THE BIDEN FAMILY BUSINESS REVISED VERSION
Miranda Devine’s December 14 New York Post column is keyed to Hunter Biden’s public statement defying the congressional subpoena for his testimony last week. Jonathan Turley covers Biden’s illegal contempt of Congress in a column that is now posted at his site. In his statement, Hunter Biden played his “poor, poor pitiful me” card and vowed to defend his Daddy from the bad guys (“MAGA Republicans,” in case you hadn’t heard).
Devine’s column takes up Hunter Biden’s reformulation of Daddy’s distance from the family business. “There’s no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business,” said Hunter. And: “My father was not financially involved in my business.”
Devine comments:
Joe Biden was ”not financially involved” is a significant shifting of the goal posts. It is a carefully parsed, legalistic phrase, that looks as if it has been workshopped to death in a campaign war room before being dropped into Hunter’s soup of self-pity.
That is the message from the White House, delivered by a hostage who needs Daddy’s pardon to stay out of jail.
It bears no relation to all the president’s previous denials.
Joe Biden has gone from years of saying: “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their business, period” to this summer’s line from the White House: “The president was never in business with his son” — and now to this latest transmutation: Joe “was not financially involved in [Hunter’s] business.”
That’s quite an admission, right there, that the mountains of evidence produced by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler and the parade of credible witnesses and bank records assembled by Comer and colleagues have become impossible to deny.
This is a reported column. Devine adds that “just hours before Hunter’s press conference, the transcript of the latest testimony of Ziegler and Shapley was published by the House Ways and Means Committee.” A transcript of their December 5 testimony was released by the committee last week and is now posted online here. Links to the transcript and related materials are included in the Chairman Jason Smith’s December 12 press release posted here.
Devine takes up the transcript of the whistleblowers’ testimony:
Their testimony was in response to a barrage of hostile questioning by Democrats on the committee who insist that there is “nothing new,” “no evidence,” that the president did nothing wrong and, anyway, let’s talk about Donald Trump.
Ziegler and Shapley quickly disabused them of their delusions — and how.
Georgia Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ga.) stepped on the first landmine when she asked the knowledgeable pair to point to any evidence “that directly prove[s] that Joe Biden has done something illegal, yes or no?”
Shapley replied: “There is evidence that exists.”
Sewell, flustered: “I just — it is yes or no.”
Shapley: “Yes, there is.”
Sewell, turned to Ziegler: “Please show me the direct evidence . . . that actually proves that Joe Biden did something unlawful, illegal.”
Ziegler obliged: “So in exhibit 1I, Hunter Biden states in his email that his original agreement –”
Sewell cut him off, but soon enough Ziegler was allowed to complete his answer, citing three pieces of evidence.
Devine supplies bullet points for the three pieces of evidence cited:
• An email to an executive of Chinese energy firm CEFC, on Aug. 2, 2017, in which Hunter states the deal “me and my family” had with CEFC was “for introductions alone [at] a rate of $10 million per year for three years [for a] guarantee[d] total of $30 million.”
• A WhatsApp message three days earlier, July 30, 2017, in which Hunter demands a CEFC executive pay up or else: “I am sitting here with my father”.
• An email two months earlier to Hunter from one of his partners in their joint venture with CEFC, suggesting an equity split between four partners of 20% each, with an extra 10% for Hunter’s uncle
Jim Biden and 10% “held by H for the big guy.”(H is Hunter and the “big guy” has been identified as Joe Biden.)
Whole thing here.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/the-biden-family-business-revised-version.php
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