Month: April 2022

Zelensky Dismisses Two Of His Top Generals For Being “Traitors”

Zelensky Dismisses Two Of His Top Generals For Being “Traitors”

In a highly unusual move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has removed two of this own generals for being “traitors” – as he announced in a Friday post on the presidency’s website. 

“Today another decision was made. Regarding antiheroes. Now I do not have time to deal with all the traitors. But gradually they will all be punished,” Zelensky said, suggesting that he thinks more “traitors” are in the ranks which will soon be dealt with.

The statement identified the pair of generals in the following: “That is why the ex-chief of the Main Department of Internal Security of the Security Service of Ukraine Naumov Andriy Olehovych and the former head of the Office of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson region Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych are no longer generals,” according to the presidency’s website. 

These were top command posts. With the “Main Department of Internal Security” being the country’s main intelligence agency.

The president didn’t specify what the allegations were, or the precise nature of their alleged traitorous activities, only do say they “have not decided where their homeland is” – suggesting perhaps pro-Russian sympathies, or also refusal to carry out state orders at the command level. 

Zelensky stated: “According to Article 48 of the Disciplinary Statute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, those servicemen among senior officers who have not decided where their homeland is, who violate the military oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people [in regard to] the protection of our state, its freedom and independence, will inevitably be deprived of senior military ranks. Random generals don’t belong here!” 

Despite some Western reports in the past days pointing to a Russian troop draw down near Chernihiv and Kiev, Zelensky told the public to prepare for “powerful strikes” – also amid reports the Russians are preparing to conduct attacks from longer ranges out.

“The invaders are allocating their sick creativity to the temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region,” he said. “Also in Donbas, in Mariupol, in the Kharkiv direction, Russian troops are accumulating the potential for strikes. Powerful strikes.” 

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/01/2022 – 15:45

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Yale Law Prof. Kate Stith Confirms that the Protest of a Fed Soc Event She Moderated was Extremely Disruptive

There have been conflicting accounts of the infamous March 10 protest of a Yale Federalist Society event. Some accounts contend that the protest was brief and not-all-that disruptive in the scheme of things; others claim that the protest disrupted not only the event, but was so noisy that it disrupted classes and meetings elsewhere in the building.

Among other participants in this debate, a Yale Law professor who claims to have been at a faculty meeting in the building at the time told me (and others) on Facebook that various accounts from “right wing media” have grossly exaggerated the protest’s disruptiveness. This professor specifically asserted that the faculty meeting was not interfered with.

Professor Kate Stith, who was the moderator of the Fed Soc event, begs to differ. In a memorandum circulated to the law school’s tenured faculty (and published, via an anonymous source, at journalist Vicky Ward’s substack), she writes:

The hallway disruption was far more than excessively noisy. An audiotape released on March 29 by the group FIRE* reveals disruption and interference even while the
protesters were in Room 127. The audiotape further reveals the shocking and extraordinary disruption of the event after the protesters moved (twice) to the School’s main hallway—yelling, stomping, powerful chanting, and wall-banging. Students and faculty have also reported serious disruption of a faculty meeting and of two classes that were being conducted in other classrooms off the main hallway…

As it happens, events on March 10 were shut down by the remarkably loud and multisource hallway noise. For instance, whoever was running the faculty meeting decided to shut down its in-person portion and proceed solely on Zoom. Students in the class in Room 128 have said the instructor urged them to “yell” in order to be heard. The instructor in Room 121 stopped the class at one point explicitly because the noise so interfered with the teaching function. And we in Room 127 ceased even trying to talk or listen on multiple occasions.

Professor Stith concludes that the students’ behavior was a blatant violation of university policy, though she stops short of calling for any penalties to be imposed:

As a former prosecutor, I know well that not every violation has to be an occasion for sanctions. In my judgment we should use this moment as an opportunity to educate our students about the core importance of free expression to our academic mission—and to make clear, as Dean Gerken has forcefully written, this can never happen again. That said, we cannot make the most of this opportunity unless we recognize that a blatant violation of Yale’s Free Expression policy occurred on March 10.

 

 

The post Yale Law Prof. Kate Stith Confirms that the Protest of a Fed Soc Event She Moderated was Extremely Disruptive appeared first on Reason.com.

