Yes, They're Going To Relitigate The 2020 Election

On Sunday, I noted the phenomenon we've seen since Trump's arrival as a political contender whereby received opinion has promoted a series of quasi-verities that go unquestioned, at least for a period of years, and anyone who doubts them is called a conspiracy theorist. Then something happens, and the quasi-verity collapses and turns out to have been a hoax. One that has continuing prestige, at least so far, is the idea that Trump is delusional or in denial that he lost the 2020 election, which was, as it's sometimes put, stolen fair and square.

But the history we've seen of such quasi-verities makes me skeptical. One of the shorter-lived examples promoted by received opinion was the idea that Hunter Biden's laptop was just Russian disinformation. Recent testimony from FBI whistleblowers has established that

The FBI “verified” the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in November 2019 and a federal computer expert assessed “it was not manipulated in any way,” IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley told Congress in explosive testimony released Thursday.

. . . “In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID,” [whistleblower] Shapley said.

. . . Most news outlets ignored the laptop’s contents until well after Biden won the 2020 election, with the Washington Post and New York Times saying only in March 2022 that they had confirmed the authenticity of files.

This was actually a pretty short life for that particular quasi-verity. However, it's generally acknowledged that had the FBI acknowledged its authenticity, it would have been a bigger issue in the election and could conceivably have affected the outcome.

When President Donald Trump raised Hunter Biden’s laptop during the final 2020 presidential debate, Joe Biden dismissed it as a “Russian plant,” citing “five former heads of the CIA” who say it’s “a bunch of garbage.”

We now know this was patently untrue. The laptop was authentic. But at the time, almost no one in the news media questioned Biden’s false assertion. To the contrary, CNN questioned whether Trump had “spread Russian disinformation” during the debate by raising the laptop.

Twitter suppressed the New York Post story that broke the news of the laptop’s existence, preventing users from sharing the story or even sending it by direct message (a tool usually used to stop the dissemination of child pornography). Worse, the company suspended the New York Post’s Twitter account, as well as other accounts that shared the story.

By last June, we learned that Secretary Blinken was at least involved in coordinating a letter from 51 former spy-agency leaders that claimed The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.

Blinken’s October 2020 outreach to former CIA acting director Michael Morell was credited by Morell with inspiring the letter, though Morell says Blinken, then a Biden campaign aide, didn’t specifically ask him to write it.

But Jordan and Turner revealed that other letter-signers described Blinken as asking for the letter in their own depositions by the committees.

We've become generally aware over the past year that there was a coordinated effort to discredit the Hunter laptop story, but yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan added important detail:

Jordan published documents showing the FBI's comments on the Hunter Biden story when it first broke and how FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan testified about his meetings with Facebook representatives.

Chan and Foreign Influence Task Force Section Chief Laura Dehmlow met with Facebook on Oct. 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published its story on the Hunter Biden laptop. Dehmlow met with both Twitter and Facebook that day.

At this time, the FBI had the laptop in its possession and knew that it was real, Jordan said.

Documents published by Jordan show that when a Twitter representative asked whether the story was real, an FBI agent said "yes," but an FBI lawyer jumped in, cutting him off with, "No further comment."

Dehmlow then said the FBI held emergency deliberations on how to respond to the question going forward. When the Facebook meeting was held later in the day, the FBI simply said, "No comment," when asked whether the Hunter Biden story was factual.

Twitter and Facebook then censored the story.

In December of last year, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, who worked on the agency's Foreign Influence Task Force, testified in a lawsuit that he met weekly with Twitter and Facebook to "warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election". Although this testimony about the existence of these meetings was known at the time, Chairman Jordan's new allegation is that Chan purjured himself in this testimony.

In a sworn deposition in the Missouri v. Biden case, FBI special agent Elvis Chan, who is the main conduit between the bureau and big tech companies, claimed that apart from one instance, he was not aware of any meetings between Facebook and the FBI regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In the same deposition, he also claimed that he had “no internal knowledge” of the FBI’s investigation regarding the troubled Biden son’s laptop.

The Facebook files reveal both claims to be false. An internal Facebook communication reveals that Chan had more than one meeting with Facebook regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In addition,

When Facebook initially asked the FBI if the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, Laura Dehmlow, currently Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force, said “no comment.” At that point, the FBI was fully aware that the laptop was real, according to Rep. Jordan.

