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Woodward Book: Joe Biden’s “Dementia” Tracked His Stress about Hunter Biden

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Axios’ Chief Dick Pic Correspondent, Alex Thompson, did something funny yesterday.

He got very aroused because Bob Woodward’s book describes that donors began expressing concerns about Joe Biden’s mental fitness after a fundraiser in June 2023.

Biden, who was 80, had flown in from Washington earlier that day. A donor acknowledged he had probably woken up very early but appeared tired. “He could not wait to sit down and only took two pre-arranged questions.” He carried a handful of note cards with the answers printed out, but even then seemed to wander off point.

But by later in the day — the following passage, not marked by Thompson, described — donors witnessed the opposite. Biden was energetic. He wouldn’t sit down for two hours.

Thompson did, however, mark a description of events eight days later in June where donors said he couldn’t complete a sentence.

Thompson treated this like a smoking gun. This was proof that Biden’s team was hiding his dementia!!!

But coming as it did from Axios’ Chief Dick Pic Correspondent, it was instead a confession.

That’s because any good Dick Pic Correspondent like Thompson would have started his perusal of Woodward’s book by consulting the parts about Hunter Biden; everyone in DC knows you start reading a Woodward book with the index! And right in the middle of a discussion about Biden’s decision to step down in July, there’s a discussion about Hunter.

Blinken knew Hunter’s struggles had derailed Biden emotionally much, much more than any outsider or the public realized. Another of Blinken’s friends called this “the real war,” the battle that affected Biden more than Ukraine, more than Israel. The guilt was overwhelming. If he were not president, “my beautiful boy,” “my little boy” would not be under the crushing scrutiny of all the investigations, he’d say. Biden was heartbroken.

In June 2023, Biden was showing what people viewed as signs of impairment, but also wild swings from hour to hour, on June 19. In June 2024, Biden had a disastrous debate performance, seemingly confirming real dementia.

And yet, as Tony Blinken described it, what was really going on, what the public didn’t realize, is that Biden was wracked with guilt in knowing that even as Hunter was trying to stay sober, Biden’s political adversaries — abetted by Chief Dick Pic Correspondents like Alex Thompson — had made private citizen and recovering addict Hunter Biden their singular focus, their means to find scandal with Joe Biden (before they moved onto marking just the passages of a book that described him struggling at fundraisers).

The connection between Biden’s worst moments and Hunter’s plight should have been clear to someone like Thompson.

It was to me.

The day after the disastrous debate, I laid out how much stress Biden had been under, pointing specifically to the toll of the deliberately humiliating trial earlier that month and the pending, even more humiliating one.

  • His kid was convicted in a trial that not only laid bare what a cost Joe’s political career has been on his family, but that would, without question, never have happened if his son were not the son of President Joe Biden

And the passage that Thompson treats like a smoking gun shows that on the day prosecutors first floated that there was an ongoing investigation (and, as became clear in retrospect, the first day the new prosecutors who would renege on the plea deal got added to the case), Biden was a mess. But later in the day, when the plea deal had seemingly been finalized, Biden was great.

Here is Chris Clark’s declaration, which describes how, on June 19, Hunter’s team thought they had reassurances that the entire ordeal would soon be over.

35. On June 19, 2023, at 2:53 PM EST, after I had a phone call with AUSA Hanson indicating I would do so, I emailed AUSA Hanson a proposed press statement to accompany the public release of both Informations that read, in part, “I can confirm that the five-year long, extensive federal investigation into my client, Hunter Biden, has been concluded through agreements with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware.” (Emphases added.) A true and correct copy of Chris Clark’s June 19, 2023, email to AUSA Hanson is attached hereto as Exhibit P.

36. Shortly after that email, I had another phone call with AUSA Hanson, during which AUSA Hanson requested that the language of Mr. Biden’s press statement be slightly revised. She proposed saying that the investigation would be “resolved” rather than “concluded.” I then asked her directly whether there was any other open or pending investigation of Mr. Biden overseen by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, and she responded there was not another open or pending investigation. Thereafter, at 4:18 PM EST that day, I sent AUSA Hanson a revised statement that read: “With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.” (Emphases added.) The new statement revised the language from “concluded” to “resolved,” a stylistic change that meant the same thing. A true and correct copy of Chris Clark’s June 19, 2023, email to AUSA Hanson is attached hereto as Exhibit Q. [Clark’s italics, my bold]

Days later, when disgruntled IRS agents and Chief Dick Pic Correspondents like Thompson began to claw away at the plea again, Biden was once again a wreck.

It’s absolutely true that Woodward’s book describes events a year ago when donors viewed Biden to be a wreck. It’s also true that Woodward provides the alternate explanation that Chief Dick Pic Correspondents should immediately recognize — but won’t, because they’re trying to drum up scandal somewhere else now. One of the things making Biden a wreck was the guilt of knowing his son had become enemy number one as a way to harm him personally.

