House GOP Has New Plan for Hunter Biden, After Last One Was Total Bust

On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee pushed forward with its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, inviting his son Hunter Biden to testify in a public hearing on March 20. It is not yet clear if the younger Biden has agreed to the date.

Last week, Hunter Biden finally gave in to monthslong requests for him to appear before the committee in a closed door hearing. Over the course of six hours, Republicans found themselves targeted more than the president’s son, being roundly accused of ignoring evidence supporting the president’s innocence and pushing a double standard by refusing to examine the financial gains pocketed by President Donald Trump and his family off of their official White House positions, including a $2 billion deal with a Saudi crown prince and Trump ally brokered by the former president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, shortly after he left the White House.

So far, Republicans have failed to provide any witnesses or concrete evidence that show criminal wrongdoing by Joe Biden. The committee’s former star witness, Alexander Smirnov, served as the singular source for claims that Biden had profited millions off of his son’s connection to Burisma. But that angle, which House Republicans had believed was their best bet at nabbing the president, completely blew up in their face last month when Smirnov was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president.

Meanwhile, all of the other witnesses that Republicans have called, claiming that their testimony will blow the case wide open, have instead debunked every single accusation against the Biden family.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says it’s OK that he hung out with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a couple times because he also was friendly with plenty of other questionable characters.

The independent presidential candidate offered the staggering defense during a Wednesday appearance on the podcast Flagrant. Kennedy has previously admitted that he had flown on Epstein’s private plane twice.

“I’m in New York for most of my life. You run into everybody in New York,” Kennedy said. “I mean, I know Harvey Weinstein. I knew Roger Ailes. I knew, O.J. Simpson came to my house. Bill Cosby came to my house.”

Kennedy insisted that he wasn’t aware he was hanging out with a bunch of sexual abusers and an accused murderer. “You don’t know these people are swamp creatures until all this stuff comes out,” he said.

But at least with Epstein, who killed himself in prison before he could stand trial for sex trafficking minors, Kennedy said he “did see the creepiness immediately.”

But apparently not so immediately that he didn’t go on the disgraced financier’s private plane a second time.

The internet, of course, had jokes about Kennedy’s mind-boggling defense.

“Who name drops four rapists and a murderer???” one person tweeted.

Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer pointed out that someone seemed to be missing from the guest list.

“Never stop running for president, Bob,” another person quipped.

Kennedy’s presidential campaign has struggled to take off, and in recent weeks has been hit with some major mishaps. Kennedy ran a campaign ad during the Super Bowl that borrowed the iconic “Kennedy for president” jingle from his late uncle John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. Kennedy was forced to apologize to his other family members, who were outraged that the anti-vaxxer had tried to leverage the family name for campaign clout.

And on Monday, the Democratic National Committee accused a pro-Kennedy super PAC of violating campaign finance regulations.

But Kennedy appears to be slowly gaining support. While he notched no big wins on Super Tuesday, Kennedy did announce that he has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the New Hampshire and Nevada ballots in November.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign officials were scrambling to find any means for the election results to work out in his favor, despite being unable to find actual evidence that he legitimately won the states that ultimately sent Joe Biden to the White House.

And it turns out, according to the Arizona state Attorney General’s Office, the campaign may have broken the law in the state.

In the past few weeks, people officiated with Trump’s campaign have received grand jury subpoenas from Arizona prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Politico reported. These subpoenas could help determine if some of Trump’s biggest allies in the state, including some who were fake electors in December 2020, will face criminal charges.

Arizona’s attorney general, Democrat Kris Mayes, is behind the latest move. It’s not yet clear if she will go after people in Trump’s national campaign, or if this investigation is focused on those in Arizona who tried to help Trump overturn the state’s election results. Mayes’s investigators have reportedly asked about Trump himself, his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro.

A recent document release from a lawsuit settlement reveals the deranged depths Chesebro went to in the search of ways to undermine the 2020 election results. 

Fake electors in other states like Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada are all facing charges for their efforts.

When the Anti-Defamation League announced that it was giving an award to Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House official Jared Kusher, it received a lot of criticism, given the organization has a supposed reputation for opposing antisemitism and the Trump administration … did not.

On Wednesday, that criticism came in full view as protesters interrupted Kushner’s big award ceremony.

As Kushner was accepting his award for his “vital and deeply impactful work on the Abraham Accords,” he was jeered and heckled by protesters in the audience, who attacked his record and also called for a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“You’re not doing shit like that!” yelled one woman in the audience in response to Kusher using the line “Do unto others as they would do unto you.”

“You are not a civil rights ally, you fascist! You’re a fucking racist!” the woman continued as security escorted her from the room.

“Warmonger! What about the Palestinian people? It is not antisemitic to stop bombing the Palestinian people!” another protester shouted. “Cease-fire now!”

According to Forward, three people in total were removed from the ADL’s “Never is Now” conference for disrupting Kushner, while “several dozen” people walked out silently when Kushner began his remarks. Kushner finished the speech as protesters were removed from the room.