What I find most intriguing about this latest data point is that it reveals an effort within the FBI under Director Wray, a Trump appointee working within his administration, to influlence social media with false information that would aid the Biden campaign. In tandem with the letter from 51 former intelligence officers discrediting the laptop story, it strongly suggests a coordinated effort within the organs of state security to influence the election in Biden's favor. That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

Did anyone suggest to Director Wray that he should so this, especially in coordination with members of the intelligence community? If so, who? The FBI was fully aware that the laptop was authentic. Why did Wray allow the agency to promote this false information? What was Biden's role, or he role of close campaign advisors working on his behalf, in influencing these activities?

And this brings us to a bigger question, what is Biden's role in influencing the current prosecutions of Trump?

[A] story from the New York Times published in April 2022 is gaining new attention, especially after Smith indicted Trump for speech surrounding the events of January 6, 2021 last week.

"The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6," the paper reported.

. . . More than a year later and at the beginning of the 2024 presidential election, the Department of Justice has fulfilled President Joe Biden's demands Trump be indicted over January 6.

My sense is that the House Republicans have Director Wray in their immediate crosshairs, and that will be a conduit to get Attorney General Garland. An inevitable result of these efforts, fed by material that will inevitably emerge from discovery following Trump's third indictment, will be a re-litigation of the 2020 election and the question of how justified Trump was in believing it was "rigged" or "stolen". This willl also come out in the continuing Republican primary process: given the positions of anti-Trump candidates like Pence and Christie that Trump is delusional, this will be up for real debate.

I had originally expected that the August congressional recess would be a vacation with little news, but it looks like the Republicans have a sense of urgency, and this won't be the case.

Back To 1876 And Mike Pence

Over the weekend, since the third Trump indictment, I've begun to see renewed references to the 1876 election, the Compromise of 1877, and the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Trump's strategy, given assertions that the 2020 vote counts in several states were irregular, was to throw the election into the House of Representatives per the Twelfth Amendment of the US Constitution, as intepreted by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. This post at the National Constitutional Center from December 15, 2020, anticipates and explains this strategy:

Federal law requires the states to deliver certified electoral college results to the vice president, serving as president of the Senate, and other parties by December 23. Then a joint meeting of Congress is required by the 12th Amendment to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the presidential election. The session on January 6, 2021 starts at 1 p.m.

Objections at that meeting about electors will be settled using a process established by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The law has its origins in the contested presidential election of 1876 between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Several states during the 1876 election sent rival electoral ballots to be considered by Congress, which lacked a procedure to decide among contested slates of electors. The short-term solution was a special 15-person commission (including five House Representatives, five Senators, and five Supreme Court justices) to decide the election, which went to Hayes. In the end, the participating Supreme Court justices cast the deciding votes, after the House and Senate members voted on party lines.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 and several federal statutes address questions about contested electors that land in Congress. The Congressional Research Service’s current interpretation of the Electoral Count Act explains its understanding of the process when it comes to objections to electoral votes.

“Objections to individual state returns must be made in writing by at least one Member each of the Senate and House of Representatives. If an objection meets these requirements, the joint session recesses and the two houses separate and debate the question in their respective chambers for a maximum of two hours,” the CRS said. “The two houses then vote separately to accept or reject the objection. They then reassemble in joint session, and announce the results of their respective votes. An objection to a state’s electoral vote must be approved by both houses in order for any contested votes to be excluded.”

As Trump's lawyer Christina Bobb explained in yesterday's post, Trump's congressional allies began the process by having one senator and one congressman object to the Arizona electors, Pence in his role as President of the Senate recessed the joint session, and the process of debate began. This was interrupted by the incursion of a crowd of demonstrators into the Capitol, which in effect stopped the process. As Ms Bobb pointed out, this was contrary to the interests of Trump and his allies, and the actual origins of the incursion are still unclear.

While there are questions about the vice president's role in such proceedings, the Electoral Count Act does provide that the vice president in his role as President of the Senate presides over them. Vice President Pence appears to have vacillated over his precise powers on January 6.

[Trump's] Attorney John Lauro said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Mr. Trump’s defense team believes Mr. Pence’s court testimony could be crucial in exonerating the former president of any wrongdoing in the so-called Jan. 6 case.

. . . “The reason why Vice President Pence will be so important to the defense is . . . number one, he agrees that John Eastman, who gave legal advice to President Trump, was an esteemed legal scholar,” Mr. Lauro told the outlet. “Number two, he agrees that there were election irregularities, fraud, unlawful actions at the state level. All of that will eviscerate any allegation of criminal intent on the part of President Trump,” he added.

