by Thomas Lifson
Kamala Harris is Joe's insurance policy. If and when she leaves the vice presidency and is replaced by someone who could be elected in 2024, Joe's and Jill's days in the Oval Office are numbered.
Thanks to a series of leaks from the hard drive of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop computer, we know there is more than enough evidence to appoint a special counsel, or at least convene a grand jury to investigate bribery, tax fraud, and probably several other categories of crime involving the Biden Crime Family. Three recent articles by highly respected reporters Miranda Devine (who has a book on the subject about to come out and whose work informs the other two writers), Byron York, and Emily Jashinsky present evidence typed in Hunter's own hand of the schemes whereby Hunter acted as the bagman collecting vast wealth from foreign interests by selling access to Joe when he was vice president and a potential candidate for the presidency.
All three accounts are worth reading, though there is considerable overlap. From Devine, here is an example of evidence that already ought to have led to a subpoena for financial records:
Hunter complained that he was forced to give half his salary to his father.
"I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years," Hunter wrote in a 2019 text message to his daughter, Naomi, that was found on his abandoned laptop.
"It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won't make you give me half your salary."
There's no direct evidence of such a wealth transfer on Hunter's laptop.
A mildly curious U.S. attorney ought to be able to get a grand jury to subpoena the financial records of the Biden clan on this basis. Or, in an alternate reality, a special counsel, appointed to reassure the public that their president is not beholden to foreign interests, ought to be digging through these and other financial records, such as (via Devine) that Hunter routinely paid at least some of his father's household expenses, including AT&T bills of around $190 a month.
We know from an e-mail on June 5, 2010, with the subject "JRB bills" to Hunter from Eric Schwerin, his business partner at Rosemont Seneca, that he was expected to foot hefty bills to Wilmington contractors for maintenance and upkeep of his father's palatial lakefront property. Joe's initials are JRB, for Joseph Robinette Biden.
The bills that June included $2,600 to contractor Earle Downing for a "stone retaining wall" at Joe's Wilmington estate, $1,475 to painter Ronald Peacock to paint the "back wall and columns" of the house, and $1,239 to builder Mike Christopher for repairs to the air conditioning at the cottage of Joe's late mother, Jean "Mom-Mom" Biden, which was on his property and which he would later rent to the Secret Service for $2,200 a month.
"This is from last summer I think and needs to be paid pretty soon," wrote Schwerin of Christopher's bill.
Another $475 "for shutters" was owed to RBI construction, of Bear, Del., about 15 minutes west of Wilmington.
Gifts to public officials that are not disclosed can and have led to criminal prosecution of both parties.
As Byron York reminds us:
For years, Joe Biden was known as the poorest man in the U.S. Senate. It was a label he himself welcomed, claiming it showed how ethically clean he was. "I entered as one of the poorest men in Congress, left as one of the poorest men in government, in Congress, and as vice president," Biden said during his presidential campaign in 2019. What Devine has discovered suggests that while Biden bragged about his lack of money — in other words, claiming to be free of the financial corruption common in politics — he was relying on his influence-peddling son to pay some of his bills.
York also mentions the photo Devine obtained of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim with both Bidens at the Vice President's Residence, putting the lie to Biden's claim he had no knowledge of Hunter's business dealings. Hunter gloated over the size of the business deals he expected with Slim and his associates. Recall that it was Slim's cash infusion that saved the New York Times when it was at a financial low point.
Jashinsky's headline summarizes the big issue: "In A Healthy Country, The Bidens Would Be Seen As The Picture Of Elite Corruption." She reminds us that Joe raking off the top of Hunter's business income is an old story:
Hunter's complaint about his father taking a chunk of his earnings might sound familiar. It's basically exactly what we learned from Tony Bobulinski shortly before the 2020 election, even if the media chose not to treat that information credibly.
Here's more from Devine: "Further evidence that Joe expected to receive a slice of his son's income was provided by Tony Bobulinksi, Hunter's former business partner in a firm called Oneida, which was set up to enter a joint venture with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC. Bobulinski says that Joe was the "big guy" referred to in a 2017 e-mail who was to be allocated 10 percent equity in the firm: "10 [percent] held by H [Hunter] for the big guy."
CEFC is a recurring character in the Biden drama. When the FBI caught Patrick Ho, an executive with CEFC, bribing African officials with cash in Chad and Uganda, he made a call. It was to James Biden, whose brother had just departed the vice presidency and was exploring a bid for the Oval Office. Why on earth would a corrupt Chinese business executive make an emergency call to James Biden?
Well, according to Jim, Ho was actually trying to contact his nephew Hunter. Here's how the New York Times reported on the exchange back in 2018: "In a brief interview, James Biden said he had been surprised by Mr. Ho's call. He said he believed it had been meant for Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son. James Biden said he had passed on his nephew's contact information."
"There is nothing else I have to say," James Biden told the Times. "I don't want to be dragged into this anymore."
Part of the point of paying Hunter Biden money to oversee business dealings outside his areas of expertise is so that you can make a call just like the one Ho made back in 2017.
So the new emails make it pretty clear that Hunter Biden's corrupt foreign influence peddling benefitted the current president of the United States[.]
It is far from clear how many copies of Hunter's hard drive are in the hands of others, and far from clear who is orchestrating the leaks. But what is absolutely clear is that Biden's presidency could be brought to its knees, possibly even ended, if the media gatekeepers at the New York Times and Washington Post decided to give the story enthusiastic coverage, bringing the rest of the agitprop along with them. They could agitate for the appointment of a special counsel, as was done with President Trump over the nonsense Russiagate fake scandal.
Or a U.S. attorney who convened a grand jury could issue subpoenas and eventually obtain indictments, setting the stage for impeachment.
We understand why none of this is happening — yet. Biden is serving his purpose, appointing officials and signing executive orders that advance the progressives' agenda. But the drip, drip, drip continues and accumulates.
Glenn Reynolds, AKA the Instapundit, offers a fascinating theory:
Hunter's laptop is being held for when they decide to get rid of Joe. The leaks are just to remind everyone it's out there. Well, everyone except for Joe. He won't remember for long anyway.
This makes perfect sense because Joe Biden already is damaged goods, his accelerating mental decline self-evident to all who do not wear ideological blinders. What is most intriguing is the calculus behind "when they decide to get rid of Joe." I strongly suspect that Kamala Harris is now recognized to be such a disaster, unelectable if she inherits the presidency after Joe reigns, is impeached, or leaves under the terms of the 25th Amendment, that she must be Agnewed before Joe leaves. Clayton Spann yesterday explored some of the types of maneuvers that might be executed to accomplish this, but there are many other approaches one could imagine.
Kamala Harris, for all her purported friction with Dr. Jill Biden, is Joe's insurance policy. If and when she leaves the vice presidency and is replaced by someone who could be elected in 2024, Joe's and Jill's days in the Oval Office are numbered.
All of this is uncomfortably banana republic territory: powerful, unseen forces pulling strings and deciding the fate of the nation's leadership by manipulating corrupt media and officialdom. That's where we are today.
Caricature by Donkey Hotey, CC BY 2.0 license.
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Thomas Lifson
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_question_is_when_not_if_hunter_bidens_laptop_will_bring_down_joe_bidens_presidency.html
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