TWGB: Impeaching Trump By Accident?

 

We are not at a serious point in this Biden impeachment inquiry--that much is sure. In the spirit of Jim Jordan, who has unseriously referenced random unrelated things like the 1/6 pipe bomb, the bag of coke in the White House, and the leaked Dobbs opinion, to do what other than pretend the Biden Administration is awash in scandal, I don't know, let me get my inappropriate rhetoric on:

You know how we have all these options in the "dairy" section of the supermarket these days? Vegan and lactose-free vegetable-and-nut based milk substitutes showing up on our shelves to give options to people who either can't or prefer not to drink animal milk? Anyway, I see these varieties and am pretty happy that people have choices to fulfil their own unique dietary requirements and tastes. Almond and oat milk both taste pretty good to me. But I see some people complain: How can you milk a soybean? How can you milk a cashew? 

Well, I don't know about that. What I do know is that in this impeachment inquiry, the House Republicans don't have beans and they don't have nuts, so I don't know where they think the milk is coming from, but the cow done died ages ago. 

And that is why in the image above, Rep. Raskin is smiling and Comer looks like his life is flashing before his eyes. 

House Republicans Had Some Kind of Day

 

Things aren't great with the House Republicans. For one thing, some of them are big mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for trying to do something useful like make the government still happen, in part because it involves dealing with Democrats and obviously, that's insane. They tanked some rules just from spite because they're salty about it.  And poor Mike Johnson has to make a pilgrimage to Godfather Trump to get his blessing on the whole avoiding a shutdown thing, which is awkward, because we all know Trump wants the economy to crash because he absolutely said so. 

I have some idea of the kind of arguments that have to be made. If House Republicans are responsible for a shutdown--all Republicans could be blamed, including Trump. Whether Trump can hear arguments like that is dicey, though. Ditto (or maybe that should be "MAGA-dittoes") for the mascots some red districts have elected to Congress--they were elected to sow chaos and it really shows. They want a shutdown for the same reason Patriarch Newt Gingrich normalized Republicans causing shutdowns--just burning spite against the idea of doing government at all. 

This is why the House sucked out loud in 2023. They couldn't pass legislation for shit and just did mascot stuff. Retiring Rep. McHenry referred to it as "a very actively stupid political environment" and that sounds exactly right. 

What the Biden Impeachment Inquiry is About

 

Earlier this year, I wrote a blogpost about the House GOP Biden impeachment inquiry back when I agreed with Rep. Raskin that this inquiry has been an impeachment about nothing, but now I'm pretty sure I see exactly what's it's about. Thanks to Rep. Troy Nehls, we can all appreciate what it's for: "Donald J. Trump 2024, Baby!"   (Okay, I lie--I always knew it was exactly about that.) 

I mean, Trump's legal fund money is going to Trump himself and his PAC money is paying his own legal bills, so why not have the taxpayers fund an anti-Biden campaign for him? And that's what he wants, so that's what every little GOP congressperson in the House gave him. 

I mean, here's a snip about what Trump wants from July:

Former president Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with their investigations into the president and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The demand, delivered at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, echoed Trump’s conduct at issue during his first impeachment, when Trump withheld aid from Ukraine while pressuring the country’s president to announce an investigation of Biden.

“Congress should refuse to authorize a single additional shipment of our depleted weapons stockpiles … to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden Crime Family’s corrupt business dealings,” Trump said at the rally. He added that any Republican lawmakers who didn’t join the effort should face primary challenges, a tactic he used last year to unseat Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

That little bit there? "Echoed Trump's conduct at issue during his first impeachment." It's a great touch because it sure does! The US conditions aid to Ukraine (although the Republicans in congress are playing their fund-denial games with border security) and the pay-off is dirtying up Biden so that Trump can win re-election! See how in those paragraphs, you can understand who is doing what for whom, to get what in return? And what should happen to GOP reps who don't do what Trump wants?

Yeah, well, after all the "inquiring" that Comer, Jordan, and Smith have done so far, we still don't have anything like that for how Hunter Biden paying back his loans equals political favors the senior Biden was going to do for...anybody.  

Now, Hunter Biden showed up yesterday and called out the House GOP over their subpoena shenanigans, letting them know he would give a deposition, but not behind closed doors. Sounds to me like he isn't hiding something, the House GOP are. After all, I remember when they just hated closed door depositions. Then they realized that if they used closed-door depositions, their failures wouldn't be nearly as, um, public.

And then they could keep up the lying. And I while I certainly could expect less from them (I mean, MTG wants to toss around revenge porn again, I just know it), I trust they will continue to limbo under my expectations. 

