The effort has been triggered by Hunter Biden’s struggles to pay his mounting legal bills amid increasingly stretched resources and his pursuit of a new, aggressive legal strategy, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
A constellation of lawyers have worked for Biden over the years, and he continues to add new ones as he prepares to confront the investigations that House Republicans are starting to pursue.
It’s unclear exactly how much the president’s son owes in legal fees, in part because some of the bills were expected to be discounted or treated as pro bono work. But three people familiar with his situation estimate his current legal debt at well into the millions of dollars, and the figure is likely to grow as he faces additional congressional investigations.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Tuesday, January 31, 2023. Krystal Ball has taken it on herself to attack others because she thinks they're not as smart as she is. Reality: Krystal's not smart. Reality: Krystal is advocating for the same logic that led to the Iraq War. Reality: What follows below is not sweet or kind or intended to be.
I'm not in the mood for stupid. Grow up, Krystal Ball snarled at those who don't want to join her sexual fetish with Marianne Williamson.
Grow up?
Okay, Krystal, you first. Are we playing the truth game? I haven't played it on such a large scale since I left Julia Ormond in tears. But, okay, I'll bite. Just don't be surprised by the puncture wounds.
On a scale of one to ten, Krystal Ball, you're a five. You're never going to be better than that because plastic surgery can't do a thing with that pointed head and you have ugly eyes. That's reality. Grow up. You're involved with an attractive man. That's probably not going to work out well. He's good looking and, as evidenced by his recent hair color change, he's ready and willing to do other things to make himself even more attractive.
We're not done with you yet, dear.
MSNBC was your last chance at fame and fortune. You failed. There's not another chance for a woman your age coming down the road. Even if society changes, it will change for future female generations. Your time will have passed and you've aged out of opportunity. You're now on a popular YOUTUBE program where your male co-host is also prettier than you and has a decade or two to prove himself because of the way sexism works. While you're career's winding down, his is just beginning.
Ready to grow up yet?
No real career prospects beyond what you have now. You've reached the highest level you will ever reach and, from here on out, it's all downhill. Grow up. Kids? Well you're forty-one, I don't think you can wait too much longer unless you want people to think they're your grandkids? That'll be fun won't it, Kyle looking young and handsome and you looking like a grandma while other parents assume Kyle's wife passed away and he's got his mother helping him with the kids.
Want to grow up today, Krystal? Want to face just how awful your future is? Marry Kyle and spend the rest of your life wondering if he can really love you and really be attracted to you?
I can play the truth game all day long. It never leaves me in tears.
And maybe next time when you think you have knowledge, grasp that you are a blithering idiot.
Now I don't think I'm all that smart. I work from the belief that I'm the least intelligent person in any room. When people don't know some basic fact, I don't think, "I know it! I'm so smart!" I think, "Wait, I know this. If I know it why the hell don't you?"
And I don't present as an expert. You know that you self-present as an expert despite knowing nothing.
Here's what we learned about Krystal in that video: She has a pointed head and really can't carry off a middle part and has no real friends who'll tell her that to her face. But mainly what we've learned is that she's not a journalist.
She's not a journalist. She's not here to inform. She's a whore for a political party. That's all she is because her tiny little mind can't expand to allow her to become anything else.
So she wants to hector people about how to vote. You know, Krystal, grow up because grown ups don't need you. No one does.
You don't know politics and you don't know history. You're a raving lunatic making fun of others and thinking you sound informed. You don't.
Every election cycle it gets worse. The whoring, yes. But I'm actually talking about the results.
Krystal wants you to know that there's no point to a third party. Grow up. Grow up. People are suffering.
Suffering!
Not Krystal, of course, but you know people. This free floating concept of people -- people she doesn't know, people she's never met and never will. Certainly not anyone she'll bring on BREAKING POINTS -- or RISING before that. Because she doesn't care about the poor, for example. She bare knuckled it through college as an economics major and they may be the only thing worse than a general studies major.
People will suffer!!!
People always suffer, you stupid idiot.
And you do nothing to help them so stop lying to yourself. Hop off that high horse before life knocks you off it.
The idiot she speaks with says -- and she agrees -- we got close with Bernie Sanders. No, that didn't happen. There was no close and this isn't horse shoes. Bernie turned tail and ran which really is the story of his life. He's a con man. I called him out here long, long ago. We've got a VA scandal -- to just give one example -- where people are dying, veterans are dying because they can't get VA care and the VA is using two sets of books to hide the long delays in treatment. This emerges in the mainstream media. And does so hours before a Senate VA Hearing. And yet?
