What’s not true?

When asked by an audacious foreign reporter about documented payments from a Chinese energy company that made their way to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and “Biden,” President Biden responded: “That’s not true.” Asked to elaborate, White House press secretary KJP responded in three parts: (1) “lies,” (2) “Republicans,” and (3) “I’m not going to get into it from here.”

Jonathan Turley reviews the history of Joe Biden’s response to inquiries on the family business in a Fox News column that he has posted at his own site: “‘I Know Nothing, Nothing!’: The National Archives Just Torpedoed Biden’s Sgt. Schultz Defense.” In this column Professor Turley draws on emails dredged up by Stephen Miller from the National Archives. Fox News separately reports on these emails in “VP Biden’s office tried to quash Bloomberg story about Hunter Biden at his firm’s request, emails show.” Let’s pick up at this point (links omitted):

The National Archives has released emails that show that then-Vice President Joe Biden approved an official statement in December 2015 about Hunter Biden’s position on a Ukrainian energy company’s board.

Biden has denied any knowledge or involvement in these business dealings at least seven times as a presidential candidate and as president.

For years, the media has continued to report President Biden’s repeated claim that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” At the outset, the media only had to suspend any disbelief that the president could fly to China as Vice President with his son on Air Force 2 without discussing his planned business dealings on the trip.

Of course, the emails on the laptop quickly refuted this claim. However, the media buried the laptop story before the election or pushed the false claim that it was fake Russian disinformation.

Some in the media have repeated those denials, including most recently the Associated Press which, in 2022, falsely stated that there was no evidence Biden ever discussed the deals with his son despite an actual audiotape proving that claim to be false.

The audiotape showed President Biden leaving a message for Hunter specifically discussing coverage of those dealings [quotation omitted].

Some of us have written for two years that President Biden’s denial of knowledge is patently false. It was equally evident that the Biden family was selling influence and access. There are emails of Ukrainian and other foreign clients thanking Hunter Biden for arranging meetings with his father. There are photos from dinners and meetings that tie President Biden to these figures, including a 2015 dinner with a group of Hunter Biden’s Russian and Kazakh clients….

Professor Turley brings his column to a close on an unreasonably optimistic note (video omitted):

What made Sgt. Schultz funny is precisely why the Biden defense is collapsing. The refusal of the media to see what is now in plain view will convince no one. At some point, Democratic leaders will have to recognize the obvious or join the Bidens (and many journalists) in the cast of this theater of the absurd.

Even if nothing follows from the evidence presented in the column, however, it is useful to have a nonpartisan observer review the facts in the public domain and bluntly draw obvious conclusions. Check out the whole thing with links here.

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