Democrat Contingency Planning

Over the past several days, I've begun to see more little hints that the Democrats are looking for a Plan B. A few weeks ago, I noted that they were quietly dusting off two potential candidates, California Gov Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov JB Pritzker. Just this past Tuesday, the Sacramento Bee noted,

Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking fundraising steps often used by potential presidential candidates, setting up multiple committees that in their first three months have raised and spent millions of dollars.

. . . Newsom has repeatedly denied any interest in running for the nation’s highest office next year. But whether President Joe Biden wins or loses, there will be no Democratic incumbent in 2028. As governor of the nation’s largest state, the big winner of two elections and a recall, Newsom would be well-positioned for a White House run.

And as of yesterday, Ron DeSantis agreed to debate Gov Newsom:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday evening that he has accepted California Governor Gavin Newsom’s debate challenge.

DeSantis accepted the challenge during an interview on Fox News with host Sean Hannity, who will host the debate.

When asked by Hannity what his answer was to Newsom’s offer, DeSantis responded: “Absolutely, I’m game.”

While JB Pritzker has maintained a somewhat lower profile as a potential 2024 contender, he just recently got into his own public fight with DeSantis:

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) fired back at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) after the 2024 presidential candidate attacked a state law Pitzker signed letting non-U.S. citizens apply to be police officers.

“This man isn’t smart enough to be president,” Pritzker said of DeSantis on Monday, writing a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Back in April, The Hill ran a piece very much like the Sacramento Bee's on Newsom, suggesting Pritzker, even if he might not be quite serious about 2024, is a good prospect for 2028:

The decision to hold the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago handed a critical win to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, elevating his profile at a time when many are speculating on his ambitions for higher office.

Pritzker, a Hyatt Hotels heir fresh off a landslide reelection last November, has seen a string of progressive wins under his tenure and stirred discussion of presidential aspirations after traveling to New Hampshire and Florida last year.

As of late June, Barack Obama was reportedly on board with Biden:

Former President Barack Obama pledged during a recent lunch with President Biden at the White House that he would do all he can to support Biden’s reelection and reportedly stressed that Donald Trump remains a formidable political foe.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Obama voiced concerns about Trump’s political strengths, such as his intensely loyal base of supporters, political polarization and the conservative media world backing him.

But that meeting was six weeks ago. Why are reports of it emerging just now? Nick Arama's take at Red State probably does reflect the current state of affairs:

I wrote about the Harvard/Harris poll that had Trump up by five points and there was NY Times/Sienna poll that has them tied. The RealClear Politics average as of Wednesday, Aug. 2, is Biden, by the slimmest of margins, at +0.9, and given how the polls seem to always be skewed toward Democrats, that’s looking like a win to me there.

. . . There’s definitely some spin in that report with the claim that “Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party, according to the people.” Either Obama is spinning to Biden or that’s the WaPo trying to cover for Biden’s deficiencies.

Either way, Obama knows that they have a lot to fear in a race with Trump and there’s a big problem with Biden.

Even the take at NBC News is less than univocal:

The Washington Post was first to report Wednesday that Obama had expressed concern during the private lunch about Trump's strengths, including his base, conservative media that's friendly to Trump and a politically polarized electorate. Sources familiar with the meeting declined to offer additional details.

. . . As NBC News reported on the day of Obama’s White House visit in June, officials in both camps were careful to characterize it as just “another check-in conversation,” a clear effort to convey that such interactions were hardly uncommon.

But since the June meeting, Biden has had a number of setbacks, some major. The most important was the Delaware federal judge's refusal to sign off on Hunter's plea deal, when it was pretty clearly expected that if this went through, it would remove the Hunter issue from the 2024 campaign, or at lest make it harder to raise. The baggie-in-the-White House story kept the Hunter issue alive even before the plea deal fell through, and that appears to have had the additional problem that it's forced Hunter out of the White House, where he'd apparently been a close adviser to Joe. Their strange codependency also seems to have given Joe a kind of moral support.

Now there's Devon Archer's testimony to the Comer committee, which has at minimum made Joe's repeated insistence that he never discussed business with Hunter inoperative. And beyond that, Joe has finally been forced to acknowledge his seventh grandchild.

