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      Ex-Twitter execs to testify in Congress on handling of Hunter Biden laptop reporting

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      Ex-Twitter execs to testify in Congress on handling of Hunter Biden laptop reportingCompany temporarily restricted New York Post article in 2020 about contents of the abandoned computer of Joe Biden’s son Former senior staff at Twitter will testify on Wednesday before the House oversight committee about the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.The hearing has set the stage for the agenda of a newly Republican-controlled House, underscoring its intention to home in on longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations that big tech has an anti-conservative bias.Republican targeting Hunter Biden says: ‘I don’t target individuals’Read moreThe recently departed Twitter employees set to testify include Vijaya Gadde, the social network’s former chief legal officer, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth.The hearing will center on a question that has long dogged Republicans – why Twitter decided to temporarily restrict the sharing of a story about Hunter Biden in the New York Post, released in October 2020. The Post said it had received a copy of a laptop hard drive from Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the article for several days, citing concerns over misinformation and spreading a report based on potentially hacked materials.“Americans deserve answers about this attack on the first amendment and why big tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit,” said the Republican committee chairman James Comer. “Accountability is coming.”At the time, the article was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement. Twitter initially said the article had been blocked in keeping with its “hacked materials” policy, which restricted the sharing of unlawfully accessed materials. While it explicitly allowed “reporting on a hack, or sharing press coverage of hacking”, it blocked stories that included “personal and private information – like email addresses and phone numbers”. The platform amended these rules following the Biden controversy.Months later, Twitter’s then CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the company’s communications around the Post article “not great”. He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” around why it was blocked was “unacceptable”.Elon Musk, who purchased the company last year, has since shared a series of internal records showing how the company initially blocked the story from being shared, citing pressure from the Biden administration, among other factors. Republican theories that Democrats are colluding with big tech to suppress conservative speech have become a hot button issue in Washington, with Congress members using various tech hearings to grill executives. But experts say claims of anti-conservative bias have been disproven by independent researchers.“What we’ve seen time and again is that companies are deplatforming people who are spreading racism and conspiracy theories in violation of the company’s rule,” said Jessica J González, co-chief executive officer of the civil rights group Free Press.“The fact that those people are disproportionately Republicans has nothing to do with it,” she added. “This is about right or wrong, not left or right.”Musk’s decision to release information about the laptop story comes after he allowed the return of high-profile figures banned for spreading misinformation and engaging in hate speech, including the former president. The executive has shared and engaged with conspiracy theories on his personal account.The White House has sought to discredit the Republican investigation into Hunter Biden, calling them “divorced-from-reality political stunts”. Nonetheless, Republicans now hold subpoena power in the House, giving them the authority to compel testimony and conduct an aggressive investigation.Online advocacy groups and big tech watchdogs have said the focus on alleged anti-conservative bias from social media firms has served as a distraction from legitimate concerns, delaying the chance for useful legislation to address issues like misinformation, antitrust concerns and online hate speech.“The fact that this is the very first tech hearing of this Congress says something,” González said. “There are real problems facing people across the political spectrum because of big tech, and lack of regulation. But instead we are getting a big waste of time, and a political stunt. The focus of Congress ought to be serving the people who elected them to office.”The Associated Press contributed to this articleTopicsHouse of RepresentativesTwitterHunter BidenRepublicansUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican targeting Hunter Biden says: ‘I don’t target individuals’

