Okay, we are not being honest with you in the sense that we don’t actually regret informing you of Rupar’s dishonesty. We have long considered Aaron Rupar to be one of the most dishonest people on the Internet and he lived down to that reputation with his latest nonsense:
This is just a blatant lie from Fox Business host Larry Kudlow during this interview with Comer. There is no evidence Joe Biden was profiting from Hunter's business dealings. pic.twitter.com/TRJsoI9CJ6
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 10, 2023
At this point, anyone who says that there is no evidence that Joe Biden was benefitting from his son’s business dealings is lying to you. Evidence from his laptop shows that Hunter made sure that 10% went to the ‘Big Guy’ and evidence from his associates verify the intuition that the ‘Big Guy’ is Joe Biden. Furthermore, Hunter Biden once texted bitterly to his daughter: ‘[b]ut don't worry unlike Pop I won't make you give me half your salary.’ One might not consider that absolute proof, but it is certainly evidence of such a benefit.
Now, you might say, ‘but if we assume Joe Biden gets a bunch of money from his son, that wouldn’t be a direct benefit and maybe that is what he meant.’ Except Rupar took an entirely different attitude during the emoluments controversy when Trump was president.
The controversy concerned the part of the Constitution that stated that
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
So, throughout his presidency, Trump was dogged with claims that he violated this provision as follows:
1. Trump profited off of his hotel business.
2. Those hotels offered their rooms to the public at large.
3. That included officials from foreign states.
4. Therefore, Trump profited from such payments.
5. And therefore, such payments constitute an unconstitutional emolument.
The entire controversy was stupid and blatantly partisan. First, the Constitutional provision prohibits payments to the person, not indirect payments to that person. And that is because it would be impossible to insulate a person from all foreign money.
For instance, George Washington grew tobacco at Mount Vernon. Let us say that he ran a stall at a local marketplace selling tobacco in small amounts and in bulk. By the logic of the people banging this emoluments drum, Washington would have to make sure that no one who bought his tobacco was an employee of a foreign government, even after it exchanged several hands.
And for that matter, that would mean that Joe Biden was in the process of violating the emoluments clause as we speak. After all, Joe Biden has written books himself—or at least he is credited with writing them. Most politicians put out books and we are pretty sure most of them are boring, and mainly made as a way to get a little extra pocket change.
But if you go to the website of the University of Toronto, a public university in Canada, you can see they have a copy of Biden’s book ‘Promises to keep.’ Oh noes! That means a foreign government gave money to a book company that in turn gave money to Joe Biden! It’s an emoluments violation!!! Rhhhheeee!!!
Another problem is more basic. ‘Emoluments’ refers to salary. Renting a place doesn’t count. How do we know? Look to George Washington who openly rented properties to foreign dignitaries without anyone crying ‘emolument!’ Obviously, it isn't impossible that Washington violated the Constitution and no one care, but we presume that the practice of the founders tells us a great deal about the meaning of the Constitution.
(And that is what hotels do: They rent property to people, typically on a short-term basis.)
But in any case, the point of this diversion was that Rupar was not drawing that kind of distinction between direct and indirect payments when Trump was president:
I’m willing to wager the founding fathers would be more upset by Republicans turning a blind eye to egregious violations of the emoluments clause they enshrined in the Constitution https://t.co/lDf345tHly
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 18, 2019
Weirdly, I have not seen him or his fellow leftists talk about emoluments since Biden won the presidency. It’s almost as if they knew it was a bogus issue and only brought it up because they hated Trump. But, it couldn’t be that, right?
Naturally, dear reader, you might ask why we are willing to talk about indirect payments with Biden and not with Trump. Well, with Trump, we are talking about the meaning of a clause of the Constitution that doesn’t, on its face, cover indirect payments. With Biden, we are talking about the possibility of bribery and our bribery statute, 18 U.S. Code § 201, very explicitly covers indirect payments and even payments for to other people where the politician doesn’t benefit from at all. That is, if Joe Biden granted a pardon, for instance, in exchange for his son getting $50,000 that would be bribery even if Hunter Biden never gave his father a dime.
The difference is that the bribery statute prohibits the bargain, the quid pro quo. By comparison, the emoluments clause prohibits all payments that count as emoluments, regardless of whether there is any bargain. Since it is a complete prohibition, it makes sense for it to be a narrower limit.
Now, naturally, if say, the King of Saudi Arabia had said to Trump ‘I will stay at your hotel if you grant a pardon to John Doe’ (to make up a name) and Trump agreed to that, we would be looking at bribery. But that was never the accusation, just that Trump was profiting and that was supposedly verboten.
And today, Rupar is pretending there was no evidence that Joe Biden was profiting from Hunter Biden’s dealings. But you know it isn’t true, and we believe that Rupar also knows that.
Yes its not like Hunter paid Joe's taxes, paid $50,000/quarter in "rent" for their office together or that his entire extended family was paid millions of dollars. Not a single benefit to be found. Oh and of course Hunter didn't say he gave half his money to Joe, that's just…
— Chris Manning (@Manning4USCong) August 10, 2023
And everyone knows you're lying.
— Hollywood Resistance (@ResistItAllTX) August 11, 2023
Nothing but those magical-millions that showed-up in Biden's countless bank-accounts. Of course, those monies could have been deposited by those foreign oligarchs and dignitaries quite by mistake—some sort of schizophrenic accounting error. But then again, how many politicians…
— Sam'l (@SamlDowl) August 10, 2023
The missing text says:
But then again, how many politicians have millions of dollars deposited into their bank-accounts by mistake?
<grin>
You liberals are adorable.
You were saying? pic.twitter.com/I1FnMbvmeS
— JayJay McMaster, CD (@tantrumblue1) August 11, 2023
Well dingess, what do you suppose the purpose of 15 LLC’s was? Only way to rule out *evidence* of The Big Guy’s crime is to fully audit each and every one of them.
— Actual Antifascist (@Dog4Running) August 11, 2023
Maybe Garland will get right after that, huh? https://t.co/NwWmG4MkEE
There is nothing for Hunter without his dad being the big guy. He sold access to his dad with his dads full knowledge. Creepy Joe is corrupt and for sale. Spare us, jackass and lying moron. https://t.co/o6LVSJyASd
— Joe (@JoeC1776) August 11, 2023
Wait so Hunter Biden talking about how the “big guy” gets 15% of whatever he makes isn’t referring to Joe Biden? Then, who is he referring to? Jesus? https://t.co/lCoDJ932mO
— Angel Rivera 🇵🇷🇺🇲 (@AngelJRivera08) August 11, 2023
And, of course, Rupar had supporters, including this chucklehead:
@fcc How is this okay? Fox is triggering people into getting themselves killed by Federal law enforcement. https://t.co/vhUWqJ2PoB
— Fred Cruz (@Fred12780) August 10, 2023
Your fascism is showing.
***
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