OPINION:
Influence-peddling allegations have given new meaning to President Biden’s old title of “vice” president. The Department of Justice has spent years investigating allegations of financial wrongdoing on the part of the Biden family, with little to show for the effort.
Congress may be having better luck. Before awarding him a second term in office, Americans should be fully apprised of whether Mr. Biden and his family have engaged in corruption for the benefit of foreign interests.
Republican lawmakers have taken up the investigative duty that federal law enforcers have shunned. In a news conference this past Wednesday that House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer termed “Judgment Day for the White House,” congressional Republicans laid out their findings.
Investigators examined “suspicious activity reports” produced by four banks, and they assert that the Bidens and their associates established more than 20 businesses, mostly limited liability companies, while Mr. Biden was serving as vice president. Further, they say, foreign nationals used the entities in “complicated financial transactions” to funnel more than $10 million to Biden family members.
“The Bidens’ foreign entanglements are breathtaking and raise serious questions about why foreign actors targeted the Biden family, what they expected in return, and whether our national security is threatened,” Mr. Comer said in a press statement.
Among sources of funds were Chinese nationals “with significant ties to Chinese intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party,” investigators charge. In addition, the Bidens received more than $1 million from Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate tycoon under investigation for alleged corruption, between 2015 and 2017.
Making money isn’t a crime, but it is normally acquired in exchange for a service or product. The Bidens, Republicans allege, didn’t appear to have lifted a finger except, perhaps, to point wealthy foreigners toward their powerful patriarch. “What did they do to warrant receipt of the money? That is the fundamental question, and no one seems to have an answer to that fundamental question,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Relatedly, Senate Budget Committee ranking member Charles Grassley of Iowa has disclosed that an FBI whistleblower has come forward with allegations that the bureau possesses documents implicating the Bidens in a criminal “pay to play” scheme, but officials have kept the evidence hidden to protect the president. Mr. Grassley had given FBI brass until Wednesday to produce the records, but none materialized.
Politics is a cutthroat enterprise, and some may suspect that allegations of Biden family crimes are little more than a Republican scheme to tar Mr. Biden’s reputation with the same ferocity that Democrats have defaced Donald Trump’s before, during and after his presidency. If the feds were on the case, though, lawmakers wouldn’t need to be.
It is clear the U.S. justice system has hardly scratched the surface of criminal claims against the Bidens. Unsurprisingly, a recent YouGovAmerica survey found that only 34% of Americans believe Mr. Biden is “honest and trustworthy.”
While Mr. Biden deserves the presumption of innocence, congressional lawmakers have a duty to determine whether he sold out U.S. policy to foreign interests to enrich his family. Until they know the truth, Americans may persist in associating President Biden with “vice.”
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