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That 'Highly Credible' Republican Witness Is On The Lam

That 'Highly Credible' Republican Witness Is On The Lam

The Republicans who claim to be "investigating" President Joe Biden's alleged corruption evidently can rely on the infinite patience of the American media and their own voters. Week after week they promise new and damning evidence, to be delivered by highly credible witnesses. And so far, every time, the results are embarrassing not to Biden, but to them.

Consider the "highly credible" witness touted repeatedly over the past several months by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the House Oversight Committee chairman. That's the same witness, described as a whistleblower by Comer, who mysteriously went missing months ago, leading some skeptics to doubt his existence. He does in fact exist, although at this point some Republicans may wish that he didn't.

The mystery man is Gal Luft, a 57-year-old dual citizen of the United States and Israel who ran the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Maryland think tank — and who also appears to have dabbled in illegal arms sales and covert assistance to Chinese influence operations. Such dubious activities were Luft's side hustles, at least according to a federal indictment unsealed this week. He has been "missing" because he is a fugitive after skipping bail while awaiting extradition from Cyprus, where he was arrested last April.

The Justice Department has charged Luft with a startling list of offenses. He is alleged to have operated as an illegal foreign agent, notably by attempting in 2016 to secretly "recruit and pay, on behalf of principals based in China, a former high-ranking U.S. government official" who was advising Donald Trump, aiming to shape the president-elect's policy decisions. Prosecutors also accused Luft of seeking to broker "illicit arms transactions" with Chinese dealers, and of attempting to break sanctions on Iranian oil by marketing it as "Brazilian oil." They also say he lied on multiple occasions to federal agents.

Luft denies everything and claims to have fled because he doesn't believe he can get a fair trial in New York, where the indictment was filed. He also insists that the Justice Department only charged him to block his supposedly damning testimony against President Biden and his son Hunter Biden before Comer's committee, cries of "political persecution" that congressional Republicans have echoed.

Yet while the Justice Department unsealed its charges against Luft on July 10, the original indictment was filed last fall — before Republicans gained control of the House. The investigation must have begun many months earlier.

So as Philip Bump observed in The Washington Post, the actual sequence of events was not that prosecutors charged him after his public accusations against the Bidens drew right-wing attention, but exactly the opposite. He went after the Bidens following his indictment and is brazenly using the Republicans to escape a trial and possible conviction that could send him to prison for decades.

Not surprisingly, Comer played his role as the useful idiot in that strategy with enthusiasm. He and other Republicans have loudly demanded that the Justice Department grant "immunity" to Luft so that he can return to Washington to recite his smears in a public hearing. They don't care what serious crimes he may have committed against the United States so long as he advances their partisan agenda. And the same media outlets proven to have consciously lied about the 2020 election are now promoting Luft's "revelations."

What would Luft say after he receives immunity? Nobody knows, but if his testimony resembles the last big reveal touted by Comer, it won't amount to much. Remember the "informant" who allegedly reported a claim by a Ukrainian energy executive that Biden had taken a bribe? That executive turns out to have been Mykola Zlochevsky, boss of the infamous Burisma firm that had hired Hunter Biden.

But Zlochevsky informed Rudy Giuliani years ago in no uncertain terms that his company had never obtained any assistance of any kind from Joe Biden. "No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden's engagement," Zlochevsky said.

After all of this congressional clowning at taxpayer expense, the Republicans still have nothing on Joe Biden beyond the sad misconduct of his surviving son. They possess no evidence that he accepted a bribe, no evidence that he did anything illicit or untoward on behalf of foreign interests, and no evidence that his public service was in any way compromised.

But the lack of proof won't discourage them from slandering him every day from now until Nov. 5, 2024. Not even a little.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Gal Luft

Fugitive GOP 'Informant' Luft Is Right-Wing Media's Latest Broken Toy

Within the right-wing echo chamber, the evidence that will finally expose the corruption of Democrats and their deep state pawns is always on the way, yet tantalizingly out of reach. Gal Luft, the House Oversight Committee “informant” and indicted fugitive, is just the latest source.

It goes like this: Republican politicians will trumpet some new document or witness, and their propagandists will puff it up as a game-changer, the final piece of the puzzle. But when the right’s heavily touted sources are finally revealed, they do not move — and then all the same players settle on a new Macguffin and restart the cycle.

This pattern has played out an untold number of times over the past six years. Republican politicians want to get booked on Fox, right-wing media personalities want to fill airtime and column inches, and both need ways to defend Donald Trump, attack his predecessor, and excite the base. Just wait, they tell their audiences. Wait until you see the text messages revealing the FBI’s anti-Trump “secret society.” Or Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) memo. Or Richard Grenell’s “unmasking” list. Or special counsel John Durham’s report. Or the Biden bribery tapes. Then the perfidy of our enemies will be unveiled, and they’ll finally get their comeuppance.

