International
Hunter Biden May Never Have Been On Trial Were It Not For Whistleblowers And No-Nonsense Judge

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
“During the first three years of the Biden administration, Weiss spent most of the time sitting on his hands as the statute of limitations chewed up the Biden investigation,” McCarthy wrote for the National Review. “Especially egregious was his willful failure to move on tax offenses (and potentially other offenses) based on Hunter’s peddling of his father’s political influence during the last years of the Obama administration, when the elder Biden was vice president (e.g., Hunter’s raking in millions from the corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, while dad pressured Kyiv to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma).”
Hunter Biden may never have been tried on felony gun charges without IRS whistleblowers coming forward and careful questions from an observant federal judge.
Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony gun charges Tuesday in Delaware and is set to go to trial in September on felony tax charges. After years of avoiding charges entirely, special counsel David Weiss was forced to bring Hunter Biden’s case to trial after his “sweetheart” plea deal, which would have had Biden plead guilty to two misdemeanors and enter a diversion agreement to avoid jail time for a felony gun charge, fell apart last July under questioning by U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika.
Hunter Biden began negotiating his plea deal in May 2023, shortly after IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley first came forward in April by sending a letter to Congress, not yet identifying himself but expressing his intention to expose the Hunter Biden investigation.
Shapley accused DOJ prosecutors of “slow-walking” the investigation and providing Hunter Biden with “preferential treatment” in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 26.
Weiss removed Shapley, along with Joseph Ziegler, the other whistleblower who came forward, from the investigation last May.
🚨🚨 Whether you think the gun charge conviction today is just a red herring or not, just remember that none of the government’s shenanigans would have been exposed were it not for IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler.
Before their disclosures, Biden appointees had…
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) June 11, 2024
The plea deal was announced June 20, 2023, just two days before the Ways and Means Committee released the testimony of both whistleblowers.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted Wednesday that the plea deal’s dramatic collapse makes it “easy to forget” Weiss tried making the case go away entirely until the whistleblowers made it “politically impossible.”
“During the first three years of the Biden administration, Weiss spent most of the time sitting on his hands as the statute of limitations chewed up the Biden investigation,” McCarthy wrote for the National Review. “Especially egregious was his willful failure to move on tax offenses (and potentially other offenses) based on Hunter’s peddling of his father’s political influence during the last years of the Obama administration, when the elder Biden was vice president (e.g., Hunter’s raking in millions from the corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, while dad pressured Kyiv to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma).”
“Because of Weiss, those crimes can no longer be prosecuted (which is why they are not in the tax indictment Weiss finally brought after his effort to tank the case entirely failed),” he continued.
Even after whistleblowers exposed the investigation, the plea deal seemed designed to protect Hunter Biden.
Noreika, who oversaw his gun charges trial, highlighted this when she probed the scope of a sweeping immunity provision included in the diversion agreement.
The provision stated Hunter Biden would not be criminally prosecuted for any crimes encompassed by the statement of facts in his plea deal, which listed the millions of dollars he raked in through overseas business dealings in China, Ukraine and Romania.
“So let me first ask, do you have any precedent for agreeing not to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with the case or the charges being diverted?” Noreika asked DOJ prosecutor Leo Wise during the July hearing.
“I’m not aware of any, your Honor,” Wise replied.
When prosecutors and defense attorneys disputed in court whether there could be future charges brought against Hunter Biden under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the deal crumbled and he changed his plea to not guilty.
Hunter Biden’s California trial on federal tax charges is slated to move forward in September.
He was indicted in December on nine charges relating to his alleged failure to pay over $1.4 million in taxes over a four-year period. At the same time, he was pouring millions into expenses like “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” according to the indictment.
Crime
‘We’re Going To Lose’: Steve Bannon Warns Withholding Epstein Files Would Doom GOP

