Louis Freeh In Context

While we can't be 100% sure that former FBI Director Louis Freeh is the mole who, according to Gal Luft, Hunter called "One Eye", there is in fact evidence from e-amails on Hunter's laptop that Hunter and Freeh engaged in several financial transactions related to their mutual business interests as international fixers. I cited those in yesterday's post.

But this brought me to look more closely at Louis Freeh himself. Freeh was FBI Director from September 1, 1993 to June 25, 2001. According to Wikipedia,

Shortly before and during Freeh's tenure, the FBI was involved in a number of high-profile incidents and internal investigations. Writing about Freeh in 2011, Reuters wrote that Freeh "faced widespread criticism for a series of high-profile blunders" during his tenure as FBI Director.

These included the Waco siege, which took place several months before Freeh became director, but he was involved in the highly controversial investigation, including allegations of a cover-up by the FBI. Wikipedia mentions further,

Freeh was accused of malpractice several times during his time at the FBI. In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, Freeh failed to hand over 3,000 pages of evidence to Timothy McVeigh's lawyers. Freeh also received backlash for not looking into whether Moscow had recruited someone in the FBI, despite being warned by senior investigator Thomas Kimmel. It would later come out 2 years later in 2001 that Robert Hanssen had been recruited by the Russians to be a spy for them. In 1994 after it was discovered that Aldrich Ames was a spy for the Russians, Freeh was advised to require routine polygraph tests for FBI agents; no action was taken by him.

. . . Attorney general Janet Reno testified that information that could have prevented the September 11 attacks was mishandled by the FBI at the time Freeh was the director of the FBI.

In June 2001, he resigned amid criticism that the FBI needed stronger leadership, particularly after allegations of spying by Robert Hanssen.

However, despite his tarnished reputation, Freeh was apparently able to rely on his connections to build a lucrative post-FBI career. Again according to Wikipedia,

In September 2001, Freeh was appointed to the board of directors of credit card issuer MBNA; he also served as the bank's general counsel, as well as corporate secretary and ethics officer.

It isn't entirely coincidental that MBNA had also earlier hired Hunter Biden:

After graduating from law school in 1996, Biden accepted a consultant position at the bank holding company MBNA, whose employees donated more than $200,000 into Joe Biden's senate campaigns. MBNA's hiring of Biden was controversial because his father had pushed for credit card legislation which was beneficial to the credit card industry and was supported by MBNA during Biden's time at the bank. The legislation made it more difficult to get bankruptcy protection. This led to Byron York of National Review referring to Joe Biden, years later, as "the senator from MBNA" referencing the close relationship between the two.

MBNA was headquartered in the Bidens' home town of Wilmington, DE. Originally Maryland National Bank, MBNA's parent moved its headquarers to Delaware in 1982 to bypass Maryland's restrictions on credit card interest rates, and its subsequent growth as a credit card issuer depended on its ability to negotiate Delaware politics. Thus it had a close connection with the Bidens. (It was acquired by Bank of America in 2006.)

As MBNA grew, it became one of the most profitable companies in the United States, the world's largest independent credit card issuer, and the largest private-sector employer in Delaware.

. . . Historically, many MBNA executives were former employees of the FBI.

But with MBNA no longer employing him as of 2006. according to the Wikipedia link above on Freeh,

In 2007, Freeh formed Freeh Group International Solutions, a consulting and investigative firm headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware with regional offices in Washington, D.C., and New York. Affiliated firms include Freeh Group Europe and the law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP. The latter firm includes Eugene R. Sullivan, a retired federal judge in Washington, D.C., and Eugene R. Sullivan II amongst partners, and Stanley Sporkin as senior counsel. Sporkin is a retired federal judge who earlier served as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement and as general counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In other words, after leaving the FBI with a highly uneven record, especially in counterintelligence, five years after leaving it, Freeh reinvented himself as an international fixer with connections in law enforcement and intelligence, precisely the same line of work the Bidens were engaged in. A vignette from 2015, a year prior to his e-mail exchanges with Hunter recorded on the laptop, provides a glimpse into his lifestyle during this period:

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh would have died within 60 seconds of sustaining a severed artery in a car crash eight months ago in Vermont if not for the life-saving actions of emergency crews, officials revealed Friday.

Current FBI leader James Comey and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., made the remarks when questioned about Freeh's medical condition, including a leg mangled in the Aug. 25 wreck in Barnard in central Vermont.

This was the first time that public officials have provided details concerning the serious nature of Freeh's condition after the accident.

Leahy noted that Freeh had a severed artery in a leg, but first responders, along with a retired FBI agent who witnessed the crash, came to Freeh's aid.

