Ex GOP bombshell witness in the Hunter Biden case gets sentenced to 6 years for lying.
His argument for a reduced sentence is fun:
In seeking a lighter sentence, Smirnov’s lawyers wrote in court papers that both Hunter Biden and President-elect Trump “have walked free and clear of any meaningful punishment.”
This case still smells. I haven’t seen any reporting on why he would invent lies about Hunter Biden from whole cloth. He just woke up one day and decided, I don’t like Hunter/Joe so I’m going to commit felonies?
There’s more to the story that I’m not seeing.
According to his wiki he was an informant for the FBI, other US intelligence agencies, Israel, and likely Russia. Somehow he made millions of dollars according to tax charges brought against him. There’s certainly more to the story than just the Biden falsehoods. This guy is likely both dirty and plugged in. I’m sort of surprised he’s going to prison this long, as he probably has some tea to spill.
I’m curious if the lies were specifically a result of Russian influence, from Trump/his campaign, or a different related source?
Assuming every lie is an admission, I’m guessing Eric or Jr have some shit on their laptops.
Maybe even Barron!!
30 stab wounds to the back. Worst case of suicide I ever saw.
IIRC this article was more at the start of the affair. What was shocking was after the key witness got found out in March the GOP continued a baseless impeachment investigation for the rest of the year.
shocking?
Yes, they have. They let the orange man get into their heads to the point they would threaten the very foundations of Our Democracy, including weaponizing the justice system and rule of law, just to stick it to Trump. They don’t care. To them the ends justify the means. They’re bad people, they’re not good stewards of Democracy, and you should stop listening to them.
It turns out that the greatest threat to Our Democracy recently has been authoritarian progressives
Many people are saying that after being a comatose corpse for most of his presidency, having it covered up while putting the US national security at risk, after lying to your face that he didn’t know anything about his crackhead son’s business dealings, lying to your face that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, he went and did that anyway. Then, just for good corrupt measure, blanket pardoned the rest of his family too.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5096041-biden-pardons-family-corruption/
They’re not dumb. I’ll grant some are willfully blind, but not dumb.
I’m hoping everyone can take some lessons from all of this. Even if you believe that a burglar is in the house setting fire to it isn’t the best way to get him out. Also, just because you think someone is bad doesn’t mean that person is always wrong or their opponent is always a good person.
I think you’re going to have to pull up a chalkboard to show us what we are supposed to have learned. At the moment, I think everyone here thinks the same as they did in the first place?
Please refrain from making derogatory statements about other posters.
Keep comments about the issue(s) under discussion and avoid making judgements about what another believes.
Funny, I thought it was the folks who violently stormed the Capitol, threatened to hang the Vice President, and got pardoned for it.
I am curious to see a list of authoritarian progressives.
Let’s have a look at some of the posts from above. Hopefully we’re allowed to laugh at these posts.
I’m still trying to understand the Joe Biden hatred.
Biden walks a bit slow, but he seems really fit for his age.
Oddly I don’t have a lot negative about Joe Biden.
Overall, [Biden] seems to be among the best Presidents of my lifetime.
Authoritarian progressive examples:
Social media censorship, including censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Very authoritarian, very very wrong. Sad! Non-progressives (Neo-cons) also did this. Maybe I should have said “Neocon and neoliberal authoritarian.” It’s one of the dumbest things about liberalism and progressivism - it’s deliberately amorphous and constantly changing so it becomes this obnoxious semantical game. I do think progressive is currently the correct label. and there are plenty of examples of more purely progressive authoritarianism:
COVID vaccine mandates were mostly a progressive and very authoritarian thing. Then the progressives turned around and flipped out about SCOTUS abortion ruling at least partially on the basis of “bodily autonomy.” Kind of funny, but super scary too.
Liz Warren I saw sent some jawboning letter recently to Sam Altman and others demanding explanations for their donations to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Trudeau shut off people’s bank accounts for protesting.
There’s been a general trend by progressives to shut down various kind of political dialogue, mostly through puerile labeling (eg, “racist”). In Germany they want to ban a political party, AfD, a party that’s popularity is in response to various progressive policy failures.
Weaponizing the justice system against Trump. As someone correctly mentioned above, trumping up some misdemeanor charges into felonies to avoid the statute of limitations is really bad.
NY Progressives passed the Adult Survivors Act of 2021, after some lady published a book accusing Trump of rape decades ago. It opened a one time window of exception to the statute of limitations. The lady filed suit against Trump the very date it went into effect.
Biden talking about the Equal Rights Amendment as if it had been ratified. This is some 3rd world wannabe dictator stuff.
Trying to throw Trump off ballots.
Biden creating the Ministry of Truth, I mean “The Disinformation Governance Board.”
Biden debanking various people in the cryptocurrency industry.
Shortly after the Post story broke, social media companies blocked links to it, while other news outlets declined to publish the story due to concerns about provenance and suspicions of Russian disinformation.[8] By May 2023, no evidence had publicly surfaced to support suspicions that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation scheme.
It was not big C censorship as the government did not threaten or force the media to not report on the laptop story in October before the election. The private companies chose to act (censor their content) as they did. The media companies did go to far in linking Russian propaganda effort without evidence and did not report on the issue as there was little credibility at the time. So MSNBC, CNN, and CBS did pick sides. Facebook and Twitter did block links the story. Both were facing internal and external pressure regarding the use of there platforms for proven misinformation campaigns with regard to COVID so they started providing fact checking efforts.
So in the fall of 2020 the people involved in decision making at MSNBC, CNN, CBS, Facebook, and Twitter were very wrong very authoritarian. Have I miss stated your position?
You left out some facts here.
The FBI sent notice to the media that “Russian disinformation” possibly involving Hunter Biden was likely to show up shortly before the story broke. (Mind you, parts of the FBI knew the laptop was completely legit by this time.) Also the revelations about pressure on COVID stories from various government agencies and threats to important legal protections enjoyed by social media companies. There was not direct threat of force but there was certainly a large amount of pressure and indirect threats of negative regulation changes and regulatory action.
MSNBC, CNN, NBC, and ABC they didn’t have to threaten. Those outlets pretty much reliably parrot whatever Democratic party talking point is fed them. Hopefully they regain some journalistic integrity and scepticism after swallowing the Biden is fine and COVID developed in a wet market lines.
Also, who was the president in October 2020 and in charge of the government?
Trump was president in October 2020 and chose the head of the FBI at that time, no?
Just because Trump was POTUS does that mean the 1M+ Federal workers who report up through the executive are all Trump supporters? You couldn’t prove it by the way Northern Virginia votes or where the campaign contributions go.
The notice was sent, its on record.