I’m not saying Biden is not old. I’m not denying that Biden had difficulties advocating for his policies. Harris has done a far better job at doing so.

I am saying that the pack of rabid Dick Pic Sniffers who had spent the first two weeks of June wallowing in just how humiliating prosecutors had made that trial, for the entire Biden family, somehow forgot about what they themselves had described as an immense strain on the entire family a few weeks later when Biden bolloxed that debate. And now Chief Dick Pic Correspondent Alex Thompson can’t even recognize the significance of that date, June 19, 2023, when Biden was having wild emotional swings.

When Vice President Harris answered Hallie Jackson’s question that similarly tried to drum up a smoking gun about Kamala covering up Biden’s purported decline, Harris suggested that Jackson might ask Biden if there was another reason, beyond simple mental impairment, why he dropped out of the race.

Deciding to end the public targeting of his son could well be one reasons.

Ten Days after David Slater Told His Honeypot American Officials Were Traveling to Kyiv, Lloyd Austin and Tony Blinken Arrived

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I’ve been puzzling over how the government discovered that retired Lieutenant Colonel David Franklin Slater was leaking classified information to a honeypot he met on an online dating site.

But it seems likely that it arose from a counter-reaction to information he leaked about a trip of two officials to Ukraine.

On April 13, 2022, according to the indictment, Slater shared information about Russian capabilities in Ukraine.

[O]n or about April 13, 2022, DAVID FRANKLIN SLATER transmitted classified NDI regarding Russian military capabilities relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

[snip]

On or about April 13, 2022, in the District of Nebraska and elsewhere, the defendant, DAVID FRANKLIN SLATER, having authorized possession of, access to, and control over information relating to the national defense, willfully communicated, delivered, and transmitted that information to a person not entitled to receive it with reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation: to wit, DAVID FRANKLIN SLATER transmitted SECRET information regarding ·Russia’s war against Ukraine to Co-Conspirator 1.

The next day, his honeypot thanked him for advance notice of two officials who were traveling to Kyiv.

On or about April 14, “My sweet Dave, thanks for the valuable information, it’s great that two officials from the USA are going to Kyiv.”

Ten days later, Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin arrived in Kyiv.

At a hearing on Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Michael Nelson granted the government’s request to treat this as a complex case (possibly because it’ll require CIPA). With the government’s consent, Slater was given pretrial release.

Several Missing Details about the Classified Documents at Penn Biden

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As CBS first broke the story yesterday, on November 2, some Biden associates discovered around ten classified documents (including some classified TS/SCI) in files from his former offices at Penn Biden. The documents were returned the next day, NARA made a referral to the FBI, and Merrick Garland asked one of two remaining Trump US Attorney appointees to investigate the matter.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden’s vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney’s inquiry.

[snip]

Garland assigned U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to find out how the classified material ended up at the Penn Biden Center. The review is considered a preliminary step, and the attorney general will determine whether further investigation is necessary, including potentially appointing a special counsel.

Lausch was nominated to be U.S. attorney by former President Donald Trump, and he is one of only two current Trump-era U.S. attorneys still serving. The other is Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who is leading an investigation into the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

Lausch recently briefed the attorney general and will eventually submit a final report to Garland. The review is expected to conclude soon.

The report has generated a lot of insanely bad reporting, including this article from the NYT — with four reporters bylined and two more contributing — that doesn’t even mention a key detail from a recent Alan Feuer scoop (which I wrote about here): that Beryl Howell might yet hold Trump or his lawyers in contempt for failing to return all the classified documents in his possession.

Peter Baker and his colleagues didn’t mention that recent NYT scoop, but it did see fit to quote the former President without fact check. Nor did they note that Biden is not complaining that this is under investigation, whereas Trump has never shut up about it. Indeed, a key part of Trump’s defense has been that NARA had no authority to refer the matter for investigation. So Trump’s embrace of this investigation eliminates a claim he has been relying on in his own defense.

Another amusing difference is that for the entirety of the Trump Administration, Biden continued to have clearance; Biden decided not to continue intelligence briefings for Trump shortly after he launched a coup attempt.

Some outlets, including the NYT, have managed to explain that unlike Trump, the Biden office did not refuse to give documents back — though many, like the NYT, have insane comments about why Biden and DOJ didn’t disclose an ongoing investigation when (among other things) that would violate DOJ policy.

The White House statement said that it “is cooperating” with the department but did not explain why Mr. Biden’s team waited more than two months to announce the discovery of the documents, which came a week before the midterm congressional elections when the news would have been an explosive last-minute development.

