USA 2024 Elections Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Tue May 16 14:25:57 PDT 2023


Hang All The Members Of The Liars' Club?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Federal prosecutors last week announced the indictment of U.S.
Representative George Santos (R-N.Y.) on a host of charges, including
misuse of federal campaign funds and wire fraud, almost all of them
resulting from his pathological lies.

Certainly, Santos deserved the attention of prosecutors for lying on
federal documents and affidavits that may have helped him win a
congressional seat as well as personal lucre.

But if that’s the case, why haven’t federal prosecutors also gone
after Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)? She clearly lied her way
into a Harvard Law School professorship and an erstwhile presidential
candidacy by claiming, in part, quite falsely she was a Native
American, supposedly Harvard’s first indigenous law professor.

Her Senate colleague, Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), flatly lied (he
said “misspoke”) about being a Vietnam War veteran. He never confessed
to “misspeaking” about his résumé until caught. Both senators,
apparently like Santos, gained political traction in their various
campaigns from such lies, but the two apparently never put them in
writing, or at least not as blatantly as did Santos.
New Federal Standards?

Are federal and states prosecutors now setting a new moral and legal
standard by criminalizing Santos’ lies? If true, congratulations—it is
long overdue.

Now can we please extend the long arm of the law to reach far beyond a
bit player like Santos?

Why not reboot with the really big liars? Their lies far more
undermined the integrity of our key agencies and indeed our national
security.

So let us start with John Brennan, the former CIA director. He lied on
two separate occasions, in one case while under oath before the U.S.
Senate. His untruths were not mere campaign finance fabrications. They
involved falsely swearing that the CIA did not spy on the computers of
Senate staffers (“Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on
[the committee] or the Senate.”). He also lied that U.S. drone
missions in prior years had not killed innocent bystanders (“There
hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional
proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to
develop.”).

Brennan, only when caught, admitted to both lies. But he faced zero
consequences and, in fact, was soon rewarded with an on-air analyst
job at MSNBC.

Then we come to James Clapper, the former director of the Office of
National Intelligence. Like Santos, he lied. But unlike Santos,
Clapper was under oath to Congress. And further unlike Santos, Clapper
was not a small fish, but a whale in charge of coordinating the
nation’s intelligence bureaus.

Clapper’s lies mattered a great deal, especially when he swore to
Congress that the National Security Agency did not spy on Americans.
(“No, sir. Not wittingly.”) When caught, Clapper confessed that he
gave “the least untruthful answer.” (“I responded in what I thought
was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying ‘no.’”).
He faced zero consequences for his perjury. And like Brennan, he
marketed his anti-Trump phobias into a comfortable cable news gig.

Note well that both Clapper and Brennan likely lied again when they
signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, with a wink and nod
suggesting it was a hallmark example of “Russian disinformation.”

Then we come to the former interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He is
also currently working as a cable news commentator. McCabe admitted to
lying—according to the inspector general, “done knowingly and
intentionally”—four separate times to federal investigators, three
times under oath. McCabe misled the country in matters that concerned
a national election, more specifically lying that he had not leaked to
the media to massage media narratives about the FBI’s investigation of
the Clinton Foundation.

Then there is James Comey, another former FBI head, who confirmed
McCabe had lied. He simply claimed on 245 occasions to House
investigators and members that he either had no memory or had no
knowledge, when asked under oath to explain some of the wrongdoing of
the FBI during his directorship. Remember, Comey and the FBI signed
off on the authenticity of Steele document material to obtain a FISA
warrant, when they knew it was unreliable and Steele was not credible.
Comey also likely leaked to the media a confidential memo officially
memorializing a private conversation with the president of the United
States.

Should we include yet another former FBI director? Robert Mueller
swore under oath to Congress that he knew little about Fusion GPS
(“I’m not familiar with that”) and more or less had ignored the Steele
dossier. (“It’s not my purview.”) Mueller’s claims cannot be true
because revelations about both were the very catalysts that prompted
his own special counsel appointment.

Will the Santos prosecutors go after Anthony Fauci, the recently
retired head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases?

Fauci seemingly lied under oath to the Senate when he preposterously
claimed the money he channeled through a third party to the Wuhan
virology lab did not entail support for gain-of-function virology
research. (“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund
gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”) Many
virologists were aghast at Fauci’s claims, since they knew
gain-of-function research conducted in China—the point being to skirt
U.S. laws—was precisely what the U.S.-subsidized researchers in China
were doing.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Bidens

Prosecutors are currently looking at the various shenanigans of Hunter
Biden, whose lies may even be a match for those of George Santos. Joe
Biden’s son apparently lied on his firearms background check affidavit
when applying for a handgun purchase—so far, with impunity.

When asked point blank on national television whether his lost laptop
was his own—he had signed a receipt for it at the repair shop—Biden
refused to give a yes or no answer.

Hunter Biden has apparently de facto lied for years when he
purportedly did not report either his entire income or his real
business expenses accurately, or that he was the father of a child he
conceived with an ex-stripper in Arkansas.

If Hunter’s lies do not match the number of Santos’ prevarications,
his were at least far more significant. His lie that the laptop was
not his prompted current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a former
top Biden 2020 campaign aide, to call up Mike Morell, former interim
CIA director. Morell’s mission was to round up as many intelligence
authorities as he could to lie on the eve of a presidential election
that the laptop had “all the hallmarks” of “Russian disinformation.”
He found 51, including himself. Apparently, some active members of the
CIA pitched in as well to lend the letter additional authenticity.

