This post by James Howard Kunstler was too good not to include

"calling D.C. a swamp is an insult to swamps"

Clusterfuck Nation – Blog June 23, 2023

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/teachable-moment/

Teachable Moment

“In the wake of the Hunter Biden sweetheart plea deal, calling D.C. a swamp is an insult to swamps and frankly to all wetlands in general. We need to redefine the Clean Water Act to include all Biden adjacent areas.” — Margot Cleveland, Lawyer and legal analyst

“I’m proud of my son” — Joe Biden

  I hope you agree this has been an instructive week for our republic, sinking to the bottom as fast as the Titan submersible on its way to consort with its grandmama, the RMS Titanic. Here’s what I learned, for instance, from Special Counsel John Durham’s visit to the House Judiciary Committee: When asked why he did not seek grand jury testimony from the primary culprits in the Russia Collusion hoax — Comey, McCabe, and Strzok — he told the room it would have been “unproductive” because they habitually claimed to “not recall” anything when testifying in Congress.

    That’s an interesting legal theory. If it is so, we must suppose that any witness in a criminal inquiry may decline testifying on the grounds of claiming a defective memory. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but is it not the case that witnesses can be prompted to recall events when presented with evidence? E.g., “…here is your smartphone text of July 29 saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll stop him [Trump].’ What means did you have in mind to accomplish that, Mr. Strzok?”

     In the four-year lead-up to his personal appearance in the House, many of us were fooled into thinking Mr. Durham was a serious dude. (I sure was.) Turns out the ferocious facial hair masked a rather timorous persona. Mr. Durham apparently did not dare test the boundaries of the narrow lane laid out in the scoping directives set forth by then Attorney General Barr. Mr. D. did find a line of criminal conduct between Lawfare artist Michal Sussmann, the Fusion GPS disinfo company, the DC law firm Perkins Coie, and candidate Hillary MyTurn in the creation and marketing of the Steele Dossier — yet he never called Hillary to do any ‘splainin about it (or anything else she did in 2016). Weird, a little bit.

     While his omissions and missteps were spotlighted by the Republican members, Mr. Durham was mugged, kicked to the curb, stomped, and peed-on by the committee Democrats, who still labor to prop-up the dead-letter Russia Collusion fraud against all evidence and reason. As usual, the lead attack dog on that was Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). He was rewarded the next day with a censure vote for seven years of shameless lying about said fraud, and stripped of his seat on the House Intel Committee, which he used, as then-chairman, to launch Trump Impeachment #1 in 2019 with fake “whistleblower” (and CIA goblin) Eric Ciaramella, whom Mr. Schiff naturally lied about never meeting prior to the proceeding.

      We are treated in these twilight months of the “Joe Biden” regime to a cavalcade of revelations laying out the degeneracy of a federal justice system at war with the American people and its shady machinations in service to the Biden family global bribery operation. Late Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), released the affidavit of IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley from testimony given in closed session May 26. It disclosed a concerted program by the DOJ to impede, obstruct, delay, divert, and bury a massive tax evasion and fraud case against Hunter Biden, involving millions of dollars garnered from foreign persons and entities for no discernible services performed in return.

     I am alleging, with evidence…” Mr. Shapley testified under oath, “…whatever the motivations, at every stage decisions were made that had the effect of benefiting the subject of the investigation. These decisions included slow-walking investigative steps, not allowing enforcement actions to be executed, limiting investigators’ line of questioning for witnesses, misleading investigators on charging authority, delaying any and all actions months before [the 2020] elections to ensure the investigation did not go overt well before policy memorandum mandated the pause.”

      Hunter Biden was code-named “Sportsman” as the case opened in 2018. Red flags in bank transfer records of Hunter B and associates involving millions of dollars triggered the IRS inquiry. It wasn’t until a year later that Hunter’s laptop turned up, crammed with deal memos of bribes paid along with vivid documentary evidence of sex and drug crimes. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID.

     By the way, note that this was the exact same time that the House Intel Committee under chairman Adam Schiff commenced its impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. AG William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray therefore knew then that Hunter’s laptop existed and that it contained evidence of suspicious money transactions with Russia, China, and most particularly Ukraine — since Mr. Trump’s impeachment case was based on a telephone query he made to Ukrainian President, Zelensky, regarding the Biden family’s operations there. Neither Mr. Barr nor Mr. Wray alerted Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the evidence contained in the laptop — which would have provided exculpatory proof of a reasonable motive for Mr. Trump’s phone call. How was that not an obstruction of justice?

      Mr. Shapley’s testimony is just one thread in the much larger tapestry of Biden family corruption now achieving clarity. Rep. James Comer’s Oversight Committee continues on its deep dive into the Biden family bank transfer records — with its evidence of money laundering through Biden shell company cut-outs — and the direct voice recording evidence of  “Joe Biden” discussing his family’s financial arrangements with Petro Poroshenko, then-president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, plus other damning evidence connected to a “trusted” (and well-paid) FBI human confidential source in the much fought over FD-1023 document recently surrended to the Oversight Committee.

     In short, the tide is going out even as the sun sets on “Joe Biden” as President. He and his handlers may believe they enjoy the protection of a compliant news media, but even that has its limits. Impeachment is coming, even if not as fast as Rep. Lauren Boebert wants it to, and if and when it does, there will be no ignoring the stark presentation of hard evidence — no matter how much MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid snorts and cackles.

    Meanwhile, please understand that “Joe Biden” is only pretending to run for reelection and his party is pretending along with him just for the present desperate moment. Before long, their whole reeking, creaking edifice of lies and bad faith will come crashing down. Joe Biden will have to resign or the nation will be treated to the spectacle, this time, of a trial in the senate for real cause, bribery and treason, not just fake animus. And then, not even Gavin Newsom will be able to save the Democratic Party in its present alignment and foul habits. If it survives at all, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will have to rebuild it from the ground up and expel the demons infesting it.