But before he could do so, he wanted to take one final step: getting the "green light" from his son, which he received last week, one source said. And on Friday, Biden finally spoke out about his seventh grandchild whom, for years, he wouldn't so much as acknowledge in public.

It almost sounds like Hunter tells Joe what to do. That's a problem, even for Democrats.

My own guess is that Gov Newsom would not be maintaining a low-key profile as contingency candidate without the approval of Speaker Emeritus Pelosi, with whom he is close, and even with the tacit acquiescence of Barack Obama.

By the same token, the Republican public strategy of moving toward impeachment isn't serious, as I think they're fully aware that even if the House votes out articles, there's no chance of conviction in the Senate. On the other hand, McCarthy and the Republicans are startiong to get a sense they can use Trump to panic the Democrat establishment into taking Biden off the ballot, whether Trump winds up as the nominee or not.

A More Detailed Look At The Shokin Timeline

Accounts of Devon Archer's testimony to the Comer committee on Monday give what appears to be a broad outline of the events that led up to the removal of Viktor Shokin as prosecutor in Ukraine to relieve pressure on Burisma:

Archer, a former Hunter Biden business associate, testified that Hunter Biden was being pressured in December 2015 to do something about Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine energy firm for which they both worked, lawmakers said.

In the same month, then-Vice President Joe Biden began applying pressure in a series of moves that got Shokin fired.

Archer also reportedly told the House Oversight Committee, to which he gave the closed-door testimony Monday, that Burisma would not have survived had it not been for the influence of the Biden family.

However, the existing record gives considerably more detail without the need for Mr Archer to corroborate it. For now, at least, the fire-Shokin story begins on November 2, 2015:

On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was serving as a Burisma board member, his associates Devon Archer, a fellow board member, and Rosemont Seneca Partners president Eric Schwerin about a "revised proposal, contract and initial invoice for Burisma Holdings," from lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies, according to emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, which have been verified by Fox News Digital.

Pozharskyi emphasized in his email that the "ultimate purpose" of the agreement with Blue Star Strategies was to shut down "any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine," referring to Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.

. . . The email exchange came one month before then Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine's capital of Kiev, where he gave a speech about rooting out corruption in politics.

Ahead of the trip, an associate at Blue Star Strategies emailed Blue Star executives, Hunter Biden, Archer and Pozharskyi about a White House conference call that "outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding U.S. policy toward Ukraine."

Archer's Monday testimony apparently adds some specific meetings and calls to this record:

[A]t a meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015, top executives of Ukrainian energy concern Burisma asked Hunter Biden and himself for help from D.C. At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden’s dad, Joe Biden, was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president as well as his point person on Ukraine. Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and Vadym Pozharski, a Burisma executive, wanted to get Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired as he was investigating the company for corruption, Archer told members of Congress.

Hunter Biden put Zlochevsky and Pozharski on a call with “D.C.,” Archer said, noting he was not part of the phone call so couldn’t possibly know who exactly was on the other end of the line.

. . . A mere five days after the Dubai meeting and phone call, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada, its parliament in Kyiv, attempting to lay the groundwork for firing Shokin.

It took just a few short months before Shokin was fired. Joe Biden bragged in a public speech in January 2018 that he was personally responsible for getting that firing accomplished so quickly. In fact, he claimed he had bullied the Ukrainian government into firing the investigator by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee unless he got what he wanted.

Blue Star Strategies by most accounts was closely involved in all these events. According to Politico in 2022,

Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies has registered retroactively as a foreign agent for work it did in 2016 on behalf of Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola), an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, according to documents with the Justice Department filed late last week.

. . . — Hunter Biden, the son of the then-vice president, sat on Burisma’s board at the time and helped broker the energy company’s arrangement with Blue Star, The New York Times reported — a tie that ultimately triggered the series of events leading to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

— The filings appear to affirm testimony provided to congressional investigators by [Blue Star executives] Tramontano and Painter, disclosing that Blue Star was asked in 2016 to broker meetings between U.S. government officials and Zlochevsky’s attorneys to “present an explanation of certain adverse proceedings in the U.K. and Ukraine.” The firm disclosed meetings in February and March of 2016 with Amos Hochstein (more on him in last week’s West Wing Playbook) and Cathy Novelli, officials at the State Department who handled energy matters.

