I have long dismissed the Hunter Biden story as an irrelevant sideshow, but recent revelations have changed my mind. There’s more than enough evidence to merit a thorough investigation of President Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings.
The Hunter Biden saga started in late 2020 when the New York Post reported that a laptop he had left at a Delaware repair shop contained evidence that he, in 2015, apparently tried to set up a meeting between his father, then the vice president, and an executive at a Ukrainian energy firm with whom Hunter was doing business. The Biden campaign actively sought to suppress the story, devising a public statement from 50 former intelligence officials claiming it was Russian disinformation. That wasn’t so.
It’s also clear that Hunter received millions of dollars from Chinese and Ukrainian businesses for which he could offer little to no prior experience. His value to them was clear: his relationship with his father.
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None of this directly implicated the elder Biden in any wrongdoing, which is why I — and many Americans — have largely ignored the story. But recent developments have gotten my attention.
Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, recently testified before the House Oversight Committee that Hunter’s value to these firms was his family’s “brand” — his presumed access to the then-vice president. At the time, according to Archer’s testimony, Joe Biden attended dinners in Washington with Hunter and members of Burisma, the Ukrainian firm on whose board Hunter served. Joe Biden also regularly participated in phone calls with Hunter and his clients, Archer said.
That might not have been illegal, and Archer noted that the vice president had not changed policy to help Burisma. But it sure does stink.
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The House Oversight Committee also claims Joe Biden used aliases in email conversations about Ukraine policy. In one instance, the committee reports, a document that included information about a call between the vice president and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was forwarded to one of Biden’s supposed aliases, with Hunter copied.
Again, this doesn’t prove Joe Biden was changing policy to fit with Hunter’s clients’ preferences. But it does suggest he was aware of Hunter’s dealings and wanted to keep his son in the loop.
One could dismiss this as simply another tawdry example of access-peddling. Maybe that’s all it is. But only a complete investigation can ensure that it’s nothing worse.
Hunter selling access to his father is disreputable but completely legal. Similarly, Joe Biden participating in meetings that his son asked him to attend would constitute questionable judgment but not illegal conduct. The trouble comes if it moved beyond that to a shared business relationship in which the vice president was an active partner.
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That’s what Republicans have long alleged. In their telling, Hunter made the contacts and the money, and his father provided the access that kept the money flowing. Some of that money flowed back to Joe Biden, they claim, pointing to an 2017 email found on Hunter’s laptop discussing a joint business deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate in which Hunter would hold 10 percent for “the big guy.” Such an arrangement could be illegal. (The elder Biden has denied it ever existed.)
Democrats often respond to these details with a whataboutism. They point to Donald Trump and his family, who allegedly used Trump’s presidency to enrich themselves. Foreign government officials, for example, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay at Trump’s hotel in Washington during his presidency. Democrats also charge that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, secured a $2 billion investment in his private equity firm from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund through ties he forged while serving as Trump’s aide. Even Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, recently said Kushner’s deal “crossed the line of ethics.”
But none of this negates the need to thoroughly investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Had Trump and one of his adult children been involved in the same set of facts as the Bidens, the outcry on the left would be deafening.
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We hear a lot these days about the rule of law and the importance of applying it evenhandedly regardless of a person’s political power. That’s correct, of course, which is why Trump’s alleged crimes deserve serious scrutiny even if his indictments are partially motivated by politics. The same logic, though, should apply to Hunter and Joe Biden.
Mature democracies do not use trumped-up charges to imprison political opponents. But they do follow and apply the law regardless of political consequences. Only a methodical investigation of the Bidens can conclusively determine which side of that equation their activities fall.
