The Deep State Doubles Down

What a surprise!

Con-law professor Jonathan Turley angrily — well, angrily for Turley — ripped FBI director Christopher Wray for his prevarications to Congress as his agency and the Department of Justice stumble through a series of scandals. Wray offered only a “false appearance of contrition and substance” in a “maddening” performance, dodging questions about Hunter Biden, the censorship regime in which the FBI played a central role, and more.

“He could have answered some of these questions,” Turley told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “He just chose not to”.

I could have saved Prof Turley the trouble, I knew that was going to be Wray's take from the start -- and I also knew the Secret Service was going to be at a total loss over whose cocaine was left near the Sit Room. This is a pretty clear signal of how the deep state sees 2024: they're behind Biden, and they're doubling down. So far, Conservative Inc isn't getting the point. Ryan Saavedra writes at the Daily Wire this morning:

Top Democrats are reportedly reaching out to rising stars in the party and are telling them that President Joe Biden is not running for re-election.

CNN reported that the “top Democrats and donors” have reached out to “possible replacements” for Biden and had conversations about them getting in the race as Biden struggles in the White House.

Who, pray tell, are the rising-star Democrats? John Edwards is 70. Gary Hart is 86. Bill Clinton is 76 and can't run again. Are there any younger, attractive white guys left? Or even a Barack Obama? The Daily Wire story lets the cat out of the bag:

The Democrat who has seemingly tried to raise their national profile in recent months as Biden stumbles, both literally and figuratively, is California Governor Gavin Newsom.

This piece at UnHerd lists two other pssibilities, who nevertheless share a "consistent record of poor governance":

This applies not only to Newsom, but to Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, both of whom are widely pitched by Democratic operatives as possible Biden replacements.

Both are uninspiring machine politicians who likely couldn't unify the Democrats in the face of third-party threats from both the far left and the center.

At this point, the deep state is staying with the strategy it's had since the 2016 election: use the organs of state security against Trump and assume the election will be between Trump and a minimally acceptable Not Trump, necessarily Biden, because there's no good replacement for Joe. There are three problems with this strategy. The first is that the Republican nominee might not be Trump, although potential replacements so far are faltering. The second is that leftist and centrist third-party candidates could split the Democrat vote and elect the Republican, Trump or not. The third is that irrespective of some criminal smoking gun involving Joe and Hunter, Joe is one stumble, one fall away from a major health crisis. I would put that possibility as actually more likely than a smoking gun.

At this point, I'm somewhat skeptical that the Comer committee or some other Republican investigation can uncover enough about Joe and Hunter that we don't already know from the laptop, and one thing we are in fact learning as various e-mails gradually leak out is that Hunter has been executing Joe's business plan all along, and both the Democrat establishmenmt and the deep state have always been on board with it. The deep state will continue to slow-walk and stonewall investigative efforts, which they've made even clearer in the past few days.

The big thing that would change would be a health crisis for Joe that would put Vice President Harris in office, either before or after 2024. So far, nobody is gaming this out, although they really should. I'll make a start on this tomorrow.

Now Obama Wants Biden To Step Down?

In Tuesday's post, I argued that the Democrat problem is the need to maintain an illusion that the New Deal coalition of labor, Catholics, immigrants, Jews and other ethnics, Southern segregationists, and Ivy League gentry is intact, when it has been disintegrating over the past two generations. Both parties basically need white guys to head the ticket, with the Democrats typically nominating a northern liberal for president and for vice president a southern conservative a la Roosevelt-Garner, Truman-Barkley, or Kennedy-Johnson.

This could be switched out, for example Carter-Mondale with a southern president and a northern vice president, and it was the case even with Obama-Biden, with Biden at least thought to be the southern conservative, which he had been in the Senate. It was even arguably the case with Clinton-Gore, although both of them were southerners and centrists while in office. On the other hand, they were both white guys. This at bottom maintained the comfortable fiction of a continuing New Deal coalition, and in the case of Bill Clinton, it was a deliberate contrast with the disasters of the Mondale and Dukakis candicacies.

