Cross-Examination

• Joe’s exchanges with Hunter’s associate: Aside from Jimmy Buffett and Gordon Lightfoot, one of the most notable casualties of the past year was Joe Biden’s continued insistence that he’d never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings. That denial has evolved over the course of the year, and the administration’s gymnastic wordplay has been audacious if not impressive. And now comes this revelation from, of all sources, NBC News: “Joe Biden exchanged emails with his son Hunter’s business associate 54 times while he was serving as vice president, and some of the messages were sent around the time the elder Biden was traveling to Ukraine and his son was working for a Ukrainian gas company, according to records released by House Republicans.” When it came time to comment, the cat got Team Biden’s collective tongues, but a spokesperson “pointed to statements by House Democrats that Hunter Biden’s business associate, Eric Schwerin, worked as Joe Biden’s financial adviser from 2009 to 2017 and helped him file his tax returns.” Uh-huh. We wonder: Did H&R Schwerin also help Hunter file his tax returns?

• The eight-year immigration check-in: Just yesterday, we covered the worst story of the year, the broken record of a disaster on our southern border, and we noted a tiny episode that epitomized the farcical nature of Team Biden’s impeachable dereliction. An illegal immigrant from Colombia who’d crossed the border in El Paso was handed a check-in card by U.S. authorities and sternly told that she needs to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City on Thursday, January 23 … 2031. We kid you not. Eight years from now. For perspective, Donald Trump will be halfway through his third term in office by then (we kid). Fox News reports: “The woman’s attorney, Matthew Kolken, [said] in the nearly 30 years of immigration law he has practiced, the woman’s release with a check in eight years from now is one of the most shocking things he has ever seen. Kolken said his client is a legitimate asylum seeker with what he believes is an airtight case.” They’re all airtight cases, of course, so long as Joe Biden is in charge of border security. Given this, it’s no wonder that House Speaker Mike Johnson sent a scathing letter to the president yesterday “blaming him for the border crisis and urging him to take a number of executive actions.” We’re sure the president will take it under advisement.

• Cop-defunder hypocrisy: From the drawers of our jam-packed Hypocrisy Files comes the case of first-term Congressman Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat and erstwhile cop defunder who on Tuesday was caught requesting a police patrol in his neighborhood back home — a matter duly and publicly noted by the Austin Police Retired Officers Association. Cops for me but not for thee? Say it ain’t so, Greg. As the Washington Examiner reports: “Casar was one of the most prominent advocates of defunding the police force in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter summer protests. The congressman encouraged the city to reduce funding for the department drastically while he was on the City Council. The calls to defund the city’s police force led to a series of resignations and retirements from the department.” Casar’s request for police protection wasn’t his only exchange with law enforcement recently. No, it seems he also sent a letter to the Department of Justice last week “accusing the Texas police force of racism and discrimination against people with mental health problems.” Concerning those mental health problems, wethinks the congressman doth protest too much.

• Reality hits the EV pipe dream: Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) announced on Thursday that it was indefinitely postponing a meeting scheduled for a vote to approve an electric vehicle mandate similar to California’s. The reason for the postponement — a massive storm that knocked out power for more than 400,000 residents in the Pine Tree State and led to Governor Janet Mills declaring an emergency in 14 counties. BEP has pursued an aggressive green agenda, including the proposed EV mandate dubbed the Advanced Clear Car Program, which would require at least 40% of new car purchases in the state to be EVs by 2027, increasing to 80% by 2032. State Republican lawmakers have been joined by some Democrats in raising objections to the BEP’s proposed EV mandate. As state House Republican leader Billy Bob Faulkingham argued: “Extremists seem to think that only 6% of consumers want EVs because the government hasn’t forced them to buy one. The truth is this plan isn’t feasible because of Maine’s geography and infrastructure. It is about freedom of consumer choice. I hope the BEP will abandon this horrible idea before it ruins the Maine economy.” Democrat Representative Jared Golden has also been critical of the plan: “Forcing Mainers to purchase cars and trucks powered by electricity when our grid is insufficient, charging stations are few and far between, and a storm like yesterday’s would render 80% of cars useless is, to say the least, ill-advised.” Hopefully, this timely storm will save Mainers from a disastrous plan that would cripple the state both economically and practically.

