This is the Lt Governor of Minnesota.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 8, 2024
Why do they always resort to violence and encourage physical harm? pic.twitter.com/RbxiNJ6mxi
Prosecutors signaled in a court filing on Wednesday that they intended to mount an aggressive strategy in Hunter Biden’s tax trial in California, saying they would show how foreign interests paid him to influence the U.S. government while his father was vice president.
The special counsel in the case, David C. Weiss, has wrangled for weeks with Mr. Biden’s lawyers over what evidence can be introduced when he is to be tried in September on charges of evading taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses. Already, Mr. Weiss has overseen Mr. Biden’s conviction tied to the purchase of a gun in Delaware in 2018.
Mr. Biden’s team had moved to disqualify evidence about his lucrative foreign business activities and lifestyle from a time when he was addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol. Mr. Weiss’s deputies rejected those arguments on Wednesday, in a preview of what promises to be a bare-knuckled courtroom strategy.
Prosecutors stopped short of accusing Mr. Biden of violating foreign lobbying laws, which are not among the charges for which he faces trial. While they intend to introduce evidence that Mr. Biden and his business partners contacted government officials, they said they did not plan to accuse him of having “improperly coordinated with the Obama administration.”
Instead, they plan to cite evidence related to his foreign business dealings to prove how he willfully engaged in a scheme to obtain vast amounts of cash without paying taxes.
To that end, prosecutors said they would introduce testimony from an American business associate of Mr. Biden’s to detail a lucrative arrangement with a Romanian real estate magnate who faced corruption charges at home.
The magnate, who is identified in the filing only by his initials but is known to be Gabriel Popoviciu, hoped that Mr. Biden and his associates could persuade U.S. officials to intervene with the Romanian authorities to drop a criminal investigation into a land deal with the government.
Mr. Popoviciu signed a $3 million agreement with Mr. Biden’s associate, who then passed a third of the money to Mr. Biden, according to prosecutors, who described the arrangement as an “attempt to influence U.S. government agencies.”
But it was configured as a property management agreement to avoid “political ramifications” for his father that could have arisen had Mr. Biden disclosed the work under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, wrote Derek Hines, a top deputy to Mr. Weiss.
In the filing, prosecutors indicated that they intended to introduce evidence related to Mr. Biden’s business dealings with not only Mr. Popoviciu, but also the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy.
It was money for nothing, prosecutors said. Mr. Biden “performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities,” they wrote.
Mr. Biden’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
A message sent to an account known to have been used by Mr. Popoviciu did not immediately yield a response. His seven-year prison sentence for corruption was vacated by a Romanian court last year.
Mr. Popoviciu had retained a number of politically connected Americans to try to defuse the case.
Mr. Biden’s involvement could create complications as he seeks to avoid a second criminal conviction and possible prison time. The court documents suggest he could be in for another wrenching public reckoning if he does not reach a plea deal — after a shattering seven-day trial in June ended with his conviction on three felony counts for lying on a federal firearms application.
Mr. Weiss and Mr. Biden agreed to a plea deal in early 2023 that would have spared him any prison time. But it abruptly imploded at a hearing that July, when Judge Maryellen Noreika of the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del., sharply questioned elements of the deal, saying she had no intention of being “a rubber stamp.”
At that hearing, Leo Wise, another deputy to Mr. Weiss, left open the possibility that Mr. Biden could be prosecuted for FARA violations.
The trial had loomed as a potential minefield in the presidential campaign, but it lost some of its potency when President Biden dropped his bid for re-election.
It could nonetheless prove embarrassing for Democrats, and provide a modest rallying point for Republicans who spent years spotlighting the younger Mr. Biden’s foreign business activities in a bid to damage his father. They have signaled that they plan to try to saddle Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, with the Biden administration’s baggage.
Last December, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged Mr. Biden, who has been sober for several years, in the tax case.
Mr. Biden pleaded not guilty to three counts each of evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return — documented in a withering 56-page indictment that read like a play-by-play of personal indulgence and financial profligacy.
Prosecutors said that he “subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company,” Owasco PC, by withdrawing millions from the coffers that he used to subsidize “an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.”
In the indictment, Mr. Weiss called out Mr. Biden for failing to pay child support and for his reliance on associates, including the Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, to pay his way.
The Biden legal team tried to throw out some of that evidence detailing his spending and partying, but the government is asking Judge Mark C. Scarsi, who is presiding in the case, to allow it to be introduced.
