It is not Joe Biden’s fault that his son, Hunter, is a whoremongering crackhead. It is not his fault that Hunter, for years, has engaged in shady business dealings.
But it is most certainly the father’s fault that he directly abetted some of Hunter’s shady business dealings, and it is his fault if he lied about his knowledge of or aid in those dealings.
Worse, it is more than his fault, but also a corruption of his duty to the public, that then-Vice President Joe Biden assisted his son’s unethical profiteering in ways that clearly undermined America’s diplomatic standing and that could potentially help undermine U.S. security.
The reality of all of those detrimental elements of what Politico called Biden Inc. has long been apparent. Information from the alleged laptop of Hunter Biden, as reported in the past two days by the New York Post, would, if true, mean the degree of those detrimental elements could be even worse than previously assumed.
This is why it is such a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics for major media outlets to denounce the Post’s reporting rather than actually follow up on it with an open mind. What was already known by the media, but treated as unimportant, was bad enough. The new revelations, including Thursday’s update adding (alleged) details about Hunter Biden’s China dealings to Wednesday’s reports of his Ukraine imbroglio, continue to make both Bidens look bad in ways that cast doubt on the father’s fitness for office.
The new documents, which appear authentic, show Hunter Biden continuing to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese-government-connected entities even after his father left the vice presidency. One of the son’s biggest forays into the Chinese market, one that appears to be his gateway into many of his other dealings there, involves an equity firm called BHR Partners, which is 10% owned by the younger Biden and 80% owned by Chinese entities, including at least 30% by subsidiaries of the Communist Chinese government itself. BHR Partners was registered 12 days after, and apparently resulting from, a 2013 trip to China in which the vice president brought the son as a guest on Air Force Two.
In short, Hunter Biden is in league with Chinese government entities at least substantially because his father used his taxpayer-financed luxury plane as a conduit for his dodgy, lucrative business deals.
It matters not that nobody has (yet) shown any direct illegality in these dealings. The father’s slick assistance of his son’s profiteering, in cahoots with the government of this nation’s single-most dangerous global adversary, was abominable. Now, the Post has provided plausible evidence that the profiteering continues, in ways that could at least indirectly compromise Joe Biden if he wins the presidency.
The evidence is plausible because everything in the emails seems to comport with and add believably to what was already known about the Biden Inc. dealings, because the diction and details in the emails are so distinctive, and because they were accompanied in the hard drive by very private photos that quite clearly belonged to or involved Hunter Biden.
There is one more thing, which should be dispositive. The original hard drive, of which the Post’s version was a copy, was reportedly seized last year by the FBI. Why would a Delaware grand jury subpoena, and the federal authorities seize, a computer and hard drive that weren’t even plausibly related to the vice president?
Real reporters should be beating down the doors of the Delaware prosecutor’s office to find out what was done or is being done or was discovered about the hard drive. Electronic evidence is verifiable. Every reporter (and indeed every citizen) should be demanding that this particular electronic evidence be either verified or disproven.
