The Blind Squirrel’s Nut: Chuck Grassley Unwittingly Debunks Bill Barr

Last month, Bill Barr got Federalist Faceplant Margot Cleveland to claim that Jamie Raskin was lying when he said that the lead from an informant claiming that Joe Biden had been bribed was assessed by Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady and then shut down.

It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” William Barr told The Federalist on Tuesday in response to Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin’s claim that the former attorney general and his “handpicked prosecutor” had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe. “On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

Then James Comer relied on that to claim that Raskin was wrong when he said that it was shut down as an assessment.

Bill Barr to Margot Cleveland to James Comer: At each new level, this Matryoshka doll of disinformation gets less and less credible.

So incredible, in fact, that even Chuck Grassley debunked them.

Unwittingly.

Like the proverbial blind squirrel finding a nut.

You see, Chuck is outraged that the IRS agents conducting the investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes were not included in a meeting at which Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the Delaware US Attorney’s office about the informant report. He has written Delaware US Attorney David Weiss a letter demanding an explanation of why.

The answer is clear from the timing of the briefing, which Senator Grassley reveals in his letter: October 23, 2020.

Based on information provided to my office from individuals aware of the meeting, on October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden; however, the meeting did not include any IRS agents. In addition, based on information provided to my office, potentially hundreds of Justice Department and FBI officials have had access to the FD-1023 at issue, which begs the question that I’ve been asking since the start of my oversight in this matter: what steps have the Justice Department and FBI taken to investigate the allegations?

This briefing was nine days after a NYPost story would have made clear that Rudy Giuliani had ties to the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” that the IRS agents had been relying on for investigative materials for the better part of a year.

It was one day after an October 22, 2020 meeting that the IRS agents did attend. As Gary Shapley confessed to the House Ways and Means Committee, the meeting was largely an effort to make sure that the government had used proper legal process before acquiring two devices that — it had only recently became clear — had become and may always have been part of a political hit job.

A Yes. So there are a couple significant parts of this. One was that, at this time, the laptop was a very big story, so we were just making sure that everything was being handled appropriately.

So we wanted to go through the timeline of what happened with the laptop and devices. I thought one of the most important first parts was that on November 6 of 2019, the FBI case agent, Josh Wilson, called up the computer shop owner, John Paul, and basically got the device numbers from him.

If Shapley’s notes are at all reliable, prosecutors at the meeting instead discovered that the FBI broke the most basic rules of forensics when exploiting the laptop purportedly owned by the former Vice President’s dissolute son, and in the process may have destroyed evidence about who was really behind it. I’m still not convinced his notes are reliable, but if they are, then the meeting should have raised all sorts of alarms within DOJ.

As I laid out here, Shapley has instead pitched the meeting as one that served the primary purpose of giving Whistleblower X opportunity to complain that the US Attorney’s office had prevented the IRS agents from being tainted by dodgy materials on the laptop. Whistleblower X did complain, mind you, but those complaints mostly raise questions about the extent to which he had already been accessing materials from the laptop that Rudy Giuliani had been tampering with, thereby tainting the investigation.

Shapley’s propaganda has worked, because that’s what our blind squirrel from Iowa focuses his letter on.

But as Shapley described in his prepared statement, even before that meeting he had written to AUSA Lesley Wolf complaining about how the laptop was being referred to in the news.

On October 19th, 2020, I emailed Assistant United States Attorney Wolf: “We
need to talk about the computer. It appears the FBI is making certain representations
about the device, and the only reason we know what is on the device is because of the
IRS CI affiant search warrant that allowed access to the documents. If Durham also
executed a search warrant on a device, we need to know so that my leadership is
informed. My management has to be looped into whatever the FBI is doing with the
laptop. It is IRS CI’s responsibility to know what is happening. Let me know when I can
be briefed on this issue.”

Shapley appears to have been concerned, in the weeks before the Presidential election, that people believed the laptop was being investigated by the FBI as an information operation targeting Joe Biden, when in his view, it remained the cornerstone of his investigation into Hunter Biden.

But if DOJ was not already investigating both topics by October 23, 2020 — both Hunter Biden’s tax crimes and a potential information operation targeting Joe Biden — if it has not spent years doing so, then the FBI has become even more captured than I already suspected.

Indeed, if the FBI hasn’t already significantly substantiated that Hunter Biden was hacked in early 2019, then I may renounce my citizenship. I know FBI’s cyber agents can be incompetent, but they can’t be that incompetent, can they?

