Republicans have rolled out a shiny timeline in support of their impeachment stunt.
It is riddled with unsubstantiated and at times, false claims. As one example, it states as fact that a $40,000 loan repayment James Biden made in 2017 — when Joe Biden was a private citizen — was money laundered from China.
It juxtaposes a misleading (but potentially caveated) answer at the October, 22 2020 debate from Biden with Tony Bobulinski’s interview with the FBI the next day, but doesn’t mention that Trump hosted Bobulinski at that debate and then, according to Cassidy Hutchinson’s book, Mark Meadows handed him something at a covert meeting weeks later.
It doesn’t, however, mention Tony Bobulinski in its report about a meeting between Hunter and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming on February 16, 2017 (the date of the meeting may not even be correct).
In the testimony Bobulinski gave to the FBI between attending the debate with Trump and having a covert meeting with Mark Meadows, he claimed to have attended that February 2017 meeting and seen Hunter receive a diamond.
BOBULINSKI first met in person with members of the BIDEN family at a 2017 meeting in Miami, Florida. BOBULINSKI, GILLIAR, WALKER, HUNTER BIDEN, and YE all attended the meeting. Also in attendance was Director JIAN ZANG (“ZANG”), a CEFC Director involved in forming new businesses and capitalizing them at the request of CEFC. At the meeting, BOBULINSKI witnessed a large diamond gemstone given as a gift to HUNTER BIDEN by YE.
Perhaps the silence about Bobulinski arises from the fact that Hunter Biden has claimed Bobulinski not only wasn’t at the meeting, but didn’t yet know of James Gilliar’s business ties to him. Rob Walker, who was at the meeting testified, twice, that he didn’t see a diamond pass hands at the meeting.
Walker has read about RHB receiving a diamond from people with CEFC, but he never saw the diamond.
And James Biden testified that an associate of Ye gave Hunter a diamond at his office (not the meeting) — but it ended up being worthless.
James B did recall RHB receiving a diamond from the Chinese but that they found out it was not valuable. RHB said that he received the diamond from an associate of the Chairman at his office [redacted] James B stated that the Chinese always gave something as a welcome gift. RHB was originally told that the diamond was worth $10,000, but James B took it to a friend of his and found out that it was worthless. James B is only aware of one diamond and was not aware of a larger diamond.
All this changes Biden’s statement at the debate significantly; Trump was working off a Bobulinski claim that isn’t backed by the available records.
And then weeks later (again, according to Hutchinson’s book), Trump’s Chief of Staff handed Bobulinski something that might be an envelope.
Much of the timeline focuses on Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky’s years-long effort to kill legal investigations into his corruption.
Unsurprisingly, the Republican timeline makes no mention of the investigation that — per Chuck Grassley — DOJ opened into the owner of Burisma in January 2016.
Likewise, James Comer forgot to mention that — again, per Chuck Grassley — Donald Trump’s DOJ shut down that investigation into Zlochevksy in December 2019, even while justifying his Perfect Phone Call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a claim to be concerned about corruption at Burisma.
Comer’s timeline definitely doesn’t mention that (per Chuck Grassley) Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down an investigation into Zlochevsky when it discusses that Zlochevsky was offering bribes to shut down investigations.
Maybe in addition to impeaching Trump for whatever he handed Bobulinski to make claims about big diamonds he couldn’t see, James Comer should open an impeachment investigation into why Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down that Zlochevsky investigation — and whether there’s a tie between the closure of the investigation and Zlochevksy’s new claims about Biden?
Wow. James Comer’s case for impeaching Donald Trump just keeps getting stronger and stronger!
Admittedly, Comer does take a break from substantiating an impeachment case against Trump by providing scandalous details about Biden … inviting his son to a party.
A party!! Joe Biden invited his son to a Christmas party!?!?!
This is truly scandalous stuff, particularly when contrasted to Bill Barr’s noble efforts to shut down an investigation into Zlochevsky at the same time that Trump was claiming publicly to support an investigation into Zlochevksy and Zlochevksy was, apparently, offering billions to those who shut down such investigations.
A Christmas party!
How dare a good Catholic like Joe Biden invite his own family member — his son!! — to a party at his residence? Surely the 18 Republicans from districts Biden won will be happy to explain their vote to impeach because they’ve decided to declare War on Christmas?
This impeachment gets better every day.
There’s one more utterly ridiculous detail I’m rather obsessed about. In addition to proposing to impeach Joe Biden because he invited his kid to a party, James Comer thinks it’s scandalous that Vadym Pozharskyi sent Hunter notice that his father was traveling to Ukraine.
Wow. Scandal. Pozharskyi knew and shared details about when Biden was traveling to Ukraine.
But I’m interested for a different reason. You see, this claim is almost certainly sourced to the copy of the “laptop” that House Republicans won’t explain — at least not on the record — how they obtained. In addition to the email from 2016 that was resent on September 1, 2020 when the hard drive was in Rudy Giuliani’s possession, this email is one with which I’m obsessed.
Here’s how it appears at BidenLaptopEmails dot com.
The President of the US-Ukraine Business Council got the alert from the White House, he sent it to Burisma, and Pozharskyi sent it — at least by all appearances — to just Devon Archer and Hunter.
As I circled, whoever’s email box this appeared in recognized Pozharskyi’s email not as “Burisma,” but instead as “Burials.” The email also had an identity for Hunter associated; most other emails that he received don’t identify himself.
There’s just one other email in the public set like this — an important one.
It was a thread sent over one week — from November 11 ET through 18, 2015. On it, Pozharskyi, Eric Schwerin, Archer, and Hunter discuss bringing in Blue Star Strategies — they’re the ones who tried to fix Zlochevsky’s legal troubles, with some initial but ultimately short-lived success.
This effort, outsourced as it was, was undoubtedly one of the sleaziest things Hunter was involved in. But the GOP didn’t include this email in their timeline (probably because it makes clear that Hunter did a pretty good job of firewalling off the legal influence peddling).
Anyway, from this email, it appears that it is Schwerin’s email account that, for a few days only, recognized Burisma as “Burials.” Only, he’s not listed as being on the other one.
I really have only suspicions about what explains this anomaly. I care about it, for two reasons. First, because the anomaly, especially on one of about ten or so that really get into Burisma’s efforts to suck Hunter and Archer into this corruption, does raise questions about the provenance of the set of emails loaded up on a laptop attributed to Hunter Biden.
Also because, according to a spreadsheet Joseph Ziegler was generous enough to share with the world, this is among the not quite 10% of emails that the IRS used in its own influence peddling investigation that they sourced to the laptop when it should have been included in returns from warrants obtained from Google on both Hunter and Schwerin’s Rosemont Seneca emails.
There’s a lot in Comer’s timeline that makes a great case for impeachment — of Donald Trump.
There’s a lot in his timeline that shows he continues to rely on fraudsters to make his case.
There’s a lot that tries to criminalize … Christmas!
And then there’s this, an email probably obtained from the famous “laptop,” one that raises some real questions about what got packaged up on a laptop attributed to Hunter Biden.