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      Republican targeting Hunter Biden says: ‘I don’t target individuals’Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson grilled on why Jared Kushner should escape scrutiny for profiting from proximity to presidency The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson refused to say Republicans planning investigations of Hunter Biden for profiting from his connection to the presidency should also investigate Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser who secured a $1.2bn loan from Qatar while working in the White House.George Santos a ‘bad guy’ who did ‘bad things’ but should not be forced out, top Republican saysRead more“I’m concerned about getting to the truth,” Johnson insisted. “I don’t target individuals.”Republicans are undoubtedly targeting Hunter Biden, for allegedly making money thanks to his father, Joe Biden. In the House, newly under GOP control, committees have promised investigations.Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Johnson focused his own fire on the president’s surviving son.The host, Chuck Todd, said: “Senator, do you have a crime that you think Hunter Biden committed because I’ve yet to see anybody explain. It is not a crime to make money off of your last name.”Johnson referred to investigations pursued with Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, and a report written by a Trump-aligned group which Johnson said “detail[ed] all kinds of potential crimes” involving Joe Biden’s son.Todd said: “Let me stop you there. ‘Potential’. This is potential. Potential is innuendo.”Johnson said: “Is it a crime to be soliciting and purchasing prostitution in potentially European sex trafficking operations? Is that a crime? Because Chuck Grassley and I laid out about $30,000 paid by Hunter Biden to those types of individuals over December of 2018, 2019, about $30,000.“That’s about the same time that President Biden offered to pay about $100,000 of Hunter Biden’s bills. I mean … that’s just some information. I don’t know exactly if it’s a crime.”Hunter Biden is known to be under investigation over his tax affairs. He has denied wrongdoing. His struggles with addiction have been widely discussed, not least in his memoir. He has not been charged with any crime.On Sunday, after some back and forth over what Johnson said was media bias against Republicans – a key focus of the new GOP House – Todd said: “Senate Democrats want to investigate Jared Kushner’s loan from the Qatari government when he was working in the [US] government negotiating many things in the Middle East.“Are you not as concerned about that? … I say that because it seems to me if you’re concerned about what Hunter Biden did, you should be equally outraged about what Jared Kushner did.”Johnson paused, then said: “I’m concerned about getting to the truth. I don’t target individuals.”Todd said: “You don’t? You’re targeting Hunter Biden multiple times on this show, senator. You’re targeting an individual.”Johnson said: “Chuck, you know … part of the problem, and this is pretty obvious to anybody watching this, is you don’t invite me on to interview me. You invite me on to argue with me. You know, I’m just trying to lay out the facts that certainly Senator Grassley and I uncovered.‘It’s going to be dirty’: Republicans gear up for attack on Hunter BidenRead more“They were suppressed. They were censored. [The FBI] interfered in the 2020 election. Conservatives understand that. Unfortunately, liberals and the media don’t. And part of the reasons are our politics are inflamed, is we do not have an unbiased media. We don’t. It’s unfortunate. I’m all for a free press.”After more cross-talk, Todd said: “Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it’s part of your identity.”The interview moved on to Johnson’s connections to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and links between Trump advisers and the abortive coup in Brazil.The conversation ended with host and senator talking over each other again.TopicsRepublicansHunter BidenUS politicsJared KushnerUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s going to be dirty’: Republicans gear up for attack on Hunter Biden

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      ‘It’s going to be dirty’: Republicans gear up for attack on Hunter Biden House Republicans are determined to make the president’s supposedly errant son a staple of the news cycleWhen Borat – alias British actor Sacha Baron Cohen – told risque jokes about Donald Trump and antisemitism at last month’s Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, Joe Biden was not the only one laughing in a red velvet-lined balcony.Sitting behind the US president was Hunter Biden wearing black tie and broad smile that mirrored those of his father.The image captured the intimacy between the men but also the sometimes awkward status of Hunter as both private citizen and privileged son of a president. It is a dichotomy likely to come under a harsh public glare this year as congressional Republicans set about making Hunter a household name and staple of the news cycle.Is Hunter Biden’s art project painting the president into an ethical corner?Read more“The right wing is licking its chops at the chance to go after him,” said Joshua Kendall, author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama. “The level of venom is going to be over the top and really, really dirty. The Republicans’ rhetoric might get so heated that it detracts from some of the actual behaviour.”Republicans have been waiting a long time for this moment. After regaining control of the House of Representatives in last November’s midterm elections, they used their first press conference to promise to investigate the Biden administration and, in particular, the president’s allegedly errant son.Hunter has long faced questions about whether he traded on his father’s political career for profit, including efforts to strike deals in China and reported references in his emails to the “big guy”.Hunter joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, around the time that Joe Biden, then vice-president, was helping conduct Barack Obama’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Hunter earned more than $50,000 a month over a five-year period.Senate Republicans claim that his appointment may have posed a conflict of interest. Last year more than 30 of them called for a prosecutor to be given special counsel authority to carry out an investigation into alleged “tax fraud, money laundering, and foreign-lobbying violations”. But they have have not produced evidence that it influenced US policy or that Joe Biden engaged in wrongdoing.House Republicans and their staff have been studying messages and financial transactions found on a now notorious laptop that belonged to Hunter. Having gained the majority, they now have the power to issue congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that did business with him.Richard Painter, who was chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration, believes that Joe Biden should have recused himself from matters relating to Ukraine. “The Ukrainian gas company wanted to curry favour with Joe Biden so they put his son on the board,” he said.