Conservatives are once again successfully demonizing and devaluing a term embraced by liberals, and this time they are doing it with the help of Democrats.
Even in purportedly liberal bastions like San Francisco and Oakland, the word “progressive” is being twisted to denote radical ideas and inept leadership instead of hope and revolutionary change.
Republicans and many moderate Democrats have perpetuated a distorted narrative around progressivism, and any term associated with it. Both groups paint progressives as detached from reality, which diverts attention from their own patchy records on critical issues like public safety and housing.
As the late Fred Siegel wrote in 2014 book The Revolt Against the Masses, “Progressivism” stole a huge base from laissez faire classical liberals and rebranded as “liberalism” in the 1920s, after the brutal, racist Woodrow Wilson had made such a hash of the term during WWI:
For the ardent Progressive Frederick Howe, who had been Wilson’s Commissioner of Immigration, the pre-war promise of the benign state built on reasoned reform had turned to ashes. “I hated,” he wrote, “the new state that had arisen” from the war. “I hated its brutalities, its ignorance, its unpatriotic patriotism that made profit from our sacrifices and used it to suppress criticism of its acts. . . . I wanted to protest against the destruction of my government, my democracy, my America.” As part of his protest, the thoroughly alienated Howe distanced himself from Progressivism. Liberals were those Progressives who had renamed themselves so as to repudiate Wilson. “The word liberalism,” wrote Walter Lippmann in 1919, “was introduced into the jargon of American politics by that group who were Progressives in 1912 and Wilson Democrats from 1916 to 1918.” The new liberalism was a decisive cultural break with Wilson and Progressivism. While the Progressives had been inspired by a faith in democratic reforms as a salve for the wounds of both industrial civilization and power politics, liberals saw the American democratic ethos as a danger to freedom at home and abroad.
After decades of failure during the Great Depression, the Great Society, and the events leading up to the Republican Congressional revolution of 1994, the left began to rebrand as “progressive” rather than “liberal.” By 2015, Hillary Clinton, she of “vast right-wing conspiracies,” Russian collusion fabulism, and most recently, “formal deprogramming of the cult members,” was claiming, “I take a backseat to no one, when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.”
The Chronicle notices another phrase that, as the leftist cliché goes, Republicans have pounced on:
Another phrase that fell victim to right-wing manipulation is “defund the police.” This rallying cry emerged in response to police brutality and the urgent need for police reform. Yet, conservatives skillfully spun it as an attack on law and order, suggesting that those who support reallocating money toward social services are putting the safety of communities at risk. It’s a classic case of conservatives distorting the meaning of a phrase to suit their own fear-mongering agenda.
Which is odd, because during the annus horribilis of 2020, fervent leftists were pretty darn clear that “defund the police” meant just that:
At least until the left that discovered “defund the police” didn’t play very well in many minority neighborhoods that count on law enforcement to keep the peace, to the point where: Democrats Trying to Rewrite History on ‘Defund the Police.’
More from the San Fran Chronicle:
So is reclaiming the terms related to progressivism and rehabilitating their true meaning. This is challenging but not impossible. Progressives should aggressively rebut conservative distortions of their work, and articulate their genuine intentions.
The Republicans, and the moderate Democrats who naively carry their water, want to lead California down a dangerously regressive path. The first step to stopping them is to reclaim the terms progressives once popularized, and remind people of their true meaning.
One of the FedEx pilots commandeered the air traffic control radio frequency. He ordered Southwest to abort its takeoff. It didn’t. The FedEx crew blasted the engines to climb away from the Southwest plane. “On the go,” a FedEx pilot radioed.
The FedEx plane, which had three crew members, skimmed less than 100 feet over the other jet. The 128 people aboard Southwest Flight 708 continued on their way to Cancún, Mexico. Passengers were unaware that they had nearly died.
In a year filled with close calls involving U.S. airlines, this was the one that most unnerved federal aviation officials: A disaster had barely been averted, and multiple layers of the vaunted U.S. air-safety system had failed.
An instructor at Stanford University has been suspended for what the president and provost called “identity-based targeting” of students in connection with the Israel-Gaza war.
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center, said he was told by three students who were in the room that the instructor asked Jewish and Israeli students to identify themselves during a session for a required undergraduate course called “Civil, Liberal and Global Education.”
