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Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
@bhweingarten
Aug 11, 2020 • 24 tweets • 14 min read • Read on X
23 Questions for @JoeBiden on China free for the asking if we had a real media. As @realDonaldTrump told @hughhewitt, if Biden wins China will own the United States thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her… Image
Q #1 for @JoeBiden on China: Do you still believe, as you remarked during a 2011 speech, that “a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large”? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #2 for @JoeBiden on China: Do you regret support for granting permanent normal trade relations to China, setting it up for accession to the World Trade Organization that would supercharge its drive toward superpower status? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #3 for @JoeBiden on China: Do you believe O admin responses, or lack thereof, to China’s rampant IP theft, militarization of S China Sea, catastrophic OPM hack, liquidation of CIA assets were sufficient, and successfully checked China’s ambitions? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #4 for @JoeBiden on China: Do you disavow Obama admin signing of '13 MOU—following intense lobbying of you by CCP—granting Chinese companies continued access to US capital markets, in spite of total regulatory noncompliance, resulting in numerous frauds? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #5 for @JoeBiden on China: Do you think it appropriate for former Obama admin NatSec officials to lobby on behalf of Huawei, the CCP-tied, NatSec-threatening, alleged U.S.-lawbreaking linchpin of China’s plan for control over global communications? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #6 for @JoeBiden on China: Will you disclose any and all funding directly or indirectly emanating from Chinese sources for the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #7 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President-Elect Biden take a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s president, and express ambiguity regarding the “One China” policy prior to dealing with the CCP? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #8 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a Biden administration explicitly recognize the ruling CCP as a “Marxist-Leninist Party,” “hostile to the United States,” that harbors hegemonic ambitions? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #9 for @JoeBiden on China: More fundamentally, would a Biden administration recognize that China poses the greatest threat of all to America? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #10 for @JoeBiden on China: Would every member of a Biden Cabinet adopt policies geared toward countering China, or ceasing cooperation with it? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #11 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden continue the Trump administration’s military buildup aimed at countering China’s aggression? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #12 for @JoeBiden on China: Specifically, would a President Biden prioritize significant funding of missile defense and the Space Force in his budgets? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #13 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden continue to vacate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #14 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden continue accelerating naval activities throughout the Indo-Pacific? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #15 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden explicitly encourage U.S. companies to move their supply chains out of China? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #16 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden impose tariffs as a means of creating leverage over China in a bid to achieve free, fair, and reciprocal trade? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #17 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden use every possible measure to counter China’s efforts to monopolize strategically significant fields, such as 5G telecommunications? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #18 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden maintain substantially increased powers of exec branch over conducting Committee on Foreign Investment in the US reviews of transactions that might pose NatSec threats, and use it to scuttle such deals? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #19 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a Biden administration sanction Chinese entities doing business with sanctioned Iranian entities? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #20 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a Biden Department of Justice maintain the Trump administration’s China Initiative, aimed at preventing and prosecuting Chinese espionage and hacking efforts? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #21 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a Biden admin engage in a comprehensive strategic comms effort aimed at CCP, including resolutely challenging its propaganda, delivering Mandarin pro-democracy/anti-CCP messages, and highlighting tyrannical CCP actions? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #22 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a Biden admin maintain restrictions on visas for Chinese students & scholars in strategically significant disciplines, and investigate and expose potentially corrupting Chinese funding of American higher ed institutions? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…
Q #23 for @JoeBiden on China: Would a President Biden order that the savings of U.S. government employees not be invested in funds with weightings toward Chinese companies antithetical to America’s interests? thefederalist.com/2020/05/29/her…

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More from @bhweingarten

Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Jul 22
Kim Cheatle @GOPoversight Hearing

Secret Service director calls assassination attempt on Donald Trump the "most significant operational failure...in decades"
USSS Director Cheatle can't or won't answer @RepJamesComer's first question as to whether Secret Service personnel were ever on the roof from which the assassination attempt occurred.

"There was a plan in place to provide overwatch."

