The Same People Who Ran Ukraine For Joe In 2014 Are Still Running It, But They've Been Promoted

The two people in the photo above, conveniently almost unrecognizable behind their COVID masks, are Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the left, and Victoria Nuland, currently Acting Deputy Secretary of State, on the right. I quoted Seymour Hersh Wednesday on Nuland:

. . . “ultra-hawkish” Victoria Nuland was promoted by Biden from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs to Acting Deputy Secretary of State ”over the heated objections of many in the State Department,” Hersh writes. “She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. “

The one other figure who really ought to be in the same photo is Amos Hochstein, described by Politico as "perhaps, the most influential Joe Biden adviser that most people don’t know about. He wants to keep it that way," which is probably why we'll never see him in such a photo, with or without a mask. For good or ill, these three are indisputably running current US Ukraine policy, especially as Joe progressively loses interest in the day-to-day job of president. But let's start with Ms Nuland.

She in particular found herself present at the creation of a new Ukraine policy in 2013-1014, because in the State Department under both the Bush and Obama administrations, she'd done a great deal to bring the circumstances about that caused the US to become more visibly involved. According to Wikipedia,

From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, exercising an influential role during the Iraq War. From 2005 to 2008, during President George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she concentrated on mobilizing European support for the NATO intervention in Afghanistan.

. . . In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs[18] and was sworn in on September 18, 2013. In her role as assistant secretary, she managed diplomatic relations with fifty countries in Europe and Eurasia, as well as with NATO, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

. . . During the Maidan Uprising in Ukraine, Nuland made appearances supporting the Maidan protesters. In December 2013, she said in a speech to the US–Ukraine Foundation that the U.S. had spent about $5 billion on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since 1991. The Russian government seized on this statement, claiming it was evidence the U.S. was orchestrating a revolution.

On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on January 28, 2014, was published on YouTube. Nuland and Pyatt discussed who they thought should or shouldn't be in the next Ukrainian government and their opinion of various Ukrainian political figures.

. . . Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity [Maidan revolution], establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and border guard.

. . . Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, is a historian, foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder in 1998 of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC). She has two children.

It's hard to ask for more solid neoconservative credentials. Her thumbnail at the Carnegie Endowment reads in part,

She was also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, distinguished practitioner in grand strategy at Yale University, and a member of the Board of the National Endowment for Democracy.

So, with her neoconservative husband Robert Kagan, whose brother is Frederick Kagan of the neocon Institute for the Study of War, she's part of a nepotistic neocon power network that's been ingrained in the Deep State irrespective of political party. But let's look in particular at the National Endowment for Democracy and its relationship with Ukraine's Maidan revolution:

Obvious examples of Central Intelligence Agency covert action abroad are difficult to identify today, save for occasional acknowledged calamities, such as the long-running $1 billion effort to overthrow the government of Syria, via funding, training and arming barbarous jihadist groups.

In part, this stems from many of the CIA’s traditional responsibilities and activities being farmed out to “overt” organizations, most significantly the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

. . . [In September 2013,} Carl Gershman, NED chief from its launch until summer 2021, authored an op-ed for The Washington Post, outlining how his organization was hard at work wresting countries in Russia’s near abroad -– the constellation of former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states -– away from Moscow’s orbit.

. . . Along the way, he described Ukraine as “the biggest prize” in the region, suggesting Kiev joining Europe would “accelerate the demise” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six months later, Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.

. . . on February 3rd 2014, less than three weeks before police withdrew from Kiev, effectively handing the city to armed protesters and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country, NED convened an event, Ukraine’s lessons learned: from the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan.

[US Senator John] McCain flew to Kiev in December 2013 to give an address to Maidan protesters, flanked by known Neo-Nazi Oleh Tyahnybok. Then-State Department official Victoria Nuland, now Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, was also present, notoriously handing out motivational cookies to attendees.

On February 4th 2014, . . . an intercepted recording of a telephone call between Nuland –- now [2022] Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs –- and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked, in which the pair discussed how Washington was “midwifing” Yanukovych’s ouster, and named several handpicked individuals to head the post-coup government.

Most discussions of the Maidan revolution treat it in isolation from the Russian annexation of Crimea, which took place in February and March of 2014, but the timing strongly suggests it waa a Russian response to increased US interference in Ukrainian domestic politics, in particular the US-sponsored ouster of the pro-Russian elected president Yanukovych under the pretext of corruption. Whatever the pros and cons of this US skulduggery may ultimately be, especially in the context of Nuland's call with Ambassador Pyatt, there's a most unfortunate connotation of Viet Nam-era Ugly Americanism, in which a quasi-colonialist clique of US diplomats manipulates right-wing factions in a client country to fight a proxy war against Russia.