Mr. Lauro added that Mr. Pence believed doubts around the 2020 election were legitimate enough to warrant debate during the proceedings on Jan. 6, 2021, when lawmakers assembled Capitol Hill to certify the Electoral College vote.

Ahead of Jan. 6, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff said that the former vice president welcomed an effort by some lawmakers to raise objections on Jan. 6.

. . . Mr. Lauro added that there was a “constitutional disagreement” between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence around whether the vice president at the time had the legal authority to reject questionable electoral votes and kick the issue back to the states for further debate or audit.

The attorney said that, at the end of the day, what Mr. Trump wanted from Mr. Pence to do on Jan. 6 was not to overturn the results of the election but stop the counting of electoral votes to allow further debate at the state level.

“The ultimate ask of Vice President Pence was to pause the counts and allow the states to weigh in,” Mr. Lauro said.

We must assume that Pence agreed sufficiently with Trump's interpretation of his role that he did in fact recognize the objections of one senator and one congressman and begin the process of debate in the individual houses, but that process was interrupted and never resumed. The link above continues,

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Pence insisted that Mr. Trump’s team had asked him outright to overturn the results of the election.

“They were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the outlet.

There seems, though, to be a general understanding that while interpretations of the Electoral Count Act may differ, Pence had already followed provisions of the act by placing the January 6 joint session in recess for separate debate on the Arizona objections. This debate never concluded, and apparently the joint session never resumed to hear subsequent objections on January 6 after the incursion. At no point in the process does there appear to have been any real opportuinity for Pence to "overturn the election". On the other hand, he never had an opportunity to continue to preside under the provisions of the act to hear further objections to other states' electors.

It's hard to avoid thinking that the various pressures Pence has faced since January 6, 2021 have left him confused over even his generally acknowledged role as president of the joint session that day. That he's now a candidate for the Republican nomination against Trump gives him some incentive to claim Trump wanted him to "overturn the election", but voters so far are rejecting this.

Former Vice President Pence on Friday faced heckling from supporters of former President Donald Trump outside a campaign stop in Londonderry, N.H.

“Why did you sell out the people?” one heckler can be heard saying in a video taken outside of the event and shared across social media.

Pence's current claim, from the link farther above, is “From sometime in the middle of December, the president began to be told that I had some authority to reject or return votes back to the states. I had no such authority. No vice president in American history had ever asserted that authority and no one ever should.”

But as far as I can tell, he was asked only preside over the joint session of congress specified in the Electoral Count Act and recess the session for debate once the specified objections were received. But no ther vice president had been called upon to do this, ever, since the need to invoke the act had never some up since 1887, even though this was completely legal, and it was what Pence did in fact do before the demonstators broke into the Capitol. For whatever reason, the separate debates over the Arizona electors were never concluded, and the joint session never resumed to hear addional objections to other states' electors. It almost sounds as though Pence was complicit in this and simply stopped the process specified in the Electoral Count Act, possibly because even though it was constitutional, he was prevailed upon to stop it due to the potential outcome.

What last weeK's indictment has done has been simply to reopen the 2020 election and raise both old and new questions about the events of January 6, which simply increases the chance that the existing accepted narratives will collapse. It was an unwise move by the deep state to do this. On the other hand, Mike Pence's reputation will now be irredeemably destroyed.

Trump Indictment III Means Relitigating The 2020 Election

One pattern that's kept reemerging in the Trump story since 2016 has been a constant stream of narratives that have been sold as verities, yet they've wound up collapsing into hoaxes years later. The first was the 2016 "pee tape" story that alleged Trump conspired with Russia to interfere in that year's election. This wasn't effectively refuted until the Muller Report in 2019. However, the Wikipedia summary at the link raises what may become a prophetic issue:

The investigation intentionally took an approach that could not result in a judgment that Trump committed a crime. This decision was based on an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution, and Mueller's belief that it would be unfair to accuse the president of a crime even without charging him because he would have no opportunity to clear his name in court[.]

So the problem with the overall "pee tape" narrative was that it gave Trump no opportunity to disprove it, or at minimum to establish that it couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court.

The second hoax was the 2019 first impeachment of Donald Trump, which was based on putative efforts by Trump to use Ukraine President Zelensky to provide damaging information about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign. As it happened, the accusations have turned out to be a mirror image of the much better-established threat by Biden himself to withhold aid to Ukraine if a prosecutor who was threatening the Biden-supported Burisma company wasn't removed, a factor that's reemerged four years later.

