“All roads lead to Joe”

The House Oversight Committee has posted the opening statements of the two IRS whistleblowers who testified on the farcical investigation of Hunter Biden. They testified at the committee’s public hearing yesterday. Gary Shapley’s statement is posted here. Joseph Ziegler’s statement is posted here.

C-SPAN has also posted video of the opening statements as delivered. Gary Shapley’s is below.

Joseph Ziegler’s is below.

Both men give the appearance of unimpeachable professional integrity. They have nothing to gain by their coming forward. They have everything to lose. Their testimony was powerful and devastating.

The New York Post makes Steven Nelson’s report on the hearing its cover story: “IRS whistleblowers describe alleged Hunter Biden coverup: ‘Not letting me do my investigative job.’” The Post’s Victor Nava adds this morsel: “Foreign nationals gave Biden family and associates over $17M, IRS whistleblower claims.” That $17M and counting.

Miranda Devine extracts highlights in her New York Post column here. At the Free Beacon Chuck Ross extracts major revelations.

Devine and the New York Post are our foremost chroniclers of Hunter Biden saga. What’s it all about? She observes: “As The Post has pointed out since the first day of our coverage of this scandal, all roads from the Hunter Biden scandals lead to Joe Biden.”

While the hearing was in progress yesterday, I wrote that the Democrats behaved as clowns. If you believe that Democrats are noxious idiots beneath the contempt of decent citizens, your opinion of them would have been lowered by a full viewing of the hearing.

Rep. Dan Goldman thinks he’s better than the rest. Unlike most of his Democratic colleagues, he tried to stay on topic for a moment. However, his participation was of the exploding-cigar variety. Professor Jonathan Turley noted it on Twitter and has now devoted an excellent New York Post column with an apt headline to it: “Joe Biden hit hard in whistleblower hearing — by Democrat Dan Goldman.” That should leave a mark.

UPDATE: Since posting my comments above, I have received Devine’s newsletter. She takes special pleasure in Goldman’s performance:

Dan Goldman, smarmy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, was supposed to be the Democrats’ new hotshot hitman, stepping into the shoes of Adam “Shifty” Schiff. But he keeps shooting himself in the foot, or, more precisely, when it comes to playing Joe Biden’s defacto defense counsel, letting the cat out of the bag.

That’s what he did when he tried monstering IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing. While trying to prove that their evidence actually exonerated Joe Biden from any knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business affairs, he accidentally proved the opposite.

Goldman grilled Shapley about his testimony that Joe had stopped by a lunch with Hunter and his Chinese business partners at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC: “Hunter told his Dad that ‘I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys.’“

Goldman tried to downplay the meeting: “Now… that doesn’t sound much like Joe Biden was involved in whatever Hunter Biden was doing with the CEFC, if Hunter Biden is telling him that he’s trying to do business with them, does it?”

He was no match for Shapley: “But it does show that he told his father he was trying to do business, and he was talking to his father about the business.”

Goldman started waving his arms around and talking over Shapley, but it was too late.

He had inadvertently illuminated the very truth he was trying to hide.

As I was saying…

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses