This is the first explanation of why the Biden classified documents story came out that makes sense to me
Yes indeed, I think the idea that the Democrats and the MSM were trying to get ahead of the story is the correct one. Note the timeline Levin presents:
Now we have the news that Hunter paid Joe close to $50K per month to rent the house in Delaware – you know, the one with the Corvette in the garage. I guess access to classified documents is expensive these days:
The file, labeled “background screening test,” shows Hunter Biden lived in the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence between March 2017 and February 2018. Hunter Biden also claimed to “own” the property, according to the document.
The document [see *UPDATE below] was originally discovered on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, according to the Washington Examiner, and was reshared on Twitter by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.
The laptop – the gift that keeps on giving.
There’s also this from Jonathan Turley:
…[W]hy was a legal team sent in six years after Biden took the documents on leaving as vice president? Were the lawyers specifically selected because they had clearances, an acknowledgment there might be classified material unlawfully housed in the office?
After the fourth batch of documents was discovered this week (the third found in Delaware), Richard Sauber, referred to as the “special counsel to the president,” stressed that he has a clearance. Sauber admits the lawyers who found the first batch at the residence didn’t have clearances but says he found the later documents.
It remains unclear which lawyers were involved in which discoveries, whether they had clearances and (if so) at what level. In fact, it seems to suggest Biden continued to use uncleared lawyers after his team found highly classified documents Nov. 2 in the Penn Biden office closet in Washington.
That itself could be viewed as gross mishandling of classified information.
It’s strange Biden did not use security officers or the FBI to conduct further searches. The president has a host of people who regularly handle classified material. So why use the lawyers?
The answer appears the same as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails: control. Using private counsel allows Biden to raise attorney-client privilege. Trump also used counsel, but eventually the FBI raided his home to search and remove not just classified material but documents found in boxes with that material.
And now the Secret Service is saying there are no visitor logs for that Delaware house.
You can’t make this stuff up.
*UPDATE: See this for more about whether Hunter Biden actually claimed that amount as rent on Joe Biden’s home. It’s confusing, but it turns out he might have been claiming the rent for an office and also claiming he owned home although he didn’t:
Caution re wild speculation. This was for Hunter Biden’s application for an apartment in a hip Hollywood complex he was desperate to get into. Big-noting by falsely claiming to own dad’s house in DE. The rent may refer to the $50k rent he paid for his office at House of Sweden pic.twitter.com/5NhblYNSal
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) January 16, 2023
I also read that Joe didn’t report the rental income from Hunter. Maybe Hunter was renting out bedrooms to Chinese spies.What a bunch of sleaze bags.
It has always been the question, “If Joe is on the take, how and where is he getting the money?”. $50,000 a month for the “big guy” looks like the answer. My parents old house in Atherton, CA (easily top 10% income, probably 1%) is rated by Zillow at $7,000,000 with monthly rental of $17,000/month. Guess we were paupers compared to Joe’s neighborhood.
So, Levin’s theory (I did listen) is that the Mar-a-Lago raid was a last-ditch attempt by the J6 crowd to find some evidence against Trump, since they didn’t find any through their hearings. And then, on this theory, Biden realized he’d better find a way to get rid of the classified stuff lying around his office and home, so he sent his private attorneys to look, and they began turning things over to Archives on the sly. Levin then interviews Comer, the new head of House Oversight, who says he wants to look into records issues on ALL former officials, and immediately the search is leaked to CBS News to get ahead of the news. Not earthshaking on either the Trump or Biden front, but sleazy on the Biden side.
50K a MONTH? Who the heck has that kind of money? Jeeez, some folks make that or less per year.
The MSM mocked the elder Bush when he expressed surprise at a grocery store scanner showing how “out of touch” he was with your average American; But, I won’t hold my breath for the MSM to say the same here.
50K!? I wish my 90+ year old mother had social security that was more than 15K per year; 50K per year would be very sweet. VERY sweet indeed!
Back on topic about the docs, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if this “investigation” also went after the emails that Hillary had on her private server?
Kate:
Thanks!
I listened to Levin twice (admittedly while doing other things) and I couldn’t quite put it together.
I will take the written word over a YouTube any damn day, assuming the writer knows how to boil things down, then express the result clearly.
Of course, that’s an art in itself which most people lack. So put a camera and mic in front, than blather away.
huxley, I seldom watch You Tube links. I had some time while cooking dinner and thought Levin might be on to something. But he did wander around a bit; I hope other listeners will agree with my summary.