. . . "He credits those folks with saving his life," Comey told reporters at the news conference at Champlain College. Comey was in Burlington to tour the college with Leahy.

Freeh was critically injured in the crash. State police believe the former FBI director fell asleep at the wheel on Vermont 12 near his seasonal home in Barnard shortly after noon on Aug. 25.

So wait a moment. Eight months earlier, Freeh was nearly killed while driving a GMC Yukon that apparently also had a retired FBI agent aboard, since he was able to save Freeh's life within a minute of the crash. (Was the Yukon black? Sounds like Freeh still wanted FBI vibes, hoh?) What was going on? Apparently this was kept very, very quiet until Jim Comey, FBI Director at the time, talked about it, along with Sen Leahy. Isn't that odd?

The best we can surmise is that Freeh, Comey, and a US senator are all part of the same club, along, of course, with Hunter and his dad. I have a feeling that Hunter's interactions with that club go beyond what we've seen so far from the laptop, and this is in fact still going on as we speak. But as of 2020,

AlixPartners, the global consulting firm, today announced it has acquired Freeh Group International Solutions LLC (FGIS), a leading global risk management firm, expanding its premier global investigations practice. The transaction, effective immediately, sees FGIS team members joining AlixPartners and is complementary to the firm’s investigations, compliance, and cybersecurity capabilities. The acquisition will add a new AlixPartners office in Wilmington, Delaware. As part of this transaction, Louis J. Freeh will step down as Senior Managing Partner of the affiliated law firm of Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP, and will no longer practice law.

But it's still the Delaware Way.

Who Is :"One Eye"?

Allegations have resurfaced in the past week from Dr Gal Luft, an Israeli specialist in energy and security, who was an advisor to the Chinese energy company CEFC. CEFC, headed by Ye Jianming, paid $4,790,375.25 to Hunter's firm Owasco P.C. over about one year around 2017.

Luft was arrested in Cyprus in February 2023 on what he claims was "a politically motivated extradition request by the US". Luft claims to be in fear for his life if he is returned to the US. Over the past week, Luft made a video that he sent to the New York Post that repeats allegations he had earlier made in March.

These include that CEFC was paying huge sums to Hunter and Joe's brother James ($100,000 and $65,000 a month) in exchange for use of their family name in promoting China’s interests. He also alleged that Hunter had a pet mole that he called "One Eye" within the FBI, who provided tipoffs to CEFC honchos about incoming heat.

Speculation about the identity of "One Eye" immediately centered on former FBI Director Louis Freeh:

REPORT: Hunter Biden colluded with an FBI mole named 'One-Eye' to tip off Chinese business partners about investigation.

Who could this 'One-Eye' be?

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh happens to have one eye. He also happened to donate $100k to Hallie https://t.co/7YEZu7lFqb…

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 23, 2023

In fact, there are numerous potential connections between Freeh and the Bidens, not least via Hunter and Hallie, but also, following his retirement from the FBI, Freeh established his own consulting firm, Freeh Group International Solutions, in Wimington, DE. The Twitter post refers to a donation that was noted in a New York Post story from May 2021:

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a trust for two of President Biden’s grandchildren as he sought to pursue “some very good and profitable matters” with him, newly surfaced emails revealed Thursday.

Freeh apparently made the gift in April 2016 — when Biden was the outgoing vice president — and shortly before he told Biden’s son Hunter, “I would be delighted to do future work with you,” according to the emails.

According to the Collin Rugg tweet, the two grandchildren were Hallie's children from her marriage to Hunter's brother Beau, who passed away in May 2015. Hallie immediately began an intense cocaine-driven affair with Hunter after Beau's death. Freeh kept in contact with Hunter thereafter. Accxording to the same story,

“I also spoke to Dad a few weeks ago and would like to explore with him some future work options,” Freeh wrote on July 8, 2016.

“I believe that working together on these (and other legal) matters would be of value, fun and rewarding.”

In another email to Hunter Biden the following year, Freeh described seeing Joe Biden at church earlier in the day “and he said hi walking back from communion–I didn’t get the chance to return greetings.”

But by June of 2016, he was already working with Hunter on another project. According to this New York Post story from June 2021,

Emails obtained from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show the younger Biden — then working as a counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP — reached out to former FBI Director Louis Freeh in June 2016 about the case of Gabriel Popoviciu, who was accused of acquiring land to build a Bucharest mall at a below-market price, the Daily Mail reported.