Can they?

Chuck Grassley may not realize it because he is very old and he is staffed by a bunch of partisan cranks. But he’s basically complaining that DOJ might have learned their lesson after the Steele dossier — the lesson that Chuck Grassley spent years demanding they learn! — and decided, upon the revelation that a key piece of evidence they had been relying on for months had ties to a political hit job, they should figure out precisely what tie that key piece of evidence had to the political hit job.

Chuck Grassley may also not realize that the political cranks who staff him got him to sign a letter effectively complaining that the FBI thought it worthwhile to figure out if the information operation Russian spies had been bragging about for over a year at that point had actually succeeded. Chuck is bitching that the FBI decided to protect a presidential candidate.

Chuck Grassley also likely doesn’t realize his staffers got him to sign a letter bitching that David Weiss attempted to maintain the integrity of the tax investigation even while DOJ assessed whether they had been caught in another information operation. That’s why you don’t include the IRS agents in a meeting where Pittsburgh FBI agents explain to Delaware lawyers how sketchy was the information Rudy Giuliani was collecting from known Russian agents in Ukraine. If you include them, you risk blowing the otherwise meritorious tax investigation.

And Chuck Grassley definitely doesn’t realize that he has debunked Bill Barr.

You see, Bill Barr, who is a very adept liar, was sort of telling the truth to Faceplant Margot that the FD-1023 was referred to DE USAO for further investigation. It surely was. But Pittsburgh FBI agents shared it on October 23, 2020, because the US Attorney’s office was frantically trying to figure out whether the entire tax investigation had been blown, or only parts of it. The US Attorney’s office was undoubtedly trying to understand what kind of other garbage Rudy had produced that got shared with the FBI, in addition to any role he had with the “laptop” that had been used in the tax investigation.

Even Gary Shapley admitted that in the wake of the NYPost story, the Delaware US Attorney’s office did some quick CYA to figure out whether they had been using a tainted information operation for the better part of a year (they had!). The October 23 briefing would have had substantially the same purpose as the October 22 one: to figure out how tainted the investigation was.

And Bill Barr instead got even stupider people to believe that that an attempt to triage the damage done by Rudy’s political hit job amounts to an investigation for bribery.

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67 replies
  1. massappeal says:

    Another terrific post, thanks.

    It’s also another brick in the steadily growing wall of evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI still lives and breathes and moves among us. The attitude that the Agency knows better than the people and their representatives (and even its ostensible supervisors at DOJ), has deep roots. As does the Agency’s use of its investigatory powers to gather information that could be used to blackmail prominent government officials (and citizens) from the president on down.

    I’m not saying that FBI agents have been breaking the law in this (and related) cases. I’m just saying *if* they have been, it doesn’t come as a surprise.

    (See, for example: Betsy Medsger’s terrific and highly entertaining 2014 book “The Burglary”. https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2022/05/26/the-burglary-the-discovery-of-j-edgar-hoovers-secret-fbi/ )

    • Harry Eagar says:

      All secret police behave the same way. Harlan Fiske Stone said as much in the ’20s when he was restraining Hoover. They cannot help it. It’s agin human nature.

      • Spencer Dawkins says:

        I agree, and IIUC, secret police reenforce this behavior because no one wants to be an outlier in the secret police.

        The nail that sticks up the most is the one that is pounded down first.

  2. HikaakiH says:

    I love reading your articles where curious jigsaw pieces get clicked together showing us parts of the bigger picture of what’s been going on.
    [Subedit: Last sentence should drop one of the ‘that’s or the ‘an’ :)]

  3. freebird says:

    All this shows that Hunter Biden acted like a sloppy and absent minded used car salesman prone to puffery who kept slapdash business records. The Biden detractors are trying to weave a conspiracy by taking disconnected fragments and shards of data into a grand crime.

    This is like watching that “JFK” movie by Oliver Stone.

    • Rayne says:

      Hunter Biden’s personal data management isn’t much different from many digital consumers’ data management, even with his addictions.

      I say this as a former IT service person who’s had to replace a laptop after its display failed for an executive. (Funny how the display looked like an exact imprint of a jean-clad ass.) Have also had to clean off (in more than one way, while wearing gloves) an executive’s laptop, the browsing history of which was filled with teenage Japanese girls in kawaii fetish attire. ~shudder~

      What sets Hunter Biden apart is that he was a target, not only a digital fish among many caught in a seine net.

