Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“Most Americans say they think President Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business dealings with Ukraine and China while he served as vice president under Barack Obama, according to a CNN poll… A majority, 61%, say they think that Biden had at least some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, with 42% saying they think he acted illegally, and 18% saying that his actions were unethical but not illegal.” CNN
“U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing on Wednesday they will seek an indictment of President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, by Sept. 29 in his tax and firearms case. David Weiss, who was appointed U.S. special counsel by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in August, said in a court filing that the government would seek a grand jury indictment before the Sept. 29 deadline under the Speedy Trial Act.” Reuters
Here’s our previous coverage of Hunter Biden and the Biden family finances. The Flip Side
The right argues that there is evidence of inappropriate behavior by both Hunter and Joe Biden.
“Shortly after Hunter got on the payroll, the CFO of Burisma, Vadym Pozharsky, sent an email requesting that Hunter and Archer ‘use your influence’ (they don’t call it influence-peddling for nothing) to bring a halt to the investigation into [Burisma owner Nikolay] Zlochevsky and Burisma. A year later, Pozharsky was invited to a dinner, with Joe Biden in attendance, at Café Milano in Georgetown. Also in attendance, by the way, was the Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who showered Hunter and Archer with $3.5 million…
“[In December 2015] Burisma had a board meeting in Dubai, where it had to meet because Zlochevsky couldn’t return to Ukraine. His legal troubles were a focus of the discussions. Afterward, Nikolay Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharsky requested an urgent private meeting with Hunter and Archer. At this get-together, Pozharsky asked Hunter, ‘Can you ring your dad?’ This request was astonishingly inappropriate. But, lo and behold, Hunter rang his dad…
“Nothing about this was subtle. Are we really supposed to believe that everyone here knew the score — both the people paying out the money and those taking it — except the guy who had ascended to No. 2 in the United States government, who’d been in Washington for decades and seen it all?”
Rich Lowry, National Review
“Millions flowed into the Biden family coffers, on down even to Joe’s grandchildren, through nearly two-dozen shell companies, from individuals and entities hailing from adversarial and/or corrupt countries around the globe — without the Bidens rendering any recognizable service. The only thing Hunter brought to the table was political power — the ‘Biden brand,’ on which the entire influence peddling scheme was based, headlined by patriarch Joe…
“Maintaining that brand evidently involved Joe dining with Hunter’s ‘business’ counterparts, popping into their meetings, writing college letters of recommendation on behalf of at least one of their kids and taking at least one call from Hunter when demanded by a client to get it out of a jam…
“What other actions did Joe Biden take directly or indirectly benefitting his family’s international influence peddling operation? And to what extent did Joe directly or indirectly benefit?”
Benjamin Weingarten, New York Post
Regarding the gun charge, “People who do not wish to see Joe Biden’s reelection prospects damaged by the shenanigans of his son with the freebase-and-hookers habit will complain—and are complaining—that people are rarely charged with a crime for lying on the ATF form, and almost never charged with the five-year felony simply for being illegal drug users in possession of a firearm…
“But we have those laws on the books… These are the rules we live under, and the very legitimacy of our government rests on the foundational, creedal commitment to the fact that we all live under them.”
Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch
The left argues that there is no concrete evidence implicating Joe Biden in Hunter’s business pursuits.
The left argues that there is no concrete evidence implicating Joe Biden in Hunter’s business pursuits.
“Hunter Biden’s work earns benefits accrued to ‘the Biden family,’ a bit of wordplay meant to implicate Joe Biden in what his son did, even without any financial connection being made… Of course, [House Oversight Committee Chairman James] Comer often goes further, explicitly claiming that Biden was explicitly involved and benefited, though he has offered no robust evidence to that effect…
“There are a number of outstanding questions related to Hunter Biden’s private-sector work… At the less important end of the spectrum are questions about the scale of Hunter Biden’s personal work and ways in which he leveraged his last name in his legal or consulting work. Somewhere in the middle is the question of how much awareness Joe Biden had about the way in which his son was deploying his last name and perceptions of influence over his powerful father…
“And at the most important end are questions about whether Joe Biden was intentionally involved in boosting his son’s business for his own financial benefit. As it stands, there is plenty of information addressing the less important questions and very little evidence pointing at those most important ones.”
Philip Bump, Washington Post
“Hunter was kind of sleazy, but the sleaze was all out in the open. There's nothing much to dig up. As for Joe, there's no evidence of anything. Evidence. That is: bank accounts, recordings of conversations, messages (to or from Joe himself), living beyond his means, eyewitness testimony, documents, and so forth. All these years of investigation and there's not a scrap of any concrete evidence that he did anything wrong. The obvious conclusion is that he did nothing wrong.”
Kevin Drum, Jabberwocking
Some argue, “There is much that seems unfair in President Biden’s chronically anemic poll ratings. Like his low marks for economic stewardship despite presiding over a robust recovery from the pandemic. The fact that significantly more Americans fret about his mental acuity than that of the unhinged Donald Trump. That by an even wider margin, voters worry more about the octogenarian president’s age than about Trump’s, although the former president is just three years younger and plainly less fit…
“But here’s what is not unfair: that Biden is paying a political price in the polls for the legal travails of his son Hunter…
“Hunter invited notoriety and congressional attention, however dishonest, when he undeniably traded on his father’s name to drum up business contracts in China, Ukraine and elsewhere. Live by the famous name, die by it. The best thing that Joe Biden could have done, as a father and a public official, would have been to put the kibosh on any attempt by his son to make a career off his proximity to political power. Washington is full of buck-rakers peddling their connections. But it’s not a good look for the son of a senator, vice president and now president.”
Jackie Calmes, Los Angeles Times