“It’s pretty clear what’s going on there but the missing link the Republicans are looking for – but I don’t think they’re going to find – is any kind of a quid pro quo, Joe Biden for the Ukrainian gas company. Still, it would have been better if Joe Biden had said: ‘Look, my son is going to be on this board, maybe the secretary of state or somebody else could handle Ukraine,’ and he’d step aside.”Hunter’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months. There are no indications that this involves the president, who insists that he has never spoken to Hunter about his foreign business arrangements.Republicans are pulling at another strand. Ethics experts have accused Hunter of cashing in on his father’s name as he pursues a career as an artist. He is represented by the Georges Bergès Gallery in New York, which reportedly struck an agreement with the White House to set the prices of the art and not reveal who bid on or bought it.Bergès said in an Instagram post in November that Republicans on the House oversight committee had written to him with “certain requests” and subsequently got into a Twitter debate with Painter about money and influence in art. Bergès wrote: “If you’re going to scrutinize a profession then scrutinize all of them and every position that children of Congress take in DC and elsewhere.”My Son Hunter: the rightwing Hunter Biden movie is for fringe lunaticsRead morePainter said in an interview: “I don’t think there’s anything corrupt about the White House or anything corrupt about President Biden. But keeping the identities of the art buyers secret was a bad idea. It leads to suspicion that people are passing money under the table. It’s hard to keep who buys the art secret in the close-knit world of Hunter Biden’s friends or Hunter Biden himself so the secrecy was a bad idea.”Fox News and other rightwing media may relish an opportunity to demonise the president’s son ahead of an election in 2024. But Republicans are in danger of overreach. Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to examine Hunter’s business dealings led to his first impeachment. His efforts to weaponise Hunter’s troubles in the 2020 presidential election fizzled.David Brock, a veteran political operative and president of Facts First USA, a new group set up to combat the congressional investigations, said: “What we’re going to see in the hearings is a recycling and a rehash of old discredited stories and conspiracy theories. They’re doing it for political reasons. [Congressman] Jim Jordan is on the record saying that the investigations are all about 2024 and electing Donald Trump again. That’s his own words, not mine.”Hunter’s 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, generated sympathy in some quarters for a man who 50 years ago last month survived a car crash that killed his mother and sister and who has been honest about his struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse. Brock believes that a fresh Republican onslaught will backfire.Trump ramped up attacks on me to distract my father, Hunter Biden saysRead more“Going after someone who has an addiction and has had mental health issues is sadistic politics and I don’t think it will work with the American people,” he added. “There are so many people who have family members who’ve suffered in one way or another and will identify with Hunter; they won’t identify with the attackers. The Hunter-hating narrative has been out there for three years. It hasn’t really gained any traction outside of the far right and I don’t think it will.”Republicans could also lose credibility by focusing on Hunter and other retreads of the past instead of advancing a plan for domestic issues such as inflation, jobs and taxes.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist who served as a senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee from 2009 to 2013, said: “For all the talk about Republicans saying they want to return to regular order, they want to have better stewardship over taxpayer dollars, they want to act more responsibly with legislative power, well, OK, but how does investigating Hunter Biden do anything to help the American people?”TopicsHunter BidenJoe BidenRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Hunter Biden hires Jared Kushner lawyer to face Republican investigators