      • David F. Snyder says:

        Exactly. Given the stolen/missing phone timeline, there was plenty of time for a black-hat hacker to compromise HB’s Apple/iCloud account.

      • freebird says:

        I hear you. I once had a boss who said never do anything that you cannot defend on a witness stand. Many people ignore that.

        • Savage Librarian says:

          I once had a boss who said never do anything that would show up in the newspaper. That boss eventually was given the choice to retire or get fired. They retired. So the backstory never showed up in the paper or in the courtroom, saving tax dollars and embarrassment. But, they expertly exercised retribution through a cadre of duped and vengeful cohorts.

        • bgThenNow says:

          Yes, I once asked my boss why anyone did not try interventions with certain known officials who were later busted and highly embarrassed in all kinds of news outlets (and also lost jobs and pensions). He said, “It was not our business.” “Well it was not our business until it was everyone’s business,” I said. Really, there was not much realistically that could have prevented it, whether it was our business or not. Very sad, tragic overall.

    • Spencer Dawkins says:

      I was in third grade in November 1963, living in Dallas, when Kennedy was assassinated, so from the Warren Report until Stone’s “JFK”, I had a front row seat to Conspiracy Theory Central.

      The notable thing about Stone’s movie wasn’t that it popularized conspiracy theories, but that it popularized ALL of them. A CIA hit? Check. Billionaire fascist oilmen? Double check. Oswald as a Russian mole? Triple check. Bay of Pigs counter-revolutionaries? Quad check. Castro revenge? Quint check. Arms industry? …the only way to reconcile all the theories was to assume they were ALL at Dealey Plaza in front of the triple underpass, and Kennedy was trampled in the stampede.

  4. BriceFNC says:

    Regarding Grassley, why didn’t the J6SC probe inquire how he reached the conclusion, and announced by tweet that he was going to take over the electoral vote count process on behalf of Pence. In his Jan 5 tweet Grassley made clear he was open to hearing arguments on behalf of alternate slates of electors. My recollection was that Grassley posted his tweet shortly after Pence engaged in a heated Jan5 session with Trump where Pence rejected Eastman’s nonsensical plans. Who at the WH woke drooling dotard Grassley from his morning nap and pulled him into the plot to steal the election for Trump? And who then advised the old codger to take down his message shortly afterward! Grassley has skated on this—I believe this action remains central to understanding fully what transpired leading up to the insurrection!

    • Rayne says:

      You may wish to refresh your memory of the Constitution, specifically Article I, Section 6:

      Section 6: Rights and Disabilities of Members
      The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

      Tell me how you get around that emphasized clause if 80-odd-year-old Grassley may have believed was his duty as a Senator. On second thought, don’t. This will be an issue only when the investigation into the conspiracy produces evidence which meets the probable cause standard.

      • BriceFNC says:

        I am fully aware of the protection provided Grassley under speech and debate clause. Investigation would have needed to focus upon other WShite House sources or Pence’s staff (two key Pence aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob submitted to committee questioning). Also, media might have played a role questioning Grassley directly. Grassley is an ornery and, at times, flippant responder when interviewed. He should have been confronted in some manner and required to give some explanation for his actions! Full context for Grassley’s strange message must be established and understood for our history to be complete on J6!

        • timbozone says:

          Please explain which US Senator would be in charge of having the votes counted if the VP was not willing/able to counting the votes. I’m betting that you will find that it would have been Chuck Grassley… following the rules of the US Senate, the law, and the US Constitution even. Seems like there’s bigger fish to fry that are much more easily classed as illegal, let alone “illegal! illegal! illegal!” which Grassley’s tweet post almost certainly was not.

        • Shadowalker says:

          It’s actually written into the Electoral Count Act, which they jointly agree to use as the rules at the beginning of the session. The only way to get around it would be for both houses agreeing to suspend the rules for the joint session.

        • Rayne says:

          The Electoral Count Act (ECA) still can’t violate the Constitution Article II Section 1 which says,

          …The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. …

          There is nothing in the text which says the role of VP is to change the outcome of the certificates already signed and submitted. Nothing in the ECA can go against that, it’s just performative you-stand-here-touch-this-count-that-nod-when-instructed. The certification actually happens in the states when the electors sign and attest to their state’s election outcome.

