Gavin Newsom Trolls Ron DeSantis Hard About November 30th Debate

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

There is no way Team DeSantis is prepared to go toe-to-toe with Gavin Newsom.  As much as I just cannot stand the California governor, he has a firm grasp of Machiavellian manipulation in politics.

In this soundbite, Newsom is asked about Ron DeSantis and the special debate between the Florida and California governors as organized by Sean Hannity.  Newsom’s response is epic level trolling.  Judging by the response from Newsom, he also knows a nomination is likely at the DNC convention in Chicago. WATCH:

X22, On the Fringe, and more- Sept 28

 

Republican Wall Street Donors Looking to Nikki Haley as DeSantis Shrinks

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Long before the 2024 election was ever in the mindset of voters, CTH pointed out the specific moves the people who control Nikki Haley were taking in 2018 {GO DEEP}. It wasn’t difficult to predict, because Haley followed the Bush plan to an exacting measure.

The BUSH PLAN is the five-year roadmap that modern Republican consultants use to position their principal in the approved Republican lane. “This ‘Five Year Plan‘ was the same historic approach done for Ronald Reagan. With a candidate in the private sector, the professional donor-class make investments in the candidate while it is legal to do so. The investments are made in anticipation of future influence.  This is simply how money influences politics.”

It is not coincidental that it was also 2018, when DeSantis exited his congressional seat to establish the 2024 agenda. The U.N, as an institution, is also in alignment with the high-brow Prescott Bush clan. Ms. Nikki Haley is regarded by this clan as a very valuable commodity.  As I said in 2018, “If they can’t get Jeb, or another Bush (ie. DeSantis) over the finish line, they will be much better positioned with investments in Nikki Haley.”

To be sure, for the voters this is an impossible lift, but the RNC/RGA donor class do not regard the voters as part of the equation.  For too many years they have assembled the illusion of choice, and they are still stuck in that paradigm.  They did not feel threatened by the Tea Party, and they quite simply do not understand the larger MAGA movement.

The billionaires feel ‘above the fray‘ in their sheeple constructs; and remember, for them Newsom is just fine too.

Sept 27 (Reuters) – Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley appears to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign, with more donors saying they are looking more closely at her candidacy as an alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump.

Reuters spoke to four donors and one source close to a major donor who were impressed by the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the first Republican presidential debate in August and said they were keen to donate should she continue to strengthen as a candidate.

They will be watching to see how she does at the second debate in California on Wednesday night among those vying to win the party’s nomination to run for president in the 2024 election.

DeSantis, once seen as the most formidable challenger to former President Trump, has struggled to catch fire amid missteps and relentless Trump attacks on his candidacy. Despite his campaign’s struggles he has retained the support of some major donors.

Donors are crucial to keeping White House hopefuls afloat, and the willingness of some to now look beyond DeSantis underscores his struggle to convince donors that he is the best alternative to Trump. It also shows the despair of some Republican establishment donors looking for a viable candidate who is not Trump.

Of the five donors looking at Haley, three have so far broadly sat out the campaign while one has donated to DeSantis and another was supportive of him but did not donate. Reuters also spoke to a half dozen Haley donors, advisers to donors, and even supporters of other candidates who said more donors are looking at Haley. (read more)

For a deep dive into the financial construct Nikki Haley put together {Go Here}; reference the CTH archives from November 2019, when she registered the Stand For America SuperPAC.  For an overall summary of what she has been doing {GO HERE},  and see the internal citations assembled a few weeks ago.  Haley’s superpac donor files have been leaked, and the funding pattern is similar to Ron DeSantis, only Nikki Haley has more rich democrats. (GO DEEP)

{Nikki Haley Archives Here}

…”“I don’t think [Trump’s] going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.” […] “We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”  (link)

Bipartisan Rebuke: House Bill Funds School Hunting and Archery Courses, Reversing Biden Admin

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

Hunters and anglers and the organizations they support are the undisputed champions of wildlife and habitat conservation. For example, Ducks Unlimited has preserved or restored over 16 million acres of wetlands. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has helped protect almost nine million acres of vital elk habitat. There are other examples, but those are the big ones — all funded voluntarily by their members, who are overwhelmingly hunters.