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Yale Law Prof. Kate Stith Confirms that the Protest of a Fed Soc Event She Moderated was Extremely Disruptive

There have been conflicting accounts of the infamous March 10 protest of a Yale Federalist Society event. Some accounts contend that the protest was brief and not-all-that disruptive in the scheme of things; others claim that the protest disrupted not only the event, but was so noisy that it disrupted classes and meetings elsewhere in the building.

Among other participants in this debate, a Yale Law professor who claims to have been at a faculty meeting in the building at the time told me (and others) on Facebook that various accounts from “right wing media” have grossly exaggerated the protest’s disruptiveness. This professor specifically asserted that the faculty meeting was not interfered with.

Professor Kate Stith, who was the moderator of the Fed Soc event, begs to differ. In a memorandum circulated to the law school’s tenured faculty (and published, via an anonymous source, at journalist Vicky Ward’s substack), she writes:

The hallway disruption was far more than excessively noisy. An audiotape released on March 29 by the group FIRE* reveals disruption and interference even while the
protesters were in Room 127. The audiotape further reveals the shocking and extraordinary disruption of the event after the protesters moved (twice) to the School’s main hallway—yelling, stomping, powerful chanting, and wall-banging. Students and faculty have also reported serious disruption of a faculty meeting and of two classes that were being conducted in other classrooms off the main hallway…

As it happens, events on March 10 were shut down by the remarkably loud and multisource hallway noise. For instance, whoever was running the faculty meeting decided to shut down its in-person portion and proceed solely on Zoom. Students in the class in Room 128 have said the instructor urged them to “yell” in order to be heard. The instructor in Room 121 stopped the class at one point explicitly because the noise so interfered with the teaching function. And we in Room 127 ceased even trying to talk or listen on multiple occasions.

Professor Stith concludes that the students’ behavior was a blatant violation of university policy, though she stops short of calling for any penalties to be imposed:

As a former prosecutor, I know well that not every violation has to be an occasion for sanctions. In my judgment we should use this moment as an opportunity to educate our students about the core importance of free expression to our academic mission—and to make clear, as Dean Gerken has forcefully written, this can never happen again. That said, we cannot make the most of this opportunity unless we recognize that a blatant violation of Yale’s Free Expression policy occurred on March 10.

 

 

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Insult Diplomacy: Does Biden’s Vilification Of Putin Help?

Insult Diplomacy: Does Biden’s Vilification Of Putin Help?

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

Several weeks into the war in Ukraine, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked President Joe Biden if he agreed with those who call Russian President Vladimir Putin “a killer.”

“I do,” said Biden.

Since calling Putin a killer, Biden has progressed to calling him “a war criminal,” “a murderous dictator,” “a pure thug” and “a butcher.”

It is difficult to recall an American president using such a string of epithets about the leader of a nation with which we were not at war.

What is Biden’s rationale? What is his purpose here?

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, to their eternal embarrassment, called Joseph Stalin, a far greater monster than Putin, “good old Joe” and “Uncle Joe” when they sought his cooperation in World War II and the early postwar era.

Richard Nixon toasted the century’s greatest mass murderer Mao Zedong in the Great Hall of the People during his historic trip to China in 1972. His purpose: establish relations with America’s most hostile adversary — to help Nixon advance a “generation of peace.”

But when it comes to depicting Putin, who launched this invasion of Ukraine, Biden repeatedly reaches for the nastiest of insults.

But why?

“Putin deserves it,” say the champions of a Cold War II. We need more truth and candor in diplomacy. When Biden referenced Putin in the closing remarks of his address in Warsaw, Poland — “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” — they were elated.

Biden was calling for regime change in Russia, calling for the people of Russia to administer to the “killer” and “butcher” the fate he deserves and remove him from power by any means necessary.

Within minutes of hearing their president go off-script with his call for regime change in Russia, White House aides and Cabinet officers were scrambling to assure reporters that the president of the United States did not mean what the president of the United States had just said.

Biden was expressing his “moral outrage” at the carnage Putin has unleashed on Ukraine, they said — and not making a change in U.S. policy.

For days, the president and his advisers argued over whether Biden had meant it literally when he said, “This man cannot remain in power.”

