An Atlantic columnist has become the latest writer to advance the notion that what Joe Biden did with his son Hunter Biden might not have been criminal; however, it certainly crossed ethical boundaries.
“Biden was supposed to be different. Yet his unconditional public support for everything his son has done serves to sanitize and reinforce a business model that provides image-laundering services for foreign kleptocrats and monetizes access to power—or the appearance of such access. For a president and a political party whose brand stresses integrity, that’s a self-inflicted wound,” Sarah Chayes the author of “On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake,” writes in an Atlantic piece.
Joe Biden Resembles Afghanistan’s Corrupt Former President
Chayes compares the Bidens’ corruption with that of Afghanistan’s corrupt former president Hamid Karzai. She notes that Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer noted that his selling point was that he was the son of the American vice president and that he was selling access or the perception of access to his father.
“I spent a decade in a country where this sort of signaling was the primary mode of communication among members of a corrupt ruling elite. I watched Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai send opposing messages to separate audiences during a single speech in 2010,” Chayes writes. “To his international backers, he spelled out his willingness to tackle corruption by calling for new legislation (calculated to appeal to wordy Westerners who love drafting laws). To members of his network, Karzai indicated his intent to keep providing protection by sharing the platform with two notorious warlords, members of his cabinet who were involved in drug trafficking and spiriting away millions of dollars in national revenue.”
Chayes continues, “That Afghanistan experience makes plain to me what was wrong about the Bidens’ behavior, even if it wasn’t illegal … To Ukrainian oligarchs, in other words, the U.S. seemed to be sending the same type of conflicting messages Karzai sent: statements for the benefit of a Western audience and nonverbal signaling that conveyed Washington’s real meaning.”
Burisma Deal Stinks to High Heaven
Burisma wanted Hunter Biden on its board as an insurance policy and to keep the Ukrainian and U.S. authorities off its tail as the June 2020 FD-1023 form alleges.
“Pojarskii said Burisma … hired Hunter Biden to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” the FBI informant said. “[The confidential human source] told [Burisma head Mykola] Zlochevsky that due to Shokin’s investigation into Burisma, which was made public at this time, it would have a substantial negative impact on Burisma’s prospective IPO in the United States. Zlochevsky replied something to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.’”
Chayes noted that Zlochevsky had been a minister in the government of Ukraine’s toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yukanovych but had fled the country. Zlochevsky had been under investigation by Ukrainian authorities before he left, starting in 2012.
“Other characters, alongside the Ukrainian oil-ministry oligarch, should also have raised red flags for Joe Biden, who was at the time the U.S. vice president—and had just taken on the task for the Obama administration of pressing Ukraine to tackle its endemic corruption. Archer himself is one such character. He was sentenced last year for the crimes of fraud and conspiracy in an unrelated $60 million scheme that launched in early 2014—right about the time that he and Hunter joined Burisma,” Chayes writes. “As the barrage of discomforting questions intensifies, Biden and his party’s best defense is to take a stand not only for what is legal but also for what is right. Blurring the lines and sending double messages will only add to their difficulties. Worse, it will breed more corruption in our politics.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From the Vault
Donald Trump May Have a New Problem: Melania Trump
Barack Obama Scolds Americans for Offering ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ During Maui Tragedy
Donald Trump Keeps Making ‘Chilling’ Threats That Could Land Him in Jail
