Tag Archives: ethics

I’ve Written It Before

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House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R, KY) says there’ll be no special treatment of Hunter Biden; if he ignores the Committee’s subpoena, Comer will take him to court to force his appearance.

“We’re going to treat this investigation like every congressional investigation in recent memory has been treated: you come in for a deposition, then you do the public hearing. All of our depositions are transparent. We released the transcripts. … He is the key witness to all of the Biden crimes. So the subpoena called for him to show up in this office on December 13 for a deposition. I expect to see Hunter Biden in this office for a deposition.”
Asked if he was prepared to go to court if the first son does not show up, Comer answered. “Absolutely.”

And I’ll write it again. Comer shouldn’t waste time on going to court to enforce the Committee subpoena of Son Biden. The Father Biden/Garland DoJ won’t push the matter at all. Instead, per Jurney v MacCracken, Comer should put the matter before the House for a contempt vote first thing in the morning of the 14th, and then the House Sergeant at Arms, by noon on the 14th, should be sent to arrest Biden and haul him before the Committee for a closed-door deposition on the 15th.

There’s no need for any more stalling by either Biden.

Healthcare Systems On Edge

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They’re on edge from a plethora of cyber attacks against them.

According to the Institute for Security and Technology, about 300 hospitals have suffered ransomware attacks this year alone. Cyber experts say hackers typically see health care organizations as a prime target because hospitals are likely to pay ransom to keep critical health services up and running.

Two problems are buried in that simple characterization. One is the continued vulnerability of the hospital systems’ IT systems. Why does this vulnerability continue to exist? Charlie Regan, Nerds On Site CEO:

Cyber criminals trying to get into any network or system are incredibly well-funded and incredibly well-orchestrated, and they have a never-ending source of more creative and effective tools to breach systems[.]

Yes, countering, much less preempting, such attacks is hard. But “hard” means “possible,” and the hospital system IT managers don’t appear to be making much effort to get on top of their companies’ vulnerability—those 300 attacks in just the last several months seem to demonstrate this.

But the larger problem in that characterization is that hospitals are likely to pay ransom. Paying the ransom is nothing other than paying the hackers wages for their labor, aiding and abetting the hackers’ crimes, and increasing the vulnerability of others to hackers’ crimes by guaranteeing that their crimes don’t just pay; they’re lucrative.

Given that, I’m having a hard time summoning any sympathy for the hospital systems. They need to start taking their cyber vulnerabilities seriously.

Limits

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Progressive-Democrat Joe Biden, through his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is busily trying to tie Israel’s hands (plural) behind its back as it fights its war of survival against the terrorist organizations of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorists ensconced in Gaza Strip. Blinken’s words:

“…the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” He said Israel must take “more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians.”

This is Biden and Blinken continuing to be cowed by the mullahs of Iran, who want Israel defeated to the point of destruction.

If these two had any morals at all, they’d take up that “massive loss of civilian life and displacement” with the Hamas, et al., terrorists (excuse the redundancy) who are butchering those civilians through their use of them as shields and of their residences, schools, and hospitals as weapons caches, rocket launch sites, and command centers.

If these two had any sense at all, they’d recognize that Israel already is taking the most “effective steps to protect the lives of civilians:” Israel is killing the terrorist Hamas, PIJ, et al., so they can never inflict those butcheries again.

Instead, these two…politicians…are bent on betraying Israel, and intended or not, they’re betraying the United States in consequence.

Evidence Tampering

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It seems that the House January 6 Committee videos of witness depositions have…disappeared. Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R, GA), House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman:

All of the videotapes of all depositions are gone[.]

This is a problem because such videos, being the products of official House proceedings, are records that are required to be preserved, stored, and available. These videotapes in particular, having been created by the last Congress’ House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in its pursuit of its investigation into the events of January 6, 2021, constitute Congressional evidence and especially are required to be preserved. Yet that committee’s Chairman, Mississippi Progressive-Democratic Party Congressman Bennie Thompson (D, MS), now claims (in his best Johnny Carson impression), “I did not know that.”

Imagine that.

The tampering spreads to Committee documents, also.

[T]he Democrat-led House committee sent certain evidence such as transcripts to the Biden White House and Homeland Security Department and now the transcripts have been returned to Loudermilk’s GOP-led subcommittee nearly fully redacted so their contents can’t be read.

This is Thompson evidence-tampering by destroying the videotapes and Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden aiding and abetting in the crime by allowing his staff to tamper with those documents. Party will protect their members, though, so it’s up to us ordinary Americans to rid ourselves of them next November.

Subpoena Fight

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The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Hunter Biden to be deposed in a closed-door hearing. Biden has responded, through his lawyer, that he’ll be there, but only if the hearing is public. Supposedly, this sets up a subpoena fight.

It needn’t, and Oversight Chairman James Comer (R, KY), has said so, although he has offered, unnecessarily IMNSHO, a compromise to have Biden testify in an open Oversight hearing after he’s sat for the close-door deposition.

If the impasse is not broken, Congress can move to enforce its subpoena in several ways. Republicans can hold Biden in contempt or file a civil suit to compel him to testify. These options require the Department of Justice or the courts to enforce, respectively. But, if Republicans want Hunter Biden’s testimony soon, investigators may have to acquiesce to his lawyer’s demands for a public hearing or awaken a long dormant Congressional power to compel the younger Biden to appear.

The correct move is a) and d) above. If Biden is a no-show, he should be held in criminal contempt and referred to DoJ for prosecution (even though AG Merrick Garland is unlikely to do so). In parallel, the House should exercise its authority to go get Biden and compel his (closed-door) testimony.

That fourth option is the House’s and Senate’s—”the Legislature’s”—Inherent Contempt Power. This power permits each house to arrest and detain an individual who is found to be obstructing Constitutionally defined duties and responsibilities of the legislature. The latest use of this power to compel testimony was the Senate’s 1934 Jurney v MacCracken case. William MacCracken at the time was refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena, the Senate sent its Sergeant at Arms to arrest him and present him before the Senate for a contempt trial, and on conviction, he was held in jail in the Senate’s custody (not DoJ’s or any other police facility’s) until he cleared his contempt by testifying as subpoenaed. Jurney was the Supreme Court upholding the Legislature’s—the Senate’s in that case—authority to exactly what it did.

So it should be with Biden in the House. The matter could move apace, with the long pole in this tent simply being finding Biden in the first place and transporting him to the House floor for trial.

Regarding Oversight’s subpoena in particular, there’s nothing about which to fight, or negotiate, or even discuss. The subpoena has been issued for a closed door deposition on a particular date; the only thing for Hunter Biden to do is to appear for the deposition on the appointed date. Or suffer the ignominy of arrest, House trial for contempt, and then jail in House custody until he testifies.

Full stop.