In June of this year, Fox News reported on Amos Hochstein's involvement in the Shokin matter:

President Biden’s senior energy adviser, who met with the then-vice president Biden two days after his infamous Ukraine trip for a one-on-one meeting, was in communication with Hunter Biden multiple times and appeared to be in contact with associates at Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings when Hunter was serving on the board, emails reveal.

Amos Hochstein, who served as special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs under the Obama-Biden administration, was tapped as Biden’s special coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security in August 2021. While he testified in September 2020 about his conversation with Hunter and a few meetings with then-Vice President Biden, he met with Biden several times between 2015 and 2016.

However, the story outlines numerous contacts and meetings between Hunter, Joe, and Hochstein over Burisma dating back as far as 2014, but there was a major uptick in meetings surrounding Joe's 2015 trip to Ukraine and Shokin's firing. By October 2015, according to Hochastein's testimony at the link,

"We were starting to think about a trip to Ukraine, and I wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message—to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma," Hochstein told Congress, according to the report.

According to Hochstein, Biden told Hunter about the meeting, prompting Hunter to request a meeting with Hochstein, according to the 2020 Senate Republican report.

. . . "Well, he [Hunter Biden] asked me for a meeting," Hochstein said in his testimony. "I think he wanted to know my views on Burisma and Zlochevsky. And so I shared with him that the Russians were using his name in order to sow disinformation—attempt to sow disinformation among Ukrainians."

The report said Hochstein "did not go so far as to recommend that Hunter leave the board," citing the New Yorker.

On Dec. 11, 2015, Hochstein met with Biden in the West Wing, just two days after the vice president returned from his infamous Ukraine trip, where he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if Ukrainian leaders did not fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. The Republican Senate report cited testimony that Hochstein also had a conversation with Biden on the flight over to Ukraine in December 2015.

. . . Hochstein visited Biden at least another six times in 2016, including the day after prosecutor Shokin’s firing in Ukraine.

Accordinmg t0 Wikipedia, Hochstein was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from 2011 to 2015 and Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs from 2015 to 2017. It adds, "While at the State Department, Hochstein worked as a close advisor to Vice-President Biden." Also,

On August 10, 2021, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he is appointing Hochstein as the Senior Advisor for Energy Security, and he was subsequently appointed Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security.

. . . In June 2022, The Washington Post reported that Hochstein was serving as President Biden’s top energy advisor, or “energy whisperer,” in both domestic and international energy issues. In 2022, Hochstein "helped shape" the White House effort to reduce gas prices during the height of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and throughout 2022 often traveled with Biden to overseas meetings.

Every indication we have is that Hochstein has worked very closely with Joe since Joe was vice president and continues to work closely with him now. He also seems to have been near the center of US State Department policy overall.

The record indicates that he met frequently with Hunter during the critical period of Shokin's firing as prosecutor, even though he claims to have opposed Hunter's position on the Burisma board, and he met even more freqwuently with Joe himself, even accompanying him on the December 2015 trip to Ukraine. Yet despite his opposition to Hunter's presence on the Burisma board and Hunter's clear advocacy of Burisma's corrupt management, Hochstein appears to have endorsed the Biden family program of firing Shokin and allowing Burisma to continue business as usual -- which Devon Archer has testified would not have happened without Joe's influence.

And this leaves aside Secretary Blinken's claims that while Deputy Secretary in 2015, he was completely ignorant of the Burisma issue. It looks like we have a great deal more to learn.

Hunter, Joe, And Secretary Blinken

While the fallout from Devon Archer's closed-door testimony to the Comer committee is likely to continue over coming days, this piece at Breitbart raises a parallel question, which is the role current Secretary of State Blinken played in the Bidens' Ukraine influence-peddling in the 2015-16 period.

6) October 2015: Senior State Department official Amos Hochstein raised concerns with then-Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma Holdings’ board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.

7) November 2015: Burisma hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm, linked to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and instrumental in Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s firing.

