Well, Son Of A Bitch!

The last we heard of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, late a 46-year-old Florida man named Mike who'd turned up as "Sarah", the oficial spokestrans for the Ukrainian territorial defense force, was that once the story attracted the attention of Ohio Sen Vance, he'd been suspended from the role of spokestrans.

On social media, the TDF said: “The statements of (Junior Seargant) Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

“The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken. Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation.”

It looks like the official investigation has taken place, the appropriate decisions have been taken, and, son of a bitch, Sarah's back on the job!

Ukraine’s controversial transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has claimed to have been reinstated in the role representing the Territorial Defence Forces (TDF) after being suspended last month.

“I continue in the role of TDF spokesperson. Truth, trust, and humanity will always prevail over accusations, allegations, and artificial intelligence,” Ashton-Cirillo said on Tuesday.

The original story of Sen Vance's letter and Ashton-Cirillo's suspension broke on September 20. However, on September 22,

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced Thursday that President Joe Biden would name Penny Pritzker, a billionaire heiress and former commerce secretary, to manage Ukraine’s economic recovery from the ongoing war.

In this post, I discussed Penny Pritzker's position as a Democrat megadonor, as well as her cousin James Nicholas Pritzker AKA Jennifer Natalya Pritzker, the first transsexual billionaire. There can be little question that getting Sarah her job back must have been one of Penny Pritzker's earliest priorities as Ukraine's recovery czar.

But one of my biggest points in my post last month on "Sarah" was that he seemed already to have had friends in high places: "[W]ho vouches for him? He must have handlers. Who are they?" Yesterday's Breitbart link raises additioonal questions:

The American citizen, born as Michael John Cirillo before ‘transitioning’, went on to claim to have signed two book contracts with Potomac Books publishing, with the first volume set to be released in the summer of next year.

Potomac Books says on its website,

Potomac Books has a long and distinguished pedigree. Founded in 1983 as the U.S. imprint of Brassey’s, a renowned British publishing house established in the nineteenth century, Brassey’s-U.S. was acquired by Books International in 1999 and renamed Potomac Books in 2004.

The University of Nebraska Press bought Potomac Books in 2013, acquiring its impressive backlist in military history, politics, current events, international affairs, terrorism, intelligence, and national security. As a general-interest imprint of UNP, Potomac continues to build on its strong roots in these fields, keeping readers informed about the critical issues and challenges of today’s world.

Later, the Breitbart link says,

Last year Ashton-Cirillo was presented with awards from Nevada Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Democrat Congresswoman Dina Titus.

Mike's previous publishing history is as a vanity self-publisher; now he's writing for a respected publisher in the military and intelligence fields. So far, I've been able to find no reference at all to any academic or journalistic achievement that might qualify Mike to write for a university press on military or intelligence issues. For instance, Mike doesn't appear to have either a four-year or a two-year degree, or any job ever with a recognized news outlet, much less The Atlantic or the Washington Post.

Yet somehow Mike is traveling in rarefied circles with the likes of Anne Applebaum and David Ignatius. I can only think he's got highly influential friends in extremely high places. Sen Vance in his letter last month had a point:

. . . Is this individual an American citizen? Did they ever serve, in any capacity, in American intelligence services?

Let's Revisit The Great Replacement

According to Wikipedia,

The Great Replacement (French: Grand Remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."

Regular visitors know my views are tempered by the common-sense observation that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, but this neglects the whole question of whom they're out to get. If you're a white guy worried about Latins streaming across the border, maybe you're paranoid and maybe you aren't. On the other hand, as I've been noting here pretty frequently, if you're black, you have more urgent reasons to mistrust white Democrats. Planned Parenthood was and is aimed at reducing the population of blacks.

Yesterday I was especially puzzled that the black mayors of Chicago and New York trusted their white Democrat governors to work with white segregationist Joe Biden to temper the effect of Latin immigrants surging into their cities. Black residents of Chicago turn out to be asking the same question: is there in fact a Great Replacement under way, and just who is being replaced?

