What Are They Thinking?

Only days before the Robert Menendez indictment, California Gov Newsom sought to downplay the Hunter Biden scandal by saying it was nothing new:

Newsom made the remarks during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash when asked about Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry into the president.

“Republicans have shown that Hunter Biden, he tried to leverage his father’s name and that the president allegedly, before he was president, joined phone calls that Hunter Biden’s business associates were on,” Bash said. “Do you see anything inappropriate there?”

“I don’t know enough about the details of that. I mean, I’ve seen a little of that,” Newsom claimed. “If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries, not just in politics, where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique. I don’t love that any more than you love it or other people I imagine love that.”

Newsom should know, since he himself is related to Nancy Pelosi by marriage. But Sen Menendez's indictment just underscores how common "influence peddling" is, especially since Sen Menendez was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (he had to resign as chair, but not as senator, following his indictment), a post Joe Biden also held from 2001 to 2003. The level of influence this position gives to its occupants is indicated by the statement of the prosecutors:

Menendez is accused of using “his power and influence, including his leadership role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to benefit the government of Egypt in various ways,” said the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, during a press conference on Friday.

This is the same US Justice Department that has proven amenable to all sorts of influence, not just from Joe, but from Menendez himself. According to the prosecutors,

[Fred] Daibes, a real estate developer, gave Menendez gold bars and cash after Menendez sought to influence a federal criminal case in New Jersey against Daibes for obtaining loans under false pretenses, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Daibes pleaded guilty and received a probationary sentence.

So if you know the right people, you can plead guilty to federal charges and get probation. Where have we heard that before? But the Biden and Menendez cases aren't just parallel, they seem to have some connections: The UK Daily Mail has previously published a memo found on Hunter's laptop in which Hunter and Eric Schwerin discuss coordinating with Menendez to hold a 2010 event at the vice president's official residence in return for access to key Spanish finincial figures. Per the Daily Mail,

[W]hen an aide to Senator Robert Menendez requested VP Biden host the U.S.-Spain Council's 2010 annual meeting at his official Naval Observatory residence in Washington DC, they contacted Schwerin rather than Joe's White House office.

Hunter and Schwerin then privately discussed the potential to ingratiate themselves with 'CEOs of the major banks' if they helped arrange the request.

So I'm scratching my head. The federal prosecutors, who as we've seen are fully capable of slow-walking investigations if it's convenient for the right people, have indicted Menendez, who is nothing if not a frequent flyer in bribery and corruption cases, right at a time when bribery and corruption allegations have surfaced against Joe Biden, who coincidentally has spent his career in precisely the same Senate positions of power as Menendez. Beyond that, one of the allegations in the indictment is that Menendez got kickbacks from military aid to Egypt, which he was in a position to influence:

At all times relevant to this Indictment, MENENDEZ held a leadership position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (the “SFRC”), first as the Ranking Member and then the Chairman, and therefore possessed influence over, among other things, the Executive Branch’s decisions to provide foreign military sales, foreign military financing, and other aid or support to or for the benefit of the Government of Egypt.

. . . [T]he State Department would typically not proceed with a transfer of foreign military financing grant money to Egypt’s bank account (located at all relevant times in Manhattan), or with a foreign military sale to Egypt, while the Chairman or the Ranking Member of the SFRC had not signed off on, and was maintaining a “hold” on, such a transfer or sale. As a result, at all times relevant to the Indictment, ROBERT MENENDEZ, the defendant, as the Chairman or the Ranking Member of the SFRC, possessed substantial influence over foreign military sales and foreign military financing to Egypt.

. . . in or about May 2018, HANA hosted another dinner at a high-end restaurant with MENENDEZ, during which MENENDEZ disclosed to HANA nonpublic information about the United States’s provision of military aid to Egypt. Shortly after the dinner, HANA texted Egyptian Official-1, “The ban on small arms and ammunition to Egypt has been lifted. That means sales can begin. That will include sniper rifles among other articles.”

In other words, the Menendez indictment contains allegations of circumstancrs and methods that are remarkably similar to those that have emerged related to Joe Biden's dealings with Ukraine. Ukraine, like Egypt, is a major recipient of US economic and military aid. The aid is subject to numerous approvals and potential holds, which can be lifted by the right people in the right positions. In the case of Menendez, it's alleged that in exchange for bribes, Menendez, who had the power to get holds lifted, in fact did this.

How does this differ from the case of Joe, who was in a position to threaten a hold on Ukrainian loan guarantees in December 2015 and by his own account demanded the firing of Viktor Shokin to have the hold lifted? Since 2015, Joe has been in a position to influence whether or not Ukraine gets over $100 billion in military aid. Given the parallel circumstances and the parallel opportunities for corruption from two guys who've enriched themselves throughout their political careers, why shouldn't we be suspicious that the same sort of back channel deals that enriched Menendez are also taking place with Ukraine aid and Joe?

So far, nobody at either the legacy media or Conservative Inc has noticed these parallels, but this all reinforces for me the idea that we need to start looking at the Milo Minderbinder theory of the Russo-Ukraine War, that this is being pursued in large part because powerful people, including Joe Biden, are getting kickbacks from a multibillion-dollar skim off economic and military aid that they're promoting and approving.

All the Menendez indictment is doing for now is enabling the possibility that investigators will look into this. Why on earth did Merrick Garland approve this move? Is the guy deeper than he looks, or what?