The Biden family has always capitalized on Joe’s influence. A pause during campaign season is par for the course, and it doesn’t mean anything has changed.
Sep 29, 2015: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during a meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in New York. (By Drop of Light/Shutterstock)
It was almost exactly one year ago that Joe Biden stood on the primary debate stage and was confronted for the first time about Hunter Bidenâs decision to accept a lucrative position at a Ukrainian energy company while his father oversaw foreign policy in the region.
âMy son made a judgment. Iâm proud of the judgment he made.â
The answer came only hours after his son admitted to ABC News that his judgment was, in fact, off. âIn retrospect, I wish that my judgmentâŚâ Hunter Biden said on âGood Morning Americaâ before trailing off. âDid I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah.â
Today, Biden, Inc., is back in the news, as the New York Post and others continue to publish a series of articles revealing that the former vice president was much more intimately involved in the younger Bidenâs business dealings than previously known.
The strategic response from the Democratâs allies has been an intentional blackout. Twitter prohibited users from sharing a link to the Postâs investigation and locked the newspaper out of its own account. George Stephanopoulos conducted a two-hour âtown hallâ with Biden, during which the anchor failed to ask a single question about the corruption allegations. And, when the nominee finally ventured outside to get ice cream, the toughest question that the media in attendance asked was: âMr. Biden! Mr. Biden! What flavor did you get?â
A CBS News reporter attempted to solicit a response on the tarmac, but Biden blew him off. âI know youâd ask it,â the candidate said. âI have no response. Itâs another smear campaign. Right up your alley.â The campaignâs response devolved from thereâsurrogates insist that anyone even the least bit curious about the vice presidentâs role in Hunter Bidenâs unusual business relationships is part of a foreign intelligence effortâand itâs just going to get worse.
Unfortunately, this is a play weâve seen before. The Bidens have been doing this shady work, and âexitingâ from it when convenient, for a very long time.
In 2001, fresh off a plum job in the Clinton administration, Hunter Biden was named founding partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair LLP. The lobbying firmâon whose website Biden touted his status âa presidential appointeeâ of Bill Clintonâquickly took on a scattershot of clients ranging from hospitals to universities and, according to Delawareâs News Journal, was known for âspecializing in the sort of earmarks doled out by Sen. [Joe] Biden.â
Hunter Biden would go on to personally shape appropriations bills on behalf of clients, and in a short period donate more than $35,000 to federal candidates, including $10,000 to his fatherâs colleagues who were members of the appropriations committees at the time he was lobbying them.
And it was no secret why Hunter Bidenâs first client chose him: Napster, the file-sharing service, was facing a barrage of attacks from Congressâa fight in which his father was expected to play a major role. Joe Biden was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, two powerful entities with unique interests in copyright laws that Napster was under fire for flouting.
The company tapped Manus Cooney and Karen Robb to lead its lobbying efforts⌠alongside, strangely, Hunter Biden.
Whereas Cooney and Robb had extensive experienceâserving as the judiciary committeeâs most recent chief counsel (including during Napsterâs appearance before it two months earlier) and as a staff director, respectivelyâthe younger Bidenâs only qualification appeared to be his biological tie to the committeeâs former chairman. Just one month after Hunter Biden registered to lobby for Napster on the issue of âcompulsory licensing,â the serviceâs chief executive officer appeared before the judiciary committee, of which Joe Biden was a member, and called on members âto provide a compulsory license for the transmission of music over the Internet.â
It was clear what was going on, and Team Obama, running on an anti-corruption platform, wasnât happy about it. The Illinois senator chose Biden as his running mate on Aug. 23., 2008. Two days later, Hunter Biden wrote a letter to Congress stating that âI no longer expect to act as a federal lobbyist.â
There was no moral epiphany. His conflict of interest simply was no longer politically tenable while running for the White House. But after the election, as âsenatorâ became âvice president,â Biden, Inc., opened back up for business, and Hunter Biden pivoted from congressional lobbying to international consulting, violating the spirit of his pledge as soon as Election Day passed.
That violation would continue for years.
In December 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied the vice president on an Air Force Two flight to Beijing and, upon arrival, arranged for him to shake hands with businessman Jonathan Li. Bohai Capital, Liâs firm, would go on to partner with Rosemont Seneca Partnersâco-founded by Biden six months after his father took officeâto form a foreign investment fund called BHR Partners. Corporate records for BHR Partners were completed 12 days after the Bidensâ trip to Beijing.
Even a former senior aide in the Obama White House later said that the younger Biden appeared to be âleveraging access for his benefit.â
In May 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, one month after his father traveled to Kiev to urge parliament to âfight the cancer of corruption.â In fact, Burisma was being investigated for corruption by Ukraineâs prosecutor general, who was fired at the insistence of Vice President Biden under the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees.
Burisma paid Hunter Biden $50,000 per month, the purpose of which, as the Eurasia Groupâs Ian Bremmer said, was âclearly to be selling influence, because otherwise no one would ever pay him that kind of money.â He would retain the board seat until April 2019, the same month his father announced his candidacy for president.
This is barely the tip of the iceberg.
Just as it was in 2008, Biden, Inc., may be on a temporary hiatus, but it will be back. Joe Biden has long embraced the business of selling access until it becomes politically untenableâand recent reports from the New York Post and other institutional newsrooms suggest that the Biden familyâs overlap of business and public office became something much more serious than simple cronyism.
It is not inappropriate or insensitive for the American people to question how (time and time again) someone with Hunter Bidenâs troublesome background became, at a momentâs notice, an expert in copyright enforcement, Ukrainian geopolitics, and other complex policy issues at precisely the same moment that his father began to oversee them in government.
The mediaâs refusal to demand an answer before Election Day is journalistic malpractice, and the Democratâs failure to have done so already is disqualifying in and of itself.
Brian Anderson is founder of the Saguaro Group, an Arizona-based research firm..
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Brian Anderson
The American Conservative 2020-10-19 17:00:00