On Tuesday afternoon, a protest took place outside the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse in the city’s Galewood neighborhood, where residents voiced their concerns about a plan to transform the space into a migrant shelter.

"We ain’t having that. No! You want to tell us what to do in our park? You cannot do that! We pay our money," said Linda Johnson, community member.

Critics argue that turning the site into a migrant sanctuary will disrupt crucial park programming and youth activities for residents – programs that took years to build.

"You want to take the little scraps of resources we have and put us at the bottom of the barrel? That’s not fair!" one woman said. "A lot of these young boys, they don’t have fathers so a lot of these coaches, they are their fathers. They spend part of their weekend here along with during the week, that keeps them in a safe place, it gives them mentorship, it shows them discipline."

The story goes on to outline other parts of the city where there are similar conflicts between established black neighborhoods threatened by Latins surging into newly designated immigrant shelters. It mentions Gov Pritzker's approach, which if anything seems to lack any special urgency:

At the same time, Governor J.B. Pritzker is urging the Biden administration to address the migrant crisis. He penned a letter to the president on Monday, emphasizing that the influx of migrants in Illinois has become "untenable."

Illinois has already allocated $330 million to tackle the migrant crisis, and Pritzker believes that additional resources can be provided by the White House and Congress to assist blue states targeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott's bussing campaign.

In other words, blah blah blah -- except that Pritzker also recognizes that it's Texas Gov Abbot who's forcing action:

"You don't hear him telling Republicans that they need to go to work in Washington on behalf of reform. Instead, he is just sending busloads across the country and causing chaos really," Pritzker said.

Pritzker says he's been in regular discussions with the Biden administration since the first bus arrived in Chicago in August 2022, seeking effective ways to address the ongoing challenges posed by the migrant crisis.

In other words, blah blah blah. What I'm beginning to notice about the latest Republican strategies is that they're forcing choices on Democrats. You can open the spigot and bring in all the Latin migrants you want, and you can have programs that support black communities, until you have to start to choose. And let's recognize that whether or not Gov Abbot charters buses to New York or Chicago, those are the places the migrants prefer, and they'll get there by charter bus or some other way.

Thus we have what appears to be a reversal by Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas:

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is citing an "acute and immediate need" to waive dozens of federal laws in order to build a border wall in south Texas as the illegal immigration crisis grows utterly out of control.

The problem I keep seeing is that, whether or not bien pensant opinion agrees, mass migration from the global south has been an agenda item. The assumption up to now has been that the intent is to make the world a better place, with a US electorate that looks more like -- who knows? -- Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay? -- than the current US, and those replaced might just be those of northern European backgrounds. But when policymakers are forced to choose, all of a sudden, they're choosing to replace the blacks. The northern Europeans, represented by the white Democrat governors doing the choosing, will be just fine.

Plenty of blacks have understood this all along. Yes, there's a Great Replacement agenda. The question isn't that there's an agenda, the question is who's being replaced.

Biden's Border Calculation

Recent weeks have brought indications that there are strains in the remaining Democrat coalition. Both Illinois Gov Pritzker and New York Gov Hochul have complained that the migrant incursions on the southern border are too big to handle, since once they cross, the migrants often head to New York or Chicago, where they stay and consume government services.

While neither Pritzker nor Hochul has pointed specifically to the de facto open border itself, both complain that there's no federal coordination in relocating the migrants, no policy that will allow the migrants to work, and no federal aid for the cities providing services to the migrants. On Monday, Pritzker outlined the problems in a letter to Biden:

On top of the 15,000 that have arrived in Chicago and Illinois over the last 13 months, we are now seeing busloads more migrants at increasingly higher rates being sent specifically to Chicago each day. Our state government has been forced to dedicate over $330 million to provide humanitarian aid — and that amount is increasing each day. . . . Though we have found temporary housing in existing buildings for a majority of the refugees, we are challenged to find additional housing for the continuous flow of people who keep coming and are now forced to sleep in police stations and on sidewalks. This situation is untenable and requires your immediate help beyond the coming work authorizations for some of the asylum seekers.

