With Trump’s four indictments dominating every news cycle, Republicans are gearing up to kick the malarkey machine into chaos mode after Labor Day. No matter that President Joe Biden is about as exciting as a baked potato, God love him! There’s also the minor issue that Republicans haven’t had an original thought since the Clinton administration, and that was mostly because Bill Clinton did a lot of gross, stupid shit to inspire them.
But no matter! Republicans will manufacture a scandal, or at least recycle some old ones and hope this time they stick. This week we are back to BUT HER EMAILS or BUT HIS EMAILS, since this time the target is Joe Biden. Here’s how the goobers at the NY Post framed the story:
In Washington, conning the American people is always considered a victimless crime. The latest DC shellshocker is the National Archives blocking release of 5,000+ emails Vice President Joe Biden wrote using a pseudonym to shroud Biden family graft.
In ancient Rome, the consul Scipio was accused of abusing his power. He stood in front of the Senate, pulled out the written records of his reign and tore them to pieces. Scipio’s reputation was so impeccable that the audience cheered him, regardless of his destruction of evidence.
Bizarrely, this is the same template the liberal media use to whitewash President Biden. Americans don’t need to know the facts of how Biden has used his power because his intentions are good.
Fox is already demanding that Joe Biden be impeached for, uhhh, look there are emails and … HUNTER BIDEN UKRAINE LAPTOP!
If we might translate from loon to English:
The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), one of the eleventy billion conservative-funded dot-orgs that exist solely to file litigation attacking liberals and stoking culture war, filed a FOIA request in June of 2022 with the National Archives (NARA). They want emails sent by then-VP Biden associated with several alias accounts, including robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com, and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov. As in, they want all of them.
NARA responded within 20 days, as is required by law, informing SLF that it had identified 5,138 messages. But because the Presidential Records Act obligates NARA to giving the former vice president an opportunity to review the request, it was being placed in the queue for “Complex” FOIA requests, and would take some time.
The fact that the government sits on FOIA requests for-freakin’-ever is kind of a joke among journalists. You can sue if the government misses the 20-day deadline or tells you “no,” but if they’re still processing it, you’re basically shit out of luck. The best strategy is to narrow your request and make it as specific as possible. And indeed, NARA invited SLF to do just that, so that it could escape the complex queue and have its request fulfilled more expeditiously.
SLF declined to do that, and instead filed this dumb turkey of a lawsuit. This is a totally performative exercise, in that SLF is clearly not entitled to the relief it demands. Its FOIA request is voluminous, it likely implicates multiple federal agencies, and it’s subject to the PRA. All of which clearly qualify as “exceptional circumstances” under the law which obviate the need for a prompt response.
And SLF refuses to just say “give us anything that has Hunter Biden or Ukraine in it, BFFR you know that’s all we care about.” So NARA is going to get to that shit when they get to it. And, PS, the statute that they filed under doesn’t allow for any of the relief they’re asking for, including attorney’s fees and a court order barring the government from destroying any records.
But all is not lost! Because if the real goal is to allow Rupert Murdoch’s howler monkey minions to write a week’s worth of garbage accusing criminal mastermind Joe Biden of using secret email accounts to run his Ukraine conspiracy with Hunter Biden, and then hiding it from the good people at SLF, then mission accomplished. Never mind that this genius plan requires us to believe that Joe Biden used his gmail account to do bribe stuff, and then CC’d the National Archives to ensure that there would be a record of it. He was probably just too senile to know better!
The case was filed in the Northern District of Georgia, where it was assigned to Judge Leigh Martin May, an Obama appointee. You may remember Judge May from such chart topping hits as “Lindsey Graham, Get Your Ass In There And Testify To DA Willis,” and “No, Seriously, Senator, Cough It Up.” Safe bet, she’s not going to be super impressed with this dumpster fire of a lawsuit.
In summary and in conclusion, We really need a better class of conservatives. These losers haven’t had an original thought since 2010, and these replica mini-scandals are boring as hell.
[SLF v. NARA / NY Post]
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"Is you CCing notes on a criminal fuckin' conspiracy to the National Archives?"
— Biden advisor Stringer Bell
Scuttlebutt I'm hearing is that the House Republicans are demanding an immediate cease-and-desist by DOJ of all investigations of their Lord Emperor The Pabby One in return for funding the federal government.
"Call in yer goons er the kids get it!"
To which I would like to hear the Democrats reply, "We don't negotiate with terrorists."