Sunday in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to shut down the argument:

“As you know, and as you’ve heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter. In this case, as in any case, it’s up to the people of the country in question. It’s up to the Russian people.”

One problem with Blinken’s statement is that the U.S. has been deeply involved, both during the Cold War and afterward, in “color revolutions” to effect the overthrow of autocrats we did not like.

Indeed, when Biden characterizes America’s cause in the world as leading the global struggle between democracy and autocracy, what is the desired and predetermined fate of the autocrats we oppose, if not their forcible ouster?

In 2014, the U.S. helped finance the Maidan Revolution that ousted a democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in Kyiv. Sen. John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland had both been seen in the square cheering on the rebels.

A second problem is that Putin is many things other than the terms Biden used to describe him.

He commands the largest nuclear arsenal on earth and 10 times as many battlefield nuclear weapons as the U.S. military. He is the man we must look to if we hope to end the war in Ukraine. For Putin alone can order the Russian army to stand down or withdraw, presumably a goal of U.S. foreign policy.

If the president of the United States is the most powerful man in the world, Putin is up there alongside him, disposing of an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could bring an end to Western civilization.

Without Putin’s cooperation, the bloodletting goes on in Ukraine.

How does it advance the goal of getting his agreement to end the war in Ukraine for the U.S. president to repeatedly call him vile names?

Already, we have paid a price.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley are finding their secure phones to their opposite numbers in the Russian government have gone silent.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov have not been picking up the phone.

In Moscow, there is talk of severing diplomatic relations with the United States because of Biden’s name-calling.

None of the aspiring peace-makers seeking to broker a cease-fire or truce in the Ukraine war are acting like this or using language like that.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Recep Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel have not used the kind of public language on Putin as has Biden.

We see the cost of what Biden is doing; wherein lies the benefit?

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/01/2022 – 15:30

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Tulsa Police Officers Taunt Elderly Woman With Bipolar Disorder Before Violently Arresting Her


tulsa police paris

Tulsa police officers taunted and laughed at a 70-year-old woman having a mental health crisis before violently arresting her, recently released bodycam footage shows.

The video has sparked outrage, but the Tulsa Police Department says its officers followed protocols when they kicked down a bathroom door and tackled LaDonna Paris in an incident last October. Paris had locked herself in the bathroom of a Habitat for Humanity store and refused to leave. She has late-onset bipolar disorder and was having a manic episode.

The Tulsa Police Department says Paris had an aerosol can and a lighter and was trying to set the bathroom on fire. It’s what happened before police kicked down the door, though, that’s drawing attention. The body camera footage shows a Tulsa police officer arcing her taser, asking Paris if she wants to get tased, and rattling the door to taunt the clearly distressed woman.

“This is gonna be so fun,” the officer says as she and her partner wait for another officer to arrive and kick down the door.

 

Tulsa has a special response team to handle people experiencing mental health crises, but it was busy at the time. Instead, police tackled Paris, bloodying her face. She spent a month in jail on charges of arson, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other charges before a judge dropped all of the charges, citing Paris’ mental health.

The Tulsa Police Department released full footage of the incident and defended the arrest.

“To be clear, the banter between the officers outside of the presence of the suspect can be received as unprofessional and has been addressed with the officers,” Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg said in a statement. However, Meulenberg said that the “overall actions of the officers and the way in which the call was handled is within the policies of the Tulsa Police Department.”

Several incidents of police abuse of the elderly have made national headlines in recent years.

A police officer in Loveland, Colorado, Austin Hopp, was fired and criminally charged after bodycam footage showed him violently arresting a 73-year-old woman, Karen Garner, who suffered from aphasia and dementia. Garner was suspected of shoplifting $130-worth of merchandise from Walmart.

Back at the station, Hopp later watched the video footage of him dislocating Garner’s shoulder with other Loveland officers for entertainment. “Ready for the pop?” he asked the other officers.

The Solomon-Simmons Law office is now representing Paris.“The TPD officers involved were fully aware that Ms. Paris was suffering a bipolar manic episode, yet they still viciously provoked and attacked Ms. Paris while laughing off her disability as if it were a joke,” the law firm said in a statement. “We are disgusted by this outrageous behavior caught on video and the fact that the Tulsa Police Department has attempted to shift the blame for the incident onto the victim of a mental health episode and police brutality.”