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      Hunter Biden hires Jared Kushner lawyer to face Republican investigatorsTarget of House GOP looks to Abbe Lowell, seasoned Washington attorney who represented Trump’s son-in-law Facing imminent investigation by House Republicans, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has hired a high-profile Washington lawyer who represented Jared Kushner in Congress, as well as during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Donald Trump and Moscow.Trump left ‘shockingly gracious’ letter to Biden on leaving office, book saysRead more“Hunter Biden has retained Abbe Lowell to help advise him and be part of his legal team to address the challenges he is facing,” another attorney for the president’s son, Kevin Morris, told news outlets on Wednesday.“Lowell is a well-known Washington based attorney who has represented numerous public officials and high-profile people in Department of Justice investigations and trials as well as congressional investigations. [For Hunter Biden] Mr Lowell will handle congressional investigations and general strategic advice.”Lowell has worked across the political divide, representing Democrats including Bob Menendez, a New Jersey senator, and the former senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, both in corruption cases that ended in mistrials; and acting as chief minority counsel to House Democrats in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.Recently, Lowell represented Tom Barrack, a Trump ally acquitted in a foreign lobbying case.Lowell, 70, has said that to be a trial lawyer, “you have to have a desire to be a performer at some level. If I hadn’t done this, it would have been Broadway”.But his work for Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, brought an uncomfortable sort of spotlight. Writing in the American Lawyer in late 2020, Lowell suggested criticism of his work for another client was generated “primarily because I later represented … the president’s son-in-law.“The resulting news coverage, and especially the more sensational headlines, triggered the all-too-common flurry of hate mail, threatening voice mails and anonymous criticisms for doing the very job that attorneys are supposed to do.”Hunter Biden is the focus of considerable criticism and threat from Republicans who will take control of the House next month.The president’s son is also under federal investigation over his tax affairs and personal issues including problems with drugs that have been widely documented, including in his own memoir.Biden has said he “handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers”. He has not been charged with any crime.Politically speaking – where Lowell comes in – Republicans allege the younger Biden exploited his father’s roles as a senator, vice-president and president for financial gain, allegations Hunter Biden also denies.James Comer, the incoming chair of the House oversight committee, has said an investigation will seek to determine if Biden family business activities have “compromise[d] US national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality”.Republican allegations focus on Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine, claims that in the case of Ukraine attracted the attention of Donald Trump, resulting in the scandal which led to his first impeachment.Beautiful Things by Hunter Biden review – the prodigal son and Trumpists’ targetRead moreIn November, Comer told reporters: “We want the bank records and that’s our focus. We’re trying to stay focused on: ‘Was Joe Biden directly involved with Hunter Biden’s business deals and is he compromised?’ That’s our investigation.”Republicans are also fixated on a laptop computer once owned by Hunter Biden, the contents of which were shopped to news outlets by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, shortly before the 2020 election.The laptop and news and social media’s wariness of it and of Giuliani have recently emerged as a subject of the Twitter Files, a series of releases coordinated by the new owner of the platform, Elon Musk, as he has sought to demonstrate liberal bias.TopicsHunter BidenJared KushnerJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump seized classified documents – but for Republicans the story is Hunter Biden’s laptop | Lawrence Douglas

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      Trump seized classified documents – but for Republicans the story is Hunter Biden’s laptopLawrence DouglasThere was a time when Republican lawmakers took dangerous security breaches seriously but Trump’s actions are unworthy of attention for the likes of Senator Ron Johnson In a Friday appearance on Newsmax, the rightwing media site, Ron Johnson blasted the FBI for not being aggressive enough in following the evidence. Was the great patriotic Republican senator from Wisconsin angry that the FBI had waited too long before searching Mar-a-Lago for illegally stashed documents critical to US national security? Hardly. What agitated Johnson was an alleged whistleblower’s complaint that the FBI had failed to take the “necessary investigative steps after receiving Hunter Biden’s laptop”.Remember laptop-gate? The FBI received the laptop back in 2020 from a computer repair shop owner who claimed the PC had been left in his shop but never retrieved by Hunter Biden. Analysts determined that much of the data was a “disaster” from a forensics standpoint, as the hard-drive had clearly been accessed by persons other than Biden’s son. Nonetheless, after exhaustive studies completed earlier this year, both the New York Times and the Washington Post concluded that some of the retrieved material had been authentic; and while it showed that Hunter clearly tried to trade on his father’s name, it failed to indicate any corruption on Joe Biden’s part.For the likes of Senator Johnson, the laptop remains the story of the hour. Unworthy of the senator’s attention was the release of the redacted affidavit that indicated former president Trump, in defiance of a subpoena, had refused to hand over documents that had the highest security classification and arguably included the names of American intelligence assets abroad. There was a time when Republican lawmakers took dangerous security breaches seriously. But this was back when Republican lawmakers also recognized the possibility of electoral defeat after a fair vote.Senator Johnson was hardly alone in his peculiar priorities. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, attacked the “raid” on Mar-a-Lago as “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves”. Also joining the attack was former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who earlier lamented, “look what the DoJ did … to President Trump, while it slow-rolls and looks the other way on Hunter Biden”. And while Senator Johnson is yet to join Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar in their calls to “defund the FBI”, the Wisconsin senator insists the handling of the laptop affair demonstrates the FBI’s “corruption”; the bureau, he concludes, is “not to be trusted”.If we struggle to characterize the unrelenting efforts of those like Johnson, who defend Trump through systematic misdirection and by attacking the integrity of US institutions of law enforcement, President Biden himself supplied a helpful term – “semi-fascism”. In a speech given last Thursday, the president rightly described “Maga Republicans” as a “threat to our very democracy”.The rise of semi-fascism within the heart of the Republican party underscores the exceptional risks in indicting Trump and bringing him to trial. That some form of indictment will soon follow now seems increasingly likely. The redacted affidavit reveals that in hoarding and refusing to surrender government documents, Trump may have violated three separate federal criminal statutes, which carry penalties from three to 20 years imprisonment. And this investigation is unrelated to the criminal fraud inquiry in Manhattan; the election interference investigation in Georgia; and the Department of Justice’s examination of the election tampering scheme that culminated in the violence of January 6.While many no doubt eagerly look forward to Trump’s day of legal reckoning, dread is the more proper response. When even a Maga-lite lawmaker like the Florida senator Marco Rubio counters the president’s claim of authoritarian strains within the Republican party by tinnily declaring, “If you’re looking for authoritarianism, look no further than what happened under the watch of Anthony Fauci and his allies in the elite establishment,” we know that any future indictment will be greeted by hysterical and violent attacks on the integrity of the US system of justice.And yet the costs of inaction are greater still than the costs of moving against Trump. A failure to indict born of fear of the political risks of doing so suggests that Trump and the semi-fascists have already succeeded in deforming the rule of law in America. Holding Trump to legal account may not succeed; it may trigger civil unrest and redound to his favor. But it may also begin a long, painful process of removing the poison of Maga authoritarianism from our body politic.Those who cherish democracy need to call out the proto-fascist tendencies now seizing the Trump-occupied Republican party.
      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College
      TopicsUS newsOpinionUS politicsMar-a-LagoDonald TrumpHunter BidenJoe BidenRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problem

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problemKathleen Buhle’s memoir in answer to a similar confessional from the president’s son makes uncomfortable reading Hunter Biden was a nasty husband. On top of his penchant for addiction and excess, verbal abuse littered his marriage to Kathleen Buhle. In her memoir, If We Break, Buhle recounts how the 46th president’s surviving son regularly taunted her for supposed intellectual shortcomings.Fox News’ Sean Hannity pitched Trump on Hunter Biden pardon – reportRead moreAmid booze-soaked benders and drug-fueled rages, Biden called his wife “goddam dumb”, the “dumbest person” he had met. “Get away from me, you idiot,” he purportedly thundered.Buhle discovered text messages that showed she wasn’t alone in suffering such tirades.“He was mean at times, and strangely tender, with dozens of women,” Buhle writes. “I was struck by the number of them who clearly thought they could save him.”Buhle attended a Catholic high school then graduated from St Mary’s University in San Antonio with a degree in psychology. Biden pocketed degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, but declined to look too deeply into the mirror. Socio-economic disadvantage is not to blame for his penchant for crack, prostitutes and self-pity. Buhle writes that she once told him: “Hunt … a kid from a middle-class family does not have a ballroom.” He also had a “tuxedo hanging in his closet – a tuxedo he used fairly regularly”.The conservative muckraker Peter Schweizer has shredded the Bidens for their business dealings. Yearning for catharsis as much as for score-settling, Buhle says she knows nothing of her former husband’s financial escapades.“I liked the nice things,” she admits. “I didn’t want to think about the cost at which they were coming.Otherwise, she has plenty to share. Subtitled “A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing”, her book is a dagger.The couple met in 1992, as members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. They married the next year and had three daughters. For Hunter, alcoholism and tax problems surfaced in the early 2000s. Later, the US navy expelled him for using cocaine. In 2017, he and Buhle divorced.If We Break is easy reading, published in time for Father’s Day. It leaves you wondering how and why Joe Biden pursued the presidency in 2020 when all this family drama was percolating away. Hunter’s laptop, a computer he once owned that Republicans claim is full of incriminating material, debuted before election day. It is still producing stories. If We Break may shock but it does not surprise.Buhle demonstrates better judgment than her ex-husband, who published his own memoir last year. She knew when to walk away. He had difficulty letting go. More important, she understood that not that all broken things can be repaired.Buhle possesses an awareness of self and circumstances her ex-husband evidently lacks. For example, in 2015, just minutes after Beau Biden, his brother, was buried, Hunter contemplated running for elected office as Beau once did, becoming attorney general of Delaware. Buhle’s reaction was short and to the point.