The teacher told the Jewish students to take their belongings, stand in a corner, and said, “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians,” Greenberg said, citing the student accounts. The instructor then asked, “How many people died in the Holocaust?” When a student answered, “Six million,” the lecturer said, “Colonizers killed more than 6 million. Israel is a colonizer.”
Why are our universities such cesspits of hate and misinformation?
A 19-year-old woman attacked a 24-year-old male Israeli student with a stick outside of Columbia University’s main library amid division on campus regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
The police responded to a report of the assault in Morningside Heights – outside Butler Library – at 6:10 p.m. on Wednesday, cops said.
The attack occurred when the victim confronted the woman after watching her tear down flyers displaying the names and pictures of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas last weekend, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator, which first reported the attack.
The victim, who asked to be referred to as I.A. in an interview with The Spectator for fear of his safety, suffered minor injuries that include a bruised hand and broken ring finger.
I.A. will not be returning to campus for several days, and warned other Jewish and Israeli students about hostilities on campus as protests over the war continue.
“We were all kinds of shocked that this stuff can happen on our own campus, which should be a safe haven,” I.A. said.
Taking cues from his economic advisers, President Joe Biden has announced a proposed 25 percent minimum tax on the wealthy as a centerpiece of his “Bidenomics” plan. This “billionaire tax,” which he outlined in a speech last month, is premised on the notion that the U.S. tax system provides too many breaks to the highest earners. As Biden claimed in his remarks, “billionaires pay an average of — guess what? — less than 8 percent in federal taxes — less than 8 percent on a yearly basis.” To drive home the point, the President declared that this is a “lower federal tax rate than a firefighter, a teacher, a cop” pays.
Biden’s contentions are meant to shock his listeners into believing that the federal tax system is steeply regressive, penalizing the working class at the behest of the rich. His statistics, however, are complete nonsense.
According to Congressional Budget Office statistics for 2019 (the most recent year with data), the heaviest tax burdens still fall squarely on the highest income earners. The Top 1 percent of filers pay an average federal tax rate of 30 percent. This number holds among the ultra-wealthy as well. If we restrict our subset to only the top 0.01 percent of earners, a category that generally applies to people with multi-million dollar annual salaries, the CBO estimates an average federal tax rate of 30.2 percent.
By contrast, the average tax rate on the lowest quintile of filers was just 0.5 percent in 2019 – a result of generous tax credits that are designed to relieve the poor of almost their entire federal tax burden. The second lowest quintile paid an average rate of just 8.9 percent in federal taxes.
Source: Congressional Budget Office
As we can see in the data, President Biden has his story exactly backwards. The average wealthy filer already pays well in excess of Biden’s proposed 25 percent minimum tax, whereas the average working class filer pays only a little higher than the 8 percent rate that Biden falsely attributes to the ultra-wealthy.
Why, then, is the President so statistically confused?
The answer comes from his administration’s continued reliance on manipulated tax stats by economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. In 2019, the New York Times and Washington Post ran splashy headlines declaring that billionaires paid lower tax rates than average Americans, attributing this figure to a new book by Zucman and Saez. A sympathetic press heralded the Zucman-Saez numbers before they ever went through peer review because they appeared to confirm the progressive left’s favored political narrative.
When I placed the Zucman-Saez stats under a microscope, several irregularities emerged. First, they intentionally excluded tax benefits for lower income filers such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, creating an illusion that the poor face a much higher tax rate than they actually do. Second, they manipulated their calculations for assigning corporate tax incidence among the rich, creating the illusion that billionaires only pay a little more than half of the actual rates. As part of the fallout from this discovery, Harvard University reportedly rescinded a job offer to Zucman because his “new” data could not be trusted.
There’s another twist to the story, though. Before Zucman and Saez cultivated the patronage of the media and left-wing politicians, they released an earlier estimate of the total federal, state, and local tax burden of an even smaller slice of the ultra-wealthy. As of 2014, the most recent year of their data, the tax rate for this group stood at 40.6 percent.
Furthermore, as the chart above shows, the total tax burden on the ultra-wealthy has hovered just north or south of about 40 percent since the 1960s, subject to a few fluctuations tied to business cycle events and tax code overhauls.
So, no, Mr. President, the wealthiest filers are not paying a lower tax rate than the rest of us. IRS statistics show that America’s federal tax system remains steeply progressive, and no politically motivated data manipulation will ever alter that fact.
73 teams of social scientists were invited to take part in a study where each team tested the same hypothesis using the same data. What happened? Results varied hugely and absolutely no consensus emerged.