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon warned on Friday that Republicans would suffer major losses if President Donald Trump’s administration does not move to release documents related to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and associations.
Axios reported on Sunday that a two-page memo showed the Department Of Justice (DOJ) and FBI found no evidence Epstein kept a “client list” or was murdered, but public doubts have continued. Bannon said on “Bannon’s War Room” that failure to release information would lead to the dissipation of one-tenth of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and significant losses for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
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“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that, it’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why it’s not going to go away … For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,” Bannon said. “If we lose 10% of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in ’26, we’re going to lose the [presidency]. They don’t even have to steal it, which they’re going to try to do in ’28, because they’re going to sit there and they go, ‘They’ve disheartened the hardest-core populist nationalists’ — that’s always been who governs us.”
Bannon also demanded the publication of all the Epstein documents on “Bannon’s War Room” Thursday. He called on the DOJ to go to court and push for the release of the documents or for Trump to appoint a special counsel to manage the publication.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking. Shortly after, he was found dead in his New York Metropolitan Correctional Center cell shortly after. Officials asserted that he hanged himself in his cell.
However, Epstein’s death has sparked years of theories because of the malfunctioning of prison cameras, along with guards admitting to falsifying documents about checking on the then-inmate. The DOJ inspector general later confirmed that multiple surveillance cameras outside of his cell were inoperable, while others captured the common area outside his door.
Both Bannon and Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson have speculated that Epstein had connections to intelligence agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta allegedly indicated that Epstein was tied to intelligence, according to Vicky Ward in The Daily Beast.
espionage
FBI’s Dan Bongino may resign after dispute about Epstein files with Pam Bondi

From LifeSiteNews
Both Dan Bongino and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been taking the heat for what many see as the obstruction of the full Epstein files release.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino took the day off on Friday after an argument with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s case files.
One source close to Bongino told Axios that “he ain’t coming back.” Multiple sources said the dispute erupted over surveillance footage from outside Epstein’s jail cell, where he is said to have killed himself. Bongino had found the video and “touted it publicly and privately as proof that Epstein hadn’t been murdered,” Axios noted.
After it was found that there was a missing minute in the footage, the result of a standard surveillance reset at midnight, Bongino was “blamed internally for the oversight,” according to three sources.
Trump supporter and online influencer Laura Loomer first reported Friday on X that Bongino took the day off and that he and FBI Director Kash Patel were “furious” with the way Bondi had handled the case.
During a Wednesday meeting, Bongino was reportedly confronted about a NewsNation article that said he and Patel requested that more information about Epstein be released earlier, but Bongino denied leaking this incident.
“Pam said her piece. Dan said his piece. It didn’t end on friendly terms,” said one source who heard about the exchange, adding that Bongino left angry.
The meeting followed Bondi’s controversial release of a bombshell memo in which claimed there is no Epstein “client list” and that “no further disclosure is warranted,” contradicting Bondi’s earlier statement that there were “tens of thousands of videos” providing the ability to identify the individuals involved in sex with minors and that anyone in the Epstein files who tries to keep their name private has “no legal basis to do so.”
The memo “is attempting to sweep the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal under the rug,” according to independent investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger in a superb analysis published on X.
“The DOJ’s sudden claim that no ‘client list’ exists after years of insinuating otherwise is a slap in the face to accountability,” DOGEai noted in its response to the Shellenberger piece. “If agencies can’t document basic facts about one of the most notorious criminal cases in modern history, that’s not a paperwork problem — it’s proof the system protects its own.”
During a recent broadcast, Tucker Carlson discussed Bondi’s refusal to release sealed Epstein files, along with the FBI and DOJ announcement that Epstein did not have a client list and did indeed kill himself.
Carlson offered the theory that U.S. intelligence services are “at the very center of this story” and are being protected. His guest, Saagar Enjeti, agreed. “That’s the most obvious ,” Enjeti said, referencing past CIA-linked pedophilia cases. He noted the agency had avoided prosecutions for fear suspects would reveal “sources and methods” in court.
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb has discussed in her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” how the intelligence community leverages sex trafficking through operatives like Epstein to blackmail politicians, members of law enforcement, businessmen, and other influential figures.
Just one example of evidence of this, according to Webb, is former U.S. Secretary of Labor and U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s explanation as to why he agreed to a non-prosecution deal in the lead-up to Epstein’s 2008 conviction of procuring a child for prostitution. Acosta told Trump transition team interviewers that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” adding that he was told to “leave it alone,” The Daily Beast reported.
While Epstein himself never stood trial, as he allegedly committed suicide while under “suicide watch” in his jail cell in 2019, many have questioned the suicide and whether the well-connected financier was actually murdered as part of a cover-up.
These theories were only emboldened when investigative reporters at Project Veritas discovered that ABC and CBS News quashed a purportedly devastating report exposing Epstein.
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