(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Sept. 15): Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claimed this week that “there is precisely zero evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever” by President Joe Biden. The Associated Press asserted Republicans are “claiming without evidence that [Joe and Hunter Biden] engaged in an influence-peddling scheme.”
“No evidence” has become the mantra of liberal media and congressional Democrats. It is ludicrous. Evidence of influence peddling is substantial. The question isn’t whether it happened but who was involved, to what extent, and whether it was “merely” unethical or actually illegal.
But let’s be clear: Unethical influence peddling occurred. Everybody knows it. The proof has already been made public.
Congressional investigators have shown receipts for at least $10 million of foreign business for Biden family members funneled through 20 shell corporations, without any Biden registering as a foreign business agent, and for which the Treasury Department received almost 200 suspicious activity reports.
Emails, recordings, contemporary notes, and copious firsthand witness testimony show Hunter Biden and his business partners and clients repeatedly built business deals around the belief that Hunter Biden could influence his father, the vice president at the time, to push policies favorable to their clients. Credible witnesses said not only did the father get on the phone with the son during more than 20 meetings with foreign business interests but that Joe Biden dined with or met in bars with his son’s foreign business interests. Photos prove that at least a couple of those in-person meetings occurred.
Hunter Biden claimed to pay a significant portion of his father’s bills. He was at the father’s house the same day he warned a client his father was sitting next to him and would not take kindly to the client leaving the son high and dry. We know Joe Biden and his aides took dozens of meetings with Hunter Biden and his partners and that the vice president’s staff looped Hunter Biden in on emails related to Joe Biden’s diplomacy with the foreign countries with which Hunter Biden was doing business. We know that people involved in Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings referred to his father as “the Big Guy,” some specifically in the context of expecting the Big Guy to deliver desired policy and receive a cut of profits…. [The full editorial is at this link.]