The post Prosecutors Preview Aggressive Strategy in Hunter Biden’s Tax Case appeared first on New York Times. [SOURCE]
A Romanian businessman facing bribery charges paid Hunter Biden in an effort to “influence U.S. policy and public opinion,” according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
During the fall of 2015, Hunter Biden entered into an “oral agreement” with businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, identified as G.P., who wanted the U.S. government to “investigate” the criminal probe against him in Romania, prosecutors wrote in a Wednesday court filing in Hunter Biden’s upcoming tax case. Special counsel David Weiss’ team explained in the filing that Hunter Biden’s business associate would testify about the arrangement during his coming tax trial, slated to begin Sept. 5. (RELATED: Hunter Biden Sentencing Scheduled For Week After Election)
Hunter Biden, along with his business associate, was “concerned that lobbying work might cause political ramifications” for Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time of the agreement, prosecutors wrote.
Hunter Biden’s business associate entered into “an arrangement that concealed the true nature of the work he was performing for G.P.” Under the agreement, a legal entity belonging to Hunter Biden’s associate “would purportedly provide management services to real estate properties in Romania,” though “that was not actually what G.P. was paying for,” according to prosecutors.
“In reality, Business Associate 1 and G.P. agreed that Business Associate 1 would receive compensation for work by Business Associate 1, the defendant, and Business Associate 2, to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian investigation of G.P., and Business Associate 1 would pass approximately 1/3 to the defendant as his compensation and approximately 1/3 to Business Associate 2 as his compensation,” the documents states.
Hunter Biden’s business associate was compensated around $3,101,258 for the work between Nov. 2015 and May 2017, which the partners split three ways, according to the indictment.
Special Counsel David Weiss appears to have finally made the long-awaited case exposing years of concealment and political corruption. No, it is not the case against Hunter Biden but the DOJ itself... https://t.co/23nPDXzkQF
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 8, 2024
Prosecutors revealed the evidence in response to Hunter Biden’s effort to prevent them from introducing references to “alleged improper political influence and/or corruption” during the trial. Weiss’ team noted in the filing that introducing the evidence does not mean the government “will also reference allegations that the defendant violated FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] and that contacts with government officials were improper.”
“The evidence of what the defendant agreed to do and did do for G.P. demonstrates the defendant’s state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years charged in the indictment,” prosecutors wrote. “It is also evidence that the defendant’s actions do not reflect someone with a diminished capacity, given that he agreed to attempt to influence U.S. public policy and receive millions of dollars pursuant to an oral agreement with Business Associate 1 in an arrangement that concealed the true nature of the work he was performing for G.P.”
Hunter Biden was indicted on nine federal charges in December relating to his alleged failure to pay over $1.4 million in taxes.
Despite receiving “substantial” amounts of income during the period, including from his foreign business dealings, Hunter Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” according to the indictment. Instead of taxes, he funneled the money into strip clubs, luxury cars, escorts and other “personal expenses,” prosecutors allege.
In June, a Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges.
Hunter Biden’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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[SOURCE]
Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz's coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.
When the coronavirus was first spreading, Walz was an enthusiastic promoter of social distancing rules. He described the crowds in public, outdoor spaces as "a little too big." He even defended Minnesota's ridiculous hotline for COVID-19 snitches. That's right: Walz's government maintained a method for people to report their neighbors for failing to abide by social distancing rules. Walz insisted in a recent interview that "one person's socialism is another person's neighborliness"; denouncing one's neighbors as insufficiently loyal to government policies is a fundamental aspect of socialism, however.
When asked by Republicans to take down the hotline, Walz responded: "We're not going to take down a phone number that people can call to keep their families safe."
And though Walz instructed police to merely issue citations to people caught violating stay-at-home orders—which is still bad enough—he also maintained the right, via executive order, to issue $1,000 fines and send violators to jail for 90 days. His government maintained that private, indoor gatherings should be limited to 10 people. Outdoor gatherings were arbitrarily capped at 25 people. On July 23, 2020, Walz declared a statewide mask mandate for most indoor spaces and even some outdoor spaces.
"If we can get a 90 to 95% compliance, which we've seen the science shows, we can reduce the infection rates dramatically, which slows that spread and breaks that chain," Walz said at the time. "This is the way, the cheapest, the most effective way for us to open up our businesses, for us to get our kids back in school, for us to keep our grandparents healthy and for us to get back that life that we all miss so much."
What followed was the implementation of one of the stupidest COVID-19 rules: Diners at restaurants had to wear masks while walking to their table and moving about the establishment but were allowed to go maskless as long as they were eating and drinking.
Later, in November and December of 2020, Walz issued and extended orders for restaurants, gyms, and other businesses to shut down. This included outdoor dining service for eating establishments. Over 150 businesses formed the Reopen Minnesota Coalition and urged the governor to relent, but Walz was unmoved.
By the spring of 2021, vaccines were widely available for the most at-risk groups, and people who wanted to protect themselves from the risk of severe disease and death were able to exercise that option. It was only at this point that Walz partly relented and allowed widespread reopening; however, he kept capacity limits in place for many businesses.
These nonsensical policies—the efficacy of which is now doubted by top U.S. health officials—are not unique to Minnesota; in fact, they were commonplace in blue states. But Walz was as vigorous an enforcer of them as any of his Democratic peers.
