the investigations into Trump’s criminal wrong-doing. Regardless of the insurrection aspect, there is no question that holding on to government documents (classified or not) was a violation of US law. Which the US would probably have overlooked if Trump had apologized and immediately returned the papers.
If republican congress-critters were really concerned with unethical or illegal activities, they would have initiated a vote of censure of Trump and the RNC would have refused to accept Trump as a candidate for their 2024 presidential nomination. Instead of admitting that their dear leader has been caught in blatant violation of the law again and again, they seem to think that investigating Hunter Biden will be payback for the times the democrats impeached Trump.
Sure, investigate Hunter Biden. If there is something there, refer it to the DOJ and drop it. If there isn’t anything there, drop it. But we know the republican congress will not do that.
Well, the R’s are on to another outrage: Joe Biden’s granddaughter got married. WHO? you ask, and rightly because this person hasn’t made a spectacle of herself like Trump’s kids did. Rather than having Joe Biden go to an outside location and all the hoopla that would draw attention away from the bride, they held the wedding privately.
One great quote that puts this into perspective:
The White House press corps may be extremely peeved that some other media outlet cut in on their own personal celebrity gossip beat, but unless Naomi Biden has gotten $2 billion in investment funding from the Saudi royal family or is tossing out classified national security secrets with the bouquet, the rest of us don’t have to give a damn. (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/22/2137873/-White-House-press-corps-grouses-about-Biden-lies-after-being-scooped-on-family-wedding-pictures#comment_85029776)
“These hearings are going to be a rerun of the notorious Benghazi hearings.”
.
Let’s hope not, but did they ever figure out where president Obama was when our facilities were being overrun and our personnel killed?
@13
Yes.
“Despite persistent accusations against President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, ten investigations—six by Republican-controlled Congressional Committees—did not find that they or any other high-ranking Obama administration officials had acted improperly.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
“Yes.”
.
So, where was he?
@15
The White House.
Silentbob @9, thanks. That works.
txpiper:
Let me help you.
<clickety-click>
H. Rept. 114-848 -- FINAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE 2012 TERRORIST ATTACK IN BENGHAZI
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/114th-congress/house-report/848/1
Poor txpiper and his mysterious inability to access even a single search engine! At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with. Otherwise you’d think someone with the curiosity to look into these Benghazi and other political questions, paired with the ability to look into them, would have done so.
“After his meeting with the President, which lasted less
than 30 minutes, Secretary Panetta had no further contact with
the President that night.\109\ None. It is hard to accept that
the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense had no
further contact during the entire unfolding crisis. Possibly
just as startling is that Secretary Panetta and Secretary
Clinton did not speak at all\110\ and Secretary Clinton did not
speak to the President until approximately 10:30 p.m., over six
hours after the terrorist attack began and approximately five
hours after a U.S. ambassador went missing.\111\ Secretary
Clinton spoke to CIA Director David Petraeus at approximately
5:38 p.m. but not again that night.\112\ The meeting (denoted
“M”) and calls (denoted “C”), or lack thereof, between the
four principals--President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Secretary
Panetta, and Director Petraeus--looked like this:\113\….
We cannot help but contrast the picture painted by the
above with the all hands on deck depicted in the now-famous
photo of the President, Secretary Clinton, Defense Secretary
Gates, Director of National Intelligence Clapper, and other
officials huddled in the Situation Room during the Osama bin
Laden raid. Benghazi should have merited the same level of
attention and urgency.
Until now, the public has been told that the military could
not have reached Benghazi in time to help--either with jet
planes, armed drones, or personnel. Had we seen aircraft in the
air flying toward Benghazi--flying toward the sound of gunfire
as the military often says--only to be recalled mid-flight
after hearing that the Americans had left Benghazi safely, we
may have been willing to accept that explanation. But the
fighter planes and armed drones never left the ground. And, as
the chart below shows, the transport planes carrying the FAST,
CIF, and hostage rescue team did not leave until hours after
the attack was over……
We are now convinced, contrary to the administration’s
public claim that the military did not have time to get to
Benghazi, that the administration never launched men or
machines to help directly in the fight. That is very different
from what we have been told to date. And the evidence is
compelling.
For example, FAST platoons, as of September 2012, were
typically used to reinforce embassy security and operated from
a fixed location within an embassy. FAST platoons did not
deploy with their own vehicles, so they were dependent on other
means for ground mobility. In other words, the FAST team was
not sent to help in the fight at the CIA Annex. The question
then became what was sent. And the answer appears to be
nothing. None of the three assets that Secretary Panetta
ordered to deploy were intended to join the fight against
terrorists at the Annex….”
Those quotes are weird. I thought you were concerned with where Obama was at the time?