Oh, wait - Hunter Biden actually has been found to have broken the law, he's stood before the man, admitted to being a tax cheat, and he's paid us what he owed.
He's also pled guilty to a gun charge (he lied on his background check), which is something that's almost never prosecuted.
BTW #1, I have yet to hear any Republicans squawking about how poor Hunter's 2A rights have been trampled on by a tyrannical government.
OK, but still, he got off easy. What about all the horrible things he's accused of doing in the 2014 - 2016 timeframe? Rudy Giuliani's pal got Hunter's laptop for us and it's just loaded with proof.
BTW #2, some serious questions remain largely unanswered about "the laptop":
- Does it actually exist?
- How was it obtained?
- What about the chain of custody?
I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to it, and that Hunter Biden is innocent like a spring lamb. I'm betting there is, and he's not.
But I'll bet way more on the obviously dead solid certainty that Republicans have their new Benghazi, and it doesn't matter what the truth is - they're going to flack the fuck out of that one narrow aspect of it, trying to drive Joe's numbers down.
WaPo takes a look at it for us.
Republican lawmakers expressed outrage last week after Fox News published a 2015 email chain from Hunter Biden’s laptop in which a Ukrainian energy company executive suggested that the “ultimate purpose” of Hunter’s hiring by the company was to shut down investigations of the company’s owner. The email exchange took place about one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine with the express purpose of seeking the removal of the country’s top prosecutor.
Never mind that Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, devoted an entire show to this email in October 2020. “Did Joe Biden subvert American foreign policy to enrich his family?” Carlson asked.
The Hunter Biden saga apparently can be endlessly recycled for maximum impact.
“The calm, judicious, steady reveal of incredibly condemning evidence that clearly incriminates the Biden crime family will eventually alarm even the most ardent supporters” of Biden, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told Fox last week.
However, working with our colleagues in Ukraine in 2019, we carefully documented the legal cases involving the energy company, Burisma, and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. The information continues to be relevant to assess whether the 2015 email chain provides evidence that Hunter Biden was acting to influence U.S. policy through his father at the time.
Biden and the Ukrainian prosecutor
The email chain is part of 217 gigabytes of data on a hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden and obtained by The Washington Post from a Republican activist. A small portion of the data, including the chain, was verified by two security experts who examined it for The Post, so we are able to cite these emails and provide links.
On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was a Burisma board member, and two of Hunter’s associates regarding the hiring of a U.S. public relations firm to bolster Burisma’s image.
“I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking U.S. officials in Ukraine (U.S. Ambassador) and in U.S. publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision-makers here in Ukraine: President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.,” Pozharskyi wrote, using a nickname for Zlochevsky. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former U.S. policymakers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.”
After responding with an email suggesting he wanted “one more conversation” with Blue Star, the PR firm, Hunter Biden told Pozharskyi that he was “comfortable” with Blue Star and “you should go ahead and sign.”
Nine days later, the U.S. Embassy announced that the vice president would be traveling to Ukraine in December to meet with the Ukrainian president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and members of parliament. Separately during this period, Blue Star indicated it was beginning to engage with U.S. and Ukrainian officials to shape perceptions of the company.
Here’s where the story gets complicated. A key purpose of Joe Biden’s December 2015 trip was to press Poroshenko to remove the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. Biden’s pressure eventually led to Shokin’s firing. But whether he was a shakedown artist operating at the behest of his son depends on whether Shokin was viewed as an impediment to investigating Burisma. Shokin has since claimed he was ousted because he was getting too tough on Burisma, but the available evidence shows the opposite is true.
- snip -
The available evidence shows that U.S. policy, executed but not developed by Joe Biden, operated independently of his son’s efforts to engage a PR firm to burnish Zlochevsky’s image. Biden’s efforts to oust the prosecutor only plausibly benefited Zlochevsky if Shokin had moved aggressively against Zlochevsky. But documents and interviews instead show Shokin had failed to act — which was a key reason the international community, led by the United States, sought his removal in the first place.
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