Bernie announces, as chair of the Committee, that they're not going to discuss that. They'll be time for it later. Now let's instead focus on holistic treatments and alternative therapies and . . .
Yeah, he's that pathetic.
He's a con artist from long ago. He conned in the House (I have to run every two years so I can only go so far left) then he finds a new excuse when he gets in the Senate.
Many of Hillary's attacks on him in the campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination came from here because I'd already documented it and because I knew Hillary's team. Years and years ago, once he betrayed veterans, we'd made a point to note how he never accomplished anything.
And that is the reality. In Congress since 1991 and what can he really point to? Naming some post offices?
These same idiots who pimped Bernie (Krystal) are now trying to pimp Marianne Williamson. I know Marianne, I even like her. How's she going to be president? Marianne goes through staff rather quickly. And she's never been a leader outside of her New Age cult of the 80s and 90s. When the press slammed her for her 'answer' of positive thoughts when she was running last time? Let her try to be the front runner and you're going to find out a lot of things that aren't going to be pretty. She's protected by that fact that outside of the cult she built up in the 20th century, few could get through those meandering books. Meaning most people don't know what was in them.
Here's Liz Moore at BUSTLE in July of 2019:
After the Democratic debates, Marianne Williamson quickly became quirky meme fodder across the internet. She has bold ideas regarding reparations, yes, but does that mean we should elect this crystal-loving woman to the Oval Office? Williamson's platform of love and positivity might seem appealing, but abled people would benefit from listening to disabled people, because we can see the dangers Williamson poses to our community.
In Williamson’s 1996 book A Return to Love, she reasoned that when it comes to taking medication, “the healing doesn’t come from the pill. It comes from our beliefs.” Let’s take this to its logical extreme. If a pill doesn’t work, is it because our beliefs are not strong enough? Incorrect? Full of hate? She wrote that “sickness is not a sign of God’s judgement on us, but of our judgement on ourselves. ... Sickness is an illusion and does not exist.” On Twitter, Williamson described depression as a “spiritual disease.” In her 2012 book A Course in Weight Loss, she wrote that men who have AIDS should forgive people in order to heal, comparing it to how a cancer patient would complete chemotherapy.
Should we go on? The woman who wrote that nonsense is the 'answer' per Krystal and others. Kids, that's only two books. Her body of work does not propel her to the top of the ticket. You're an idiot if you think it does. EARTH IN THE BALANCE harmed Al Gore and he was lower on the ticket (vice presidential nominee in 1992).
Elections change very little of what happens. That's reality. FDR was a transformative president. He was called a class traitor. But he made the moves he did to keep the system going. Not out of the good of his heart. He did it to keep factories going and to keep workers working and that is what this system cares about more and more and more.
And that is why we pretend that the pandemic is over. The country had endured as much as it was going to -- or rather, those in charge of industry had endured as much as they were going to so back to work we go, whether it's safe or not.
We have been told, as a people, over and over that voting matters but Emma Goldman was right, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
Bully Boy Bush sent troops into Iraq in 2003. Since then? We've had two terms of Barack Obama (Democrat), one term of Donald Trump (Republican) and now Joe Biden (Democrat). Guess what? US troops are still on the ground in Iraq. It'll be 20 years in March.
Now Krystal can never deal with that (Iraq) because it's reality and she's a cheap whore with a cheap product -- she pretends she's doing news but she's not. She's as bad a public affairs host as anyone who ever hosted MEET THE PRESS.
You want change?
The powers-the-be need to be fretting that you'll be in the streets and disrupting production.
Idiots like Krystal are the reason Donald Trump did whatever he wanted. As I noted early on here, We The People held Ronald Reagan in check -- and the media was on Reagan's side. Donald Trump did not have Reagan's communication skills. It would have been easy to circumvent Donald. But instead of doing that we did theater and virtue signaling.
We'll come back to that but let's deal with Krystal's nonsense about the Green Party.
'They didn't win in 2020 so shut up. ' That's her argument.
Well they didn't have all the YOUTUBE programs, did they? They weren't part of an echo chamber, were they?