• Biden screws seniors to splurge on greenies: To see his green dream realized, Joe Biden has been infusing the not-so-burgeoning electric vehicle industry with cash. To subsidize the EV industry, the Biden administration diverted “savings” from Medicare to green projects. This little-known funding redistribution gambit was written into the Democrats’ dubiously named Inflation Reduction Act, which diverted roughly $280 billion from Medicare’s prescription drug provisions to Biden’s green agenda, part of which provides tax credits for EV purchases. So, instead of lowering the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, Biden and company pumped billions into an EV crony-capitalist scheme in the hope that Americans will suddenly ditch their gas-powered vehicles and switch over to costlier, more limited, and less practical EVs en masse. Meanwhile, thanks to Bidenflation, seniors are having to shell out more of their money for prescription drugs.

• “Repugnant” California gun-carry ban blocked: California gets most everything wrong these days, especially in matters concerning law and order, self-defense, and especially our Second Amendment. But a broken clock is right twice a day, and it’s in this spirit that we cheer the ruling of a federal judge who blocked what The Daily Wire called “a far-reaching California law that would have banned carrying guns almost everywhere in public, including at places like churches and playgrounds.” The suit was brought by the California Rifle and Pistol Association after Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law in September. Calling the original ruling “repugnant,” U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, a George W. Bush appointee, “ripped into the law in his decision, saying that it violated the Second Amendment and openly defied the Supreme Court.” CRPA President Chuck Michel praised Judge Carney’s decision. “California progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court’s mandate from the Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it,” he said. “The Court saw through the State’s gambit.”

• A massacre in Prague: A student attending Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, killed 14 people and wounded at least 25 others when he opened fire at the school on Thursday. This attack marks the worst massacre in the Czech Republic’s history. Previously, the worst attack had been in 2015, when an individual shot and killed eight people in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod. No motive has been determined. It is unclear whether the perpetrator killed himself or was killed by police responding to the attack. According to authorities investigating the attack, the perpetrator was an excellent student and had no prior criminal record and he acted alone. They further noted that there was no indication the crime was connected to some radical ideology. He legally owned the firearms he used in the attack — a fact that instantly became the primary culprit for the crime according to the Leftmedia and anti-Second Amendment groups.

• Biden’s bad Venezuelan deal: Joe Biden’s foreign policy strategy projects American weakness. And that weakness was again on display following a prisoner swap deal with Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. In the deal, the U.S. receives Leonard Francis, who is wanted for swindling some $35 million from the U.S. Navy. The U.S. also gets 10 Americans imprisoned by Maduro’s regime and an additional 21 Venezuelans who were political prisoners. In exchange, the Biden administration is sending Maduro one man, Alex Saab. So, how is this more evidence of Biden projecting weakness? After all, 31 for one appears like a good ratio. Well, it has much to do with who Saab is. He’s a Hezbollah operative who was actively engaged in mapping possible targets in New York City “to determine how a future attack could cause the most destruction.” Targets included the Rockefeller Center, the United Nations, and Time Square. Furthermore, he was convicted of the attempted murder of a man he believed to be an Israeli spy. Why would Maduro want Saab? As Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) explained: “Alex Saab ran Maduro’s global money laundering empire and his relationships with Hezbollah and drug cartels. He is now free to do so again. Today’s swap strengthens Maduro and makes Americans less safe around the world.”

Headlines

• Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs demand answers on Jack Smith’s “unprecedented investigation and prosecution” of Trump (Townhall)

• Migrants are being released on U.S. streets at the border as shelters see record numbers (NBC News)

• Rudy Giuliani seeks bankruptcy after $148 million judgment in defamation case (Reuters)

• Gadi Haggai confirmed as first American to die in Hamas captivity; wife remains held by terrorists (New York Post)

• Billionaire Harvard donor pulls back donations over president’s anti-Semitism testimony (Fox Business)

• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and husband sue DOD over conditions around COVID vaccine requirement (Washington Examiner)

• Feds give Pornhub deferred prosecution agreement in criminal sex-trafficking case (Washington Examiner)

• New York lost nearly 102,000 residents in a year — most in the nation — while Texas saw biggest population gain (New York Post)

• Virginia drops remaining criminal charge against Loudoun superintendent who lied about rape (Daily Wire)

• Catholic women’s college in Indiana reverses policy change allowing applicants who “identify as women” (Fox News)

• Humor: Menu anxiety and 13 other very real anxieties Gen Z faces (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.