That's why it was puzzling when the Biden administration attempted to cut off funding for hunting, shooting, and archery programs in the nation's schools. But the House of Representatives has dealt a broad bipartisan rebuke to this policy.

The House voted late Tuesday evening in favor of legislation striking down the Biden administration's decision to block federal funding for school shooting sports courses.

In a 424-1 vote, the House approved the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act with 216 Republicans and 208 Democrats voting in favor, and just one lawmaker, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, voting against. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., introduced the bill on Aug. 1, days after a Fox News Digital report in late July revealed the Department of Education was withholding funds for school hunting and archery courses.

"Hunters and fishers are the best conservationists," Green told Fox News Digital after the vote Tuesday. "Hunting, whether it be with a firearm or bow, is one of the most effective ways to control wildlife populations, protect our beautiful lands, and connect with nature. My Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act is critical for our children."

The details of the House vote can be seen here.

My colleague Jim Thompson recently chronicled the fate of a family who could have profited from some knowledge of the outdoors. With a little education, this may have been prevented. And education is a good thing, right?

The Biden administration has a history of unfriendliness towards outdoor sports, hunting in particular. Members of this administration seem to fall into the trap, where hunting (in particular) is concerned, to adopt the thought process "guns are bad, people hunt with guns, so hunting is bad." That's simplistic and, honestly, stupid. But the strongly bipartisan nature of this vote shows very clearly that Republicans aren't the only ones to see the value of outdoor sports; many Democrats, especially those from states with a strong outdoor tradition, see the value of teaching safe, responsible practices for hunting, shooting, and archery in the school systems. 

America's outdoor traditions go back to the first settling of much of the country. In many places, hunting, fishing, and camping are not just hobbies but a way of life. Some areas even close schools when deer season opens, acknowledging that many of the students will be afield with family and friends. Here in Alaska, many families depend on an annual moose or a caribou or two to provide protein through the winter.

The fact is, outdoor sports are some of the healthiest, safest, and most wholesome activities American youth can be involved in. Hunting, fishing, and hiking teach responsibility, respect, fortitude, and discipline. We should be encouraging, not discouraging, school programs that instill these values. While I'm on record as insisting that our nation's troubled schools focus on the basics — reading, writing, math, the hard sciences — there is still great value in elective classes for hunting, archery, and so on.

For once, it's nice to see Congress set aside their many partisan differences and face down a presidential administration to bring some sense into funding for our schools.

Wire Transfers From Chinese Oligarchs To Hunter Biden Listed Joe Biden’s Home Address

According to his memoir, Hunter Biden was living in California during the summer of 2019, when the wire transfers were sent.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso reporting for The Federalist

In the summer of 2019, Hunter Biden received two wire transfers from Chinese business partners — wire transfers that listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home as the beneficiary address, the House Oversight Committee revealed Tuesday evening.

After subpoenaing bank records, the committee found records of two wires linked to BHR Partners, a “Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited,” according to Fox News Digital. Hunter Biden sat on the firm’s board.

The first wire transfer in July 2019 was for $10,000 from Ms. Wang Xin, the name of a woman listed on BHR Partners’ website. The second in August 2019 was for $250,000 from Ms. Tan Ling and Li Xiang Sheng, the CEO of BHR Partners who also goes by the name Jonathan Li.

While the beneficiary for the wires is “Robert Hunter Biden,” the listed address is Joe Biden’s primary residence in Delaware. A beneficiary address is “either the address listed to the recipient account, or listed by the individual sending the wire,” explained Fox News Digital. “It is unclear, based on the wire records, who listed the address.”

According to his memoir and the failed plea agreement his attorneys drafted with his dad’s DOJ, Hunter Biden was living in California with his second wife during the summer of 2019, when the wire transfers were sent. Hunter was photographed at the Wilmington residence on July 30, 2017, however, on the day he was reported to have sent an extortive WhatsApp message to a different Chinese associate, saying “I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father” and threatening to use “the man sitting next to me” to “forever hold a grudge” if a “commitment made” was not “fulfilled.”