It's hard to avoid thinking Putin was fully aware of what Nuland was engineering, and in fact the Maidan revolution might reasonably be seen as a US provocation that started the Russo-Ukraine War in the first place. Putin's 2022 invasion must be seen as a flareup in a war that had begun eight years earlier in response to a US-engineered coup.

But this is the context in which we can see Joe Biden's flight to Kyiv on April 21, 2014 following not just the success of the Yanukovych ouster but also the outbreak of the the Russo-Ukraine War, which is still going on, in which we first encounter the shadowy Amos Hochstein. I'll have more to say about him tomorrow.

But here's a question to ponder: as best we know, Barack Obama didn't think much of Joe Biden as either a diplomat or a policy guy. All of a sudden in February and March of 2014, we're looking at a portentous pair of geopolitical developments on Russia's border, both provoked by the US. Why did Obama make Joe, who was little more than comic relief in his administration, the point man to deal with this?

What Did Obama Know?

A couple of stories came out yesterday that raise two questions about Joe's Ukraine timeline, neither especially new, but intriguing as we learn more context. The two questions ultimately boil down to, first, what did Obama know about Joe's Ukraine payoffs, and second, what does Zelensky have on Joe?

Red State brings up the first:

New questions are swirling about Joe Biden's involvement in Ukraine while he served as vice president during the Obama administration.

. . . How did things get to that point, though? A newly unearthed exchange from 2014 is providing a major clue. A "senior administration official" (at the time) gave a press briefing on background about Biden's now-infamous trip to Ukraine. According to one answer given, the now-president may have actually requested the role of overseeing American foreign policy in Ukraine. From there, the timeline only gets more suspicious.

The transcript of the press briefing, which took place on April 21, 20l4 aboard Air Force Two as Joe flew to Kyiv, can be found at the link. Red State quotes this passage:

Q Could you just say how this trip came about? Obviously the Vice President has a long history of diplomatic relations with Ukraine. Was this something that was his initiative? Did the President ask him to go because of those relationships? Or how did that come?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The reason I’m pausing here is it’s one of those -- it’s one of those conversations where it’s a little hard to say whether the President asked him or he said I want to go. It grew out of a conversation that the two of them had, and both of them agreed that it was important for the U.S. to send a high-level signal of support for all of the lines of effort that this government is undertaking.

A September 18, 2020 report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee puts Joe's April 21, 2014 visit to Kyiv in partial context:

In late 2013 and into 2014, mass protests erupted in Kyiv, Ukraine, demanding integration into western economies and an end to systemic corruption that had plagued the country. At least 82 people were killed during the protests, which culminated on Feb. 21 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych abdicated by fleeing the country. Less than two months later, over the span of only 28 days, significant events involving the Bidens unfolded.

On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and he soon after was described in the press as the “public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.” The day after his visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma. . . . Fourteen days later, on May 12, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.

The Red State link gives more details of Joe's, Devon Archer's, and Hunter's activites in the runup to the April 21 flight to Kyiv:

That's where the timeline comes in. Devin [sic] Archer, who recently testified in the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Biden family corruption, was told by Hunter Biden to buy a burner phone on April 13th, 2014. Just days later, Archer met with Joe Biden in the West Wing of the White House. On April 21st, 2014, the then-vice president was wheels-up, headed to Kyiv where he would eventually get Shokin fired.

There's no reason to believe that the flow of events shown above is a coincidence. Did Joe Biden specifically go to Barack Obama to position himself as the lead in Ukraine as part of a scheme to enrich his son (and by virtue, his family)? And did the infamous trip to Kyiv that ended with a big win for Hunter Biden and Burisma stem from the conversation with Archer? It certainly looks that way. This onion has a lot of layers, and we aren't near the center yet.

The Washington Examiner published a story in 2019 itemizing Joe's six trips to Ukraine. The first was on July 20-22, 2009, and appears to have been a routine diplomatic visit at the start of the Obama administration. The next didn't take place until April, 2014, five years later. The Senate committee report mentions the abdication of Ukraine's President Yanukovych following anti-corruption demonstrations, but it leaves out the Russian annexation of Crimea in January and February of that year, which took place in the power vacuum that resulted from the anti-corruption demonstrations.

Oddly, the "senior administration official" who conducted the press briefing had little directly to say about Crimea, but the implcation of his general gaseous diplospeak was that Ukraine's position vis-a-vis Putin had suddenly become a major focus of admiminstration policy, and in light of that, Joe was going to be in charge. As a result, from one visit in 2009, Joe then made five visits between 2014 and 2017.