The problem is that the comfortable fiction is harder and harder to maintain, and the reality is that the Democrat constituency has become greens, radical feminists, parlor leftists, queer theorists, race hustlers, and the urban criminal class, financed by tech and rentier wealth. It basically can't win a presidential election without a credible white guy at the top of the ticket, and that includes Barack Obama, the Ivy-educated child of a white woman and a Kenyan economist who went to an exclusive private school in Hawaii. If anything, Obama was a smoothie in whiteface.

The report now is that Obama is meeting with a cabal of young congressional Democrats:

Former President Barack Obama has hosted a handful of informal, but lengthy private meetings with groups of next-generation House Democrats this spring, I’m told by multiple attendees. The initial session featured the chamber’s new trio of leaders, but he then held subsequent conversations with a range of lawmakers.

Included were progressive members, like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), as well as more moderate lawmakers, such as Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

The gatherings were Obama’s idea, I’m told, and were designed for the now-61-year-old former president to keep current with his party’s rising stars, more than six years after he left office.

According to RadarOnline,

Barack Obama has stabbed his former vice president Joe Biden in the back by secretly rallying congressional support for an alternate 2024 candidate — despite having publicly backed his ex- Veep for a second term.

That’s the bombshell claim behind a new report suggesting the 61-year-old former commander-in-chief was caught red-handed hosting a series of hush-hush meetings with Democratic congressional bigwigs and former administration staffers at his Washington, D.C., office.

“Obama recognizes the gravity of the situation with Joe’s disappointing poll numbers,” said a Beltway insider.

“He had hoped that the president would have rallied and come into his own at this point, but that clearly hasn’t happened.

We don't precisely know what's behind Obama's reported loss of confidence, but we can speculate:

Cornel West’s third-party presidential campaign is stirring up unpleasant flashbacks to 2016 for members of the Democratic Party, some of whom are starting to grow anxious about the effect it could have on President Biden’s reelection.

West, a philosopher, Ivy League academic and leftist, recently announced he is newly registered with the Green Party as he seeks to challenge Biden and the eventual Republican nominee for the White House.

Or this:

Sen. Joe Manchin's planned trip to a "No Labels" event in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire has some Democrats worried he could mount a "spoiler" reminiscent of late Texas industrialist Ross Perot in 1992.

, , , The senator recently told reporters his participation at the event is not a formal indication of third-party intentions, However, he later added that he's "never ruled out anything or [ruled] in anything... this is strictly a conference we're having."

Or Robert Kennedy Jr:

Far from an exile, he is an extremely well-connected person with unparalleled access to the centers of influence in New York, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C., who either has no idea what kind of fire he’s playing with, or does and is therefore an arsonist.

. . . Lesser threats than Kennedy have played spoilers in elections before, and if he succeeds in helping burn us all to the ground, it will not be because he is an outsider, as he claims, but because of a political and media culture that has protected and encouraged and fawned over him his whole life — handing a perpetual problem child, now 69 and desperate for attention, accelerant and matches.

The problem isn't really Joe Biden, the problem is the disappearance of the New Deal coalition. Manchin represents the strain of moderate Democrat that has largely disappeared from congress and is being kicked to the curb by the new Democrats. Cornel West represents that now-dominant faction, the greens, parlor leftists, queer theorists, and race hustlers who are demanding even more influence. Kennedy represents the Ivy League gentry in the old coalition who are also now being kicked to the curb along with the old-style moderates.

Joe Biden became president in the wake of Hillary Clinton's loss, which might be characterized as Dukakis Lite -- her candicacy was a bait-and-switch, since she had been in the White House already as Mrs Clinton and apparently hoped to succeed in part under the impression she would carry forward Clinton's southern moderate posture, but nobody believed it, and she lost on the basis that she was a radical feminist member of the new Democrat club, and she couldn't cover it up.

