How Investigative Journalists Have Become Cover-Up Promoters

By John D. O’Connor

After the highly touted, shamelessly self-promoted Washington Post “investigative” Watergate journalism, thousands of aspiring young people sought to become, like the legendary Woodward and Bernstein, fearless speakers of truth to power, uncovering corruption and cover-up without fear or favor.  But fifty years later, these supposed investigative journalists have become the corrupt actors whom they promised to expose.  Have our vaunted good guys become dirty cops?  It sure looks like it.

While this evolution from clean to corrupt has been proceeding apace for fifty years, there is no better incarnation of this perverse role change than the recent journalism concerning ostensible Biden family corruption.

There is much room for legitimate, good-faith debate about the strength of evidence against Hunter Biden and, separately, his father Joe.  But the debate is properly about the unseemly activities of Hunter and the practiced neglect of same, at the least, by his father.  Whatever the strength of evidence, all of it is ugly, worrisome, problematic.  There is no way to sugarcoat this: there is a noisome stench emanating from Bidenville that cries out for further investigation.

This tableau of potential Biden family corruption amounts to a test of the bona fides of modern “investigative” journalists.  Will they investigate facts in a dispassionate way, or will they act as partisan publicity agents covering up wrongdoing, perhaps treason?

What results has this test thus far returned?

To decide this question, let’s first recapitulate the evidence that seems to be uncontroverted, even if not publicized in detail by these supposed watchdogs.

In the throes of the “Maidan Revolution,” by late 2014, Ukraine had been turned upside-down.  To tamp down endemic corruption, which portended the country’s demise, the United States took a firm anti-corruption stance, which it could enforce as the main player in granting foreign aid.

Vice President Joe Biden then volunteered to be the Obama administration point man for the troubled country.  Before he flew to Ukraine, he had a multi-hour White House meeting with Devon Archer, his son’s partner in apparent influence-peddling.

As Hunter and Archer thereafter maneuvered to pitch potential Ukrainian clients, Hunter sent a lengthy memorandum one such client, the energy company Burisma, which sounded suspiciously, with jargon, as if it had come directly from a classified analysis of U.S. policy on oil and gas exploration in and around Ukraine.

Soon, Attorney General Eric Holder, along with U.K. officials, heralded the London seizure of $23 million in Burisma funds directed to Cyprus for the personal benefit of a Burisma owner and apparent embezzler, Mykola Zlochevsky.  After British officials attached the funds, all that was needed was certification by a Ukraine prosecutor that the gain was ill-gotten, in which case the Court would return the money to Ukraine.

But, oddly, no Ukraine official, to the British magistrate’s stated frustration, ever claimed the money, which was reluctantly forwarded to Cyprus, for the benefit of Hunter’s new client.

Another Hunter client, Igor Kolomoisky, carried out massive thefts with no apparent pushback.  After $1.8 billion in foreign aid was sent to Kolomoisky’s large, prominent PrivatBank to help stabilize the Ukrainian banking system, PrivatBank immediately lent that money to shell companies through deposits to PrivatBank’s branch in Cyprus, secured by nonexistent contracts — monies never again seen.  All in all, PrivatBank was looted for $5 billion under Joe Biden’s nose, all of which had to be reflated through foreign aid

When President Trump later called on new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden corruption, this was not an empty, partisan request, notwithstanding the president’s awkward coloration of it.  But Trump likely did not realize that President Zelensky’s major benefactor was Igor Kolomoisky, in hindsight rendering Trump’s initiative blackly comical, however appropriate.  (Kolomoisky, in spite of looting his country’s major bank, and stealing foreign aid, did not flee the country until late 2016, as Vice President Biden was leaving office, to return only after Zelensky was elected.)

In early 2016, after prosecutor Viktor Shokin, spurred by U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, raided Zlochevsky’s home in an anti-Burisma investigation, Joe Biden famously had him fired — strong circumstantial evidence of the vice president’s corruption.  A recently unearthed FD-1023 report of a credible informant confirms that Hunter Biden and his father were each promised five million dollars for getting Shokin fired.  While the cover-up spin is that Shokin was a shakedown artist, in fact, after he was fired, the strong cases against Burisma were settled for a paltry $7 million.

Shifting to China, it is well established that (a) Hunter had a strong relationship with the globally corrupt Chinese energy arm CEFC, on record as a company that bribed foreign officials, and (b) was given ten-percent ownership in the lucrative multibillion-dollar Bohai Harvest Fund, which invested funds from the Bank of China.

When Hunter wrote an email threatening a CEFC official who was late in paying him, he warned that his father was sitting next to him.  Whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next to Hunter, the CEFC official was certainly under the impression that Joe was in on the deal, failing which his presence would be a meaningless threat.

Now, as specific evidence emerges fleshing out this obvious influence-peddling scheme, the only question is the degree to which Joe Biden willingly participated since, after all, Hunter’s clients were purchasing that participation.  But in any case, aren’t these issues that investigative journalists should be tackling?

Let’s hark back to Watergate.  Richard Nixon was forced out of office by powerful journalism — not because he was guilty of the underlying criminal burglary, but because he enabled and participated in the cover-up.  His most palpable crime was importuning the CIA to call the FBI off, briefly, its “Mexican money trail” investigation — a minor cover-up, but criminal, nonetheless.

Showing stronger culpability, the emerging evidence from credible whistleblowers verifies that the Biden administration, through its Justice Department, fixed the prosecution of Hunter, refusing indictments both in D.C. and Los Angeles, allowing statutes of limitation to expire, and refusing proper investigative steps recommended by IRS agents.

Given all the above, there is plenty of grist for the mill of our vaunted investigative journalists — you know, those same sleuths who breathlessly seized on every morsel suggesting that Donald Trump may have spoken to people with Russian accents.

A few examples of the accumulated evidence should suffice.  In addition to two credible, experienced whistleblowing IRS agents, and the FD-1023 informant’s report, Gal Luft, an American-Israeli think-tank director, in 2019 in Brussels had personally provided DOJ lawyers and FBI agents with specific facts detailing corruption by China of both Bidens.

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