During his testimony to the Oversight Committee, former Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer alleged that Joe Biden had coffee with Jonathan Li in Beijing and that Hunter put Joe on speakerphone with Li for at least one call.

Joe Biden also wrote a letter of recommendation for Li’s daughter’s Georgetown college application, according to Archer — and Fox News Digital reported in 2022 that Biden had written a recommendation letter for Li’s son’s Brown University application.

Besides further incriminating Joe Biden in the family influence-peddling scheme, the wire transfers continue to disprove Biden’s brazen lie during a 2020 presidential debate that “My son has not made money [from] China.” 

The news adds to a laundry list of bank records uncovered by the Oversight Committee showing that the Biden family and their business partners have received funds amounting to millions of dollars from foreign nationals in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Kazakhstan, and China. 

Biden’s claim that he “never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their business, period” has also fallen apart, with testimony from multiple different associates placing Joe on phone calls or in meetings with Hunter’s foreign contacts.

“Bank records don’t lie but President Joe Biden does,” said Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. 

Meanwhile, the corporate media have gone into overdrive covering everything other than the explosive development in the Biden family corruption scandal — or “covering” the Biden story by airing excuses from Hunter’s lawyer. In particular, legacy media are piling on Trump after a New York judge effectively booted him from doing business in the state. 

The obsession with Trump’s latest legal troubles today is consistent with how developments in the unraveling Biden bribery scandal have been swept under the rug all year. Just for a refresher: On June 8, the FBI released to Congress records showing a “credible” FBI confidential human source had alleged Joe Biden took $5 million from a foreign national in Ukraine. The same day, Trump was indicted in a probe over his handling of classified documents. 

On July 26, Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal was derailed by a federal judge. The next day, more charges were added in the case against Trump. On July 31, Devon Archer testified to Congress that Hunter connected his father to foreign business associates nearly two dozen times. The next day, Trump was indicted again. On Aug. 14, Congress released an FBI supervisory special agent’s transcript corroborating testimony “that FBI headquarters tipped off Secret Service headquarters and the Biden transition team” about IRS investigators’ planned interview of Hunter Biden. That same day, Trump was indicted another time.

Today, the pattern continues. Tuesday, the Oversight Committee released bank records showing Joe Biden’s home was listed as the beneficiary address on wire transfers from Hunter’s Chinese associates. The same day, a New York judge ruled against Trump and it’s all the media can talk about.  

Hunter Biden Signed 2016 Letter to Ukrainian Prosecutor Complaining About Investigation into Burisma

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist 

Hunter Biden was a signatory to a 2016 letter from Burisma demanding Ukraine’s top prosecutor back off from making “allegations of criminal activity” in his investigation into the Ukrainian energy company, documents made public by the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday revealed.

The letter was addressed to then-General Prosecutor of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, who succeeded Viktor Shokin, the chief prosecutor ousted due to pressure from former Vice President Joe Biden.

“As members of the Board of Directors, we respectfully request that allegations of criminal activity made by you and/or officials in your office cease and that any investigation be conducted consistent with the standards of fairness and the rule of law,” Burisma leadership wrote. “Moreover, it is imperative that allegations of criminal activity made to the media about Burisma and/or Nikolay Zlochevskyi come to an end.”

The letter dated July 9, 2016, was sent just more than three months after Shokin’s removal. In January 2018, Joe Biden bragged about pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire Lutsenko’s predecessor, who had been investigating Burisma. While Hunter Biden raked in excessive compensation serving on the company’s board of directors, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.

The letter surfaced in a trove of documents related to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation of Hunter Biden that was released by the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday.

This summer, veteran IRS agents Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley publicly blew the whistle on widespread interference in their tax investigation of Hunter Biden from the Department of Justice (DOJ). What originated as a probe into a foreign pornography ring in 2018 quickly expanded to a sprawling investigation regarding Hunter Biden’s finances. Whistleblowers testified that officials at the Justice Department stonewalled the operation and left tax agents in the dark about a document alleging a criminal bribery scheme between the Bidens and Burisma’s founder.

