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In Evidence

In yesterday’s Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler explained, per the headline: “How Republicans overhype the findings of their Hunter Biden probe.”

He has a point. For example, the official House committee staff carefully stated that they had “identified over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.” But Committee Chairman Comer turned that into: “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”

The whole $20M+ didn’t go to the Biden Crime Family. Kessler’s analysis puts that number at merely $7.5 million. 

I guess this is why gang members sometimes turn on each other.

But Kessler — like so many other mainstream media mouthpieces — gets something very, very wrong.

“No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself,” the fact-checker asserts before delving into the specifics of his checked facts. Near the close, Kessler reiterates: “No money has been traced to Joe Biden.”

That’s just not true.

In a text that was discovered on the infamous Hunter laptop (now verified even by big media behemoths), Hunter Biden tells his daughter that his father (now President Biden for those following closely at home) makes Hunter kick back roughly 50 percent of his income.

A statement made in confidence to a loved one is commonly referred to as evidence. Strong evidence.

There are additional communications and invoices showing Hunter paid bills for “the Big Guy,” including home repairs and improvements costing thousands of dollars.

No matter how hard “fact checkers” ignore the evidence, it is still there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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A Very Special Prosecutor

You don’t send a salamander to put out a fire or a leech to drain a swamp. Similarly, you don’t appoint David Weiss as a special counsel to “investigate” the Hunter Biden case. 

Not if you want justice.

Weiss, who has been on the case since 2017, was responsible for the cushy plea deal that fell apart last month, in court. It was a novel, first-of-its-kind offering of immunity to all future prosecutions for unspecified charges. When pressed in court, the prosecutors had to admit it was “unprecedented.”

And the judge had to throw it out.

Now, with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing Weiss as special counsel, the questions mount:

  • Why Weiss — considering his track record?
  • What additional powers does he have — considering the AG’s past assurances that Weiss had everything he needed?
  • And why now?

To answer that last query, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) admitted on ABC’s This Week — amidst many accusations against former President Donald Trump — that Hunter Biden “did a lot of really unlawful and wrong things” and that Mr. Weiss, “with the collapse of the plea agreement that he had apparently worked out with Hunter Biden,” now “wants to be certain that he’s got the authority to go bring charges wherever he wants.”

Which only further begs the question. Weiss says he didn’t ask for it. And if he in fact lacked what was needed, why didn’t Garland give it before?

What’s really going on?

“The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight,” explains House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), “as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption.”

And as Jonathan Turley, the renowned George Washington University law professor, adds, “The initial impact is to insulate Weiss from calls for testimony before Congress.”

Republicans are looking this Democrat gift horse in the mouth. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Child Corpses Pile Up

Two podcast conversations recently went viral, capturing the attention of millions. 

The first was on Triggonometry, where New Atheist luminary Sam Harris let his Trump Derangement Syndrome swing free, sans rational hinges. The second was on The Joe Rogan Experience, where Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg fielded a question regarding the same story — Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Mr. Harris called the Internet’s suppression of the Hunter laptop news “an eleventh-hour” way to rid America of a completely selfish, utterly unpredictable president — Donald Trump. “At that point,” Harris elaborated, talking about the run-up to the 2020 elections, “Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement: I would not have cared.”

The linkage between Hunter’s racket and Joe Biden himself did not seem to concern him, either.

The suppression of the laptop story by Twitter was also echoed on Facebook. The week after Harris’s unhinged rant, Joe Rogan queried Mark Zuckerberg, who calmly explained that the FBI warned Facebook against “Russian disinformation” and how his social media company then algorithmically suppressed the story without ever actually censoring the story as such.

While Zuckerberg absolved the FBI of specifying “Hunter Biden” as the keywords, and the FBI denies any ability to direct a company to suppress any “disinformation,” that’s hardly pertinent: apparently it’s easy for Leviathan Government to get Behemoth internet companies to play along.