So the party fell back on Biden, who'd been preparing to run in 2016. When Hillary lost, his behind-the-scenes argument appears to have been that he could resume the role of centrist unifier. The problem is that nobody at this late date can assume that role, since many of the groups that made up the old coalition, like Catholics, many Jews and other ethnics, labor, Southern moderates, and Kennedy-style gentry, have in some measure left it, and there are no more credible white guys who can run at the top of a Democrat ticket to keep enough of those groups on board to win a presidential election. Biden was the last one.

This is Obama's dilemma. If, per the reports, he wants to replace Biden with a winner, who's the winner? Gavin Newsom? Whom does Obama think can outperform Biden as a Democrat nominee, who needs credibly to represent anything more than the current dominant Democrat faction? I actually think Biden is the only choice. Biden could well lose, but anyone else will lose bigger.

A Bigfoot And UFO Nut Is A Key Member Of Hunter's Legal Team

Last week I posted on an incresingly unserious-looking Kevin Morris, who represents himself as Hunter Biden's lead attorney. One item I noted was that Morris has hired bigfoot and UFO expert Denver Riggleman to work on the defense team. As I outlined in that post, Riggleman, who is not an attorney, served one term as a Republican congressman from Virginia from 2019 to 2021, but he managed to get so crosswise with the Republicans in his district that they refused to renominate him for the 2020 election.

The illustration at the top of this post is from his podcast's web site, which you can find here. On one hand, he pretty clearly believes in bigfoot and UFOs, and he also believes QAnon is a vast conspiracy. After leaving the House in January 2021, he nevertheless attached himself as an adviser to the January 6 committee and argued that the demonstrators had been guided by QAnon types.

As I said in my post last week, he's a flake and a quack. This is only confirmed by his YouTube channel, a sample episode of which you can see below:

This past Sunday, he was interviewed by Jim Acosta on CNN, who took him seriously -- and in fact, Conservative Inc took it seriously that Acosta took him seriously.

Acosta begins by noting that Riggleman worked with the January 6th committee, which apparently adds great credibility in the eyes of the host. At that point, Riggleman begins to suggest that the material on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which has been forensically authenticated by numerous news outlets (including The New York Times and The Washington Post, albeit belatedly), is actually fake. He claims to have the “data” on his side.

The link quotes from Riggleman in the Acosta interview:

What we wanted to look at first is the data that’s out there that’s purported to be Hunter Biden’s laptop. We wanted to see if there was any forensic format or if there was any forensic validity to it, and there was none. Jim, I think what surprised me is that, if you’re looking at data from 4chan or from a site like Marco Polo, you have to have forensic validity, and I am shocked that anyone anybody Congress would use that data or any journalist would even use those sources. Because what we found out, and we do have the data, we have the ones and zeros. we have the facts-based analysis based on the ones and zeros that we have, we found this the very same folks. We have videos.

His point, as far as anyone can parse it out, appears to be that what we think is Hunter's laptop -- and that includes what the FBI, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have concluded is Hunter's laptop -- is an elaborate hoax, apparently concocted with the help of AI by the same people who are behind QAnon. He claims an expertise in data analysis, "ones and zeros", that allows him to prove this. But according to Wikipedia, his educational and work background had nothing to do with this:

Riggleman earned an Associate of Arts from Rowan College at Burlington County, formerly Burlington County College, in 1996. He received an Associate of Applied Science in avionics systems from the Community College of the Air Force at Air University in 1996. In 1998, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. Riggleman received a graduate certificate in project management from Villanova University in 2007.

. . . Riggleman served in the Air Force for 15 years.[7] After initially serving as an enlisted avionics technician, he received a commission and went on to serve as an intelligence officer.

Riggleman founded NSA contractor Analytics Warehouse, LLC, in 2007, and was its CEO until 2015.

