Hunter Biden may be shamelessly corrupt, but there’s more than one way to skin a fleecing-the-taxpayers cat, and in an op-ed published Friday by the New York Post, the writers claim that Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law Tony West may have found a whole new way to define “corrupt.” (The bio on the article states that one of the writers, Daniel Huff, “is a former counsel to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees,” while “Clark S. Judge is managing director of the White House Writers Group, Inc.”)
If Kamala Harris wins the White House, her brother-in-law, Tony West, who is married to her sister Maya, is poised to claim the crooked crown.
Like Hunter, West learned his craft in the Obama years.
Then head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, he invented a new form of what 19th-early 20th centuries Tammany boss George Washington Plunkett famously called “Honest Graft.”
It was simple.
Until 1977, Congress had to approve any settlement of a civil suit against the Federal government over $100,000.
That seems appropriate; a civil suit, should the government lose, requires the disbursement of funds – and Congress, especially the House of Representatives, holds the purse; indeed, all spending bills must originate in the House. That’s the law. But this changed in 1977:
This preserved the Constitutional requirement that Congress control the government’s purse.
But in that year, seeking relief from the burgeoning volume of suits to review, Congress removed the cap, handing the Justice Department a permanent blank check to pay settlements unilaterally, in any amount, out of an account known as the Judgment Fund.
Run by the Treasury Department, the Judgment Fund’s secrecy is so complete that our often-penetrated CIA might study it for lessons.
See Related: NEW REPORT: Hunter Biden Asked State Dept. for Help on Burisma Deal—While Joe Was Vice President
New Details About What Hunter Biden Spent Money on Instead of Taxes Revealed at Pre-Trial Hearing
With me so far? Here’s where it gets interesting:
The limited data released omits recipients, the facts underlying the case, and often the lawyers involved.
By statute, attorneys’ fees awarded need not be disclosed.
A Government Accountability Office study concluded that “no one knows the number of claims processed by the federal government each year.”
Still, for three decades, the integrity of Justice’s officials sufficed to prevent abuse.
Then, in 2009, Tony West took over the department’s Civil Division, the division that litigates and settles lawsuits.
Once West arrived, his deputy emailed colleagues asking “can you explain to Tony the best way to allocate some money toward an organization of our choosing?”
Settlements became the vehicle for paying off political allies.
Huff and Judge have some receipts.
OK, that’s a lot of text, but the writers raise an interesting point. If they are correct in how this is done, there’s potential here that billions – billions of dollars may have been funneled to Democrat candidates, supporters, and donors. And here’s the catch; that 1977 change in the law means it may actually be legal.
There are a million-and-one reasons to kick Kamala Harris and as many Democrats as possible out of office in November as possible. If proven to be true, this is one more for the list. What Huff and Judge are describing is not just a loophole in the law; you would have a hard time convincing me that it wasn’t a trapdoor put there deliberately for precisely this sort of thing. And there are groups – the ACLU, among others – whose entire business model seems to be filing lawsuits against the federal, state, and local governments. The only amazing bit is that until Tony West took over, things were pretty above board, as the authors of the piece linked above claim.
Politicians and political people, especially Democrats, being what they are, it’s amazing it took anyone this long to figure this out.
Ordinary crooks, when they set out to rob a citizen, use a gun or a knife, but top-tier crooks use lawyers – and of the two, the lawyers are far more dangerous.