. . . First and foremost, I recommend that there be one person in the federal government who works directly for you in the White House who can lead the oversight of our nation’s efforts at the border. Right now, we have too many different federal department contacts — who are uncoordinated with one another — that handle various programs related to this humanitarian crisis. A single office with an identified leader must be assigned to work for the cities and states across the silos of government to manage the challenges we all face.

Surely Gov Pritzker is aware that Joe has already appointed a single person in the White House to handle the border crisis, Vice President Harris, who has never displayed much enthusiasm for the job. Part of the problem is that Harris hlds her position as representing the urban black faction of the Democrat coalition, but that community is the one directly affected by the open border influx in several ways. No matter, the white Democrats have never had blacks' interests in mind.

First, the inflow of refugees to New York and Chicago adds to the demand for basic social services in their inner cities. As both Pritzker and Hochul point out, the federal government isn't reimbursing the cities for increased use of police, public housing, and welfare services the migrants cause -- more deamnd for the same-size pie. This in turn directly decreases the level of services available to the existing black inner city residents.

Second, the lack of coordinated federal action is yielding control of the southern border to Mexican drug cartels. Per NewsNation earlier this year:

Drug cartels are controlling operations at the southern border as they force migrants across the Rio Grande at gunpoint and hold asylum seekers in stash houses, Border Patrol reports.

The cartel sees what is happening on the US side and takes advantage of the lack of resources, pushing people and drugs through the holes while border patrol is busy processing, according to Vice President of National Border Patrol Council, Art Del Cueto.

Per the New York Post,

Drug cartels are besieging the border by deliberately sending thousands of migrants a day to hand themselves over to Border Patrol officers in different US border towns, sources revealed to The Post.

The tactic is meant to tie up already overworked border agents so Mexico’s cartels can carry on their drug and human smuggling operations undisturbed in less populated areas, law enforcement officials explained.

. . . The mass give-ups are being fueled by cartel lies including about the Biden administration’s CBP One app to schedule immigration appointments, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post.

“They’re circulating false information that anyone waiting for a CBP One appointment can turn themselves in and get asylum,” one source revealed.

This facilitates the cartels' importing larger quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which in turn reach black inner city areas in places like New York and Chicago at lower prices, putting more strains on the population there.

My question continues to be who benefits. Among those who almost certainly don't are the migrants themselves, who are sustained in often inhumane conditions for indefinite periods. The poor and working class in the northern cities don't, since the new migrants demand government services that had previously gone to their communities. To the extent that the migrants work, normally off the books, they take existing jobs from existing residents.

The non-profits who collect government payments to address migrant and homeless problems without ever solving them benefit, and they often benefit local politicians via family and other connections. Beyond that, the big beneficiaries have got to be the cartels who bring the drugs across the border and the gangs who transport them across the US and distribute them in the cities. But that in turn suggests to me that there are payoffs and kickbacks at all levels to keep the system in place, which go to politicians as well.

What Govs Pritzker and Hochul are pointing out is an essential conflict within the current Democrat coalition whereby an existing and long-standing political establishment continues to have the cards loaded against urban blacks, to the establishment's immense ongoing profit. The black politicians, especially the mayors of New York and Chicago, are making a mistake to trust their white Democrat governors to look after their interests.

For the time being, Joe is showing no interest in making any changes to the system he's created. I've got to assume he's making money out of things as they stand.

Joe Is The Last Credible White Democrat

One phenomenon I've noticed over the past several years is that the Democrat Party, in its post-Reconstruction form the refuge of white segregationism in both north and south, has simply been abandoning that position, turning out the lights, leaving the keys in the locks, announcing that the cis whites have left, and whoever else is welcome to come in. The last generation of credible white party leadership, represesnted by figures like Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden, all cut deals for non-white support for their final candicacies with the understanding that they'd retire when those terms were over and would effectively nominate, or tolerate the nomination of, black successors.

Thus Dianne Feinstein earlier this year announced that she would not run for reelection in 2024, and as her health declined, Gov Newsom, himself term-limited for reelection as governor, announced he would nominate a black woman to complete her term.

