The Transom

Charles Lipson at The Spectator. The Republicans investigating the Biden family grift had a big week, not that you would know it from reading the New York Times or Washington Post. Just how big a week it will turn out to be depends on whether congressional investigators can actually prove what the two IRS whistleblowers allege. The allegations, presented at a press conference by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee Thursday, are based on testimony from those whistleblowers.

Welcome to Thunderdome, your weekly update on Hunter Biden’s love life, which won’t require any conjugal visits after all! (A downside perhaps, because some girls find that hot.) Thanks for listening to our weekly podcast, the latest edition of which is available here — I hope you’ve subscribed, and you can stream it here: The dynamics of parallel stories often create ridiculous scenarios for today’s partisan water-carriers.

In his text messages, Hunter Biden has depicted himself as Atlas, carrying his entire family on his back — their financial and emotional burdens taken unto himself, turning his life into a black hole of drugs, debts, and duplicity. You have to be a certain kind of troubled to carry on an affair not just with your brother’s widow but her sister as well, corresponding with them with disturbing texts in between wiring them money.

For all that talk about Hunter Biden and “the big guy” and every question left unanswered, the case has apparently ended just as Jonathan Turley predicted: with a controlled demolition to avoid further investigation. And it’s likely to work! Here are the reported details from the WSJ: Biden’s deal with federal prosecutors marks the culmination of a yearsl…

Western nations are increasingly breaking from American progressives on how to treat trans kids, the WSJ reports: But as Max Eden reports, in New York, it’s so much an item of holiness to assist transitions even as young as kindergarten, the state is directing educators to lie to parents about it: Share He’s not letting this go. Michael Shellenberger. My case at The Spectator: Birchwell: Why I’m with Boris on Ozempic. Foreign Xi Jinping meets with Tony Blinken.

I write at The Spectator: For all the vagaries of presidential contests, we know two things about 2024: Joe Biden’s age and Donald Trump’s legal troubles are the unavoidable dynamics of this election. Both are impossible to ignore, and are the first things everyone brings up about the current and the former president. Absent an incredible legal sprint through the courts or the discovery of the long-rumored fountain of youth in the great marshes of Rehoboth, these two factors are set in stone.

Welcome to Thunderdome, your weekly update on the latest attempt by the obviously inappropriate behavior of a former president, or if you prefer, the latest attempt by the deep state to stop the Orange Man! (It can be both.) Thanks for listening to our weekly podcast, the latest edition of which is available here — I hope you’ve subscribed, and here’s the Spotify player: On this week’s edition we discussed the indictment and its fallout for most of the show, as well as how all the candidates...

My take on the scene in Florida, at The Spectator: The scene in Miami was somewhat less than promised today, with the predicted tens of thousands of protesters replaced instead by the handful of eccentrics who always seem to find ways to show up at things involving Donald Trump — even historically significant things like the first federal arraignment of a president of the United States on criminal charges.

The Trump team’s strategy: extend the trial. Southern Florida's federal courts are known as a "rocket docket" for their speedy trials, but former President Trump's legal team is likely to unleash a flurry of motions and challenges to delay his criminal trial there, former Trump lawyers say. The moves could push the trial back, a few months at a time, as T…

Eli Lake offers his take. Reading through the indictment of Donald Trump, one is tempted to ask if the man wanted to be caught. It reads like a bad comic novel. The former president is the bumbling protagonist, scheming with an underling to hide boxes of documents from the FBI and his lawyers. Trump boasts to a writer and publisher that he is showing the…