Is there a “Biden Crime Family”? Two House Oversight Committee staff reports (March 2023 and May 2023) reveal that communist-controlled Chinese companies and other unsavory entities and people paid millions of dollars to close relatives of Joe Biden while he was Vice President and thereafter. Recipients included, among others, Mr. Biden’s son, brother, sister-in-law, and three current or former daughters-in-law. The payments were remitted via a series of limited liability companies whose only apparent reason for existence was to shuffle funds from one Biden to another.
There has so far been no dispute about those facts. The Oversight Committee obtained them from subpoenaed bank records, some of which the May report reproduces (with redactions of sensitive information). The only issue is what to make of them. Are they records of income from innocent business activities or evidence of a large-scale influence peddling scheme or something in between?
The innocent explanation is that the President’s son Hunter and brother Jim rendered valuable services to overseas clients, were paid what their services were worth, and passed some of the proceeds to objects of their bounty. Hunter is a lawyer, as well as a crackhead and putative artist, while Jim –
has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.
“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.
(That assessment comes not form Fox News or the Washington Examiner but from the left-wing investigative site ProPublica.)
The likelihood that any of the other recipients has ever done anything that was worth as much as a tiny fraction of a million dollars is vanishingly small.
If the Biden duo was paid fairly for legitimate services, the nature of those services is at this point unknown. Matters could be cleared up quickly through disclosure. If none is forthcoming, it might not be unreasonable to suspect that something is amiss, particularly in view of the opaque channels through which money flowed from the payors to the ultimate beneficiaries.
The semi-innocent explanation is that Hunter and Jim were paid for their perceived political influence but didn’t deliver anything. In brief, they cheated Chinese and other foreigners out of millions of dollars, but the whole escapade was their own frolic and detour; Joe Biden played no role in it. This appears to be the position of pro-Biden commentators, which they support by citing the absence of evidence that Joe Biden himself received any money.
Since the Bidens’ activities continued for years, this explanation assumes that the victims of their scheme were thick-headed dolts. They paid and paid and received nothing and continued paying.
The non-innocent explanation is that Joe Biden was well aware of the “family business” and cooperated in furthering it. Whether he took a share of the profits for himself is irrelevant.
Far be it from me to pass judgment without the benefit of more data, but it seems clear at this point how the balance of probabilities tilts.
Further Reading: Jonathan Turley, “America’s state media: The blackout on Biden corruption is truly ‘Pulitzer-level stuff’”
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