By Mike Huckabee
February 5, 2023
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Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read.
And after you read my Sunday Standard, please leave me a comment.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
More insanity at the FBI: "There is no way this is possible"
By Mike Huckabee
This story was originally published on January 24, 2023.
“If they put this in a movie, you’d turn it off immediately, saying, ‘There is no way this is possible; this is just --- this is comedy, not drama…”
That was Mike Pompeo, speaking to Jesse Watters Monday evening about the revelation that Charles McGonigal, the FBI agent alleged to be a Russian asset, was also the one put in charge of the investigation into the DNC “hack.” (We’ll have more on that connection soon.) McGonigal had also been tasked with investigating Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska but had secretly gone to work FOR him to help get sanctions lifted against him. He and court interpreter Sergey Shestakov, a U.S. citizen, were charged in the Southern District of New York; details of the charges here…
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/23/ex-fbi-agent-charged-working-russian-oligarch-oleg-deripaska/
Pompeo said he’d personally suffered for two years under all this, with the FBI’s Russia Hoax. “It’s hard to know where to begin,” he said, “because it is so outlandish…Director Comey has a lot of questions to answer about how he picked this guy, why he picked this guy, and did he not know…”
Once again, not a good look for the FBI. As Jack Posobiec tweeted: “I’m just going to repeat this for the people in the back. An FBI official who investigated Trump for illegal ties to Russia but found none has just been arrested for his illegal ties to Russia. Internalize this.”
Legal analyst Alan Dershowitz has said for a couple of weeks that the Trump and Biden classified documents scandals would cancel each other out and that neither man would be prosecuted. He said that again to Sean Hannity on Monday night. Different issues are at play: for Trump, he was the President and arguably had the authority to declassify any document at will, and for Biden, his possession of the documents would have to be proved intentional, and Biden would just say he didn’t know.
Where did this new standard of “intention” come from? Our understanding was that it was the mere possession of classified materials that was illegal. Then-FBI Director James Comey pulled the same argument --- the difficulty of proving intent --- when saying “no reasonable prosecutor” would take Hillary’s email case. And even if prosecutors DID have to prove intent, Hillary’s mishandling of classified emails and her destruction of evidence looked to us about as intentional as it gets.
(Aside: Dershowitz --- bafflingly --- has always maintained that Hillary, as egregious as her actions were, should not have been criminally prosecuted and said so again yesterday. He seems to be playing the part of her defense attorney and simply will not go there. Hannity pressed him on that, with Dershowitz still saying she claimed those were “personal” emails and she was not destroying anything classified. He also said it wasn’t necessarily deliberate. With all respect, Mr. Dershowitz, this willful blindness where Hillary is concerned is making it harder to rely on you as an expert.)
Anyway, Dershowitz foresees no criminal prosecution of either Trump or Biden for having classified documents. But the larger issue is the massive corruption within the Biden family, Joe included, and what the documents he squirreled away in multiple locations might have to do with that. Dershowitz did call for “complete transparency” regarding the documents, noting that Biden, as the current President, has the power to declassify it all right now.
Gregg Jarrett reiterated that, yes, the President does have the authority to declassify. “It’s an exclusive power contained in the Constitution through the Commander-In-Chief clause. The Vice President doesn’t have that right, or Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.” Unlike Dershowitz, he believes that the evidence against Hillary was “overwhelming” and it was “a terrible injustice” not to bring a case against her. He said that “every prosecutor in America would love to have brought such an easy case.”
He agreed with Dershowitz that “this will be a wash” but disagreed, as we do, that knowledge and intent/willfulness is the only standard. “If you examine Sec. F of 18 USC 793, that also provides for gross negligence or carelessness.” The growing number of locations where Biden’s classified materials are being found “renders ‘inadvertence’ implausible, and instead seems to be the definition of recklessness, gross negligence under the statutes. So I think that legally, it would be a fairly strong case.”