The Anti-Defamation League has been criticized in recent years for ignoring the threat of white nationalism and instead focusing on anti-Zionist activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, even admitting that it considers that activism as antisemitism. That shift seems to have been accelerated by its president, Jonathan Greenblatt, who on Wednesday introduced Kushner by stating, “I really don’t care how you vote.”

The Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, were signed in September 2020, during the last months of the Trump administration. Kushner is credited with helping to bring the parties together. In recent months, following Israel’s war on Gaza, the agreements have faced criticism for ignoring the fate of the Palestinian people.

Representative Elise Stefanik is a lot of things, but this week, she made a good case that she’s not a historian.

During a speech on Super Tuesday, Stefanik tried to insert a callback to a famous campaign line by Ronald Reagan, in which he coyly questioned the progress made during President Jimmy Carter’s term. But the House Republican Conference chair had none of the charm—or apparently any memory—of what happened during the previous administration.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer for hard-working Americans around the country is a resounding no,” Stefanik said.

This time four years ago, the nation was being ravaged in a dystopian way by the Covid-19 pandemic, with former President Donald Trump ordering sick passengers to stay quarantined on the Grand Princess cruise ship to keep case numbers inside the country low.

Droves of viewers with working memories were quick to glom onto the scripted error, including several of Stefanik’s Democratic colleagues.

One user on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that “4 years ago this month Covid exploded out as Trump endlessly lied about the seriousness of it and there were so many dead bodies from it that cities had to rent trailers to stuff full of corpses.”

“Four years ago people were rationing toilet paper and dying in hospital hallways,” posted Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly.

“The gentlelady from NY seems to have forgotten about body bags in Central Park, a collapsing economy, loss of faith in US democracy around the world and a tax-dodging, COVID-denying rapist President who was preparing his final act of sedition,” said Illinois Representative Sean Casten.

Vermont Representative Becca Balint accused Republicans of “trying to literally rewrite history.”

“Four years ago we were on the brink of a deadly pandemic that killed millions of Americans because of Trump’s failed response and this same kind of denialism,” Balint said.

It’s no surprise that Stefanik is trying (and failing) to gaslight Americans. She is reportedly being weighed as a potential option for Trump’s vice president, though the presumptive GOP nominee’s shortlist is starting to look a little long.

Other contenders to be Trump’s Number Two include one-time Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the last of whom has already outright rejected the offer (“I am not doing that.”) And the list continues to grow. Just last week, Trump added Texas Governor Greg Abbott to his dumpster fire pick list.

Donald Trump is currently facing federal charges for involvement in the January 6 riot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. In an effort to save his own skin, Donald Trump has claimed that he, as a former president, has legal immunity for any actions committed while he was in office.

The legal question, despite being discredited by several experts, has made its way to the Supreme Court, which announced last week that it would begin to hear the case the week of April 22. That announcement was already seen by many experts as a victory for Team Trump, as the federal election interference trial can’t begin until the Supreme Court weighs in. In other words, perhaps the biggest case against Trump has been pushed back by months.

On Wednesday, however, the nine-member court, three of whom were appointed by Trump, once again decided “what’s the rush?” and declared the case’s arguments will begin April 25. Putting the case on almost the last day of the week suggests another lengthy delay to ultimately decide it.

While seemingly minor, the change undoubtedly benefits the former president, the latest such decision from the Supreme Court to do so. The fact that the court is hearing the case at all could delay Trump’s January 6 case until after the election, giving him the benefit of voters not seeing him as a convicted felon on their ballots. Trump is still enjoying a victory from the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado, as well as other states, can’t enforce the Constitution’s disqualification clause against federal officeholders and remove him from their ballots. The entirety of that ruling also drew criticism from legal experts, even those who agreed with the gist of it.

Every legal case against Trump, a former president, is unprecedented. With the Supreme Court’s decision to drag its feet on the immunity question, Trump could potentially be reelected and then be found guilty of federal crimes shortly afterward. How would the country navigate that thorny legal question?

After winning a sum total of zero delegates in the Democratic Super Tuesday primaries, Dean Phillips has called it quits on his long-shot bid for the White House.

“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again—because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” Phillips wrote in a statement Wednesday.

“But it is clear that alternative is not me. And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be,” he said.

The Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden had brought several memorable moments to the 2024 presidential race, such as  when he announced he would run as a “generic Democrat” to no fanfare, when he forgot about population density, or when he launched a very human A.I. chatbot to help voters get to know him. 

Apart from his age, Philip’s only major policy differences with the sitting president included lowering costs for housing, health care, and childcare; changing the tax code to allow parents to deduct the cost of childcare; raising the minimum wage; and a proposal to legalize weed at the federal level.

Still, on his way out, Phillips couldn’t resist one last shot at the 81-year-old president.