The post Tulsa Police Officers Taunt Elderly Woman With Bipolar Disorder Before Violently Arresting Her appeared first on Reason.com.

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Tulsa Police Officers Taunt Elderly Woman With Bipolar Disorder Before Violently Arresting Her


tulsa police paris

Tulsa police officers taunted and laughed at a 70-year-old woman having a mental health crisis before violently arresting her, recently released bodycam footage shows.

The video has sparked outrage, but the Tulsa Police Department says its officers followed protocols when they kicked down a bathroom door and tackled LaDonna Paris in an incident last October. Paris had locked herself in the bathroom of a Habitat for Humanity store and refused to leave. She has late-onset bipolar disorder and was having a manic episode.

The Tulsa Police Department says Paris had an aerosol can and a lighter and was trying to set the bathroom on fire. It’s what happened before police kicked down the door, though, that’s drawing attention. The body camera footage shows a Tulsa police officer arcing her taser, asking Paris if she wants to get tased, and rattling the door to taunt the clearly distressed woman.

“This is gonna be so fun,” the officer says as she and her partner wait for another officer to arrive and kick down the door.

 

Tulsa has a special response team to handle people experiencing mental health crises, but it was busy at the time. Instead, police tackled Paris, bloodying her face. She spent a month in jail on charges of arson, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other charges before a judge dropped all of the charges, citing Paris’ mental health.

The Tulsa Police Department released full footage of the incident and defended the arrest.

“To be clear, the banter between the officers outside of the presence of the suspect can be received as unprofessional and has been addressed with the officers,” Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg said in a statement. However, Meulenberg said that the “overall actions of the officers and the way in which the call was handled is within the policies of the Tulsa Police Department.”

Several incidents of police abuse of the elderly have made national headlines in recent years.

A police officer in Loveland, Colorado, Austin Hopp, was fired and criminally charged after bodycam footage showed him violently arresting a 73-year-old woman, Karen Garner, who suffered from aphasia and dementia. Garner was suspected of shoplifting $130-worth of merchandise from Walmart.

Back at the station, Hopp later watched the video footage of him dislocating Garner’s shoulder with other Loveland officers for entertainment. “Ready for the pop?” he asked the other officers.

The Solomon-Simmons Law office is now representing Paris.“The TPD officers involved were fully aware that Ms. Paris was suffering a bipolar manic episode, yet they still viciously provoked and attacked Ms. Paris while laughing off her disability as if it were a joke,” the law firm said in a statement. “We are disgusted by this outrageous behavior caught on video and the fact that the Tulsa Police Department has attempted to shift the blame for the incident onto the victim of a mental health episode and police brutality.”

The post Tulsa Police Officers Taunt Elderly Woman With Bipolar Disorder Before Violently Arresting Her appeared first on Reason.com.

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Elizabeth Warren Compares Buying Bitcoin to ‘Buying Air’


Thumbnail (7)

On Meet the Press, Chuck Todd posed a series of cryptocurrency-related questions to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.): “If I buy bitcoin, am I buying a share of stock or am I buying a pork belly or am I buying euros? What am I buying?”

“Or are you buying air?” responded Warren, calling bitcoin an “ephemeral token” where the value is only tied to other people’s perceptions of its worth.

Todd pressed her on that, asking whether the finite supply of bitcoin makes it more similar to platinum or silver.

“With bitcoin, there’s no thing that backs it up,” responded Warren, saying, “it’s just belief.”

“Instead of bitcoin, we could be talking about digital currency,” argued Warren, saying that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have “something that backs it up”—the government.

It makes sense that Warren, who wants people’s transactions to be maximally surveilled by the government, would favor the creation of a digital currency. But CBDCs don’t even come close to being useful substitutes for cryptocurrency, because they obviously fail to confer the benefit that makes cryptocurrency so attractive: anonymity, or privacy from government surveillance of transactions.

Toward the end of the segment, Warren said she thinks cryptocurrency “is going to end up getting regulated.”

Contrast both this mindset and this regulatory approach with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.), who told Reason‘s Nick Gillespie last year, “There are different reasons to have a digital dollar, or a central bank digital currency, than to have bitcoin.”

