Comer sounds alarm about presidential family members not named Kushner

[cigaretteman]

Less than two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that a private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner — former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a White House adviser to Trump — had received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from multiple foreign governments. In total, the Times estimated, Kushner’s firm had vacuumed up about $2.5 billion from various Persian Gulf countries.


And that’s after Trump left office. While he was in office, a company linked to the Qatari government invested nearly $1.3 billion in a Manhattan property owned by Kushner Cos. Trump himself benefited from foreign generosity as president, with multiple foreign governments spending at least $750,000 at his D.C. hotel “at sensitive moments in their U.S. relations,” according to the Associated Press.
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That report stemmed from the release of documents by Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, after a lengthy court fight over subpoenas issued by the House Oversight Committee. Mazars was turning over subpoenaed documents in tranches following a settlement reached in September 2022, including a set that documented spending at Trump’s hotel.



Mazars is no longer turning over documents. The midterm elections gave control of the House to Republicans and, therefore, gave Republicans control of House Oversight. Soon after the gavel changed hands, an attorney for Trump reportedly informed Mazars that “the committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete” document production. In an interview with the Times, the committee’s new chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), agreed that his committee would no longer seek the material. (“I honestly didn’t even know who or what Mazars was,” he told the newspaper in a statement.)
Instead, Comer has joined other high-profile Republicans in focusing breathlessly on President Biden and his family, particularly son Hunter Biden. Beginning even before his party took control of the committee, Comer has made sweeping and unproven allegations about the Biden family. His committee has been engaged in a wide-ranging fishing expedition, seeking access to various documents targeting Biden family members and their business partners.
Despite his delineation in November of nine federal crimes for which he claimed his committee had evidence, Comer’s biggest revelation as chairman is that Hunter Biden and his business partners received money as part of a business deal made with a Chinese energy company after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president ended in 2017. It has been known for some time that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s brother James were involved in deals with Chinese interests; The Washington Post reported on one agreement in March 2022. What hasn’t been shown — despite insinuations from Comer and his allies — is that money went to Joe Biden.


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It has also been known for some time that Hunter Biden was apparently eager to parlay his last name into financial arrangements. His role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma was a central feature of the first impeachment probe into Trump, whose allies cobbled together a several-steps-removed argument for why Trump’s demand for a Biden probe related to Burisma was warranted. Beyond those unfounded insistences, though, Hunter Biden’s sitting on Burisma’s board was viewed as ethically dubious — if not worse. (During the impeachment probe, it was revealed that a government official had flagged Hunter Biden’s work as problematic in 2015.)
Comer hasn’t moved the ball much, despite regular appearances on Fox News in which he rehashes the same unfounded or evidence-free allegations over and over. As he did on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning.
“Have you found evidence that anybody broke any laws?” co-host Steve Doocy asked Comer.



Now, remember: back in November Comer claimed specifically that evidence of nine crimes had, in fact, been uncovered — claims covered by Fox News. But Comer didn’t go quite that far this time.
“If the president was involved in this,” he said, “obviously he would have broken many laws because we don’t believe that China would have paid the Biden family millions of … dollars for nothing. We believe that China was more than likely getting something in return. The same could be said for Ukraine, with Burisma.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/11/comer-rings-alarm-about-presidential-family-members-not-named-kushner/

 

[cigaretteman]

Of course China and Burisma assumed they were getting something for their money. That’s the thing about Hunter Biden trading on his name: It only works if he convinces them that he can exert influence. In some things he could, as when Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for a college recommendation for his son. But it’s not clear what Hunter Biden could deliver for those agreements — and it’s certainly not clear that Joe Biden was involved, much less that he violated any law.



“What we’re trying to determine is if in fact Joe Biden made policy decisions and did things that were not in the best interest of the American people in order to enrich his family,” Comer stated. “Then those are laws that are … certainly broken.”
Remember, the deals with China occurred after Joe Biden left the Obama administration. Comer might as well say, “if we find that President Biden stole his Corvette, then he broke the law.” Well, sure — but the hard part is demonstrating that a law was broken.
“We’re going to fix the laws on influence-peddling because this is getting out of control,” Comer continued. (Co-host Brian Kilmeade chirped: “Absolutely!”) “If we don’t have tighter ethics laws, we’re going to have countries like China that are going to come in and buy off relatives of high-ranking government officials,” Comer continued, adding that his committee was focused on Biden “because we’re very concerned that his family was getting this money because of things he was doing, both as vice president and president.”



Now we come back to Trump and Kushner. If Hunter Biden and his business associates made two deals with Chinese energy concerns totaling less than $10 million, that’s less than 5 percent of what Kushner’s firm got from one of the newly reported agreements. It’s one half of 1 percent of the $2 billion a Saudi fund decided to invest with Kushner.
In its report, the Times noted that “Qatari officials feared they would face unfavorable treatment if they turned down Mr. Kushner’s invitation to invest and Mr. Trump returned to power.” Kushner’s White House portfolio included a focus on the Middle East, you’ll recall, but it’s Hunter Biden’s murky deals that spurred Comer to warn that foreign countries might “come in and buy off relatives of high-ranking government officials.”
And: House Oversight was handed documents showing how foreign actors spent money with the Trump Organization as they sought to influence Trump’s administration, while he was in office. But under Comer’s leadership, that document production ended. If the Qataris or other foreign interests were worried about the political fallout of cutting deals with Kushner or the Trump Organization, Comer’s open lack of interest in probing the former president and his family would not seem to be a disincentive.



At the end of his “Fox & Friends” interview, Comer pledged that “the American people are going to learn a lot more about this in the coming weeks.” This has been the patter for months now, a patter inherited from Trump himself. The big score is always just around the corner, so sit tight. Feel free to assume the worst because we’re about to prove it … though that proof often never comes.
The Oversight probe of the Bidens is a fishing expedition, but there’s also plenty of bait for the right-wing media and its audience, too.

 

[THE_DEVIL]

Also from this ignorant pol

AOC Tries To Coach Rep. Comer Into The Real World

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