A No-Interest Loan

 

Comer: That’s bullcrap! If he wanted to send money to his son for a truck then send him money for a truck pic.twitter.com/Z8zgBNRUi6

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 5, 2023

So, Rep. Comer got all heated up because he found these payments that definitely demonstrated influence peddling: Hunter Biden made three whole payments to his dad in 2018, totaling...$4,140.  A truly prodigious sum that had already been reported as being for a truck loan. Once everyone pointed out that we already knew about this and it was just a loan getting paid back, Comer came up with the very magnanimous point: Why wouldn't you just gift him the money out of the goodness of your heart?

Um, not for the bills of a grown-ass man. 

This is pretty small, and I'm sure they would like to hear Hunter Biden tell more about it. Just not in public. Because to hear Republicans talk about these very serious Biden allegations, it's the Democrats who turn everything into a clown show. 

Uh-huh. And although I don't like this to get around, when I'm not blogging, I'm actually the Pope. 

GOP GONE WILD!!!

 

What in the hell was up today in Congress? First off, it seems like former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy nailed Tim Burchett in the kidneys so hard that Matt Gaetz had to file a report. That's wild. Apparently, McCarthy isn't settling into his post-Speaker life that great. And I do not know what is up between Gaetz and McCarthy but the mutual disrespect is real. Also, McCarthy has been talking shit about his fellow Republicans and this isn't the first time. 

Sounds very stressful.

Also, in the Senate, Markwayne Mullin thought he'd try to throw down with a Teamster on the floor and it got denied by Senator Bernie Sanders, a damn adult in the room. Mullin later appealed on Twitter like this:

For the benefit of the Comfortably Smugs and probably Catturds of the social mediaverse. Look at those guns and those firearms. At the risk of sounding sexist: this man is benching a lot of male insecurity and supplementing with Daddy issues. Somebody hand him a testosterone wubbie to suck on. 

James Comer got DAGGONE DEFENSIVE when Jared "the Smurf" Moskowitz called him out on his own loan to his brother of $200K--exactly like the Crime Family Bidens' Terrible Secret! Why so tense? I wonder? 

Shit, why is everybody so tense?  Is it because the Christian Nationalist who was supposed to be hardcore MAGA offered a clean CR and isn't a big fan of a Biden impeachment because there's no "there", there? (MTG has already voiced her threats misgivings.)

What's next? Is this just a case of elephant musth? Or can we expect MTG to kneecap Lauren Boebert like she was Nancy Kerrigan? (She been going around calling her a "whore" which is just hours of family entertainment where I come from.) Should we expect Harriet Hageman to finally lasso and hogtie somebody like I truly think she's been fixing to do? 

I don't even want to pretend I know. I only know I want to blame Trump because he made violence feel more like an acceptable thing, but that isn't it exactly, either, is it? 

The Impeachment About Nothing

 Rep. Jamie Raskin (D, National Treasure) was one of the most persistent voices of sense in Thursday's House impeachment hearing, and his comment that this was an "impeachment about nothing" gives me the title of the post. Maybe it's about bribery? But who got bribed and for what by whom? 

Usually, you would want to establish a quid pro quo, right? I give you "X" and you give me "Y". You give me an investigation into Joe Biden and I'll release military aid, for example. This is not so clearcut. Is the bribe coming from Burisma to get rid of the prosecutor who was manifestly not investigating them? Is the bribe coming from Chinese businessmen because yadda yadda yadda? (That Hunter Biden was drawing a loan based on his investment to pay major debts is actually pretty plausible, given what we know of his circumstances at the time.) 

What the GOP House established was they were GONNA GODDAMN FIND a reason. They were going to take this impeachment business seriously. They didn't all stick around or provide any evidence or anything, so I don't know how literally they are taking the impeachment business, but man, they are serious. 

Raskin proposed subpoenaing Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas. Oh. The Jimmies (Comer and Jordan) didn't like that idea.  The damaging data of the liberated laptop loses a bit of its shine when you consider the irregular provenance. 

TWGB: They Want to Impeach Joe Biden?

 

Ok, you have questions: "How is the declaration of Speaker McCarthy (R: Gimp) a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag post?"

Oh gosh, I think it's because Trump told them to do it. Trump said, out loud and also in private, to the House GOP that they wanted to go on ahead and try to impeach Joe Biden because he got impeached, too, and wasn't that some kind of RIGGING? Which is funny as fuck, because the investigation that the House GOP are going to do into Joe Biden the year before the 2024 election is the exact same sham investigation that Trump extorted Ukraine President Zelenskyy for sparking his own first impeachment. And even some current GOP House members can kind of admit that.  (And sadly, Rep. Ken Buck, who is a Tea Party conservative in you'd think good standing, is likely to be looking at some Liz Cheney treatment for his honesty.) 