“As long as the dollar is in use, it’s important that we make transactions clear faster and that people have more opportunity to use a digital format for the U.S. dollar,” said Lummis, deemed the “crypto queen” of the Senate, who noted concern about the ways these currencies, like the digital yuan being developed by the Chinese Communist Party, can be used by the state to surveil citizens.

“In combination with China’s ‘social credit’ system, the e-CNY [digital yuan] will also enable China to directly send money to, and take money from, favored and disfavored individuals,” writes Avik Roy at National Review. “People and businesses who speak out against the government can have their bank accounts instantly wiped out and find themselves de-platformed from economic life.”

As to how this might function in America, consider the fact that administrators of this hypothetical CBDC would have extraordinary amounts of data about where individuals spend their money. “If you were troubled by IRS leaks of private tax returns, wait until the Fed knows everything about your spending habits,” cautions Roy.

In that hypothetical universe, cryptocurrency’s promise of financial privacy makes it an even more appealing competitor.

The post Elizabeth Warren Compares Buying Bitcoin to 'Buying Air' appeared first on Reason.com.

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Elizabeth Warren Compares Buying Bitcoin to ‘Buying Air’


Thumbnail (7)

On Meet the Press, Chuck Todd posed a series of cryptocurrency-related questions to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.): “If I buy bitcoin, am I buying a share of stock or am I buying a pork belly or am I buying euros? What am I buying?”

“Or are you buying air?” responded Warren, calling bitcoin an “ephemeral token” where the value is only tied to other people’s perceptions of its worth.

Todd pressed her on that, asking whether the finite supply of bitcoin makes it more similar to platinum or silver.

“With bitcoin, there’s no thing that backs it up,” responded Warren, saying, “it’s just belief.”

“Instead of bitcoin, we could be talking about digital currency,” argued Warren, saying that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have “something that backs it up”—the government.

It makes sense that Warren, who wants people’s transactions to be maximally surveilled by the government, would favor the creation of a digital currency. But CBDCs don’t even come close to being useful substitutes for cryptocurrency, because they obviously fail to confer the benefit that makes cryptocurrency so attractive: anonymity, or privacy from government surveillance of transactions.

Toward the end of the segment, Warren said she thinks cryptocurrency “is going to end up getting regulated.”

Contrast both this mindset and this regulatory approach with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.), who told Reason‘s Nick Gillespie last year, “There are different reasons to have a digital dollar, or a central bank digital currency, than to have bitcoin.”

“As long as the dollar is in use, it’s important that we make transactions clear faster and that people have more opportunity to use a digital format for the U.S. dollar,” said Lummis, deemed the “crypto queen” of the Senate, who noted concern about the ways these currencies, like the digital yuan being developed by the Chinese Communist Party, can be used by the state to surveil citizens.

“In combination with China’s ‘social credit’ system, the e-CNY [digital yuan] will also enable China to directly send money to, and take money from, favored and disfavored individuals,” writes Avik Roy at National Review. “People and businesses who speak out against the government can have their bank accounts instantly wiped out and find themselves de-platformed from economic life.”

As to how this might function in America, consider the fact that administrators of this hypothetical CBDC would have extraordinary amounts of data about where individuals spend their money. “If you were troubled by IRS leaks of private tax returns, wait until the Fed knows everything about your spending habits,” cautions Roy.

In that hypothetical universe, cryptocurrency’s promise of financial privacy makes it an even more appealing competitor.

The post Elizabeth Warren Compares Buying Bitcoin to 'Buying Air' appeared first on Reason.com.

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UK Urges Zelensky To Hold Out For Better Terms In Peace Talks With Russia

UK Urges Zelensky To Hold Out For Better Terms In Peace Talks With Russia

So much for prioritizing lives over territory…

In a report from the Times of London that’s nothing short of shocking (especially considering the continuing stalemate in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia), senior British officials are urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instruct his negotiators to hold out and refuse to make concessions during talks with their Russian counterparts. The UK position reportedly contrasts with that of other European “allies”, like France and Germany, who have urged Zelenskyy to “settle” as soon as it’s feasible.

