Authored by Jonathan Turley,

With the commencement of the impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Joe Biden, three House committees will now pursue key linkages between the president and the massive influence peddling operation run by his son Hunter and brother James.

The impeachment inquiry should allow the House to finally acquire long-sought records of Hunter, James, and Joe Biden, as well as to pursue witnesses involved in their dealings.

I testified this week at the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry on the constitutional standards and practices in moving forward in the investigation. In my view, there is ample justification for an impeachment inquiry. If these allegations are established, they would clearly constitute impeachable offenses. I listed ten of those facts in my testimony that alone were sufficient to move forward with this inquiry.

I was criticized by both the left and the right for the testimony. 

Steven Bannon and others were upset that I did not believe that the basis for impeachment had already been established in the first hearing of the inquiry.

Others were angry that I supported the House efforts to resolve these questions of public corruption.

Without prejudging that evidence, there are four obvious potential articles of impeachment that have been raised in recent disclosures and sworn statements:

1. bribery,

2. conspiracy,

3. obstruction, and

4. abuse of power.

Bribery is the second impeachable act listed under Article II. The allegation that the President received a bribe worth millions was documented on a FD-1023 form by a trusted FBI source who was paid a significant amount of money by the government. There remain many details that would have to be confirmed in order to turn such an allegation into an article of impeachment.

Yet three facts are now unassailable.

First, Biden has lied about key facts related to these foreign dealings, including false statements flagged by the Washington Post.

Second, the president was indeed the focus of a corrupt multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme.

Third, Biden may have benefitted from this corruption through millions of dollars sent to his family as well as more direct benefit to Joe and Jill Biden.

What must be established is the President’s knowledge of or participation in this corrupt scheme. The House now has confirmed over 20 calls made to meetings and dinners with these foreign clients. It has confirmation of visits to the White House and dinners and events attended by Joe Biden. It also has confirmation of trips on Air Force II by Hunter to facilitate these deals, as well as payments where the President’s Delaware home address was used as late as 2019 for transfers from China.

The most serious allegations concern reported Washington calls or meetings by Hunter at the behest of these foreign figures. At least one of those calls concerned the removal or isolation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, an energy company paying Hunter as a board member. A few days later, Biden withheld a billion dollars in an approved loan to Ukrainian in order to force the firing of the prosecutor.

The House will need to strengthen the nexus with the president in seeking firsthand accounts of these meetings, calls, and transfers.

However, there is one thing that the House does not have to do. While there are references to Joe Biden receiving money from Hunter and other benefits (including a proposed ten percent from one of these foreign deals), he has already been shown to have benefited from these transfers.

There is a false narrative being pushed by both politicians and pundits that there is no basis for an inquiry, let alone an impeachment, unless a direct payment or gift can be shown to Joe Biden. That would certainly strengthen the case politically, but it is not essential legally. Even in criminal cases subject to the highest standard, payments to family members can be treated as benefits to a principal actor. Direct benefits can further strengthen articles of impeachment, but they would not be a prerequisite for such an action.

For example, in Ryan v. United States, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of George Ryan, formerly Secretary of State and then governor of Illinois, partly on account of benefits paid to his family, including the hiring of a band at his daughter’s wedding and other “undisclosed financial benefits to him and his family and to his friends.” Criminal cases can indeed be built on a “stream of benefits” running to the politician in question, his family, or his friends.

That is also true of past impeachments. I served as lead counsel in the last judicial impeachment tried before the Senate. My client, Judge G. Thomas Porteous, had been impeached by the House for, among other things, benefits received by his children, including gifts related to a wedding.

One of the jurors in the trial was Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who voted to convict and remove Porteous. Menendez is now charged with accepting gifts of vastly greater value in the recent corruption indictment.

The similarities between the Menendez and Biden controversies are noteworthy, in everything from the types of gifts to the counsel representing the accused.  The Menendez indictment includes conspiracy charges for honest services fraud, the use of office to serve personal rather the public interests. It also includes extortion under color of official right under 18 U.S.C. 1951. (The Hobbs Act allows for a charge of extortion without a threat of violence but rather the use of official authority.)

Courts have held that conspiracy charges do not require the defendant to be involved in all (or even most) aspects of the planning for a bribe or denial of honest services. Thus, a conspirator does not have to participate “in every overt act or know all the details to be charged as a member of the conspiracy.”

Menendez’s case shows that the Biden Administration is prosecuting individuals under the same type of public corruption that this impeachment inquiry is supposed to prove. The U.S. has long declared influence peddling to be a form of public corruption and signed international conventions to combat precisely this type of corruption around the world.

This impeachment inquiry is going forward. The House just issued subpoenas on Friday for the financial records of both Hunter and James Biden. The public could soon have answers to some of these questions. Madison called impeachment “indispensable…for defending the community” against such corruption. The inquiry itself is an assurance that, wherever this evidence may lead, the House can now follow.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Something has been going very wrong in the US economy for a very long time, and whatever is going wrong accelerated from 2009 to the present.

