Have we mentioned that House Intel Chair James Comer is full of shit? Like, more full of shit than a herd of constipated elephants? Oh, we say it a lot? Well, fair, because it’s totally true.
Okay, kids, get your Pepe Silvia stringboards out, because it’s time to play everyone’s favorite game, What The Fuck Are Republicans On About Now? Yeah, again. You know you love it!
Today’s topic: WHO OR WHAT IS GAL LUFT?
Okay, so you know how Comer and his band of dipshits have been hee-hawing for months about their top secret whistleblower? The one who can prove that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden took all the bribes from China? They couldn’t produce him because REASONS, and in May our pal Jamie took his big square head over to Fox to tell that big airhead Maria Bartiromo that his informant was lost.
“Well, unfortunately we can’t track down the informant. We are hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant, the whistleblower is very credible,” he told the credulous Fox host, who briefly demonstrated signs of mild skepticism, before reverting to form.
“Who in the White House is intimidating these people? Do you know?” she gasped.
“I do know,” Comer assured her. “We’re saving that for a later time.”
Friends, that time is now. Because yesterday that “informant” outed himself, running to that bastion of good journalism, the New York Post, claiming to be on the run from the US government, bent on silencing him.
Gal Luft, a dual American-Israeli citizen, headed a “think tank” called the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in DC. In the video, Luft alleges that in the course of doing very serious thought leader stuff with a Chinese energy conglomerate known as CEFC, he discovered that Hunter Biden was also doing stuff with the company, but of the bad LOCK HER UP variety. He says that he blew the whistle last year to the FBI, after which he was indicted, made bail in Cyprus, and then went on the lam for his own safety.
Naturally Jamie Comer and his chaperone, Jim Jordan, raced to Fox to rehabilitate their guy.
To which the DOJ said “Bet!” and immediately unsealed the indictment against Luft.
Now, before we get into this document, let’s point out perhaps the most salient thing from a political standpoint: It was returned on November 1, 2022, i.e. before there was a Republican Congress. So the idea that the feds arrested this guy to head him off from talking to Congress is reeedonkulous. That investigation was in the works for a good long while, and a gander at the charges lets you know exactly why.
Luft is alleged to have conspired to traffic weapons and Iranian oil, in addition to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). And while the weapons and oil may be more serious from a criminal perspective, Luft’s FARA scheme is most interesting politically.
Broadly speaking, Luft coordinated with Chinese agents to pay former CIA Director James Woolsey to author pro-China editorials in Chinese news outlets during the 2016 election and its aftermath. Woolsey was then an advisor to the Trump campaign, and when Trump won the election, Luft and his Chinese backers were ecstatic. Woolsey was also palling around with Mike Flynn at the time, and famously attended a meeting where Flynn pitched high-level Turkish government officials on a plan to black helicopter the Muslim cleric Fetullah Gülen (Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s archenemy) out of the US for the low-low price of $15 million. To his credit, Woolsey distanced himself from Flynn after that, but we can’t help but notice that Flynn also accepted money from a foreign government cutout to publish editorials under his own name advocating for warm relations between the US and another nation.
All the cool kids were doing it — at least the cool kids hanging around with Donald Trump.
Sorry for the extended flashback, but we can’t help but note that Trump, whose supporters have been screaming nonsense about Biden’s supposed ties to China, was being advised by a guy who was literally being paid by a Chinese agent to publish articles praising the CCP.
Here’s just a taste from the indictment (CC-1, or “co-conspirator 1,” is presumed to be Patrick Ho, who was sentenced in 2019 to three years in prison for bribing African officials in connection with his position at CEFC):
On or about November 12, 2016, CC-1 emailed GAL LUFT, the defendant, that “[e]ver since the publication of the articles of my ‘dialogue’ with [Woolsey] in Hong Kong and in the mainland, [he] is now a household name among the USA watchers in HK and in China. But I should think that he should hide for now, come to China on a silent trip first, then surface to speak out on Trump’s foreign policies just before his inauguration or thereafter. LUFT responded that “[w]e are debating about his role in the new admin. There are kinds of considerations … We should talk ftf as there can be a supremely unique opportunity for china.”
On or about November 13, 2016, GAL LUFT, the defendant, and CC-1 exchanged emails about the potential role of Individual-1 in the new presidential administration. LUFT reported that “[o]ur friend is now on the shortlist of the following: Sec Def[,] Sec homeland security[, and] Dir nat intel.” CC-1 replied that “[t]his side would like to see him assuming something with a ‘China’ profile. Of the three, S of D [i.e., Secretary of Defense] or DNI [i.e., Director of National Intelligence] would be good, esp the former.” LUFT wrote to CC-1 that “DNI is most likely,” and CC-1 responded later in the email chain that “may be you could reserve his ‘direct’ China link as the weapon of last resort.”
But instead of Woolsey becoming DNI, the job went to Mike Flynn — although Woolsey would presumably have been judicious enough to go away quietly and not come back four years later advocating for martial law and a coup.
Did your eyes glaze over when you read all that? Well, snap out of it, because that’s exactly what the Republicans were hoping would happen. Just check out Rep. Nancy Mace, the supposedly “moderate” one, shoveling horseshit into Maria’s ever open maw.
Luft didn’t get indicted because he tried to blow the whistle on Hunter Biden. He got indicted because he was wildly corrupt and because he made false statements about it to the FBI, including in March of 2019, during the very same interview in which Comer alleges that Luft blew the whistle on Hunter Biden.
And one more thing, since we’re all the way down this weird rabbit hole. From NBC, here’s what Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has to say about a supposedly incriminating What’sApp message from Hunter Biden regarding his China deal that Luft gave to congressional Republicans:
Lowell writes that the screenshots of the message as tweeted by Smith, “both include a photo of Mr. Biden not from 2017 but from the White House Easter Egg roll in April 2022 (long after the purported message was sent); both images portray the message in a blue bubble, when WhatsApp messages are in green; one image super-imposed the Chinese flag for the contact ID, when surely that was not how a text or contact was kept; and one purports to be a screenshot with the ‘. . .’ of someone composing a text (as in Apple’s iMessage) when that does not happen on WhatsApp.”
He writes, “In short, the images you circulated online are complete fakes.”
In summary and in conclusion, COME THE FUCK ON.
Oh, and PS: You know that IRS whistleblower Comer and the chuckleheads are touting? He’s mad that the IRS didn’t chase this shit down harder.
OPEN THREAD.
[Bulwark / Insider / NBC / Indictment]
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