I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE BEEN SO ASHAMED TO BE AN ALUM OF NYU LAW: I knew Hakeem Jeffries (same class) and watched him devolve from a pretty nice guy to a race-hustler (thanks, Derek Bell) but that’s nothing:
Podcasters like Joe Rogan could fall afoul of a new Canadian law. (Photo: Joe Rogan Experience/Spotify)
On Friday, September 29, Canada’s federal broadcast regulatory agency (CRTC) announced a new mandate requiring online streaming services, including podcast platforms, to register with the government by November 28.
The order applies to streamers generating $10 million or more from their Canadian consumer base, which would presumably include Spotify, Rumble, X, and others.
Read in isolation, these new online regulations aren’t explicitly despotic or indicative of censorious overreach. The government is merely creating a “registry” for online streaming services—that’s all. What could possibly go wrong?
After all, the seemingly altruistic and patriotic rationale underpinning Bill C-11—the controversial law passed in April under which these new regulations are now being introduced—is that Canadian content should be preferentially celebrated, consumed, and amplified.
To achieve this goal, the government believes it has to engineer a desired outcome by imposing strict regulations on Canadian creators. Bill C-11 “will help make sure that our cultural sector works for Canadians and supports the next generation of artists and creators,” said federal official Pablo Rodriguez.
But independent Canadian creators are worried their online success will depend on the degree to which their content is deemed “Canadian” by the government. Streaming giants are opposed to the regulation, too. In public hearings on Bill C-11 this July, Spotify listed its own internal efforts to uplift Canadian voices, especially ones that are LGBTQ+ and BIPOC, and stated that “Spotify listeners in Canada discovered over 83 times more Canadian music than Canadian songs played on broadcast radio.”
Does Spotify really need a government clampdown to promote Canadian artists?
Needless to say, black Canadian artists such as The Weeknd and Drake have earned international superstardom without any government intervention. The idea that the next generation of artists needs a federal bureaucracy to boost them is absurd.
And given that Instagram and Facebook have refused to comply with Canadian government mandates, it’s entirely possible that podcast platforms like Spotify will opt out of registering altogether.
The most dramatic shift in Canadians’ lives comes from Bill C-18, which mandates that social media companies compensate Canadian media outlets for distributing their content. Twitter and Facebook warned beforehand they would not be able to comply with a 4 percent link fee for a number of technical and pragmatic reasons. But Justin Trudeau’s government pushed it anyway.
The unsettling result: Canadians can no longer access any news articles, videos, or event accounts of media outlets and newspapers on Instagram or Facebook.
Canadians are also currently unable to access a variety of programs on Instagram from corporate giants such as the CBC and The New York Times to independent media outlets such as Glenn Greenwald’s System Update or this very outlet, The Free Press, which has reported on these censorship bills.
If podcast platforms follow the precedent of social media companies and choose not to be controlled by the dictates of the Canadian government, millions of Canadians could find themselves unable to access Spotify shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy, and Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.
But the CRTC isn’t merely tasked with amplifying Canadian and indigenous artists. It also follows a new Broadcasting Act, which has politically charged and highly ambiguous parameters. Here’s just one portion of the law:
It is hereby declared as the broadcasting policy for Canada that. . . through its programming and the employment opportunities. . . serve the needs and interests of all Canadians—including Canadians from Black or other racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages—and reflect their circumstances and aspirations, including equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society and the special place of Indigenous peoples and languages within that society.
But who decides what the diverse and various “circumstances and aspirations” of “racialized communities” in Canada are?
Will this policy promote the concerns of Muslim Canadians opposed to progressive sexual orientation education in schools? Will it boost Meghan Murphy, the podcaster outspoken about transgender-identifying men entering vulnerable female spaces?
It’s unlikely, given that the CRTC has a disturbing record of prioritizing social justice pieties over free speech.
Last year, the CRTC ordered the CBC/Radio-Canada to apologize publicly and show evidence of internal, corrective reform for violating the “Canadian broadcasting policy objectives and values” after receiving one citizen complaint over a radio show in which a professor quoted a famous book with the n-word in the title.
The CRTC’s contention was not that the word was used with racist intent, but that the broadcast failed to show “sufficient respect and sensitivity to the communities affected by the term.” It went on to claim the CBC had failed to give “social context” or a trigger warning (“a clear audience advisory”) at the beginning of the episode.
