RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.)

And then we get to the heart of Comer’s presentation:

Rep. Comer highlighted one specific SAR linked to a $3 million wire from China to Biden’s business partner, Rob Walker. This money was received in an inactive account that had maintained a $50,000 balance for ten years before the significant wire transaction from China. Within just 24 hours of receiving the wire, Walker initiated incremental payments to several Biden shell companies, eventually disbursing funds to four different Biden family members.

I guess you might understand why the sudden receipt of $3 million from China into an account that had otherwise been largely dormant might have caught the bank’s attention.

And now over to the almost simultaneous revelations from Rep. Jordan’s Weaponization Subcommittee.

Jordan’s revelations include texts of internal Facebook emails that document pressure from the administration, and specifically from the White House itself, to remove certain posts. One April 2021 email authored by Nick Clegg (Facebook’s President of Global Affairs) describes the technique used by one White House staffer by the name of Andy Slavitt (a Senior Advisor to President Biden) to induce Facebook to delete posts:

[Slavitt] was outraged — not too strong a word to describe his reaction — that we did not remove this post.

The particular post referred to there apparently remained up; but there were plenty of other posts that were removed in response to such White House pressure. From the WSJ:

Facebook removed content related to Covid-19 in response to pressure from the Biden administration, including posts claiming the virus was man-made, according to internal company communications viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The emails show Facebook executives discussing how they managed users’ posts about the origins of a pandemic that the administration was seeking to control.

The WSJ notes that the White House’s excuse for its conduct in seeking to have Facebook posts suppressed and/or deleted was that “its discussions were aimed at promoting the adoption of vaccines and other public-health goals.”

Well, maybe you could make that argument about seeking to have information suppressed regarding, for example, effectiveness or side effects of the vaccines. That conduct would still be unconstitutional and reprehensible in my view, but at least the argument makes sense. But how about suppression of the lab leak theory of Covid origin? Nothing about whether the lab leak theory is right or wrong goes to the question of whether taking the vaccine, or following other public health recommendations (like masks or lockdowns) is a good idea.

No, the suppression of the lab leak theory of Covid origins is purely a question of not making the Chinese rulers look bad. So why would the U.S. government get involved in any way in trying to make the Chinese rulers look good, right after they had unleashed Covid upon the world? One theory is that the President was paid off. The evidence for that theory is rather strong. Is there another theory?