RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/07/31/justice_sotomayor_uses_supreme_court_staff_to_sell_books_969348.html

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff helped organize events to sell her books, for which she has made $3.7 million since joining the court in 2009, according to an Associated Press investigation. Her salary on the court is $285,000.

In 2019, Sotomayor hosted an event at a Portland public library for her book “Just Ask!” Before the event, a Sotomayor aide emailed the organizers, informing them they had not bought enough books. “For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” said her aide, Anh Le, in an email, the AP reported.

Staff pushed books at other events as well. Before events at UC Davis Law School, University of Wisconsin, Clemson University, and Michigan State University, taxpayer-funded staff pushed organizers to buy books, or to buy more than their original order. Some books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where her staff brought them to her to sign in her chambers.

The court defended Sotomayor, saying in a statement that, “When [Sotomayor] is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.”

What’s more, Sotomayor’s publisher, Penguin Random House, has had several matters before the court in which Sotomayor did not recuse herself.

“Justice Sotomayor would have recused in cases in which Penguin Random House was a party, in light of her close and ongoing relationship with the publisher,” the Supreme Court said in a statement. “An inadvertent omission failed to bring Penguin’s participation in several cases to her attention; those cases ultimately were not selected for review by the Court. Chambers’ conflict check procedures have since been changed.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-7-30-the-bidens-stone-cold-crooked-6-what-did-china-get-for-its-money

On July 27 (last Thursday), Representative James Comer of Kentucky appeared on Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast. Comer is the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, and the guy who has subpoenaed, and little-by-little is getting, the bank records of transfers from foreign governments to Biden family companies. Late that evening, Twitchy posted about an 8 minute clip from the podcast of Comer discussing some of the things his subpoenas had uncovered. Comer particulrly discusses one large payment from a Chinese government-connected entity, much of which went to various Bidens.

Separately on the same day, July 27, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio released on Twitter (or is it now “X”?) a thread that he called “The Facebook Files, Part I.” Jordan, in addition to being the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, also serves as Chair of is Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Government. In that capacity, Jordan had received a trove of internal Facebook communications documenting pressure from the White House to suppress various true information, notably information relating to the origin of the Covid virus in the Chinese Wuhan laboratory. The Wall Street Journal on July 28 had further reporting on the Facebook emails newly released by Jordan’s Subcommittee.

In other words, we’re starting to learn what China got in return for its investment in the Bidens.

I can’t find a transcript of the Comer appearance on Cruz’s podcast, but you can watch it at the Twitchy link, and in addition, the Twitchy piece contains a summary of what Comer said, posted on Twitter by a user going by the handle @KanekoaTheGreat.

Much of Comer’s discussion deals with the remarkable fact that some six major U.S. banks have filed no fewer than 170 Suspicious Activity Reports with respect to transactions conducted by Biden family members. (Comer specifically mentions JPM Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as among the banks that filed the SARs.). Comer (who says he is a former bank director) then says that filing of even two SAR reports as to an individual could make it difficult for that individual to open a bank account. (I’m not sure that that is true. However, I have several ex-colleagues who went on to become bank regulatory lawyers, and all of them have told me that the filing of a SAR against someone is by no means a routine step. So I have no doubt that 170 is truly extraordinary.)

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/31/the-biden-presidency-is-unsustainable/

Imagine if Gavin Newsom was currently Vice President amid the final meltdown of the Biden family consortium.

Does anyone doubt that Biden would then either be forced to resign by Democratic politicos (for reasons in addition to his escalating dementia), or would be impeached and perhaps abdicate Nixon-style?

The presence of the now predictable mediocrity of Kamala Harris and the impossibility, given her race and gender, of removing her, for now is about all that keeps a cognitively declining Biden still in office. The Left fears what she could do as president to the Democratic Party; conservatives are terrified of what she could do to the country.

Joe Biden’s bewilderment exempts his embarrassments from accountability in the way that Hunter Biden’s addictions excuse his past serial criminality. But the passes granted to both father and son would be now unsustainable with a viable Vice President in waiting.

Indeed, the Harris problem explains some of current Democratic strategy.

Backroom leaks and growing insider rumors of Biden dementia confirm the portrait of an often befuddled president whom the public by now knows all too well.

The aimless House Democrats’ “how-dare-you-even-consider-an-impeachment inquiry” furor, coupled with their half-hearted efforts, along with the media, to refute the actual charges of corruption of the Biden family, suggest that he will not run for reelection—but also not be impeached much less convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment.

So the Harris dilemma explains a lot: finding a way to keep her out of current power until Biden somehow finishes his first term, and thus letting the Democratic 2024 primary candidates organically abort her presidential aspirations.

There are a few problems, however, with this strategy.

One, can Joe Biden finish his first term?

That would require his staff to shorten his already truncated workday for the next 18 months to about 2-3 hours of work per day.