Vice President Joe Biden sits with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on February 7, 2015, before a bilateral meeting also attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Toria Nuland on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
The Real Issue Is Hunter Biden
The real issue, however, is not what President Trump may or may not have said to the Ukrainian president. Rather, argues Roger Kimball in American Greatness, it is the “ostentatious corruption” of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and how his father aided and abetted him while Joe was vice president.
No Background in China = Lucrative Business Dealings?
I’ll come to Hunter Biden’s excellent Ukraine adventure with his dad. But first, let’s back up and accompany him to China, where Biden fils had some very lucrative business dealings. The great Peter Schweitzer was on the case. “In December of 2013, Hunter Biden flies on Air Force 2 to Beijing, China, with his father,” Schweitzer noted.
“His father [then vice president of the United States] meets with Chinese officials, he’s very soft on Beijing. The most important thing that happens [takes place] 10 days after they return. And that’s when Hunter Biden’s small, private equity firm called Rosemont Seneca Partners gets a $1 billion [that’s “billion” with a “B,” kemo sabe] private equity deal with the Chinese government, not with the Chinese corporation, with the government.”
No Background in Private Equity = Unparalleled Deal?
“And what people need to realize is Hunter Biden has no background in China. He has no background in private equity. The deal he got in the Shanghai free-trade zone, nobody else had—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Blackstone, nobody had this deal.”
China’s Foreign Influence Peddling
“The Chinese government has figured out that the way to get favorable treatment from policymakers in Washington, DC, is by, basically, signing sweetheart deals with the children of politicians because they think by doing so, they’ll get better policy positions from our government. And the history indicates in the Obama administration that that’s exactly what happens,” explains Peter Schweitzer.
Back to the Ukraine, Continues Kimball
President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son, according to people familiar with the matter, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr. Trump’s potential 2020 opponent.
According to “People Who Are Familiar”
The media and anti-Trump commentariat is jumping up and down in unison saying, “Trump is leaning on a foreign power in order to gain a political advantage.”
But what is that charge cover for? A chap called Robert Barnes, writing on Twitter, reminds us of a pertinent fact. “The same Democrats who used all the powers of the Presidency to spy on an opposing campaign, and continue to use every power of the House to invade the privacy of the President, are deeply offended that Trump would want corruption investigated involving a former Vice President?”
As has been reported previously, but then swept under the proverbial tapestry and into the oubliette, in 2014, while Joe Biden—still the vice president—was overseeing America’s Ukraine policy, chip-off-the-old-block Hunter became involved with a “controversial” (code for “corrupt”) Ukraine natural gas company. President Trump’s critics are skirling that he is trying to collect “dirt” on Joe Biden for his own political advantage. But, Schweitzer asks, what sort of “dirt” would that be?
The Dirt on “Burisma”
Burisma, the aforementioned natural gas company, employed Hunter Biden until several months ago, Schweitzer explains:
In April 2014, Hunter Biden agreed to join Burisma’s board of directors, ostensibly to advise on legal issues, The New Yorker reported. Biden had no known expertise on the natural gas industry, but Burisma was certainly in need of help.
Earlier that month, British officials had frozen the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and soon after, Ukrainian officials opened their own corruption investigation into Burisma, the Kyiv Post in Ukraine reported.
Hunter Biden helped to recruit a legal team for Burisma, including former Obama administration Justice Department official John Buretta and several American consulting firms, the NYT reported.
The younger Biden was well compensated for his efforts. Records obtained by the Government Accountability Institute show he was paid as much as $83,333 per month for his work at Burisma.
Hunter Biden denies any wrongdoing. But Schweitzer presents some thought-provoking coincidences, as listed by Mr. Kimball here.
Roger Kimball,editor and publisher of The New Criterion, is president and publisher of Encounter books.
Peter Schweitzer is president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute. He also wrote the 2015 exposé Clinton Cash, in which he included copious documentation of Hillary Clinton’s history of amassing wealth from donors seeking favorable actions from her State Department while she was President Obama’s Secretary of State.
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