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Notes -
Slow morning, eh?
For some time now, we've been discussing the implications of Hunter Biden's laptop, and whether the information it contained was relevant to our political system. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we know that the FBI knew about the laptop's contents roughly a year in advance of the 2020 election, and used its official access with the major social media companies to prepare their censors to perceive the story as Russian disinformation. Then when the story actually broke in the press, the FBI successfully pushed the social media companies to censor it.
From the laptop information itself, we know that for quite a while now, Hunter Biden has been engaged in various grifts, selling purported access to his father in exchange for lucrative sinecures with various foreign corporations, selling "art" for amusingly inflated values, and so on. The supposition on the Red side has been that this grift implicated Biden as well, and Trump's attempts to have that theory investigated led directly to his first impeachment. The laptop emails backed this story with evidence, with Hunter referencing how "the big guy" was getting a significant cut of his grift money, and one of his associates confirming that "the big guy" was in fact Joe Biden.
Blues on the other hand claimed that there was no reason to suppose any corruption was happening. While Hunter was obviously a junkie fuckup grifter, and was obviously making his money claiming to peddle influence, there was no evidence of actual payments going to Joe, so this was all meaningless. My impression of the previous threads is that even those here who thought Hunter was paying Joe, assumed that there would be no formal exchange of money, but rather quid-pro-quo.
Now it appears that Hunter Biden has been paying rent to live in his father's residence in Delaware, to the tune of $49,901 per month. For completeness' sake, it must be mentioned that this is the same residence where Joe was found to be improperly storing classified documents, alongside his Corvette. While it seems doubtful that the files would be of interest to a junkie who prospers by peddling influence for foreign corporations, it's a detail that does add a touch of piquancy to the overall narrative.
So this appears to me to be pretty open-and-shut. Joe Biden is corrupt, selling influence to foreign corporations in China and Eastern Europe through his son Hunter. Hunter collects the money, then kicks a large slice back to Joe through rent, and quite possibly other, yet undiscovered "repayments". Trump was impeached when he attempted to have these activities investigated, while the FBI sat on the information they were given, and engaged in a protracted disinformation and censorship campaign to keep that information from leaking elsewhere. That information does in fact lead to provable direct payments from Hunter to Biden.
Impeachment when?
[EDIT] - ...Or perhaps not! @firmamenti points out that while Hunter is apparently living in the residence and renting an office space for 50k, the office space is not specified to be in the residence, and very well could be an entirely separate location entirely unconnected to Biden. The hunt continues...
The only thing I have to add here is that Matt Taibbi mentioned something on his premium podcast that I haven’t heard elsewhere.
He said he believe this is a DNC opp to sideline Biden in ‘24. He implied that he believes this is the case based on certain unreported facts about the source of this brouhaha. He didn’t elaborate. More of a passing comment to his cohost.
But surely Biden wouldn't even contemplate running in 2024? Everyone was saying that Trump was too old in 2020, and Biden is 80 now, he'll be 82 in 2024 and already there are health (and cognitive decline) queries around him.
I can't see any reason for him to go for a second term other than vanity, and that would be stupid. The Democrats must have a better way of telling him he can't run than working up a scandal?
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Sideline Biden in favor of who, though?
The left does seem to have a weak bench because their national candidates come from very liberal places and they’ve struggled to gain any traction in a lot of regions but they still have a few options especially when Biden isn’t all that desirable.
Newsom - good looking big state governor
Pritzker - think he’s very age and not charismatic but I would think he can be the not a GOP candidate as well as Biden
AOC - I know some Guiliani people who say they would prefer her over Biden because there is no fear she’s compromised. Charismatic/good looking/social media game. Seems to be moving somewhat more to mainstream Dem and away from squad leader
There’s no real rising star I can see but between these candidates and a few others there are generic Dem candidate who aren’t much worse than Biden at turning off moderates
Polis could be the move.
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