Letters: July 6, 2023

Fictional accusations 

In recent news reports, we have heard many accusations made about Dems, Such as that President Biden too, had a bunch of classified documents he squirreled away despite knowing that white house documents are illegal to remove--even for an ex-President's private use. However, the press hardly mentioned the real reasons why Biden had boxes of supposed classified information i.e. according to FactCheck.org:   

"Biden in 2012 donated more than 1,850 boxes of records from his years in the U.S. Senate to the University of Delaware. The documents are not available for public access following an agreement between Biden and the university at the time of the donation not to provide public access to any of the materials until “two years after the donor [Biden] retires from public life.”   

This is proof that Biden did not try to retain classified documents illegally. Also, the documents found were promptly given to the Justice Department with Biden's consent, but no classified documents have been found among them.  

Now we are being fed misinformation about Hunter Biden's illegal use of controlled drugs, charges of misdemeanor tax fraud, and his alleged refusal to provide child support payments for the unwed mother of his child. He and President Biden have also been accused of accepting bribes from a Russian oligarch in return for favorable policy decisions, but here are a few things that Republicans didn't mention:    Hunter failed to pay $100,000 in owed Federal income taxes, but he paid all of those taxes in 2021. He also agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for not paying federal taxes, and he admitted in a 2021 Memoir that he relapsed and regularly used controlled substances in 2018, when he also owned a gun in Delaware illegally, after lying about his drug usage while purchasing it.  However, Hunter only had the gun for two weeks before his then--girlfriend tossed it into a trash can behind a grocery store.  According to the office of David C Weiss--appointed US Attorney for Delaware (by Trump).  

So, because Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to the two misdemeanor tax charges for illegal  possession of a firearm and the use of controlled substances, and agreed to enter a pretrial "diversion program," the Department of Justice agreed to recommend a sentence of probation for the tax charges.   Of course because Repubs have been out for Biden's blood for many years, they called Hunter's punishment a slap on the wrist and claimed it illustrated the "politicization and weaponizing" of Bidens Justice department, However such relatively mild charges are typical of punishments for first time tax offenders, who rarely get prosecuted or sentenced to jail. Douglas Berman a law professor at Ohio State University, tells us that State prosecutors may have felt pressured to charge Biden, despite the fact that none of the (real facts) are in dispute, and that, most prosecutors would say that these facts would not warrant making a federal case, unless a public safety issue was involved or the perception that a President's son was given undue leniency. However, Biden's  legal case was treated the same as many other cases in which the offender is just an ordinary person.  

The Bribery charges included allegations in a recently "unearthed and unverified report" from an FBI informant who said that years ago a Ukrainian Oligarch bribed Hunter and Joe Biden. The existence of the Report was revealed on May 3rd, by Rep. Charles Grassley, and Republican James Comer, who are both on the House Budget Committee, when they sent a letter to AG Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, saying  a whistleblower had recently been brought to their attention, and saying that the FBI possess an unclassified FD-1023 form describing an "alleged criminal scheme involving former Vice-President Joe Biden and a foreign national about an exchange of money for policy decisions." However, the FBI asserted that FD-1023 is a form used by special agents to record "raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources" and merely "document that information." It does not reflect the conclusions of investigators based on a fuller context or understanding." So just recording such information does not validate any concocted conclusions!  

Read about this issue at:   https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/republican-claims-about-hunter-biden-offenses/   I think there are two things to take note of before we conclude that Republican claims are valid. The first is that the charges are unsubstantiated, and at best reveal only (potential) violations concerning Hunter, or President Biden's roles in any of this. Therefore such "potential violations," may have been created by enemies of Biden in order to discredit him with egregious yet completely nonexistent accusations!  

Secondly, the accusations eagerly made against Dems about their supposed "politicization and weaponization of Biden's DOJ" sound very much like deliberate projections made by the GOP concerning essentially made up accusations about the Bidens and other Democrats. So please consider who has been doing the attacking as well as who has been constantly forced to be on defense against what are completely unverifiable and unproven facts--despite the very real fact that Trump brought most of his honesty and character into question all by himself, since day one of the 2016 elections.  

Peter W. Johnson – Superior Wisconsin