A
bunch of whores told people to vote for Joe Biden -- a huge bunch of
whores -- and even doing that Joe only squeaked by. With all that
whoring from the large echo chamber, that's all you accomplished.
What if the Green Party had even half that online presence.
They really had none in 2020.
They do now via Howie Hawkins, they have a presence because of him.
I'm confused about which Democrat running for the presidential nomination accused Joe Biden of stealing it?
It wasn't stolen, it was gifted to him, I know. But I'm noting Cindy Sheehan and others were happy to bring on Dario Hunter -- useless piece of crap -- and let Dario tell you that Howie stole the nomination. He didn't steal it from you, Dario, you refused to get off your lazy ass and work for it. Dario was another Princess Hillary who felt he should be gifted with the nomination.
So not only did we not see a 2020 media presence that would not promote the Green Party presidential candidate, we also saw non-Democrats on the left, like Cindy Sheehan, use their platforms to tear apart the Green Party nominee ahead of the election -- to spread rumors and talk -- online -- about what they 'knew' but couldn't share.
Imagine if instead of whoring, people like Krystal actually tried to educate.
The country would be much better.
We'd know, for example, how other countries have better health care. We'd know real issues and not just the talking point that the Democrats want us to repeat this week.
Donald Trump tapped into the reality, that the game is dirty and the rules are rigged. And that's why a large number of people responded to him.
I don't think he's the one who can fix or correct. But he tapped into the sentiment.
And he wasn't wrong.
Year after year, the average American's income gets smaller and smaller while the percentage going to the top gets greater and greater.
And whoring for elections speeds up this decay.
Educating on actual issues could slow the decay, might even turn it around.
But instead of education we get ahistorical claims.
We're going to do it this election cycle, spirit bunnies, this is the one and now we'll take over the party!!!
Do you know how many generations have said in the last 50 years and it's never happened.
I believe that back in 2019, we were being told that Kyrsten Sinema was the answer. She was our left hope, we were told. How'd that work out, help me out on that? Did Sinema become the next Paul Wellstone? What happened to her?
Krystal keeps looking for her savior and then whoring for him/her to try to get votes and it never goes anywhere and it never will.
Krystal's proud that she helped Joe into the White House.
Help me out with what we've got from that.
I'm not seeing serious efforts to address climate change. I see no increase in the minimum wage. I see no rent control efforts (Joe's remarks last week were an insulting joke). ROE could have been codified. LBJ could have gotten it done if he felt pressure.
I don't see much worth bragging about.
And I've seen this over and over in one election after another.
So maybe Krystal can learn history before she next screeches at others to "Grow up!"
People lives are at risk, Krystal, right now. That includes immigrants. Do you know any immigrants to this country because I don't see them on your show. I don't see anything on your show but a lot of whoring.
We are the change. We make change or we don't.
And the only change you help with is the changing of the guard -- each and every hour.
Now more than ever, the needs of the people are not being met and here's Krystal fretting over who's going to be home coming queen.
Before Frank Capra became known for Capra-corn, he actually made some good films, great even. MEET JOHN DOE has a lot to say about the world today. But the one that really angered some at the top was MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON with Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart. It wasn't just movie censor Joseph Breen that objected to the film early on -- how it will damage our system of government. The DC press called it unAmerican for the way it portrayed corruption in the US government. JFK's father Joseph Kennedy, then the US Ambassador to the UK, deemed it "Nazi propaganda" and offered to purchase the negative and destroy the film. We could go and on for hours about the reaction -- of those in power -- to that film -- including the various responses in the US Senate.
Can Krystal speak to that?
No, because she's an uninformed idiot who thinks she can weigh in without having any knowledge base at all. And she can't tell the truth because she's a cheerleader for the system at play. Anything that threatens her must be attacked -- in 1939, she would have been attacking MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON.
This week, she attacks anyone who won't do what she tells them to -- this week she's telling them to get on board with kooky, non-scientific Marianne Williamson.
Let's pause for a moment on that.
What did brave Marianne Williamson do in 2020?
Urged everyone to vote for Joe Biden, yeah, I know.
But she did something else. I remember it because Ava and I called out in real time (see September 11, 2020's "TV: Leftists seeking public affairs programming"). Krystal doesn't seem to remember it.
Maybe because Krystal was whoring in real time?