This is an important issue upon which to stake future reputations. Comedian Bill Maher sided with principle and (yes) liberalism against leftoid-insiderish conspiracy on his show, while talking to Rob “Meathead” Reiner. The former All in the Family star professed ignorance of any of the pertinent facts.

Which is precisely what social media’s censorship and algorithmic suppression aimed to accomplish. But for more voters than just Meathead.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Major Media’s Cricket Chorus

“How is this not a subject of bigger concern in the country?” Emily Jashinsky asked last week on The Hill’s morning TV program, Rising.

Hunter Biden’s “addiction and dysfunction are the public’s problems, too,” explained Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist, “given that Hunter was wrapped up in an influence-peddling operation in which he traded on his father’s name to carry out lucrative business deals.”*

“That makes the sad work of reading his personal correspondence crucial,” she added, “given that his father is, you know, the president of the United States.”

Jashinsky pointed to items gleaned from Hunter’s bountiful laptop, which reinforce a narrative — first advanced during last fall’s presidential campaign and corroborated by a former business partner, but then and now ignored by most media — that Hunter not only profited off his father’s position, but also provided kickbacks to “Pop.” 

In a text Hunter sent his daughter, complaining that he doesn’t “receive any respect,” he elaborated: “I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

Now the New York Post’s Miranda Devine informs, “[W]hat we do know is that, while Joe was vice president, Hunter routinely paid at least some of his father’s household expenses” . . . which the headline dubbed “daddy pay care.”

“In a healthy country, our free press would be highlighting the Biden family as the very picture of elite corruption,” offered Jashinsky. “They would be pushing relentlessly for answers to the questions these emails continue raising.”**

“Instead, it’s mostly crickets,” in what she sadly called “this era of media corruption.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* “The Justice Department is investigating the finances of President-elect Joe Biden’s son [Hunter], including scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings and other transactions,” the Associated Press reported last December. 

** In May, The Guardian disclosed: “Former FBI director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for Joe Biden’s grandchildren and met with the then-Vice President in 2016 ‘to explore with him some future work options,’ emails reveal.”

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Twitter’s Election Interference

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube . . . they sucked us in by pretending to be non-biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.

The current case regards the water-damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story. 

Now it’s blowing up everywhere.

It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*

No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.

Shivers down my spine.

But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.

Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?

But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”

While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other. 

Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.

Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* A state-connected Chinese bank and a well-connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.

 ** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.

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Nepotism Today

The Democrats’ impeachment of Donald Trump has made us all familiar with Joe Biden’s son, Hunter — for his Burisma boardroom gig, anyway. Raking in millions despite lack of knowledge of the country or the business of the Ukrainian corporation in question certainly has the appearance of corruption.

But don’t forget Chelsea Clinton, also recently in the news.

“Chelsea Clinton reaps $9 million from corporate board position,” read the headline at The Hill, referring to her position on the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp (ticker: IACI). That’s a bit of spin, since the Barron’s article it’s based on has a more informational headline: “Chelsea Clinton’s IAC Stock Is Now Worth $9 Million,” which clearly shows that it is not her $50,000 per annum retainer that’s making her rich. 

It’s her annual booty of $250,000 in restricted IAC stock units that’s the source of her boon. 

And the fact that IAC stock has increased “89%, 50%, and 36% in 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively.” 

Since the company is going gangbusters, her position doesn’t look worthless.

But why would she be valuable?

There’s no more evidence for her ‘business genius’ than for Hunter’s.*

It’s connections that matter, especially those that make up the systemic corporatism of our Big Business/Big Government reality.

And that family angle? Well, economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that class is based on family success, coordinated and accumulated generation by generation. But since the advantages that the children of Democratic pols bring to corporations actually depend on government policy, this makes modern technocracy look less democratic and more old-fashioned oligarch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Chelsea Clinton holds a Doctor of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Oxford. And, by the way, she also doesn’t “care” about money.

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