Commentary
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, (looking at his watch) I think it was about six hours. I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.” – Joe Biden, March 2016
That was Biden, two years after leaving office, bragging to an audience at a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations how he strong-armed Ukraine and threatened that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in loan guarantees if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Victor Shoklin.
Caught on video relating his conversation with then Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, which has been replayed numerous times on TV, Biden failed to share the fact that the prosecutor was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Hunter Biden as a board member.
In fact, the president would have you believe that he had no knowledge of Hunter’s relationship with Burisma when he threatened to withhold funds to Ukraine.
Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to investigative reporter John Solomon of The Hill, who saw financial records on file in Manhattan.
Trump’s Call
In September 2019, just two months after then President Trump had what he termed his “perfect call” to Ukraine President Zelensky, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed impeachment proceedings, alleging that he tried to strong-arm Zelensky into launching an investigation that might hurt Joe Biden’s election prospects.
That call lasted just 30 minutes, in which Trump asked Zelensky to look into the removal of the prosecutor that took place following the Biden threat.
Another double standard. Trump is impeached for saying “I would like you to do a favor” while Biden’s threat of withholding funds is ignored.
This week, following the House’s interview with Devon Archer, we learned that Hunter placed at least 20 calls to his father, Joe Biden, during meetings with his business partners and we are to believe that only the weather and casual conversation took place.
Archer believes that it was all about the Biden name – the Biden brand – and without it he believed the scandal-plagued Burisma would have gone out of business. Clearly, Hunter was influence peddling using his father’s position.
As someone who had responsibility for brand management during my years with Sperry Rand and Honeywell, where marketing strategies dealt with the protection of the brand’s reputation while building awareness, it’s easy to recognize how Hunter, with no background in energy, needed the Biden White House brand to succeed.
New York’s gullible liberal Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman would have you believe that “none of those conversations ever had to do with any business dealings or transactions,” and claimed that Joe wasn’t always aware that he was on speakerphone with Hunter’s associates. But Archer also confirmed that Joe attended several meetings in person, in Beijing and in Washington DC.
While Joe continued to insist that he never discussed his son’s business with him, in 2020, Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter business partner, spoke of meeting Joe at a May 2017 meeting at which a discussion took place over a potential deal with the Chinese energy firm CEFC.
FLASHBACK – The conversations Joe Biden claimed didn’t take place concerning Hunter’s business dealings reminded me of the exchange Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch had on her plane on the tarmac of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on June 15, 2018.
Clinton essentially ambushed Lynch, boarding her plane as it came to rest. Aware of her pending arrival, Clinton delayed his departure. Of course, it made the news because Lynch was investigating whether Hillary should face criminal charges.
“I just wanted to say hello to her and I thought it would look really crazy if were living in a world where I couldn’t shake hands with the attorney general … you know, when she was right there,” Clinton said.
Details released later indicated that Lynch found the 20-minutre encounter “devastating,” and that it seemed to go “on and on,” awkward. Aboard the plane, Lynch’s senior counselor had difficulty in trying to break up the conversation.
Supposedly, they talked about grandkids, and Bill’s golf game that day, and that the investigation of Hillary never came up.
Back to Biden. There may not be a special counsel investigating Biden family corruption, but if there were, how could we trust an independent counsel appointed by Merrick Garland?
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
