Burisma

Democrats constantly downplay Hunter Biden’s troubles and any felonies he might have committed. The legacy media avoid them entirely. What do they say when they can’t bury the story? Their most common defense is also their most important: Hunter Biden’s troubles matter only if they can be linked directly to his father and specifically to Joe’s official position. So far, they say, those links are weak and unproven. What other defenses do they put forward? First, they say that whatever money Hunter made from his foreign business dealings, he did not benefit from any official action taken by the vice president. Neither did Joe himself. Those points are crucial. Second, it’s not a crime to benefit from your family name.

At long last, Attorney General Merrick Garland decided to appoint a special counsel to continue the investigation of Hunter Biden, his family and associates. His choice: US Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, who has been on the case for several years. He was originally appointed as US attorney by Donald Trump, a point Democrats always highlight without noting that he was promoted by both Democratic senators from the state.  Being named special counsel gives Weiss some authority beyond that of a regular US attorney. In particular, he can bring federal cases outside his narrow territorial domain without consent from US attorneys in those other districts. That’s an important point, since Weiss was apparently denied the right to bring at least two other cases his office sought.

The Biden administration has repeatedly told the public that Hunter’s lucrative consulting business doesn’t matter unless it is directly connected to his father. That’s true. Moreover, they add, that connection is not just unproven, it cannot be proved because it didn’t exist. That’s false, although the mainstream media has repeated it faithfully. But even the most feckless are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain this awkward lip-syncing with the White House press office. Actually, the Biden grifting operation extends well beyond Hunter to include multiple family members. It always centered on Joe’s public position and the political access it ensured, first as the sitting vice president and then as a prospective Democratic nominee after Hillary Clinton’s defeat.

A famous clip from recent history: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.” That was Joe Biden in 2016. He was relaxing among friends at a chummy event at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ha, ha, ha, tittered the appreciative audience. What a lark! Here was a former vice president of the United States bragging about how he (naughty word) blackmailed an official from a foreign government who was investigating the company on whose board Joe Biden’s son sat. This is old news, of course.

In his texts, Hunter Biden depicts himself as Atlas, carrying his entire family on his back — their financial and emotional burdens taken unto himself, turning his life into a black hole of drugs, debts and duplicity. You have to be a certain kind of troubled to carry on an affair with your brother’s widow while sexting her married sister, corresponding with them in disturbing messages in between wiring them money. The threats of self-harm and the mournful late-night desperation, alternating with chest-thumping declarations that he’s the only one earning money for the family, are all recognizable as aspects of someone with serious substance addiction. If he wasn’t so clearly an awful person, you’d almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

Cockburn has accidentally left his laptop at plenty of bars in his day. Yet if you were to open it up and search it — as a PI hired by one of his loopy exes once did — you would not find extensive evidence of drug use or information potentially compromising to national security. Not so in the case of Hunter Biden. Even the New York Times admitted last month that his now-notorious laptop is real and under investigation by federal prosecutors. When the New York Post broke that story back in October 2020, the mainstream media took a pass and Twitter even suspended the Post’s account. Now that the crooked computer has been verified, those same alleged journalists are rushing to play CYA.

More news is breaking daily on America’s favorite pipe artist. But if you looked at Hunter Biden’s inner circle, you wouldn’t see a group of people bracing for impact. In fact, you would see photos of Hunter Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen frolicking with friends on the beach in Rio de Janeiro and sipping out of coconuts. You would see the president in the fake White House set rolling up his sleeve for his second televised booster shot. But don’t let the Biden family’s schedule fool you: Hunter is in trouble — and they know it. The Washington Post published a piece this week titled, “Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company.” The company in question is CEFC China Energy conglomerate.

Biden is dishonest. His memory is shot. He’s an influence-peddler pretending to be a victim, a lifelong exploiter of his public position who hides behind the lowest forms of sentimentality. Hunter Biden, of course. You’d have to be on the wrong end of a three-day crack binge to confuse Hunter Biden with the impeccably honest, mentally agile and profoundly principled multimillionaire career politician Joe Biden. Hunter has written an autobiography. Or rather, some desperate and shameless mercenary has ghosted it for him. It belongs to the most execrable category of literature, the political memoir — the sort of book written to launch a political career (Dreams From My Father) or, as in this case, to end one (Ten Percent for the Big Guy).

Are the chickens coming home for Hunter Biden? It certainly seems so, though experts differ on the critical question of whether they are coming home to roost or roast. Wednesday’s news, splashed via an official communiqué from his father’s transition operation, that Hunter is being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for possible tax fraud makes me want to bet for ‘roast’ not ‘roost’. Here’s Hunter’s statement from Wednesday, in full: ‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs.

Res ipse loquitur. What a card Joe Biden is. Here he is to Fox News a year ago: 'I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.' Ha, ha, ha. Peter Schweizer exploded that bald faced lie in his film Riding the Dragon and elsewhere. And just today the New York Post prints an email captured from Hunter Biden’s computer. It’s from a Ukrainian businessman named Vadym Pozharskyi, who in 2015 was an adviser to Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat. Hunter had no experience in the energy sector. But his dad was vice president of the United States and apparently that was worth the $50,000 per month that Hunter collected in fees.