But here's my big puzzle: Kevin Morris, who represents himself as Hunter Biden's lead defense attorney -- by implication, this means he's supervising Abbe Lowell and Chris Clark -- has hired this guy to work on that same legal team on the basis that the laptop is a hoax generated by AI in the service of QAnon. But Clark in particular has repeatedly implied in public remarks that the laptop is authentic, for instance:

"I’ve seen people wave various random e-mails around. I’ve never seen it. Obviously whatever that stuff [is] has been available to everyone in the United States for many years, sadly. I don’t know how you’d feel if everyone was disseminating the contents of your stolen phone. I wouldn’t be happy about it," Clark said.

I can't imagine that Riggleman was able to get on CNN and represent himself as working on Hunter's legal team without Keven Morris allowing it to happen. For instance,

Acosta began with a softball: "Why did you decide to take on this case and work with the Hunter Biden legal team and what's your role here?"

Riggleman said he's doing the same forensic analysis for the Bidens that he did for Pelosi. . . . "I also found out, you know, as the Hunter Biden legal team reached out to me, that a lot of the people that have been pushing this are the same people that pushed the J-6 conspiracy theories."

I assume that Riggleman said these things with Kevin Morris's approval, because if he hadn't, Morris would have immediately issued a statement disassociating the legal team and Hunter from Riggleman and demanded a retraction from CNN.

But this in turn makes me start to think Kevin Morris is as big a quack as Denver Riggleman. Let's recall, though, that any potential case against Joe Biden will be inextricably linked to Hunter's cases, which will almost certainly not go away with his pending guilty plea in Delaware. But at least for now, Kevin Morris is running that show with the invaluable assistance of Denver Riggleman of bigfoot and UFO fame.

I'm still working my way through this.

Wishful Thinking

Over the weekend there was an uptick in calls from various quarters for Joe Biden to step down from his intent to run for reelection next year, but I think the attempts by B-listers like Steven Hayward to see reason for optimism are just wishful thinking.

I still say Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee next year. And I think there’s a 50/50 chance that if Biden doesn’t drop out of his own volition, Gavin Newsom will decide some time this fall to jump in the race, with a “more in sorrow than anger” announcement that praises Biden for his good deeds, but that it’s time for a generational shift. Don’t think Newsom and his advisers aren’t weighing this possibility.

The big factor that Hayward and the others who think this way are leaving out is that Biden is basically the last Democrat who can remotely claim to lead a fusion party that unites what's left of the New Deal coalition -- which, recall, once comprised labor, Catholics, immigrants, Jews and other ethnics, Southern segregationists, and Ivy League gentry. Substantial numbers of most of these have left the party over the past two generations, while Southern segregationists have effecttively disappeared.

The traditional members of the New Deal coalition have been replaced by greens, radical feminists, parlor leftists, queer theorists, race hustlers, and the urban criminal class. The challenge for Democrats has been to keep these groups off center stage, either by bumping them aside and triangulating a la Bill Clinton, or co-opting them a la Barack Obama. Without a strong leadership figure who can do either while maintaining some semblance of party unity, there's no chance of building a winning electoral coalition, since the Republicans have begun to occupy the center.

This has been the Democrat dilemma for the past several election cycles -- it's Bernie Sanders or a more moderate-seeming alternative like Hillary or Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders was at least a cis white male, while Joe Biden was both that and a seeming moderate. The problem is that Bernie is even older than Joe, while Hillary is not in good health. Joe is the last viable Democrat figure, all the others who are younger are too closely associated with the new Democrat factions.

Note that Mr Hayward expects Gavin Newsom to step in and supplant Joe. But Newsom is not the same kind of Californian as Nixon or Reagan. He's tied too closely to Covid lockdowns, poop on the streets, crime, homelessness, and high taxes-- and this leaves aside that he's a leader in the only state policy initiative so far to raise the possibility of reparations for the descendants of African slaves by appointing a task force to study the issue.

