(Nov. 19) When Joe Biden takes the presidential oath of office next year, he should insist that his son and brother unravel any business arrangements with entities of any foreign government.

Indeed, the new president should set up a bipartisan panel to review all of the foreign business ties of Hunter and Jim Biden and to recommend which ones must be disassociated from any member of the Biden family.

The imperative for such disassociations is apparent anew in a supplemental report released on Nov. 18 by the majority staff of the Senate committees on finance and on homeland security. The five-page report, accompanied by 65 pages of evidence, says that new records obtained by the committees “confirm the connections between the Biden family and the communist Chinese government, as well as the links between Hunter Biden’s business associates and the Russian government, and further support the Committees’ September 23, 2020 report’s finding that such relationships created counterintelligence and extortion concerns.”

Without a deep dive into the new and existing evidence, suffice it to say that there can now be no doubt that the Bidens’ global web of “consulting” and influence-mongering has created some unsavory conflicts of interest. Completely apart from the question of whether Joe Biden knew about, enabled, or even participated in these dealings, these dodgy foreign business ties now must end in order to protect the presidency, and the public, from worrisome appearances and untenable pressures.

No president should have close family members dependent on financial inducements from subsidiaries of China and Russia.

This shouldn’t even be debatable.

China and Russia are clearly rivals and are obviously hostile to U.S. values and interests. Even if every past, present, or future business arrangement by Hunter and Jim Biden is technically legal (potentially still an open question), plenty of difficulties can arise from financial pressure to do the bidding of those adversaries. A president and his family should take extra precautions, above and beyond the technically legal, to avoid problematic foreign influence.

[The full column is at this link.]

 

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