Hunter Biden’s addiction is not the issue. Joe Biden’s addiction is: His addiction to power and money. It is the evidence of the former vice president’s corruption, and the national security risk our country would face by electing Biden, that is the story of the MacBook hard drive.
Though many would like them to be, the salacious, verified photographs and videos of Hunter Biden are a mere sideshow.
For over a week, corporate media has successfully ignored or downplayed news of the trove of Hunter Biden’s emails, texts, photographs, and videos recovered from a laptop abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store.
Ignored by the “legacy media” was the confirmation of the authenticity of the materials first reported in the New York Post. The release of a second set of emails — also confirmed— from another source finally forced the press to acknowledge the issue, but just barely.
One week ago today, CBS News’ Bo Erickson asked Joe Biden about the New York Post story as the Democrat candidate for president departed from a campaign stop in Michigan. “I have no response. It’s another smear campaign — right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask,” Biden snipped at the long-time reporter.
With more details coming out daily, that non-answer did not placate even a compliant press for long. The “Russia disinformation” narrative pushed by Biden’s media boosters falls apart in the face of multiple confirmations of the evidence establish this story is not disinformation.
It’s not about Hunter’s addiction, It’s about Joe’s, his addiction to money, power, prestige and — as we dare connect his awkward public flirtations to his avarice — sex.
So, the dissembling will start, with Biden attempting to make the story about his son’s drug addiction. We already saw this when President Trump hit his opponent during the first presidential debate with the fact that once Biden “became vice president [Hunter] made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow and various other places.”
Before we knew about the laptop, President Trump hit Biden about Hunter's corrupt activities in Europe and China during the first debate on September 29. (Photo: Fox News)
Biden’s first response was outright denial: “That is not true.” But that won’t work with the constantly accumulating evidence from the hard drive and the other independent emails.
Wisely, President Trump ignored the misdirection, replying, “But why was he given tens of millions of dollars?” Fox News' Chris Wallace, the moderator for that debate, rescued Biden by interjecting, “We’ve already been through this. I think the American people would rather hear about more substantial subjects. Well, as the moderator, sir, I’m going to make a judgment call here.”
Perhaps Wallace had not read a recent Senate committee report confirmed the corruption before the computer repair shop turned Hunter’s laptop over to the FBI.
While Hunter Biden’s highly lucrative position on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma has received some press, the media all but ignored the U.S. Senate committee report on “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.”
That report not only details “examples of extensive and complex financial transactions involving the Bidens, it also describes the quandary other U.S. governmental officials faced as they attempted to guide and support Ukraine’s anticorruption efforts.”
The report’s key findings included concerns raised by “officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma's board.” Included were the details of a senior State Department official’s warning to Vice President Biden or his staff “that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.”
The report also confirmed that former Secretary of State John Kerry “had knowledge of Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board,” even though he falsely denied that knowledge during a town hall event in 2019.
The report was not limited to Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board and the Obama-Biden administration’s knowledge of that conflict of interest. The Senate committees also detailed Hunter’s receipt of “a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.”
Elena Baturina, owner of a construction company with known ties to the Russian mafia and also the wife of the former Moscow mayor, wired $3.5 million to Hunter Biden, ostensibly to invest in a J.P. Morgan account which, as a suspected criminal, she was not allowed to open herself. ( Photo: Refugee.ru)
It also covered Hunter’s opening of “a bank account with Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden,” as well as his “business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army.”
“Those associations,” the report continued, “resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow,” some of which Hunter “paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an ‘Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.’”
That is when the laptop showed up. The emails and other material on the hard drive, and the personal texts and photographs and videos released leave little doubt that the hard drive truly was Hunter Biden’s.
This is about Joe, not Hunter.
That is the extent of the relevance of the personal information being released. The public does not need to know of the unsavory and illegal behavior Hunter engaged in — much less watch it — while he was in the throes of addiction. America also does not need to read the words of anguish exchanged between an addict son undergoing rehab and his famous father.
To be clear, Hunter Biden’s addiction, and the fact that tens of thousands of other Americans suffer similar demons, does not atone for the sins of the father. Those sins are what the email and text scandal concerns: Evidence that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, knowingly allowed his son to profit by selling access to Biden and others in the Obama administration, including to Communist Party of China leaders, and then lied about it while pocketing up to fifty percent of the filthy lucre.
The emails and texts Joe personally received suggest such a sizable cut from Hunter’s influence-peddling. For instance, one email published by the New York Post detailed a deal Hunter Biden pursued with China’s largest private energy company that was “interesting for me and my family.”
A May 13, 2017 email with the subject line “Expectations” listed expected “renumeration packages” for various individuals, including “‘H,’ apparently referring to Biden.” The Post noted that “the deal also listed ‘10 Jim’ and ‘10 held by H for the big guy?’” but did not identify the “big guy.” However, sources have told Fox News “the big guy” is a reference to the former vice president.
This is where the difficult family dynamics are disturbing. A text recovered from the hard drive also suggests the former vice president may have received a cut of Hunter’s “earnings.” “I Hope you all [can] do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family [for] 30 years,” a screenshot of a text from January 2019 to Hunter’s daughter read. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
As if Hunter Biden doesn't have enough problems, it is now revealed the FBI's top child porn and trafficking investigator wants to see what is on the infamous laptop, subpoenaing it for a review. (Photo: Fred Barnes/Buffalo Chronicle)
Most of the angst in that text can be chalked up to an addict’s self-justification, but, as with all such rants, there is likely a kernel of truth at its heart. Hunter Biden likely was turned into a sophisticated thug and bag man by his utterly, morally corrupt dad in order to make the family rich.
Worse, Joe’s late son Beau was the “favored offspring” Biden paraded before the cameras as the tragically-stricken model son, ignoring Hunter except when he needed a payday.
This compromising material Is a national security risk. Not to mention, at the time, a disgrace to a sitting U.S. vice-president.
Evidence of this scandal is too strong to ignore or to allow Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, or corporate media to cast aside as an unseemly attack on a recovering drug addict. That is true, not merely because of the corruption at issue, but because of the ramifications it carries for America.
Every country, every foreign politician or political faction, and every corrupt oligarch or business that paid for access has the emails, notes, receipts, itineraries, fund transfers, and maybe even photographs or recordings. That makes Joe Biden a national security risk.
Remember, it was Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ concern that then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a national security risk that sent her to the White House to get him fired. The Russians would know, she maintained, that Flynn had misrepresented to Vice-President Mike Pence his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and that would leave Flynn compromised. Of course, that theory was so preposterous that even disgraced former FBI Director James Comey called it a stretch.
But there is a world of difference between a brief passing conversation among a transition team member and a foreign ambassador and a conversation between individuals with foreign interests and the former vice president, bought and paid for with cash funneled through his son.
A compromise of that kind holds serious national security issues, which is why our country needs a full vetting of this evidence. As much as is possible in only 10 days, that vetting must begin now.
If the emails and texts are fake, we need to know that. But all indications to date are that they are real, and spectacularly damning.
Hunter Biden’s addiction is immaterial to that issue. Joe Biden’s unfitness for office is the concern, and voters deserve to know just how compromised he may or may not be before November 3.
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