Jarrett sounded much like Jonathan Turley when he called Biden’s “whack-a-mole” rebuttals/excuses/alibis to these ongoing discoveries --- the infamous “Corvette defense” included --- “more and more preposterous.” And for Biden to say he had no regrets was just arrogance, he said. Biden has to know that taking those documents was gravely wrong, plus (and most importantly for his party) it’s interfering with the goal of prosecuting Trump. You know he cares about that.
It should be noted that advisers such as “crisis PR adviser” Anita Dunn, who is married to Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer, no doubt came up with or at least reviewed those responses. During the unfortunate “no regrets” remarks, he was reading off a piece of paper in a notebook, and the effect was just as lame as when Karine Jean-Pierre does that. He appeared to be just looking at the paper without even engaging his brain, which would be par for the course for him.
The narrative that Biden was being “cooperative” likely came straight from Dunn. Andrew C. McCarthy, writing in NATIONAL REVIEW, explains why that’s a crock. “The truth of the matter,” he says, “is that, like most criminal suspects as to whom there is already strong evidence of felony offenses, Biden consented to a search knowing that, if he did not, newly-appointed special counsel Robert Hur would apply for a judicial warrant from a federal judge.” That might lead to a chain of legal disasters. Better to play the “dedicated public servant” who has nothing to hide. He’s just doing what’s in his best legal interests.
So don’t fall for it, he says.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-biden-consented-to-an-fbi-search/
I still can’t get over Biden’s treatment of Carter nominee for CIA director Ted Sorenson during his early days in the Senate. He ambushed Sorenson during his confirmation hearing, savaged him for taking classified documents home and insinuated that he (Sorenson) could be criminally prosecuted for that. We know now that Biden did it himself when he was a senator. This blast from Biden’s past shows his blatant hypocrisy, and also that he had to know what he did was wrong. In case you missed the story…
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-tanked-jimmy-carters-nominee-cia-mishandled-classified-docs
Former deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, in an interview on FOX NEWS, said Hillary went far beyond either Trump or Biden and that Congress should look at the handling of all three cases. “Let’s get the facts and then the Justice Department will have to be sure that they’re treating all the cases fairly,” he said. But I’m not so sure it’s as simple as ‘compare and contrast,’ when this ‘Justice’ Department doesn’t even seem to care about the perception of fairness.
Judicial Watch is still trying to get to Biden’s U.S. Senate papers being held by the University of Delaware. They’ve filed an appeal brief, also on behalf of the DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION, with the Delaware Supreme Court asking for limited discovery to depose a University representative about this issue. A lower court blocked their access to records about the papers.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/biden-senate-papers/
Finally, Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST has a good overview of the classified records scandal up to this point. She speculates that administrative aide Kathy Chung was named publicly so the Biden administration can “throw her under the bus” (we need a new, less clichéd expression for this) to deflect scrutiny from the President. Devine also describes a striking email sent by Hunter to then-partner Devon Archer a week before VP Biden went to Ukraine to meet with the then-prime minister. Hunter refers to “my guy’s upcoming travels.” This email is highly detailed, not at all the sort of thing Hunter usually wrote, and has “the distinct flavor of an official briefing, perhaps even a classified one.”
It also instructs 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.”
There’s no hiding Biden’s fright over classified document scandal
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Great news
By Mike Huckabee
This was originally published on January 30, 2023.
I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to share this…
A federal court jury figuratively told Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden DOJ where they could put their politicized persecution of pro-life activists by finding Mark Houck NOT GUILTY of violating the FACE Act that criminalizes blocking someone from entering an abortion clinic.
The feds were trying to send Houck to federal prison for 11 years for shoving a pro-abortion activist who was harassing his young son. State authorities decided there was no case, but Garland will never miss an opportunity to abuse his powers to try to silence critics of Biden's agenda. Let's hope he doesn't hold that power much longer.
