My Kabuki Alarm Hasn't Stopped Beeping

On Saturday I said my kabuki alarm has been going off since the start of the elaborate cat-and-mouse between the Comer committee and FBI Director Wray over an FD-1023 form that may contain allegations of bribery against Joe Biden when he was vice president. This was all going to be settled when Wray brought the FD-1023 in question over to the Capitol yesterday to show it to Chairman Comer and Ranking Member Raskin in person -- except, of course, it wasn't. According to NBC:

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced Monday that his panel will start proceedings to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress, a move the agency called "unwarranted."

The FBI briefed Comer and Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., on Capitol Hill for more than an hour Monday and offered them the chance to review a document that purportedly describes an allegation that Joe Biden accepted a bribe as vice president.

Speaking to reporters outside the

secure briefing site afterward, Comer said the "FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody" of the committee. "And we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday.

. . . In a statement, the FBI said it had been cooperative with Comer's request.

“The FBI has continually demonstrated its commitment to accommodate the committee’s request, including by producing the document in a reading room at the U.S. Capitol. This commonsense safeguard is often employed in response to congressional requests and in court proceedings to protect important concerns, such as the physical safety of sources and the integrity of investigations," the statement said.

"The escalation to a contempt vote under these circumstances is unwarranted,” it added.

Robert Spencer comments on PJ Media:

It’s a positive development, and long overdue: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced on Monday that he would start proceedings to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress. Still, even though this is welcome news, Wray is unlikely to suffer any significant consequences, even if the full House votes that he is indeed in contempt of Congress.

How on earth is any of this a "positive development"? As far as I can see, this is a kabuki exercise that's been choreographed from the start and is likely to go on indefinitely. Based on what we've learned in the last several days, both Sen Grassley and Chairman Comer have already seen the FD-1023 in question. Director Wray was forced, once he was made aware of this last week, to acknowledge that the document exists, and that the allegations in it are at least credible.

But it also goes without question that whatever the merits of the allegations in the FD-1023, the Wray FBI is going to slow-walk any investigation. Whether any House action over finding Wray in contempt of Congress would actually open a substitute investigation into those allegations is a remote question and unlikely. But let's postulate that it will, and there'll be some type of House hearing on whether Joe actually took a bribe from some foreign actor to influence US policy as VP.

The sketchy information we have is that Joe took $5 million to do something unspecified about an unspecified US policy. The one thing that rings true here is how cheaply he was being bought, if in fact he was being bought. The Vice President of the United States took a bribe for five million? This is in league with the guy who tells a yokel that the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, and he can have it for $50,000.

Right now, we don't know just when this is alleged to have taken place, so we can't locate it in the timeline of Hunter's over-the-top expenses, but as I've been saying here all along, the current level and timeline of payments alleged to have gone into a Biden family boodle just don't add up. We're talking about somewhare between nine and 12 completely unproductive people, of whom four or five are addicts with expensive habits on top of their other worldly tastes.

The level of payments into this boodle are generally described so far as a million here, three million there, every few years, passed on through shell companies, yada yada. Let's add this new $5 million alleged to the big guy himself. The problem with what we've been seeing is that Hunter alone, who is alleged to be the kingpin and the driving force behind the boodle, had expenses himself that, as I estimated yesterday, were at minimum in the $1 million a year range and for many years, especially after 2015, were probably much larger.

Hunter would have had to be skimming almost all the money that was coming into the putative family boodle for himself -- yet there were still eight or more other Bidens with their palms out. And beyond that, for much of the period after 2015, references on the laptop strongly suggest Joe himself was making up Hunter's shortfall. Even if Joe took a $5 million bribe from Chinese intellegence in a briefcase full of unmarked bills, all Joe could have done with an amount like that would be give it to Hunter to go up his nose. Even at that level, Dr Jill, brother James, sister Valerie, daughter Ashley, niece Caroline, Hallie, her kids, and the rest would have gone hungry and without a fix, and this still leaves out Kathleen Buhle and her alimony check.

So far, none of the allegations here meet any sort of reasonability check. This is not to say that the family isn't a thoroughly corrupt bunch whose lifestyles are far beyond their apparent means and who may well be on the take, but the amounts that would support the lifestyles of those dozen useless types are far, far greater than what's reflected in the rinky-dink frammis of sporadic baksheesh through shell companies we've heard about so far.

Short of much more convincing revelations about payoffs much bigger than what we've seen, I don't think it's productive to wish a Biden family boodle will have any effect on the 2024 election. Although I agree with Nikki Haley on almost nothing else, I think she's right to say it's a much better bet to campaign against President Kamala.