We don’t need to be reminded not to get excited about Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden ever being brought to justice or even seriously embarrassed. The coverage of the longstanding grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden is nevertheless reaching a fever pitch. Today’s New York Post cover story reports that a grand jury witness was asked to identify “the big guy” in Hunter Biden’s laptop emails.
Please spare me. The Post does not report who the witness was or how he answered. I would guess the witness, whoever it was, got the answer right, but I’m not going to get excited about it at this late date.
Post columnist Miranda Devine highlights the obvious point overlooked by the mainstream media:
There is evidence on the laptop that Joe Biden profited from Hunter’s overseas business dealings, indicating mingled finances, shared bank accounts and household bills Hunter was expected to pay for his father.
Hunter complained about having to give “half” his salary to his father and “pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.”
But even if [White House chief of staff Ron] Klain and media pals want to dismiss evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme — including meetings with Hunter’s foreign partners — that doesn’t clear the president.
There is no country in the world where millions of dollars paid to a top official’s son for doing nothing would not be regarded as corruption.
“Large payments to the children of powerful government officials by those with interests potentially affected by those officials’ actions are universally understood to be corrupt efforts to influence the officials,” Manhattan litigation lawyer Francis Menton writes in the Manhattan Contrarian blog.
“In cases involving people other than the Bidens, whether the official/parent ‘personally benefited’ from the payments or ‘knew details’ of the transactions are considered completely irrelevant.”
Devine’s column omits a link to Francis Menton’s excellent Manhattan Contrarian post. Find it here.
UPDATE: Rich Lowry adds more in his column today.
JOHN adds: This is all so blindingly obvious. No one has ever bribed Hunter Biden, an unemployable crackhead. Obviously the point of the operation was influence with Joe.
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