In a June 18, 2016, email, Hunter Biden told Freeh — then a partner at the Delaware-based law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan — that he believed Popoviciu was “a good man that’s being very badly treated by a suspect Romanian justice system … Time is of the essence and my client has never balked at bringing whatever team it takes together at whatever cost to obtain justice.”

While Freeh’s initial response, which began “Thanks for your note and for thinking of me,” was noncommittal, he was soon fully invested in Popoviciu’s case.

“I will see my good friend Ron Noble (former SecGen INTERPOL), in NY on Thursday,” Freeh wrote Hunter three days after the initial email, “and most likely he knows this DNA [Romanian National Anti-Corruption Directorate] prosecutor, Laura Codruta Kobesi, very well. Let me talk to him and see what the possibilities may be to meet with her and to initiate a dialogue which would remediate the situation.”

In a subsequent email, the former FBI head suggested Popoviciu had value to American law enforcement.

“FYI,” Freeh wrote in a July 8 email to Hunter Biden obtained by The Post, “I have had conversations with the head of the FBI’s Criminal Division and there is a sincere Bureau interest in meeting and debriefing Gabriel on other matters he may be willing to discuss.” Freeh did not elaborate on what those “other matters” were.

Later in the email, Freeh told Hunter Biden he would “like to make a small payment to you for this referral-and for your continuing work on this matter. This is a standard practice … We would just need your bank information in order to make a remittance.”

So at least from 2016, there was an ongoing relationship between Hunter and Freeh that involved not just family connections, but business and financial relationships as well. At this point, we don't necessarily know the full extent of these. But this adds further context to a story from this past week:

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss officially filed charges against the president's son last Tuesday after a near five-year probe into his alleged tax crimes and foreign financial dealings.

Weiss's deputy, Assistant United States Attorney Derek Hines, signed off on the charging documents alongside his boss and two other assistant US attorneys – indicating he has a central role in Hunter's criminal prosecution.

According to Hines's LinkedIn account, he previously worked as Special Counsel to ex-FBI director Louis Freeh at his private company, Freeh Group International Solutions, a lobbying and 'risk management' consultancy that teamed up with Hunter on overseas business currently under scrutiny by lawmakers.

. . . Freeh and his firm worked closely with Hunter Biden trying to get the US State Department to help limit the prosecution of Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu, who was on the brink of a bribery conviction in 2015.

Freeh proposed setting up a private consultancy with Hunter and Joe Biden when he ended his vice presidential term, offering 'lucrative future work options' including working for overseas clients such as corrupt former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The full extent of Hunter's connections to key figures in the deep state remains to be seen, but I have the impression that they go well beyond just Freeh. Another factor that strikes me is that the amounts passing to the Bidens from the various foreign sources are turning out to be much larger than had been suggested by fragmentary reports from earlier this year, which adds to the credibiliity of the oveall allegations. A million here, a million there over eight or ten years was too small to seem worth Joe's time. Now we're starting to see $5 million here and $10 million there, whicxh makes at least somewhat more sense.

So The Story's Changed Yet Again!

Nothing new, of course, we're just living in the same alternate universe where there was a desperate race to locate the missing Titan submersible before the oxygen ran out. The latest version of the White House cocaine baggie has morphed from "in the residence library" to "in a cubby in a West Wing holding area", and now to "downstairs in the West Wing near the Situation Room":

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell acknowledged Thursday that contrary to the idea that a random tourist left cocaine in the White House in what officials have described as a “heavily trafficked” area, the cocaine was actually found in a “limited access place” near the Situation Room.

At this point, there's less and less credibility for each update, while the White House press office is fumbling over the Hatch Act. That in turn suggests to me that they're as much in the dark as anyone else. I would surmise the strategy for now is to act confused until it all goes away.

The issue of where it was found is probably the wrong question anyhow. As far as I can tell, Hunter's cocaine use is an open secret. The photo above, which I picked up off a post on as Conservative Inc site, doesn't have a date or event attached to it, but it shows Hunter dressed in black tie just as he's passed some type of uniformed security guard, appearing for all the world to be taking a bump of cocaine on his way into the main event.

Two Twitter posts containing versions of White House balcony video from July 4 portray Joe's and Dr Jill's body language telegraphing that they're fully aware of the situation.

I’m not saying Hunter Biden snorted cocaine at the White House but if he did, I would expect it to look exactly like this. pic.twitter.com/n3VykREfgq

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 5, 2023

As Hunter Biden steps away Joe and Jill look concerned but ignore it in the end. pic.twitter.com/ZwjxcVbVk8

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) July 5, 2023

Right-wing commentator Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, explains the issue in a nutshell:

There’s absolutely ZERO chance anyone other than a family member brought that cocaine inside the White House complex. No chance that would make it past the mag/security checkpoints. Family bypasses those.

