Bongino just blew this whole thing up! Michael Carpenter will be a household name for decades.
Michael Carpenter “senior director at the Penn-Biden center”
Where the documents were found.
On Ukraine.
Bongino just blew this whole thing up! Michael Carpenter will be a household name for decades.
Michael Carpenter “senior director at the Penn-Biden center”
Where the documents were found.
On Ukraine.
the Air Vent 
Been listening to Bongino for YEARS !!!
Man knows Spygate inside and out.
3.
2.
1.
BLAH,BLAH,BLAH CONSPIRACY !!!!!
Biden is guilty of everything Trump has ever been accused of
Just to be clear, a president cannot be indicted and the statute of limitations will be mostly over before he leaves office.
The goal no is no 2024 run
Jeff: To be clearer, the DoJ has adopted a POLICY of not indicting a sitting president, but it is not law. Since the DoJ’s leadership serves at the pleasure of the president, they can be fired for trying to indict a sitting president. When the AG and dAG refused to fire special prosecutor Cox, Nixon fired them both. The third ranking official in the DoJ, Robert Bork, agreed to fire Cox, possibly because Nixon was dangling the possibility of an appointment to the Supreme Court (discussed in Bork’s own book). When the next special prosecutor took over, got hold of the tapes and presented them to a Grand Jury, they voted to approve indictment of many administration officials presumably including Nixon. However, when announcing the indictments of those officials, the DoJ chose to call Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator of those who had been indicted.
As far as I can tell, the DoJ is willing to do the investigating (using their power to subpoena and to compel testimony in front of a Grand Jury), turn the evidence over to Congress to impeach the President and then let the DoJ prosecute the now-former President. This system is convenient for the DoJ.
After Nixon, we tried investigating and prosecuting presidential and administration wrongdoing with Independent Counsels who couldn’t be fired. Scalia famously (and correctly IMO) asserted such Independent Counsels were an unconstitutional fourth branch of government not responsible to anyone, but he was in the minority (8-1). However, the shenanigans of the Special Counsels for Iran Contra and Whitewater convinced the Congress Independent Counsels responsible to no one were a bad idea. Now we’ve returned to a Special Prosecutors who are employees of the DoJ and can be fired, but have POLICIES intended to shield them from Presidential retaliation. In theory, they can only be dismissed for misconduct, but the President still decides what constitutes misconduct.
There are two problems with leaving “indictment” of Presidents up to Congress rather than the DoJ. One is today’s intense partisanship combined with the vague standards for impeachment (high crimes and misdemeanors). The second is that the President, through the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, has been insisting for more than 50 years that presidential advisors can not be compelled to testify in front of Congress, a form of “executive privilege”. The Supreme Court has ruled that some form of executive privilege needs to exist so the executive branch can function properly, but that the need for Congressional oversight can be more important, as it was with the Nixon tapes. Lower courts have twice ruled that presidential advisors do NOT have absolute protection from compelled Congressional testimony as the OLC insists, but those decisions have been appealed. Until Trump, sensible limitations on testimony had been negotiated and the appeals became moot, so the issue has never reached the Supreme Court. The OLC still absurdly asserts the lower courts were wrong. Nixon never dared trying to prevent his administration officials from testifying to Congress about Watergate, but Trump succeeded in preventing some of his closest advisors from testify during his first impeachment. If Nixon had gotten away with the things Trump did, Nixon never would have been forced to resign or impeached.
Here is the Catch 22: The DoJ can investigate wrongdoing by the President and can legally compel testimony from most witness, subpoena documents etc. However, the DoJ REFUSES to indict sitting presidents, saying they must wait until the president is out of office before they will act. Congress has the power to remove a president from office, but not – according to Trump’s interpretation of executive privilege – the power to compel testimony from advisors who are likely to be the BEST WITNESSES to a president’s “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Even if advisors have been questioned or testified in a DoJ investigation, the executive branch doesn’t have to turn that information over to Congress or may redact some of it. Someday, the DoJ may recognize that one of their two policies must change
Executive privilege exists to help the executive branch function properly, but the Nixon tapes case shows it doesn’t exist merely to protect the President from legal or political jeopardy. AFAIK, one reason executive privilege exists is to protect advisors who want to give the president their best candid advice without later being forced to disclose what that advice was in public. There is no reason an advisor should be prevented from testifying to Congress about what factual non-classified information he presented to the president or what orders or decisions the President made or possibly even what options were considered. However, a free discussion between the president and his advisors is essential to proper function of the executive branch and should not be subject to Congressional oversight. Protecting the president from legal jeopardy is the job of the president’s personal attorneys, not government employees.