The third quasi-verity involving Trump has been the January 6, 2021 demonstration and alleged incursion at the Capitol. This was the cause of Trump's second impeachment, just before he was to leave office in any case. Wikipedia summarizes the narrative:

The House of Representatives of the 117th U.S. Congress adopted one article of impeachment against Trump of "incitement of insurrection", stating that he had incited the January 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol. These events were preceded by attempts by Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as well as his pushing of voter fraud conspiracy theories on his social media channels before, during, and after the election.

Last week's third indictment essentially rehearses the charges in the second impeachment and maintains the quasi-verity:

The indictment charges Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction; and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.

So in effect, it opens the door to giving Trump the chance to make his full case in an official venue, even if the trial's outcome is potentially rigged against him. This is because he can bring in evidence via discovery, which appears to be what his lawyers have in mind. Via Red State:

Critical to the left’s J6 narrative is that the angry mob that showed up at the Capitol was working in Trump’s interests. Yet, the protesters began crashing the barriers on the Capitol grounds just as Trump’s congressional allies challenged former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electors from Arizona.

Trump ally Rep. Paul Gosar (R.-Ariz.) objected to Arizona’s Biden slate, and it was seconded by Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas), which triggered an adjournment of the joint session of Congress called to adjudicate the presidential elector slates sent to Congress by the state legislatures.

If one congressman and one senator challenge a state’s electors, the two chambers meet separately for a maximum of two hours of debate, followed by a vote. If both chambers vote to reject a state’s electors, they are taken off the board. They are not awarded to another candidate.

If Trump allies successfully challenged Arizona’s 11 electors, plus Georgia’s 16 and Wisconsin’s 10, Biden’s total would drop from 306 to 269—although any greater combination that took any candidate below 270 would do.

When no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, the presidential election goes to the House of Representatives. In the House, each state’s delegation votes, and because Republicans had majorities in more House delegations than the Democrats, Trump would have been expected to win his second term.

While the House and Senate debated Arizona, the protesters crashed the gates, leading to both chambers going into a recess. When Congress reconvened, the Trump allies lost support, and objections to the Biden electors became politically untenable.

In effect, the crashing of the Capitol gates disrupted the plan developed by Trump’s congressional allies—it was not in any way part of a plan for Trump to subvert the Constitution or seize power.

The J6 protesters blocked Trump’s challenges, ensuring he would have to relinquish power on January 20, 2021.

Trump's Lawyer Christina Bobb makes the point, which is echoed by Alan Dershowitz, that Trump's January 6 plan was simply to exercise his constitutional right to petition Congress for redress of grievances, which was interrupted by the January 6 Capitol incursion, whose origins have always been suspicious. At the link above,

Bobb said 20 months after J6; there are still questions.

“OK, who started it? Did you start it, FBI? Did you start it, Department of Justice? Did you start it, Capitol Police? Because somebody moved to the barricades,” she said. “We gotta get all of that information.”

This in turn has caused Smith's prosecution team to do all it can to prevent material Trump's defense obtains through discovery from being made public. Late Friday evening, it filed for a protective order:

In the filing, prosecutors urged U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue an order prohibiting any findings related to the case be kept from public view.

“Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him,” Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom wrote in the filing. “And in recent days, regarding this case, the defendant has issued multiple posts—either specifically or by implication—including the following, which the defendant posted just hours ago.”

The filing does not specifically request a gag order against Trump, which would bar him from discussing the case altogether outside the courtroom or with the media. However, prosecutors noted they are set to share a “substantial” amount of evidence to Trump’s team, which they are trying to keep out of public view while criminal proceedings play out.

Their problem is that they're dealing with Donald Trump. In the filing, they demonstrate a rudimentary insight into how Trump is going to operate -- he's going to use the media against itself. Their need to cover Trump is irresistible, because his style is outlandish -- but that in turn means it's going to be much harder to sustain a mediating narrative that maintains the quasi-verities. And apparently the prosecutors understand this perfectly well.

So they'll need to keep Trump's mouth shut, which will be almost impossible, and in the process, he'll have the opportunity to relitigate not just January 6, but the 2020 election, likely with evidence the prosecutors will be forced to provide while doing their best to keep it from being public.

This whole idea of basically reopening the unsuccessful second impeachment is turning out to be reckless and hamartic.

What's Up In Ukraine?