So, what do we know? Well, we know Kevin McCarthy's round and fuzzies just get passed between MTG and Trump and he unilaterally called the investigation because he belatedly realized he might have a hard time with the votes. And GOP centrists all sighed a sigh of relief because actually, this impeachment thing might be seen as a real partisan clusterfuck since they spent so much time decrying the "politicization of government."

And here they are. 

Whistleblowers Sometimes Fail

 

Whoops. Gal Luft, the GOP's new fake Hunter Biden "whistleblower," was just indicted by the Justice Department for arms trafficking, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, making false statements to federal agents, and being an unregistered foreign agent for China.

James Comer… pic.twitter.com/cgwcfPbDnE

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 10, 2023

You ever lose track of your very important witness to something and it turns out they were actually an agent of a foreign government just cutting deals left and right with what you might call hostile government entities? Because that's what seems to have happened with one of the GOP House Oversight Commitee's really big guns. You wouldn't have thought, right? 

Anyway, this guy was influencing TrumpWorld from 2016. 

 Among other things, in the weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, LUFT and a co-conspirator (“CC-1”), who is a Chinese national and worked for a Chinese nongovernmental organization affiliated with a Chinese energy company, created a written “dialogue” between CC-1 and Individual-1, in which LUFT wrote Individual-1’s responses and included information that was favorable to China.  The dialogue was then published in a Chinese newspaper online and sent to, among others, individuals in the United States, including a journalist and professors at multiple U.S. universities.  When LUFT was writing the dialogue, CC-1 told LUFT that “[i]n these articles, we do not want to spill all the beans yet, just enough to let ‘people’ know he [i.e., Individual-1] is in the corridor of power to be.  Just broad stroke policy consideration that leaves plenty of room for interpretation and imagination to be filled in later.”  After the purported “conversations” were published, LUFT told CC-1 that certain information, favorable to China, had been “tucked between the lines.”  Shortly after the 2016 election, LUFT and CC-1 also discussed possible roles Individual-1 might have in the incoming U.S. administration and discussed Individual-1 taking a “silent trip” to China.  LUFT responded that “[w]e are debating about his role in the new admin.  There are all kinds of considerations . . .We should talk ftf [i.e., face-to-face] as there can be a supremely unique opportunity for china.”

The Individual-1 looks to be Jim Woolsey.  He was in the loop for a little bit of fuckery. But I'm not saying I understand how all of those parts fit. I just know when the House GOP's witness is kind of a spy for China this is very not good for them.

And I had thought it was pretty bad when one of their whistleblowers was just dead. 

Anyway in other news, the Trump-appointed US Atty investigating Hunter Biden's tax things says he was as independent as independent could be, which would have been my linchpin story if not for the China agent thing. Which lets you all know how well the GOP Oversight stuff is going right now. 

Would I Call it Weaponization?

 

Somewhere, deep down, I feel like nothing is ever over with Republicans. Forget Benghazi or tan suits. They are going to get weird and bring up Chappaquiddick or Alger Hiss or Robert Byrd's Klan connections out of the blue.  So what do I think when Jim Jordan thinks maybe he'll target Hillary Clinton with a new investigation?

If Hunter Biden wasn't already done to death, why would the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turning their lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton again hit any different?  I mean, Kevin McCarthy, the current and obviously temporary Speaker of the House explained out loud where people could hear that the email investigation hurt Clinton intentionally. And current crank James Comer admitted in the same vein that the investigation into President Biden's family members is supposed to help Trump. 

He still hasn't found what he's looking for, of course. The GOP can't keep track of their whistleblowers. To the extent they exist they are being paid by Trump insider Kash Patel who is a witness in the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and the first impeachment over the Ukraine president's being extorted. So that's not obviously sleazy as hell, right? 

But in the funny old round world kind of way, it comes out just now that the Trump DOJ was already investigating the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation, and they had nothing. See, unlike Trump's slush fund that he called a charitable enterprise which had to be shut down, and his kids had to go to mandatory don't run a charity as a slush fund school? The Clinton Foundation has been on the up and up. 

So--see how that seems like weaponization? And the thing where Trump get tried in courts and actually has done stuff is not weaponization? And how Durham had nothing, and most Republicans seem to be kind of distracting from 1/6 or the documents scandal by deflecting and whatabouting to other stuff? 

It's like they want to pretend "both sides" are equally as bad and they really aren't. And I would through very gritted teeth like to suggest the media report it that way, because sometimes, there are not two sides to everything (sorry current CNN management!) but one side is actually very bad, even seditious. And even undermines the very concept of rule of law via extreme partisanship. 

And what I mean by that isn't hard at all to see or hear if you're paying attention.