But this brings us to the second of yesterday's stories, at Just the News. In 2014-15, Ukraine had moved up as a US area of interest, and official policy had involved non-lethal military support as an anti-Russian measure and pressure to limit corruption as a domestic political measure, which was reasonable enough if not very imaginative. For much of this time, Joe was with the program, but on his fifth trip to Kyiv, December 7-8, 2015, he suddenly reversed course:

Just a month earlier [November 2015], a task force of top State, Treasury and Justice Department officials had decided that Ukraine and its new top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had made enough progress on anti-corruption reforms for the country to receive a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee.

They drafted a term sheet for the delivery of the new aid to then-President Poroshenko during Biden’s December 2015 trip to Ukraine, and were making plans to invite Shokin’s top staff to Washington in January for a high-level meeting. Shokin himself even got a letter from the State Department declaring it was “impressed” with his reform efforts.

But the vice president and his top advisers on Ukraine, including then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, had a very different plan that began unfolding that Thanksgiving holiday week. In fact, it was an about-face when it came to Shokin’s plight, according to two “goals and objectives” memos drafted four days before Thanksgiving on Nov. 22, 2015 and obtained by Just the News.

“There is wide agreement that anti-corruption must be at the top of this list, and that reforms must include an overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s Office, including removal of Prosecutor General Shokin, who is widely regarded as an obstacle to fighting corruption, if not a source of the problem,” the memos stated.

The odd thing is that we're seeing the start of what reporters like Seymour Hersh are now reporting is a split between the conventional deep state -- "a task force of top State, Treasury and Justice Department officials" -- and Biden loyalists, in particular Victoria Nuland, who advised Joe to reverse US policy on Shokin and use the leverage of the $1 billion loan guarantee to secure his removal. But this advanced only Biden family interests, not US interests as determined by the cabinet-level task force. The Just the News link continues,

A U.S. intervention into the domestic affairs of an ally like Ukraine was rare and intrusive, and the meddling has had years of fallout. And it turns out, according to documents obtained years later by Just the News, that Joe Biden and his son Hunter were both intensely focused on the same prosecutor at that same moment.

A few blocks away from the White House, Hunter Biden and his associates were trying to hire a crisis communications firm to deal with Shokin’s decision to revive a corruption investigation of the Burisma Holdings company where Hunter Biden served as a board member and received $1 million a year in compensation, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

There can be little question that the sudden US policy reversal calling for Shokin's removal benefited the Biden family interests, while the Biden retainers like Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Amos Hochstein were apparently on board with the sudden policy switch and continue to drive US Ukraine policy now. The problem is that the Ukraine policy we have is turning out to be yet another neoconservative war with no clear objective and no exit strategy, and signals are beginning to emerge that the Deep State is unhappy.

This strikes me, though, as a good start toward the insightful policy analysis we need over the origins of this war, which may well establish a link between short-term political scandal and longer-term policy error. And they date back to the Obama administration, its policy decisions, Joe's involvement, and his ability to override them. How could he do this, and what did Obama know?

What About Ukraine?

There's general consensus across the spectrum that the planned Ukraine 2023 counteroffensive has "stalled", although that's probably a generous characterization -- it might be more accurate to say it never really got under way. Other than Tucker Carlson's Monday interview with retired Col Douglas MacGregor, which is over-the-top, there's been little other recent discussion. On the other hand, there's a good analysis on Seymour Hersh's Substack, which is mostly behind a paywall, but Gateway Pundit has a summary:

Hersh cites an unnamed intel official who said that SecState Antony Blinken “has figured out that the United States” and Ukraine “will not win the war” against Russia. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported the U.S. intel community realizes the Ukrainian offensive will fail to achieve its key goal of taking the southeastern city of Melitopol, a strategic Russian logistics hub.

“The word was getting to (Blinken) through the Agency that the Ukrainian offense was not going to work. It was a show by Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bullshit,“ Hersh’s source said.

Hersh's implication is that this went against the White House line, although this is probably more accurately characterized as the line of Biden's foreign policy handlers, especially Jake Sullivan:

When war hawk Blinken was “suddenly having doubts,” CIA director Bill Burns “made his move to join the sinking ship,” Hersh writes. Burns may have been jockeying to replace “a disillusioned Blinken,” according to Hersh, but only got “a token promotion: an appointment to Biden’s cabinet.”

At the same time, “ultra-hawkish” Victoria Nuland was promoted by Biden from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs to Acting Deputy Secretary of State ”over the heated objections of many in the State Department,” Hersh writes. “She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. “

“Tony Blinken, who publicly vowed just a few months ago that there would be no immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, is still in office and, if asked, would certainly dispute any notion of discontent with Zelensky or the administration’s murderous and failing war policy in Ukraine,” Hersh writes. The White House’s “wishful approach to the war, when it comes to realistic talk to the American people, will continue apace,” Hersh said. “But the end is nearing, even if the assessments supplied by Biden to the public are out of a comic strip.”