“To be clearer, the DoJ has adopted a POLICY of not indicting a sitting president, but it is not law.”
The power of pardon is another deterrent. They guy who works for you can accuse you if they want, when it comes to punishment, get a new guy.
Executive privilege needs to be protected in every manner possible. To hamstring a president as to whether they can even ask about whether something is illegal is ridiculous. e.g. Can I ask Ukraine to fire the prosecutor in exchange for a billion dollars.
If that kind of conversation becomes illegal or grounds for impeachment, we have very big problems.
That IS what happened to Trump.
In every other part of the legal system, participants are required to recuse themselves from participating in a decision. IMO, when the President is acting as the chief legal officer of the United States – which is what he is doing when he exercises his pardon power – he must also recuse himself when he has a clear conflict of interest. Few agree with me, but should first consider this factors. Marc Rich infamously bought his pardon in return for a $1M contribution to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library. Joe Biden must recuse himself from pardoning Hunter Biden, especially because otherwise Hunter might be induced to testify against his father. Even Nixon recognized that it would have been improper for him to pardon the Watergate burglars to keep them from talking, but somehow he convinced himself and others that giving their families “compassionate financial aid” was proper – illustrating why we can’t leave these decisions up to fallible humans, especially those ambitious enough to run for president. At the time, Nixon was trying to end the Vietnam War and needed to have his presidential power undiminished by scandal in order to get the best possible deal. Trump’s needs to put the Russiagate investigation behind him was certainly no greater than Nixon’s. The House Watergate Committee chose the include a charge of obstruction of justice, but Nixon’s resignation interrupted this precedent.
Now the President also needs to be able to pardon foreign agents to exchange them for Americans held prisoner by other countries. He should have that power as Head of State or Chief Diplomat or Commander in Chief. I have a tougher time with blanket pardons covering large numbers of people, such as Carter’s blanket pardon of Draft Dodgers after Vietnam. Such actions are inherently political (the law is too harsh) and not legal (applying the full penalty of the law to this particular individual under these circumstances is unjust). So I’m not in favor of a president being able to issue a blanket pardons BLM to Jan6 convicts.
No one says that Trump couldn’t ask his advisors if “bribing” Poroshenko to fire his Chief Prosecutors is legal. Technically it might only be bribing if money went to Poroshenko personally. The State Department has experts on this subject. Those experts work for the US government. Their advice and whether the President followed it is something Congress can investigate. If the President is worried about the personal legal danger he might engender, then he should consult his private attorney. WH Counsel Pat Cipollone negotiated a deal with the Jan6 committee that allowed him to not answer questions that might incriminate Trump, but he presumably was required to answer such questions a few weeks later in front of the Jan6 Grand Jury about conspiracies to submit Fraudulent Electoral Votes, to get Pence to withhold some certified Electoral Votes from Congressional approval and to convince state legislatures the DoJ was still investigating Election fraud. Congress certainly should be able to hear such testimony when deciding whether such actions constitute high crimes and misdemeanors, but the J6 Committee didn’t have months to appeal to the Supreme Court.
I think that presidents shouldn’t be able to obstruct justice while executing their Article II powers. If Trump wanted to replace Comey as head of the FBI, great – but he could have remained as special counsel continuing the FBI’s investigation. Trump’s statements about Muslims during the campaign clearly showed that he was unfit to administer immigration law (by issuing executive orders) without discriminating on the basis of religion, in which case Trump should recuse and have someone unbiased draft an executive order that addressed the dangers Trump saw as Commander-in-Chief. Or ask Congress to amend the law or the Supreme Court to find parts of the law unconstitutional.
Many claim to prefer a strong unitary president with all executive power concentrated executive, but I don’t and I’m sure you don’t either. Does the EPA have the power to interpret the Navigable Rivers act to regulate seasonal streams and ponds? No. Does the Clean Air Act give the EPA the power to declare CO2 a pollutant end the use of fossil fuel in generation of electricity. No. The Supreme Court is revitalizing the Major Questions doctrine to limit this excessive use of executive power. Our Founders who recognized that governments are composed of flawed ambitious men. Writing about the Separation of Powers in Federalist 51, Madison prophetically wrote:
“If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary controul on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” (I personally haven’t seen a President who was an angel since Reagan.)