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) July 5, 2023

He's gone into more detail elsewhere and made the point that "protectees", that is, the president, vice president, and members of their families, are escorted past all checkpoints by Secret Service special agents, in part because the agents carry firearms that wouldn't get past metal detectors. For others, the checkpoints include drug sniffing dogs.

But as Bongino suggests, the pool of likely suspects, assuming family members are the likeliest, expands beyond just Hunter. Vice president Harris and her husband can't be eliminated, and the vice president in particular has something of a cackling, party-girl persona. Joe's daughter Ashley was on the balcony at the July 4 celebration, she's been to rehab for her own addiction, and we don't currently know her whereabouts over the prior weekend.

Others have suggested White House security insiders already know who brought the baggie in, just as both the US Navy and the Royal Navy knew what happened to the Titan submersible the moment it imploded. I'm leaning in that direction myself. But if that's the case, I have two questions.

First, let's assume the news gets out, which I'm not sure will ever happen, but if it does, what happens to the one who's identified? If a celebrity gets busted for this sort of thing, there's usually just a public mea culpa, a promise not to do it again, and a trip to rehab. If it's Ashley, that would probably work. If it's Hunter, well, nothing new, but it might affect his diversion program for the lie on his gun application, which requires him to stay sober, and he could maybe even get jail time -- but since Joe is running the show, probably not. He'll just go back to rehab. What else is new?

If it's the vice president, on the other hand, that's definitely something new. She would almost certainly need to resign in a deal much like Spiro Agnew's -- possession of cocaine on federal property is five years in prison for a first offense, any amount. They'd waive the sentence in exchange for her guilty plea and resignation. That would probably have the greatest impact, but none of the possibilities would affect Joe directly.

The second question is even bigger, though: how do people at that level get their drugs? All of these people have Secret Service protection, at least theoretically. Hunter, as the immediate family of Joe when he was vice president, would have had it from January 2009 to January 20l7, when he was driving fast cars on crack and sometimes wrecking them, cavorting with Russian hookers, and buying drugs in industrial amounts. How did the Secret Service look the other way?

How is the Secret Service looking the other way now? Just the photo and video evidence we see, leaving aside the baggie near the Sit Room, suggests he has a massive cocaine habit, not just a bump now and then. These are significant amounts of narcotics being trafficked into the White House. How has the fix been put in? Someone had to enable Hunter, and irrespecive of one particular baggie, that's happening. The level of corruption in the Secret Service is likely the real hidden story here.

Kevin Morris Is Hunter's Lead Attorney

I don't have a good feeling about this. One of the main narratives we've seen in recent current events has been how Stockton Rush, CEO of Oceangate, brushed aside all counsels of prudence in the design and construction of his Titan submersible, only to succumb with four passengers to what proved to be the predictable outcome. Meanwhile, we're starting to hear of Joe Biden angrily dismissing equivalent warnings of predictable outcomes:

President Joe Biden, who is reportedly “consumed” with his son Hunter’s scandals, allegedly angrily dismisses White House aides who believe Hunter Biden’s controversial history might politically hurt his father.

. . . In recent days, White House aides reportedly tried to speak with Joe Biden about the continual drip drop of damning evidence streaming from Hunter Biden’s foreign business transactions, but NBC News sources report Joe Biden’s response was “outright angry” towards anyone who would challenge him on the subject.

Joe Biden reportedly told one aide, “Hands off my family.”

But at this point, with revelations containing text messages from Hunter claiming to be directly discussing business deals with Joe, both of their cases are joined at the hip. Their legal strategies are, or ought to be, closely coordinated. But now we have a story at Breitbart offhandedly tossing out the following information several paragraphs down:

Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s lead attorney, told CBS News that [former one-term Republican congressman Denver] Riggleman consulted with his team in the past months but will now be a staple on the team.

“He is an invaluable resource and we have made tremendous strides in untangling the massive amount of corruption and disinformation involved in this story,” Morris said.

Let's see if we can tease this out. Hunter appears to have been given a highly favorable deal in his federal tax and firearm cases, but his legal troubles are nowhere near over, and serious allegations of influence peddling, money laundering, and potentially even bribery have been developing against both Hunter and Joe as a result of ongoing House Republican investigations. It seems to me that simple prudence would require that both engage highly competent attorneys in fields like white collar criminal defense and constitutional law at minimum.