He was also one of the foremost defenders of a monstrous COVID-19 policy choice: sending sick, elderly patients back to nursing homes where the infection often spread to other vulnerable people, causing a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths in such settings. A cover-up of nursing home deaths in New York brought an end to the political ambitions of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lied about his involvement in this policy. But Walz was a fellow practitioner; in fact, Walz said that it was "not a mistake" to release sick people back to nursing homes. That statement alone reflects poor enough judgment as to be disqualifying for the pursuit of higher office.
Pandemic policies
are not nearly as salient today as they were two years ago, and so it
remains to be seen whether Walz's record here matters much to voters.
But for anyone who considers the COVID-19 restrictions to have been "the biggest assault on our liberties in our lifetime," Walz's veep candidacy should be a nonstarter. [SOURCE]
By John Schindler
August 7, 2024 6:00 am
Vice President Kamala Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate was met with glee by many Democrats — but also by Republicans. The Left views Walz as a Midwestern progressive whose Minnesota-nice persona will help Harris win contested states.
But alongside a left-wing record that is sure to attract Republican campaign fire, Walz’s deep affection for Communist China is also likely to attract attention.
Shortly after finishing his undergraduate degree in his native Nebraska in 1989, Walz headed to China to teach in a high school in Guangdong Province north of Hong Kong. Asked later about his motivation for this, at a time when few Americans spent time in China, Walz explained, “China was coming, and that’s the reason that I went.” Upon his return home, Walz and his wife established a company called Educational Travel Adventures centered on taking American students to China. Together, the couple visited China every summer until 2003, including spending their honeymoon there, much as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) strangely honeymooned in the Soviet Union. By his admission, Walz has visited the country about 30 times. He’s obviously a Sinophile, and he speaks some Mandarin, too.
Many might ask, so what? Although Democrats insist that Walz had advocated human rights and the cause of Tibet, a bugbear with the communists in Beijing, his long history with China raises uncomfortable questions for anybody who understands how China works.
It was an odd choice to visit China in 1989, right as the regime was crushing dissent with tanks in the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre. This did nothing to diminish Walz’s admiration for Beijing. Upon his return from teaching in 1990, he told his local newspaper, “I was treated exceptionally well. There was no anti-Americanism whatsoever.” He gushed that the police state had “almost no crime.” While Walz allowed that the regime’s massacre of students the year before was less than ideal, he concluded: “If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, and capable people.”
You may recall a famous movie in which Frank Sinatra, playing an American who’s been brainwashed by Chinese communists, recites the line that another man “is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
While Walz’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party may be nowhere near as dramatic or sinister as that fictional one, we need to ask what’s going on here, particularly in light of Walz’s admission in 1993 that his leading of student groups to China was funded by the regime. What did China think it was getting in exchange for this investment? What did Walz think Beijing expected in return?
Put simply, the Chinese communists aren’t running a holiday charity for American tourists. For those communists, nothing comes without a quid pro quo. It’s certain that Walz was vetted by the Ministry of State Security, the regime’s powerful secret police, because that’s how China works. No American would be allowed to run academic exchanges for a couple of decades, on the CCP’s dime, without MSS approval. It just wouldn’t happen.
While this doesn’t mean that Walz has a witting relationship with the MSS, what might it know about him after his 30 visits to the country? Three decades ago, a young American with an affection for China, who was also a part-time member of the U.S. military, would have been a tempting recruiting target for Chinese intelligence. Given that Beijing’s spies represent the greatest espionage threat to the United States today, this isn’t any merely academic query.
Moreover, we’re coming off four years of a Democratic president possessing odd, unexplained ties to Beijing, including millions of dollars given to his son by Chinese intelligence. Do we really want someone who may be even more compromised by China in the White House?
Democrats have spent the last nine years obsessing about former President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow, most of which turned out to be imaginary. Would anybody have thought Trump was fit for the Oval Office if he’d visited Russia 30 times, including on the Kremlin’s dime, and gushed about Moscow’s glories?
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Since Harris is well known for her love of opposition research, she had to be aware of the governor’s longtime relationship with Beijing. She obviously didn’t care.
If nothing else, however, the choice of Walz as the vice presidential candidate reveals that Democrats’ obsessive interest in counterintelligence was a partisan sham from the start.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer. [SOURCE]
How is NOBODY talking about this interesting/concerning fact about Tim Walz???
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) August 7, 2024
Stay Tuned! pic.twitter.com/0YUetBvtnn
Listen to this and then tell me there is no way to rig an election without being discovered. https://t.co/EcVjW60s8A
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 7, 2024
JUST IN: Massive crowd gathers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for VP Kamala Harris' and Tim Walz’s rally today.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 7, 2024
Eau Claire has a population of about 69,000.
The crowd was heard chanting: "This is what democracy looks like."
It's unclear what exactly they were referring to… pic.twitter.com/hzZjLg7VsC
