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For those who watched Thursday’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing regarding the Twitter Files, the arrogant, dismissive, (and hilariously ignorant) attitude on display by the subcommittee’s Democrat members was hard to stomach. While most hearings are dog and pony shows to some degree, the Dems’ seek-and-destroy mission aimed at undermining the credibility of witnesses Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger and muddying the waters was blatant.
As a former Democrat (of the “classical liberal” variety) the disdain for journalistic ethics and best practices and utter indifference to the gross governmental overreach revealed by the Twitter Files demonstrated by the Democrats who questioned (or, rather, bellowed at and over) Taibbi and Shellenberger made my blood boil. There were no liberal ideals on display Thursday — at least not by the Democrats. And the irony that their ire was directed at two decidedly-non-Republican witnesses simply because they’ve dared question the authoritarian methodology embraced by the “progressive” ruling class was thick.
Yesterday’s #TwitterFiles hearing should have been a sleepy affair. Most gov’t hearings are. Instead, it was an engrossing match btwn sharp-witted, smiling champions of free speech & dull-witted, scowling establishment bubble-dwellers. The aptitudes of the 2 sides are diverging.
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) March 10, 2023
None of the Democrat committee members covered themselves in glory at Thursday’s hearing, but Rep. Dan Goldman (NY) went on a smarm-offensive with his questioning, first, during time yielded to him by fellow Democrat committee member Linda Sánchez (CA). (Video is cued up to Goldman’s initial questioning.)
Though he started out with an awkward compliment to Shellenberger on his tie (presumably because it was similar to the one he was sporting), Goldman quickly pivoted to attempting to discredit the NY Post/laptop story. He asserted that the hard drive provided to the Post by Rudy Giuliani had been tampered with while Giuliani was “openly cavorting with agents of Russian intelligence,” though Shellenberger pushed back pointing to the fact that multiple news outlets, including CBS, had since authenticated the contents of the laptop.
Goldman also whipped out the “Trump Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report,” asking Shellenberger if he’d read the 300-page tome before asserting in Twitter Files #7 that “Every single fact in [the NY Post story on the laptop] was accurate.” Of course, Shellenberger had not, though he testified he was generally familiar with his contents. Goldman referred to the first paragraph of the Post’s story, which asserted that the prosecutor (Viktor Shokin) who was fired at the behest of Joe Biden was investigating Burisma:
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
This is where Goldman had his Matlock Moment, as he punctuated each word with the Report for emphasis, proclaiming that:
“Every single State Department and Trump administration expert on Ukraine said that Vice President Joe Biden, in concert with the European Union and the IMF, was executing official U.S. policy by encouraging Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general because he was not prosecuting corruption and was not prosecuting companies like Burisma, so that story — notwithstanding your allegations — was false.”
Of course, Goldman’s argument (and the “expert” testimony he holds in such vaunted esteem) conveniently dismisses the evidence to the contrary and executes a clever semantic two-step there. If that’s what he’s hanging his hat on to discredit Shellenberger, I’d submit he’s failed to make his case.
Goldman got another shot at questioning, which he snarkily reclaimed when Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) seemingly forgot to return to him, using that segment to relitigate 2016 and the Mueller indictments. When Taibbi pushed back on the premise of his questioning, Goldman barked, “Let me move on. That’s how this works — you should know that by now!” He then quibbled with Shellenberger over what constituted “direction” from the FBI to Twitter to remove posts or accounts before detouring to complaining to Jordan about the committee not discussing Republican book banning and the horrific misdeeds of one Donald J. Trump.
For his grand finale, Goldman bemoaned the fact that the committee was there discussing Twitter — “Twitter!” — contending that “Even with Twitter, you cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any lawful speech.” When Jordan offered an example of a White House official contacting Twitter two days after Biden assumed office to request a tweet be taken down, they got into a back-and-forth about whether it involved “lawful speech.” When Jordan didn’t immediately have the tweet handy, Goldman snidely replied, “Oh, shocking.” The tweet in question, it turns out, was from Robert Kennedy, Jr. regarding Hank Aaron’s death after he received the vaccine. (Read: Lawful but contradicting the preferred narrative.)
It would appear that Mr. Goldman, after chiding the witnesses for not having committed the Ukraine Impeachment Report and Mueller indictments to memory, hadn’t bothered to do his own homework.
This is the tweet she wanted censored. You can say it’s inappropriate, but it’s clearly 1st Amendment protected speech. The statement is also too subjective to be said to be false. (Note that it doesn’t claim Aaron died from the Covid shot.)https://t.co/7CF5v1dMXQ
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) January 9, 2023
I knew Goldman seemed familiar, but it took me a few moments to place him. The way he revered the Impeachment Report should have tipped me off:
That he’s a partisan with an aim toward discrediting Republicans and running interference for the Biden administration is hardly surprising. What is interesting, however, is the connection Goldman has to a consulting firm overseeing the funds being marshaled to combat investigations into Biden, as reported by Fox News Digital.
Through his family foundation, Rep. Daniel Goldman, D.-N.Y, a member of the House Oversight Committee, has ties to Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that overlooks the largest dark money network in the country. Arabella Advisors manages the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has bankrolled the Congressional Integrity Project, a group of liberal operatives working behind the scenes with Democrats in attempts to smother the Biden investigations by Goldman’s GOP colleagues on the Oversight Committee.
…
Goldman’s ties to Arabella Advisors lie with his family foundation, the Richard W. Goldman Family Foundation, which works to “promote equality” and reduce “barriers to opportunity across generations for our nation’s most disadvantaged.” According to tax forms, Goldman held several roles at the foundation, which he typically operated alongside a few other family members. In 2012, he became its secretary; in 2018, he also took over its treasurer responsibilities.
The same year he became its treasurer, Goldman’s family foundation moved its books into the care of Arabella Advisors. But even before the influential firm took over its books, the foundation had paid Arabella Advisors hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees dating back to 2013, its tax forms show. The foundation has also doled out more than $1.2 million to the New Venture Fund, an Arabella Advisors-managed dark money nonprofit incubator, for endeavors.
Goldman’s 2022 financial disclosure shows that he had shifted his position to the sole family foundation board member reported on previous years’ tax forms.
Arabella Advisors, meanwhile, manages the Sixteen Thirty Fund, another dark money nonprofit incubator that pushes hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing causes and initiatives each year. In 2020 and 2021, the Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled $1.5 million into the Congressional Integrity Project, the Washington Examiner first reported, which was nearly all of the Congressional Integrity Project’s cash during that time.
It’s all so…cozy. Almost like the relationship the FBI developed with Twitter.