09-20-2023, 01:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-20-2023, 01:51 AM by DerVVulfman.)
What does it take for Joe Biden to grant his political rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the Secret Service protection he has been requesting?
Does Kennedy have to be mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet, like his father and uncle?
RFK Jr. escaped the same fate Friday night when an armed man impersonating a US marshal tried to approach him at a Los Angeles campaign event just two miles from where his father was assassinated in 1968.
His private security team managed to avert catastrophe, but this is exactly the sort of threat he was warned is a uniquely high risk for his campaign.
The alarming security assessment is why he asked the Biden administration in June for an early start on Secret Service protection – but inexplicably he was denied.
Hunter Biden gets a six-car Secret Service motorcade to take him to courtrooms in Delaware and Arkansas, where doors are opened and closed for him as if he were a prince.
The Secret Service rented a house next to his in Malibu for $30,000 per month.
Even after Joe lost eligibility for a detail when his vice presidency ended, Hunter still had the Secret Service running around after him.
When a debit card he shared with Joe got cleaned out by a hooker, two former agents were dispatched within hours to Hunter’s hotel room to find out what happened to “Celtic’s account”, Celtic being Joe’s codename.
When Hunter’s sister-in-law-turned-lover, Hallie Biden, threw his gun in a trashcan opposite a school, two men flashing Secret Service badges turned up at the gun shop within hours and unsuccessfully demanded the very paperwork which now sees Hunter indicted in Delaware.
If Secret Service protection in perpetuity is available to shield Hunter Biden from the consequences of his bad choices, surely it’s not too much of a burden to protect for the duration of his campaign.
Disgraced first son Hunter Biden sued two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers Monday, saying that they violated his right to privacy and tried to “embarrass” him when they publicized his tax information.
The legal action against IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, came just four days after Hunter, 53, was indicted on federal firearms charges for allegedly lying about his drug use to buy a gun in 2018, a case that could go to trial as his father’s bid for re-election heats up.
The suit seeks to “force compliance with federal tax and privacy laws” and stop the spread of “unsubstantiated allegations” and “unlawful disclosure” of Hunter’s tax information.
Shapley and Ziegler were not named in the lawsuit, but the filing centers on statements and congressional testimony made by the agents as they sounded the alarm on what they called a wide-ranging coverup in the Department of Justice’s tax fraud investigation into the first son.
Hunter attorney Abbe Lowell Wrote:IRS agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.
Biden’s suit sought a $1,000 award for each unauthorized tax disclosure and attorney fees, as well as all related documents.
Shapley’s legal team quickly blasted the suit as an attempt at misdirection by the first son.
Shapley’s legal team Wrote:This suit against the IRS is just another frivolous smear by Biden family attorneys trying to turn people’s attention away from Hunter Biden’s own legal problems and intimidate any current and future whistleblowers.
“The federal judge in Delaware who oversaw the aborted plea deal shot down similar claims against the whistleblowers after they exposed the secret backroom deal between Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice.
...
Neither IRS SSA Gary Shapley nor his attorneys have ever released any confidential taxpayer information except through whistleblower disclosures authorized by statute. Once Congress released that testimony, like every American citizen, he has a right to discuss that public information.
William “Widge” Devaney, a former New Jersey federal prosecutor, told The Post he believes that the first son may have a valid case, noting the complications of trying to sue the congressional committees that amplified the whistleblower information.
William Devaney Wrote:The IRS is allowing them to go on television. They’re allowing them to give various statements to the press, which is beyond what they’re entitled to do under the whistleblower statutes.Devaney adding that the suit appeared to be less about money than political pushback and bolstering Hunter’s criminal defense case.
Shapley and Ziegler told the House Oversight Committee in July that political appointees interfered in the case and shielded investigators from probing finances of Hunter’s that were linked to his father.
They also claimed federal prosecutors blocked investigations into the president’s possible role in multi-million dollar payments to Hunter from a Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate, and prevented agents from looking into emails that suggested he was splitting revenue from his overseas business interests with his father.
Joe Zeigler Wrote:Any time we potentially wanted to go down the road of asking questions related to the president, it was, ‘That’s going to take too much approvals, we can’t ask those questions.’
Monday’s lawsuit, filed in DC federal court, claimed that the sharing of Biden’s personal tax information was not permitted under whistleblower protections.
The legal action came almost exactly three months after Hunter struck a deal with the feds to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in connection with his failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes in both 2017 and 2018. The agreement would have also seen his felony charge of possessing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine dismissed.
But the probation-only agreement, which followed a five-year investigation and was dubbed a “sweetheart deal” by Republicans, was scuttled at a July 26 hearing after Hunter’s lawyers learned that prosecutors were keeping additional charges on the table in connection with an ongoing investigation into his overseas business deals and financial records, while the presiding judge expressed concern over the agreement’s structure.
After Hunter pleaded not guilty, US Attorney David Weiss withdrew the charges in Delaware and was granted special counsel status by Attorney General Merrick Garland Aug. 11.
President Biden has denied any impropriety or involvement in his son’s international lobbying activities, which were first detailed by The Post in a bombshell 2020 exposé.
After an F-35 fighter jet disappeared into the South Carolina sky, officials have found its debris field and launched an investigation into the “mishap” that forced its pilot to eject, according to the US Marine Corps and a defense official with knowledge of the search.
The pilot ejected Sunday near Charleston and was taken to a local medical facility in stable condition, Joint Base Charleston said. But the fighter jet went missing.
The jet’s debris field – about two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston – was discovered Monday after an extensive, multi-agency search from both the ground and air.
The F-35B Lightning II jet is described as “the most lethal, survivable and connected fighter jet in the world” by
Lockheed Martin.
The jet costs about $100 million, said Russell Goemaere, spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office.
The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of the plane.
It’s not clear what prompted the pilot to eject Sunday.
"The mishap is currently under investigation, and we are unable to provide additional details to preserve the integrity of the investigative process," the Marines said in a statement Monday.
Before the debris field was found, the military made an unusual plea to the public for help finding the F-35 jet, saying its last known position was near Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, northwest of the city of Charleston.
Community members are now being asked to stay away from the fighter jet’s remains while recovery crews work to secure the debris field in Williamsburg County.
"We are transferring incident command to the USMC this evening, as they begin the recovery process," Joint Base Charleston posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
It isn’t the first notable incident involving military aircraft in recent weeks.
The Marine Corps ordered a two-day pause in flight operations Monday, citing three “Class-A aviation mishaps” over the past six weeks.
"This stand down is being taken to ensure the service is maintaining operational standardization of combat-ready aircraft with well-prepared pilots and crews," the Marine Corps said in a news release.
While the Marine Corps’ statement didn’t detail the other two mishaps, there were two aviation incidents that happened in August.
A pilot was killed on August 24 when a Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet combat jet crashed near San Diego. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
Days later, a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey crashed during military exercises in Australia, killing three US Marines and leaving five others in serious condition. That crash also remains under investigation.
Though there is no indication of any connection between the crashes, all of the incidents are classified as Class-A mishaps by the Marine Corps – defined as an incident that leads to a fatality or more than $2.5 million in property damage.