“In 2011, I hosted then VP Biden at my home. Most notable was his empathy and kindness to my daughters and the catering staff, with whom he sat and had ice cream (surprise-surprise). His decency and wisdom were rarities in politics then, and even more so today,” Phillips said in his statement.

“Over a decade later, the only thing that has changed is time—which slows all of us down a bit, including presidents.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t disavowing her theory that Jewish space lasers were the cause of the California wildfires, but she definitely wants to stop being pestered about it, going so far as to tell one journalist to “fuck off” with the questions.

At a Super Tuesday event at Mar-a-Lago, Greene was approached by former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis, who after a perfectly civil interview on the topic of Nikki Haley dared to follow up on the Georgia Republican’s bonkers conspiracy.

“Can you tell me why so many people that support Donald Trump love conspiracy theories, including yourself? He seems to attract lots of conspiracy theorists,” prompted Maitlis, who now works for The News Agents.

“Well, let me tell you, you’re a conspiracy theorist,” Greene shot back. “And the left and the media spreads more conspiracy theories. We like the truth, we like supporting our Constitution, our freedoms, and America First.”

As Greene turned around to leave, Maitlis got in one more question.

“What about Jewish space lasers? Tell us about Jewish space lasers,” she asked, referring to a 2018 Facebook post in which Greene linked alleged sightings of “lasers or blue beams of light” to the cause of the California wildfires. She then, apropos of nothing, further tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often targeted by antisemitic conspiracies, whom she believed were clearing the land for rail stations.

“Why don’t you go talk about Jewish space lasers?” Greene replied to Maitlis. “And really, why don’t you fuck off? How about that?”

It’s not even the first time in recent memory that Greene has had a sour moment with a British broadcaster over the theory. During an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored in November, Greene refused to acknowledge that she had written the infamous Facebook post, insisted that she was not an antisemite, and claimed that Morgan was twisting her words as he read the post verbatim.

“I talk about Jewish space lasers in my book because that was something I never said,” Greene said at the time, referring to her memoir. “Excuse me, Piers, I never said that phrase. That was a lie about me. If you read my original Facebook post, I never said it. That’s why I had to write this book.”

In a 2021 interview, Greene claimed ignorance, alleging that she “didn’t even know and didn’t find out until recently that the Rothschilds were Jewish.”

He took his time, but ultimately Senator Mitch McConnell has fallen in line and endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024.

The Senate minority leader and longtime leader of the Senate Republican caucus said in a statement to The Washington Post Wednesday, “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States.”

McConnell announced his decision just minutes after Trump’s lone remaining challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after only winning one of Super Tuesday’s 16 state contests. McConnell himself announced last week that he will step down as GOP leader in November.

The endorsement was long sought after by Trump, with coordinated efforts from staffers for both politicians seeking to secure a rapprochement. Trump and McConnell have not spoken since December 2020, when the Senate minority leader recognized Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Over the years, McConnell and Trump have had an acrimonious relationship, to say the least. McConnell has privately and publicly criticized Trump for his role in fomenting the January 6 riots, although he didn’t vote to convict Trump afterward in impeachment proceedings. Trump has called McConnell a “dumb son of a b----” and remarked that he would like to replace McConnell as majority leader if he were reelected president.

Trump has also made racist attacks against Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, an Asian American, despite the fact that Chao served as Trump’s secretary of transportation, and accused McConnell of conflicts of interest, alleging that Chao has ties to China that compromise McConnell. But, as Senator Ted Cruz can attest, attacks on one’s spouse can easily be forgiven in Trump’s Republican Party.

Super Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary on the surface went well for Joe Biden, as he was able to pick up the delegates from all 16 states.

But in seven states, voters had the option of selecting an “uncommitted” or “no preference” option instead of voting for Biden, Marianne Williamson, or Dean Phillips—and the results shattered expectations.

In six of the seven states, the “uncommitted” or “no preference” option received 6 percent or more of the vote, which could translate to deciding votes in November’s tightly contested election. In Minnesota, 15.7 percent of Democratic voters chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than back the president. And in North Carolina, a key state in 2024, nearly 12 percent of voters also showed up to the polls and chose to vote “uncommitted” instead.

The “uncommitted” vote is picking up steam in large part thanks to organizers urging the president to reverse his support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. In Michigan, the effort resulted in more than 100,000 votes for “uncommitted,” or about 13 percent of the vote, a significant margin in a state that Biden only won by 154,000 votes in 2020.

Meanwhile, also on Super Tuesday, in the territory of American Samoa, Jason Palmer, who wasn’t even on many state ballots, won with 51 votes out of the 91 votes cast. Palmer called for a cease-fire in Gaza and withholding military aid to Israel in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) in February.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris called for a temporary cease-fire on Sunday, Biden’s policy toward Israel’s attacks on Gaza hasn’t changed on the ground, with Israel’s bombing campaign continuing unabated. And Trump’s most recent comments signal staunch support for Israel, with the former president answering Fox & Friends about whether he approved of Israel’s actions with “You’ve got to finish the problem.”