Antony Blinken's career has been tied to Joe Biden's, especially through his wife, Even Ryan. According to Wikipedia, she

worked in the Obama-Biden White House as assistant to the vice president and special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement from September 2013 to January 2017.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Ryan served as deputy campaign manager for then-Senator Biden's 2008 presidential campaign,

As early as 2010, Hunter and then-partner Eric Schwerin were exchanging e-mails with her, while records also indicate that Hunter had several meetings scheduled with Blinken himself throughout the spring and summer of 2015, after he was put on the Burisma board. Questions about Blinken's 2015 involvement with Blue Star Strategies resurfaced this past May. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Blinken told Senate investigators under oath in 2020 that he had 'no knowledge of Hunter Biden's service on the board' of Burisma, and didn't know about Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat consultancy hired by the firm in 2015 to improve its image in Washington DC.

But State Department emails show he spoke with Blue Star's CEO Karen Tramontano at a political event around July 2016 while he was Deputy Secretary of State, and agreed to have a coffee with her to discuss 'some troubling events we are seeing in Ukraine'.

And July 14, 2016 emails from Hunter's laptop show the First Son checked in with Blinken's wife to try to make sure he took a call from Tramontano and her chief operating officer Sally Painter – as well as meeting with Blinken himself at his State Department office in July 2015.

There is no evidence that Blinken or Ryan tried to change US policy on Burisma’s behalf. [cough, cough]

But Senator Ron Johnson is now accusing the Secretary of State of having ‘lied bald-faced to Congress’ about his links to the murky influence campaign in 2020 sworn testimony.

Beyond that,

The government and laptop emails obtained by DailyMail.com suggest Blinken, who was Joe's senior campaign advisor, his Vice Presidential National Security Advisor in the Obama administration and now Secretary of State, may have been more aware of Hunter's dealings than he has let on.

Hunter joined the board of the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian company Burisma in April 2014, while the US authorities were working with British law enforcement on a financial investigation into its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.

When Hunter's appointment became public soon after, it caused a firestorm of controversy – including among State Department officials, who complained in emails that 'the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.'

However, the furor apparently passed by Blinken, who told investigators in sworn testimony that he was not 'aware of any association that Hunter Biden had with Burisma' while Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017, had no emails or texts with the First Son, and never discussed Hunter's financial or business arrangements with him.

Data on Hunter's laptop shows 26 emails involving Blinken's personal address and three with his Vice Presidential office address, between 2010 and 2018.

A further 47 emails include his wife Evan's VP office email and 22 have her personal email address.

The exact role of Hunter and then-Vice President Biden in removing Victor Shokin as the prosecutor investigating Ukraine in 2016 remains in dispute. However, controversies existed within the State Department reagarding Hunter's role:

In an email kept from public view for more than five years, a top U.S. State Department official in Kiev wrote to Washington superiors at the end of the Obama-Biden administration that Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine "undercut" U.S. efforts to fight corruption in the former Soviet republic.

The email, obtained by Just the News, was written on Nov. 22, 2016 by former U.S. embassy official George Kent, one of the Democrats' star witnesses in their first effort to impeach former President Donald Trump.

. . . "The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine," Kent wrote multiple high-ranking officials in the State Department in Washington.

. . . Kent's email described an intense pressure campaign by advocates for Burisma — including a former U.S. ambassador — to rehabilitate the Ukrainian company's corrupt reputation and to get Ukraine prosecutors to drop their criminal investigations of the company.

But if Joe was working with Hunter on Burisma's behalf, no quiet engagement was going to be effective. And what was then-Deputy Secretary of State Blinken's role in this controversy? This brings us to the question Holman Jenkins raised in the Wall Street Journal on Friday:

At some point, questions should also be asked of Barack Obama. Why allow Mr. Biden to control the Ukraine portfolio when he wouldn’t restrain his son? Was Biden family corruption the reason you skipped over your veep and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016?

But Mr Jenkins's assumption is that Joe was somehow unable to control Hunter, when the evidence we're beginning to see is that they worked closely together. And this goes to issues 6 and 7 in the link at the top of this post, the role of Blue Star Strategies in forming US policy toward Burisma. It isn't clear to me how Blue Star was "linked to Secretary of State Antony Blinken" but there is no question that Blue Star had attracted investigative attention as early as 2019, before Hunter's laptop came to light. According to Sens Johnson and Grassley,

“Recent reports indicate that Blue Star Strategies (Blue Star) sought to leverage Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of directors for Burisma in its communications and meetings with various U.S. government officials at the same time his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, served as the ‘public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.’