The Founders therefore didn’t give the President complete power over the executive branch. Dozens of executive appointments (to head departments granted administrative power by Congress) can only be made with the advice and consent of the Senate. I’m appalled that President Trump fired or forced out many powerful official (like two AGs) confirmed by the Senate and governed indefinitely through acting officials or a series of acting officials whom he knew had no chance of being confirmed and didn’t even have the support of own party. “Permanent Acting” officials were not what the Founders had in mind. Neither is the Senate’s stalling up-and-down vote on Presidential appointees.
A common theme amongst the left is unlimited trust in the equity of government, until they are the victims. This is the opposite of the intent of our constitution. The ability for a President to discuss committing a crime, even if it is understood to be a crime per the laws of the state, it not in itself a crime.
The ability of a president to pardon himself from a crime is a critical power granting the independence of the executive branch. That is why we shouldn’t put actual criminals like Biden or Hillary in the office of the president.
the ability of a president to ‘force out’ corrupt influences, is also critical. The entire branches of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, EPA, DOE all work for the executive branch. They are corrupt and should be fully disbanded.
Of course I won’t get my wish either.
DOEd is the worst one. Gotta go now because it creates non-thinking zombies filled with sticky propaganda leading to a complete lack of common sense.
Jeff: The FBI, CIA, DOJ, EPA, DOE were all created by Congress to carry out tasks that Congress has assigned to them under the direction of the President and with top leaders chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Those policy-making leaders (there are about 400 in the executive branch) serve at the pleasure of the President, but the technical experts who work for the government are protected by the Civil Service Act (a response to Jackson’s abusive spoils system). Civil Service Protection is what kept Trump from firing Fauci, but Trump was trying to circumvent those protections. Congress also created all of the Cabinet level Departments beginning with the Dept of State. The military is a separate organization (also created by Congress) and IIRC 3- and 4-star commands need Senate approval.
The President can write executive orders to provide official guidance to an agency, but those executive orders may not contradict legislation passed by Congress. In his first days in office, Trump wrote an execute order to ban Muslims from entering the country that violated Congress law that specified no discrimination on the basis of religion. The courts found that executive order invalid.
If the officials in these departments were truly corrupt, they could be arrested, convicted and thrown in jail. If they refuse to implement the President’s lawful policies, they can be forced to resign or be fired. However, if they report illegal activities – such as illegally withholding aid for Ukraine appropriated by Congress and signed by the President until Zelenskyy opened an investigation of Hunter Biden – then those whistleblowers are protected. Furthermore, all of these executive departments have independent Inspectors General who investigate dubious actions taken by their Department and they report back to Congress as well as the head of their Department.
I will agree with you that the vast majority of those who work in DC are more liberal than the average American. And this may make it more difficult for conservative presidents to implement their policies. That doesn’t make them corrupt – criminals. I presume and hope that 90% of the talk about a Deep State is an excuse and a political ploy by Trump. If I blame problems on a Deep State, I have an excuse for failing to solve to problems and an opportunity to rile up my supporters. The Steele Dossier was a great gift from the Democrats: Trump used it to unite Republicans behind him in the face of Democrat “prosecution;.
The Founders didn’t place much faith in the wisdom of voters. That is why they created an Electoral College and had state legislatures elect Senators. They understood that few ambitious politicians (like Obama and Biden living in the WH bubble) could be trusted with absolute power over part of our government. So they created a system of checks and balances that restrain them. Restraining them from dong things like giving away $0.5T of student loan debt without an unambiguous authorization from Congress. Restraining them from becoming a tyrant like the King of England.
The DoJ’s preliminary position left over from the Nixon years is that a president can not pardon himself. If you want to hear respectful arguments for both sides:
https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts/can-the-president-pardon-himself
Click to access op-olc-supp-v001-p0370_0.pdf
Frank,
Fauci is a criminal murderer who deserves trial with the risk of capital punishment. Using him as an example is a mistake but you don’t seem to even be aware of that. We now know that Fauci funded peter Daszak to create COVID 19 in the Wuhan lab and LIED about it in congress. How many people does the left say were killed by COVID? Killed dead too, not with kindness.
” In his first days in office, Trump wrote an execute order to ban Muslims from entering the country that violated Congress law that specified no discrimination on the basis of religion.”
