Yesterday the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees released their majority staff report on Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns. The report reveals what I believe used to be denominated corruption. Whatever it was, Hunter Biden was the beneficiary as the result of his father’s duties as vice president.
The report adds heft and detail to what was previously known. I urge interested readers to check out the 87-page report’s table of contents, executive summary, and key findings at pages 1-6, if not the whole thing. I doubt that much of it will make its way into mainstream accounts of the report.
Tom Hamburger et al. quote Joe Biden’s vehement “prebuttal” of the report in the Washington Post article “GOP senators’ report calls Hunter Biden’s board position with Ukraine firm ‘problematic’ but doesn’t show it changed U.S. policy.” It’s a classic non-denial denial:
In a statement issued before the report’s release, Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates accused Johnson of trying “to subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars — an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore right-wing conspiracy theory that hinges on Sen. Johnson himself being corrupt and that the senator has now explicitly stated he is attempting to exploit to bail out Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.”
I also enjoyed the testimonial from Hunter’s daughter:
In a series of tweets, Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi, 26, offered a personal tribute to her father.
“Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is,” she tweeted. “Here’s a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden — free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles.”
Emphasis on “human struggles.” Naomi’s testimonial may prompt the observant to note the absence of a comparable testimonial to Hunter by Hunter’s father. Better to dredge up such shibboleths as “hardcore right-wing conspiracy theory” on the old man’s behalf.
National Review’s Jack Crowe has a good summary of the report here as does American Greatness’s Debra Heine here. After all that we’ve been through, some readers will find Emily Jacobs’s New York Post article — “Hunter Biden received $3.5M wire transfer from Russian billionaire” — of special interest.
Among the commentary on the report are the following:
• Miranda Devine’s New York Post column “Liberal media’s pass on sloppy Joe and scandalous Hunter Biden.”
• George Neumayr’s American Spectator column “Hunter Biden Cashed In to Fuel His Drug and Sex Habits.”
• The Wall Street Journal editorial “Hunter Biden’s business.”
• Caleb Parke’s FOX News article on Mollie Hemingway “Biden was briefed about son’s involvement, according to Hunter Biden Burisma report: [Mollie] Hemingway.”
The name of Ukrainian oligarch and Burisma owner appears Mykola Zlochevsky appears 84 times in the report. It provides one interesting thread through the report. Just looking at that thread, a reasonable reader may wonder what Joe knew and when he knew it. That’s the question Mollie Hemingway addressed in the linked FOX News report.
UPDATE: Spectator USA’s pseudonymous Cockburn adds this:
A passive observer might take this all in and think that Hunter Biden’s foreign adventures are a worthy topic of discussion while his father runs for president.
That passive observer would be wrong, according to the press. Hunter Biden strikes Cockburn as a very interesting figure, yet news operations are suddenly competing to see who can find his exploits least interesting. CNN, the AP, Politico, and CBS all variously dismissed the report as old news, politically charged, or ‘controversial’. The finest headline of all belongs to The New York Times, though: ‘Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden.’
No evidence? Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars by Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese oligarchs. In fact, he was paid a lot more than Russia ever spent on the Facebook ads liberals think swung the 2016 election. That’s plenty of evidence. What the Times and others mean is that there is no proof of wrongdoing by Biden. But so what? There was never one shred of proof for the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, but the Times accepted a Pulitzer for hundreds of articles obsessively chronicling that story. They’re still at it to this day.
But don’t expect any months-long investigation into Hunter Biden, now or ever. He’s only a Democrat.
Whole thing here.
