by Daniel Greenfield
Bribing a foreign power to rig oil prices to keep control of Congress.
“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done,” Biden threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN.
The widely unpopular president wasn’t upset at the Kingdom over what it had done to America, but to his party’s prospects for retaining control of Congress.
In response, the Saudis revealed that the Biden administration had actually asked them to postpone the production cut for a month. Why a month? A month wouldn’t have changed anything meaningfully for Americans, but would have gotten the midterms out of the way.
As the Wall Street Journal noted, “The one-month delay requested by Washington would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.”
Perfect timing. Too perfect to be a coincidence.
Adrienne Watson, Biden’s NSC assistant, denied Biden had been asking for an election boost. “It’s categorically false to connect this to U.S. elections,” the former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman insisted. “It’s about the impact of this shortsighted decision to the global economy.”
But the story became even more damning when it was revealed that the Biden administration had tried to bribe the Saudis to delay the production cut until the midterms by promising to “buy oil on the market to replenish Washington’s strategic stockpiles if the price of Brent, the main international benchmark, fell to $75 a barrel”.
Biden was bribing the Saudis with a potential fortune in taxpayer money as a hedge against a decline in the price of oil. The strategic reserves had already been badly depleted by Biden in an effort to lower oil prices. This was not done to help consumers, but to politically prop up Biden’s own prospects for a second term. Biden plans to end the strategic releases from the reserve at the end of October. This is obviously aimed at influencing the midterm elections.
With the release of 180 million barrels of oil, Biden was trying to buy the midterms in a way that was corrupt, but technically legal. With crude currently priced in the high 80s, refilling the reserve would be quite expensive and Biden officials had told the finance media they would not be refilling the reserve anytime soon. But they were telling the Saudis something very different.
Biden’s already legendary corruption has worsened dramatically when given full access to the White House, but trying to bribe a foreign power to rig oil prices to keep control of Congress is outrageous even in the litany of White House scandals.
The quid pro quo here is potentially massive.
Biden’s NSC spokesman, John Kirby, warned that his boss would “take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be and that it is serving our national security interests.”
It’s not the national security interests at issue here, but Biden’s own political interests.
The Biden administration has already begun pulling out of regional security sessions in revenge for the Saudi refusal to prop up energy prices to help the Democrats retain control of Congress.
The carrot and the stick here involve foreign policy and billions in spending for a quid pro quo.
The Biden administration was using oil purchases and security cooperation as leverage to secure a foreign government’s help in the midterm elections. Senate Democrats are rushing to make the quid pro quo even more explicit by threatening to pull out anti-Iran defenses.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, Rep. Sean Casten and Rep. Susan Wild, all of whom are running for reelection, introduced a bill calling for the removal of missile defense systems and troops from Saudi Arabia, to punish it for the pre-midterm production cut.
“Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s drastic cut in oil production, despite President Biden’s overtures to both countries in recent months, is a hostile act,” the press release by the candidates stated.
As Biden said, “There’s going to be some consequences”.
Rep. Malinowski is running a tight race in a time when, as the New York Times described, “gas prices were soaring”. Susan Wild is running in another “bellwether” seat. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that House Democrats who would have benefited the most from Biden’s Saudi quid pro quo are also the ones trying to punish the Saudis, not for Americans, but for themselves.
Rep. Malinowski voted to impeach Trump because, in his words, “by pressuring a foreign country”, he “used the powers of his office not for America but for himself”, “signaled that America’s foreign policy can be bought by anyone willing to interfere in our politics on his behalf” and “endangered our national security, and violated his oath of office.” All of these things are true of Biden and of his political accomplices inside and outside the administration.
Biden was caught trying to pressure a foreign country for his own political benefit. Had he just asked the Saudis to suspend the price cut without a specific timetable, he might have gotten away with it, but by timing it for a month, enough to clear the midterms, he indicted himself.
The Saudis revealed what Biden was up to and administration flunkies like Watson have denied the motive, but not the act. The next step is for Congress to investigate the quid pro quo.
Considering how many members of the current Congress were heavily invested in preventing a production cut before the midterms, it is unrealistic to presume that a corrupt and self-interested body can credibly investigate itself. Only after the midterms have cleaned house a little bit will it be possible to turn over some rocks and discover who knew what and what the exact deal was.
Biden’s strategic oil reserve releases timed to the midterms were bad enough. There was a time when such nakedly calculated abuses of government assets and taxpayer money might have even been impeachable, but we live in times when politicians routinely engage in such plunder.
Trying to bribe a foreign government to interfere in our election is a whole other matter.
The Democrats were the ones who set the precedent with the first Trump impeachment. And that should be Biden’s first impeachment too. Whether it will be his last is up to Congress.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is
an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/impeach-biden-for-saudi-election-quid-pro-quo/
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