Quick refresher: over the past three years, Trudeau’s government has violated Canadians’ mobility rights during Covid without a robust scientific rationale and frozen the bank accounts of people who donated to members of the Trucker’s Convoy, who were protesting vaccine mandates.
Can Canadians really trust the federal government not to infringe upon our society’s foundational principles of free expression, liberty, and democratic rights?
Recent history gives us every reason to think otherwise.
Rav Arora writes at his new Substack The Illusion of Consensus, co-founded with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Ravarora1. Read Rupa Subramanya’s article on why you can’t post Free Press stories on Facebook in Canada.
And to support more of our work, become a Free Press subscriber today:
In New Zealand, Rebekah Barnett reports on concerns of secrecy and double standards as it's revealed that over 11,000 healthcare workers obtained Covid vaccination mandate exemptions from the Ministry of Health.
It’s an in-depth accounting of how one man — Anthony Fauci — may be responsible for not only creating the Covid-19 outbreak but for turning an accident into a global catastrophe. It emphasizes that all the dangerous conditions that unleashed Covid persist, and could easily lead to another, far worse pandemic any time now through incompetence, hubris, or terrorism.
Paul documents that the man sitting on “the biggest pile of infectious disease funding in the world” used that massive influence over “science (TM)” to cover up his involvement with Frankenstein science that appears to have unleashed a laboratory-worsened disease on the world. The devastating consequences have only begun to appear.
This isn’t conjecture. Paul publishes the receipts.
TEXAS RENEWABLE GRID THREATENED BY 13 minutes without sun during an eclipse. “The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is bracing itself for yet another challenge to the state’s power grid this year: The upcoming Oct. 14 annular solar eclipse. Texas is a prime viewing spot for next month’s “ring of fire,“ its path of totality tracing over the cities of Odessa, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. Unfortunately, ERCOT officials recently confirmed that the rare celestial event could have measurable impacts on solar resource power production following a summer of record-breaking demand.”
Plus:
Hell, my electricity has gone out 4 times in September, when there wasn't an eclipse or solar flares, or an apocalypse. It was even a bit cooler than it had been.
Just so we're keeping score: The Biden DOJ is suing SpaceX for not hiring refugees, the DOJ and SEC are investigating Tesla, the EEOC is also suing Tesla, the FTC demanded @elonmusk hand over internal Twitter comms and the SEC is now investigating Elon's purchase of Twitter.
Luxury beliefs can stem from malice, good intentions, or outright naivete.
But the individuals who hold those beliefs, the people who wield the most influence in policy and culture, are often sheltered when their preferences are implemented.
Some online commenters have said that my luxury beliefs thesis is undermined by these tragic events, because the victims were affluent and influential—and they still suffered the consequences of their beliefs.
But the fact remains that poor people are far more likely to be victims of violent crime. For every upper-middle-class person killed, 20 poor people you never hear about are assaulted and murdered. You just never hear about them. They don’t get identified by name in the media. Their stories don’t get told.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poorest Americans are seven times more likely to be victims of robbery, seven times more likely to be victims of aggravated assault, and twenty times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than Americans who earn more than $75,000. One 2004 study found that people in areas where over 20 percent of inhabitants live in poverty are more than 100 times more likely to be murdered than people in areas where less than 10 percent of residents live in poverty.
Expressing a luxury belief is a manifestation of cultural capital, a signal of one’s fortunate economic circumstances.
People don't want to take a job where they'll be pilloried as evil racists no matter what they do. what a shock.
BLUE CITY BLUES:
As if San Francisco wasn't dangerous enough, SFPD is experiencing an "unprecedented" staffing crisis. More than 700 officer jobs are currently empty, representing 32.4% of its intended size.
Another 350 officers are already eligible for full retirement.
As I wrote in 2020, the Left doesn’t actually have to defund the police to achieve their goal of low- or no-policing. It’s enough just to demoralize the police.
On Monday, embattled MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer posted a video to X (formerly known as Twitter) breaking his two-year legally-imposed silence due to allegations of sexual assault. In what turned out to be a just-under four-minute video posted to his verified X account, Bauer relayed his side of the story, complete with screenshots of his accuser’s own words and texts. Words and texts that were written in the aftermath of the #metoo sexual assault hysteria whipped up by the Left.
“‘Next victim. Star pitcher for the Dodgers,’” Bauer began reading a text written by his accuser, Lindsey Hill. The text was sent to her friend before she even met Bauer. Wow, can you say premeditated?
