If Democrats are so worried about Russia playing tricks in our election, maybe they should stop falling for them every single time.
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin reported Tuesday that a “top-secret CIA assessment” has concluded that President Vladimir Putin himself is “probably directing” an effort by Russia “aimed at denigrating” Joe Biden in the lead up to November.
Well, doesn’t that sound just awful? Oh, but what’s the charge against Biden, you ask? It’s that Biden is — wait for it — corrupt.
Please, calm down. I wouldn’t want you going into shock. Hearing that a politician is corrupt is understandably a blow to your confidence in our democracy, but you’ll have to maintain your senses. The next question you might have is about the channels that Putin is using that spread this absolutely devastating charge. Surely, it must be a system very sophisticated and almost too complicated for our own counterintelligence forces to understand.
Nope. According to Rogin, the brilliant scheme is carried out by one man — Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, whom the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Treasury Department have already identified as a Russian agent.
That’s lame. Couldn’t it have at least been like in a James Bond movie in which the Soviet spy is a seductive blonde? If you haven’t seen a photograph of Derkach, he looks like the My Pillow guy.
Derkach is supposedly reaching out to Republicans in Congress, as well as the White House, to push the narrative about Biden taking actions as vice president that were meant to shield his son Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings, particularly as they relate to the seedy Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
That’s a charge that has been out there since at least 2015. Answers as to what Hunter actually did for Burisma for the ungodly amounts of money they paid him remain elusive. The Washington Post reported in September 2019, “What specific duties Hunter Biden carried out for Burisma are not fully known.” A lawyer for Hunter also “declined to say how much his client earned, or whether the vice president’s son knew the company’s owner was in the crosshairs of authorities when he joined.“
Furthermore, George Kent, a U.S. diplomat who oversaw Ukrainian affairs during Biden’s tenure as vice president, testified in October 2019 that he had told Biden’s office in 2015 that there were concerns about Hunter and Burisma, only to be told in return that it wasn’t important and that Biden didn’t have the “bandwidth” to be troubled about it.
Joe Biden himself has indicated he was at least wary of his son’s association with Burisma. In a radio interview last fall, Biden said, “At one point that it came out that [Hunter] was on the board [of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma]. I said, ‘I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing.’ Period. I said that.”
Was there corruption afoot in all of this? We don’t know yet. We may get answers if and when Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, releases a report detailing the findings of an investigation he has started into this exact issue. But until then, the accusation isn’t without merit.
But would we really be talking about this if Democrats hadn’t looked for any opportunity to sound the alarm about Russia? They do it every two minutes under the assumption that voters are panicked at the idea of Trump benefiting from Putin’s malign activities. The problem, though, is that more talk about Russian interference is going to hurt their own nominee — and not for nothing.
Democrats really need to figure out that if Putin has a game, they’re playing right along with it.
