Democrats Need to Be More Vociferous in Countering Republicans' 'Influence Peddling' Canards
For all their commitment to getting things done for the American people, Democrats are predictably timid in messaging, ceding ground to the right-wing hate machine.
“Hunter Biden”.
Just those two words has the power to provoke apoplexy in random samples of right-wing hate media consumers.
Elections have consequences, and a predictable consequence of this fall’s election with republicans reclaiming the majority in the House of Representatives is spurious conspiracies about anything and anyone sans an “R” next to his or her name, substantive legislation be damned.
The corporate media, despite most of it being labeled “liberal,” sees the potential for ratings when a sitting president’s son is the subject of “scandal,” no matter how specious the accusation of it may be.
But how much has the billionaire-funded media dedicated to suspected influence peddling “the former guy’s” family committed?
We’re speaking, of course, specifically of Donald Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, whose private equity firm, Affinity Partners (A Fin Management), received $2 billion from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in apparent exchange for classified documents.
As blogger and Sirius XM radio Progressive channel host Dean Obeidallah wrote recently, if House republicans are sincere about rooting out influence peddling, as they claim to be regarding Hunter Biden, they have a duty to investigate Kushner, his wife and Trump daughter Ivanka, and the former star of Celebrity Apprentice and White House resident Donald Trump.
As Obeidallah wrote:
Is GOP House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer using his taxpayer-funded committee to simply hurt President Biden and help Republicans or is he sincere about revealing people cashing in on their government connections?! In reality, we know the answer to this question. But for Comer the hypocrisy is about to become so glaring that it will savagely undermine his new so-called “investigation” into President Biden and his family.
If Rep. Comer means it when he said, “The American people deserve transparency and accountability about the Biden family’s influence peddling,” he has a duty to conduct a full inquiry into all presidents’ children — especially those who actually worked for the federal government and influenced foreign policy.
But he won’t and neither will House republicans.
It’s all a ruse to distract people away from how little the republican party thinks about real “kitchen table issues,” favoring instead the economic royalists and multi-national corporations.
House Democrats, though, while not looking the other way, need to be more vocal in countering republicans’ faux outrage.
Last June, while still holding the majority, they opened an investigation, and last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent Jared Kushner a letter reminding him about Democrats’ requests for documentation, following reports on the nature of the Saudi investment’s role in influencing Kushner’s involvement in Middle East policy during the Trump Administration.
Raskin wrote:
Your efforts to protect the Crown Prince may have allowed him to maintain his position at the top of the Saudi government and, thus, his ability to deliver significant financial benefits to you and your father-in-law after the end of the Trump Administration. Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now, has stated that ‘[w]ithout the absolute protection of Trump and Kushner, MBS would definitely have fallen.’ President Trump expressed an explicit awareness of the Crown Prince’s debt: when Secretary Pompeo embarked on a state visit to the Middle East to visit the Crown Prince, he wrote that President Trump told him ‘My Mike, go and have a good time. Tell him he owes us.’
Kushner has relinquished almost 2,000 pages, but they do “not substantively relate to the Saudi government’s investment in the firm,” according to Raskin.
Affinity Partners’ legal officer failed to respond when the House Oversight Committee followed up with him in October.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senate Finance Committee chair, stated he is willing to take up the probe as well.
He stated:
The financial links between the Saudi royal family and the Trump family raise very serious issues, and when you factor in Jared Kushner’s financial interests, you are looking right at the cat’s cradle of financial entanglements.
The Trump/Saudi involvement is even deeper than this, though.
Democracy for the Arab World Now [DAWN], a group comprised of supporters of the Saudi-assassinated Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has called on the Justice Dept. (DOJ) to investigate Trump’s compensation from the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament in exchange for hosting their events at his properties.
Their report states:
On January 13, it was revealed during court proceedings that the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund [PIF], a sovereign wealth fund headed by the country’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman [MBS], owns 93 percent of LIV and pays 100 percent of the costs associated with its events.
DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson explained:
The revelation that a fund controlled by Crown Prince MBS actually owns almost all of LIV Golf means that MBS has been paying Donald Trump unknown millions for the past two years, via their mutual corporate covers.
Then there’s Ivanka Trump, who, while not apparently involved with the Saudis like her father and husband, should be investigated for her having received approval for 16 new trademarks in China for an array of goods from shoes, jewelry, and voting machines.
Yes, voting machines.
In 2018.
The day her father lifted sanctions on Chinese telecom company ZTE, she received approval for three trademarks.
Back in August, the FBI served a search warrant — not “raided” — Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, some of which, we now know, contained nuclear intelligence information.
Who had access to it?
Who packed the boxes that ultimately wound up unsecured at his home?
Is the $2 billion his son-in-law received from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia connected in any way?
If we think this is even on republicans’ radar, though, we are kidding ourselves.
Chances are most don’t even know about it since all republicans have to amplify on 1,500 right-wing media outlets is fear, outrage, and grievance.
There are multiple reasons the Trump crime family is still walking free, one of which is Attorney General Merrick Garland.
For all their commitment to getting things done for the American people, Democrats are predictably timid in messaging, ceding ground to the right-wing hate machine.
We need to have voices at least as loud as republicans’.
We can effectively legislate AND message about it simultaneously.