/ 24 Comments @ Manhattan Contrarian
The New York Post is a national treasure. If you don’t read it regularly, you should. While there are still at least a handful of other general-interest conservative papers out there that publish in print format (e.g., Boston Herald, Orange County Register, Epoch Times), the NYP stands far above the others in having large circulation, in the largest media market, and publishing every day; and its internet content is not behind a pay wall. Although there is a good deal of advertising, I assume that News Corp. loses substantial money on the operation every year. America owes them a deep, deep debt of gratitude.
Today at the Post, Hunter Biden is back on the cover. The headline is “Error of His Daze: Hunter has no shame about big bucks Ukraine gig.” Inside, the story fills pages 4 and 5, plus an editorial, and a long column by Miranda Devine on page 11. The story in the print edition does not seem to correspond exactly to what I find online. Online, there are at least five separate pieces:
- “Hunter Biden has ‘no recollection’ of meeting stripper with whom he had a child”
- “Hunter Biden not working on plea deal in federal tax probe”
- “Hunter Biden says he has ‘no idea’ if Secret Service was involved in gun incident”
- “Hunter Biden insists he has never given father money from his business ventures”
- “Hunter Biden says he wasn’t ‘keeping tabs on possessions’ when asked about laptop.”
Plus there are several additional stories with a date of yesterday, April 4.
I don’t know of any theory under which the Hunter Biden story is not one of the biggest stories of this year and last year, if not the single biggest story. Yes, if it was just about personal tragedy of the President’s son being a long time crack addict who has ruined his life and gone over the edge into the abyss, it would not be that big. It would still be a big story, but not a huge story. But the personal tragedy is the least important aspect of the Hunter Biden story. Far more important are the revelations about, first, the corruption of our President, and second, the corruption of our media.
Anyway, Hunter has chosen this moment to get himself back in the news by publishing a memoir. On Sunday he appeared on CBS News for the softest of softball interviews. In the interview he was at least asked about some of the major issues swirling around him; but his answers, no matter how preposterous, were then just taken at face value and the interviewer moved on. Much of the Post’s reporting today and yesterday consists of simply comparing Hunter’s statements in the CBS interview to what is known from available factual evidence. You would think that Hunter at this point would want to stay as far from the news as possible. But somehow he is under such an armor plating of media protection that he feels confident that he can just spin his story as one of personal tragedy and redemption, and everyone will buy it. Or at least, everyone but the New York Post.
Let’s start with the presidential corruption aspect of the story. As each succeeding item of news about Hunter came out over the past year and a half, one story after another somehow involved not just Hunter, but also Joe, in corruption; and most of that concerned foreign adversaries of the U.S. Theoretically, any one of these instances could have had an innocent explanation; but by the time you are getting to five and six and seven of them (and who knows how many others that have been successfully kept under wraps), there is no remaining chance that we are dealing with honesty. Here’s a short review:
In December 2013, Hunter flew to Beijing with his father, aboard Air Force Two, while Joe was Vice President. From the Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2019: “BHR Partners was officially registered 12 days after Hunter Biden in December 2013 flew to Beijing aboard Air Force Two, while his father made an official visit as vice president.” Hunter then became a director of a company called BHR, and quickly BHR participated in several major deals involving China government-controlled entities. Further from the same WSJ piece: “Filings show BHR Partners winning a piece of several desirable transactions: a stake worth more than $900 million in a corporate spinoff of non-oil industry assets from China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. ; a $10 million holding in China General Nuclear Power Corp., just before an initial public offering . . . .” And there are others. As far as I have been able to find, Hunter has denied that he made major money off this; and he claims the directorship was unpaid. On the other hand, it could just be that the deals have taken some years to pay off. The actual structure, and Hunter’s compensation, have not been disclosed. Given the amounts of money involved, the ultimate payoffs could easily be in the millions, if not the tens of millions.
To me, the Ukraine story is the most damning for the Bidens. The story involves both big money clearly received by Hunter, and quid pro quo corruption that would certainly be criminal bribery for anyone else. I covered the story in great detail in a post in October 2019 titled “The Bidens: ‘Stone Cold Crooked.’” The short version is that in March 2014 then-VP Joe Biden became “point person” for U.S. policy toward Ukraine, at a time when the Burisma oil company and its Chairman and principal owner Mykola Zlochevsky, were obvious impending targets of a corruption investigation. In April 2014 Hunter somehow landed a job as director of Burisma, in an industry he knew nothing about. The job required attending two board meetings per year, and the pay has variously been reported as $50,000 per month ($600,000 per year) or $83,333 per month ($1 million per year). In early 2016 Joe Biden — in an event he has bragged about on recorded video — threatened to withhold $1 billion dollars of desperately needed U.S. aid to Ukraine (Russia was invading at the time) unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma. The prosecutor was fired. The investigation of Burisma went away. Hunter remained in the million-per-year gig until Joe had left office. Go to the linked post for lots more details, and many links. In the presidential debate on September 29, 2020, Joe did not even attempt to give an explanation, but just repeated “None of that is true . . . . My son did nothing wrong.”