        • Shadowalker says:

          (b) Powers of the President of Senate.—
          (1) Ministerial in nature.—
          Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, the role of the President of the Senate while presiding over the joint session shall be limited to performing solely ministerial duties.
          (2) Powers explicitly denied.—
          The President of the Senate shall have no power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes over the proper certificate of ascertainment of appointment of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors.

          They already ratified an amendment to fix holes in what the Constitution requires in cases of disputes. They then enacted the ECA filling those holes and they use it as a blueprint for the rules of that session so that they are not bound to it should a situation arise not foreseen that requires suspension of the rules as happened in the 1961 joint session when Hawaii had three sets of electoral votes. One set was for Nixon that were cast on the safe harbor date and certified, two were for Kennedy with one set having been cast on the safe harbor date but uncertified, and the other set was cast after the safe harbor but was certified. Nixon called for and was granted by both houses a suspension of the rules and that Kennedy votes that were certified be accepted as authentic even though they were cast after the safe harbor date.

          It wouldn’t have mattered if Pence went along with the plan or not, because in order to do so, he would need both houses to agree to suspend the rules.

        • ButteredToast says:

          I think it’s worth noting that it wasn’t a tweet from Grassley or his staff, but rather Roll Call quoting Grassley:

          NEW: Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the Senate president pro tempore, says he and not Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the certification of Electoral College votes, since “we don’t expect him to be there.” (https: // twitter. com/rollcall/status/1346473050078777356)

          Just under thirty minutes later, Roll Call tweeted again:

          Grassley’s office clarifies that he was meaning to explain what would happen if Pence had to step away during Wednesday’s proceedings to count Electoral College votes. “Every indication we have is that the vice president will be there,” Grassley’s office said. (https: // twitter. com/rollcall/status/1346480140100911108)

          An off-the-cuff remark the 87-year-old Grassley made to a reporter doesn’t really in itself indicate he was a part of a conspiracy concocted by Eastman, Trump et al.

      • Molly Pitcher says:

        How many times has the emphasized clause been tested ? To me it references only that speech or debate made IN either house, and wouldn’t cover press interviews or speeches made in other venues.

        I believe Lindsey Graham failed to get protection from the SC regarding testifying in Georgia. Are there a lot of other instances that give Grassley coverage ?

        • Rayne says:

          Graham didn’t get protection because the vote in GA is unrelated to his duties as senator in SC, and the Constitution says conduct of elections is the purview of the states.

          What Grassley was talking about was his role as a senator during Senate functions. Totally different situation, would be extremely difficult to nail him on this. Especially since he not only was talking as a senator about Senate operations but he was also talking out his ancient wrinkled ass.

        • BriceFNC says:

          Not looking to “nail” Grassley…interested in American people being accurately informed about what took place leading up to J6 insurrection. Grassley would have been acting in his position as President pro tem of the Senate if Pence were to be absent.

          My question remains, did Grassley just wake up from his morning nap and put out a text (which he rapidly took down) that he would act in Pence’s role out of the blue…or, was the drooling dotard informed by the White House that Pence might disappear immediately after a meeting with Trump where Pence shared he would not go along with Eastman’s nonsense. The posting, and removal of this message are highly likely to have resulted from some manner of WH communications. Who communicated with Grassley? And, what was communicated to Grassley, are significant parts of the insurrection and should be pursued aggressively!

          [Please use the same username each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You typed in “BriceF” in the Name field instead of “BriceFNC” forcing moderation to clear your comment because it looked like a new user. It has corrected thhis once — please check for typos in the future. /~Rayne]

        • Rayne says:

          Now you are simply loading this thread reiterating speculative opinion. We heard you the first time. You’ve gotten feedback about this dead-end because even if Grassley was prompted, this line won’t go anywhere.

          Move the fuck on.

          ADDER: You’ve typed 379 words on this so far. Your original question began: “why didn’t the J6SC probe inquire” — the solution is to contact your representative and ask them. That’s their job since you don’t want to listen to emptywheel community members.

        • bmaz says:

          So, Grassley did not do anything wrong that you can identify, has speech and debate issues, and you still want to pursue him to answer your questions, that are themselves based on unsupported speculation? Really?

        • farmfresh says:

          To address your first question, it’s regularly tested in criminal investigations or prosecutions of members of congress. Bribes, quid pro quo corruption, Scott Perry’s cell phone records, etc. Also Lawfare did a recent podcast on this clause as it relates to Pence and testimony to the Special Counsel in the Jan 6th investigation. Since we all know originalism and textualism are bogus “doctrines” it might not surprise you to learn that SCOTUS has defined this clause to encompass not just speech made “in either house” but nearly all legislative activity that a member of congress can engage in, and much activity on the periphery.

