Tag: Jamie Raskin

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Congress GOP Joe Biden

Jamie Raskin Destroys The GOP’s Bullsh*t Biden ‘Bribery’ Claims

 

The Republican effort to slag President Joe Biden by providing false information and inaccurate claims they say proves Biden was part of a bribery scheme while service as vice president took a major hit today when the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) revealed evidence from the first impeachment of former president Donald Trump that directly refutes one of the main pillars of the GOP’s bogus claims.

NBC News reports that Raskin sent a detailed and lengthy letter to Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) in which he destroyed, point by point that anyone from a Ukrainian energy firm ever had any contact with Biden.

The document, released in a letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the committee’s ranking member, to its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is a 2019 questionnaire filled out by Mykola Zlochevsky, the co-founder of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, where Biden’s son Hunter once served on the board. Zlochevsky denies ever having contacts with Joe Biden while he was vice president or receiving assistance from his staff while Hunter served on the board.

Specifically, when Zlochevsky was asked if he had ever been in contact with Biden, he emphatically denied any meetings, calls, or other communications.

When asked to detail contacts between then-Vice President Biden and his office from 2013 to 2019, Zlochevsky wrote (in all caps): “No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement.” When asked whether Biden or his staff assisted Burisma in any way with business deals or meetings, he wrote, “NO.”

In the letter to Comer, Raskin notes:

“Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department.”

Additionally, Raskin makes it clear that all of the allegations against President Biden are “hearsay” that cannot be supported by facts, writing that the source behind much of the information “explicitly noted that it is not unusual for Ukrainian business executives to brag and show off and that he could not offer any opinion supporting the veracity of the allegations he was relaying.”

Rather than deal with the factual presentation made by Raskin, Comer would only say that “This unclassified record stands on its own and memorializes a confidential human source’s conversations with a Burisma executive dating back to 2015. The Burisma executive claims then-Vice President Biden solicited and received a $5 million bribe in exchange for certain actions.”

But as Raskin proved, the top executive at Burisma denies any such conversations ever took place, which is a direct repudiation of the allegations that have been made over the past several months by Comer and his eager accomplices in right-wing media who are determined to provide cover for the multiple criminal indictments that have been handed down against Trump.

 

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Congress GOP Joe Biden

Jamie Raskin: GOP’s Bogus Claims Of A Biden Bribery Scandal Can Be Traced To Giuliani And Russia

On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee made an announcement that they had been made aware of information being held by the FBI that allegedly proves President Joe Biden has been involved in a bribery scandal that supposedly took place while he was serving as vice president in the Obama administration.

CBS News reports that the allegation came from House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (KY) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

In their letter to (FBI Director Chris) Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Grassley and Comer said that it had come to their attention that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” their letter said. 

The White House immediately responded to announcement from Grassley and Comer, with Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, noting:

“For going on five years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically-motivated attacks against the President and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

“When it comes to President Biden’s personal finances, anybody can take a look: he has offered an unprecedented level of transparency, releasing a total of 25 years of tax returns to the American public.”

And now Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, is suggesting that the latest attempt by Republicans to create a scandal is actually part of a Russian campaign to discredit President Biden, explaining in a statement:

“Committee Republicans are recycling unsubstantiated claims floated by Senate Republicans by issuing a subpoena to the FBI to require the release of a June 2020 tip from an unknown informant.  During this same time period, Rudy Giuliani and Russian agents, sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, were peddling disinformation aimed at interfering in the 2020 presidential election.  Given Chair Comer’s commitment to ‘dismantle’ the FBI, it’s no surprise that he would rely on these unverified tips to attack President Biden in one more baseless partisan stunt.”

In the weeks ahead, you can expect to hear more from Comer and other Republicans about this nonexistent scandal they’ve created out of thin air. They have nothing, but it won’t keep them from peddling lies to their constituents for the purpose of slagging Biden and trying to raise money off it.

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Capitol Insurrection Congress GOP January 6

Jamie Raskin Goes Viral With Withering Takedown Of GOP Lies About January 6

Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin is fed up with the lies being peddled by his Republican colleagues and their echo chamber at Fox News, so he’s laying a devastating fact-check on those who continue to try and minimize what happened on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters attacked Congress and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

On the floor of the House Wednesday, Raskin offered a devastating rebuttal to those who still make excuses for the Capitol insurrection, labeling their lies “nonsense.”

