Joe Biden ABSOLUTELY benefited from Hunter’s foreign business
By Jonathan Turley
This week, President Joe Biden responded to calls for greater access to the media with a blockbuster interview with . . . the Weather Channel.
The interview immediately prompted critics to speculate that the president wanted to continue to talk about the weather — the same claim made after the disclosure of his participation in various dinners with his son’s foreign associates.
As the number of these dinners, meetings and outings increase, Joe Biden appears to have covered more meteorological subjects than Al Roker.
The problem is that conditions are worsening in Washington.
This week, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released a third report on the ongoing investigations into the Biden corruption scandal.
The latest bank records indicate the Biden family has received more than $20 million, including from corrupt Kazakh figures.
Some of this money provided Hunter Biden with extravagant toys. On April 22, 2014, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai bank account.
That account then shows the exact same amount being wired to a New Jersey car dealership for a Fisker sports car for Hunter. Finding the Fisker unsuitable, Hunter traded it in for a Porsche.
Notably, these payments often coincided with dinners and meetings with Joe Biden.
Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, the widow of Moscow ex-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton Feb. 14, 2014.
She later attended a dinner with Joe and Hunter Biden at Washington, DC, hotspot Café Milano.
For weeks, Joe Biden’s prior claims have been collapsing as his allies in the media and Congress struggle for an alternative spin on these new disclosures.
The president’s denials of any knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings has finally have been exposed as a lie.
Even the Washington Post has acknowledged Biden lied when he insisted that Hunter never made any money in China.
It was always a boldfaced falsehood (and a confusing claim from a man who insisted that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings).
But the testimony of associate Devon Archer and new bank records forced the paper and others to recognize the falsehood.
There is also the confirmation that Biden’s long denials that he attended key dinners with Hunter’s business associates were false.
Most notably, the media are grudgingly admitting that Hunter was openly selling influence peddling and access to his father was part of what Archer called “selling the brand.”
The final line of defense is now that Hunter Biden was selling access to Joe Biden but it was an “illusion.” The reason, they claim, is there is no evidence of direct payments to Joe and Jill Biden.
There is, of course, nothing “illusionary” about tens of millions moving to Hunter and other family members.
But political spins are often built on illusions. The latest is that Joe Biden only benefits from these payments if they were directly deposited in his accounts.
For a family that Hunter explained was “the best” at this type of dealing, it is absurd to expect a deposit slip from a corrupt Ukrainian official to the account of Joe and Jill Biden, one of the most vulnerable accounts in the world to review and monitoring.
These claims, moreover, ignore emails discussing the Hunter and his father’s use of joint accounts to pay for expenses, including how one account was used to pay Joe’s taxes. There is also Hunter’s complaint that he was using half of his earnings to support his father. Indeed, one trusted FBI informant said that, in planning a bribe, one foreign figure was told to avoid direct payments to Joe Biden. Today, that is as amateurish as an envelope of cash and the Bidens have been in the business of influence peddling for decades.
Responding to the new evidence, Washington Post columnist Phillip Bump led the charge in asking: Where’s the bribe?
In other words, as long as Hunter got the luxury car, Joe didn’t benefit or receive a bribe.
(Notably, Bump did not have the same high standards when he pushed the false claim over a photo op in Lafayette Park and later refused to concede with the rest of the media on the lack of Russian collusion with Donald Trump.)
Not even millions to Biden children and grandchildren would seem to satisfy Bump as an inducement for the then-vice president.
Yet the greatest illusion is the claim Joe Biden would only be motivated by a direct payment to one of his accounts.
Biden clearly benefited from millions going to the Biden Family Fund (BFF). Even grandchildren received some of the transfers funneled through a labyrinth of accounts.
Joe Biden is 80 years old. Despite holding only government jobs in his career, he is worth an estimated $8 million.
Forbes reported he earned $17.3 million over the four years he was out of office. He will never spend his fortune. Any additional money would have to pass to his descendants.
For most wealthy people in their final years, the challenge is not raising more money but getting that money to your children without heavy taxes or delays.
This money was going to his BFF. That is a benefit and probably of greater value to a man of Joe Biden’s age and wealth.
None of this has stopped politicians, press and pundits from insisting that absent a direct payment to the president’s account, there is no corruption or crime.
After all, $20 million going to a president’s family is like complaining about the weather in Washington.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
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Impeaching a Trump Impeachment
New Hunter Biden details justify the infamous 2019 Ukraine phone call.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr
Let the partisan spittle fly, as it did during the first Trump impeachment. Who sacked Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2016 and why? This question is back thanks to congressional testimony by former Hunter Biden partner Devon Archer.
Whatever happened, it wasn’t what Donald Trump said happened. It also wasn’t what Joe Biden said happened. His claim to have arranged the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin with an ultimatum to then-President Petro Poroshenko was just another Joe tall tale. Mr. Shokin’s dismissal came months later at the behest of several Western governments.
