by Joseph Klein
A case of journalistic malpractice.
[Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The publicly available documentary evidence and firsthand accounts from Hunter Biden’s former business associates already prove that Joe Biden was deeply involved with his son Hunter’s shady influence peddling schemes with foreign businesses and oligarchs. Moreover, the evidence points to Joe Biden’s benefiting financially from his son’s pay-to-play ploys that capitalized on the Biden “brand” of access to the “big guy.” The corrupt payoffs for access and use of Joe Biden’s influence went on for years, stretching back to then-Vice President Biden’s days during the Obama-Biden administration when he was the administration’s point man for Ukraine.
The extent to which the left-wing media continue to pretend that Joe Biden was not involved and received nothing of value in connection with his son’s corrupt business dealings knows no bounds. These media outlets won’t be satisfied unless Joe Biden himself comes forward to confess his guilt or a documented direct wire transfer to his bank account from an account belonging to one of Hunter’s foreign business clients is produced. And maybe not even then.
In the absence of a smoking gun, investigators often must rely on circumstantial evidence and the reasonable inferences that can be drawn from such circumstantial evidence to make out a case of wrongdoing. That is the situation we have here regarding Joe Biden’s complicity in his son’s influence peddling schemes.
Unlike a criminal case that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict a defendant, a lower standard of proof applies to impeachment and conviction under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. Bribery is specifically mentioned as grounds for impeachment and conviction.
The New York Times has just recently provided a striking example of an article that misleads its readers into believing that the evidence against Joe Biden is, in its words, “flimsy.” Adam Entous, who is described by the New York Times as “an investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times,” wrote this article entitled “Hunter Biden Text Cited in Impeachment Inquiry Is Not What G.O.P. Suggests.” It appeared on the front page of the New York Times’ December 23rd print edition.
Mr. Entous’s article tries to provide a perfectly innocent explanation for an incriminating text found on Hunter’s infamous laptop, which admitted his payments to his father. But Mr. Entous’s innocent explanation holds no water in light of the text’s language itself and the corroborating circumstantial evidence proving that Joe Biden benefited financially from Hunter’s influence peddling business activities.
The publication with the motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print” committed journalistic malpractice by masquerading this disingenuous article as news when it was little more than a fawning opinion piece.
The January 2019 Hunter Biden text to his daughter Naomi that Mr. Entous tries to explain away reads as follows: “I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro (sic) 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
The text, despite its typos, is crystal clear on its face. It refers to a thirty-year period during which, Hunter told his daughter, he paid “for everything for this entire family.” Hunter then said that he would not make his daughter pay him half her salary, in contrast to his own arrangement to split his “salary” with his “Pop.” There is nothing in the text to indicate that Hunter was revisiting a 30-year-old grievance about what he had to pay his father in the distant past from jobs that he had when he was a college student. And he certainly was not paying back then “for everything” for the “entire” Biden family from his meager wages.
Nevertheless, Mr. Entous claimed that his “close examination of the circumstances surrounding the 2019 text message” revealed that “the 2019 message was a reference to a story from Hunter’s youth that he repeated to his daughters when they became teenagers.” Entous’s “close examination” consisted of a “review of Hunter Biden’s communications and interviews with Biden aides, family friends, and Hunter and Naomi Biden [Hunter’s daughter].”
There is nothing like an “investigative” correspondent who relies on self-serving sources.
According to Mr. Entous, “The story behind Hunter’s allusion to handing half of his salary to his father can be traced back to his childhood, and to the family’s conflicted relationship with money and class.” Back in his college days, Mr. Entous wrote, Hunter “had to work in college and pay half of his salary to his father.” This was the story that family members said Hunter repeated often to his daughters “in hopes of encouraging them to be more self-sufficient.” The purpose of Hunter’s 2019 text message to his daughter Naomi, Mr. Entous wrote, was to deliver that same message once again during their fight over her sister’s medical treatment for a ski injury.
Mr. Entous ended his article with this quote from Naomi about what she thought her father meant in his 2019 text to her: “He was repeating a story from his university days that I grew up hearing. Do people really think he was texting me things like, ‘I give pop half of the Burisma money’? No. That’s crazy.”
It is certainly understandable that Hunter’s children would rally to his defense. But that does not excuse Mr. Entous for doing the same thing without any critical analysis or making the slightest effort to connect the dots.
Hunter’s text said that he paid “for everything for this entire family” during a 30-year span of time. This period covers the years that Hunter received millions of dollars in compensation from Ukraine’s corrupt energy company Burisma where he served on its board of directors. Hunter was being paid this money by Burisma while his father was vice president and the Obama-Biden administration’s point man for Ukraine.
Joe Biden’s quid pro quo for the monies Burisma paid to Hunter while Hunter was serving on Burisma’s board of directors was to use his influence as vice president to force out the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma in 2015. Then-Vice President Biden tried to rationalize his action by claiming that he was simply following U.S. anti-corruption policy in Ukraine. That excuse was not credible given the fact that other Obama administration officials gave the prosecutor’s office high marks for its progress in fighting corruption.
There are ample bank records documenting the shell companies that Hunter used to route monies he received from Burisma and other foreign entities and individuals to bank accounts he controlled as well as to other Biden family members’ bank accounts. It is most likely that this was what Hunter meant when he said in his 2019 text to his daughter that he has been paying “everything for this entire family,” including half his salary to his father. Not payments to his father from small salaries Hunter earned from his odd jobs while he was in college.
Joe Biden does not have to receive illicit money directly into his own personal account to be found guilty of bribery. The federal bribery statute applies to then-Vice President Biden if he was “influenced in the performance of any official act” in exchange for his corruptly accepting “anything of value personally or for any other person or entity.” (Emphasis added)
In exchange for the influence that he used as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma removed from office, Joe Biden corruptly accepted as value a financial benefit directed to his son by incentivizing Burisma to compensate Hunter lavishly. Other Biden family members benefited financially as well.
In any event, there is some evidence that then-Vice President Biden did receive a direct bribe of his own, which was routed through shell companies from Burisma. Mr. Entous omitted any reference in his article to the FBI 1023 reporting document in which a trusted informant implicated Joe Biden in an alleged criminal bribery scheme involving Burisma while he was vice president. The informant paraphrased a statement by Mykola Zlochevsky, Burisma’s owner at the time, to the effect that Hunter will take care of issues relating to the investigation of corruption at Burisma “through his dad.” According to the FBI report, Zlochevsky told the informer that he did not send any funds directly to the “Big Guy” (which the informer understood to be a reference to Joe Biden). The FBI report recounted Zlochevsky’s boast that it would “take them (Investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).”
The banking records and FBI 1023 reporting document provide critical evidence corroborating the most logical reading of Hunter’s January 2019 text to his daughter Naomi, which flatly contradicts the New York Times “investigative” correspondent’s benign interpretation. Hunter Biden was claiming that he was keeping his “Pop” and the entire Biden family financially afloat. At least since the days when his father was serving as vice president, the money that Hunter funneled into the Biden family bank accounts came largely from foreign sources such as Burisma who were interested in buying access to the “big guy.”
A credible investigator collects, reviews, and analyzes all relevant evidence before reaching a fact-based conclusion. The New York Times’ “investigative correspondent” fell far short of that mark in his zeal to insulate Joe Biden from any responsibility for his involvement and value accepted in connection with his son’s unscrupulous business affairs.
Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and the author of Global Deception: The
UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack
Hussein Obama, The United Nations & Radical Islam.
Source:https://www.frontpagemag.com/insulating-old-joe-from-hunters-legal-problems/
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