by David Harsanyi
After being asked the other day why he’s interacted with “so many” foreign associates of his son Hunter and brother James, President Joe Biden responded by claiming the allegations were “a bunch of lies.”
This, of course, wasn’t the first time the president blatantly lied about his role in the family influence-peddling business.
You might recall that during a 2020 campaign event, the then-presidential hopeful was asked by an Iowa man if Hunter had ever had “access to the Obama administration.”
The future president, who had vowed to bring decorum and decency back to the White House, called the man a “damn liar” and “fat” and told him he was “too old” before insulting his IQ.
This act of projection from Biden should have been a warning. It was modus operandi for Joe, whose preternatural dishonesty was impressive even for a politician, to question the mental fitness of those who caught him in a lie.
Biden would go on to contend to have never “discussed with my son anything having to do with what was going on in Ukraine. That’s a fact.” Another time, the former veep claimed he “never discussed a single thing with my son having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We’ve always kept everything separate.”
Not a single thing.
When the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, strongly indicating that Joe had lied, virtually the entire left-wing media tried to bury the story by relying on the claim of former intelligence officials that the story smelled like Russian “disinformation.” Even Joe noted that the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”
Well, we soon found out there was plenty of basis to the story. Hunter had hosted a dinner in a private room at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C., with his dad and an executive from the Biden-funders at Burisma. And in an email dated the next day, the Ukrainian exec thanked Hunter for the meeting with his dad.
In scores of other emails and texts, Hunter talks about his dad helping him secure payments and taking a cut. Indeed, one of Hunter’s former business partners contends Joe was involved in the family business, as does Hunter’s former close friend, who testified under oath that Joe was on upward of 20 calls with business associates.
At this point, there was overwhelming direct evidence that Joe was a willing participant, at the very least, in creating the impression that influence-trading was happening and plenty of circumstantial evidence that the elder Biden was getting a 10% cut for the troubles.
And as evidence of the president’s lies about his family’s influence-peddling business mounted, “fact-checkers” and the media began struggling to keep up with fresh information. At first, we were told there was “no evidence” that Biden knew anything. Suddenly, there was “no evidence” that Biden had personally benefited from Biden Inc. (as if enriching your entire family wasn’t personal enough).
Why then, people wondered, had James Biden written his brother Joe a personal check for $200,000, that also happened to be the exact amount James had received from the failed Chinese-connected Americore family venture on that very same day? Talk about crazy coincidences.
It was around this time that White House language began subtly shifting from blanket denials to finely tuned Clinton-esque turns of phrase about Joe never being “in business with his son.”