This is incorrect but it follows MSNBC just fine. Trump has wide authority to block any class of person based on any need he saw fit. He could literally ban people with blond hair — per the law — based on any definition he comes up with. I know your leftist news sites put folks out there saying the opposite but that is NOT how the laws are written. ANY class may be banned.
“I will agree with you that the vast majority of those who work in DC are more liberal than the average American. ”
You understate this and underestimate the issue. DC votes 95% fascist Democrat and 100% for increased power for themselves. The chance of a fair trial or decision or proper support are precisely zero. The deep state has taken over voting, justice, education and media. Just like Germany, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Russia, China, on and on. You are witnessing the same things that happened before in other places of the world. Therefore we should know the end of the story.
“The Founders didn’t place much faith in the wisdom of voters. That is why they created an Electoral College and had state legislatures elect Senators.”
The founders didn’t believe in allowing the populace to vote themselves the riches of others. This is a different concept than you write, and a key one which NO Democrat I’ve ever met can articulate. Reparations, progressive taxation, welfare, guaranteed health insurance, housing, guaranteed income, on all of these issues, Democrats are unconstitutional and completely in the wrong. I demand equal protection under the law, that I’m a successful white male wildly attracted to the better sex, makes no difference.
What struck me was how lucid Biden was compared to now.
Sure the trademark stumbles, but he’s clearly enjoying himself, aware of his surroundings and working the audience. Not something you could really say about presidential Biden…
yeah. we all see the same things. It’s amazing how much he has deteriorated
Here is some background on Ukraine that explains why Bongino and Trump are grossly wrong about Biden’s firing the Ukrainian prosecutor, which I learned while reading about the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014. My information comes from an ebook “Witness to Revolution” written by reporters for the Kyiv Post who covered and lived through the story. The admired many of the ordinary citizens who spent up to three months in the EuroMaidan. They didn’t minimize the role of Neo-Nazi parties and were extremely skeptical that anything had been accomplished and that the deaths on the final day would be properly investigated.
What I learned was that the revolution was about corruption. Ukrainians joked that Ukrainian politics was a choice been being ruled by the corrupt pro-Russian oligarchs from the Donbas or the corrupt pro-Western oligarchs in Kiev. Ukraine had spent five years negotiating a trade agreement with the EU that included legal help from EU Courts in dealing with corruption. Three days before he was expected to sign this deal in Warsaw, Yanukovych said he wouldn’t sign, because Putin offered him a more lucrative trade deal. However, that would mean giving up the chance of becoming a relatively non-corrupt country like Poland and Slovakia with EU oversight of their legal system and remaining a post-Soviet kleptocracy like Russia, but without the wealth from fossil fuels. Demonstrators fill the Euromaidan square within hours and remained there for three months in winter. The citizens of Kiev cooked meals and brought them to the square to feed the demonstrators. People of all ages were involved, not just Neo-Nazis. Occasionally the police tried to remove the demonstrators with surprise and force. Many were injured, but few died. A few leaders were secretly assassinated out of sight Then about 70 demonstrators died in a final clash when a few snipers were picking off people on both sides. That cost Yanukovych his last remaining supporters in the government. With the help of the EU and US (and non-disapproval of Russia), Yanukovych negotiated with opposition parties some reforms and early elections in ten months, but none of the opposition parties had the loyalty of the demonstrators. When the deal was presented to the demonstrators by members of several opposition parties, it was angrily rejected as a sellout and the pols were happy to escape unharmed. The demonstrators made it clear to Yanukovych that they would be coming for him the next day and by then there wasn’t a single police or military unit willing to protect him. He fled Kyiv that night and Putin sent a plane to secretly evacuate him from Eastern Ukraine. Parliament met the next day, unanimously declared the Presidency vacant, appointed a temporary President and scheduled elections. The unanimous vote included many leaders and members of Yanukovych’s own party, but was slightly short of the 3/4ths of Parliament required to officially remove a President. Russian troops took over Crimea a week later. Poroshenko, another dubious oligarch with connections in both the Russian and Western camps was elected president.
To stabilize and gain credibility for the new Poroshenko government, it was essential that the government convict some of the corrupt oligarchs who had gotten rich while Yanukovych was in power. The number one target on everyone’s list was Mykola Zlochevsky, the sole owner of Burisma, which had grown from nothing into Ukraine’s largest private producer of oil and gas in a decade. Zlochevsky had also been the minister in charge of selling oil and gas leases. Zlochevsky company was worthy $10B in a country with with a GDP of about $200B, 10X bigger in some ways than Elon Musk’s $100B in country with a $20,000 billion GDP. The British seized his property in the UK.