The YouTube video above is from the Hindustan Times, one of the few media outlets that's essentially repeating a New York Times story that's behind a paywall. The Gateway Pundit has an excerpt:

“Equipped with advanced American weapons and heralded as the vanguard of a major assault, the troops became bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships. Units got lost. One unit delayed a nighttime attack until dawn, losing its advantage. Another fared so badly that commanders yanked it off the battlefield altogether.

[…] Now the Western-trained Ukrainian brigades are trying to turn things around, U.S. officials and independent analysts say. Ukrainian military commanders have changed tactics, focusing on wearing down the Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire. A troop surge is underway in the country’s south, with a second wave of Western-trained forces launching mostly small-scale attacks to punch through Russian lines.”

“Ukraine’s decision to change tactics is a clear signal that NATO’s hopes for large advances made by Ukrainian formations armed with new weapons, new training and an injection of artillery ammunition have failed to materialize, at least for now.”

I went to https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/ and found no mention of the New York Times piece, but that page is heavily pro-Ukraine and pro-Western involvement. The neoconservative Institute for the Study of War, possibly responding indirectly to the Times story, would only say "Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder stated that Ukraine independently decides when and where to employ its significant combat capabilities."

The most objective analysis I've seen of the Russo-Ukraine War's progress continues to be the YouTube presentations of Col Markus Reisner of the Austrian military academy. The date of this presentation is January 13 of this year, but it was released only a day or two ago. What's significant is that so little has changed over the past seven months. My German is pretty good, but Col Reisner's English is far better than my German, so I'm grateful that he releases his presentations in an English-language version:

At 12:35, he cites estimates as of early 2023 from Ukrainian, US, and Estonian/NATO sources on the progress of the war and concludes that major additional resources from both sides will be needed to bring about a clear outcome, but so far, both sides have already expended major resources with neither gaining a clear advantage. The result has been World War I-style artillery standoffs, something nobody expected before the war.

At about 16:00, he asks a more significant set of questions, which is why the US and the West have been so slow to deliver weapons that would tip the balance. Although the US has delivered HIMARS, they haven't been in quantities that would prove significant, while F-16 fighters, while they were finally approved, will not arrive for effective use this year. Promised deliveries of modern armored vehicles from the West are in quantities far below what Ukraine has said they need.

What we've begun to see in recent days has been a shift in strategy by Ukraine, as the Times story implies, to emphasize the use of drone attacks, including a second attack on the Kerch bridge on July 17, and now a drone attack on the Olenengorsky Gornyak, a landing ship that had reportedly been used to ferry vehicles across the Kerch Strait to bypass the new damage to the bridge. My impression is that with the ground war largely stalemated, Ukraine is shifting to a strategy that can produce visible victories after many monhs when its propaganda war has also been stalled.

There are also new reports this morning of other explosions near the Kerch Bridge, which whether successful or not, are also aimed at giving an impression of progress in the war, something that's been missing so far all this year.

What I find intriguing, though, is that as a practical matter, as Col Reisner has pointed out, US support for Ukraine hasn't been at a level that would allow significant progress in the counteroffensive by the end of this year, something that it's been generally recognized that Ukraine needs to show if in fact it wants to regain all the occupied territories that are its stated objective in the war. At the same time, there's been no change in the stated US objective, most recently outlined by Sec Blinken in London on June 21:

As President Biden has said since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.

But in that case, why is it taking so long? Delays in approving Abrams tanks and F-16 fighters have resulted in equivalent delays in deliveries and training, to the point that they probably can't be used this year. So we're back to my favorite question, what problem are we trying to solve? It's been generally understood that Ukraine needs to have the war wrapped up before the 2024 election, when Republicans, especially if Trump is the nominee, will make it an issue.

At this point, that's unlikely to happen. Do Joe Biden and Sec Blinken have a Plan B? The big focus in recent weeks has been on Hunter and Trump's indictments, but it's hard not to think Ukraine will return as an issue at some point, except Biden and Blinken will have had no progress to report when it does.

And this could easily lead to more people asking the questions I began to notice last Monday that were raised by Seymour Hersh and Holman Jenkins: what's led to this policy of fruitless stalemate? Is it a bug or a feature? Who benefits? Why, after all, does the answer to so many questions that shouldn't involve it at all turn out to be Ukraine?

The Dark Brandon Mug

Yesterday, Joe Biden pitched 2024 campaign merch based on a Dark Brandon theme, a mug showing a portrait of himself with eyes gleaming a demonic red. Fox News gives the context:

President Joe Biden advertised a mug for his reelection campaign Thursday by sharing a video appearing to drink a cup of coffee emblazoned with his "Dark Brandon" persona.