Longtime readers know I've covered America's soaring wealth and income inequality for many years, and so I read economist Noah Smith's recent post entitled Working-class wealth is improving with keen interest. I respect Noah's work, which is why I follow his Substack posts.

Here are some excerpts from his commentary:

"One of the truisms many Americans learned during the 2010s that turned out not to be so true is the idea that the wealth of the working class is relentlessly falling behind. The likely reason that people "learned" this "fact" is that it was true up until the financial crisis of 2008, and people didn't recognize it and get mad about until the crash.

For that we have to turn to the (Federal Reserve's) FRED website. But when we do, we can see that the bottom 50% of households have seen strong wealth growth in real terms since 2012.

Now, 50% of the country's households holding only 2.5% of the wealth is still very dramatic inequality. We should remember that some piece of this is just the life-cycle of wealth -- young people who haven't had time to build wealth and old people who have spent down most of their retirement account will look poor even if they will be comfortable or were comfortable in middle age. But even after accounting for that life-cycle effect, America is going to have very steep wealth inequality.

Trends are important, though. And this trend is a positive one. The fact that working-class wealth has been recovering as a share of America's total wealth for a decade, even as every group has increased its wealth, says that something is going right in the U.S. economy. A rising tide is lifting all boats, and it's lifting the boats at the bottom more than the others."

Data hound that I am, I decided to explore the FRED database for charts that would confirm his no-doubt sincerely issued claim that "The fact that working-class wealth has been recovering as a share of America's total wealth for a decade, even as every group has increased its wealth, says that something is going right in the U.S. economy."

What I found is the exact opposite of his claim: the bottom 50%'s share of total assets and financial assets have fallen sharply since 2009. In the greatest expansion of net worth / assets / wealth in US history, the bottom 50%'s share of this massive expansion of wealth has declined by 25%.

Rather than increase as Noah claimed, the working class's share of America's total wealth has plummeted. Let's look at the data, as depicted on the FRED charts. Let's start with the chart Noah referenced, which does indeed show the wealth (net worth) of the bottom 50% rising smartly over the past decade, from a nadir of less than $1 trillion to $3.6 trillion in 2023:

For context, let's look at household net worth, which rose an astounding $90 trillion from $56 trillion in 2009 to $146 trillion in 2023. As the chart above shows, the bottom 50% garnered $3 trillion of this $90 trillion in gains, or 3%. This modest percentage is not supportive of Noah's claim that "A rising tide is lifting all boats, and it's lifting the boats at the bottom more than the others."

Here we see the 167 million Americans in the bottom 50% own $3.6 trillion, the top 1% --3.3 million Americans--own $45 trillion, a staggering 12.5X the net worth of the bottom 50%.

The top 0.1%--330,000 Americans--own $18.5 trillion, an astonishing 5X the net worth of the 167 million Americans in the bottom 50%.

Next, let's look at each segment's share of total assets. The bottom 50%'s share of assets plummeted 25% since 2009, from 8% to 6%.

The share of the top 1% soared 26% since 2009:

The share of the top 0.1% skyrocketed 34% since 2009:

These charts show the bottom 50%'s share of America's assets hasn't risen, it's cratered. The rising tide of $90 trillion in additional wealth since 2009 has raised the yachts of the top 1% and the top 0.1% such that the bottom 50% share of assets declined. The bottom 50%'s leaky boat--as measured by their share of assets--actually took on water.

Financial assets are important because financial assets generate income and economic security. let's look at each segment's share of the nation's vast financial assets.

The bottom 50%'s meager share--167 million American's share of the nation's stupendous financial assets--fell 26% from 3.1% to 2.3%--a sliver so thin that it's essentially signal noise.

Meanwhile, the top 1%'s share of financial assets rose 24% since 2009, more than 15X the bottom 50%'s share of financial assets.

The top 0.1%'s share of financial assets soared 34%% since 2009, 6.5X the bottom 50%'s share of financial assets.

Noah's claim of "A rising tide is lifting all boats, and it's lifting the boats at the bottom more than the others." is akin to being behind 49-0 in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter and cheerleading the team's increase in total yardage gained from 11 yards in the 2nd quarter to 33 yards in the 3rd quarter--a positive trend.

Noah claimed the financial metrics of the bottom 50% are a positive trend. If we consider the bottom 50%'s share of total assets and financial assets, this claim is not supported by the FRED data.

Noah then extended this claim to an even larger claim that "something is going right in the U.S. economy."

The message of the Federal Reserve's data depicted in the charts is the exact opposite: something has been going very wrong in the US economy for a very long time, and whatever is going wrong accelerated from 2009 to the present.

Those actually living in the bottom 50% (as opposed to jetting around to conferences) might find Noah's ponderings that the bottom 50%'s impoverishment is a statistical anomaly generated by temporarily impecunious youth climbing their way to wealth, and retirees who spent their wealth and are now comfortably impoverished somewhat risible. The reality is more likely mac and cheese from the dollar store prepared in an overcrowded flat or a trailer park and rapacious credit card interest rates and exploitive late fees.

By all means, let's look at the data before making expansive claims.

*  *  *

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF) 

Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free