Zlochevsky fled to Cyprus for about five years where he would be safe from extradition while he was being investigated, leaving existing management to run the company. Then he hired some Western faces to serve as a “board of directors” and public face (as the sole owner, Burisma didn’t need a board to represent shareholders) to speak to Western investigators when they arrived. This wasn’t cheap, since other reputable companies would not want to be associated with directors for Burisma. For its board, Burisma bought a former president of Poland (Aleksander Kwasniewski, a friend of Joe and Hunter), a DC lobbying firm (Blue Star Strategies) headed by SoS Kerry’s former Senate Chief of Staff, Hunter Biden and his partners David Archer and Chris Heinz (step-son of SoS Kerry). Heinz backed out (probably because the Heinz family fortune is worth about $1B, so Chris didn’t really need the money.) When Hunter left, Cofer Black, a former head of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, took his place. With the existing management of Burisma still in place and running the company while the boss was in exile, Hunter Biden was paid $80,000/month (ca $500/hr if full time) to handle some international legal work and hope that his presence or influence would prevent Burisma from being indicted. Chicken feed with $10B at stake. (Probably half of the boards of major US companies include someone who is there for his connections in DC, not their knowledge of the business. See Al Gore on Apple’s Board.)
With an ongoing insurrection in Eastern Ukrainian, the Obama administration’s number one goal was to help Ukraine indict and convict some corrupt oligarchs, especially Zlochevsky. When everyone who has real experience in government likely already having been involved in corruption or has friends, family, mentors or party members involved in corruption, and witnesses can be intimidated, blackmailed or bought and massive political influence (of which Hunter was a very minor part), it’s as difficult to prosecute a corrupt oligarch in Ukraine and as a Mafia Boss in the US or Sicily. Everyone at the Counsel of Foreign Relations Meeting where Biden bragged about his role in getting Ukraine’s Chief Prosecutor fired knew exactly why Biden was there and why he bragged about what he did: A $10B company and the fate of a nation were at stake, not a few million being paid to Hunter. ONCE YOU KNOW THE HISTORY, BELIEVING ANYTHING ELSE IS LUDICROUS, no matter how many times you heard people say Biden was protecting his son. (It’s as idiotic as saying Mann’s hockey stick was valid science.) The prosecutor Biden got fired was thrilled to say he had been investigating Hunter, of course. Trump would soon get himself impeached trying to force the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter.
How could Biden be so stupid as to ignore the harm Hunter’s presence at Burisma was doing to US attempts to rein in corruption in Ukraine? First, Biden is one of our least brilliant leaders. His good son, Beau, was dying of cancer in 2014 and 2015 and Joe’s ambitions of running for president again were dying with him. At that time, Joe was relatively poor (he had overspent on housing all his life) and Obama even offered him a loan to get through expenses from Beau’s illness. If Joe lived long enough after leaving office, he would (and did) make millions through books and appearances, but at the moment, he was still paying off a home mortgage and barely had enough for a comfortable retirement for his wife according to his financial disclosure statements. He couldn’t financially help Hunter with his drug and other problems – in fact the laptop suggests Hunter was paying for the upkeep of Joe’s house. The children and families of other politicians routinely and legally got rich by monetizing their connection to power, so why should he stop Hunter from getting some easy money? Now he knows why.
The Poroshenko administration failed to prosecute any big oligarchs and quickly lost the trust of the Ukrainian people. Much to the horror of US diplomats, Ukrainians were seduced by an actor who played the role of President in a comedy TV series, and he was elected with 73% of the vote. Zelensky’s new party also won a majority of seats in the normally fragmented Parliament. 80% of members of Parliament had never served before, which might help with corruption. The Neo-Nazi and far Right parties have lost all but one of their seats, and the successor to Yanukovych’s Pro-Russian Party of Regions was renamed is down to 6 seats (now 5 after Medvevchuk was found guilty treason and exchanged for Ukrainian POWs.) Parliament has outlawed large political donations from oligarchs. Based on history, I was sure that the tough Ukrainian people would resist Putin, but I had no idea their traditional military would be as successful as it has been.