Two things can be true at once:
First, then-Vice President Joe Biden did the world a service in ousting corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who, in fact, was going unfairly easy on Burisma Holdings.
Second, Hunter Biden should not have joined the board of the pro-Putin gas company, especially given how obvious it was that Burisma hoped to leverage the second son’s proximity to the White House.
Joe Biden himself seems innocent of the charge that he acted to protect Burisma and his son during his dealings in Ukraine. There’s not a shred of evidence that Biden ever spoke to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about Burisma, and a Biden adviser who attended every meeting with him said that such a thing had never happened.
Hunter Biden is a different case. His acceptance of the role on the Burisma board was peak D.C. corruption, plain and simple. He was monetizing his dad’s career. As Matthew Yglesias bluntly noted, “Hunter Biden’s whole career is being Joe Biden’s son.”
Hunter’s first real job was as the deputy campaign manager of his father’s reelection campaign, which is at least honest work. Then he got a job with one of Biden’s biggest donors at the time. Despite his lack of real expertise in anything, people managed to create excuses for him to join everything. Tom Carper, Delaware’s other senator, once wrote a letter of recommendation for Hunter to join the board of Amtrak. The best he could do is to say that Hunter “has spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains.”
But even that is bargain-barrel Beltway corruption. He took it to the next level in joining the board of a company that was acting in the service of a Russian government that openly advocates against our own. Not only did he do so undeservedly, but Hunter accepted some $50,000, per month knowing Burisma paid him with the hopes of currying favor with his father. This is what we call a sinecure, an obvious do-nothing job that’s offered as a favor … to someone.
In conceding Hunter’s corruption, Democrats are not making a concession to President Trump. They are merely acknowledging facts. After all, the crux of the case against Trump is that if he actually viewed Hunter’s actions as corrupt, he would have used formal mechanisms of government to investigate him, not use back-channels to put pressure on Ukraine.
Joe Biden might have done nothing wrong, aside from his negligence in overlooking the obvious impropriety of Hunter taking that job. But that it was improper is something on which we should all be able to agree.
