With each day, it seems, we hear something new about how President Joe Biden and his ever-eager son, Hunter, used the power of Biden’s various political offices to make money for the Biden family. If even half of the allegations are true, Biden’s in big trouble. Will that make him think twice about running for a second term in 2024?
American voters are a thick-skinned lot, and know pretty much that many politicians are scoundrels. But Biden is a different breed.
His family has, for years, received mysterious piles of money — we’re talking millions of dollars here — from questionable overseas sources, including Chinese Communist-linked executives, Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and huge sums from Ukraine and its giant Burisma energy company.
The latest revelation is just stunning.
Turns out that Hunter, with no real experience at all in the energy business, was asked to join Ukraine-based Burisma’s board of directors on April 18, 2014 — the same month that President Barack Obama made Biden his “point man” on Ukraine, then in the midst of a growing conflict with Russia.
A mere three days after Hunter joined Burisma’s board, Vice President Biden high-tailed it to Ukraine on an “official” trip to push ”medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.”
Did it work? You bet. “According to Burisma’s website, it ramped up production from 100 million cubic meters in 2010 to 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2018 – when it generated revenues of at least $400 million,” the Daily Mail reports.
For sitting on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden and his business partner and former Yale classmate, Devon Archer, each scored $83,333 a month for “consulting services” paid to their consulting firm, Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, from April 2014 to November 2015.
This wasn’t the only payment they received from questionable Eastern European sources. While the media later spun its wheels with unproved and outright bogus claims of Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, a Senate investigation noted Biden’s hands were in Russia’s pockets for real.
“On Feb. 14, 2014, (Elena) Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement,’ ” a Senate report said.
And who was Elena Baturina? At the time, a billionaire and the richest woman in Russia, married to the former mayor of Moscow, fired for corruption, with alleged ties to that country’s underworld.
The Senate investigation also found Treasury Department records that “show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals,” and that “some of these transactions are linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.’”
As noted, it wasn’t just Russia and Ukraine. China was also involved, even before Russia. And once again, Joe Biden made sure son Hunter was included.
As we wrote back in March of 2018 for the now-shuttered IBD editorials page:
“In December of 2013 … Biden traveled to China for talks. He brought Hunter Biden along. While there, the senior Biden soft-pedaled China’s clear aggression, and played up the bilateral trade partnership. Ten days after the trip concluded, China’s central bank, the Bank of China, set up a $1 billion investment joint venture called Bohai Harvest RST. For the record, the ‘RS’ referred to Biden’s son’s firm, Rosemont Seneca.”
That’s billion with a “b.” Still wonder why Biden seems so soft on China and his “old friend” Xi Jinping, who is now challenging the U.S. on all fronts, militarily, diplomatically, and economically, for world dominance?
“What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture,” writes investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer of the Gatestone Institute. “Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.”
This is also a clear pattern, as others have observed, that continues to this day. (And we’ve left out the equally curious “business” activities of Joe’s brother, James, for another time.)
Through it all, Joe Biden has angrily maintained he had nothing to do with his family’s dealings or obvious profiteering.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said in 2019 while campaigning.
“I don’t discuss business with my son,” he added a month later, with emphasis.
Now Fox News Digital reports this week that “four business partners, a vice president, and two assistants at Hunter’s now-defunct investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners visited the White House more than 80 times when his father was vice president in the Obama administration.”
Among those visiting was Eric Schwerin, the former president of Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca Partners, who “managed almost every aspect” of the Bidens’ financial life, according to Hunter’s ex-wife. He visited the White House when Biden was vice president “at least 27 times.”
This appears to be corruption on an epic scale. At minimum, Biden has some explaining to do. But there’s a very good case that Biden has illicitly profited from public office and is guilty of influence peddling. And those are truly impeachable offenses, unlike the bogus ones that former President Trump faced.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
