The Misdirection of the Hunter Verdict

Politics

Admitting to fibbing on a gun form distracts from the real concerns about the Biden family.

Misdirection. That’s what you call it when a magician distracts you from looking at the real point of interest, waving his right hand in the air while his left slips the selected card into his jacket pocket. You’re fooled, but you’re satisfied. You even play along.

Well, if you like magical misdirection, you must be very happy to see Hunter Biden convicted of lying about his drug use to buy a gun illegally, making him the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Hunter was fully guilty, no doubt, confirmed by the rapid three-hour turnaround decision reached by the jury.

He’ll face a similar fate in September when he stares down three felony and six misdemeanor tax offenses in California. The state alleges that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019 while spending millions more on drugs, escorts, exotic cars, and other luxury items. He is unlikely to do time in any case, though you’ll hear uninformed pundits in the mainstream media bellow about maximum penalties in hopes of creating the illusion of parity between the Hunter and Trump convictions. See, there’s a felon in each family! The system is fair!

The problem is that misdirection thing.

No court is set to look at what Hunter did to amass his millions while a crack addict, and no court is set to look at the slimy connections between Hunter’s made-and-spent fortune and his dad, the once vice president and now president of the United States. A reasonable jury might conclude Hunter made his money off peddling influence to daddy, and that daddy at the very least passively played along. The court of public opinion might then wonder whether that leaves Joe Biden unqualified to be president (if he ever was…).

The story, if ever told in a court or elsewhere, will get ugly quickly—one can sketch in the outlines even now. Hunter, desperately addicted to drugs and sex following his brother Beau’s death, needed money badly. The world responded with a whisper in his fevered ear that Hunter could set up some consulting companies and create the appearance of selling access to his father, then vice president.

A grieving dad, watching his last son fall into the pit of crack addiction, tries to humor the venture along until that gets too real over some shenanigans in the Ukraine and a looming China deal. (“10 percent for the big guy,” read one email.) Dad pulls the plug on his end of the caper, but Hunter keeps selling, finding foreign yokels willing to pay for the illusion of access. Along the way he taints not only Joe but his uncle Jim Biden as well. Fueled by his addiction, Hunter never stops until finally things collapse completely and he is stopped.

As you, the voter, the real jury, consider the evidence, remember a few things. Joe Biden said of Hunter, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” And during a debate with Donald Trump, Joe Biden dismissed his son’s laptop emails as disinformation from Russia. After becoming president, Joe said his son Hunter was innocent, even after Hunter pleaded guilty to tax evasion. 

None of what he said is true. Misdirection.

This sordid story has credibility now in that in the course of the Hunter gun trial the contents of his laptop were validated by the FBI as real. The FBI, of course, knew for some time the laptop was real, and we explained here why a thoughtful outside observer would come to the same conclusion even without the FBI’s forensics. Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski confirmed his emails were legitimate months before the FBI. The New York Times agreed, reporting on an FBI criminal investigation into Hunter’s business and tax activities based in part on the contents of the laptop.

Here’s what Hunter’s laptop revealed in our reading of its contents, as made available to TAC and other outlets. Hunter, with no previous experience in the energy field, joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma at a salary of $83,000 a month. What was his actual job at Burisma? The question is important because on April 16, 2014, while Joe was vice president, he met with Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Joe traveled to Ukraine to lobby for increased fracking. Burisma was one of the few companies licensed to frack in Ukraine. Burisma made hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine’s new policy. Burisma eventually paid more than $4,000,000 for Hunter’s and Archer’s board service.

While Hunter and Archer were serving on Burisma’s board, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was investigating Burisma and its owner. In his official position as vice president, Biden demanded Ukraine fire Shokin, and threatened to withdraw one billion dollars in U.S. military aid if it did not do so. Shokin was fired.

While serving on the Burisma board, Hunter and Archer sought meetings with senior State Department officials, including SecState John Kerry (Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s son, is part of one of Hunter’s front companies) and then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (Blinken coordinated the 51 intel officers’ letter which claimed Hunter’s laptop was likely Russian disinformation.) What did they all discuss?

The reason to ask that question is because it appears whatever Hunter’s job description, his value to Burisma was perceived access to the executive branch. Joe was at least a passive participant in the scheme, maybe more than that. The most charitable reading of the sleazy saga is that Joe Biden, one of the most powerful men in the world, is a gullible idiot. At least that sounds better than “co-conspirator.”

Independent of the laptop, the FBI learned about and then kept silent about how in 2016 Hunter Biden and his partners plotted to set up a new venture in tax-friendly Liechtenstein capitalized by a $120 million investment from the owner of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. The evidence shows the major investment plan was being built at the time when Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma’s board of directors and Joe was still serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, in charge of U.S.-Ukraine policy.

Meanwhile, the laptop goes on to show Hunter, through a number of front companies, accepted money from foreign firms and moved that money to the U.S. where it was parceled out to other entities, including Joe’s brother, Jim. Jim regularly invoiced Hunter for office expenses and employee costs, as well as a monthly retainer cost of some $68,000, plus other fees in the tens of thousands of dollars for unknown services. It all smells bad—multi-million dollar transfers to employeeless LLCs, residences used as business addresses, cash moving around offshore tax shelters. Can Hunter explain why his fees traveled such circuitous routes? What did he pay Uncle Jim for, and why did Jim appear to return/kickback some of the money paid him?

What is this money all about? In 2014, Hunter received $3.5 million from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of the former mayor of Moscow. Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her front company received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor.

The majority of the contents of Hunter’s laptop are a jumbled record of international business ventures. These include receipts of a large number of wire transfers to and from clients. Those with traceable addresses appear to be mostly shell companies run from lawyers’ office—no employees, unclear (at best) public paper trails.

A typical one involved $259,845 traveling on April 2, 2018 from Hudson West III in New York to a numbered account held by Cathay Bank in Asia. Hudson West was created by Hunter Biden’s own law firm, Owasco, with several Chinese nationals, including a Ye Jianming associate. Ye Jianming is chairman of CEFC China Energy, with close ties to both the Chinese government and the PLA. He was arrested in China on corruption charges and has essentially been disappeared.

A 2017 email chain involving Hunter brokering an ultimately failed deal for a new venture with old friend CEFC, the Chinese energy company, described a 10 percent set-aside for the “big guy,” whom former Hunter Biden partner Tony Bobulinski publicly identified as Joe Biden. Joe also took Hunter to China with him in December 2013 on Air Force Two, and met with Chinese leaders while Hunter tried to make deals on his own, literally in dad’s shadow.

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There is a lot morem but you get the picture. A lot of malarkey from a senior statesman like Joe who should have known better. In places like China and the Ukraine, where corruption is endemic, it is assumed the sons of powerful men have political access to their father. Hunter traded on those assumptions for millions of dollars, and Papa Joe stood by understanding what was happening. Every father wants to help his son, and we can imagine Hunter went to his dad time after time, pleading for just one more little favor to get past his sordid past. (You know, for Beau.)

The emails are a series of pointers that deserve the scrutiny of a courtroom to see whether there is a smoking gun. To dismiss them because they may be incomplete is to fail to understand the difference between evidence and conclusion. 

Let’s hope we learn the lesson before November 5.

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