Hersh goes on to imply that there are divisions within the Deep State. He mentions the CIA above, but now he turns to the Pentagon:

In November, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said that a victory by Ukraine may not be achieved militarily and that Kiev should look for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. “We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” a US official told Politico, admitting that “Milley had a point.”

A piece from this past Sunday in The Economist gives more perspective:

Having once promised a march to Crimea, occupied and annexed by Russia since 2014, the political leadership in Kyiv now emphasises more realistic expectations.

. . . Ukraine’s leadership is particularly frustrated that Western equipment has not yet arrived in its promised numbers. It is “upsetting…and demotivating,” [presidential spokesman Serhiy] Leshchenko says. Equivocation among allies about the supply of newer weapons, and the prospect of America re-electing Donald Trump next year, have added to Ukrainian anxieties. A source in the general staff says that Ukraine has received just 60 Leopard tanks, despite the promise of hundreds. Demining vehicles are particularly scarce. “We simply don’t have the resources to do the frontal attacks that the West is imploring us to do,” says the source.

. . . Ukraine has since prioritised preserving its army. “We no longer plan operations that presuppose large losses,” says the source. “The emphasis is now on degrading the enemy: artillery, drones, electronic warfare and so on.”

It's hard to avoid thinking there have been flaws in Western Ukraine policy from the start, including Ukraine's early success in resisting the Russian invasion that led to overoptimism about how the war would proceed, along with reluctance, especially from the Biden administration, to supply Ukraine with advanced weapons. Particularly during 2023, Biden's initial hesitation to provide advanced tanks and F-16s, which he eventually approved, has resulted in those weapons not arriving in sufficient numbers until 2024, when it was generally understood that Ukraine needed to make significant progress in its counteroffensive this year before the war becomes an issue in the 2024 election.

On one hand, I've noted throughout that there's been no overall clear allied objective in the war, as opposed to World War II, when there were agreements on a Europe-first policy, as well as an overall policy of unconditional surrender. On the other, so far, there doesn't seem to have been any sort of flexibility on policies that are nevertheless unclear and unstated. In 2006, President Bush lost confidence in the neoconservatives' Iraq war results and fired Donald Rumsefeld as defense secretary. There's been no equivalent move from Joe Biden, while apparent disagreements continue at the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department -- and the failed current policies of vacillation and delayed approval of new weapons clearly come from his handlers.

Even at his best, waging a proxy war in Ukraine was probably beyond Biden, and it was certainly beyond his policy handlers Blinken, Sullivan, and Nuland. At this point, Biden has become distracted by his family scandals, and it looks like he's lost interest in the details of being president. Dubya by this point would probably have fired several cabinet-level people. Apparently it was First Lady Laura who told him to fire Rumsfeld.

Now we have Dr Jill.

Nothing New

Joe's performance on his Maui visit wasn't good, especially the visual of him falling asleep at a luncheon meeting and the transcript of his remarks at Lahaina:

Governor Josh Green, you’ve been incredible. From the day we’ve spoken on this, you’ve been way ahead of the curve. Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke; Brian Schantz [Schatz], our senator; Senator Mazie Hir- — by the way, Mazie, I told my granddaughter, whose name is Maisy as well — she said, “That’s why I like her.” (Laughter.) Anyway. But her name is Maisy as well.

And — and Jill To- — Tokuda, Representative Ed Chase, and Mayor Rick Bassen [Bissen]. Rick, when we talked on the phone, I never — you look like you played in defensive tackle for — I don’t know who, but somebody good. But, anyway, I want to thank you for your leadership in this unimaginable — during this unimaginable travedy — tragedy.

What puzzles me here is that his own staff has released the official transcript verbatim, with every mispronunciation, misspeak, gaffe, and stumble clearly recorded, with not even the slightest attempt to clean things up. It's pretty clear that he isn't up to speed on the names of either US senator from Hawaii; he gets Sen Schatz's name wrong, and he's also covering for not quite knowing Sen Hirono's last name.

The impression I have is that his staff gave him the usual briefing notes that we sometimes get to see -- YOU enter from left, go to microphone, YOU greet Sen Hirono . . . YOU turn and leave the stage at right. . ." of which he maybe follows the highlights at best, but one thing he clearly didn't do in this case was study the photos and learn the names of the people he was supposed to recognize in his remarks. Why should he? It's only courteous, and the most powerful man in the world doesn't need to be courteous.