Says Secret Service prefers "sterile rooftops"
@RepJamesComer Director Cheatle: "There was a sufficient number of agents assigned"
Read 55 tweets
Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Jul 15
Judge Cannon just absolutely eviscerated Joe Biden's Justice Department:

"Both the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no. None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment— 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, 515, 533—gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith. Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
AG Garland could've been a Supreme Court Justice.

"The bottom line is this: The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers. The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers."
Judge Cannon: "If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so. He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history, see 28 U.S.C. § 541, or Congress can authorize his appointment through enactment of positive statutory law consistent with the Appointments Clause"
Read 11 tweets
Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Jul 1
Justice Thomas' concurrence in Trump v. U.S. is hugely significant. He questions whether Special Counsel Jack Smith's office is constitutional.

"If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President." supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Justice Thomas:

"We cannot ignore the importance that the Constitution places on who creates a federal office. To guard against tyranny, the Founders required that a federal office be 'established by Law.' As James Madison cautioned, '[i]f there is any point in which the separation of the Legislative and Executive powers ought to be maintained with greater caution, it is that which relates to officers and offices.' 1 Annals of Cong. 581. If Congress has not reached a consensus that a particular office should exist, the Executive lacks the power to create and fill an office of his own accord."
Justice Thomas launches a legal missile at AG Merrick Garland:

"It is difficult to see how the Special Counsel has an office 'established by Law,' as required by the Constitution"

"...None of the statutes cited by the Attorney General appears to create an office for the Special Counsel, and especially not with the clarity typical of past statutes used for that purpose"

"...Even if the Special Counsel has a valid office, questions remain as to whether the Attorney General filled that office in compliance with the Appointments Clause"Image
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Read 5 tweets
Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Jun 27
In SEC v. Jarkesy it appears SCOTUS struck a blow against the administrative state.

"We consider whether the Seventh Amendment permits the SEC to compel respondents to defend themselves before the agency rather than before a jury in federal court," the Majority writes.

It concludes a defendant is entitled to a trial by jury -- not have to go in front of a court where the administrative state plays judge, jury, and executioner
What Justice Gorsuch describes in his concurrence reflects the inherently tyrannical nature of the administrative state supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
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Justice Gorsuch -- with whom Justice Thomas concurred -- details more administrative state tyranny. We've been de-sensitized to an unelected, unaccountable, awesomely powerful branch of government that's, shall we say, hard to square this with the Constitution supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…Image
Read 4 tweets
Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Jun 26
Murthy v. Missouri
Perhaps the most significant statement in the otherwise disappointing but predictable majority opinion comes in a footnote.

"Because we do not reach the merits, we express no view as to whether the Fifth Circuit correctly articulated the standard for when the Government transforms private conduct into state action."Image
The idea that the plaintiffs couldn't prove traceability -- despite overwhelming evidence of government officials and their cutouts working in myriad ways to suppress the very speech at issue reveals a lack of knowledge of the full record IMO from the majority
Worse, the default standard seems to be that government can do a whole host of things to abridge our speech en masse, and the bar is incredibly high for anyone to do anything about it. That's the fundamentally disastrous part of the standing cop-out
Read 23 tweets
Benjamin Weingarten Profile picture
Apr 10
Greatly enjoyed speaking with, and learning from, @karaafrederick @MikeBenzCyber yesterday @Heritage @OversightPR "Weaponization of U.S. Government Symposium" emceed by @jasoninthehouse and organized by @MHowellTweets youtube.com/live/gSG21eAqc…
I wanted to amplify a few points core to the discussion yesterday in a thread.

First, it's critical to understand CISA's role as nerve center of fed-led speech policing. The switch from targeting foreign malign actors to domestic Wrongthinkers; re-characterization of tweets critical of Official Narratives as national security threats to be neutralized via censorship; and the fact the Censorship Regime emerges from the powerful and secretive national security apparatus are all vital points to understand and internalize weingarten.substack.com/p/full-testimo…
Second, the problem set is daunting. Even if we were to map out every federal government-led censorship office, restructure and defund them all, and impose severe penalties for government officials to deter any such behavior going forward, we still have to deal with the cutouts, not to mention state and local deputizers of social media speech police. But government money is no doubt a key driver of the Censorship Regime, and eliminating it would strike a severe blow to it realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/…
Read 7 tweets

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