But now we hear that Keven Morris is Hunter's lead attorney, which says to me that he must have serious input to Joe's legal strategy as well. But what is Kevin's background? He's a Hollywood entertainment lawyer best known for brokering South Park, which debuted in 1997, 25 years ago. His wife is Gaby Morgerman, whom he married in 1991 before he became an influential Hollywood lawyer, and she, a senior vice president at William Morris, is generally characterized as one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.

In fact, I can't escape the impression that he's mainly successful for being Mr Gaby Morgerman. In recent years, he appears almost to have retired from entertainment law to pursue a literary career; Per the New York Post, he characterized himself in a visit to the set of the My Son Hunter film as "a retired lawyer associated with South Park". I've looked more closely at his literary efforts in this post and concluded that he hasn't established a serious literary career, especially one that would make any sort of money, even as a creative writing professor. In fact, in that post, I concluded he's a dilettante.

A dilettante who's acting as Hunter's lead attorney, with no background in constitutional or white collar criminal law. But let's look at his most recent move, in the Breitbart link above, hiring former one-term Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who also advised the House January 6 committee on "technical matters", to work with Hunter’s legal team on reducing "technical digital exposure" facing the Biden family. According to Wikipedia,

Denver Lee Riggleman III (born March 17, 1970) is an American businessman and former politician from Virginia who served one term as the United States representative for Virginia's 5th congressional district. A former Air Force officer and National Security Agency contractor, Riggleman opened a craft distillery in Virginia in 2014.

. . . In the 2018 elections, Riggleman was the Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives election for Virginia's 5th congressional district. . . . [In 2020] The Rappahannock County Republican Party criticized Riggleman after he officiated a same-sex wedding between two of his friends, and in September he was censured by party officials who claimed that he had "abandoned party principles" over fiscal and immigration policy.

. . . The local party leaders of the 5th Congressional District Republican Committee chose to determine the 2020 nominee for the fifth district by a convention instead of a primary election.

In doing so, they declined to nominate him for reelection in the 2020 election, and this ended his political career. Although he was no longer in Congress at the time of the January 6, 2021 events, he claims to have worked with the January 6 House committee, although his actual contributions are unclear, and the main effect of the committee's work has been to end the careers of the Republicans who actually served on it. Kevin Morris's connection with Denver Riggleman appears to stem from Morris's connection with the January 6 committee Republicans. According to the New York Post link,

Last year, Morris gave $50,000 to Americans Keeping Country First, a super PAC set up to pay for the defense of Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach or convict President Donald Trump following last year’s Capitol riots, according to the Federal Election Commission. Ten House Republicans, including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep Adam Kinzinger, were part of that group, and 222 Democrats voted to impeach Trump. Morris gave $2,900 to Kinzinger’s re-election campaign last year [2021] before the congressman announced he was retiring last fall.

Riggleman alienated his Republican base even before the 2020 election and didn't last long enough even to join the likes of Reps Cheney and Kinzinger. The Wikipedia entry indicates that Riggleman has a fascination with Bigfoot, and he has written extensively on QAnon as a conspiracy that destroys families, divides communities, and undermines democracy by spreading a directed stream of algorithmically and group targeted data, or something like that.

In ahort, Denver Riggleman is a flake and a quack, and it sounds like he has Kevin Morris's ear. Although Riggleman isn't an attorney, Morris has added Riggleman to Hunter's legal team. Just as a non-attorney outside observer, I've got to question the legal advice Kevin Morris is giving Hunter. Another quote from the New York Post link says,

Morris is a highly successful lawyer and a self-made businessman, who rose from humble origins in Pennsylvania to launch his own firm, raking in hundreds of millions for his first clients, the creators of “South Park.” Now he’s thrown in his lot with the disgraced, drug-addled son of a president, filming his own documentary about Biden.

“The whole thing is so bizarre,” one Hollywood insider told The Post. “What is a guy like that doing with Hunter Biden?”

Well, for starters, I doubt the "highly successful lawyer" part. I'm convinced he's made his way as Mr Gaby Morgerman, not as Kevin Morris; he's lost interest in his own legal field; his literary career isn't doing well even with his wife to push it along -- but if he's one thing, he's a dilettante, so he's taken up Hunter Biden.

Do they do coke together? I don't think this bodes well for Hunter's future. Kevin Morris is not a serious guy. I even wonder if Abbe Lowell will last much longer as a Hunter lawyer at this rate.

The Coke-In-The-White-House Story Fleshes Out

As you might expect, the story of where the cocaine was found in or near the White House has been morphing with each new report. Via CBS News, this seems to be the latest reliable veresion:

The substance was found in a common area of the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office and offices of some of the president's top aides and support staff. A senior law enforcement official told CBS News the substance was found in a storage facility in a cubby routinely used by White House staff and guests to store cell phones.

