So Joe Biden’s new line is that he was never “in business with” his son Hunter. Really? And what business was Hunter in? Natural gas?
Imagine the conversation:
Hunter: Dad, good news! Burisma Holdings is going to pay me a million dollars a year to be on their board of directors!
Joe: That’s great, son. And here I thought you would never amount to anything, what with spending all of your time and money on drugs and prostitutes. But tell me, what is Burisma?
Hunter: Burisma is a natural gas company in Ukraine.
Joe: And you are going to be on their board? But the board conducts its business in Ukrainian, doesn’t it? Are you learning to speak the language?
Hunter: Of course not. But don’t worry, I don’t have to actually attend any meetings or read any of the board materials.
Joe: So, did they hire you for you natural gas expertise?
Hunter: Come on, Dad. You know I have never worked in the natural gas industry or had anything to do with natural gas. And science has never exactly been my strong point. Or business, for that matter.
Joe: But Hunter, if you don’t know anything about the industry and you can’t speak Ukrainian, and to be honest you have rarely put in an honest day’s work in your life, what makes your worth a million dollars a year?
Of course no such conversation took place. Joe didn’t need an explanation of why Burisma wanted to slide a lot of money to a member of his family, or why the Chinese were so anxious to do “business” with Joe’s son and brother. The business Hunter was in was influence peddling, and if you are going to peddle it successfully, there has to be someone in the picture who has influence. That certainly wasn’t Hunter or Jim. Obviously, it was Joe.
For Democrats in Congress, the New York Times, the Washington Post et al. to pretend not to understand this is absurd. We don’t need to untangle the bank records of twenty or more shell corporations to understand that Joe Biden was the centerpiece—the indispensable man—in an influence peddling scheme that raked in millions of dollars.
“Influence peddling” is a polite term for bribery. The fact that the parties who bought influence made their checks out to Hunter or to a corporate entity is irrelevant. See 18 U.S. Code § 201. Those who bribe public officials are rarely dumb enough to make checks out to the officeholder himself. And bribery is one of the grounds of impeachment specifically mentioned in the Constitution, along with treason.
So it is no wonder that those who are desperately trying to keep the Biden administration afloat feign puzzlement as to the nature of the Biden family business.