Bauer read on: “What should I steal,” the accuser asked a friend in another text, referencing an upcoming visit to Bauer’s house. “Take his money,” the friend replied.
So how might an enterprising and promiscuous young woman go about stealing money from a wealthy young MLB player? Simple: during a sexual hookup, accuse him of assault, of course. “I’m going to his house Wednesday,” Hill wrote. “I already have my hooks in — you know how I roll.” After that meeting, Hill’s friends continued to egg her on after she found out Bauer’s “net worth is $51 mil.” “Bitch, you better secure the bag,” was the friend’s terse response, meaning she should make sure she gets evidence to use to get money from Bauer.
Hill had a plan. “Need Daddy to choke me out,” she wrote. “Being an absolute whore to try to get in on his $51 million.” Could her plan and motive have been any more clear? Not really.
Now that they have done so, their reasons for obstruction have become a little bit clearer.
Some recent history: On 7 March 2022, the Ministry published a Review of the Continued Operation of Nuclear Power Plants Due to the Ukraine War, which made the case for completing Merkel’s nuclear phase-out and shutting down the plants despite the impending energy crisis. This review concludes with a brief “assessment” of the implications for “energy and climate policy.” If you read carefully, you’ll notice a strange thing: The two paragraphs which follow this heading abound with remarks on energy production, but say basically nothing about climate or emissions.
The documents Habeck’s Ministry have released since the court order reveal why. BILD has seen an earlier draft of this review, and notes that there was a originally a third paragraph at the very end, which Ministry officials deleted before publication.
It was here that they explained the emissions implications of phasing out nuclear power:
With regard to the reduction in CO2 emissions – sometimes used as an argument in this discussion – the approximately 30 TWh of additional nuclear electricity per year from 2024 onwards would result in about 25–30 million tonnes of CO2 reduction in the German electricity supply. Yet there would be no European-wide CO2 savings, as the energy industry is subject to EU emissions trading and the cap in the EU-ETS is set independently of a possible lifetime extension [for nuclear plants] in Germany.
Voting is underway in Virginia’s legislative elections, where early voting started on September 22. To try to win a very close race, progressives are telling Republican voters that the Republican candidate is a Democrat, and the Democratic candidate is a Republican. This is occurring in House District 97, which the Virginia Public Access Project rates […]
Meanwhile, a friend writes: “BTW, why hasn’t Justin Trudeau’s bank account been frozen for consorting with Nazis?
I mean, he is required under Canadian law to freeze his own bank account, am I wrong?”
Only the bank accounts of people who threaten the establishment. Duh.
There have been repeated references to the ten facts that I alluded to in my congressional testimony as establishing an ample basis to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. I have received emails asking about those ten developments so I wanted to post them. They are found in my written testimony, but I did not have time to go through them all in the course of my oral statement before the Committee.
While many have noted that I stated that I do not view the current evidence as sufficient for articles of impeachment, that is hardly surprising. This was the first hearing of the inquiry and was called to address why the threshold for an inquiry had been established. I was also asked to address the constitutional standards and best practices going forward. Indeed, I criticized the last two impeachments for prematurely declaring impeachable conduct without fully developing a record to support such articles. This hearing returned the impeachment process to a type of regular order in reserving judgment until all of the evidence could be acquired by the three committees.
