OPINION:
Evidence-backed allegations sit in full public view that the president allowed the Biden “brand” to be marketed for the enrichment of his family. Americans need a fuller accounting of these questionable activities before deciding whether he deserves a second presidential term.
With Democrats united in an effort to protect the president, it falls to Republicans to follow the money. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability published a 19-page memorandum Wednesday detailing first son Hunter Biden’s business relationships with individuals from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. Those dealings, which raked in more than $20 million for the Bidens, reportedly featured liaisons with now-President Biden while he served as vice president.
President Biden’s critics have railed against the shady optics of Hunter’s hiring in 2014 by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma with an annual salary of $1 million, which was followed by the then-vice president’s threat to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for Ukraine unless a prosecutor investigating allegations of corruption at Burisma was fired.
Lawmakers have produced bank records authenticating Hunter’s Burisma riches. Added to his father’s triumphant “Well, son of a b——. He got fired” recount of his strong-arm tactics for a Council on Foreign Relations audience, it’s hard to see this as effective marketing for the Biden brand.
Likewise, a February 2014 wire transfer of $3.5 million to Hunter from Yelena Baturina, the billionaire widow of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, jumps out from the committee-produced bank records. Several months later, the elder Mr. Biden attended a private dinner at Cafe Milano in Washington where the wealthy woman was also a guest.
And Hunter, the committee reported, met in Washington with Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev, a close associate of Kazakhstan’s prime minister, in February 2014. Two months later, Mr. Rakishev wired $142,300 to Hunter’s firm, which was used to purchase a Porsche for Hunter.
In June, the Kazakh government hosted a business meeting with executives from Burisma and a Chinese state-owned firm. In short order, Joe Biden was photographed with the Kazakhs in Washington.
Hunter flew high as an international dealmaker, but his best work — a sweetheart deal over tax fraud and gun charges back home — was shot down last month in a Delaware courtroom. With the appointment Friday of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel — the very same government attorney who attempted to keep him out of jail — Hunter could only be relieved.
There is little expectation now that evidence presented by Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer would lead Mr. Weiss to make the case that the Biden progenitor’s fame was the key to the family’s fortune.
As for the president, he has claimed that any suggestion of a connection between his official acts and his son’s business is not true.
But the more the coincidences pile up, the less plausible the claims become.
Fortunately, congressional investigators are busy tracing the distribution of Hunter’s millions to family bank accounts to see where the trail leads, and they already have an idea where that might be.
“This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Fox Business on Thursday. “We are going to subpoena the family.”
Americans deserve to know whether Joe Biden’s public office was the key to peddling the Biden “brand.”
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