Ha ha ha, kinda like Trump's taxes, see . . . except Hunter Biden had a history of filing late in 2002, 2004, and 2005, didn't report his Burisma income in 2014, and didn't file at all in 2016, 2017, and 2018

Not to mention the falsely claimed deductions, like no-show employees, a hooker, and a sex club membership fee. 

Hunter Biden's Lawyer: His Overseas Business Is "Too Complicated To Try To Explain"

 

Byron York has no problem explaining it . . . at all:

The stuff Hunter Biden didn't get indicted for

 

Influence-peddling WhatsApp message to Chicoms from Hunter Biden in July 2017 came from his father's guest house in Delaware

 Byron York, here:

Hunter Biden wanted something from Zhao — it appears it was a payment of some sort — and he wanted it immediately. "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled," Hunter Biden wrote. "Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."

Shapley said the IRS team discovered the message in August 2020. Even for people who questioned the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop — and we now know the FBI had verified its authenticity in December 2019 — the WhatsApp message was worth investigating. "In August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant," Shapley said. "Unlike the laptop, these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages. The messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on."

No kidding. The July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message was the clearest evidence ever that Joe Biden, then the former vice president, knew about his son's business dealings. Now, maybe Hunter Biden was lying in the message. Maybe his father wasn't in the room. Maybe there's some other explanation. What was clear was that the WhatsApp message was evidence that needed to be investigated. But Shapley and the other IRS investigators soon ran into a brick wall at the Justice Department.

The IRS team wanted to execute a search warrant at the guest house and Joe Biden's house in Delaware, where Hunter Biden was staying at the time of the message. In discussions with the Justice Department, they were told that there was more than enough probable cause to get a warrant but that "optics" were a problem. A Justice Department official told them, in Shapley's words, that "a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden but said there is no way we will get that approved."

Byron York: E. Jean Carroll case v. Trump was bankrolled by a billionaire when she said it wasn't, also claimed to have suffered after saying she hadn't

 

'Hoffman's money has made some waves in the Carroll case because, in her October 2022 deposition, Carroll denied that anyone was paying her legal fees. Here is what Carroll said: 

Q: Are you presently paying your counsel's fees?

A: This is a contingency case.

Q: So you're not paying expenses or anything out of pocket to date. Is that correct?

A: I'm not sure about expenses. I have to look that up.

Q: Is anyone else paying your legal fees, Ms. Carroll?

A: No.

'As the trial approached, Kaplan, Carroll's lawyer, wrote to the Trump legal team to admit that what Carroll said was not true. ...

'In addition, advocates for the Adult Survivors Act wanted to address the tremendous suffering that victims of sexual abuse experience. The lawsuit says Carroll endured "significant pain and suffering" and uses some form of the word "suffer" 11 times. Yet in a June 24, 2019 interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, part of the book promotion, Carroll declined to refer to what happened to her as a "rape" and offered this statement: "I just have trouble with the word. I just have trouble. I write an advice column for 25 years and women write to me with these devastating stories and they have been violently, you know, disposed of by men. And I just — I feel too much respect for their suffering. I didn't suffer, Anderson. I did not suffer. I did not lose my job. I wasn't beaten."'

More.

Evidently the New York jury in the civil case which just found Trump liable knew neither fact.

Byron York has DeSantis now trailing Trump in Monmouth poll in which DeSantis formerly had the lead

 Story.

Byron York is crystal clear, as usual

Five things to remember about a 'zombie' Trump indictment

3) The "zombie" timing.

Bragg's indictment, if it comes, is often referred to as a "zombie" case because federal officials earlier declined to prosecute Trump on these grounds, and then Bragg himself considered and rejected a prosecution on the same grounds. Now, with time running out on the statute of limitations and to charge Trump before the 2024 presidential campaign is fully underway, Bragg has flip-flopped. The "zombie" case has been revived and is apparently going full speed ahead.