In June, the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office struck a sweetheart plea deal with Hunter Biden that limited his offenses to two misdemeanor tax crimes plus a felony firearm charge that would be forgiven after 24 months of sobriety. Shapley complained to lawmakers that the most serious charges were left off the table while federal prosecutors waited out the statute of limitations.

The deal was derailed in July when the judge presiding over the agreement began to ask questions that revealed Hunter Biden’s attorneys had understood the deal to include full immunity from any future charges.

Despite these serious issues with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigation, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated him to special counsel status in August.

[Hunter Biden Special Counsel Appointment Is A Blatant Act Of Corruption]

Earlier this month, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over the family’s overseas influence-peddling operations. The first hearing will be held Thursday morning and will feature George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, former DOJ Assistant Attorney General Eileen O’Connor, and Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant.

On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee revealed Hunter Biden received wire transfers from Chinese business partners that listed his father’s Delaware address in Wilmington.

Hunter Biden Described Client as China’s ‘Chief of Intelligence,’ New Text Shows

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist 

Hunter Biden described one of his Chinese business associates as the “chief of intelligence” of China’s communist government, new communications released by House Republicans show.

As part of their investigation into President Joe Biden and his family’s foreign influence peddling scheme, the House Ways and Means Committee released a bevy of communication records on Wednesday documenting how Hunter sold the Biden “brand” to overseas business associates to increase the family’s fortunes. Included in the released records is a WhatsApp text exchange between Hunter and Hallie Biden — who was the widow of Joe’s other son, Beau, and dated Hunter after Beau’s passing — that offers further insight into Hunter’s business dealings with Chinese businessmen connected to the People’s Republic of China.

In his Dec. 14, 2018, message to Hallie, Hunter laments how he’d “chosen to alienate all [his] friends and family and employees and you and the kids and my kids etc.” and finds himself “dealing with rebuilding an income that can support an enormous alimony and my kids costs and myself.”

But Hunter doesn’t stop there. In the same message, he goes on to list various issues plaguing him at that moment in time, including “the arrest and conviction of my client the chief of intelligence of the people’s republic of China by the US government.”

While unnamed in the WhatsApp message, the figure referenced by Hunter appears to be Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman and Hunter’s client who was convicted by the Department of Justice for bribing the presidents of several African countries nine days prior to Hunter’s Dec. 14, 2018, message. According to the New York Post, Ho is considered to be a “top lieutenant” of Ye Jianming, a Chinese businessman with ties to China’s military and the head of CEFC China Energy, a Chinese conglomerate that purportedly “provided $6 million to the Biden family.”

Some of these payments were allegedly siphoned to Joe’s brother, James Biden.

In early 2017, Hunter reportedly worked for Ye “as a counselor and adviser” and was later hired by CEFC in September 2017 to serve as Ho’s defense attorney “despite his little experience in criminal defense.” Following his arrest two months later in November 2017, Ho called James Biden, who has said he believes the call was actually meant for Hunter.

Bank records obtained by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office indicate that Hunter — who previously referred to Ho as “the f-cking spy chief of China” — was paid $1 million for representing the Chinese businessman. According to Yahoo News!, however, “it is not clear what work, if any, [Hunter] did for Ho,” with court records of Ho’s case “show[ing] no indication that Biden or his law firm at the time … participated in Ho’s legal defense.”

Ho was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019, according to the DOJ.

In his Dec. 14, 2018, text to Hallie, Hunter also appeared to reference Ye, lamenting how he’s had to deal “with the aftermath of the abduction and likely assassination (that’s what NYT’s suspects) of my business partner,” who he refers to as “the richest man in the world.” An audio recording found on Hunter’s laptop indicates the president’s son repeating these same descriptors when discussing Ye, who according to Reuters, “disappeared from public view” in March 2018.

Biden also fretted that he was dealing with “my suspected involvement in brokering a deal with Vladimir Putin directly for the largest sale of oil gas assets inside Russia to China, a tax bill that Eric left hanging over my business and … Dads running for president.”