Hunter becomes the hunted

OPINION:

Hunter Biden ran, but he couldn’t hide for long. The first son has finally taken the hot seat behind closed doors in a congressional impeachment inquiry into Biden family influence peddling.

The younger Biden came out blazing, dropping an opening statement just before his deposition under oath Wednesday by the House Oversight and Judiciary committees.

“For more than a year,” Hunter charged, “your committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad. You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion and sensationalism — all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.”

President Biden’s brother James has told investigators essentially the same thing.

The Bidens’ depositions have followed contradictory testimony from a clutch of former business partners who purportedly witnessed the son’s practice of wooing prospective partners by bringing his father into conversations about deals — in person or by phone.

Most recently, Jason Galanis, a Biden business associate serving time in an Alabama prison for securities fraud, reportedly told fact-finders that Hunter put then-Vice President Biden on speakerphone in a 2014 restaurant meeting with Yelena Baturina, a former Moscow mayor’s wealthy wife who was eager to do business in the United States. After the call in which the elder Biden encouraged a partnership, Galanis testified, the Russian billionaire agreed to invest $20 million in one of Hunter’s ventures.

The House committees have also heard recent testimony by Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski, who said he met with Joe Biden to discuss business deals with Chinese nationals. More evidence has come in the form of the elder Biden boasting on video of strong-arming Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter.

House investigators have also uncovered dozens of shell companies purportedly serving as conduits for foreign-sourced millions funneled to Biden family members. None of it has the ring of “innuendo, distortion and sensationalism,” as the younger Biden has charged.

If Hunter is in the crosshairs of the Biden impeachment investigators, he has had help firing back from his powerful father’s intelligence community and Justice Department.

Alexander Smirnov — a paid foreign intelligence source for at least nine years — was arrested recently by the FBI and charged with lying about the Bidens. In 2020, Mr. Smirnov reported to the agency that Burisma executives had told him of paying the vice president and his son $5 million each for assistance with “problems.”

Strangely, the arrest outed a spy who had previously been considered a trustworthy intelligence asset. Lying under oath is criminal, but speaking truth about the powerful has its own perils.

Americans should undertake their own assessment of how the charges of wrongdoing stack up against the first family’s defense. For the sake of justice, voters must forswear ballots favoring influence-peddling in high office that benefits foreign entities.