Joe Biden: One law for me, another for thee

Why was it not until Nov. 2, 2022, that his lawyers were emptying the old [UPenn] office? ... The biggest problem with the Joe Biden documents story is that we know only what Joe Biden's lawyers have told us.  And that is just the way Biden wants it.

Byron York here. 

The Mar-a-Lago raid was on August 8, 2022, that's why.

Yep, that's some coincidence: IG report finds 17 FBI "errors", and damn if they all didn't go just one way, against Carter Page and Donald Trump

Byron York analyzes prospects for Republicans without once observing dramatic Kavanaugh shift in Rasmussen generic poll

Byron York: After good week, GOP House campaigners aren't yet optimistic. But they are less pessimistic:

The improved GOP numbers appear to be the result of the much-discussed Kavanaugh Effect, referring to the recent confirmation of President Trump's second Supreme Court justice. But it's not just Kavanaugh. 

Ford testified Sep 27th. The Dem +5 lead vanished within a week in the biggest and best poll of likely voters out there. This was all Kavanaugh.

Byron York thinks Feinstein call to postpone Thursday's hearings designed to give cover to Ford to back out

Here:

Are the new protests a prelude to Ford rejecting yet another hearing date? That's not yet clear. But if she does, she'll have the support of Senate Democrats. 


Dianne Feinstein calls for immediate postponement of Kavanaugh confirmation after second accuser emerges

Obama Justice Dept. and FBI implicated in colluding with anti-Trump dossier author

Byron York reports here:

Knowledge of the dossier project, during the campaign, extended into the highest levels of the Obama Justice Department.

The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016, Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.

Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew [Christopher] Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier. ... 

Ohr's contacts with Steele and Simpson were covered by a subpoena [Congressman] Nunes issued to the FBI and the Justice Department on Aug. 24. Yet as recently as Tuesday, when Nunes, along with House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., met with deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, the department said nothing about Ohr's role.

Byron York reports Washington Free Beacon confesses to funding opposition research with Fusion GPS

Here, about an hour ago:

Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS. The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. ...

The Free Beacon was founded in 2012. Its founders included Michael Goldfarb, who has moved back and forth between conservative journalism, politics, and activism. The Free Beacon was originally part of a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization called the Center for American Freedom, but in 2014 became a for-profit organization. It has never revealed its ownership. Conservative billionaire Paul Singer, a major funder of the Free Beacon, strongly opposed Trump at the time of the opposition research project.

Trump adviser Jared Kushner's father was put in jail by Chris Christie

Byron York recounts the tale, here:

The short version is: In 2004, Jared Kushner's father Charles, a real estate magnate in New Jersey and New York, pleaded guilty to a tax fraud scheme in which he claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony deductions for office expenses at the partnerships he created to manage the apartment buildings he owned. Kushner, a major donor to the Democratic Party, also pleaded guilty to fraudulently making hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in the names of employees and associates who didn't know their names were being used. Finally, Kushner pleaded guilty to retaliating against a cooperating witness in the case — his sister. He did so by setting a trap in which he hired a prostitute to lure his sister's husband into a sexual encounter in a New Jersey hotel, where the action was secretly photographed and videotaped. Kushner sent the pictures and tape to his sister as revenge, apparently motivated by Kushner's belief that she and her husband were helping U.S. Attorney Christie and his prosecutors. ... [I]n a 2014 interview with the New York real estate publication The Real Deal, Jared called his father's treatment "obviously unjust" and said the experience had soured him on an earlier ambition to become a prosecutor. "If you're convicting murderers, it's one thing," Jared said. "It's often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father's situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him."

Byron York: Both sides ignorant, 60 born in the seven countries in Trump's EO were convicted of terror crimes

Here:

Last year the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest released information showing that at least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. And that number did not include more recent cases like Abdul Artan, a Somali refugee who wounded 11 people during a machete attack on the campus of Ohio State University last November.