Yet another of those Macguffins imploded on Monday when federal prosecutors announced charges against Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who helms a Maryland-based think tank and had been touted on the right as a “whistleblower” who would expose President Joe Biden’s corrupt ties to China. The prosecutors accused Luft of “multiple international criminal schemes,” including serving as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government, and said that he had been arrested in February, but jumped bail and is currently a fugitive from justice.

Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, caused a stir in May when he revealed during a Fox interview that an “informant” his committee had been working with regarding purported corrupt Biden business dealings in China had vanished.

“Unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer told Maria Bartiromo. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there.”

Last week, that “informant” reemerged — in a 14-minute recording provided exclusively to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, a Trump favorite and Fox contributor who is the author of a book about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In the “extraordinary video,” Devine writes, Luft “claims he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying to the House Oversight Committee that the Biden family received payments from individuals with alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence and that they had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their benefactors from the China-controlled energy company CEFC.”

She adds that “[i]t remains to be seen whether Luft is the man who will bring down the Bidens, but he is not going quietly into the sunset” and that he is denying all the charges against him.

The Luft video drew a new storm of coverage on the right as Devine made the rounds on Fox and elsewhere talking up her story. It led Fox’s The Ingraham Angle, with guest host Pete Hegseth highlighting the “explosive allegations” and praising Devine for her “fantastic scoop.”

And the right quickly began working the press to treat the story with credulity. “Media silence on key would-be witness Gal Luft’s Biden revelations speaks volumes,” wrote the Post’s editorial board. “Dr. Luft released a video making pretty damning allegations against President Biden and his son Hunter. And yet in the media? Crickets,” Megyn Kelly complained on her podcast.

Then on Monday, the Justice Department unsealed the charges against Luft. As CNN reported, he “was charged with failing to register as an agent for China in the US, including in 2016 acting through a former high-ranking US official who was then advising President-elect Donald Trump. He was also charged with acting as a middleman to aid Chinese companies buying weapons. The indictment also alleges Luft violated US sanctions by attempting to broker sales of Iranian oil.”

Luft gave the right a ready-made excuse and they are deploying it, decrying the fugitive as an innocent victim of the purportedly weaponized Justice Department. The charges make it seem somewhat less likely, however, that Luft will be the one to finally crack the case against Biden.

But don’t worry, this isn’t over yet. You see, I hear there’s an FBI FD-1023 form out there that will change everything…

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Gal Luft

US Indicts Oversight Chairman's 'Very Credible Witness' As Chinese Agent

House GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer‘s alleged FBI “whistleblower,” who he claimed just days ago was a “very credible witness on Biden family corruption,” despite having been missing for months, was just indicted on charges including “arms trafficking,” “Iranian sanctions violations,” and “conspir[ing] with others in an effort to act within the United States to advance the interests of the People’s Republic of China (China),” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

He is currently on the run, says a DOJ press release.

“According to court documents, Gal Luft, 57, is charged in an eight-count indictment with offenses related to willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations and making false statements to federal agents,” the press release states. “Luft was arrested on Feb. 17 in the Republic of Cyprus based on the charges in the indictment. Luft subsequently fled after being released on bail while extradition proceedings were pending and remains a fugitive.”

Some, including NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins are characterizing Luft with being charged as a “Chinese spy.”

“The ‘missing’ Hunter Biden witness the GOP was promising for a while there was just charged by the DOJ with being a Chinese spy,” Collins tweeted.

On Friday, Chairman Comer tweeted out a clip of his appearance on Newsmax, and wrote: “Gal Luft, a very credible witness on Biden family corruption, provided incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the DOJ in a meeting in Brussels in March 2019. We have no reason to believe the FBI & DOJ acted on this info. Americans deserve answers.”

Comer told Newsmax that Gal Luft is “very credible, and the people on MSNBC who made fun of me when I said that we had an informant that was missing, they should feel like fools right now.”

“This is their worst nightmare, again, because this is a credible witness,” he continued.

Chairman Comer’s allegations attacking President Joe Biden and his family repeatedly have been baseless.

“Comer has so far failed to show how Biden may have benefited from the payments or how any alleged business dealings by relatives may have impacted Biden’s policy decisions,” TIME reported back in May. “He has repeatedly blamed stonewalling by the Biden Administration for why his investigation hasn’t gotten more traction.”

“We are hopeful that we can find the informant,” Comer told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “Now remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that.”

Also Friday, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post editorial board ran a piece titled, “Media silence on key would-be witness Gal Luft’s Biden revelations speaks volumes.”

“The drip-drip-drip of evidence detailing the Biden family criminal enterprise has turned into a torrent,” it claimed.

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.