Newsom signed the task force into law in 2020, touting California being the first state to study reparations and calling the bill a corrective to the “structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions” without explicitly embracing monetary compensation.

The difficulty is that the task force came up with a recommendation that those eligible receive up to $1.2 million in reparations, while individual members of the task force have been demanding other measures like abolishing child support payments for African-American fathers. The dilemma for Democrat candidates at this point is that either they endorse measures like this, which will alienate not just whites but Latins and Asians, who'll have to pay reparations as well, or they don't, which will bring down the wrath of the reparations hustlers and their allies.

This is a problem Newsom has brought on himself just by opening the door to it, but of course, he did this in an attempt to appease the reparations hustler wing of his party within California in the first place. His nomination in 2024 would simply assure a substantial number of Democrats supporting a third-party candidate. Mr Hayward is the expert who's paid to think this through; I have no idea why it kasn't occurred to him.

The lizard people behind Biden will simply veto any potential Newsom candicacy on the basis that Newsom will be unelectable in the general, while Biden has proven that, whatever may happen down the road, he's been elected once.

By the same token, Kamala Harris isn't electable, but the bigger issue is that no other potential Democrat candidate, such as those who ran in the 2020 primaries, is an arguable national figure who can campaign on behalf of the old New Deal coalition. They all represent individual new factions, the greens, radical feminists, parlor leftists, queer theorists, race hustlers, and the urban criminal class. They all face the Bud Light dilemma, where on one hand, they'll offend one group, but if they try to turn around and satisfy that group, they'll offend someone else, and in the end, nobody wants their product.

The Democrat strategy is going to be to tough it out over Joe, because they don't have any choice. Whatever issue comes up, coke in the Sit Room, bribes from the Chicomms, stumbles, mumbles, and falls, they're going to say nothing, hope things blow over, and basicaly claim that bad as Joe is, he isn't Trump.

What they need to do is somehow contain Robert Kennedy Jr, because his threat is that he comes off as less wacky than legacy media wants to make out, and for some segment of voters, who will mostly be Democrats left over from the old New Deal coalition nostalgic for a Kennedy, he'll be better than Joe but not Donald Trump.

My problem with Kennedy is that he has cogent things to say about vaccines, but he also wants to legalize psychedelics.

Louis Freeh And The Alternate Universe

The other day I noted that the White House versions of the cocaine story seem to come from the same alternate universe as the story of the frantic race to find the missing Titan sub before the oxygen runs out. Now it'sd starting to look as though former FBI Director and international fixer Louis Freeh has access to the same portal. Just the first page of hits from a web search on Freeh brought up the strange story of the August 25, 2014 one-car accident in rural Vermont, in which Freeh is said to have fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed his GMC Yukon.

What was hinky about the story from the start was that it was an explanation of the accident eight months after the fact, and it came from none other than James Comey, who was FBI Director at the time, backed up by Vermont Sen Patrick Leahy. In LA, celebrities wreck their Porsches and Lambos all the time, LAPD or CHP gives the details, KTLA or the Times reports a day or so later, and everyone moves on. Here, it turns out, Louis Freeh, former FBI Director, wrecks his Yukon fedmobile, the whole matter is swept under the rug for eight months, until the current FBI Director gives the details, which themselves are strange.

Only one source asked the obvious questions, shortly after the wreck itself but well before Director Comey's comments:

Recently, we reported on an Aug. 25 one-car crash involving the long-time former FBI director, Louis Freeh. Considering Freeh’s prominence and tenure in the national security apparatus, the incident has received surprisingly little media attention and virtually no serious scrutiny.

. . . Now, we’d like to update you on two key points, and then on some other curiosities.

First: local Vermont media are reporting that, just prior to his crash along a relatively straight and flat portion of a rural stretch of Vermont Highway 12, Freeh, 64, nearly took out three motorists, whose evasive actions saved themselves.

