Wall Street Journal refutes Stefanik post about Biden

Things were really shaking here in Hawaii for a few seconds

By Ken Tingley

Rep. Elise Stefanik wrote this on social media Monday:

“Bank records don't lie. Joe Biden does.”

Depending on how you feel about social media platforms like X and Facebook will impact whether this statement bothers you.

As a newspaper editor, we knew accusing someone of a lie could bring a libel suit. It was a serious charge that editors and reporters did not take likely. We avoided it at all costs. We wanted incontrovertible facts. We wanted to be fair.

Rep. Stefanik went on to write on X that “Joe Biden knew and benefitted from his family's corrupt influence peddling schemes.”

It is a another serious charge against the president of the United States. Republicans have relentlessly made these accusations for months without any evidence. Rep. Stefanik has breathlessly voiced these accusations on social media without ever telling us what the president did that was corrupt. For those who bother to follow up these statements, it has become clear this is just another facet of what to expect in the next presidential campaign.

This is politics at its worst where lying is totally acceptable to us all.

So after Stefanik posted this accusation Monday, the Wall Street Journal followed up with this headline:

GOP Sees Skulduggery in Hunter Biden Paying His Father Back for Truck

Monthly payments in 2018 came from account linked to younger Biden’s business dealings in China

The facts were a little different than Stefanik’s online post.

So far, I have not seen Stefanik retract her statement, nor explain how writing a check for your son’s car payments during hard times is illegal. Or how helping our children is the work of a crime family. If so, most of us are guilty as charged.

The devil is often in the details and the details are essential when the stakes are so high for our country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden went to the Bayshore Ford Truck Sales near Wilmington, Del. in June 2018 to purchase a 2018 Ford F-150 Raptor for $67,000. Hunter Biden needed his father there to co-sign for the loan. Joe Biden spent more than two hours in the dealership chatting with people and posing for photos. This hardly seems like a nefarious and clandestine plot.

The Wall Street Journal went on to report that Hunter Biden eventually paid his father back with three monthly installments totaling more than $4,000 from a business account that held funds from his Chinese business dealings. This information came from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Stefanik’s is saying this links the president to his son’s business and amounted to influence peddling even though he was not in office at the time.

Democrats say Biden was making payments on his son’s truck.

So let’s go back to Stefanik’s original words: “Bank records don’t lie. Joe Biden does.”

What exactly was the lie as Biden chatted with customers at the car dealership?

Then: “Joe Biden knew and benefitted from his family's corrupt influence peddling schemes.”

How?

Rep. Elise Stefanik owes her constituents an answer to that question. She owes them an answer to why she is “lying.”

Most of us can guess the answer, but she needs to explain because she represents us.

This past week, Rep. Stefanik breathlessly grilled the president of Harvard University for  handling of anti-semitism at her university. She was not satisfied with their answers. She did not believe they were forthcoming. She believed the president of her alma mater was dodging the questions.

She then tweeted they were “unable to answer her basic questions.”

She now knows how her constituents feel when they ask her questions.

The dangerous part is that Stefanik’s lying, her constant rhetoric is not only not true but it is having an effect. Near the end of the Wall Street Journal story on the accusations against Biden, it reported this:

“Nearly 70% of voters believe that President Biden did something either illegal or unethical related to his son’s business dealings, according to a recent AP-NORC poll. The survey found that 40% of Democrats think the president did something either illegal or unethical.”

Elected officials like Rep. Elise Stefanik are to blame for this misinformation.

That’s because she believes in lying.

Its what keeps her in power.

Cheney on Stefanik

Those of you who write letters to the editor of your local newspaper probably wonder if they make a difference.

Those of you who have criticized Rep. Elise Stefanik probably doubt she is hearing the criticism, but apparently that is not the case.

Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, has written a new book that includes some criticisms of Stefanik.

After Cheney’s impeachment vote against Donald Trump, she heard from many of her colleagues, including Stefanik.

"Other members said they were upset that my impeachment vote had caused them trouble at home. They thought I should have provided them cover for their votes against impeachment," Cheney writes in the book. "I had heard this same complaint from an angry Elise Stefanik of New York. She told me that, because of my vote to impeach, people were writing letters to the editors of her local papers criticizing her and asking why she hadn't taken the same 'principled' stand I had. That seemed less my problem than hers.”

That’s good to know. It should give letter-writers incentive to double their efforts.

It should give newspapers the incentive to promote letters and do more editorials and commentary.

They can hold elected officials accountable. They can cause trouble for them back home.

Cheney also wrote, "Many of us who had known Elise since before she abandoned all principles were curious about how she had lost her sense of right and wrong," Cheney wrote.

Many of us here in the 21st Congressional District wonder the same thing.

What was that?

Living here in the northeast, we don’t often see “Earthquake alert” pop up on our  phones.

That’s what I saw Monday evening as we watched a bunch of kids perform native dances at our hotel. It didn’t occur to me at the time that we were in an earthquake zone.

The alert reported there had been a 5.1 magnitude quake nine miles southeast of  Mauna Loa volcano my son and his girlfriend had been visiting that day.

Two-hundred residents reported feeling the quake and my wife said she felt a vibration at our hotel, but I didn’t notice.

The alert finally assured everyone there was “no tsunami threat.”

As I looked out at the ocean, I was relieved.

No damage was reported to buildings or infrastructure. The report the next day said the quake was “related to shallow movement on the palisades system of Kilauea volcano’s south flank.” There was one 3.1 aftershock.

Corrections

In Wednesday’s newsletter, I mentioned that a reporter had been charged with wiretapping Marion, Ohio. The reporter actually worked for the Scioto Valley Guardian in Ohio.

Also, I transposed Joe Girard’s scoring totals in his last two games. He actually scored 25 against Pittsburgh and 16 against Alabama.