Marianne did it right in front of Krystal on RISING. The general election was around the corner and Marianne was the guest on RISING. Time to churn out -- not turn out -- the vote. And in the segment, Marianne let slip that many dirty things had been done to her by the DNC during her now ended campaign. Such as?
Because ears perked up to that reality.
A real journalist would have pursued it.
But Krystal wasn't trying to inform, she was attempting to churn out the vote. So she let Marianne get away with promising to come back on the show after the election -- we mustn't get distracted before the election, Marianne insisted -- and she'd spill the tea then.
Of course, that day never came. Those days never come with people like Krystal.
She's this cycle's Laura Flanders. And, like Laura before her, she's bleeding out from self-imposed wounds.
Laura got on board with Barack Obama early on in 2007. The semi-closeted lesbian held her tongue when Barack put homophobes on stage and didn't carry that they were proponents of conversion therapy. Never addressing that issue, she did insist about many other issues that we had to get Barack the presidential nomination and then we could hold his feet to the fire.
Barack got the nomination and then Laura was telling us we'd hold his feet to the fire . . . after the general election. We couldn't risk holding his feet to the fire right now.
Barack won the election and then Laura and her ilk were telling us -- for eight years -- that we had to defend Barack.
I kind of thought that was the Secret Service's job.
So instead of making demands, Laura's ilk made every day about defending Barack -- criticism of a tan suit took up nearly a whole week on so-called left websites.
No one would demand that he codify ROE. Remember that? It was his promise. If he had done that, DOBBS would never have happened. He promised he would. Not only did he promise that, he promised it would be the first thing he did as president.
But he shrugged it off and they let him.
That's because they're not about the people. They're about some personality that they latch onto. They're about silencing all criticism of him/ her, getting him/her elected and then continuing to waste time on defending the object of their desire instead of making demands on a public servant.
Their where-else-are-you-going-to-go attitude is not just bad for election cycles. It's also what they do once the person's elected.
And it degrades our rights and our possibilities.
But she wants to lecture others?
And
grasp that Krystal is doing that in January of 2023. We're having to
endure that garbage in 2023. We're not even waiting for an election
year.
It never ends with them.
They suck out all the oxygen in the room.
Real issues can't be addressed because they're always in election cycle mode.
And it's never the time for reality or issues when you're constantly in election cycle mode.
Krystal thinks she's the serious adult in the room and maybe that makes her feel better about her so-so looks -- "I'm serious now, I don't have time to even try to look passable!" -- but it shouldn't. And she shouldn't fool herself that she's working at anything.
All these troubles and problems she insists that people -- ones she never speaks to -- suffer from? Why are we waiting for an election to 'address' them?
We're not addressing them with an election. We're using them as propaganda to churn out the vote.
But if they're so damn important, why aren't we addressing them? Why are we pretending that the answer to immigration is how we vote in November of 2024?
If you think that's a serious issue and that are people are suffering, why are you willing to let them suffer for nearly 21 months more before that election arrives?
You don't care about immigrants or about climate change or about ending wars or about providing children with the food they need or anything else. If you did, that's what you'd be talking about, that's what you'd be putting on your show, that would be your focus.
Instead, you're made your focus hectoring and bullying others to try to force them into joining you in supporting a snake-oil-saleswoman who just know will do everything you need.
And what you know is not based on reality. There is nothing in Marianne's personality or her public record that suggests that she can or will stand up to the DNC. She still can't even tell us how they did her wrong. She was going to tell us after the 2020 election, she insisted, but she still can't go there, still won't go there.
One of the things we popularized with this site and with all the talks on the mainland and Hawaii that we took part in for years and years (from February of 2003 until the pandemic hit and then we moved to zooms) was that you own your vote. You don't owe your vote to anyone. It's up to a politician to earn your vote.
That concept is beyond Krystal's highly limited vision.
It's beyond the limited vision of those Democrats (Al Franken) who sold the Iraq War to others. He was not in the Senate but he was using his connections in New York to meet with various Democrats and tell them to vote for the 2002 resolution. They had to, he insisted, in order to get re-elected.
And that is the most important thing to these people: Not what you do in office, but that you get into office.
It is a disgusting cycle and Krystal Ball is not grown up, is not a person of intelligence and is not worth listening to.
For more on the actual issue of how people see the world, you can see Jim's "Conflict: REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT NETWORK and THE VANGUARD" at THIRD.
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