119th Congress or Red Wave In Adult Land

[Tapate50]

Wow

[thethe]

Santos is the guy that needs to be expelled though.

Republicans are worth less than ****.

[57Brave]

It is apparent the House GOP in incapable of nailing a landing.
From Speaker drama to incapable leadership, lack of any platform or policy guidance
to loose cannons to
just general buffoonery

so,



This is getting interesting.

A solution in search of a problem as an old boss once put it
.................................................. .....................................

By
Arthur Delaney
Feb 22, 2024, 04:06 PM EST


WASHINGTON — The Justice Department told Republicans last year that it would be a mistake to publicize raw paperwork reflecting an informant’s tip to the FBI.

Republicans had found out a confidential human source told his FBI handler in 2020 about a Ukrainian oligarch saying he bribed Joe Biden. They demanded the Justice Department hand over the so-called FD-1023 form documenting the tip.


In response to a subpoena, the Justice Department said such documents should never be made public, warning it could endanger their sources and that the forms generally contain unverified and incomplete information told to an FBI agent.

“Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI,” Christopher Dunham, from the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, said in a May letter to House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.).

“The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it,” Dunham said. “Indeed, the FBI regularly receives information from sources with significant potential biases, motivations, and knowledge, including drug traffickers, members of organized crime, or even terrorists.”

Republicans did not heed the warning.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) obtained the form from an unknown source and posted it on his Senate website. The document described the informant’s account of conversation with Mykola Zlochevsky, head of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and other Burisma officials. In one conversation, Zlochevsky said he’d paid both Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million in bribes.



The unverified bribery allegation soon became a core part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against the president. The supposed bribe fit a narrative that Joe Biden, when he was vice president in 2015, demanded Ukraine fire its prosecutor general in order to protect Burisma from a criminal investigation. The president’s son, Hunter Biden, held a position on Burisma’s board at the time.

As Republicans put it in a document outlining the basis for their impeachment inquiry last fall, the form alleged “that President Biden directly participated in a bribery scheme involving Burisma.”

Then, last week, the bribe claim collapsed in spectacular fashion when the Justice Department announced charges against the informant, revealing him to be a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen named Alexander Smirnov and accusing him of inventing the allegation because he didn’t like Joe Biden.

“We were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony. We were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), an impeachment skeptic, told CNN on Wednesday. “And yet, my colleagues went out and talked to the public about how this was credible and how it was damning and how it proved President Biden’s — at the time, Vice President Biden’s — complicity in receiving bribes.”

Democrats have called on Republicans to call off their impeachment inquiry.

“They were willing to use anything they could get their hands on to make incredibly bold accusations that now results with them having egg on their face because they knew this was uncorroborated,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Thursday. “They knew it was unverified and they knew there was a lot of evidence to the contrary and yet they ran with this.”

Comer has said the FBI tip wasn’t the lynchpin of the impeachment inquiry, which has also examined whether Joe Biden participated in his son’s business deals.

As a senator, Grassley has not been a formal part of the impeachment push, even though he was the one who obtained the FBI document. He and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) conducted their own investigation into the Bidens and Burisma in 2020, finding it wasn’t clear whether Hunter Biden’s job had affected U.S. foreign policy.

Grassley maintained last year that he was less interested in the truth of the bribery allegation than whether the FBI had conducted a thorough investigation. He first asked the FBI to hand over documents about the Bidens and Zlochevsky in October 2022.

“Since October 2022, Senator Grassley has had a single aim: to ensure the DOJ and FBI investigated the FD-1023,” a Grassley spokesperson said. “DOJ’s indictment makes clear that, without Senator Grassley’s oversight and exposure of the FD-1023, the agency would have continued neglecting its duties and failing to provide the transparency the American people deserve.”

Comer also complained last year that it appeared the FBI had not investigated the allegation.

“They didn’t investigate a single darn thing with respect to the Biden bribery allegation,” Comer told HuffPost in June. “They never opened an investigation until I subpoenaed it.”


A former U.S. attorney who oversaw the intake of derogatory material from Ukraine told lawmakers during an October interview the bribery allegation had “indicia of credibility” and was passed along to David Weiss, the federal prosecutor overseeing a long-running investigation of Hunter Biden. Weiss only pursued the tip after Republicans made the document public, prosecutors said in the Smirnov indictment, and investigators poked holes in Smirnov’s story late last year partly by crosschecking it with travel records.

But one part of Smirnov’s report seemingly drew skepticism from Republicans right away: his claim that Zlochevsky had recordings of conversations with Joe and Hunter Biden. Several Republicans told conservative media they didn’t know if such recordings existed.

“We don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know the foreign national claims he has them,” Comer told Newsmax in June. “This is the problem — the FBI never investigated this.”