Nancy Pelosi, running for Speaker of the House after the 2020 election, referred to a promise she had previously made that that term would be her last.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday reaffirmed a pledge she made to House Democrats two years ago that she would give up the gavel after the 117th Congress.

Ahead of the 116th Congress, Pelosi cut a deal with a handful of members threatening to vote against her for speaker on the floor. To win their support, the California Democrat agreed to allow the caucus to vote on proposed term limits for the top three Democratic leaders and to abide by the proposal herself regardless of whether it was adopted.

The term limit plan, which would have limited the top three leaders from serving beyond the 117th Congress, was not brought before the caucus as scheduled, amid a partial government shutdown. The members pushing for the proposal agreed to drop it indefinitely but noted they could always bring it up again if needed.

In the event, she kept her promise and retired as speaker before the current Congress but continues to hold her seat in the House. In June 2020, Joe Biden publicily yielded to pressure to nominate a black woman as his running mate. However, Biden had already agreed in 2020 to nominate a black woman to the Suprme Court in response to pressure from South Carolina Rep Clyburn, who then rejuvenated Joe's primary campaign byh endorsing him in that state's election.

In all these cases, white Democrat figureheads facing retirement, term limits, or actuarial inevitability conceded to the likelihood of black successors. As I've been pointing out, this has been a result of the long-term disintegration of the New Deal coalition, which having lost strong elements of labor, Catholics, Latins, amd the middle class, needs to hold on to factions like queers, greens, socialists, and blacks to keep anything like an electoral majority.

Part of this realignment is apparently the need to drop the idea of a cheerful middle-aged cis white guy to preside over the coalition. Not every Democrat is on board with this:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly on the verge of launching an independent bid for president, which could change the dynamics of the race significantly, but now Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who has repeatedly floated a primary challenge against Joe Biden, is raising speculation that he may now actually be launching his own presidential campaign.

Axios reports that Phillips will be “stepping down from his role in House Democratic leadership” citing his opinions about the 2024 presidential contest.

“My convictions relative to the 2024 presidential race are incongruent with the majority of my caucus, and I felt it appropriate to step aside from elected leadership,” Phillips told Axios in a statement. He was co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “I celebrate Leader Jeffries for his remarkable and principled leadership, and extend gratitude to my outstanding friends and colleagues for having created space and place for my perspectives,” Phillips continued. “I’ll continue to abide by my convictions, place people over politics, and support our shared mission to deliver security, opportunity, and prosperity for all Americans. Onward!”

Like most Americans, Phillips is keenly aware that Biden’s advanced age and diminished cognitive health is a problem and hasn’t been shy about pointing to polls showing that even among their own party, there are substantial concerns about him being their party’s nominee. Though he has never discounted the possibility of launching his own bid, he has also said that he is not “well-positioned” for a national campaign and has urged Democrats with a stronger national profile to consider entering the race against Biden. Still, he’s so concerned about Biden’s viability that some clearly believe his resignation is a sign he’s on the verge of running.

The problem for Phillips, or anyone trying to get a moderate cis white Democrat to run, is that these are people already hanging on in swing districts trying to keep their heads down. National prominence will hurt them, not help them. There will likely also be an increasing insistence that the old-fashioned cheerful cis white unifier not be a Democrat candidate at all. This suggests to me that we're headed for a major relignment, something that at least the current cohort of aging cis white Democrats facing the ends of their careers have at least been forced to recognize before many others.

Who Is James Biden?

The House Republicans have subpoenaed Joe's brother James's bank records as part of their impeachment investigation. Wondering why I'd never thought to do this before, I went to Wikipedia, and wonder of wonders, I discovered Jimmy has no separate entry -- he's lumped under "Siblings" in an entry for Family of Joe Biden, which reads in its entirety:

• James B. "Jim" Biden (born 1949), healthcare executive

In fact, the family calls him "Jimmy". Well above this entry is a two-paragraph chronicle of the family's pets. It sounds as though for whatever reason, we aren't going to find a single source on Jimmy that will be productive. In fact, you have to negotiate the results of web searches carefully to avoid the usual puff pieces, and stories with any substance seem to date at the latest from 2020, before the election. There doesn't seem to be any place where you can find anything like a conventional CV.