The story of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer was broken by the New York Post on October 14, 2020, in the run-up to the 2020 election. From the start, the laptop story was not principally about the laptop itself, but about yet additional corruption of the Bidens by China revealed in emails found on the device. Most significantly, some of the emails showed the Bidens putting together a business venture with a Chinese government-controlled entity called CEFC in 2017 — a time when Joe was out of office, but was clearly understood to be a prospective candidate for President in 2020. Within a few days after the Post broke the story, they interviewed a guy named Tony Bobulinski, who had been recruited by the Bidens to become CEO of one of the entities created for the prospective transaction. Bobulinski then put the emails in context. Among other things, he explained that the email that said “10 percent for the big guy held by H” referred to Hunter holding a secret 10% stake in the enterprise for Joe. Bobulinski also explained that the Chinese viewed this as an “influence investment.” For much more detail, go to my October 28, 2020 post.
Then there is the matter of the Report of the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees that came out on September 23, 2020. Aside from going into some detail on the Ukraine matter, this report also revealed for the first time (that I can find) a payment of some $3.5 million from Elena Baturina, Mayor of Moscow (and a Putin crony), to Hunter Biden. I have never seen any explanation of this one by the Bidens. Is there any possible good explanation?
And then there are the reports of further dubious dealings of Hunter in Romania, and also in Kazakhstan, always trading on the Biden name.
Finally, just over a week ago, we got a story from Politico reporting that in 2018 Hunter had thrown away a gun in a trash container behind a grocery store in, of course, Wilmington, Delaware. Then this bizarre twist: “Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale. . . .” It turns out that on the application to purchase the gun, Hunter lied about his history of rather severe drug use. That would be a federal crime. And how does the Secret Service come to be involved? According to the Politico story, Joe Biden “was not under protection at the time.” So, if Politico has this one right (and they certainly are not right wing shills), at a time when Joe was not under Secret Service protection, it intervened to attempt to secrete or destroy evidence of a crime by Hunter. But don’t worry, now that the evidence is out, Hunter is definitely not going to be prosecuted. The entire federal prosecutorial apparatus is in on the Biden corruption.
I’m sure that that list is not comprehensive. And then, of course, there is the story of Joe’s brother Jim getting rich working for a construction company when Joe was VP and point person of policy as to Iraq, and the construction company suddenly won a billion or so dollars of U.S. government-funded work in Iraq. And so forth.
This litany is so long, and so massive, and so pervasive, and so deeply involves not just Hunter but also Joe in nearly every aspect, that you would think it would be completely impossible for the media not to cover it constantly as the gigantic story that it is. And yet the story of media corruption here is almost as big as the story of Biden corruption. As everyone knows, after it broke the Hunter laptop story, the New York Post was banned entirely from Twitter for several weeks in the run-up to the 2020 election. Many supposedly reputable media outlets have completely refused to cover any aspect of the Hunter Biden revelations; or, if they cover the story at all, they engage in absurd spin. In this October 18, 2020 post I collected a round-up of media sources peddling the preposterous scam that the Hunter laptop story was Russian disinformation. Those sources included USA Today, AP, Bloomberg, Business Insider, and CNN, among many others.
So now that Hunter has a book out, and a CBS interview, will anyone (except the NY Post) say anything critical? I’ll give you just a few sickening examples:
On Thursday March 31 the New York Times published a book review of Hunter’s book by Elizabeth Egan, headline “Hunter Biden’s Memoir: 7 Takeaways From ‘Beautiful Things’”. Brief excerpt: “President Biden’s son opens up about crack addiction, his romantic relationship with his sister-in-law and the new love that halted his cycle of despair. . . . The book is equal parts family saga, grief narrative and addict’s howl.” Good thing we don’t need to talk about the corruption thing here. The fifth of Egan’s seven “takeaways” is the only one that relates to the Ukraine matter: “He [covers the Ukraine] incident in an 18-page chapter that reads like a research paper compiled by a reluctant student. Was Biden appointed to the board because of his last name? Perhaps, he writes, but: ‘My response has always been to work harder so that my accomplishments stand on their own.’ Did he display a lack of judgment? ‘No.’” That’s it.
At the Washington Post, here’s a March 31 Politics column by Tyler Pager and Ashley Parker, also covering the new Hunter book. Again, the Ukraine matter gets some brief mention, but “whitewash” would be an appropriate description. Excerpt: “Hunter Biden says in a new memoir that if given the chance, he would not again sign onto the board of the Ukrainian gas company at the center of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, but he is adamant that his service was not unethical.” Well, guys, do you have a view on this rather obvious question? None that they are willing to state.
The strategy is simply to repeat Hunter’s absurd talking points without comment, and then move on to talk about a sympathetic tale of sin and redemption. It couldn’t be more insulting to the readers. I never thought I would live to see our media completely turned into a palace guard to protect those in power from scrutiny, but here we are.
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