    • Shadowalker says:

      That would be unconstitutional and could never be carried out. The Constitution gives the states the unfettered right to appoint the Presidential Electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” who then choose the President on the day Congress sets for that election. Congress can’t reject what the Constitution has granted. It also wouldn’t work because in that joint session both houses agree to use the Electoral Count Act as the framework for that session and any deviation requires consent of both houses to suspend the rules, which they definitely didn’t have support of in the House and likely not even the Senate.

      It looks like another case of blowing political smoke.

      • Doctor My Eyes says:

        That would be unconstitutional and could never be carried out.

        The first part of this statement does not necessarily prove the second part. When it was first becoming clear that powerful forces are pressing the US towards authoritarianism, one warning from specialists was “Your institutions will not save you.” I feel this warning has not been sufficiently appreciated. The constitution is a document. Individuals decide whether or not to be bound by it.

      • Bobby Gladd says:

        “The Constitution gives the states the unfettered right to appoint the Presidential Electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” who then choose the President on the day Congress sets for that election.”

        Question: Would it then be unconstitutionally “fettering“ for state legislatures to be prohibited from changing the rules they had “directed“ PRIOR to the current election day? Once the results are in, to their dislike? They get an unfettered discretionary constitutional presidential Mulligan?

        • Doctor My Eyes says:

          In this case, the “fettering” is committed by state constitutions. Hence the ongoing push to free state legislatures from being constrained by courts to submit to their state constitution and their own laws.

        • BriceFNC says:

          Legislatures acted on December 14 authorizing slates of electors. Pence recognized nothing in the Constitution would justify his failure to acknowledge the legally authorized determination of those legislative bodies. Grassley seemed willing to open the door and entertain arguments in support of “fake elector” slates. Who communicated to the Chuckster leading to his January 5 text. Did someone inform him Pence was going on another ski trip?

        • Bobby Gladd says:

          OK.

          Does your first sentence imply that state legislators can, at their plenary discretion, set forth, or modify their elector-determining processes AFTER election day, but prior to December 14? That’s the Mulligan problem. (Why even bother having a presidential popular vote plebiscite?)

          In a Constitution replete with the words “shall“ and “shall not,“ the use of the word “may“ is curious here.

        • Shadowalker says:

          There is a reason why all the states use elections in the Presidential Elector appointment process. In the first election for president New York state’s legislature could not agree on their Presidential Electors and did not cast any votes, they even gave them until the day set for vote count to get them in.

        • bmaz says:

          Well “states” certainly control their own elections, however the conduct here is far more properly a federal election criminal matter, conspiracy, not to mention attempted fraud against the US. And so is the “perfect phone call”. No state election was influenced by this conduct, only the federal Presidential election. If there are to be criminal charges, they ought be federal, not state based.

        • Shadowalker says:

          Without a doubt. The valid Presidential Electors were appointed, voted on the date set by congress and certified by each of the state executives in accordance to the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act. The states role would be complete in this matter.

          I was pointing out the problems legislatures (both state and federal) can have in agreeing on things like who gets to vote for the next President.

        • Shadowalker says:

          Only if they managed to enact such changes before the election. Every state has election laws specifying the procedures for the appointment of Presidential Electors, which would have to be changed, which is highly unlikely they could carryout since it would be before they themselves are reelected. It would be political suicide and most likely backfire. For instance, Pennsylvania changed their election laws in December 2019 and further in February 2020 where they removed signature verification and challenges for mail-in ballots (the thinking was in a close election Trump would need every vote, and since historically Republicans predominantly used mail-in ballots), everything was fine till Trump went around claiming mail-in voting was rigged.

    • boloboffin says:

      I honestly think Grassley was here announcing he would be backup for Pence to count the votes as is, not that he would admit any alternate slates of electors.

      I might be wrong. Grassley gives no indication either way. But when Pence determined to resist temptation, I think Grassley would have backed him up, not undercut him.

  5. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    Chuck Grassley may not realize it because he is very old and he is staffed by a bunch of partisan cranks. But he’s basically complaining that DOJ might have learned their lesson after the Steele dossier — the lesson that Chuck Grassley spent years demanding they learn! — and decided, upon the revelation that a key piece of evidence they had been relying on for months had ties to a political hit job, they should figure out precisely what tie that key piece of evidence had to the political hit job.

