It’s better late than never I think. The New York Times has released a major report on Hunter Biden detailing the authenticity of his now-infamous laptop and confirming details about the ongoing criminal investigation into Joe Biden’s son.
Original reports on the laptop emerged during the 2020 presidential election, most notably by the New York Post, and were met with widespread claims of “disinformation” and censorship. The Post was actually banned from multiple social media sites over their reporting, with companies like Facebook insisting it was because the laptop contained “hacked” materials.
It was false. It was actually left in a computer shop, not hacking it. The shop claimed legal ownership after the laptop was not picked up or paid for. Most computer repair contracts include the computer as collateral.
As the Times’ report makes clear, though, Hunter Biden’s issues go well beyond an unpaid laptop bill and some embarrassing pictures.
The federal grand jury heard from two witnesses in Wilmington, Del. as recently last month. This witness was an ex-employee of Hunter Biden, whose lawyer was subpoenaed to provide financial records showing how Mr. Biden was paid money from a Ukrainian company.
According to people who are familiar with the investigation, the probe began under Obama’s tax inquiry. It was expanded in 2018 to cover possible criminal violations of tax laws as well as foreign lobbying or money laundering rules.
However, prosecutors still face many hurdles in bringing criminal cases, according to people who are familiar with the investigation. These include proving that Mr. Biden deliberately violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA), which requires disclosure by the Justice Department about lobbying and public relations services for foreign clients.
I find the Times’ framing to be ludicrous, even if the underlying information is newsworthy and useful. Is it really possible to prove Hunter Biden’s intentional violation of FARA? Were we to think that he knew he was lobbying for US officials to support a Chinese-owned business (which continues to invest in it)? He didn’t know he was lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, even though he received millions in compensation to press for unfreezing Libyan assets.
This stuff isn’t hypothetical. Hunter Biden didn’t just make lots of money from foreign entities, he used his influence with his now-president father to secure benefits (or attempt to in some cases) for those foreign entities. If that’s not a violation of FARA, then nothing is (except being a Trump associate because then everything is a FARA violation).
What is the point of all that? Apparently, the memo has gone out to blame Hunter Biden’s drug use.
Now, the Justice Department is being led by the elder Mr. Biden. Hunter Biden has been a professional painter for many years and has admitted to drug dependence and other issues during his time seeking international business while also dealing with Beau’s death.
Hunter Biden isn’t a 16-year-old kid. He’s a 50-something-year-old man who has spent decades corruptly making money and living a decadent lifestyle, flush with hookers and blow. At some point, saying “Well, I was on drugs” no longer washes as an excuse for such behavior. Joe Biden where are you? Jill Biden where was Joe Biden? Hunter Biden’s family is stronger than that of many addicts who ended up paying time for their sins.
It seems that the DOJ looks for ways to get out of the law, rather than actually enforce it. Given such bureaucracies are almost always wholly made up of careerist Democrats, that’s not surprising.
There has been some debate in the Justice Department about whether all the evidence supports Mr. Biden’s intent to violate FARA. The government must prove this to get a conviction. According to people who are familiar with the matter, the prosecutors discussed approaching FARA violations in a civil matter. This would mean that Mr. Biden would need to be registered retroactively as an agent for foreign countries, without the possibility of criminal charges.
A money laundering case could be complicated by such a solution, as money laundering usually involves another crime.
Why would intent be so difficult? There’s more evidence here of intentional FARA violations than any other case I’ve ever seen, and we saw several of them pursued during the Trump years. It would be an utter miscarriage to let Hunter Biden go with just a minor slap. This would also open the door for corruption. If that’s the outcome here, it’s another huge indictment on the DOJ’s credibility, especially since they did not offer that olive branch to any Trump associate targeted over FARA violations.
Although the Times attempts to portray Hunter Biden as in good standing, it may be false. The paragraph at the bottom confirms Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop (and that it was actually left at a computer shop) and also notes that email messages on that laptop prove Hunter Biden was trying to avoid FARA.
Sources familiar with this investigation claim that prosecutors looked into emails between Mr. Biden, and Mr. Archer regarding Burisma and foreign business activity. The New York Times was able to obtain the emails using a cache file that appeared to have been taken from Mr. Biden’s laptop at a Delaware repair shop. Persons familiar with this email and other files in the cache confirmed their authenticity.
Some emails showed that Mr. Biden was familiar with FARA and wanted to avoid it being triggered.
The confirmation found on the laptop adds further support to right-leaning media outlets like RedState which have written extensively about it. It was always real, and the White House’s narrative that it was “Russian disinformation” was always false.
There are some real believers.
You can have both an authentic source and a part of a disinformation campaign, however.
— Luke Zaleski (@ZaleskiLuke) March 17, 2022
This is the point where you cannot help but shake your heads. When something is real, it, therefore, can’t be disinformation, and nothing about the reporting on the laptop back during the 2020 election pushed any false claims. The materials were rather exposed as they are and will continue to be.
In a more just society, not only would Hunter Biden be indicted for multiple crimes, but the social media companies and journalist hacks who rushed to do him and his father’s bidding would pay some kind of price. But there won’t be any follow up and they will just pay the price. They’ll just move on to the next bit of obfuscation for political gain. Yet, once more the White House is awash in egg.
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