Second: a still unidentified FBI agent quickly materialized at the scene of the crash.

As I said above, this piece was written eight months before Director Comey and Sen Leahy gave their updates, but the problem of the extra FBI agent who suddenly turned up on the scene stood out right away. The version at the link says this of the agent:

A still unidentified FBI agent was one of the first people to arrive at the accident scene, according to police. He was apparently from out of state. What he was doing there is still not clear. Police believed him to be off-duty, but could not say with certainty.

That report in USA Today from April 24, 2015, eight months after the accident, carried Director Comey's and Sen Leahy's version of events, which raised more questions than they answered. These explanations weren't available to the writers in the link above, and they don't seem to have followed up on them, if they even knew about them:

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.

So OK, the mysterious FBI agent from out of state wasn't on duty, he was retired, and he just happened to be standing around on a rural stretch of Vermont Highway 12 when he witnessed the crash and was able to rush in within a minute and save his former director's life, or something like that. And this is the firat time anyone has provided any details at all about the crash or Freeh's medical condition. The link above notes the initial secrecy over the whole incident:

It’s important to remember that this happened shortly after noon, and not terribly far from Freeh’s vacation home, not typical circumstances for a driver to have fallen asleep.

Freeh and his staff have been mum on the whole thing; the FBI has provided no details or explanation. And law enforcement has not appeared to be especially zealous in figuring out what happened.

. . . Freeh is, or was, under armed guard at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a hospital in neighboring New Hampshire that is considered among the top hospitals. It routinely has very tight security, so the reason for the extra precautions is not clear.

And nobody said anything more until, eight months later, James Comey, FBI Director himself at the time, backed up by Sen Leahy, gave a not entirely convincing explanation. Their version is that Freeh's femoral artery had been severed in the crash.

"Louis would have died within a minute or so. They stopped the bleeding," Leahy said.

"I told him he better believe in guardian angels," said Leahy, who noted the retired FBI agent also had the same first name as Freeh.

Yes indeed, a severed femoral artery can result in death within minutes -- but how long does it normally take first responders to get to the rural scene of an accident like that? Less than a minute, according to Sen Leahy. Unless the acccident was right outside the local firehouse, I can't buy this. So it must have been the angel FBI agent on the scene, huh?

But this doesn't explain how, unless he was a real angel, he was so conveniently on the scene -- but this in turn raises an entirely reasonable question, whether in fact the severed artery was Freeh's actual injury, and the angel agent was just part of a smokescreen. We're sort of back to the same alternate universe where they're frantically searching for the Titan sub before the oxygen runs out, when the pseudo-urgency masks the real question.

In the days after the accident, nothing was released about what happened to Freeh, and everyone -- hospital, police, Freeh's international fixer staff -- was mum. Eight months later, boy oh boy, gotta stop that bleeding or he'll die within minutes! And of course, this doesn't come from the hospital, the police, or Freeh's international fixer staff -- it comes from the current FBI Director and a US senator.

Well, that should settle it, huh? What we do know is that by 2015, Freeh and his team of international fixers were working closely with Hunter Biden on the case of Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu, who was on the brink of a bribery conviction. By 2016, James Comey was coordinating with the Hillary Clinton campaign to use putative Russian pee tapes against Donald Trump. By 2018, he was saying

“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” the former FBI director, 57, told George Stephanopoulos. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”

And then there's the entirely separate case of the angel Secret Service agents who turned up at a Delaware gun shop in 2018 to confiscate the paperwork recording the sale of a gun to Hunter Biden, whose girlfriend Hallie had tossed it into a dumpster. The Secret Service said it had no record of its involvement. I guess, like Sen Leahy says, you just gotta believe in guardian angels.

Well, it's possible that Louis Freeh fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his fedmobile, and an angel FBI agent turned up on the scene to stop his bleeding or he woulda died, It's possible, but we don't know. Seems like right now, there's a lot we just don't know.

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.