    For Chuck Grassley to fail to grasp the implications of his ornery, cantankerous belligerence makes me want to go through the rest of my day blowing chef kisses. Perfection!

    • Littleoldlady71 says:

      I’ll sit at the Dairy Queen and cheer as you parade by, throwing kisses back at ya.

  6. tinatinao says:

    Abuse of power at the FBI has been a concern for a long time. Thinking about how to fix things, my brain starts with, does anyone know what kind of oath they swear?

  7. vigetnovus says:

    So, Marcy, you mentioned in your post about Whistleblower X and Gary Shapley, that based on that quote in Shapley’s opening statement that John Durham may have actually looked into the Hunter Biden laptop. Any guess as to why?

    I ask, because another interesting coincidence among the timing here is that October 19th, 2020, the day of the email from Shapley to Wolf is the precise day Bill Barr appointed John Durham special counsel, unbeknownst to the public. I believe we didn’t find out that fact until 2 months later when Barr resigned.

    Was Durham looking into the laptop because the FBI was concerned it was the dossier 2.0 and that there may have been forensic clues that tied the laptop “hackers” to the DNC hackers (which Durham was supposedly investigating)?

    • Rayne says:

      Great…that clinches what this cryptic NYT article published October 18, 2020 was about:

      Giuliani Mixes His Business With Role as Trump’s Lawyer
      Amid intensifying scrutiny of his own work, the former New York mayor met recently with senior Justice Department officials on behalf of a client in a foreign bribery case.

      WASHINGTON — It is an extraordinary time in Washington, but it is more or less business as usual for Rudolph W. Giuliani.

      He is a central figure in the impeachment inquiry. He is under scrutiny by federal prosecutors. But throughout the building controversy, Mr. Giuliani has continued to represent clients, broker deals and take on consulting contracts in Washington and around the world in ways that leave him subject to criticism that he is using his role as President Trump’s personal lawyer to open doors to the government and influence policy despite the questions about his own conduct.

      A few weeks ago, Mr. Giuliani secured a meeting, along with some other defense lawyers, with the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and attorneys in the fraud section. They were there to discuss a foreign bribery case for a client that Mr. Giuliani described as “very, very sensitive.”

      Mr. Giuliani declined to divulge any details about the meeting, except to say it had nothing to do with legal issues facing him or Mr. Trump. Days after the meeting, it was revealed that Mr. Giuliani was under investigation himself for possible violations of foreign lobbying laws by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

      And look, once again the top name on the byline is Kenneth fucking Vogel, Giuliani’s stenographer. The name Biden never appears in this, have to wonder if the other two journos Schmidt and Benner were the restraints on Vogel.

  8. BobBobCon says:

    This indictment which EW recently retweeted is absoluting freaking wild:

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/co-director-think-tank-indicted-acting-unregistered-foreign-agent-trafficking-arms-violating

    The guy in question, Gal Luft, was the codirector of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, which bills itself as “a cabinet level exta [sic] governmental advisory committee” whatever that is.

    http://www.iags.org/gl.htm

    He’s also been touted in the right wing nutjob media like the NY Post and Daily Caller as having explosive information on supposed Biden family corruption with headlines like “Media silence on key would-be witness Gal Luft’s Biden revelations speaks volumes.”

    His current location is unknown, having fled Cyprus after being free on bail.

    • N.E. Brigand says:

      Who is the “former high-ranking U.S. Government official” who “was an adviser to the then-President-elect” in 2016, who Luft recruited and paid “to publicly support certain policies with respect to China” without registering per FARA?

      Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Johnson called for Luft to be granted immunity in order to testify about Joe and/or Hunter Biden. I assume Johnson is incapable of shame even now that Luft has been charged with “arms trafficking” and “Iranian sanctions violations.”

      (There’s an unfortunate typo in the sub-hed of that DOJ announcement: “Chiense” for “Chinese”.)

      • BobBobCon says:

        My first thought was Bannon, but I wouldn’t be surprised now if it was anyone.

        I’m awfully curious how the DC press deals with this. At first I thought the claims in that bio that Luft was a regularly cited expert by the Washington Post and NY Times was a lot of self promotion based on a few quick quotes.

        But it turns out they really did treat him as a serious, disinterested expert for many years. They need to explain to their readers why they were boosting such a deeply corrupt, compromised person.