I asked Google, "Where did James Biden go to college?" and got a lot of hits for Joe and Hunter. Much farther down, I discovered:

Seven years younger than the president, James Biden, 73 [now 74], never graduated from college but has made a successful living with various business ventures, some of the most lucrative deals secured with Hunter Biden.

So we likey aren't ever going to get a good list of Jimmy's employers, dates of employment, job titles, and so forth. This piece from 2020, well before the election, seems to summarize his career as best anyone can:

Jim Biden, 70 [now 74], has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.

However, the pattern of Jimmy's business activities and finances tracks even closer to Hunter's, although much of the evidence in the stories published before the election comes from outside the end dates covered by Hunter's laptop, which makes it even more useful. For instance, in the same source:

It was December 2006, not long before Jim’s older brother and Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator, would announce his second campaign for president. [Remember, the laptop covers roughly 2010 to 2019.]

Jim and Hunter Biden got a loan from a bank founded by one of Joe’s political backers — William Oldaker, an attorney for the senator’s presidential campaign and Hunter’s partner at a Washington law and lobbying firm.

Oldaker had strong ties to Joe Biden’s political operation, and at the time, the bank, WashingtonFirst, had nearly half a million dollars in deposits from a Joe Biden political committee Oldaker had helped set up.

. . . The bank required that loans be well secured by borrowers’ assets. Jim Biden put up his house in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, as collateral, but he already had $1.5 million in three mortgages against the property, then roughly valued at just over $1.1 million. Hunter offered as security his recently purchased Washington home, for which he had borrowed almost the entire purchase price.

. . . It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

Another episode from 2006 is outlined in Politico, which the site claimed in 2020 was "the most comprehensive account to date of the politically tinged business activities of Biden’s brother and son". In 2006, Jimmy and Hunter took over Paradigm Global Advisors, a shaky investment firm founded by the son-in-law of Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean cult leader. According to the link,

The Biden involvement began in January 2006. James Biden called Anthony Lotito, a New York financial adviser, and said his older brother, Joe, wanted his son Hunter to find a job outside of lobbying to avoid damaging his planned campaign for the presidency, according to a complaint Lotito later filed in a New York court, after his relationship with James and Hunter soured.

. . . Things quickly got messy. The prospective purchasers discovered that because of an accounting trick, the fund had only a fraction of the $1.5 billion in assets under management that it claimed, according to court filings.

James and Hunter also discovered that the attorney the trio had hired on Lotito’s recommendation to explore the purchase, John Fasciana, had recently been convicted on 12 counts of fraud, according to court filings.

. . . According to an agreement Lotito and James made with Paradigm in May 2006 that later surfaced in their court fight, they had planned to use their connections to union pension funds governed by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, which regulates labor unions, in order to steer new investments to Paradigm.

. . . Firefighters unions have been among Joe Biden’s closest political allies since the start of his political career.

. . . James and Hunter had taken out a loan from WashingtonFirst Bank, which had been co-founded by one of Hunter’s former lobbying partners. A former WashingtonFirst executive said James and Hunter had pledged their houses on the loan and both had paid back their debts after several years.

In the meantime, that debt was causing friction within Paradigm.

At one point, the executive said, Hunter called him and asked him to hand over $21,000 in company funds for a personal mortgage payment. When the executive refused, saying the funds were needed to cover operating expenses, he recalled that Hunter — who recently told The New Yorker he has spent most of his life living paycheck to paycheck — responded that he might lose his house.

“Hunter did take substantial dollars out of the company,” said a second former Paradigm executive, describing the withdrawals as a “semi-regular” subject of discussion and concern within the firm.

. . . A third former executive at Paradigm claimed that at one point around 2008 or 2009, James and Hunter withdrew several million dollars from Paradigm’s coffers for their own use. By this point, “The Bidens didn’t have access to the day-to-day operation of Paradigm at all,” this executive said. “The only thing the Bidens could do was get paid or request to get money out of the hedge fund.” The executive said the Bidens had the right to withdraw the funds and that the transaction was cleared through counsel.

