Democrats have much to worry about when a January 2023 change of congressional committee leaderships, along with ongoing John Durham investigations, flip long belated attention away from Trumped-up media attacks to truly onerous scandals and criminal acts perpetrated by very high-level officials of their own party.
Clinton/DNC Trump-Russia Collusion Frauds
Investigations by U.S. Special Counsel John Durham and congressional committees are certain to dig further into phony Trump-Russia collusion charges based upon contrived misinformation sponsored by the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee used as a premise for FBI spying on the Donald Trump campaign and presidency.
Questionable materials included a compelling dossier put together by former British M16 operative Christopher Steele, and questionable attributions of purported Trump business transactions.
Kevin Clinesmith, a low-level FBI lawyer, took the fall for admittedly falsifying a document during the bureau's efforts to renew FISA court surveillance authority against Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The FBI was also conducting secret "Crossfire Hurricane" Trump Oval Office spying which was endorsed by top Obama-Biden White House officials.
Hillary-Obama-Biden holdovers with good reasons for legal concern include former Clinton campaign adviser — now Biden National Security adviser — Jake Sullivan who peddled the fake Alfa Bank story to the media on the eve of the election ... an activity confirmed through recent Durham court testimony of her campaign manager Robby Mook to have been approved by Hillary.
Biden Family Foreign Influence Peddling
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are laying the groundwork for a probe into Hunter Biden's family and associate finances in preparation for likely impropriety and/or criminal hearings should they win control in November as many polls suggest.
Rep. James Comer, R., Ky., the ranking GOP committee member, has said that although Hunter hasn't yet been convicted with any criminal activity, investigating whether President Joe Biden had any links with his son's business dealings — awareness and connections he has previously denied — will definitely be an "out of the gate" priority.
Rep. Comer said that while the Senate investigation revolved around gas company Burisma Holdings Ltd., the House GOP probe would be broader, including Hunter's work in 2017 to help CEFC, a now-defunct Shanghai energy company, along with other financial business interests in Kazakhstan and elsewhere.
A then-GOP-led Senate investigation launched before the 2020 election which also looked at Hunter Biden's business deals in Ukraine found that two Obama administration officials had raised concerns to the White House in 2015 about bad optics regarding his $50,000 monthly no-show position on the board of Burisma.
That Senate acquitted President Trump in 2019 on Democrat-led House impeachment charges related to questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding Joe Biden's publicly stated withholding of $1 billion in U.S. aid to the country unless it fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma corruption.
COVID Cover-ups by Fauci and Friends?
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, believes that a joint congressional investigation with the Senate Oversight Committee should make it a priority to look into origins of COVID-19 and whether the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded dangerous coronavirus research in China.
In June 2021, Rep. Jordan and House Committee on Oversight and Reform ranking member Rep. Comer sent a letter to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci challenging his insistence that there was not any taxpayer funded gain-of-function research taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Jordan argues that Fauci and others at NIH knew that coronavirus came from a lab "from the get-go," and that our tax dollars were used.
Another matter worth investigating involves reports revealed through an FOIA request that NIH executives in positions of influence on decisions about who gets grants from the agency received a total of 77 previously undisclosed royalty payments from outside firms between 2010 and 2014 estimated to total at least $350 million of which former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins received 14 payments, and NIAID's Dr. Fauci received 23.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called the NIH "a dark money pit," which "covered up grants for gain-of-function research in Wuhan."
Southern Border National Security Invasion
Rep. Jordan has stated that another GOP priority is to require Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the southern border crisis where its current chairman, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has refused to do so.
"I mean, this is intentional, this is deliberate, there's no other logical conclusion you can reach," Jordan suggested. "So we have to investigate the border situation, two million illegals crossing our border in one year, just wrong."
As direct consequences, Border Patrol agents encountered more than 220,000 migrants at the border in April, the highest number reported since 2000. More than 1 million encounters have already been reported so far this year, while 1.7 million were reported in the entire year of 2021.
Biden Administration Responsibilities for Afghanistan Debacle
A push for accountability regarding the Biden administration's chaotic exit from Afghanistan is coming from both political parties, setting up what might be the first big congressional oversight probe of the current White House.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has made Afghanistan a top priority and has begun investigating the issue.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an Aug. 17 statement that he was "disappointed that the Biden Administration clearly did not accurately assess the implications of a rapid U.S. withdrawal" and vowed to hold a hearing on U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
Amid futile requests for answers, several congressional Republicans have already called for Biden's impeachment, along with others who also are calling for Secretary of State Antony Blinken's resignation.
Whereas we shouldn't hold our collective breaths waiting for either to occur, do expect these investigations to flood GOP campaigns leading up to 2024 elections.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 11 books, "Beyond Flagpoles and Footprints: Pioneering the Space Frontier" co-authored with Buzz Aldrin (2021), is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.