Hunter Biden – scandal or hoax?

If you believe President Trump, the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, Russia and China are a scandal of criminal proportions – and one that drags daddy Joe into the swamp.  If you believe Joe Biden, it is nothing more than an unsubstantiated and untrue political smear – a hoax.

Somewhere between those two extreme positions lies the truth.  Setting aside Trump’s propensity for hyperbole, we can rationally conclude that the truth is closer to his view than to Daddy Joe’s.  That is based on what we know as facts – and what can be logically concluded from those facts.

The simmering controversy over Hunter’s business dealings with bad actors got reignited when a laptop – that was sent in for repairs – was shown to have emails implicating Hunter’s influence peddling at the highest levels of American government.  It also established that Daddy Joe had told a whopper when he said he knew nothing of his son’s business dealings.

In fact, Hunter had arranged for Vadym Pozharskyi – said to be the second most influential person at Burisma Holdings — to meet with Daddy Joe at the White House. A recently published photograph (atop this commentary) has Daddy Joe playing golf with Hunter and another Burisma board member, Devon Archer, while the senior Biden was still Vice President.

There were also emails suggesting that after leaving the White House, Daddy Joe was to be one of the benefactors of a million-dollar deal. The recipient of a promised major cut was described as the “big guy.”  It is hard to imagine that the “big guy” could be anyone other than Daddy Joe.

Let’s look back at the central issue.  We know that Hunter was paid an enormous amount of money to serve on the Board of Burisma — a corrupt Ukrainian energy enterprise.  We know he was paid more than $50,000 per month for a job for which he was not required to show up at the office.  We know Hunter was hired by one of the most criminally corrupt oligarchs in Ukraine.

Was Hunter hired so that he could use his influence with his father and other high-ranking American officials – or was it to perform normal professional corporate duties?  If you believe the latter, you will have to believe that Burisma issued a job description that read:

WANTED – for a high-level position with a big title and an enormous salary and generous expense account in a major energy corporation in Ukraine.   Looking for a college drop-out playboy with a long history of alcohol and drug abuse and a messy personal life.  Special consideration if the applicant has been less than honorably discharged from the armed forces of the United States.  The applicant is not required to have any knowledge of the energy business — or Ukrainian laws, language or business culture.  In fact, the applicant need not ever have even visited Ukraine.  The applicant will not be required to move to Kiev or even visit very often.  The specific responsibilities will be provided later – in private.

Apparently, a similar ad was placed by the Chinese government and Russian operatives, who also greatly enriched the Biden family through Hunter.

We know that Daddy Joe intervened on his son’s behalf by taking his boy along on Air Force Two to meet with high Chinese government officials and business executives.  That landed Hunter’s two-man business more than a billion dollars in investment capital.  Daddy Joe also arranged to have the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma booted out of his job.

Now in all fairness, we must concede that the prosecutor was also corrupt, and several European nations wanted him to be fired.  But that does not negate the senior Biden’s motive in placing much-needed military aid to Ukraine up as the blackmail.  Bribe?  Call it what you want.

The laptop also revealed a video of Hunter in a self-produced pornographic love-making session in which he appears to be smoking cocaine.  That is one of those things that most people say is irrelevant and should be kept private, but no one ever does – especially the press.

So, the entire Hunter issue is by far not a hoax.  What makes it more interesting is how the elitist news media and the major social media platforms responded to the bombshell information revealed on the cover of the New York Post. They either ignored it or disclaimed it.  Consistent with their policy that the only reportable bad news is about Trump.

In an unprecedented attack on the press, Facebook and Twitter blocked the story – including the Post article and anyone who re-posted it.  Imagine, the major social media corporations censor a story that appeared on the cover of one of the nation’s larger publications – and no one in the jaded left-wing press rose to defend the Forth Estate’s First Amendment rights.

The Hunter issue is one of those things that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but Daddy Joe, the Democrats and the biased media all want us to think it is a dove.  Do they really think we are that stupid?  Even worse, are we?

So, there ‘tis.