The Secret Service will lead a full review of how the substance got into the West Wing, the law enforcement officials told CBS News, including examining consulting cameras and entrance logs to determine who had access to the space.

I looked up "cubby" and find that Merriam-Webster defines it as "a small, snug place (as for hiding or storage) : cubbyhole." A web search gave the image above. The tweet below from James Rosen gives a little bit more detail:

BREAKING: Multiple officials at @USSecretService tell @NEWSMAX that contrary to more recent published reports, the cocaine was found “in a work area in the West Wing,” not in the @WhiteHouse library—and that the cocaine was “in a baggie” when discovered, not loose or concealed.

— James Rosen (@JamesRosenTV) July 4, 2023

This story at Hot Air draws reasonable inferences:

The drugs must have been brought there quite recently. After all, if they were located in a “cubby” where people drop their phones and other electronic devices before going in to see the President, how long could a clear baggy of an unknown white powdery substance remain there without being noticed?

. . . Even if we assume that it wasn’t Hunter Biden, who else brings a bag of cocaine to (presumably) see the President? You’d have to be pretty seriously hooked on the drugs to be unable to leave them in the car until your meeting was finished. Also, a plastic baggie of coke wouldn’t be picked up by a metal detector. If you had carried them undetected all the way to the Oval Office working area, why would you then take them out of your pocket and drop them off with your cell phone?

By the way, this is an example of how awful the copy editing at Conservative Inc is -- within two paragraphs, they spell it "baggy" and "baggie". These people are paid to do this. It resumes,

. . . This doesn’t sound like any sort of sinister plot or drug smuggling operation. It sounds like a boneheaded maneuver by an idiot. Perhaps someone whose brain is a bit addled by their crack addiction?

Just for fun, I looked up the penalty for cocaine possession on federal property, which would include the White House. For a first offense involving any amount:

Not less than 5 yrs, and not more than 40 yrs. If death or serious injury, not less than 20 or more than life. Fine of not more than $2 million if an individual, $5 million if not an individual,

I agree with the various writers who've surmised that the cubby area must be checked pretty frequently. The current stories say the baggie was discovered by Secret Service uniformed officers Sunday evening as part of a routine sweep. According to the New York Post,

White House pool reporters spotted the 53-year-old first son on Friday [June 30] climbing into the presidential SUV as it departed the White House enroute to Fort McNair, where the presidential travel party will helicopter over to Camp David in Maryland.

According to Newsweek,

Hunter Biden, his wife, and son Beau, returned to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday [July 4], along with the president and first lady Jill Biden.

It seems likely that few people would have been in the West Wing holding area between the Bidens' departure for Camp David on Friday and the discovery of the baggie Sunday evening, so that camera footage and visitor logs should be fairly easy to review.

But even if the culprit wasn't Hunter, that doesn't make the problem go away. The act of carrying the cocaine onto federal property carries a penalty of five years in prison, no matter who did it, and bringing it into the White House can't easily be finessed. In addition, if the individual involved was a federal employee, that person would probably have had a security clearance, and the drug episode would simply cancel that security clearance. If it were a Biden aide, that would also be big news.

Legacy media is now on the story, the long weekend is over, and I have a feeling this won't go away.

UPDATE: Matt Wallace, who as far as I can tell normally tweets on subjects like crypto currency and Elon Musk, was quoted by the UK Daily Mail as tweeting this:

The Cocaine found at the White House is not from Hunter Biden. The real story is actually much worse than that! Many of Joe Biden’s Top Staff regularly use Cocaine and other Hardcore Drugs. The cleaning crews are tasked with hiding all traces but this weekend was especially bad! pic.twitter.com/Wd3HHwzdY7

— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) July 4, 2023

For what it's worth.

Bag Of Coke Discovered On White House Grounds

The bare bones are as follows:

An 'unknown item' was found near the White House in Washington D.C. Roads surrounding the area were briefly closed as a precautionary measure.

. . . The DC Fire Department's Hazmat team responded and the White House grounds were evacuated as a precaution, the Secret Service spokesman Anthony Gugliemi added. DC Fire and EMS was contacted to evaluate, USSS said.

. . . DC Fire Hazmat officials report that they have found a substance that tests positive for Cocaine Hydrochloride, a highly addictive and illegal drug. The event has caused people to wonder how a possibly harmful material got onto the grounds of the White House and whether it was done on purpose to damage or intimidate the president or his team.

. . . The Secret Service announced that it was looking into the event and collaborating with other law enforcement organizations to ascertain the object's origin and nature.