. . . Another former executive said negative press about Paradigm’s ties to fraudulent funds made James and Hunter wary of more scrutiny of “potential conflicts of interest or tie-ins to the Biden family.” As a result, the executive said, “They really just chose to liquidate the hedge fund and give back the money to the investors.” The former WashingtonFirst executive said James and Hunter shut down Paradigm because the global recession had cut into its revenues.

. . . According to a 2013 New Republic story on the Unification Church, [Sun Myung Moon's son-in-law] Park, who did not respond to requests for comment, was never able to collect from James and Hunter on the promissory note they used to acquire the fund.

The piece recounts elsewhere that Jimmy had run the finances for Joe's initial 1972 Senate campaign.

No sooner was freshman lawmaker Joe Biden seated on the Senate Banking Committee than James became the beneficiary of business loans that were described in news accounts at the time as unusually generous because of the relatively large amount of money he was able to borrow with little or no collateral and a lack of relevant prior experience.

In early 1973, on the heels of Joe’s election to the Senate, James Biden and a business partner decided to open a nightclub.

The club, Seasons Change, located in a shopping plaza near the Pennsylvania state line, would eventually fail, leaving behind it a trail of debt and a trickle of embarrassing revelations about its financing.

The pair had obtained a series of loans for $80,000, $60,000 and $25,000 from Wilmington’s Farmers Bank. At least one of those loans was unsecured, meaning it was not backed by collateral that could be seized if the borrowers stopped paying.

When James began missing his payments and risking default, his brother Joe became angry — at the bank.

“What I’d like to know,” the junior senator told his hometown paper in 1977, “is how the guy in charge of loans let it get this far.”

The paper looked into it: “The answer, according to three former officers of the troubled Farmers Bank, is the Biden name,” reported Delaware’s News Journal. According to the paper, the bank thought the senatorial name would attract club-goers.

It did not attract enough to turn a profit, and by 1975, the bank was having problems collecting from James.

. . . Another figure tied to Farmers Bank, the politically connected financier Norman Rales, extended James Biden an unsecured loan.

. . . These unusual arrangements came to light after Farmers Bank nearly collapsed in 1976, forcing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to bail it out. The crisis spurred several investigations into the bank’s lending practices and political connections. It also prompted Moody’s to downgrade the state of Delaware’s credit rating from A1 to A because the state’s finances were so intertwined with the bank’s.

These stories provide insight that hasn't been available elsewhere into how Joe's family used his influence often to bilk banks and investors hoping to gain favor with Joe. Jimmy's loans from Farmers Bank took place when Hunter, born 1n 1970, was in elementary school. The Politico piece also refers to another James Biden enterprise, the Lion Hall Group:

[A]fter a stint selling real estate in San Francisco, [James] returned to the East Coast and set up a new firm, the Lion Hall Group.

This appears to have been in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, famed Mississippi trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs set his sights on a gargantuan national settlement with Big Tobacco worth hundreds of billions of dollars. To make such a settlement work, Congress would have to bless it by immunizing the tobacco companies against future legal claims.

. . . As part of an effort to win over Joe and other Democrats, Scruggs hired James’ Lion Hall Group to help with a “legislative, executive, political and social” campaign, according to Wilkie’s book. Neither James nor Lion Hall appear in federal lobbying disclosures.

While the lobbying effort failed in that case, it's worth noting that Jimmy's Lion Hall Group is still in existence, and it has attracted the Republicans' interest in the current impeachment inquiry:

Last year, Senate Republicans scrutinized James Biden's business ventures, releasing records that showed payments James Biden's company, The Lion Hall Group, received from a Chinese-financed consulting group in 2018, and monthly retainers to James and Hunter Biden.

As I've been saying, there's a great deal to the Biden chronology outside the 2010-2019 period of the laptop, and there's also a great deal that involves relatives other than Hunter.