[snip]

Still, whatever the legal questions, as a matter of political reality, the discovery will make the perception of the Justice Department potentially charging Mr. Trump over his handling of the documents more challenging. As a special counsel, Mr. Smith is handling that investigation, along with one into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, under Mr. Garland’s supervision.

[snip]

“The circumstances of Biden’s possession of classified documents appear different than Trump’s, but Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel to investigate,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Merrick Garland waited too long to let us know he had opened this investigation,” he added. “To keep the confidence of the country, you need to be transparent and timely.”

But there’s something else missing from the coverage so far: it’s not even clear that the documents had been in Biden’s possession, as opposed to another of his former staffers at the Obama White House. As CBS noted, Tony Blinken was the Managing Director at the start, followed by Steve Richetti.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for example, was the center’s managing director in 2018. Steve Richetti, who now serves as a top White House aide to Mr. Biden, was managing director of the center in 2019.

While Blinken had already returned to the private sector by 2017, Richetti was Biden’s Chief of Staff when they left.

One thing Chicago US Attorney John Lausch has been investigating is how the documents ended up at Penn Biden.

Lau[s]ch’s review will examine, in part, how the documents got from Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential office to the Penn Biden Center.

In other words, it might not even be a Biden thing. It could be one of his staffers — and it could be a more serious issue if someone was found to have intentionally taken documents with them when they left the White House, or was using them in the interim. It could be Richetti who did it, for example (which would be one reason among many not to reveal the investigation publicly before discovering how the documents got where they were).

There will be insane reporting ahead — there already has been.

And virtually none of it will report that Trump is still suspected of hoarding classified documents.

Update: Here’s what Jim Trusty argued on August 30, before Judge Aileen Cannon, about how NARA should not be able to criminally refer the discovery of classified documents in the possession of someone covered by the Presidential Records Act because it is not judicially enforceable.

The existing EO on classification (which dates to 2009) treats the VP as an original classification authority, just like the President.

Update: CNN describes that the contents were mixed in with Biden’s personal items.

Among the classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president discovered in a private office last fall are US intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A total of 10 documents with classification markings were found last year in Biden’s private academic office and they were dated between 2013 and 2016, according to the source.

The boxes with these classified records also contained personal Biden family documents, including materials about Beau Biden’s funeral arrangements, the source told CNN.

Update: I meant to show CNN’s correction earlier, but they’ve backed off the claim that the files were stored intermingled with personal items.

The vast majority of the items in the office contained personal Biden family documents, including materials about Beau Biden’s funeral arrangements and condolence letters, the source told CNN. It is not clear if the boxes with classified documents contained personal materials.

Journalists Getting Suckered by Ass-Covering Sources on Afghanistan

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Rather than explaining why the government didn’t know that Ashraf Ghani was going to flee the country, allegedly with bags of cash, national security sources are busy suckering journalists to report that they warned of the quick demise of the Afghan military.

A positively egregious example is this piece from WSJ’s Vivian Salama. What it reports is that 23 people in the State Department concerned about the rapid collapse of the Afghan government warned that the collapse would happen after August 31 — that is, still eleven days in the future from today. It also reports that the Biden Administration was already hastening efforts to get allies out of Afghanistan the day after those 23 people warned Tony Blinken (meaning, State was already aware of and working on the urgency).

The cable was sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed. Mr. Blinken received the cable and reviewed it shortly after receipt, according to the person familiar with the exchange, who added that contingency planning was already under way when it was received, and that Mr. Blinken welcomed their feedback.

[snip]

The signatories of the dissent channel cable urged the State Department to begin registering and collecting personal data in advance for all Afghans who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas, aimed at those who worked as translators or interpreters; locally employed embassy staff; and for those eligible for other U.S. refugee programs while there was still six weeks left before the withdrawal deadline.

It also urged the administration to begin evacuation flights no later than Aug. 1, the people said.

On July 14, a day after the cable was sent, the White House announced Operation Allies Refuge to support the relocation of interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their immediate families who supported the U.S. government for the special immigrant visas. Evacuations didn’t kick into high gear until last week and have been complicated by the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Sunday.

Several other actions that have since been taken by the administration were consistent with some of the requests and recommendations in the cable, the person familiar with the cable exchange said. [my emphasis]

In other words, the story should be about how top Biden officials were already ahead of where the 23 people who signed this dissent cable were, and where they weren’t, they integrated the recommendations of the cable.

The story should be about how the process worked. The story should be about how, even these 23 people who were really alarmed about the fragile state of the Afghan government were still too optimistic about how long it could survive.

The story probably should also be about how, after Biden made comments on July 8 (which the article quotes) that were far too rosy about the state of the Afghan government, someone got him to stop.

That’s not what the story is about though. The paragraph describing how contingency planning was already underway is the seventh paragraph in the story; the paragraphs describing how the White House had already prepared an attempt to accelerate SIV evacuations appear at paragraphs 16 to 19.