. . . Hazmat teams were reportedly seen entering the White House's West Wing, which houses the president's office and residence, according to an eyewitnesses. It is unknown if the president was informed of the occurrence or was present when it occurred in the building. With numerous layers of security and screening, the West Wing is one of the most secure parts of the White House.

Initial reports described the discovery as "at the White House", but later ones, like the one above, said it was "near the White House", but apparently near enough that hazmat teams were seen entering the West Wing. The original statement from the Secret Service said,

"U.S. Secret Service Uniform Division Officers located an unknown item on the White House complex," a USSS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

The job of the Uniform Division is to protect the White House facilities, as opposed to the special agents, who protect the president, vice president, and their families. Legacy media, insofar as it covered the incident, tried to display confusion about just what "cocaine hydrochloride" is, tentatively suggesting it was some sort of nasal anesthetic. They got the nose part right, anyhow.

Those who watch On Patrol: Live or programs about customs and border enforcement know that when officers discover packets of unkown white powder, they immmediately apply field tests, and the typical positive return is specified as "cocaine hydrochloride", or just garden variety coke, nose candy.

This is almost certainly what took place early in last evening's process. I'm not sure why they called a hazmat team at all; certainly this isn't what the officers on On Patrol: Live do. If they find it in someone's pocket or in his car, they simply test the powder, note the result, read him his rights, and take him downtown, no shilly-shallying about in hazmat suits.

What we can reasonably surmise is that this was cocaine, it was enough to be noticed, and it was close enough to the West Wing and the residence to cause a flurry of activity. What we don't know is how it got there, except that tourists and other random people off the street don't get that close.

The Secret Service is "looking into the event", which suggests to me that we won't hear anything more about it. As of last week, reports were

President Joe Biden had made it clear to aides that he doesn't want to hear that he should keep son Hunter away amid the first son's ongoing legal drama.

. . . Biden is keeping Hunter close because he fears that the former crack cocaine addict could relapse amid the public scrutiny, sources told the network.

The pattern I've been seeing over the past year suggests to me that Hunter has long since relapsed, if he was ever off the stuff for very long. My surmise is that Hunter was able to circumvent his Secret Service minders at the Malibu compound, and it's likely that he hasn't been there much over the past year, while at the same time, it's hard for me not to think he and his wife Melissa have been living separate lives, also potentially due to Hunter's habit. Fox News reported last week,

[A] Fox News Digital review found that the visitor logs from the beginning of the Biden administration through February 2023 have not included any of Hunter Biden’s White House visits or extended stays.

Fox News Digital reviewed several articles to piece together Hunter Biden’s whereabouts during his dad’s administration and found that he has visited the White House over a dozen times through February 2023, the month accounted for in the most recent batch of visitor logs released last month.

A majority of the White House visits that Fox News Digital found were from 2022, which include the annual egg roll, Medal of Freedom ceremony, France State Dinner on the South Lawn, Christmas tree lighting, his daughter’s wedding, among others. However, they are all absent from the visitor logs, including what appear to be extended stays at the White House.

I would think that if Hunter is continuing his drug use, Joe has only two options. If he lets Hunter revert to his pre-2020 lifestyle of fast cars, hotels, hookers, and luxury rehab, that scandal will reemerge sooner rather than later, and it's entirely possible that Hunter's Secret Service minders in Malibu were reporting this could become a problem. If Joe keeps Hunter on a much shorter leash at the White House, this could potentially minimize the likelihood of problems like guns in the dumpster, lost laptops, wrecked rental cars, and the like -- but it doesn't completely eliminate exposure. Thus we'll still get the occasional lost bag of coke.

Both the Secret Service and the White House domestic staff have long traditions of absolute confidentiality over the presidential family's private affairs. I've got to assume, though, that Hunter is Hunter, and ash trays with crack pipes and other paraphernalia are routinely found there, along with heaven knows what else -- and both the Secret Service and the domestic staff are expected to clean up after him and keep it quiet. Did someone finally get fed up, maybe conveniently forget to pick up what Hunter had just dropped, and somehow arrange things so the bag of coke would somehow just randomly get found?

And this leaves aside the intricate question of coabuse and Joe's role in the whole situation.

The Sparkle Creed

A small data point caught my eye last week: A viral video of a pastor at Edina Community Lutheran Church in Minneapolis reciting the Sparkle Creed has left netizens enraged. In part, this was because as a dedicated Fringe fan, the only other place named Edina I'm aware of appeared in Season 2, Episode 11 of that marvelous show, which starred, among others, the late Lance Reddick.