Hunter's New Chinese Wire Transfers

One point I keep making here is that it's misleading to focus on the Hunter laptop as any sort of key to the Biden family shakedown. While it covers the period from 2010 to 2019, and it has lots of distractions, it leaves out two key periods, Joe's time in the Senate from 1972 to the start of the laptop timeline in 2010, and much more important, payoffs to Joe after 2019, which begins to cover his time as president. In addition, it's misleading to focus on Hunter, because it looks like Joe's brothers Jim and Frank were in on the hustle as well.

Beyond that, the laptop only hints at one feature of Joe's interregnum between 2017 and 2021, when Joe, out of office, seems to have been treated as the likely next president well before the 2020 election and was accorded courtesies consistent with that expectation, such as informal coordination with the Secret Service, although former vice presidents are not entitled to protection. We know very little about how this worked and who was involved.

And I'm surprised that there's been so little attention to one of yesterday's revelations from the House Republicans:

Hunter Biden received wires that originated in Beijing for more than $250,000 from Chinese business partners during the summer of 2019 — wires that listed the Delaware home of Joe Biden as the beneficiary address for the funds, Fox News Digital has learned from a congressional committee.

Joe announced his candidacy for president on April 25, 2019, just outside the time span of Hunter's laptop. According to the link,

The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.

The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.

The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address "1209 Barley Mill Rd." in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden.

While this goes some distance to disprove Joe's claims that his family never received money from China, it also reinforces a relationship with Jonathan Li of BHR partners that had existed well before the July-August 2019 wire transfers. BHR Partners "is a private investment fund founded in 2013 by Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd., which is controlled by Bank of China Limited along with a partnership with Hunter Biden." Jonathan Li has a history of contact with both Hunter and Joe. On December 4, 2013, Hunter traveled to China with Joe on Air Force Two, and in the course of the trip, Joe met with Jonathan Li in what was described as a social meeting.

In 2017, Joe wrote college recommendation letters for Jonathan Li's son. In July of that year, Hunter sent Li the notorius WhatsApp message “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” According to that link,

If the message is in fact real and its contents taken at face value, it would certainly raise political and ethical questions for the White House. Hunter Biden and his uncles, James and Frank, have a lengthy record of invoking the family name to secure business deals without Joe Biden's knowledge, which could have been the case in this circumstance. But if Joe Biden wasn't in office at the time, it would not necessarily amount to evidence of a crime.

The problem for that view now is that the news of the summer 2019 wire transfers provides evidence of a business relationship between Jonathan Li and the Bidens extending over a six-year period from 2013 to at least 2019. This begins while Joe was vice president, extends through the interregnum, and into Joe's presidential campaign as of 2019. It raises additional questions about what the expectations were for Joe during the interregnum, when insiders were apparently confident that Joe would become president in 2021, to the point that they wired the Bidens money in apparent anticipation of potential favors.

A question that's so far unanswered is whether the Bidens were actually involved in any specific business deals or quid-pro-quo favors with Jonathan Li. Two logical questions would be what the deal was for which Hunter was demanding payment in the July 2017 WhatsApp message, and what the deal was for which Li wired Hunter over $250,000 in July-August 2019. It seems perfectly reasonable to believe there were either individual deals or a continuing arrangement, and it would be reasonable for the House Republicans to continue to investigate what these were.

The estimate as of yesterday of the Biden family take:

Oversight Committee now has records revealing that from 2014 to 2019, the Biden family and associates raked in $24 million in foreign payments. $15 million of that to the Bidens. That’s $4 million more than previously announced.

But again, this leaves out the years between 1972, whwn Joe was first elected to the Senate, and 2014, as well as ongoing payments after 20l9, which the news of the wire transfers strongly suggests were taking place. We may reasonably surmise that the payments were for something, but so far, especially outside Ukraine, we know nothing, for instance about any specific favors for which the Chinese actors, at minimum Jonathan Li and Ye Jianming, who gave Hunter a diamond worth as much as $80,000, were paying over this extended period.

There's a great deal more to learn. On the other hand, press coverage of only the wire transfers from yesterday hasn't even reached the point of asking the questions I've asked here.

What's Newsom Up To?