Here are the ten developments that I cited as justifying an impeachment inquiry (a view with which my fellow witness University of North Carolina Professor Michael Gerhardt disagreed):
The record currently contains witness and written evidence that the President (1) has lied about key facts in these foreign dealings, (2) was the focus of a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme, and (3) may have benefitted from this corruption through millions of dollars sent to his family as well as more direct possible benefits. The President may be able to disprove or rebut these points, but they raise legitimate concerns over his role based on the accounts of key figures in the matter. Consider just ten of the disclosures from the prior investigation:
Hunter Biden and his associates were running a classic influence peddling operation using Joe Biden as what Devon Archer called “the Brand.”[1] While this was described as an “illusion of access,” millions were generated for the Bidens from some of the most corrupt figures in the world, including associates who were later accused of or convicted of public corruption.[2]
Some of the Biden clients pushed for changes impacting United States foreign policy and relations, including help in dealing with Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigating corruption.[3]
President Biden has made false claims about his knowledge of these dealings repeatedly in the past, including insisting that he had no knowledge of Hunter’s foreign dealings which Archer has declared “patently false.”[4] The Washington Post and other media outlets have also declared the President’s insistence that his family did not take money from China as false.[5]
The President had been aware for years that Hunter Biden and his uncle James were accused of influence peddling, including an audiotape of the President acknowledging a New York Times investigation as a threat to Hunter.[6]
President Biden was repeatedly called into meetings with these foreign clients and was put on speakerphone.[7] He also met these clients and foreign figures at dinners and meetings.[8]
Emails and other communications show Hunter repeatedly invoking his father to secure payments from foreign sources and, in one such message, he threatens a Chinese figure that his father is sitting next to him to coerce a large transfer of money.[9]
A trusted FBI source recounted a direct claim of a corrupt Ukrainian businessman that he paid a “bribe” to Joe Biden through intermediaries.[10]
Hunter Biden reportedly claimed that he had to give half of his earnings to his father[11] and other emails state that intermingled accounts were used to pay bills for both men, including a possible credit account that Hunter used to allegedly pay prostitutes.[12]
At least two transfers of funds to Hunter Biden in 2019 from a Chinese source listed the President’s home in Delaware where Hunter sometimes lived and conducted business.[13]
Some of the deals negotiated by Hunter involved potential benefits for his father, including office space in Washington.[14] At least nine Biden family members reportedly received money from these foreign transfers, including grandchildren.[15] For Hunter Biden, this included not just significant money transfers but gifts like an expensive diamond and a luxury car.[16]
These are only some of the serious corruption allegations facing the President, but each could raise impeachable conduct if a nexus is established to the President.
——————————————————————————————-
[1] Brain Bennett, Hunter Biden Sold “Illusion of Access” to Father, Former Associate Testifies, Time, July 31, 2023.
[2] Mark Moore, Court Upholds Bribery Conviction of Chinese Exec Patrick Ho Linked to Hunter Biden, N.Y. Post, Dec. 30, 2020,
[3] Steven Nelson, “My Guy”: Hunter Biden Partner Devon Archer Says Joe Biden was on Calls with Foreign Patrons for “the Brand,” N.Y. Post, July 31, 2023.
[4] Steven Nelson, Biden’s Claim he had no Role in Foreign Business Dealings “Categorically False”: Devon Archer, N.Y. Post, Aug. 4, 2023.
[5] Glenn Kessler, Biden said his Son Earned No Money from China. His Son Says Otherwise, Wash. Post, Aug. 1, 2023.
[6]See also Ben Schreckinger, Biden Inc.: Over his Decades in Office, ‘Middle Class Joe’s’ Family Fortunes Have Closely Tracked his Political Career, Politico, Aug. 2, 2019.
[7] John Wagner, Biden was on Speakerphone When Son Hunter was with Business Associates, Former Partner Testifies, Wash. Post, Aug. 1, 2023.
[8] Jessica Chasmar, Joe Biden Met With at Least 14 of Hunter’s Business Associates While Vice President, Fox News, July 28, 2022.
[9] Fatma Khaled, Hunter Biden Allegedly Threatened Chinese Official with his Father’s Power, Newsweek, June 22, 2023. The WhatsApp message stated:
“’I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.'”
[10] Anthony Zurcher, Senator Releases FBI’s Source of Biden Bribes from Ukraine, BBC, July 21, 2023.
[11] Jon Levine, Hunter Biden Frequently Covered Expenses, Texts Reveal, N.Y. Post, Apr. 9, 2022.
[12] Andrew Kerr & Jerry Dunleavy, Joe Biden Unwittingly Helped Finance Trysts with Russia-Linked Prostitutes, Washington Examiner, Sept. 27, 2023.
[13] Annie Grayer, House Oversight Republicans Say New Bank Subpoena Shows Hunter Biden Father’s Wilmington House in Wires from China, CNN, Sept. 27, 2023.
[14] Matt Viser, Tom Hamburger, & Craig Timberg, Hunter Biden’s Multimillion-Dollar Deals with a Chinese Energy Company, Wash. Post, March 20, 2022.
[15] Steven Nelson, Nine Biden Family Members Who Allegedly Got Foreign Money Identified by House GOP, N.Y. Post, May 10, 2023.
[16] Andrew Prokop, How Much Legal Jeopardy is Hunter Biden In?, Vox, Apr. 11, 2023.
There have been repeated references to the ten facts that I alluded to in my congressional testimony as establishing an ample basis to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. I have received emails asking about those ten developments so I wanted to post them. They are found in my written testimony, but I did not have time to go through them all in the course of my oral statement before the Committee.