The original title of the episode was to have been "Edina City Limits", and it took place in the fictitious town of Edina, NY, which was home to a phenomenon called "the Edina hum". According to the Wikipedia link, the hum was the result of an experiment

done by the army in the late 1970s to test how electromagnetic pulses can camouflage soldiers and was conducted on the townspeople; the army was unaware of the long-term effects of the study until it was too late, and the people were stuck in a deformed state. The "hum" hides their deformities from the human eye through a massive electromagnetic pulse that runs through the town, and once they leave and are out of the pulse's reach, their true deformities show.

Thus does life imitate art. The deformed people at Edina Community Church recite the Sparkle Creed, which apparently seems normal to them, but reveals their deformity to those outside, or something like that. But the Sparkle Creed has some bearing on the 303 Creative LLC v. Eleni case on which the US Supreme Court ruled Friday, when it held that a Christian website designer couldn't be complelled to make wedding websites for same-sex couples.

And this in turn reflects the trend of same-sex affirmation: a movement that began in a spirit of live-and-let-live in the 1960s attempted to hitchhike on the natural-law foundation of civil rights for the descendants of African slaves, but it has always faced the contradiction that same-sex conduct is against natural law. In spite of that -- or I would suggest, actually because of that -- same-sex affirmation has always needed to move into prescriptive territory. It can never be live-and-let-live, because it involves conscience, which derives from natural law. This requires an "Edina hum" to distract attention from the problem.

It isn't enough that citizens tolerate same-sex attraction or discount it as a factor in, say, hiring decisions. Instead, citizens must positively endorse it, for instance by sponsoring drag queen story hours at local libraries, or include positive portrayals in grade school curricula. That a main line Protestant denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, should add a creed endorsing same-sex lifestyles to its liturgy is simpy a reflection of this trend. The Edina Lutheran Community Church

is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and has been a part of the denomination’s Reconciling in Christ initiative, which seeks to foster “the full welcome, inclusion, and equity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual/aromantic (LGBTQIA+) Lutherans,” since 1985.

According to the link, "The “Sparkle Creed” was originally penned in 2021 by Rev. Rachel Small Stokes, pastor of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky." The UCC is another main line Protestant denomination. Oddly, I can't find any reference to the Sparkle Creed on the web from Episcopalian parishes or clergy, even though The Episcopal Church is thought to be the most same-sex-accepting. Certainly inserting the "Sparkle Creed" into the Eucharistic rites in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer could cause complaints to the local bishop, but it's likely there would be no repercussions.

And it's worth pointing out that various observers have called the Sparkle Creed "heretical", but the formal definition of heresy is "theological doctrine or system rejected as false by ecclesiastical authority". Martin Luther was a heretic insofar as he specifically opposed Catholic dogma, was recognized as opposing same by the Church, was offered the opportunity to recant, and rejected the opportnity. Anything short of that isn't "heresy", and here, Protestants are basically out of luck, especially since the early 1900s.

Any structures by which main line Protestant denominations can escalate heterodox practices like inserting the Sparkle Creed into the liturgy toward formal disciplinary proceedings have simply fallen into desuetude, and they would generate controversies that those denominations would prefer to avoid.

The problem that remains is the question of authentic Christianity as a credal religion. The Nicene Creed, for instance, has nothing to say about same-sex attraction or AIDS quilts. On the other hand, it does say, "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible," which carries a strong connotation of natural law, which in turn is elaborated in the Ten Commandments, which in turn in the case of Roman Catholicism are elaborated in the John Paul II Catechism, which does define same-sex attraction as objectively disordered.

But this brings me to the central problem of same-sex affirmation that I've elaborated above: in asserting things like "trans rights are human rights", it masquerades same-sex affirmation as a narural-law issue equivalent to civil rights, when both same-sex attraction and transsexualism are against natural law.

But we have an additional problem, as St John Henry Newman pointed out, that God created humans with a conscience, a natural faculty that works from natural law. Not only can you not get around natural law, but conscience won't let you do it -- or more accurately, conscience will give you a hard time if you try. And I think the whole purpose of same-sex affirmation as we've come to experience it has been an attempt to discount or somehow erase conscience as a factor, because I think what happens with the same-sex lifestyle is that it troubles the conscience.

The Sparkle Creed is an effort to distance religious observance from conscience by inserting syncretistic elements that somehow transfer divine authority to same-sex conduct. I don't think this will work any better than efforts, for instance with COVID lockdown restrictions, to abolish religion entirely. It isn't, strictly speaking, "heretical", especially because the most visible Protestant denominations won't impose formal discipline over its use. But it's here and it's queer. We should at least recognize it for what it is.