But Mr. Archer’s testimony puts the kibosh on the simple tale told by Trump partisans that Mr. Shokin was canned to protect Joe and Hunter Biden. According to Mr. Archer, Mr. Shokin was valued by Ukraine’s leadership precisely because he kept a lid on the long-running investigation of Burisma, a gas company on whose board Hunter sat.
This accords with my take at the time. Mr. Biden didn’t need to do anything. In fact, he was free, along with the European Union and other donors, to strike an anticorruption pose over Mr. Shokin because he knew Ukraine had every incentive to protect the Bidens.
Whatever the reason for the firing, it certainly wasn’t for the purpose of making trouble for Burisma.
If so, Democrats now only have to defend a Hunter business scam of peddling an “illusion of access,” as party spinmeisters are putting it. Joe only has to be excused for insouciantly abetting the illusion with a few restaurant stop-bys, a few speakerphone chats about the weather, and by lending Hunter the trappings of the White House, Air Force Two, etc.
That is, pending the failure of other evidence to pan out. Mr. Archer says that on one occasion at least, over drinks, Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky urged Hunter to “phone D.C.” on his behalf and Hunter did. An FBI informant says Mr. Zlochevsky claimed to have recorded calls with both Bidens and paid $10 million in bribes. The laptop evidence presents various complications too.
My working assumption all along, though, has been that Joe Biden wasn’t so dumb as to do anything when he knew Hunter could extract millions for doing nothing.
But there’s also political risk in the Justice Department’s stringing out a tax investigation to allow charges related to Hunter’s Burisma earnings to fall away due to the statute of limitations. Of Hunter’s several windfalls, his Burisma earnings most directly leveraged his father’s role, most directly link to a specific act by his father (the Shokin firing), and provide the most direct credence to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment defense, concerning his phone call to President Zelensky fishing for information about Biden dealings in Ukraine.
There’s some new news here. Mr. Trump may well have been informed by Attorney General William Barr about the Burisma insider who spoke to the FBI—which means Mr. Trump both can keep a secret and had a stronger foundation for his request to Mr. Zelensky, whose cooperation he sought in an FBI investigation that we now know was under way in response to the confidential informant’s testimony.
Hmmm.
The White House’s latest defense implicitly allows that Joe may have discussed business with Hunter but he wasn’t “in business” with Hunter. Plenty of room to maneuver is permitted if the facts show Joe did everything and anything to facilitate Hunter’s “illusion of access” short of selling an official act or joining Hunter’s payroll.
Can Mr. Biden be re-elected despite all this? Yup, just as Mr. Trump can be elected from prison. Silence reigns in Democratic circles, though, because it also increases the possibility that Mr. Biden will become “indisposed” and bow out of the race.
It occurs to some that Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel, is but the executor of a policy decision made elsewhere, telegraphed in the New York Times in April 2022, by Mr. Biden to run up the charges against Mr. Trump as part of his election strategy.
Mr. Biden plays dice with the country because he thinks Mr. Trump is the one GOP nominee he can defeat.
A flutter of hope passed through the electorate with the prospect of a TV debate between Florida’s Ron DeSantis and California’s Gavin Newsom, perhaps starting a groundswell for an alternative presidential slate in 2024. A widely read interview with Obama biographer David Garrow, of “Eyes on the Prize” and Martin Luther King Jr. biography fame, put the question of Obama-style cynicism on the table. Joe Biden cultivated a belief in millions of voters that he would he wave away their student debt though he knew he couldn’t. Mr. Biden is doing all he can now to make sure the country must choose
between him and Mr. Trump. But many a slip occurs between cup and lip—a health crisis, a Hunter blowup, a Trump acquittal, a reverse in Ukraine—that could make Messrs. Biden and Smith the men who delivered the White House to Donald Trump.
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Biden-nomics is the equivalent of being told shut your eyes and you will see better.
Yes, inflation is slowing but is still higher than The Fed wants. Consequently, they might raise rates. If so, they would probably cause a mild recession which would impact employment.
Furthermore, real wages have not exceeded inflation so take home pay remains a kitchen table issue. Most necessities exceed household incomes.
Biden lies and the deplorables are not buying. Also, automobile union workers will soon begin to lose jobs because the companies are losing their shirts and have to adjust for this fact.
Biden is also doing whatever he can to continue Green which is causing Red P and L's as he wrecks the energy segment of our economy. He also has caused us to become uranium dependent on Russia and shutting down mining will cripple our ability to manufacture domestically so we will continue to be dependent upon China.
Voter/consumer credit card debt is rising and has risen above one trillion dollars. UGH!
Once again Biden proves he is totally incompetent. He remains a rigid ideologue.
Only a matter of time before independent voters start deserting him and Democrat House and Senate members begin to become vulnerable. I still believe a total rout is likely if Republicans play their cards right. McCarthy is doing a great job so far.
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