It all begins, Raskin noted, with “Donald Trump’s Big Lie” that a second term in office was stolen from him.

“They say, ‘Who knows, maybe he won, maybe he didn’t. You say Joe Biden’s president, we say Donald Trump’s president.’ Nonsense!”

Raskin added:

“Sixty federal and state courts rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that they put forward. Sixty. They don’t have a single court that ever ruled in their favor. Donald Trump lost that election by more than seven million votes, 306-232 in the Electoral College.”

As a result, Raskin said, “Their Big Lie has to stretch all the way over January 6. We have to disbelieve the evidence of our own eyes and our own ears. We saw them come and descend upon this chamber, this Congress, wounding and injuring 150 of our police officers, breaking people’s noses, breaking people’s fingers, putting people in the hospital, and already they’re back on the news with big lies saying, ‘No, no, no, it was a tourist visit.'”

The Maryland Democrat also slammed Republicans and Fox for continuing to suggest that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest, writing on Twitter:

 “Tucker Carlson’s assault on the truth about January 6 is unconscionable, but more scandalous yet is Kevin McCarthy’s central role in its design. America, we cannot let McCarthy and Carlson become the Orwellian editors of our past or the authoritarian authors of our future.”

Jan. 6 was an attack on the American republic by domestic terrorists and their GOP supporters in Congress. If we forget or even minimize that fact, it could well happen again.

Here’s Jamie Raskin’s full speech:

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Congress Economics GOP

Jamie Raskin Masterfully Mocks The GOP’s ‘Pathetic’ Anti-Inflation Bill

On Monday, the House Rules Committee began hearings on the long-awaited Republican plan for controlling inflation, and it didn’t take long before it became clear that their bill — HR 347 a.k.a. the “Rein In Act” — is nothing but a publicity stunt that won’t do a damn thing to help reduce prices or inflation.

One of the committee members, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), began his comments on the legislation by noting, “The world has been waiting with bated breath for their answer to it. The long wait is over.”

Raskin added that the Rein In Act, which stands for Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation, would fight inflation by adding new reporting requirements for certain executive orders:

“You heard that right: A reporting requirement related to executive orders.”

Specifically, the bill would require would require the Biden administration to  “provide an inflation estimate” of every executive order “with a significant effect on the gross budget.” Why? According to committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY), so that the president will “think twice” before he issues any future orders.

This led Raskin to dryly comment:

“Whether you think this is the most brilliant legislation since Social Security, or the dumbest idea since the last trillion-dollar giveaway in taxes, you must concede that it will have little or zero effect on the global inflation rate or the domestic inflation rate.

“We know executive orders have nothing to do with inflation” and the Reins Act is “devoid of any serious legislative meaning where potential economic consequence … it’s pathetically weak.”

The Maryland Democrat suggested a more accurate name for the legislation would be the “Running on Empty Initiative based on no ideas — None — Act.”

You can watch the video of Raskin’s remarks at this link

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Congress GOP January 6

WATCH Jamie Raskin Destroy Marjorie Taylor Greene For Continuing To Defend Jan. 6 Rioters

During a meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) chastised Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for claiming that the “major civil rights issue” facing the country is the pro-Trump rioters who have been criminally charged and incarcerated for taking part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Raskin noted that Greene is blind to the mistreatment of those who live in Washington, D.C. and instead whines about “MAGA insurrectionists who are in jail for assaulting officers, interfering with a federal proceeding, and engaging in seditious conspiracy.”

The Maryland Democrat added that House Republicans would love to “turn the clock back on D.C.’s home rule power and relive the glory days when Washington was run like a colony by some racist Dixiecrats out of the House district committee.”

He finished his verbal destruction of Greene and her GOP colleagues by remarking:

“Today, it’s the GOP that is determined to put the people of Washington in their place … attacking Washington not just for its local voting rights policies and criminal justice code, but for its gun safety policies, for its defensive abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, its decriminalization of marijuana, and dozens of other issues potentially headed to the House floor.”

Raskin is absolutely right about House Republicans and their colleagues in the Senate who are still trying to minimize what took place on Jan. 6. To hear them tell it, the rioting was “legitimate political speech” and no one should be punished for taking part in the attack on the Capitol.