He's like a recalcitrant five-year-old who's being dragged to a big family event in a jacket and tie, something he absolutely doesn't want to do, and he's displaying passive resistance to the whole program. The five-year-old resents his parents for making him do it, and he consistently says the wrong thing, gets mixed up while shaking hands with Uncle Ted, turns in the wrong direction, and falls asleep. Joe has precisely the same routine.

In fact, Joe resents his handlers, even though they're the ones who've gotten him where he is (he likely doesn't see it that way). Every indication is that he never wanted to go to Maui, even for half a day, and he probably resisted the advice behind the scenes. It sounds like a few people got to Dr Jill, and she prevalied on him to do it. The problem is that the message was clear.

President Biden was greeted with middle fingers, chants of protest, and signs that said “No Comment” Monday as he arrived in Maui to tour wildfire damage after repeatedly declining to comment last week on the tragedy that killed at least 114 people.

. . . As he drove toward downtown Lahaina, Biden passed signs that said “No Comment,” “Really $7?,” “Action Speaks Louder Than Words”, and “FJB,” as well as at least two flags promoting the 2024 candidacy of former President Donald Trump.

Again, I don't think this is a sign of mental decline. It's a sign of a basic sense of entitlement, a little bit like Lyndon Johnson saying, "I'm the only president you've got." Ed Morrissey at Hot Air had an uncharacteristic flash of insight into the real situation:

{I]f Biden retires and the party doesn’t nominate Harris, all of the bad blood over the diversity promises of 2020 will explode. That will be especially true if the party nominates Gavin Newsom instead, who notably angered the black and female activists in the party by appointing Alex Padilla to fill out the rest of Harris’ term in the Senate rather than another black woman. This won’t be a Kennedy-Carter contest but an explosion of identity-politics grudges and fury, much more 1968 than 1980.

. . . That is why Democrats will prop up Biden for as long as it takes, even if they have to do a Weekend At Bernie’s campaign in 2024.

He's the last old white guy who isn't Bernie Sanders, and he's the last one standing who can maintain the pretense that the New Deal coalition survives. After Biden, the greens, radical feminists, reparations hustlers, homeless-cum-urban criminals, and sexual deviants will fight each other for supremacy with little chance of an electoral majority in a general election.

Whether anyone else wants a Weekend at Bernie's campaign in 2024, that's what Biden prefers. Beyond that, with Biden's weakness as a candidate -- at this point, he can no longer hold a regular press conference due to rhe overhanging questions about Hunter -- it's the only possible option to keep him on vacation or some basement equivalent for the next 14 months. Joe understands this better than anyone.

This is the real Joe we'll be seeing from now on. If Dr Jill and his handlers try to make him do more, it'll just be worse, and Joe is making sure they understand it.

Modified Limited Hangout

Yesterday I linked to an August 19 story at Politico that referred to "more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors" that had somehow come to Politico's attention. Yesterday Red State reported,

The New York Times was also shown the emails that Politico based its story on, and together, the two outlets offer a stunning look at various events that appear to show clear collusion between Hunter Biden and the DOJ.

Red State concludes from the two document dumps:

Hunter Biden's legal strategy was to pressure and coerce the DOJ into not prosecuting. That was accomplished through the aforementioned threat of calling Joe Biden to testify, but also through a series of moves to politicize the probe, including inserting Donald Trump into the discussion. You may recognize the name Lesley Wolf, as that's the same Assitant [sic -- this is Conserative Inc's standard of proofreading] U.S. Attorney who essentially scuttled the IRS' investigation into Hunter Biden. I can only assume she took the threat of "career suicide" from Hunter Biden's lawyers very seriously given her actions regarding the case.

Wait a moment. Someone sent more than 300 pages of e-mails and documents to Politico and The New York Times? Politico is a heavyweight, insider-focused outlet, while the New York Times served, among other things, as James Comey's mouthpiece to give his version of events after Trump fired him as FBI director. In other words, these new 300 pages came straight from the Deep State, in this case, David Weiss and his prosecution team, via uber-establishment media. In effect, they're a tacitly quasi-official version from Weiss of the events that led up to Weiss's appointment as special counsel. Why is this coming out now, from those sources?

Oddly, nobody from Conservative Inc has even asked that question. They're too busy lapping up the juicy details to try to figure out what this means. I would call this account a modified limited hangout. In fact, there's an eponymous blog on the subject:

Coined on the fly by Nixon lawyer John Ehrlichman in 1973, it's a very unique phrase. A modified limited hangout is the public admission of a wrong in an attempt to hide a more serious wrong, while the media and prosecutors are investigating related crimes. It's a defensive tool in trying to cover-up a conspiracy.