As anybody who has been paying attention to the talks already knows, headlines advertising a “breakthrough” have almost always been followed by headlines reporting the opposite. And while Wall Street and European governments have claimed that a breakthrough appears to be just around the corner (possibly coming as soon as two weeks from now), the British government is apparently determined to do everything in its power to prolong the conflict at the expense of Ukrainian lives, according to a report in the Times of London published Friday.

One senior British official is reportedly concerned that the Ukrainians are “over-eager” for peace.

A senior government source said there were concerns that allies were “over-eager” to secure an early peace deal, adding that a settlement should be reached only when Ukraine is in the strongest possible position.

During a phone call with Zelensky over the weekend, British PM Boris Johnson reportedly warned his Ukrainian counterpart that Russian President Putin is “a liar and a bully”.

In a phone call at the weekend, Boris Johnson warned President Zelensky that President Putin was a “liar and a bully” who would use talks to “wear you down and force you to make concessions”. Zelensky is also understood to have raised concerns about the progress of the talks and whether Moscow was exploiting them to reposition and strengthen its forces.

Meanwhile, in the latest sign of escalating conflict, Ukrainian forces reportedly carried out a cross-border raid on a Russian fuel depot on Friday, an attack that was so brazen that some on the Ukrainian side have denounced it as a “false flag” conducted by Russian forces to justify an escalation in Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the strike certainly wouldn’t benefit the cause of peace talks, as the conflict has officially taken on a multinational dimension.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/01/2022 – 15:05

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Lawmakers Demand Hunter Biden’s Communications With Obama White House

Lawmakers Demand Hunter Biden’s Communications With Obama White House

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Several GOP lawmakers sent more letters to the Biden administration demanding records of any communication between Hunter Biden and the White House.

Then-Vice-President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (L) are seen in a file photo. (David McNew/Getty Images)

“Hunter Biden’s connections throughout the Russian sphere of influence have now become especially relevant in the fast-moving and developing Russian war in Ukraine,” the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said in their letters to the White House, dated Thursday, March 31.

They argued that “if the Russian government is attempting to influence American policy in Ukraine by exploiting Hunter Biden’s connection with his father—the President of the United States—the American people deserve to know it,” according to their letter.

The Republicans are seeking “documents and communications” between the White House and “members or associates of the Biden family” from Jan. 20, 2021, to now, the letter said. They’re also seeking a list of “past and ongoing foreign business interests and past and ongoing foreign relations for members of the Biden family.”

Starting about a year ago, the younger Biden started producing artwork, which has been shown during an exhibition in New York. Some of the paintings are reportedly being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which has led to speculation that he’s using his name and influence to sell the paintings for a higher price, although Biden told outlets that his art is “literally keeping me sane” and dismissed such allegations.

Now, Republicans also are seeking seeking “all documents and communications” from Jan. 20, 2021, to now about Biden’s artwork, while demanding “all policies and procedures in place to ensure the Biden family does not profit from the presidency of Joe Biden.”

House Oversight Republicans said they’re seeking all records between Obama administration officials and “members or associates” of Biden’s family relating to Russia or Ukraine as well as all documents and records relating to Yelena Baturina, one of the richest women in Russia and the wife of a former Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. There have been allegations that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from Baturina, which Joe Biden has denied.

Republicans also allege the Biden family made a significant amount of money by leveraging Biden’s political influence when he was a senator from Delaware and when he served as vice president.

“The Biden family has for decades profited from Joe Biden’s positions of public trust. Hunter Biden has particularly benefitted from his father’s success in politics, from managing a Ukrainian energy conglomerate, to selling cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to connecting his father to Kazakhstani oil oligarchs, and preventing a Romanian real estate tycoon’s conviction for bribery charges,” their letter states.

The letters are addressed to Dana Remus, counsel to President Joe Biden, as well as David Ferriero, who heads the National Archives and Records Administration.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield on Thursday said that Biden was telling the truth in a late 2020 presidential debate that Hunter Biden didn’t make money in China or in other overseas business deals.

“We absolutely stand by the president’s comment,” Bedingfield told reporters. “And I would point you to the reporting on this, which referenced statements that we made at the time, that we gave to The Washington Post, who worked on this story. But as you know, I don’t speak for Hunter Biden so there’s not more I can say on that.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment. Hunter Biden’s lawyer has not responded to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/01/2022 – 14:48

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