Evidence of Biden Corruption Grows
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.
The Defense in Depth
One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.
Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.
But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.
And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.
Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.
To breach this fourth defense line, House Republicans will have to break through the labyrinth of Biden paywalls and find how much money was rerouted into Biden coffers. And then they must additionally compare what came into the Biden hands with a) what the family reported on their respective income tax returns, and b) whether their various properties and lifestyles were remotely possible without such massive hidden income. And getting bank records from the Bidens will be near impossible.
The Ukraine Factor
Joe Biden has successfully profited by using American foreign aid to stop prosecutorial inquiries into his son’s and, indirectly per the laptop admissions, his own quid pro quo payments from corrupt Ukrainians.
The firing of Viktor Shokin who knew of Hunter Biden’s corruption was one of the most blatantly corrupt and self-interested acts of a Vice President since the career of Spiro Agnew. Still, there is no reason why Biden would now give up such a proven successful strategy.
Yet there are important issues for Biden at stake. One, Viktor Shokin is convinced that the Bidens were recipients of Ukrainian bribes intended to win U.S. foreign aid and influence over American foreign policy in Eastern Europe and vis a vis Russia.
And two, an FBI confidential source has sworn that “a foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them — 17 such recordings.” And three, to corroborate testimonies from these Ukrainian players or to subpoena the purported 17 recordings would now translate into risking the wrath of Joe Biden the giver of massive Ukrainian military aid—now likely over $100 billion—and formerly on record of being perfectly willing to cancel Ukrainian aid unless Kyiv bent to his personal agenda.
Now in an existential war, Ukrainians will likely not wish either Viktor Shokin or Mykola Zlochevsky, former head of Burisma and said to be in possession of the 17 recordings (including two that purportedly involve Joe Biden directly), to embarrass much less help to remove Biden by producing evidence confirming their charges.
So we should assume the Ukrainian government will do its best to protect Biden from fellow Ukrainian accusers, mostly by silencing any Ukrainian who would dare endanger their stream of arms and money. For Kyiv, the ongoing Biden exemption from impeachment and conviction is likely seen as a matter of life and death.