There's no question that there were frenzied negotiations throughout 2022 and well into 2023 over precisely what charges should be brought against Hunter Biden and how his penalties could be credibly minimized, but the story as released and spun by the Times and Politico is intended to make Weiss, his prosecution team, and Garland look, if not good, at least excusable. The quasi-official version boils down to eventually, Weiss, his team, and Garland got fed up with the political pressure, and once Judge Norieka showed skepticism about the deal, it gave them an opening effectively to withdraw it by claiming they had a different understanding of the unspoken immunity terms than Hunter's team did.

It's still hard for the Justice Department to edge away from an interpretation that over 18 months, they'd succumbed to intense political pressure from the Bidens while Garland took the public position that the team was "independent" -- until the collapse of the whole frammis in court on July 26 forced Garland to backtrack and name Weiss special counsel by August 11.

One thread that runs through this version of events is the emergence of the IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler and their testimony before the Comer committee. Faced with their testimony that the Justice Department forced the IRS to take them off the Hunter investigation, Garland and Weiss have been forced to do damage control as subsequent events have unfolded. That Politico and the Times would enable this suggests some sort of tectonic shift may be taking place within the Deep State and its allies.

I think this basic development stems from a growing concern, especially at the Justice Department, that Biden could lose the 2024 election to Trump, and Trump would immediately clean house at Justice, which would make people like David Weiss and Merrick Garland vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges. Garland and Weiss are now out to do what they can to scrub at least the public perception of the record. After all, if Biden were a sure thing for 2024, there would be absolutely no reason for them to worry, they'd be golden for four more years, and they'd do business as they'd been doing it until the IRS whistleblowers showed up and Judge Norieka killed the deal.

The process may be slow and cumbersome, but just for starters, we're beginning to see daylight between the Justice Department and the Bidens that we hadmn't previously seen. My guess is that further rise in the polls for Trump will hasten this overall process.

Joe's Nixon Problem

In yesterday's post, I linked to a Breitbart story on how Biden won't discuss the Hunter problem with his staff. This morning I saw a CNN story that says the same thing, but with a different spin:

Long among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing, Hunter Biden’s legal saga now appears destined to play out amid his father’s bid for reelection, frustrating the president but so far causing little real concern among his advisers.

The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come.

. . . [B]oth investigations take away the fundamental element of control for a White House heading into an election cycle. As multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week, special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initially to discover. The fact that it’s also a delicate family matter, people close to Biden say, is creating a level of personal angst unlike any other challenge for the president. . . . “Hunter Biden is not a topic of discussion in campaign meetings,” a senior aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject. “It’s just not addressed.”

As I compare the Joe-and-Hunter saga to Watergate, I see an area where Joe may have tailored a strategy to avoid one of Nixon's biggest mistakes -- he talked too much with his staff, especially John Dean. Dean was able to parlay his testimony on Nixon's incriminating remarks into lenient treatment for his own offenses, which should be a warning to anyone in any White House thinking of making conspiracies, but that Joe Biden should be avoiding Nixon's error is another indication that Biden isn't as senile as he wants people to believe.

Now this piece at Politico gives some insight into how Joe actually operates. There's been a great deal of recent speculation on how the "sweetheart deal" with David Weiss's prosecutors was worked out, and the story fleshes out some details. It summarizes "more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors" that shed "new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal".

The problem, of course, is that the deal fell through, but the document trove indicates that Chistopher Clark, now off the case in something close to disgrace as he's likely to be a witness, was running the whole strategy. In a 2022 letter to Weiss's prosecutors, Clark

laid out what could have been seen as a promise, a warning, or just some very zealous lawyering: He said Joe Biden would undoubtedly be a witness at trial because of leaks about the probe. He wrote that just a few weeks before sending his letter, there had been two back-to-back leaks related to Hunter Biden and the gun issue. First, someone told The Washington Post that investigators thought Biden deserved tax and gun charges. Then a few days later, The Daily Mail reported on a voicemail Joe Biden left for his son in the window of time when he allegedly owned the gun.

. . . “There can be no doubt that these leaks have inserted President Biden into this case,” he said.

He then described a nearly unthinkable scenario: The president would testify to undermine a criminal case brought by prosecutors representing the United States of America.

Red State commented,

Politico offers the description of the move as a promise, warning, or very zealous lawyering, but that’s the mildest way to put it. Hunter Biden's legal team essentially gave the DOJ a choice: Stop pressing the gun charge or face the implied wrath of the president, with an assertion that the DOJ's reputation would be damaged in the process.