For someone who claims he isn't running for president, Gavin Newsom sure is in the news a lot:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo he will not be making a 2024 presidential run and will instead continue to back President Joe Biden.

“I have deep respect, reverence for Joe Biden as a person, his character, his decency and his capacity to do great things,” Newsom told Cuomo. “That’s why. I’m not worthy of that conversation. This guy deserves it, and we as members of the party deserve to have his back.”

Newsom has been considered as a possible Democratic presidential contender by some analysts, but he has repeatedly said he will not run in 2024.

Nevertheless, his presence at the Republican debate in Simi Valley tonight, although ostensibly as a Biden spokesman, raises other possibilities:

CBS13's Steve Large spoke to political strategist Doug Elmets about Newsom's presence.

Steve: "Why would Gavin Newsom want to be at the Republican Presidential debate?"

Elmets: "This is a great opportunity for Gavin Newsom to continue to increase his national profile."

Former Ronald Reagan aide Elmets says Newsom's attendance at the debate helps Biden deliver democratic talking points.

"He's quick on his feet, he's smart," Elmets said.

Elmets says it also puts Newsom in a position to replace Biden if the President does not become the nominee.

"Should Joe Biden trip or fall he wants to be the person that's there to not maybe lift him up, but maybe stand in his place," Elmets said.

There's also the question of why Newsom, who's teased the idea of debating Ron DeSantis since last spring, finalized an agreement to do the debate on November 30, even though this came after his announcement that he wouldn't challenge Biden for the nomination.

If nothing else, this raises Newsom's profile, even if DeSantis has become an also-ran opponent, and it sets up a quasi-campaign context for Newsom when the Democrats otherwise prefer no serious primary challenge for Joe

On the other hand, Newsom can always claim he's just doing it to help Biden, and he can do that until Biden for whatever reason drops out, at which point he's the clear candidate to succeed Joe. But this dodges the question of Kamala, which this piece in the Washington Exsminer also raises:

She is a fellow Californian and the first female, black, and Asian vice president, which could make things awkward for the white male Newsom should he try to overtake her. Yet her approval ratings are dismal, and hopes are fading for her to further connect with Democratic voters.

Team Harris was reportedly upset by Newsom's plan to debate DeSantis, and even his rumored status as a 2024 backup comes with some risk.

“There’s certainly a concern about stepping on her toes,” Cummins said. “That’s the job of the vice president, to fill in if Biden has some health scare or health issue that would incapacitate him. That’s why we have a vice president.”

It's worth pointing out, though, that Nancy Pelosi continues to run the California Democrat machine, of which Newsom and Harris are both members in good standing, if not the whole Democrat party, and she can and will impose a resolution. She did this when she chose Obama over Hillary in 2008:

She was somewhat cool to Clinton and her campaign from the very beginning of the 2008 cycle, and over time began sending clear signals that Obama is her candidate. When George Miller and Anna Eshoo, fellow House Democrats from California through whom Pelosi often telegraphs her wishes, endorsed Obama a few months back, the hand of the Speaker was apparent.

I have a sense she's still just as capable of determining the outcome now as she was then. In fact, I would go so far as to say Pelosi has already gamed the whole set of contingencies out and already let the players know what her preferences are.

I would also say that Newsom is playing his current game while he consults with Pelosi, and the moves he's making now are with her full foreknowledge and approval. That she should even allow a situation where there's any ambiguity at all over Joe's future, with Newsom as the most credible replacement, is significant in itself.

The mere fact that Newsom is allowed to do ambiguous things means Pelosi is making plans. If Joe withdraws as a 2024 candidate, it will be because Pelosi and a few others decide his chances in November are nil. At that point, the only credible replacements are Newsom, JB Pritzker, and Kamala, with Newsom the most attractive choice. Pritzker is short, fat, and Jewish; Kamala is Kamala.

I think Pelosi would order that Kamala be kept on the ticket as vice president to satisfy African-Americans, with the potential that she could succeed to the presidency made safely remote due to Newsom's relative youth, and Newsom would become the nominee.

At least, that's how I see it now.