Why IRS Whistleblowers Etc. Won't Make A Difference

I’m pasting in a Twitter thread that addresses the continuing Biden Crime Family soap opera—which is mostly newsworthy only for the obvious circling of bipartisan wagons to protect the Family. It’s true that there are new public revelations, but most of those are revelations which are very old news, indeed, to investigators and to knowledgeable Swamp Denizens, i.e., our Ruling Class. I know basically nothing about the author, who describes himself as:

Mountain man. Internet marketer. Self-made investor in real estate, stocks and private biz.

The question is, despite the new revelations to us, the public, will they make any difference? Yes, some Republicans are attempting to draw attention to Family shenanigans—by which term I include gross and illegal political corruption. But is this more than the usual posturing for electoral purposes? Is this really part of some grand new crusade to take up the Trumpian mantle and to Drain The Swamp? Even just a little bit?

I’ll admit, I’ve become pretty jaded over the years since 2016. For example, there were a few senators who talked a fairly good game—Chuck Grassley is one who comes easily to mind—but somehow nothing much happens. Even when there’s a GOP administration in place. The Big Plan always seems to have been to oust Trump and cause as little collateral damage as possible—Thanks for your service, Bull Durham!

See what you think of this thread. I’ve arranged it into paragraphs and the few misspellings or omissions that I’ve corrected are in brackets. For my part, I find it persuasive.

Pine Baron

@SpiritofPines

Some non-obvious takeaways from the Biden Third World Corruption story

I’m confident that most readers here will actually find these takeaways somewhat obvious.

Context:

I’ve been an entrepreneur most of my adult career. Paperwork, taxes and government bureaucracy have been a miserable part of every step of that equation. I’ve worked incredibly hard to do everything by the spirit and the letter of the law, which anyone in a similar position knows is impossible as many laws and regulations directly contradict each other. I’ve hired multiple lawyers & accountants and been universally disappointed.

So I’m uniquely disgusted to see that Hunter Biden committed many corporate crimes brazenly (he’s plead guilty to a few) and was not only left alone, but actively protected.

But here’s the thing: What he allegedly did wasn’t necessary.

You don’t need to directly take millions in wire transfers from Chinese intelligence or Ukrainian oligarchs. Grift in DC is largely a solved problem. You simply take a cushy private or lobbyist or NGO job when you leave DC. Almost all of DC power players, Republican and Democrat do this. You only need to add one layer of abstraction to make this stuff “legal.”

While this addresses some obvious grifting, it doesn’t address a matter of immediate concern to many, maybe most, of our representatives—How to get rich now, without having to leave DC? There are obviously ways to solve that problem—who thinks Pelosi or Turtle or any number of others are waiting to leave DC to get rich? They’re quite obviously hoping to die in bed in the Swamp with their boots still on, pretty much. And they’re all rich already. Campaign contributions? Insider trading? Funny foundations? I’m sure there are other solutions to the stated problem. That leaves the Pine Baron’s thesis in place: “Grift in DC is largely a solved problem.” And, of course, it can easily be done without doing anything so gauche as accepting large wire transfers from foreign powers (and their representatives) and then splitting the swag among Family members in relatively transparent (to investigators who are at least as smart as the average bear) monetary transfers.

The interesting thing is the way the Ruling Class wagons have all been formed into a circle around the Family—pretty much so. No real consequences yet and, I’ll remind anyone who needs reminding: The Family’s corrupt activities has to be the biggest non-secret in the Swamp. Who believes senators go home at night after reading the latest revelations and hold their heads in their hands, moaning to their spouses: Oh my God, I can’t believe it!

But maybe d[ue] to his drug and sexual proclivities, Hunter wasn’t able to use the fig leaf of “legality.” And so people needed to actively cover it up. And just rogue Democrat operatives would not have been able to do that. This type of thing only happens when the DOJ, IRS, DNC - AND RNC all have the same incentives. This doesn’t happen without Republican acquiescence.

And while it sure looks like the Attorney General coordinated this, he probably didn’t need to do much.

I’ll get to this later. For now it’s safe to say that Bluto Barr was well aware of the general shape of of Family corruption well before 2020. How soon even most conservatives forget what the first fake impeachment was all about. Those matters were already old news, well before 2020.

In the next paragraph the Pine Baron offers an explanation for the bipartisan circling of the wagons that, to me, is at least plausible—it’s about political populism, which is the real threat, as our Ruling Class sees it, to the constitutional order that they have put in place:

The hysterical immune system response from DC (Democrat AND Republican) against populist voters ensured that the Biden family must be protected [at all] costs. In the same way that Chinese bureaucrats don’t need to be explicitly told to stay away from Xi’s family, most American bureaucrats don’t need to be told to stay away from the Bidens. Remember - the DOJ, FBI and IRS successfully avoided doing a single thing about Epstein’s billionaire child abuse cabal for decades. Taking a few million in bribes is much less evil than that.

Yes, how soon we forget. Alex Acosta was warned off doing anything rash about Epstein, because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Acosta Was Told Epstein ‘Belonged To Intelligence,’ ‘Leave It Alone,’ Report Says. When you think about that, it’s really pretty evil.

But I don’t think the powers that [b]e did it out of any personal loyalty to Biden. No they protected him because they have leverage over him in the form of evidence of crimes by his family.

Losing Biden will make very little different to the powers that be. We would likely get identical outcomes under Gavin Newsom. And I expect that is what will happen. We will get the illusion of reform when the Biden family is disgraced and the exact same policies will continue from other nodes in the oligarchy.

Yeah, perhaps that’s how they’ll get Zhou out. Maybe that was all part of the Hunter deal. The report is that Zhou’s fund raising efforts—while a bonanza for reporters—are pretty dismal in terms of financial results.

Now, regarding Barr. The report out today—and you can read all about it from Margot Cleveland’s perspective here: Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office Buried Biden-Bribery Allegations AG Barr Sent For Investigation—is that Barr did what needed to be done. He referred the investigation to the USAO in Delaware. Instead of, like, running such a major matter out of Main Justice and FBIHQ. Yeah, as I was saying, the FACT—no subsources and oppo research firms involved here—the FACT that the Family had been running an Agent of a Foreign Power (think Foreign Agent Registration Act) FOR YEARS, was no surprise. Contrast the response of the Swamp to the possibility that these FACTS of Family corruption could be revealed when Trump started even thinking about digging a bit—IMPEACHMENT!—to the way the Swamp was all in on the patently nonsensical Russia Hoax. Barr was there for all of that. The idea that he started taking vigorous, rectitudinous action—finally—in 2020 doesn’t really pass the laugh test. When will we hear about Barr’s weekly follow-up calls to Delaware? I expect this will all blow over with no casualties. I mean, you HAVE NOTICED have you not, how infrequently Barr’s name even gets mentioned in any of these stories?

Barr was the highest level official who was totally in the know about all of this, yet he most flies under the radar—except when he surfaces to attack Trump. Yes, I know, Barr does attack Family corruption at times, but I call that on a par with the other political theater. That’s just to pull the wool over conservative eyes, with regard to the really Big Picture. How often does Barr and the rest of the Ruling Class figure they can fool most of the people? Well, here’s what I call a clue:

William Barr: Jeffrey Epstein’s death was ‘perfect storm of screw-ups’