. . . Sure enough, instead of prosecuting the gun crime, Weiss and his team moved to offer pre-trial diversion. Now, we have ample evidence that the DOJ made that decision under the threat of involving and angering the President of the United States. Did that influence Weiss' decision? It's hard to see how it didn't given Hunter Biden's legal team apparently made it a centerpiece of their negotiations.

What we're seeing is a variation on what's starting to look like Joe's modus operandi, Hunter and his proxies make veiled references to the Big Guy while preserving his deniability, yet they make it clear that if their victims make Mr Big unhappy, things could go south in a hurry. In this particular case, it also looks like any discussions that took place between Hunter and Joe that were relayed to Clark would be covered by attorney-client privilege. (But then, maybe not. Clark had to withdraw because he could be a witness, which suggests exceptions to that privilege.)

The Politico story details months of negotiations on the plea deal between Clark and the prosecutors, with interruptions and changes in terms at many points along the way as the Comer committee released new information and IRS whistleblowers came forward. It's plain in the narrative that both Weiss and Garland were highly sensitive to such revelations, and they recognized throughout that the interests of the Justice Department and their personal legal exposure were not the same as Joe's or Hunter's.

This came to a head when Judge Noreika expressed her reservations about the deal. Weiss and Garland had become nervous. Back to the Politico link:

In the weeks that followed, Biden’s defense lawyers and federal prosecutors reopened their talks. They didn’t go well. According to court documents, Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors met shortly after the hearing, and Biden’s team suggested changes to the plea deal and the diversion agreement. The prosecutors didn’t accept their proposals, and instead suggested their own changes on July 31. But Biden’s lawyers rejected their suggestions on Aug. 7.

According to a letter Clark sent to the prosecutors on Aug. 7, those prosecutors had proposed, “without explanation, completely deleting the immunity provision” in the agreement. It was an abandonment of the language they had painstakingly negotiated, and it was a non-starter for Biden’s lawyers. It’s unclear why the prosecutors, after weeks of negotiations, now wanted to narrow the immunity they would offer. ["Unclear"? cough, cough. They were nervous.]

. . . The day after Clark sent his letter, Weiss asked Garland to make him a special counsel.

That would have been August 8; Garland officially made Weiss special Counsel on August 11. Presumably after talking with Weiss, Garland was nervous as well. On that day, Abbe Lowell took over from Clark as Hunter's de facto attorney, going on the weekend talks on Hunter's behalf on August 12 and 13. On Tuesday, August 15, Clark officially withdrew from the case.

Other accounts suggest Joe was closely involved with Hunter in the runup to the disastrous July 26 hearing in front of Judge Noreika. The New York Post reported this past Thursday,

The president’s embattled 53-year-old son began what ended up being a two-week stay at the Executive Mansion on June 21 — one day after he reached a doomed plea agreement with US Attorney David Weiss, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

. . . The report notes that most White House aides, including senior staffers, are not only “not involved” in conversations about the president’s son but “strenuously avoid” discussing Hunter Biden’s legal woes with the commander-in-chief because of the belief that their “contributions and ideas would not be welcome.”

They refuse to broach the topic with the president despite concern over the “toll” Hunter Biden’s legal predicaments are having on the oldest president in US history.

. . . However, aides cleared the president’s schedule on July 26, so he could closely monitor his son’s appearance in a Delaware courtroom, where it was expected that his plea deal with Weiss would be finalized, according to the Washington Post.

. . . The president’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, gave the commander-in-chief updates as the hours-long hearing unfolded and Hunter Biden’s deal fell apart, culminating in a not-guilty plea by the first son.

Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently elevated Weiss to special counsel, which “blindsided” President Biden, according to the report.

What I'm gathering from all these data points is that Joe and Hunter are closely coordinating their strategies via a very small number of personal attorneys who are continuing to play the "Big Guy sorta wants it" game. They aren't making Nixon's mistake of bringing in White House staff, which then have an interest in testifying against them to save their own skins. On the other hand, it looks like Joe and Hunter spent many months bullying Weiss and his prosecutors into doing the "sweetheart" deal, which wound up making them so nervous they reneged on it in Judge Noreika's courtroom, and the fallout from that made Garland so nervous that he named Weiss a special prosecutor.

The problem is that the Joe-and-Hunter strategy of bullying Weiss into negotiating a "sweetheart" deal has fallen apart. There isn't, as some people still assert, some grander plan to execute a new, mega-sweetheart deal in another jurisdiction. For Weiss to drop the charges in Delaware and Garland to make him special prosecutor were last-minute attempts to cover themselves in a situation that had already made them very nervous. Why did Garland make Weiss special counsel, when what should have been done was to name a respected neutral outsider? Because Garland has his own problems now, and Weiss has the same ones -- they let Hunter, Joe, and Clark bully them into the sweetheart deal, which has fallen apart with no hope of bringing it back.