“A recent report indicates that, in November or December 2015, Blue Star officials met with Amos Hochstein, then-senior advisor to Vice President Biden on international energy affairs, and invoked Hunter Biden during a discussion of Burisma. The report describes Mr. Hochstein as ‘a vocal proponent of Ukraine cracking down on Burisma,’ and explained that the purpose of the meeting was for ‘Blue Star Strategies [] to convince Hochstein (but [it] did not) that Burisma was on the level and did not warrant further investigation.’”

On one hand, as we see above in issue 6 at the link at the top of this post, Amos Hochstein at the State Department had been raising concerns about Hunter's role at Burisma by October 2015. By November or December, Blue Star was on Hochstein's case, and Joe himself traveled to Ukraine on December 7-8, 2015, apparently in the context of the struggle to remove Shokin as prosecutor. and he was in facxt removed in March 2016.

It's worth noting that Trump's first impeachment centered on issues related to Biden corruption in Ukraine, but so far, little attention has focused on trhe extent to which the information that's emerged in the past several months has served to vindicate Trump's allegations from this period. A question that's begun to emerge for me is then-Deputy Secretary Blinken's role in overriding objections within the State Department to the Biden policy aims regarding Burisma.

I have a feeling much more will come out. It looks to me aas though Holman Jenkins's implication is on target when he suggests that Hunter's activities were directly responsible for Trump's first impeachment.

The Wall Street Journal Goes There

On Saturday, I posted on the expanding Overton window that's beginning to encompass the question of what President Biden might have done in his role as "point person" for Ukraine during the Obama administration to put us where we are in the stalled Russo-Ukraine War. The key question that's been raised by Seymour Hersh is what President Zelensky may know about Biden's involvement in Ukraine's politics while Biden was vice president that could give Zelensky leverage over current US policy.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a column by Holman W Jenkins Jr, Hunter Biden Is a Geopolitical Disaster, that indirectly raises the same question, but it tries to make Hunter the culprit, not Joe. The column itself is behind a paywall, but a good part of it is excerpted at Instapundit. Joe Biden while vice president

allowed a family environment in which milking connection to Joe was de rigueur. Paralysis seizes our elite over what has ensued.

. . . At some point, questions should also be asked of Barack Obama. Why allow Mr. Biden to control the Ukraine portfolio when he wouldn’t restrain his son? Was Biden family corruption the reason you skipped over your veep and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016?

The story here is all the more remarkable for being untold. In short order, the Hunter mess has managed to taint our intelligence community, the FBI, IRS and now the Justice Department. If news sense is not completely dulled by neurotic compliance, some editors must also be starting to see the outlines of another approaching debacle, in which skeletons from the Biden closet elect Mr. Trump.

In other words, Mr Jenkins goes the long way around to ask what Seymour Hersh also asks, what does Zelensky have on Biden? In Mr Jenkins's view, this could become a big enough story to tip the 2024 election.

This brought me to look at how the "Hunter mess" got started, at least as it relates to Ukraine, and there's actually very little available about this. A 2019 op-ed by John Solomon at The Hill says,

The timing of Hunter Biden’s and [Devon] Archer’s appointment to Burisma’s board has been highlighted in the past, by The New York Times in December 2015 and in a 2016 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer.

. . . President Obama named Biden the administration’s point man on Ukraine in February 2014, after a popular revolution ousted Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych and as Moscow sent military forces into Ukraine’s Crimea territory.

According to Schweizer’s book, Vice President Biden met with Archer in April 2014 right as Archer was named to the board at Burisma. A month later, Hunter Biden was named to the board, to oversee Burisma’s legal team.

Solomon then rehearses what was already known of Hunter's and Archer's positions on the Burisma board, their generous directors' fees, and millions of dollars otherwise paid to Biden entities, evidence that was available as of 2019 even before the discovery of Hunter's laptop in 2020. Solomon concludes,

Nonetheless, some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020: Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy? What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

As far as we're beginning to learn as of 2023, there were more payments to the Bidens for more millions from other Ukrainians over matters beyond Burisma, but the question of whether, and how, just the Burisma investigation was thwarted hasn't been sufficiently investigated. Testimony from Devon Archer to the Comer committee that's expected today is likely to expand our understanding of these transactions:

Archer visited Biden's vice presidential residence for a holiday reception in December 2009, and he met with Biden in the West Wing of the White House on April 16, 2014, just days before Archer and Hunter joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings in Ukraine.

