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The Brew: Biden Claims ‘Executive Privilege’ to Bury Devastating Audio from Interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur – The Stream

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Happy Friday! Let’s get pouring.

Biden Exerts “Executive Privilege” to Keep You From Hearing His Interview With Special Counsel Robert Hur

Biden’s burying the tapes.

Remember when Joe Biden went before the cameras and blasted Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report concluding that the president is so mentally incapacitated no jury would convict him of a crime? Remember how the White House, Kamala Harris, and Democratic leadership shredded Hur’s observations as being “wrong” and “inappropriate”? Hur’s conclusion was based on hours of interviews he and his staff did with Biden. He even confirmed to Congress that the audio — and not just the words — informed his decision not to recommend charges.

So the solution should be obvious: Release the tapes. If Hur was wrong, we’d know soon enough.

A transcript was released, but the U.S. Department of Justice refused to hand over the audio. Just yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for not relinquishing them.

Yesterday, the same Joe Biden who called Hur names for exposing his loss of mental acuity has claimed the audio recordings are protected by executive privilege.

In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, White House General Counsel Edward Siskel declared, “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.” He added, “Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”

Call me crazy on a Friday morning, but if a Special Counsel is saying “I can’t charge the president with a host of crimes because the audio tapes show his brain is scrambled” and that president is saying the Special Counsel is a lying, dog-faced pony soldier, the public darn well does have a “legitimate need” to hear those tapes. Either Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency, or he is fit and Hur made up the mental-deterioration scheme to avoid prosecuting him for crimes that would land anyone else in prison for years. There really is no middle path between those poles.

In fact, this president’s opponent is facing charges of the same types of crimes — thanks to this president. And, as The Federalist’s Sean Davis points out, the same president who “put Trump aides in prison for asserting executive privilege” just exercised it himself to stay in power.

Cohen’s Cross-Examination Will Continue Monday

Michael Cohen had a rough day on the stand, broken into little pieces by a withering cross-examination.

How tough was it? CNN’s Anderson Cooper seemed both aghast and bemused by just how effectively Trump attorney Todd Blanche got Cohen to undermine the whole case against the former president. Cohen had testified earlier that a particular call to Trump was when Trump personally signed off on the deal to allegedly pay hush money to former stripper Stormy Daniels about a sexual relationship. Cohen said he called Trump’s then-bodyguard Keith Schiller, who handed the phone to Trump.

However, texts show that Cohen actually called Schiller to talk about a 14-year-old prankster who had been repeatedly calling him. When confronted with the discrepancy, Cohen said he talked both with Schiller about the 14-year-old and with Trump about the deal with Daniels. A skeptical Blanche asked if Cohen was saying he’d had both conversations in the space of ninety-six seconds.

Even Anderson Cooper wasn’t buying that.

There’s no trial today, as the judge has given former President Trump the day off so he can go to his son’s high school graduation.

Cancelers Want to Give NFL Player a Swift Kick Out of League for Supporting Biblical Values

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Bukter is facing petitions calling for the Super Bowl champs to cut him from the team for “inappropriate conduct.”

So what did he do? Assault a woman? Get wasted on national TV? Insult our fallen veterans by refusing to respect the flag? Get caught with drugs or guns? Take part in anti-Israel protests? Scream, “Defund the police”?

No. All the devout Catholic did was give a passionate, even tearful, commencement speech at Benedictine College last Saturday in which he touted the joys of parenthood. He urged the female graduates to embrace becoming wives and mothers. He blasted the “lies” millions of women are told when it comes to abortion and motherhood.

Butker then took a shot at Joe Biden for now being all in on abortion while claiming to be a devout Catholic. He also touched the third rail in the cancel-culture world, failing to bow down to LBGTQ worship when talking about pride. “Not the deadly-sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it,” he said, “but true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him.”

The NFL condemned Butker’s comments, saying, “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Charlie Kirk took to The Blaze to mock the league’s response. “Butker is being denounced by the NFL for encouraging young women to live happy and fulfilling lives,” he said. “Whoops! Apparently, he would have been better off punching one of them in the face or getting two or three of them pregnant.”

Good news, though: The days of would-be cancel culture vultures feeding with impunity are over. When someone crossed the line by revealing Butker’s personal information online, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced on X he’s going after the people of Kansas City “who doxxed (Butker) last night for daring to express his religious beliefs. I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion.”

Victory: Christian Teacher Fired for Refusing to Use Wrong Pronouns Gets $360,000 Payout

“Truth will win in the end.” So says Jessica Tapia, a Christian who was fired from her teaching job for refusing to use students’ “preferred” pronouns or to keep parents in the dark about their kid’s gender identities. On Tuesday, the Jurupa (California) Unified School District agreed to pay her a $360,000 settlement.

Tapia, who’d been with the district for two decades as both a student and teacher, filed suit last year after she was terminated. She told Fox News, “From the second that I was pulled into my first meeting with the district, I knew this was some serious spiritual warfare and just a battle on truth that we’re seeing across the nation, especially in education and in and around children.”

After some students complained about Tapia’s faith-based posts on her personal social media, she was dragged into a series of meetings with the district. In the second one, she was ordered to “lie to parents about their children’s gender identity, refer to students by their preferred pronouns, refrain from expressing her religious beliefs with students or on her social media, and allow students to use the bathroom or locker room that matched their preferred sex.”

Rather than giving in, she asked for a religious accommodation. Instead, she was canned.

When she worried about losing her house, Tapia says she clung to Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for My sake will find it.”

With a $360,000 payout, Tapia is now secure in more than just her faith and identity.

Along The Stream

This morning we welcome back Rachel Alexander, who was on our staff for several years. If you are not following her current work in Arizona on election integrity, fraud, and lawfare, you are missing out. We’ve put up one of her latest efforts, called “The Left Is Getting Better at Cheating. Here’s How to Fight It in the 2024 Election, Starting Now.”

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.

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