{"id":1444456,"date":"2023-12-18T00:50:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1444456"},"modified":"2023-12-18T00:50:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T05:50:00","slug":"yes-hunter-is-now-in-contempt-of-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/yes-hunter-is-now-in-contempt-of-congress\/1444456\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Hunter Is Now In Contempt Of Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, Hunter Is Now In Contempt Of Congress<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Turley,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Below is my column in The Messenger on the decision of Hunter Biden to defy Congress in a press conference outside of the Capitol Building. Remarkably, this spectacle was coordinated by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Cal.) who presumably knew that Biden was going to violate the congressional subpoena. So Swalwell (a former impeachment House manager) helped facilitate a possible criminal act in refusing to share appear in an impeachment inquiry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is the column:<\/p>\n

Congress is often a theater of the absurd,<\/strong> from Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulling a fire alarm before a major vote to former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) being, well, a member of Congress at all. However, none of that compares to what unfolded on Wednesday as Hunter Biden stood outside Congress and defied a subpoena as being \u201cbeyond the absurd.\u201d What happens next could be even more bizarre.<\/p>\n

Hunter was under a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to appear for testimony. As I\u00a0previously wrote<\/a>, he had two choices: He could appear and either testify or invoke his right to remain silent. The only thing that he could not do is what he did \u2014 just refuse to go into the hearing room. Yet, there he was, with counsel Abbe Lowell by his side, holding forth with a public press conference while refusing to appear in the closed-door deposition being held in the building behind him.<\/p>\n

By staying on the Senate side of the Capitol, Hunter guaranteed that the House sergeant at arms did not pull him into the hearing room. Ironically, that would have been a better option than his blowing a raspberry\u00a0at the committee and then speeding away.<\/p>\n

Many pundits immediately claimed this was a clever move because the subpoena was not really enforceable until the House voted on the formal impeachment inquiry a few hours later.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I disagree. <\/strong>As I noted in my testimony in the first impeachment inquiry, there is no requirement for a formal vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry. Indeed, that is precisely what then-majority Democrats did with the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. While I encouraged the House to hold a formal vote on the inquiry, it is not constitutionally required.<\/p>\n

Moreover, this is an oversight committee which has independent authority to issue subpoenas. The subpoena was issued not only by the Oversight Committee but by the Judiciary Committee.\u00a0It was issued\u00a0under\u00a0three different authorities<\/a>, including Rule 12(g) of the Oversight Committee which allows for subpoenas \u201cin the conduct of any investigation or activity or series of investigations or activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

In holding this spectacle, Biden and his legal team committed another unforced error.\u00a0<\/strong>This one could prove as\u00a0costly as pushing\u00a0for an obscenely generous\u00a0plea agreement<\/a>\u00a0and then\u00a0telling prosecutors to \u201crip it up\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in July.<\/p>\n

Few people expected Hunter to testify in the deposition. The evidence against him is overwhelming, as shown in his\u00a0second federal indictment<\/a>\u00a0on tax charges.\u00a0He and his uncles were allegedly engaged in one of the largest influence-peddling operations in history involving millions of dollars from various foreign sources. Hunter simply could have done what prior witnesses have done: Go in and take the Fifth. That is what attorney and former IRS official Lois\u00a0Lerner did \u2014\u00a0twice<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 when House Republicans wanted to ask her about the Obama administration targeting conservative groups.<\/p>\n

It was a no-brainer that someone appears to have radically over-thought on the Hunter Biden legal team.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hunter can now be held in contempt of Congress. That will force the hand of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who aggressively pursued Trump figures for contempt,\u00a0including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon<\/a>. Despite some of us writing to the contrary, Bannon claimed his lawyers told him he did not have to appear before a House committee. He was swiftly charged and convicted by Garland\u2019s prosecutors.<\/p>\n

In this instance, the contempt case would go to the U.S. Attorney in D.C., Matthew Graves, who\u00a0previously declined to assist<\/a>\u00a0in bringing tax charges against the president\u2019s son. Yet by pulling a Bannon, Hunter now faces the expectation in many circles that he will get the full Bannon treatment from Garland.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is another possible cost to this move.\u00a0Fox News quoted<\/a>\u00a0White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that President Biden \u201cwas certainly familiar with what his son was going to say,\u201d which suggests that the president spoke with his son before his act of contempt and discussed his statement. If that is true, it was a breathtaking mistake. One of the\u00a0four most obvious potential articles of impeachment<\/a>\u00a0that I laid out in my prior testimony was obstruction. There already are questions over special treatment potentially being given to Hunter in the form of alleged felonies being allowed to expire, warnings about planned federal raids, and sweetheart deals.<\/p>\n

In addition, President Biden has\u00a0enlisted White House staff to\u00a0actively push challenged accounts of his conduct and attack the House Republicans\u2019 investigative process. Such acts could legally bootstrap prior misconduct into his presidency under abuse-of-power allegations.<\/p>\n

If this latest allegation is true, the president was speaking with his son about committing a potentially criminal act of contempt. <\/strong>Hunter was refusing to give testimony focused not on his own role but on his father\u2019s potential role in the alleged influence peddling. The House can pursue evidence on that conversation and how the president may have supported his son\u2019s effort.<\/p>\n

With his bizarre public display, Hunter has opened a new potential front for prosecution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the same law is applied the same way as it was to Bannon, Hunter could find himself indicted within a few weeks.<\/p>\n

In Bannon\u2019s case<\/a>, the subpoena was issued at the end of September. He was held in contempt by the House in October and indicted in November. It took just four days of trial to convict him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, President Biden himself has maintained that defying subpoenas cannot be tolerated. When subpoenas were issued to Republicans during the House\u2019s January 6 investigation, Biden\u00a0declared<\/a>: \u201cI hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is precisely what Republicans will now expect from Garland in Hunter\u2019s case. In the meantime, the House did not lose anything that it expected to get from Hunter. It will now move to secure the testimony of a circle of associates surrounding both Hunter and his father. At the same time, the National Archives has finally agreed to give House investigators\u00a0tens of thousands of emails<\/a>\u00a0reportedly involving the president.<\/p>\n

As expected, in a floor vote late in the day, not a single House Democrat supported getting answers to these questions through an impeachment inquiry.<\/strong>\u00a0They unanimously opposed any inquiry even though\u00a040% of Democrats<\/a>\u00a0have said in polling that they believe the president has acted illegally or unethically regarding his family\u2019s business deals. (Overall, 70% of those polled held that view.)<\/p>\n

Hunter, however, just tripped another wire that could seriously complicate matters not just for himself but for his father.\u00a0<\/strong>Perhaps that is why, when dramatist-scholar\u00a0Martin Julius Esslin<\/a>\u00a0devised the term \u201ctheater of the absurd,\u201d he described it as \u201cpart reality and part nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 12\/17\/2023 – 19:50<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/yes-hunter-now-contempt-congress<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Hunter Is Now In Contempt Of Congress Authored by Jonathan Turley, Below is my column in The Messenger on the decision of Hunter Biden…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}