Maybe this will send a message to Garland that the American people are fed up with him ignoring blatant crimes by violent leftist radicals while he spends his time trying to railroad elderly pro-life activists into federal prisons for praying outside abortion clinics to try to save the lives of babies. If he wants to prosecute someone for violating federal law by protesting, how about charging the leftist protesters who are rallying outside the private homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices in clear violation of federal law?
Since the Dobbs case is long over, I assume the only reason for those illegal protests is to try to use intimidation tactics to influence High Court judges' rulings. Isn't that also illegal?
Leave me a comment, I read them.
Hunter's Dirty Deals Greasing Wheels For Joe's Exit?
By Mike Huckabee
This story was originally published on Feb 1, 2023
“God doesn’t choose our President. The FBI does.”
I wish we could take credit for that line, a response to President Biden saying he’d run again “God willing,” but it was from Jesse Watters Tuesday evening. He was making the point that the FBI put Joe Biden in the White House (by hiding his son’s laptop, among other things), and they can take him out. That’s a bold statement that gets no argument from us.
Then Jesse went on to state the obvious: that the ‘memo’ has gone out that it’s time to dump Kamala, at least as running mate for ‘24. That’s right about on schedule. Big clue: the WASHINGTON POST did “the” kick-off story to start building unease, saying, “Some Democrats are worried about Harris’s political prospects.” (Really??)
WAPO cited racism, but they know the problems with Kamala transcend race and gender; “checking the boxes” won’t be enough. She was chosen the first time to check particular boxes that the DNC thought would most help Biden win, and her name on the ticket might have helped with that, but we soon found out she is not a serious person. No need to address all the reasons again; she is simply not acceptable.
Again, this has nothing to do with race or gender. As Jesse said, “Polls show Michelle Obama would be coronated if she ran.” Oprah, too, he said, “could have been President any time she felt like it.”
Oprah’s star might have faded a bit, but recall that we’ve said for a long time --- my writer Laura Ainsworth would take bets if she were a betting woman --- that Michelle Obama is waiting in the wings. Tucker Carlson must have the same crystal ball, or at least notices the same hints in the news, because he addressed that Monday night. Michelle’s got a new book out and a lot of perfectly-timed hype. There’s a surge of “manufactured racism” in the news. Michelle does interviews, Oprah-style, about going through menopause. Democrats have GOT nobody else. And, as we reported, Michelle answered the question of whether Biden should run again with a long, loooong pause, some stuttering, and “I will have to see.”
Right now, Democrats are maneuvering to take out both Joe AND Kamala, with a plot that no doubt was hatched long ago.
But now, to the matter of knocking out Joe in time to send in a new presidential nominee. Attention is starting to be focused on the documents he has stored at the University of Delaware. This is a massive amount of paper. As reported by the Newark Post in 2012 (and thanks to Sean Hannity for reporting this), 33 pallets of boxes, two trucks’ worth, were moved to the basement of the university library. That’s 1,800 cartons, plus 415 gigabytes of electronic records, all still being shielded from view.
As for the classified documents we know about, we’ve finally learned the FBI did search the Penn Biden Center, not just the President’s house. They just didn’t tell the public.
And on Tuesday, the New York Post reported that an email found on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” from Hunter to the aluminum company Alcoa Inc. promising information on Russian oligarchs is “raising fresh concerns about the first son’s access to classified documents.”
In 2011, Hunter, always on the hunt for more $$$$$ to feed his lifestyle, offered on behalf of his company Rosemont Seneca to sell intelligence on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his “elite networks” to Alcoa. In an email to Alcoa VP Daniel Cruise, he said he would charge them “fees of $25,000 for phase one of the project [and] $55,000 for refined analysis.” But note: this isn’t really breaking news; Miranda Devine at the New York Post first reported this in --- believe it or not --- October 2021, before her book LAPTOP FROM HELL had even come out and long before we had the context of Hunter’s access to classified documents at his dad’s home.
Alcoa didn’t think the data analysis “was worth the full $55,000.” But they were interested in “the list of Russian elites connected to OD [Deripaska] that would not otherwise be on Government Affairs team radar, including various Russia Committee Heads, Union leaders or Ministers.”