Joe and Hunter are off on a "vacation" at Lake Tahoe under the pretense of a family get-together. They're sorta-kinda working on a Plan B, in between Hunter stepping out of the room for a bump every 15 minutes. Let's hope the Secret Service swept the place for bugs before the family moved in. But Hunter's working it all out, he's the smartest guy Joe knows. Things'll be fine!

Glenn Reynolds Isn't The Sharpest Knife In The Drawer, But. . .

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, a Yale Law graduate and holder of an endowed chair at the University of Tennessee School of Law, is a libertarian, which means that he follows Ayn Rand as his guiding light. (Rand herself described libertarians as "a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people" who "plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose".)

He is also a transhumanist who in the past has endorsed cryonics (freezing the heads of dead people in anticipation that future technology can resuscitate them) and the technological singularity, which among other things embraces the idea that people can be digitized and uploaded into a giant computer memory, which will ensure their immortality, at least until the next power failure.

I wouldn't even ask Glenn Reynolds for advice on a traffic ticket, but before he rose to prominence, I'd already lost confidence in the ability of academic institutions to certify people whom we can trust to teach future generations. Nevertheless, like a few other commentators, he's beginning to ask the right question about Joe Biden:

In public he appears increasingly out of it.

He speaks nonsense, he shows flashes of inappropriate anger, he walks off stage in the middle of events, and he has trouble with stairs.

. . . But what if it’s all an act?

He cites as evidence Joe's use of pseudonymous e-mail addresses while he was vice president, apparently to pass privileged information to Hunter so that Hunter could in turn pass it on to foreign Biden family clients as proof that they were getting what they paid for, viz, Joe's influence on their behalf.

I'm not sure if this proves Reynolds's point -- Joe did use phony e-mail accounts at least up to 2016, but it says little about his cognitive abilities in 2023, although I agree in general that Joe isn't suffering from a medical condition that impairs his thinking. (A separate question that's worth asking is if he's still using fake e-mail.)

Reynolds cites Charles CW Cooke at the National Review behind a paywall:

Writing in National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke observes: “If this allegation is proven to be accurate, what could the defense possibly be? . . . I honestly can’t think of one.”

. . . I suppose there may be other, more innocent, explanations, but like Cooke I’m having trouble thinking of anything that makes this pattern of behavior look innocent.

Which is why I’m wondering if when Joe Biden is acting senile, he’s actually acting senile.

The accounts we're seeing suggest that there is in fact a purposeful effort coming from the White House to do what it can to control the metastasizing scandal, although the ability to address it is limited by Joe's apparent unwillingness to discuss it with aides:

President Joe Biden reportedly ignores most White House aides when they try to share “contributions” or “ideas” about how to handle Hunter Biden’s legal position, according to a report.

. . . “Inside the White House, most aides strenuously avoid discussing Hunter’s troubles with the president, believing their contributions and ideas would not be welcome,” the Washington Post reported Thursday based on comments from half a dozen current and former administration officials. “[O]nly a small group of longtime trusted aides are engaged in conversations about how to handle family matters.”

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

Of course, Joe's problem isn't just Hunter, it's looking more and more as if Joe's problem is what Hunter was doing for Joe, especially when the phony e-mail accounts appear to have been directly related to their joint business effort. Newt Gingrich on Thursday referred to other purpose-driven activity from within the White House:

In an interview with Charlie Kirk, Gingrich said it is hearsay but that he was told from a reliable source, "Friday evening, somebody from Washington called the district attorney in Atlanta and said, You have to indict on Monday." He added, "We have to cover up all of the mistakes we just made with Weiss."

"She said apparently, my jurors aren't coming back till Tuesday," Gingrich continued. "and they said you didn't hear me. You have to indict on Monday."

"And she said, Well, they're not gonna get here before noon," he said. "They said that doesn't matter."

"She says this means it's going to be eight or nine or 10 o'clock at night," he added, "It doesn't matter. We need the news media shifting."

Kirk asked who made the phone call, but Gingrich said he didn't know, and reiterated that it was hearsay.

The bottom line here, for anyone even as obtuse as Glenn Reynolds, is that Joe himself has full situational awareness and probably understands his potential risks better even than his staff, which is why he won't discuss them. Still, we're seeing at least inchoate and piecemeal recognition of a problem and the start of a game plan to deal with it.

But for now, it looks like Joe's public strategy will be to do everything he can to avoid publc contact and definitely questions fron the press, but when he absolutely can't avoid them, he'll continue to play senile. The question will be how long he can maintain that facade.