In paragraph two, meanwhile, the story uses the word “imminent” to suggest days when it really means weeks.

The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

And the headline doesn’t note that the cable’s warning was, like all other warnings, too optimistic about the state of the Afghan government.

Internal State Department Cable Warned of Kabul Collapse

I get that such stories — suggesting that Biden ignored warnings and so owns this collapse — will drive a lot of traffic. Biden does own this collapse, along with Trump, Obama, and (especially) George Bush. But he owns it because of stupid decisions made 18 months and 18 years ago, not the efforts he made in July to mitigate the aftermath of those earlier decisions.

A far more urgent, and honest, story is the explanation for why, thus far, zero anonymous sources have claimed to have an explanation why no one knew that Ghani was going to flee. Another urgent story is to understand what forces helped the Taliban succeed so wildly, and how such efforts were able to so thoroughly evade our intelligence collection. Another interesting story is why Afghan veteran Christopher Miller, who was promoted way outside of his expertise level and was surrounded by flunkies fiercely loyal to the President, is making shit up about what was the real plan he was hired to implement.

Every story claiming prescience published thus far has in fact revealed that the people claiming prescience didn’t know this would happen either. It’s time to stop pretending they did and starting figuring out why they didn’t.

The Most Counterproductive Letter in Defense of Julian Assange

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How seriously do you think the Joe Biden Administration is going to take a letter that,

  • Implicitly treats helping Edward Snowden flee Hong Kong to Russia (one of the overt acts Julian Assange is currently charged with) as a journalistic activity
  • Was written by an organization on the board of which Edward Snowden serves, without any disclosure of the relationship (or that another Freedom of the Press Foundation board member, Laura Poitras, decided in real time that such activities weren’t journalism, thereby eliminating the New York Times problem the letter claims still exists)
  • Treats the Julian Assange extradition request as a Trump Administration decision at a time when Biden is trying to emphasize that DOJ represents the country, not one president
  • Ties the Assange prosecution to Trump’s other politicization of DOJ when the evidence shows the opposite happened, that Trump abused power to attempt to protect Assange (in her ruling, Judge Baraitser also noted that Trump in no way treated WikiLeaks like he treated journalistic outlets)
  • Relies on dated 2013 reporting about the sum total of WikiLeaks’ actions targeting the US, ignoring much of the public record since, not to mention the grave damage incurred by a release — Vault 7 — that had almost no news value, which was allegedly leaked while Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin (who will probably field this letter) was in charge of DOJ’s National Security Division
  • Exhibits zero familiarity with the 54-page report — citing testimony from Biden Administration members Avril Haines, Lisa Monaco, Susan Rice, Tony Blinken, Samantha Power, Denis McDonough, and John Kerry — that concluded one reason the Obama Administration didn’t respond in more timely fashion to Russia’s attack on the 2016 election was because of a delayed understanding of how WikiLeaks had been “coopted” by Russia:

Despite Moscow’s history of leaking politically damaging information, and the increasingly significant publication of illicitly obtained information by coopted third parties, such as WikiLeaks, which historically had published information harmful to the United States, previous use of weaponized information alone was not sufficient for the administration to take immediate action on the DNC breach. The administration was not fully engaged until some key intelligence insights were provided by the IC, which shifted how the administration viewed the issue.

[snip]

The executive branch struggled to develop a complete understanding of WikiLeaks. Some officials viewed WikiLeaks as a legitimate news outlet, while others viewed WikiLeaks as a hostile organization acting intentionally and deliberately to undermine U.S. or allies’ interests.

The letter claims to want to protect a “robust” press. But this letter fails to meet journalistic standards of transparency or accuracy.

Nevertheless, the following organizations signed onto such a (in my opinion) counterproductive letter:

  • Access Now
  • American Civil Liberties Union
  • Amnesty International – USA
  • Center for Constitutional Rights
  • Committee to Protect Journalists
  • Defending Rights and Dissent
  • Demand Progress
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • Fight for the Future
  • First Amendment Coalition Free Press
  • Freedom of the Press Foundation
  • Human Rights Watch
  • Index on Censorship
  • Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
  • National Coalition Against Censorship
  • Open The Government
  • Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
  • PEN America
  • Project on Government Oversight
  • Reporters Without Borders
  • Roots Action
  • The Press Freedom Defense Fund of First Look Institute
  • Whistleblower & Source ProtectionProgram (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts

I have a great deal of respect for these organizations, have worked for several of them, and have received funding in the past from Freedom of the Press Foundation. I agree with the sentiment of the letter that some of the current charges against Assange pose a risk to journalism. I believe these organizations could have written an effective letter to Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson (or, more effectively and with better targeting, to Carlin).

Instead, they signed onto a letter that violates several of the principles of journalism they claim to want to defend.