So the talking point wasn't true. And yet at the 9th Circuit oral argument, the judges appeared to believe it was true, and Justice Department lawyer August Flentje didn't know enough to correct them.

Byron York says Justice Department demolishes Robart case against Trump order

Here:

Now the government has answered Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground. 

Read the rest at the link.

Byron York: Staff on the Clinton team destroyed material that was under subpoena (it's a crime called obstruction of justice)

Byron York unpacks the twists and turns in the Hillary e-mail scandal and coverup, here, from which he reaches this conclusion:

But even with the fragments now public — the Clinton 302, the overview report, but none of the many other witness interviews — it seems fair to conclude that staff on the Clinton team destroyed material that was under subpoena. Whether that was unwitting, or whether it was something else, is not known, at least publicly.

There's no doubt that Clinton intended to destroy her email archives after choosing which ones to send to the State Department. That's what Mills' December 2014 directive was apparently intended to do. Given that the Benghazi investigation was well under way and there had been multiple document requests and production agreements, the effect of Mills' directive, had it been carried out at the time she sent it, would have been to destroy the evidence that had not been handed over to the State Department before anyone knew to ask for it. But apparently the Platte River Networks staffer's carelessness led to the emails not being destroyed in December 2014, remaining in existence until March 2015, when their existence was publicly disclosed and another subpoena issued for them. Then they were destroyed.

Gavin McInnes pretends Trump didn't flipflop on deportation

Here.

In other words, ignore Ann Coulter, Byron York, Mark Krikorian et alia.

Yeah, what do they know.

Byron York walks the line of those waiting to see Trump in Wausau: 5 minutes of video later he hasn't reached the end of it

See it here.

And the venue was already half full.

If Wisconsin is so critical in the GOP race, why have all three candidates traveled away from it this week?

Byron York wants to know, here:

MILWAUKEE — The Wisconsin Republican primary is so critical to Donald Trump that, after having pledged "I'll be here all week" to his supporters, Trump promptly departed to Washington and other destinations for a couple of days off the trail prior to next Tuesday's vote.

The Wisconsin GOP contest is so critical to Sen. Ted Cruz that he took off to California for some fundraising and a guest spot on Jimmy Kimmel, in addition to a stop in North Dakota for its delegate convention, before returning to Wisconsin for a few more days of campaigning.

The Wisconsin primary is so critical to Gov. John Kasich that he headed to New York, where his highest-profile accomplishment was to be photographed eating pizza with a fork.

Michigan Republicans boo Romney the "loser", call for his deportation

Byron York reports here:

Trump instinctively sensed that he could bash Romney in Romney's home state with no consequences at all. "This guy Romney came out yesterday," Trump began, which brought on lots and lots of boos. "The hatred he has, the jealousy, the hatred, it's hard to believe."

More boos. "You guys should like him, right?" Trump said. Still more boos.

'Deport Romney!" yelled a man in the crowd.

"Thank you," said Trump.

"Loser," yelled a woman near me.

The anger and frustration did not stop with political figures. A number of people complained to me about conservative media, which they believe hasn't treated Trump fairly. "I'm a National Review reader," said a man who walked up to me during Trump's speech. "I can't even look at the site anymore. It looks like Salon. Nine stories tearing [Trump] apart, man. I don't get it."

Is English a second language for Marco Rubio?

Recently Rubio flubbed "more" and "fewer", saying "more plumbers and less philosophers".

But now he also shows his ignorance of "between you and me":

"The bottom line is there isn't that big a difference between [Cruz] and I on how to approach immigration," Rubio told CBS News on Sunday.

I expect rednecks from Michigan to say "between you and I" but not US Senators, but then again neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump seems to know it's "secretaries of state", not "secretary of states".

Meanwhile Byron York above shows rather convincingly that it was Ted Cruz voting for stronger border amendments to the Gang of Eight bill in 2013 and Rubio voting against them.