(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The hypocrisy and disgusting nature of Fox News and the Republican Party knows no bounds [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-23 There is no low to which the Republican Party and individual republicans and Fox News will not go. Their hypocrisy is brazen. It's stunning. Every time I think they can not get worse, they do. Making Jim Jordan their speaker nominee is an example. Hunter Biden is an angel compared to Donald Trump. The legal troubles of Hunter Biden pale in comparison to those of Donald Trump. Yet Fox News apparently has created and made available a 16 episode psuedo-documentary of Hunter Biden's life. Where would we begin with a documentary of the immoral life that Donald Trump has led? How many episodes would we need? Hunter Biden is a private citizen who has not served in government in 25 years. What if we only covered the legal troubles of Donald Trump? What if we only covered the immorality associated with his political career? Do we start with he and his father marking rental applications with a C ? . The affairs . President Donald Trump’s time in the spotlight has consistently been dogged by reports of extramarital affairs and accusations of sexual assault . His confession on the Hollywood Access tape that he liked to commit sexual assault . Four years ago this week, news broke that the Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, had been caught on tape talking with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about his habit of sexually assaulting women. In that 2005 conversation, the then-Apprentice star bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” kissing women before they can stop him, and “moving on” a married woman “like a bitch.” Trump already had image problems that didn’t square with either party’s idea of presidential behavior, but the tape offered testimony (from the offender’s own mouth) that he was more than just a boor: He was a predator, and he’d been caught confessing. The case against him seemed complete. . He got an early start in making his bigotry manifest . Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle. The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. . . He called for the execution of the Exonerated Five and wouldn't apologize even after science proved their innocence . Trump Will Not Apologize for Calling for Death Penalty Over Central Park Five “You have people on both sides of that,” the president said when asked about the wrongly convicted defendants.. Trump was asked about newspaper advertisements he bought back then calling for New York State to adopt the death penalty after the attack. .Mr. Trump’s remarks about the Central Park Five were strikingly similar to comments he made in reaction to the deadly violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. A woman was killed after a driver slammed his vehicle into counterprotesters. At the time, the president said, “There was blame on both sides.” . Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a succinct summary of Trump's birtherism . For five years he has led the ‘birther’ movement to delegitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history,” Clinton said at the Black Women’s Agenda Symposium. “Barack Obama was born in America plain and simple and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology. So my friends, there is no new Donald Trump. There never will be.” . . Michael Barbaro of the NY Times wrote this excellent article about Trump's history of promoting birtherism . Donald Trump Clung to ‘Birther’ Lie for Years, and Still Isn’t Apologetic By Michael Barbaro Sept. 16, 2016 It was not true in 2011, when Donald J. Trump mischievously began to question President Obama’s birthplace aloud in television interviews. “I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” he said at the time. It was not true in 2012, when he took to Twitter to declare that “an ‘extremely credible source’” had called his office to inform him that Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was “a fraud.” It was not true in 2014, when Mr. Trump invited hackers to “please hack Obama’s college records (destroyed?) and check ‘place of birth.’” It was never true, any of it. Mr. Obama’s citizenship was never in question. No credible evidence ever suggested otherwise. after a remarkable campaign of relentless deception that tried to undermine the legitimacy of the nation’s first black president. He nurtured the conspiracy like a poisonous flower, watering and feeding it with an ardor that still baffles and embarrasses many around him. . The Tennessee Tribune notes this important fact . 1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money is short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in Blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.” . Even the AP states that accusations that Trump is a racist precede his political career . Donald Trump was accused of racism long before his presidency, despite what online posts claim CLAIM: Donald Trump was never called a racist until he ran for president. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The federal government sued Trump for allegedly discriminating against Black apartment seekers in the 1970s. Black pastors also accused the New York businessman of stirring racial animus during the “Central Park Five” rape case in the 1980s. Native American groups criticized him for making derogatory remarks about tribes seeking to build casinos in the 1990s. Trump was also a leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy that baselessly claimed former President Barack Obama was from Africa and not an American citizen. . Wikipedia documents some of Trump's racism in a post entitled, "The Racial views of Donald Trump" . . German Lopez wrote an excellent summary of Trump's long history of racism for Vox . Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020 Trump has repeatedly claimed he’s “the least racist person.” His history suggests otherwise. German Lopez @germanrlopez german.lopez@vox.com By If you ask President Donald Trump, he isn’t racist. To the contrary, he’s repeatedly said that he’s “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.” Trump’s actual record, however, tells a very different story. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks, from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US, to suggesting a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. The trend has continued into his presidency. From stereotyping a Black reporter to pandering to white supremacists after they held a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to making a joke about the Trail of Tears, Trump hasn’t stopped with racist acts after his 2016 election. Most recently, Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” — racist terms that tap into the kind of xenophobia that he latched onto during his 2016 presidential campaign; Trump’s own adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously called “kung flu” a “highly offensive” term. . The AP tells us about NY AG Letitia James lawsuit against Trump Organization . NEW YORK (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans. Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations. . The NY Times tells us what Attorney General Letitia James is seeking as a penalty . She is seeking to recover $250 million in ill-gotten gains. She wants to prohibit Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization from entering into any New York State commercial real estate deals for the next five years and to bar them from applying for loans from any New York bank during that same period. . . In an awesome interactive article Politico lays out the four Indictments and 91 felonies charged . Former President Donald Trump has been charged in four criminal cases over a four-and-a-half-month span. In New York, he faces 34 felony counts in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. In Florida, he faces 40 felony counts for hoarding classified documents and impeding efforts to retrieve them. In Washington, D.C., he faces four felony counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And in Georgia, he faces 13 felony counts for his election interference in that state. . . . The January 6th Indictment . In the two months between Election Day in 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, Trump mounted a wide-ranging campaign to subvert Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Trump and his advisers spread false information about voter fraud, urged Republican state officials to undermine the results in states that Biden won, assembled false slates of electors and pressured Mike Pence, the vice president, to unilaterally toss out the legitimate results. The effort culminated on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. . . The "Advice of Counsel" Defense is fraught with peril and cannot be sustained . Notably, Smith and his team do not concede that Trump has a valid advice of counsel defense, and contest his ability to assert it. Anecdotally, Barr also pointed out that Trump rejected the advice of lawyers for the Justice Department, the White House and even his own campaign, instead seeking out outside lawyers who would tell him what he wanted to hear. According to allegations in the indictment, even Trump said that Powell sounded “crazy.” In Barr’s succinct assessment, “I don’t think that dog is going to hunt.” The discovery requirement covers not just the documents that prove Trump’s reliance on advice of counsel, but those that refute it. But if Trump tries to assert the advice of counsel defense, he must waive the attorney-client privilege and produce in discovery documents related to that advice. The discovery requirement covers not just the documents that prove Trump’s reliance on advice of counsel, but those that refute it. Every scrap of paper or digital record debunking the theories of Trump’s co-conspirators would need to be turned over. In this case, the waiver would open the floodgates to discovery, since no fewer than 25 witnesses have asserted the privilege in refusing to answer questions or turn over documents. The sheer volume is one of the reasons Smith is asking for the court to force Trump to decide now. Waiting until after the trial starts would cause significant delays while the defense produces the relevant documents and the government reviews them. What’s more, a mid-trial waiver would compromise the government’s ability to conduct interviews of those witnesses in advance. . . . The Georgia RICO indictment . Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election were perhaps most aggressive in the state of Georgia. Multiple recounts confirmed that President Joe Biden narrowly prevailed in the race for the state’s 16 electoral votes. But Trump and his allies spread lies about voter fraud, urged Georgia officials and state lawmakers to reverse Biden’s win and plotted to send fake electors to Washington. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” 11,780 votes — the number needed to overcome Biden’s victory. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 of his allies for these efforts, alleging a wide-ranging criminal enterprise. . The Classified Documents Indictment . Federal prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, have accused Trump of taking highly sensitive national security documents when he left the White House in January 2021. He stashed those documents haphazardly throughout his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstructed the government’s repeated attempts to retrieve them, prosecutors allege. On at least two occasions, Trump showed classified documents to individuals who were not authorized to view them, prosecutors say. During one of those episodes — which was audio-recorded — Trump allegedly displayed a top-secret military plan of attack while telling visitors, “As president I could have declassified it” but “now I can’t,” adding that the document he was showing them was “still a secret.” . The Campaign Finance Violations Indictment . Trump is accused of falsifying business records in connection with a payoff to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed she had a sexual encounter with him. By buying Daniels’ silence, the payoff avoided a possible sex scandal in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer” at the time, paid $130,000 to Daniels in October 2016, according to prosecutors. Then, while in the White House, Trump reimbursed Cohen in a series of installment payments processed by Trump’s company. Prosecutors say Trump fraudulently disguised those installments as corporate legal expenses in violation of New York law. . . Mark Joseph Stern writing for Slate says Hunter Biden has a "surprisingly strong" defense . This development reveals that Republicans had it exactly backward: Hunter Biden is receiving especially unfavorable treatment because his father is the president. The new charges, unveiled in an indictment on Thursday, are not just unusual; they would be inexplicable outside of the context of the political attacks on the Biden family. Indeed, they reek of selective prosecution, as if special counsel David Weiss started with the premise that Biden must be charged with something, anything, to satisfy the howling mob, and gun-related crimes were the lowest-hanging fruit. . . They spent five years investigating a private citizen and come up with this . Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018 and has overseen the Biden investigation since that time. . . . Renato Marrioti explains why charging Hunter Biden here is very unusual . I have charged many defendants with gun offenses in my former career as a federal prosecutor, but until this week I had never heard of a prosecution of anyone for possessing a firearm while addicted to a controlled substance before the Hunter Biden case. Most of the other former federal prosecutors I’ve spoken with aren’t familiar with a defendant being charged with this statute either. One prosecutor who was familiar with the statute said he charged it once, many years ago, involving a particularly problematic defendant. As for the misdemeanor tax charges, I prosecuted tax cases and have defended many clients in criminal tax cases, and I’m not familiar with a misdemeanor tax charge ever being brought as the only tax charge in a case. The DOJ’s Tax Division has to approve every tax charge brought by prosecutors, and their practice is to focus on serious felony tax fraud or tax evasion cases. . . Glenn Thrush makes it clear that most people in Hunter Biden's situation with a different last name would not be prosecuted . The Gun Charges Against Hunter Biden Are Unusual. Here’s Why. The heart of the federal case against the president’s son — that he lied about drug use on a federal form when he purchased a handgun — is not typically the basis for a stand-alone prosecution. . In reality, few people fitting Mr. Biden’s profile — a first-time, nonviolent offender accused of lying on a federal firearms application, who never used the gun (in his case, a Colt Cobra .38 that he held onto for less than two weeks five years ago) to commit a crime — get serious prison time for the offenses charged in the indictment. Just bringing the charges is out of the ordinary in some ways, former law enforcement officials say, and the legal basis of the prosecution is under constitutional challenge. . . The Burisma Holdings Conspiracy Theory is Baseless as The Hill Reports . No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement,” Zlochevsky says in the exchange, which appears to be with Vitaly Pruss, whom the letter describes as “another long-time associate of Mr. Giuliani who was a close friend of Mr. Zlochevsky.” However, the conversation was turned over to Giuliani by Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian who was later convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to former President Zlochevsky also answered “no” when asked if then-Vice President Biden or his staff “assisted you or your company in any way with business deals or meetings with world leaders or any other assistance.” Raskin argues the information shows that Zlochevsky “squarely rebutted” allegations that are at the core of the GOP probe. “As part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, Congress learned that Mr. Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch and the owner of Burisma, whom Republican Committee Members appear to have identified as the source of the allegations memorialized in the Form FD-1023, squarely rebutted these allegations in 2019,” he wrote. . Gal Luft, House Republicans 'informant', was indicted in November of 2022 on charges of arms trafficking and serving as a spy . By Tom Winter and Dareh Gregorian Federal prosecutors in New York City have indicted a co-director of a Maryland-based think tank on a host of charges stemming from what they allege was his unregistered advocacy of Chinese causes while he was trying to sell weapons on behalf of a Chinese company to a number of foreign countries. Gal Luft, a dual Israeli and American citizen and a co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, was also charged with violating Iranian sanctions and making false statements to federal agents, according to the November indictment, which was unsealed Monday. . As mentioned above, David Weiss was assigned to investigate Hunter Biden in 2018. Rudy Giuliani was sent to Ukraine by Donald Trump to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. A person came forward and told Rudy Giuliani that he was told in 2016 by somebody without any evidence was that Hunter and Joe Biden extorted the CEO of Burisma Holdings for ten million dollars by threatening to sic the prosecutor general on him and the company. Neither that original source , if that original source really existed (no evidence exists to establish that person exists beyond the testimony of this second hand repeater), nor the second hand repeater have any evidence to support the claim and they never have had any evidence. Rudy sent this person to the FBI and the statement about what they were told was memorialized in FD -1023. This was in 2019. At this time, of course, Donald Trump is president and Bill Barr is attorney general and Christopher Wray is Director of the FBI and David Weiss is US Attorney for Delaware. Thus, this was a motivated investigation. The FBI did investigate the matter and Hunter Biden and they were unable to find any evidence supporting the allegation. They had this matter for two years. Yet neither Joe nor Hunter Biden were indicted for any crimes, much less for this allegation. Now, President Biden could absolutely have gotten rid of, replaced, David Weiss, and there was zero, nothing, nada that House Republicans or other republicans could do about it. They would not have liked it, but every other US attorney was replaced as is normal because they are all political appointees who have political bias. If President Biden had wanted to interfere with this investigation, he absolutely could have replaced Weiss, a Trump nominee. He didn't. Again, the FBI and David Weiss investigated this matter for two full years and came up with no evidence. In 2022 as a result of gerrymandering, the Republican Party gained control of the House of Representatives. They could foresee legal problems for Donald Trump given his attempted coup. They wanted to try to make President Biden look dirty, even if it's not as dirty as Donald Trump. It's 2023. The House Republicans including their Weaponization Committee and Oversight Committee have found zero evidence to support the Burisma allegation. After five years of investigation of a private citizen, Hunter Biden, the only charges were paying taxes late and lying on a form to get a gun he had for eleven days five years ago. If they are going to spend five years investigating a private citizen, then they better come up with the goods and serious, serious crimes. They didn't. They made a big deal about Devon Archer being the key witness who was going to prove either the allegation or serious crimes by President Biden. Devon Archer's testimony was exactly the opposite. He refuted the allegation. A Guliani ally, Parnas, confirmed that there was never anything to this. Fox News had Shokin, the previous prosecutor general of Ukraine on and Shokin wanted to repair the damage he himself inflicted upon his own reputation by backing the allegations. The republicans alleged that then Vice President Biden had Viktor Shokin fired because he wouldn't pressure Burisma Holdings. However , the truth was that Shokin was fired not because he was investigating corruption too seriously, but rather because he wasn't investigating corruption in Ukraine at all. Senate Republicans supported sacking Shokin as is proven by a letter that three Senate Republicans wrote including MAGA Ron Johnson. Furthermore, European allies supported sacking Shokin as well. In addition, our Ukrainian experts supported firing Shokin. Brian Kilmeade had the previous president of Ukraine on, hoping that the previous president would back the accusations of Fox News and the republicans and Shokin himself, but the opposite happened. The previous president flatly contradicted what Shokin said, asked why they would have a crazy man like Shokin on, and told them to stop pushing these false divisive conspiracy theories! . By 2023, Comer knew that they had nothing. The FBI had this matter for five long years, two years while Donald Trump was president, Bill Barr was attorney general, Christopher Wray was head of the FBI, and David Weiss was the US attorney for Delaware. Yet they had no evidence. Comer had already seen FD-1023 and knew that there was no evidence to support the claims within it. Since there was no evidence to support the claims within it, the FBI opposed making it public as there could only be one reason to make it public, political gain. FBI policy is to not release documents like this that have no evidentiary support for that very reason. However, Comer threatened republican Wray serving in a Democratic Party administration and Wray caved. But Comer knew not only did they not currently have any evidence to back up the allegation within FD-1023 or show President Biden committed any other crimes, he knew that they never would have any such evidence in the future. That's obvious because the FBI and Weiss had this matter and investigated it for two full years while Donald Trump was president and Bill Barr was attorney general and Christopher Wray was head of the FBI and David Weiss was US attorney for Delaware and they came up with nothing then and four years have passed since the repeater repeated the allegation supposedly told him seven years ago. He released it anyway. . Even though this isn't completely relevant, I will make note of how stupid and dishonest Comer and the