“What are you talking about? You’ve only been sober a few days … This is insane. Please don’t mention anything to the girls.”Hunter did blab – in Beautiful Things, his self-reverential confessional.“I underestimated how much the wreckage of my past and all that I put my family through still weighed on Kathleen,” he wrote.Think self-absolution and exhibitionism, rather than contrition, in an episode that preceded a fling with his late brother’s wife.“He said it was his duty to take care of Hallie and her kids,” Buhle writes. When she learned of their affair, all she could muster was: “Oh my God.” She says she didn’t cry. At that moment, she writes, she “knew in some way that he couldn’t hurt [her] any more”.For what it’s worth, the Old Testament obligates the brother of a childless man to marry the widow. But Beau had two kids and anyway, religious duty was most likely not on Hunter’s mind. In 2018, according to emails harvested from that laptop, Hunter insisted Hallie test for HIV.Joe Biden makes only rare appearances in If We Break. Buhle depicts him as a loving father and kind father-in-law. He greeted her when they first met by putting “his hands on [her] cheeks and look[ing] me in the eyes, his nose almost touching my own”. Then a senator, Biden told her: “Honey, my boy tells me he loves you, so that means I love you too. Understand? I love you.”Rough Draft review: Katy Tur’s fascinating – and flawed – story of news and familyRead moreAt the time, she was pregnant. Buhle also writes that Biden introduced her “as his daughter everywhere we went” and that the family saw the future president as “the sun around which we all revolved”.A lot revolves around Hunter. A federal criminal investigation proceeds. Taxes are only part of his worries.For his father, in terms of political pressures, inflation is on the rampage, approval numbers circle the drain. Democratic cognoscenti harbor serious doubts about the president’s capacity to govern. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior strategist, casts Biden’s age as a major liability. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declines to say if she will back a reelection bid.Yet Biden was the only Democrat capable of unseating Trump. The bench is neither wide nor deep.Count Katherine Buhle’s memoir as another addition to the canon of opposition research on the Bidens, should Joe Biden run for re-election. Buhle shouldn’t expect a thank you note from Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell, but she has earned one.
      If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage Addiction and Healing is published in the US by Crown Publishing
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksAutobiography and memoirUS politicsHunter BidenJoe BidenreviewsReuse this content More

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      Fox News’ Sean Hannity pitched Trump on Hunter Biden pardon – report

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      Fox News’ Sean Hannity pitched Trump on Hunter Biden pardon – reportDaily Beast says rightwing host saw pardon for Joe Biden’s son as way to ‘smooth things over’ after Capitol attack The Fox News host Sean Hannity tried to sell Donald Trump on a novel way to heal the wounds of his presidency and the deadly Capitol attack: a pardon for Hunter Biden.The bizarre idea was referred to in texts released by the House January 6 committee, which on Thursday held its first primetime televised hearing.‘I’m not afraid of clowns’: Republican defends vote to impeach TrumpRead moreIn one message, Hannity told Kayleigh McEnany, then White House press secretary, Trump “was intrigued by the pardon idea!! (Hunter)”.The Daily Beast said a source familiar with the conversations between Hannity and Trump confirmed that Hannity was referring to Hunter Biden.Joe Biden’s surviving son has become a magnet for Republican attacks over his business affairs and personal life, including a collapsed marriage and struggles with addiction.A laptop he once owned was touted by Trump allies including Hannity as an “October surprise” to blow up the 2020 election. It did not explode but news outlets have since run stories based on information from the computer.Hunter Biden has confirmed that his tax history is under investigation, saying in December 2020: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.”His business dealings in China are reportedly part of the investigation.Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine were at the heart of Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, for soliciting dirt on political rivals in exchange for military aid.Trump was impeached a second time in 2021 for inciting the Capitol riot, a failed attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.After Trump’s defeat, a Hunter Biden pardon was floated in conservative circles.On 10 December 2020, the editor of the National Interest, a conservative magazine, wrote: “Trump himself might consider pardoning Hunter as well as his own family … as well as officials who worked for him.