One reason for skepticism that there are secret tapes of Zlochevsky talking to Joe Biden could be that, according to Hunter Biden and others who’ve spoken to him, Zlochevsky doesn’t speak English.

[Tapate50]

That either

[Jaw]

I agree with 57 that the House GOP has behaved like a pack of buffoons lately. They're still one eyed men in the land of the blind, but they deserve their share of criticism.

[sturg33]

I agree with 57 that the House GOP has behaved like a pack of buffoons lately. They're still one eyed men in the land of the blind, but they deserve their share of criticism.

Failure theater

[acesfull86]

Amash announces Senate run in Michigan. Hopefully him or Meijer gets it.

[nsacpi]

Amash announces Senate run in Michigan. Hopefully him or Meijer gets it.

Would be great. But both have a yes on impeachment vote on their resume. To their credit in my book. But I don't think that's how the GOP primariy voters swing these days.

[thethe]

Would be great. But both have a yes on impeachment vote on their resume. To their credit in my book. But I don't think that's how the GOP primariy voters swing these days.

Having a yes by your name for a bull**** witch hunt impeachment is a pretty bad look.

It is what it is.

[thethe]

First impeachment was just the democrats trying to hide the Biden crimes.

Imagine having a 'yes' vote next to your name for that one?

Disqualifying.

[Tapate50]

First impeachment was just the democrats trying to hide the Biden crimes.

Imagine having a 'yes' vote next to your name for that one?

Disqualifying.

Is this real ?

Poor look for the big guy

[thethe]

Is this real ?

Poor look for the big guy

its the NYP so I guess its reasonable.

Again - Anyone that voted 'Yes' to impeachment 1 (Same for BS Impeachment 2) should never hold any position of significance. It was obvious what was happening from day 1. Poor wittle Amash let his feelings get in the way of sound judgement.

[cajunrevenge]

First impeachment was just the democrats trying to hide the Biden crimes.

Imagine having a 'yes' vote next to your name for that one?

Disqualifying.

Hunter through out a hypothetical idea that there is no evidence Joe ever consented to and you think thats evidence of a crime by Joe?

[acesfull86]

[cajunrevenge]

I can get behind that,

[Carp]

Amash and Tulsi were 2 of favorites back in 2020 and have remained so.

[acesfull86]

[sturg33]

Genuinely cannot remember the last time a president vetoed a spending bill

[acesfull86]

https://reason.com/2024/03/06/the-bu...n-of-earmarks/

Voters in California went to the polls this week for a primary election that's the first step towards picking a permanent replacement for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died nearly six months ago.

In Washington, meanwhile, Feinstein is still wielding influence from beyond the grave. Her name is attached to 256 different earmarks included in the budget bill working its way through Congress this week. Those pork projects will cost taxpayers about $1.1 billion if the bill passes in its current form, the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday.

And that only scratches the surface. The partial budget deal—which contains six of the 12 appropriations bills that make up the discretionary portion of the annual federal budget—is overflowing with earmarks to fund lawmakers' pet projects. All told, there are more than 6,000 earmarks in the bill, costing taxpayers more than $12.7 billion, according to Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), who has urged Republicans to vote against the package.

Many of the earmarks in the package seem like things that would be better funded by local or state taxpayers, who at least might stand to benefit from projects like new sewer systems, new runways and other upgrades for tiny rural airports, and a plethora of highway projects. Some are truly head-scratching, like Sen. Tammy Baldwin's (D–Wis.) $1.4 million earmark for a solar energy project in Wisconsin, one of the places in America least well suited for a solar farm.

Plenty of others make no sense for the public to be funding at all. Like a $3.5 million earmark secured by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D–Mich.) for The Parade Company, which runs Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Or the $2.5 million earmark that will help build a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire, courtesy of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D–N.H.), as well as $2.7 million line item to help build a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people.

For that amount of money, "you could buy EVERY resident a $1,200+ bike" Sen. Rick Scott (R–Fla.), who has become a vocal critic of the earmarks in the bill, posted on X (formerly Twitter). "There's no way they need this much of YOUR money for this."

The same could be said for several Republican-based earmarks too. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has inserted at least eight earmarks into the bill, forcing federal taxpayers to put up more than $33 million for things most will never use, like a new trail at Coastal Carolina University and an ROTC facility at the University of South Carolina. Among the dozens of earmarks inserted by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska), perhaps the strangest is the $4 million grant for the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project."

Wait, you might be thinking, didn't Congress ban the use of earmarks when tea party-era Republicans controlled the government? Yep, they did. But like fiscal responsibility and concern about America's ballooning entitlement costs, those efforts to limit pork barrel spending are now distant memories. Democrats voted to reinstate earmarks in 2021, and Republicans soon followed suit.

[Tapate50]

Gross