Archer also played golf with Joe and Hunter Biden in the Hamptons at least once during the Obama administration in August 2014, four months after he and Hunter joined Burisma.

I don't think Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal is out of line to see "the outlines of another approaching debacle".

Yup, Hunter's Left The White House

In a story that I think confirms my speculation in Friday's post, the New York Post reported on Friday:

The first son cut a dejected figure as he arrived at Los Angeles’ Van Nuys Airport in a private plane early Friday — as a documentary filmmaker captured his every move.

Hunter, 53, touched down just before 1 a.m. SoCal time, more than 36 hours after Delaware US District Judge Maryellen Noreika blew the whistle on a wrist-slap plea agreement cooked up by Hunter’s attorneys and father Joe’s Department of Justice.

As an airport worker retrieved Hunter’s bags, the first son was consoled on the tarmac by an unidentified friend sporting a Yankees cap and a mustard-colored sweater. A camera operator observed the scene a few feet away.

The Post had nothing to say about whose jet this was, but I think we can assume it was the same one that he flew in with Kevin Morris to Philadelphia Tuesday night to attend his Delaware court session, Kevin Morris's plane.

I think this helps firm up a timeline. It seems to be generally understood, although there are no public White House logs to confirm or disprove it, that Hunter had been in residence there since sometime last year. In the weekends prior to this past July 4, including the holiday weekend itself, Hunter had accompanied Joe to Camp David. In the inquiries after the discovery of the baggie outside the Situation Room, it was acknowledged that Hunter had been in the White House just before the family departed for Camp David.

A uniformed Secret Service officer discovered the baggie during the evening of July 2 while the family was still away. By the afternoon of July 4, Hunter, Joe, Dr Jill, and little Beau were filmed on the White House balcony during a vignette in which Hunter stepped away briefly to do something with his nose, to the evident discomfort of Joe and Dr Jill. (Mrs Hunter, Melissa Cohen, wasn't in the scene.)

Over the following week, gosh darn, the Secret Service announced the baggie could have belonged to any of 500 people and dropped further investigation.

The next we heard of Hunter's whereabouts, according to the UK Daily Mail, Hunter was in LA on July 21 paying Kevin Morris a visit, during which Mr Morris stepped out onto his balcony to take a hit from a bong. Then, on July 25, Morris flew Hunter from LA to Philadelphia to attend the court hearing the following day.

The last time Kevin Morris made the news in his private jet was this past April 30, when he flew from Los Angeles to Dulles Airport, where he picked up Hunter and flew him back to

Newport Municipal Airport in Jackson County, [AR,] 34 miles from the Independence County Courthouse in Batesville, where Biden attended [a court] hearing the next morning.

When the hearing concluded, Morris flew Hunter back to Dulles. This is further suggestion that as of April, Hunter was operating out of the White House. But it's worth pointing out another data point farther down in the story at that link:

Flight records show the aircraft landing in or taking off from Fayetteville, Ark. at least nine times between February 2022 and April 2023.

Fayetteville is the home of Edward Prewitt, Hunter Biden’s financial advisor.

Laptop emails show Prewitt had access to several business accounts linked to Hunter Biden.

Morris — reached by phone in Hawaii — declined to comment.

So we have some level of suggestion that up to the time of the Secret Service investigation into the baggie, Hunter had been living at the White House, certainly since last spring. Then, following the July 2 discovery of the baggie and the apparent public bump on the balcony, Hunter is no longer at the White House, and the Secret Service is driving him around LA instead.

My hypothesis continues to be that some combination of remonstrances from Joe's staff and the Secret Service led to a decision to put more distance between Hunter and Joe, sending him back to LA and relying on some combination of Kevin Morris amd an LA Secret Service detail to babysit the First Cokehead, at least for the time being.

But in light of the new conditions for Hunter's pretrial release, which include not to use alcohol at all, not to use or unlawfully possess a narcotic drug, and not to break any federal, state, or local law, this would seem to be a high-risk strategy.