        I’m very much not sure they have the strength of character to do so.

        • N.E. Brigand says:

          Ah, so the “former” describing a “high-ranking U.S. government official” may mean former as of 2023 and not former as of the 2016 election? Hadn’t thought of that. Bannon could qualify that way.

      • BobBobCon says:

        That article points out how it’s been known for months that he’s been identified as a deeply problematic part of the GOP case.

        And yet all the while we’ve had supposedly mainstream reporters at NBC, Politico, and a ton of other outlets dancing around the issue this case is rotten to the core.

      • harpie says:

        From that article:

        Despite the allegations, Comer doubled down on Friday [7/7/23], tweeting that Luft is a “very credible witness on Biden family corruption,” who “provided incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the DOJ in a meeting in Brussels in March 2019.” “We have no reason to believe the FBI & DOJ acted on this info,” he continued.

        Some things I’ve learned from Marcy, recently:

        2/15/19 Data on Hunter BIDEN’s MacBook that would end up in Mac Isaac’s shop starts being deleted

        3/17/19 Droidhunter88 is added back to Hunter BIDEN’s iCloud contact again.

        [As early as] 4/13/19 MAC ISAAC begins “accessing what he claims he had in his possession as Mr. Biden’s data” [Abbe LOWELL]

        • Rayne says:

          First quarter 2019 sure was incredibly busy, with Giuliani running around Ukraine trying to gin up a case against Hunter and Joe Biden, Ukraine going into an election, Hunter Biden leaving Burisma’s board, Team Trump trying to ditch then-Ambassador Yovanovitch, and Bill Barr getting sworn in and poking around in Fruman/Parnas, and Public Integrity investigations almost immediately after his oath.

          For starters. LOL

      • harpie says:

        There is also this:
        2/14/19 BARR confirmed as AG [nearly party-line vote] [TRUMP had announced the nomination on 12/7/18]

        Marcy:
        https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/07/05/double-booked-whistleblower-x-described-inappropriate-presidential-interference-back-in-2019/

        Then, we learn, that shortly after Barr was confirmed, and in a period when he was trying to reverse the prosecution of Michael Cohen, sustaining investigations into Greg Craig and Andrew McCabe, perpetuating efforts to seed an investigation into John Kerry, and launching a four year witch hunt based off fabricated claims about Hillary Clinton, the Attorney General consolidated everything in Delaware — the perfect venue if Joe Biden is your target but (as Whistleblower X noted), the wrong place for Joe Biden’s son, who lived in LA or DC during the alleged crimes in question.

        DOCUMENTED SIXTH AMENDMENT CONCERNS
        How all this got started matters, because this early period may be when adverse emails that could make it impossible to prosecute Hunter Biden at trial got put into the record.

      • Rugger_9 says:

        Doesn’t this bombshell put the Swalwell frothiness in its proper context (or trash can)? Combined with the long-term knowledge about PRC spies at M-a-L and the curious case of Ivanka’s fast-tracked trademarks it would seem that the prior administration was full of (beans) about being tough on the PRC.

    • harpie says:

      From the DB article Molly Pitcher links to, according to COMER, Luft briefed FBI/DOJ in Brussels in MARCH 2019, an important time period in Marcy’s recent work. I have a comment in moderation about that. Will repost if necessary.

  9. Kristen_D62 says:

    Some of the glaring incompetence – intentional or not – of the FBI makes me very uneasy, and the dumbing down and deterioration of quality journalism when competence and experience are needed now more than ever underscores my fervent hope that DOJ is reading the analyses here, and succeeds in disseminating it convincingly enough to break through the RW noise to inform the masses. The tyrannical minority means to drown out reason, is deliberately fucking things up, hollowing them out, gaslighting and lying. Once again, thank you so very much for the exhaustive work here.

    • bmaz says:

      Hi, as to the “glaring incompetence” of the FBI, can you be more specific as to your facts and knowledge of how the FBI works?

      • Kristen_D62 says:

        Hi bmaz – the glaring incompetence I mention refers to what is written in the original post. Sadly, I don’t have facts and knowledge of how the FBI works other than what I have read about. Coming here has helped me learn. I will admit I found my own fears get worse just by reading Marcy’s exasperation at their incompetence, pondering renouncing her citizenship. I’ve come to trust this site and if emptywheel.net thinks the FBI behaves incompetently and then writes about the hows and whys, I tend to heartily agree.

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