According to President Joe Biden’s supporters, Hunter Biden was finally held accountable on Tuesday, putting an end to the country’s protracted nightmare of having to deal with any type of criticism.
The Department of Justice should be investigating serious allegations, not minor infractions like giving a speeding ticket to “the getaway driver after a bank robbery,” according to law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University. This accountability for the president’s son, however, was little more than a reprimand.
Republicans in Congress have just recently made public a “highly credible” FBI informant’s accusation that Mykola Zlochevsky, the creator of Burisma and a Ukrainian tycoon, paid $10 million in bribes to Hunter and his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.
The then-vice president was referred to by Zlochevsky as “the big guy,” a moniker also purportedly employed by the Biden family in shady business operations in China. Zlochevsky allegedly produced two audio recordings of Joe Biden (and another 15 of Hunter) discussing their business activities, which Zlochevsky apparently maintained as a sort of “insurance policy” that he’d get what he was paying for. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, made the tapes public.
Who or what did he pay for? The final goal of “the deliverables,” according to emails from the chairman of Burisma that were made public three years ago, was “to close down for any cases/pursuits against [Burisma’s president] in Ukraine.” When Vice President Biden forced Ukraine to dismiss the prosecutor pursuing Burisma, the matter was in fact ended.
Hunter assisted Burisma officials open an account at Satabank, a Maltese bank that was shut down two years later by the Maltese government for “gross deficiencies” in regulating money laundering and adhering to laws on terrorism funding, according to Congressional investigators. The government had certain doubts about the banks’ interactions with Burisma, which prosecutors claimed had the appearance of money laundering.
Once more: This only pertains to the previous two weeks.
However, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, all of this new information is essentially old information, and anyway, these investigations were stopped years ago by the person chosen by former Attorney General Bill Barr.
Barr himself asserts that is in no way the case: It was actually sent to Delaware for more examination, he claimed in an interview with The Federalist.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, tells The Daily Caller that he is unconcerned by the stories of alleged foreign bribery even though he admits he hasn’t read them.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of the Democratic Oversight Committee, believes there is nothing for Congress to look into. He told John Roberts on Fox News that the House Oversight Committee should defer to the FBI for investigations into presidential wrongdoing.
However, the FBI is reluctant to discuss it, despite a June Trafalgar Group poll finding that more than half of respondents believe the Biden family has accepted payments from foreigners. Even then, the FBI redacted mention of the audio recordings (from a document that isn’t even classified) and forced committee members to view it in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in order to elicit any cooperation at all from Christopher Wray, the FBI director.
It’s important to emphasize that all of this happened within the last two weeks.
So what exactly is the renowned Department of Justice doing? Hunter Biden “has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement” for falsifying information on a weapons application and possessing an unlawful handgun, according to a letter the DOJ sent to a Wilmington court on Tuesday. He also agreed to plead guilty to two tax charges.
In conclusion, Hunter Biden is charged with using his position to buy influence abroad and accepting (and organizing) bribes worth millions of dollars for himself, his uncle, and his wealthy father. He (and his father, who was then vice president) are charged with conspiring to have the prosecutor fired in order to halt an investigation into an oil business owned by a Ukrainian billionaire. The DOJ also confirmed the fundamental details surrounding the gun case today and accepted a guilty plea for what The Washington Post refers to as “two minor tax crimes,” with the defendant agreeing to participate in “diversion programs” and serve a two-year probation period.
Hunter Biden has finally been exonerated. His father has demonstrated his adherence to the rule of law and the idea that no man is above the law by calling him to account for his misdeeds. It is finished.
At least, that’s what CBS reports Hunter’s legal counsel believes. Additionally, it supports the long-standing arguments made by congressional Democrats that there is nothing to see here and that, even if there were, the matter had already been looked at and was resolved.
The loss of their cherished “what about Hunter Biden” talking points has “a thousand GOP hacks crying in their soup,” as Substacker Matt Yglesias wrote in the morning on Tuesday. After all, how can anyone claim that there is a double standard when one former president is raided and jailed while the child of a different president is given a favorable outcome? (For extra flavor, the court date for former President Donald Trump was revealed on the same day that the DOJ announced its agreement with Hunter.)
Perhaps there will be more. Investigations do take time, after all. In fact, contrary to the hopes of Hunter’s team, the U.S. attorney for Delaware told Fox News that “the investigation is ongoing.”
There are numerous reasons to doubt that anything will result from it, though. Whistleblowers from the IRS and the FBI have complained to Congress about the delays, slow-moving, and questionable investigative actions that have plagued the investigations against Hunter Biden. To get the FBI to provide Congress the barest of assistance, it took these whistleblowers, the records they generated, and the credible danger of contempt.
The plea agreement from Tuesday is comparable to putting out a house fire with a watering can while claiming to be a firefighter. Naturally, they’ll do that anyhow. Expect today’s decision to be used as a club by Biden supporters throughout the DOJ and the corporate media to bash furious (and out-of-power) Republicans with, far from being a sign of justice to come. Yes, justice was done.