“The difficulty for Trump has been that any such pardons would not only look self-serving, but also raise questions about trying to foreclose criminal liability since no charges have been leveled against Hunter or Ivanka or Don Jr.“These issues might not be enough to deter him, and Hunter Biden’s predicament would allow Trump to inveigh against the federal justice system more broadly. He could show magnanimity and evenhandedness by pardoning Biden’s scapegrace son.”The source who spoke to the Beast said Hannity pitched the idea on 7 January, the day after the attack on Congress, as a way to help “smooth things over”.‘Biden blood only’: Hunter Biden’s ex-wife describes Secret Service exclusionRead moreBut the source said that like other suggestions, including an end to Trump’s lie about a stolen election and Trump attending Joe Biden’s inauguration, it went nowhere.“It died on the vine,” the Beast quoted the source as saying, adding that though Trump was briefly interested, the pardon was “never seriously considered”.Another source told the Beast Hannity “genuinely wanted some healing”.Fox News, McEnany and Trump did not comment.Trump issued last-minute pardons to aides and allies including Steve Bannon, his former campaign chair and White House strategist who was charged with fraud.Hannity has continued to attack Hunter Biden on his show.TopicsHunter BidenFox NewsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJoe BidenTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Tucker Carlson tried to use Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown

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      Tucker Carlson tried to use Hunter Biden to get his son into GeorgetownEmails reveal the ‘extent’ which Carlson was willing to turn on Biden’s son since the 2020 election, Washington Post says As Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for help getting his son into an elite Washington university in 2014, the Fox News host’s wife, Susie, reportedly wrote in an email: “Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!”Since the 2020 election, however, Carlson has fueled rightwing attacks on Joe Biden’s son, particularly over business affairs in which he allegedly benefited from his father’s position.The existence of emails about getting Buckley Carlson into Georgetown has been known for some time, thanks to a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden that was obtained by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and pushed to media in 2020.On Thursday the Washington Post revealed new emails and said analysis by security experts confirmed their authenticity.The emails, the Post said, “reveal the extent to which Carlson was willing to turn on a former associate as he thrives in a hyper-partisan media world in which conservatives have made Biden a prime target for attack.”“They also show how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the ‘ruling class’.”Carlson told the Post that in 2014, when Joe Biden was vice-president, “Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well.“I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about. And I’ve said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that’s why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I’ve said that many times, and I mean it.”He also said he would not comment on the emails, as they “were described by our [intelligence] community as Russian disinformation. So why would I? And I read that in the Washington Post”.The Post said Carlson was “speaking with apparent irony”. He and others on the right charge that mainstream media willfully overlooked the Biden laptop in 2020, amid reports it could contain disinformation planted by Russia or other malign actors.The Post also said emails showed Carlson helping Biden in 2015, amid reports about the state of Biden’s marriage. Carlson has confirmed doing so.But the Post focused on Carlson’s apparent hypocrisy.Quoting Carlson accusing Hunter Biden of getting “lucrative jobs … because he had an important father”, the Post said the Fox News host did so without “disclosing that he had once enlisted Biden to help get his son into a prestigious private university”.On the same January 2020 show, Carlson said: “In America today, there’s nothing illegal about paying de facto bribes by handing fake jobs to the unqualified family members of powerful people. And since it is perfectly legal, naturally, Hunter Biden isn’t the only one shamelessly cashing in on his family name.”In another email reported by the Post, Susie Carlson wrote: “Tucker and I would be so grateful if you could write a letter or speak to someone in the Georgetown Admission’s [sic] Office about Buckley.”Biden reportedly agreed to write to the university president and said: “I will do anything you would like me to do.”According to the Post, Tucker Carlson wrote: “I can’t thank you enough for writing that letter to Georgetown on Bucky’s behalf. So nice of you. I know it’ll help. Hope you’re great and we can all get dinner soon.”Buckley Carlson went to the University of Virginia. Now communications director for Jim Banks, a House Republican from Indiana, he did not comment on the Post report.Amid reaction online, the author Radley Balko wrote: “The story here is that Tucker Carlson is the living embodiment of the unearned, privileged elitism that Tucker Carlson derides on his show every night. The Hunter Biden part is just gravy.”Rightwing accounts pointed to an NBC report which said Biden’s laptop and other sources showed that between 2013 and 2018, he and his company brought in about $11m from work linked to Ukraine and China.TopicsHunter BidenFox NewsJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More