How else would Hunter have information like this if not through his dad? It sounds like something from the State Department. If it was classified, this was a potential risk to national security, and criminal as well. Even if it wasn’t classified, this was shady information-trafficking and influence-peddling. Reading the story in light of what we now know about Hunter’s business dealings and his likely access to government secrets is stunning. “Some junior staff of the Obama State Department,” Miranda wrote, “were alarmed by Hunter’s connections to Russian oligarchs and role in Burisma.” Seriously, read this.
Here’s how the DAILY MAIL reported it.
They include a quote from Deripaska that takes on new dimension, given what we know today about the Russia Hoax and the role of Twitter and other social media in spreading it. “I cannot help but marvel at the utter stupidity of a part of the American establishment,” the oligarch said, “as they persist in spinning this story about the supposedly colossal role of Russians in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” In other words, HE didn’t buy the Russia Hoax. He thought it was DC’s own fault for alienating Americans so much that they voted for an “operetta character” like Trump. They were ready to vote for anyone but the “bribe-ridden members of the Clinton clan,” he said.
So, he didn’t blame Russian bots for Hillary’s loss. This Deripaska certainly has a way with words. Ironically, though, look at the “bribe-ridden clan” we have in the White House now.
Something else we’ll pass along, because it’s in the news. DAILY MAIL is reporting that, as evidenced by some of his laptop material, Hunter pressured an assistant to occasionally have naked, showering video sex with him, saying he would withhold her pay if she didn’t. There are apparently four assistants (and counting) with whom he had a sexual relationship. I’ll link to the report at DAILY MAIL, though I’ll warn you, it’s pretty lewd. Still, it seems significant if only to show how vulnerable Hunter might have been to “honeypot” spies.
The House Oversight Committee, led by Kentucky Rep. James Comer, is already conducting interviews about the documents, and on Tuesday they were scheduled to hear from representatives from the National Archives. But Comer said Tuesday that the DOJ, right before the meeting, handed them a letter saying that nothing could be said about the Biden documents. They still conducted a 3+ hour transcribed interview with the counsel; not sure what they talked about. Their main take-away, according to Comer: “There IS a double standard at work here.”
Comer is focused on getting the “flagged” Biden bank records. The information he wants is being withheld by the DOJ and White House, not the National Archives. And one last thing: At this point, could Karine Jean-Pierre PLEASE stop insulting everyone’s intelligence by saying the President is being “transparent”?
Related: The indictment of former FBI agent Charles McGonigal is leading to more information regarding Hunter’s dealings in Albania. An unnamed Albanian official listed in the indictment is described as being employed by “a Chinese energy conglomerate and operated as an informal advisor to the Prime Minister of Albania, retaining an official Albanian government email account and passport.” This appears to be a man named Dorian Ducka, former Deputy Minister of Energy and Industry of Albania from 2013-2015. Ducka went on to work for Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC at the same time Hunter was working on his most potentially lucrative business ventures. He continues to work there.
One of Hunter’s emails to business associates Rob Walker and James Gilliar with the subject line “Re: Dorian” discusses “taking care” of Ducka because he was “a real help early on.” “No way we don’t do it,” Hunter writes. “And if the majority says no, I’ll take it out of my salary.”
This is where we see the likely connection through Albania to CEFC and Hunter’s deals there. And this involves some incredibly corrupt individuals. Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner wrote last September about President Biden’s tolerance for corruption in Albania under current prime minister Edi Rama, detailing Rama’s ties to the Albanian mafia and the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. Rama’s former energy minister turned “fixer”: Dorian Ducka. (Thanks to Dan Bongino for the link.)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bidens-strange-tolerance-for-albanias-narcostate
Hunter Biden appears to have been rubbing elbows with some extremely bad people. And today, President Biden’s tolerance for the socialist Rama administration and his lack of initiative to stop drugs at our southern border has observers scratching their heads. Is it really that confusing? More soon.
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