President Joe Biden tweeted, "A cup of Joe never tasted better," along with a video of himself appearing to drink a cup of coffee from a mug showing his face with glowing laser eyes. He declared in the video, "I like my coffee dark."

The story continued with reaction:

"The ‘great unifier’ is back with a Dark Brandon flex just hours after indicting his main political rival AGAIN," Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, tweeted. "When tyrants speak, BELIEVE THEM."

Podcaster Tim Pool wrote, "[I’m] glad they embrace the ‘biden is evil’ memes."

I've been looking at Biden's character here now and then, and I think this move is completely consistent with what I've seen so far. What struck me over the past week, between Hunter's plea deal falling through at least for the time being, followed by Devon Archer's testimony, which mostly just corroborates and adds weight to the extensive existing record, is that neither Joe himself nor the White House has had any specific statement about either development.

The problem for Joe is that he's been on the record repeatedly saying he never discussed overseas business with his family.

"First of all, I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their business, period," Biden said in August 2019.

. . . "I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings," Biden told Fox News' Peter Doocy in September 2019.

During a September 2020 presidential debate with then-President Trump, Biden repeatedly said, "None of that is true" when Trump invoked several foreign transactions regarding Hunter's international business dealings. Biden further said it was "totally discredited."

Even in the face of incressing evidence that Joe was in fact involved in Hunter's business dealings, the White House has continued to deny it, while Joe has simply stayed away from the discussion:

"It's not an unreasonable question to ask if United States was involved - as this message seems to suggest in some sort coercive conversation about business dealings with his son - if he wasn't, then maybe you should tell us," a reporter said after the WhatsApp messages surfaced.

"I just answered this question by telling you my colleagues at the White House counsel have dealt with this, and I would refer you to them," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

At another recent White House briefing a reporter asked, "Does this not undermine the president's claim during the 2020 campaign and the reaffirmations of that claim by his two press secretaries since then that he never once discussed his son's overseas business dealings with him?"

"No, and I'm not going to comment further on this," the White House spokesperson responded. "Let me save you some breath if you're going to ask about this: I am not going to address this issue from this podium," he said before storming out of the press briefing.

The people at the White House press office must certainly be aware of Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler's futile attempts to deal with equivalent revelations:

“The other statements that were made were based on information that was provided prior to these events, which have been referred to in the President’s statement today [yesterday]. Therefore any comment which was made up until today, or previously, was based on that activity. This is the operative statement.

“The way to assess the previous comments is to assess it on the basis that they were made on the information available at that time. The President refers to the fact that there is new material. Therefore this is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”

According to the source, Ziegler made these statements, which originated the "inoperative statement" neologism, on April 18, 1973. Nixon didn't resign until August 8, 1974, but the "inoperative" statements were a key turning point in the whole Watergate narrative. My guess is that Joe's press office is acutely aware of how any equivalent admission will play out and is doing all it can to avoid it.

The problem is that we have to add Joe's character to the mix. Nixon's neuroticism, his highly visible traits of anxiety, depression, and self-doubt, made him far from Joe Biden's traits of bombast and bluster. Where Nixon, if by facial expression and body language if nothing else, always exhibited uncertainty, Biden will never acknowledge any sort of error or miscalculation. If necessary, and this is part of his routine, he'll feign senility to avoid any sort of detailed explanations.

But in addition, I keep referring here to Biden's view of himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations. In his view, unlike Ziegler channeling Nixon, there's no need for him to retract, justify, explain, or apologize for anything in however contorted a way. He's simply going to retreat to his beach house and continue to manipulate the levers of power. What's anyone going to do about it? He's the most powerful man in the world.

And as I've kept noting here, the smirk is part of his repertoire as well as his feigned senility. The difficuty I see at this point is the demon eyes on the coffee mug. The whole mug pitch in effect says he isn't going to make Nixon's mistake, to have the basic decency to know when he's lost the game and resign. He's just gonna keep on keeping on like -- er, like some kind of demon. I like my coffee dark.

I've already asked here if Hunter is Joe's main advisor. This whole pitch seems like it was thought up by some guy on crack. According to this story, "The mugs have been for sale on Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign website since he announced his run for reelection in April." We don't know, for that matter, when Joe made the video. The problem is that in the current context, it's coming off as reckless and hamartic. Well, Hunter seems to have left the White House. Maybe he left this behind.

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.