Kate:
I was talking about the timeline he goes into towards the beginning of the video.
So far the Dems and the Press are still carrying water for Biden. How much longer though?
I read the 50k was slightly under that, could there be some sort of reporting cutoff in Delaware that would require the amount to be under the 50K.
@SHIREHOME, I saw a facsimile of the ATF form where Hunter had entered in the home’s monthly rental charges and it was something like $49,984 per month.
Who has that kind of money?, someone asked Ha ha, good one. Think of it as an accounting entry against a GDP figure that is small enough to be below widely-acceptable error margins.
Joe Biden needs to answer one question (to begin with): Where else might we find classified documents? Either he lies (as usual) or he doesn’t know. If his answer is that he doesn’t know, that is a major problem. (I left out the third possible answer, that he discloses the remaining hiding places, because I seriously doubt he would come clean.)
I didn’t have the will to listen to Levin last night so watched the whole thing this morning. Kate’s summary is very accurate in my view.
I have issues with Levin’s hypothesis. First of all, I think his ego gets in the way in his assessment that it was his one question to Comer that precipitated the whole series of events…Wow…you’re that important to the Democrats??
Second, how is “getting ahead of the story” useful? The story is that Biden had classified documents. Either way it comes out it is damaging to Biden. And with the GOP House investigation…that could take many months to years to even come close to finding out what happened; why “tell all” now, where by delaying the story it may never come out?
Third, I keep coming back to the question others have mentioned: why were the private lawyers there at Penn-Biden in the first place? Why didn’t they just destroy anything they found? Why did they notify NARA and DOJ? Were these lawyers so incompetent that they had a brief episode of being honest citizens that they forgot who is paying them?
This entire story stinks, but I am still very confused as to where the real sources of the smell is coming from. For now, I just go with “somebody wants to destroy Biden”.
“…somebody wants to destroy Biden”.
The truth is that Biden destroyed himself.
You can see it every time you look at his face, listen to his words, watch him move.
The real question is, Who has decided that they are no longer going to continue to perform the cover up?
Which leads to the question:
Have they decided that they are no longer going to cover up the most corrupt, the most degenerate president in American history because they have “seen the light”…or because they have concluded that they can no longer continue with that coverup—IOW that to attempt to do so places the entire—ongoing, ever-increasing—Democratic Party/Deep State meta-coverup (i.e., coverup of the coverup of the coverup, etc.) in jeopardy, in grave danger of being unraveled entirely?
Personally, I’m not sure why they’re panicking. (That is, if they are in fact panicking.)
This story really ought to be ignored—and probably will be, either via the old tried-and-true policy of ignoring/censoring anything “unpleasant” and/or with the “assistance” of some massive distraction or other—so that it WILL BE business as usual…and disappear beneath the murky waves of even more Democratic Party/Deep State deceit and subversion.
After the Clintons took bags of cash from Chinese military spies and gave them unlimited access to all top secret CIA files and Commerce Dept cables, why is this a big deal? We have the evidence from Senator Thompson’s committee.
Obviously, no one in DC gives a damn about bribe-taking or national security. The best and biggest bribes are paid for the most secret info. How else can these sleazeballs be expected to make the big bucks?
So who keeps track of classified docs checked out by people with clearances? Did no one notice Biden had not returned documents his office requested? Or are Biden’s document stashes *copies* of documents that were returned?
Either we have amazingly careless record keeping by Federal employees (and a broken system for accountability of who-has-what), or we have stupendously illegal behavior by the current President. Both possibilities seem to be, well, really bad.
The first sentence below Levin’s mug is wrong. You don’t pay rent for a house you claim to own.
The real story is that Hunter committed financial fraud on the application, falsely claiming that he owned his dad’s home, and then claiming that he was RECEIVING $50k a month from his own company, which probably never happened. If it did happen, it was Hunter taking money out of his right pocket and putting it in his left, while giving Owasco PC a tidy write-off.
Joe spends a lot of time in Delaware. Why didn’t Joey and Dr. Jill just go through those properties themselves and quietly bring all classified stuff to the WH? Once in the WH, it could easily be sent to the Archives. There must be witnesses who saw the stuff in these places and reported it.