extremists are with regard to the new ??? I don't even know what to call it as it's not really an allegation of wrongdoing. In 2018 President Biden was not president. He was a private citizen. He loaned his brother some money. Comer and the Republican Party went on a fishing expedition with an overly broad subpoena request , but it was granted. Comer saw in the records obtained that President Biden had loaned his brother James some money in 2018 and six weeks later James repaid him with a personal check and wrote loan repayment in the memo section. President Joe Biden is not responsible for the actions of James, his brother. In 2018 when Joe Biden was a private citizen, James, his brother, sought a loan from an institution that failed on the strength of his ability to affect foreign policy in Saudi Arabia. Joe Biden had no way to influence the Trump administration's policy towards Saudi Arabia. Not does it meet even the minimal requirements to be internally consistent. A quid pro quo means that a politician takes a position different than what they had previously or would have apart from a bribe. The first problem with this claim is that Joe Biden wasn't in government at the time and had no official policy towards Saudi Arabia representing the federal government. The second is even if Joe Biden had some ideas about what our policy towards Saudi Arabia should be, there is no evidence that he held one policy views prior to a payment and changed it after receiving the payment. The third problem is that all Joe Biden did was loan his brother some money and then took repayment from his brother. Comer demanded proof that Joe loaned James money when he already had evidence of that in his possession as a result of the subpoena. It was a completely dishonest request from a shit human being. . Here I am going to show statements made by House Republicans making it clear that they don't believe that they have any evidence that President Biden has committed a crime. . ."CNN has reported that there are as many as 30 [House] Republicans who don't believe there's enough evidence yet for impeachment " Republican Ken Buck (Colorado) said that, 'the time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden, if there's evidence linking President Biden, to a high crime or misdemeanor " but that the evidence "doesn't exist right now " . He also said, " I don't think that evidence has been presented " connecting President Biden to wrongdoing " and that, "I'm not convinced that that evidence exists " Republican Republican Dave Joyce (Ohio) told Forbes, he is 'not seeing facts or evidence ' that would merit an impeachment inquiry. Republican Rep Dusty Johnson (South Dakota) told CNN that ,' there is a constitutional and legal test that you have to meet with evidence ' when it comes to impeachment and that he ' has not seen that evidence ' . Republican Rep Don Bacon (Nebraska) said, 'I think that before we move on to [an] impeachment inquiry , we should there should be a direct link to the president in some evidence. We should have some clear evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor, not just assuming there may be one. I think we need to have more concrete evidence to go down that path'. Republican Rep French Hill (Arkansas) told CBS that House Republicans have not even remotely completed their work on the kind of detailed investigations and quality work ' needed to proceed to an impeachment . Republican Rep Mike Lawler (New York) , 'With respect to impeachment we're not there yet.' Republican Rep Chuck Edwards (North Carolina) said in a House hearing, 'I've heard over and over that President Biden has not been implicated or proven for any wrongdoing here, and I acknowledge that.' A Republican lawmaker told CNN, 'There's no evidence that Joe Biden got money [...] There's just no evidence of that . And they can't impeach without that evidence. And I don't think the evidence exists.' A senior House Republican aide told Politico, 'We haven't proven the case for impeachment yet. How can you start impeachment? We haven't done what you need to do to start impeachment.' " . So, they have nothing on President Biden. Hunter Biden has been a private citizen for 25 years. He has had numerous moral failings including infidelity and misrepresenting his influence and graphic pictures which were made public and substance abuse issues. As an aside, I also had a substance abuse issue. I enrolled myself in Laurel Ridge alone without the knowledge of anybody else as nobody but me knew that I had a problem. This was five years ago this past July. I have been in substance abuse rehabilitation and have never had a relapse. Yes, Hunter Biden has had many moral failings. So have I. But it's absolutely disgusting for them to attack a private citizen who has endured so much grief for political gain. What's more, their hypocrisy is brazen because Donald Trump was president and his moral failures are far, far worse. Hunter Biden appears to be on a good path now. Donald Trump has never been on a good path or been a good person and he never will be. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Again, this is absolutely disgusting! Fox News is trying to profit financially and help their political party, the Republican Party, using another human being's struggles and moral failures and pain. I find it abhorrent. What's more, the amount of brazen hypocrisy is absolutely stunning because the political party they support and the leader of the political party they support are far worse morally. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/23/2200794/-The-hypocrisy-and-disgusting-nature-of-Fixed-Noise-and-the-Republican-Party-knows-no-bounds?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/