But let's leave aside the cost to the taxpayer of using the Secret Service as Hunter's minders and limo service. It looks like Kevin Morris is flying Hunter around the country whenever he needs it, and he's paying, apparently, for Hunter's legal bills in the multimillions, plus pocket money for Hunter, who is otherwise unemployed, traveling around money for Melissa, plus whatever the current costs are for separate living arrangements for Hunter, Melissa, and little Beau, plus Beau's nannies and daycare.

This is a lot for Mr Morris to be picking up, even if there's a quid pro quo. But what on earth could Mr Morris want to buy for that much money? What's behind all this? Is it even coming out of Mr Morris's resources, or is someone paying him back?

Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't MeanThey Aren't Out To Get You

One factor in the current environment that hasn't had much notice is the expansion of the Overton window, the range of ideas politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. These include notions that only a short time ago would have been considered "paranoid" or "conspiracy theories".

The most prominent example is how the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr has advanced interpretations of events that only a year or two ago would have been deemed dangerously heterodox, and he's gaining an audience. For instance, Bill Ackman, "one of the most influential investors on Wall Street", has begun to endorse Kennedy's views on COVID vaccines:

Bill Ackman said in 2021 that delaying Covid vaccinations for older Americans “seems like genocide.”

Today, the influential hedge fund chief and investor is amplifying the debunked anti-vaccine views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Ackman is not denying his change. In fact, he said Kennedy is asking “important questions” about vaccines, raising issues he is interested in learning more about.

Or take Seymour Hersh, whose reporting since the My Lai massacre has always pushed the envelope, but his more recent stories, especially his allegation that

US Navy divers, acting under the direct orders of US President Joe Biden, planted C4 explosives on the [Nordstream] pipelines during routine NATO exercises in June last year, before remotely activating the bombs three months later

have been met with intense skepticism. More recently, he's said this about dissent within the US intelligence community over the Ukraine war:

Let’s take a look at recent events in the Ukraine war from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don’t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should.

. . . The Biden administration’s role in both [of the Ukrainian] attacks [on the Kerch bridge] was vital. “Of course it was our technology,” one American official told me. “The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo.” I asked if there was any thought before the bridge attack about the possibility of retaliation. “What will Putin do? We don’t think that far,” the official said. “Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.”

. . . At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, “Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It’s as if he’s an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden’s support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky’s knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden’s son.”

In other words, what does Zelensky have on Biden? Even a couple of months ago, this would have been well outside the range of acceptable questions, but with the steady stream of revelations from Sen Grassley and the Comer committee involving millions in under-the-table payments from Ukrainians and others, it isn't that far off base. As Mr Ackman said about Kennedy Jr, we're interested in learning more.

Or take Oliver Stone, not long ago denounced for "loony JFK conspiracies", who more recently has expanded on his views about US involvement in Ukraine:

Stone spoke on a recent episode of commentator Russell Brand’s talk show "Stay Free" on Rumble. Stone won international fame for his documentaries, one of which was "Ukraine on Fire." This documentary is described on IMDb as one that details the ousting of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in a "coup d'état" aided by the United States government in 2014.

. . . He then slammed the "Neoconservative movement who started the war in Iraq" who yet remain "deep inside our government," citing prominent figures like Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He went on to add that "Biden is an old Cold Warrior, and he really hates the old Soviet Union which he confounds again with the Russian Federation, which is not communist."

. . . "If we don’t stop this, what Biden is doing, this guy is – I voted for him – I made a mistake, I was thinking he was an old man now that he would calm down, that he would be more mellow and so-forth, I didn’t see that at all," he said. "I see a man who maybe is not in charge of his own administration. Who knows?"

The problem we're looking at in all these cases is that there are new data points that we've begun to recognize can't be explained within our existing cognitive models, so we're forced to go outside them. What happened in the 1960s was that we had not a single, isolated political assassination out of the blue -- like, say, President McKinley's in 1901 or James Garfield's in 1881 -- but a sequence of three over five years, accompanied by an increasingly problematic war.

Thus we saw the rise, and in fact the persistence, of conspiracy theories. I don't think it's coincidental thar Robert Kennedy Jr has endorsed at least one of them:

Robert Kennedy Jr., the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, has backed a conspiracy theory that the CIA was involved in the killing of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, arguing the evidence is “overwhelming.”