Note that Morell swears Blinken called him to solicit signers of the
bogus letter, while Blinken claims he did not. So either the current
secretary of state or the former interim director of the CIA is
lying—or they both are. Again, among the first to sign the fraudulent
intelligence letter were Brennan and Clapper. They apparently had
earned a reputation as team players, given that both men had been
willing to lie under oath to Congress. Misleading the nation again
about the laptop to aid Joe Biden’s campaign was small potatoes.

Biden, on spec, promulgated the lie when he said in his second debate
with Trump, “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said
that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of
the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.
Nobody believes it, except his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”

A subsequent poll suggested the Bidens’ concocted laptop lies may have
influenced voters to side with Biden in the election. If true, that
was a lie that should be of far more interest to current federal
prosecutors than Santos’ crazy fairy tales.
The Lies of the “Big Guy”

So we come to the greatest prevaricator of all.

Joe Biden flat-out lied on numerous occasions, such as when he claimed
that he never discussed the family shake-down business with Hunter
Biden.

Joe Biden, in fact, turns up on the laptop as someone deeply connected
to Hunter Biden’s quid pro quo companies (“10 [percent] for the Big
Guy”). Tony Bobulinksi, a former business associate of Hunter’s, has
sworn that Joe and his brother Jim Biden were deeply involved in their
foreign leveraging efforts.

A photo shows Joe Biden with Hunter’s “business” associates. Will the
current Santos prosecutors turn their attention to the Oval Office
occupant’s financial records to determine whether his lavish private
homes and lifestyle were viable under his reported stated income?

Biden lied to Americans dozens of times to get elected. The tragic
death of his wife in a car accident was not due to the drunkenness and
fault of a truck driver. That was a horrific smear designed to shift
blame onto an innocent man and gain sympathy for himself.

He lied that his son, Beau, died while serving in Iraq.

Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after he was caught
lying about his college records and plagiarizing a speech from a
British politician.

So we know that in the past, Joe Biden’s lies have left a mark on
history in a fashion that Santos’ never will.

When Biden prefaces his whoppers with “No joke!” or “This is the God’s
honest truth!” and especially when he swears, “My word as a Biden!”
then it is a fair bet that he is lying.

When Biden entered office, he lied about the number of Americans
previously vaccinated under the Trump Administration and
preposterously claimed there had been no COVID vaccine available.

He lied that his loan forgiveness amnesty passed Congress by two
votes. In fact, Biden simply declared amnesty by fiat and never
submitted the request to Congress at all.

He repeatedly lies that billionaires pay only three percent of their
income in taxes on average. He lies about minor details, from giving
his Uncle Frank a purple heart to matters of national concern, such as
the price of gas when he entered office. It was most certainly not $5
a gallon!

Biden constantly lies about his résumé. He was never a long-haul truck
driver. Nor was he a star athlete almost headed for the Naval Academy
on a sports scholarship if only Dallas Cowboys legend Roger Staubach
had not beat him out. “I was appointed to the academy in 1965 by a
senator who I was running against in 1972. I didn’t come to the
academy because I wanted to be a football star. And you had a guy
named Staubach and Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”

His house was never almost destroyed by a fire. He was never raised
“politically” as a Puerto Rican. Biden never pinned the Silver Star on
a Navy Afghanistan war hero for bringing back the body of a fellow
soldier from a deep ravine. He was never arrested, either in South
Africa or in Atlanta, for demonstrating on behalf of civil rights.

No foreign leader can believe Biden. He never traveled 17,000 miles
with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He lied about his own Amtrak
travel. He lied about his record on inflation and economic growth. He
lied about upping Social Security payments. (It was a
larger-than-usual automatic cost-of-living increase spurred by his
inflationary policies.) He lied about the nature of the Trump tax
cuts.

Biden keeps lying that the southern border is “secure” even as nearly
2 million people have crossed illegally on his watch and tens of
thousands more are massed to enter the country as Title 42
restrictions are lifted.

He insists that five police officers died at the hands of protestors
on January 6, 2021. In truth, the one person we know for certain who
died violently that day was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester who
was shot and killed by a Capitol Police lieutenant with a checkered
record, whose identity was suppressed for months while Babbitt’s past
was sullied by the press.

Biden’s defenders hint that either he is cognitively compromised and
thus not responsible—as if he has told the truth the last 40 years
when he was hale!—or his lies are mere “exaggerations” unlike the
“lies” of Trump—as if lying about the death of one’s spouse or son or
school record or resume or major legislation or his presidency is a
mere “exaggeration.”

As a general rule, since 2015, if any federal bureaucrat or elected
official lied in service of opposing Donald Trump, he was exempted
from consequences. If not, he was properly held responsible for his
lying. So the more that the fake Steele dossier, the Russian collusion
hoax, and the Russian disinformation laptop lie warped the 2016 and
2020 presidential elections, the more the promulgators of those
falsehoods never faced any consequences for their untruths.

So, yes, let federal prosecutors go after the lying George Santos to
set a precedent that the lying of government officials has
consequences.

But in the great scheme of lying things, Santos is a prevaricating
minnow who was snagged to great acclaim because the lying sharks swim
and circle with impunity.


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