It also looks as though the lid is coming off the Democratic Party/Deep State/Big-Pharma SUPREME effort to squelch the truth WRT Covid vaccination, controlling populations, wreaking socio-economic destruction and making gazilli-bucks in the process…BUT AT THE SAME TIME…stay (officially, at least) out of the limelight.
IOW, Elon Musk—take a bow….
(Think scurrying cockroaches…who still have an inordinate amount of power…and these creeps play for keeps….)
“Every Facet of Government Is in the Censorship Business”—
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/01/17/government-censorship-business.aspx
“Why Is the Associated Press Lying About Gene Therapy Shots?”—
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/01/11/associated-press-lying-about-gene-therapy.aspx
“Biden White House & Facebook censor ‘true content’ on vaccines because it may reduce the number of people taking vaccines.”—
https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1615347771099283456?cxt=HHwWgIC80aiP7-osAAAA
H/T Lee Smith Twitter feed.
(Though this last is a no-brainer…)
One may well wonder what gems will be revealed next.
Biden criminal family frolics?
Electoral shenanigans?
Ukraine follies?
WTF fantasies and miasmas?
Collapsing cities? (Adams is getting a bit “uppity” vis-a-vis the “Secure” border…)
Hillary-Russia nexus?
Are the wheels really about to fall off? This time? Really?
Stay tuned…
When the republicans commence their investigation of the documents, they will be stonewalled.
The relevant agency heads – all in the tank for Biden / Obama / Hillary, et. al., – will stall and stall and stall ………….until the entire issue just disappears.
The dems are world class at avoiding having anyone of their tribe being realistically held accountable for any malfeasance.
The republicans are world class for allowing the democrats to get away with murder.
So, just another fraudulent, self-aggrandizing statement by a Biden (In this case, Hunter.) Nothing to see here.
(Paul Montagu:) “and then claiming that he was RECEIVING $50k a month from his own company”
I got to admit, when I see an application form where the section labeled “Current Residence” starts by asking for a “Company Name,” I no longer have confidence that I understand the conversation.
Is it possible that the raid on Pres Trump was preemptive PR, to cloud the possibly worse situation of VP Biden possessing mishandled classified documents?
Silly me, I’m assuming there’s some kind of chain of command for top secret files, that someone knew he had them and that classified documents don’t just magically appear in random hoarder piles.
Even the Collyer brothers, who were famously crushed to death by their piles of newspapers, had to collect the papers from somewhere first.
physicsguy:
I don’t think Levin’s question itself precipitated it. I think the fact that was revealed by the question is what precipitated it. I think “getting ahead of the story” is their motive, not destroying Biden in this particular manner. As I’ve said before, there were other ways to discredit Joe that don’t help Trump. But this news was coming out anyway.
Plus, this way they get to appoint a special counsel, which gives them cover to control the investigation and stop or hamper the House investigation by saying it intereres with the special counsel investigation.
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The raid on Mar-a-Lago could likely have multiple antecedents, given that evidence obtained by a lawfully executed warrant is not restricted to a particular investigation. Trump’s spat with the National Archivist could have been the reason, as could a search for documents that further implicated the FBI in Russiagate, for something that could be spun into a ‘plan’ for J6, or simple harassment via lawfare, with the classified document search being a pretext for any of those. Given the often remarked overclassification as well as what seems to be relatively lackadaisical controls on such documents at the highest levels, I have to wonder if sweeps such as we’re hearing about in Biden’s private offices are more common than we understand. I’m going to fall back to what seems to be the most likely and simplest explanation which is that the Democrat PsTB, or a significant anti-Biden group within them, have decided that he must be dissuaded from attempting to run for re-election in 2024. Arnold Kling, who I consider to be a pretty sober observer of our current situation, wrote in his SubStack yesterday that he considers Biden’s re-election chances to be pretty good at this moment. I tend to agree with him, and suspect that has the Democrats who wanted Biden to be a one-and-done up in arms at the prospect of a four year delay in their plans and a much tougher election to win 2028 (Reagan’s two terms and GHWB’s one term being the only such period of single party control of the WH since the 26th Amendment).
What if Biden and Garland knew that he had a problem with classified documents earlier than the time line shows. They were looking at losing both the House and Senate and may have feared that this would all come out considering all the investigations that were promised by the Republicans.
So you raid Trump for the records he has, appoint a special counsel all as a way to provide cover for Joe?
Now they can say that they investigaed everyone and (ala James Comey) at the end of the day decide that like a football game where you have offsetting penalties everyone walks away scott free.
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