“There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder,” Kennedy said in a Sunday interview with John Catsimatidis on New York City radio station WABC 770. “I think it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”

Well, when it looks like the Democrats may have rigged the 2020 election, in part by alleging that the loser was a Russian agent and using the organs of state security to discredit damning evidence on Hunter's laptop, and then engineered political prosecutions of the loser, what are we supposed to think? This is what happens when the consensus narrative becomes unsustainable.

Has Hunter Moved Out Of The White House?

Exactly where Hunter has been living for the past year or more hasn't been clear in any case, but common speculation had been that he'd moved into the White House sometime in 2022, at least in part to avoid legal service in his child support case with Lunden Roberts. This was settled last month, which would take away one possible reason for his extended White House stay.

On the other hand, Hunter and Joe have a strange relationship that at least outwardly looks like codependency. It appears that Hunter continues to be a key adviser to Joe, and in addition, it seems likely that he enables Joe's inflence-peddling side gig at the same time that Joe enables Hunter's drug and alcohol abuse. All things being equal, it looks like Joe would prefer to keep Hunter close at hand in the White House, while the unexplained baggie near the Situation Room (if that's where it was) suggests Hunter had worked out a modus vivendi with White House security that would accommodate his habits.

I think, though, that after the baggie episode, it was made known to Joe that there was only so much the Secret Service could do to maintain appearances. I posted here on the best explanation I've heard for the baggie: in the view of former cocaine addict and Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort, someone like Hunter will leave small stashes all over the place in order to have a constant supply close at hand. I strongly suspect the Secret Service had already been finding these as a matter of routine, and it was only a uniformed officer who was out of the loop on the holiday weekend who called it in as a hazmat incident.

Thus it must have been transmitted to Joe that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened again, and while the Secret Service could claim ignorance this time, all future bets would be off. So at this point, Joe had two options: let Hunter stay on at the White House and risk more baggie discoveries that link Joe with enabling Hunter's drug use, or send Hunter back to LA again under Kevin Morris's aegis, where he seems to have been between 2019 and 2022.

I suspect this had already proven unsatisfactory by last year. Hunter had a team of Secret Service minders in the rental adjoining his own in the Malibu compound that was apparently paid for by Kevin Morris, but what we're beginning to see from last week's vignette on the balcony with the bong is that Kevin is anything but a stabilizing influence, and I've got to think that by the middle of last year, the Secret Service had made it known to Joe that Hunter was getting out of hand.

So Joe had two bad options: keep Hunter close by in the White House and risk more baggies being found, or send Hunter back to California with Kevin and risk even bigger scandals with wrecked cars and Russian hookers. I suspect the fallback plan with Kevin involves an even bigger Secret Service detail and closer escort with multiple black SUVs, but a tacit agreement to look the other way over drug deals -- in fact, I'll bet Kevin even handles those. Hookers? I imagine those can be factored in as well. Just don't let him drive, that's the big thing.

(As I've noted here frequently, Hunter's wife Melissa seems mostly out of the picture these days.)

Wednesday's court hearing in Delaware does add complications. Following Hunter's not guilty plea, the conditions of his realease require him not to use any alcohol or drugs, including marijuana, which although legal in California, is still prohibited under his conditions. In addition, he has to submit to drug tests. We don't know how strictly these will be enforced, but all of this is a risk. Even a repeat of last week's situation with Hunter visiting Kevin while Kevin went onto the balcony with a bong could now have repercussions that could put Hunter in jail.

It's hard to imagine someone like Hunter resisting the temptation to take a hit if Kevin lights up a bong while he's visiting, but even if he refrains, there's some possibility he could fail a drug test just by being in the room. But why would a "friend" like Kevin expose him to even that temptation?

It's slowly being acknowledged that the judge placing Hunter's plea deal on hold in the Delaware hearing is a major blow to Biden's reelection strategy. The whole intent was to resolve Hunter's legal issues once and for all and get them out of the way before the 2024 campaign. Now it's less likely that this will happen, while the likelihood that Hunter will do something new to get back in the news is increasing -- and the Secret Service will be right there enabling it with black SUVs.

The paparazzi have those black SUVs dialed in -- we learned that last week.