The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (3) -- Any Remaining Doubt Should Be Investigated!
/On October 6, I put up two posts calling the Bidens, Joe and Hunter, “stone cold crooked.” The basis for the label was a series of factual assertions listed in the first of the posts, none of which had received any meaningful refutation in any source I could find. The short version is that it was essentially conceded by all that Hunter Biden had taken a position as director of a large Ukrainian gas company (Burisma) within days of his dad Vice President Joe getting appointed “point man” for U.S. diplomacy in that country; that Hunter did not have relevant business experience, and yet was paid $50,000 per month for the gig; that Joe had bragged (on a widely available video) of then using the leverage of threatening to withhold $1 billion of U.S. aid to get a prosecutor fired; and that the fired prosecutor had stated publicly that he was investigating Burisma. These are facts from which most reasonable people would easily conclude that something here stinks to high heaven. To reach that conclusion, the readily available facts are plenty of “evidence”; there is no need for any actual individual to step forward and admit that “yes, we paid Hunter to buy influence with his dad.” Of course that’s why they paid Hunter that kind of money.
Since the October 6 posts, facts keep coming out that, as far as I can see, only make the Bidens’ position more and more indefensible. Simultaneously, organs of the progressive press keep doubling down on the narrative that there is “no evidence” of wrongdoing of the Bidens in Ukraine, and any assertion to the contrary is a “conspiracy theory.”
Suppose that you are one of those hard-to-sway skeptics who think that there is not yet enough evidence to demonstrate the crookedness of the Bidens. The funny thing is that there is a place you could go to really nail this down: Ukraine! Shouldn’t somebody be doing that?
Let me list some facts that have at least come to my attention since those prior posts:
It looks like the amounts paid by Burisma to Hunter Biden and his business colleague Devon Archer were not $50,000 per month each, but rather $83,333 per month each. Reuters has that figure in an October 18 piece here, confirming Peter Schweizer’s assertion in this Fox News piece from September. $83,333 per month would come to a nice round $1 million per year.
From the same Reuters piece, the Burisma board met all of two times per year. Reuters says that Hunter “regularly attended” (omitting how many meetings he actually went to), and then concedes that the meetings were held outside of Ukraine, and Hunter never actually went to Ukraine even once.
So what the heck was Hunter doing, if anything, to justify the mil per year? Hunter’s lawyer, a guy named George Mesires, put out a statement on October 13 attempting to answer that question. The answer Mesires gives is, basically, “corporate governance advice.” “Hunter focused his work on the principles of corporate transparency, governance and responsibility . . . .” The statement gives no specifics as to what the advice might have been.
But wait a minute! Isn’t Burisma a private company, without public shareholders, and essentially owned by one guy? (From Wikipedia: “ [Burisma] is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky . . . .”). Since when do private companies owned by one guy have need for any kind of sophisticated or complex “corporate governance” counseling? Completely private companies like this don’t normally have outside directors at all. Why should they? And if for some reason they do need some corporate governance advice, why don’t they get it from an outside lawyer, to whom you can pay a small fraction of $1 million per year even at outrageous big firm lawyer rates? (Sure enough, Burisma got along just fine without outside directors right up until its patron President Yanukovich fled the country and Joe Biden took over the role of “point man” for the U.S.)
Reuters, anticipating my objection, comes up with several supposed reasons why Burisma might possibly have had need of fancy corporate governance advice and sought same from Hunter. All of the reasons are attributed to anonymous “sources” inside or “close to” Burisma. “‘Expansion to other markets was . . . discussed,’ [one source stated]. Another source close to Burisma said Biden assisted with analysis of oil and gas assets the company was considering buying abroad, though a deal didn’t go through. The company was considering possible acquisitions in Europe, Kazakhstan and the United States, the source and another person close to Burisma said. Both sources said that around the time Biden was appointed, Burisma was also looking to secure a financing deal with foreign investment funds, including one in the United States.” Aha! So every single thing that Hunter did as to “corporate governance” related to discussions of prospective deals, all revealed entirely by anonymous company sources, none having identified counterparties, and none of which went anywhere during the entire 5 years that Hunter served as a $1 mil per year director. Should anyone acknowledge that sources inside or “close to” Burisma have a powerful incentive to rationalize the function that Hunter was serving here?
Now, are these anonymous sources and Reuters playing it straight? Or is this just a preposterous cover story to try to justify the indefensible? The obvious facts that Burisma somehow didn’t need “corporate governance” advice before Yanukovich fled Ukraine and Joe Biden got involved for the U.S., and that no transaction calling for or requiring sophisticated corporate governance advice actually happened during the entire time of Hunter’s directorship, should give you a strong clue as to the answer. But for doubters, there is also a way to get definitively to the bottom of this, and that is to investigate. If you were going to do that, here are some obvious places and questions that you would start with:
How does Burisma — a company wholly owned by the former Ukrainian “Ecology Minister” and close associate of the then-President who was in turn a close ally of Vladimir Putin — come to hold a large percentage of the valuable oil and gas leases in that country?
What do the minutes of the Burisma board meetings show as to Hunter Biden? Get them! This should tell you which meetings Hunter attended, what was discussed, and whether he said anything at all, let alone provided sophisticated advice.
What language was used in the Burisma board meetings? Ukrainian? What is the language of the minutes? To the extent he attended, did Hunter even know what was going on?
What is the evidence of Hunter’s work justifying the $1 mil per year? Did he do specific projects for the board? Did he generate reports for the company? Get them!
Was there any sort of real proposed international transaction or investment in Burisma that would have called for the supposed advice that Hunter gave, or is this all a complete charade? Who were the counterparties? How far did the discussions go?
One thing is immediately obvious about each of these issues: all or almost all of the relevant documents and witnesses are in Ukraine. In other words, if you want to take testimony or subpoena documents, you are going to need to go through a Ukrainian prosecutor.
So is anybody in the U.S. government allowed to ask that these obvious pieces of evidence of corruption be investigated? Somehow, it seems that the very act of posing that question is now an impeachable offense. Therefore, are the Bidens entitled to a total pass on this hopelessly corrupt conduct, by virtue of the very fact that Joe is running for President?
Meanwhile, the forces of the progressive media march forward with the narrative that until all details of the Bidens’ corruption have been confirmed, there is therefore “no evidence” of same, and even to mention the subject is to traffic in a “conspiracy theory.” In my October 6 post I quoted from an October 6 New York Times piece: “President Trump ha[s] been hurling unfounded accusations about Mr. Biden, his son Hunter and their dealings in Ukraine.” The accusations are “wild.” “There is no evidence behind Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Biden intervened inappropriately with Ukraine to help his son.” Here are a couple more (among many):
From Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, October 4, headline “The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine”: “For nearly two years, conservative operatives have been trying to weaponize the Ukraine-based story that has led Trump to the brink of impeachment.” The story is “a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s work in Ukraine.”
From USA Today, October 11: “[The town of Vodiane, Ukraine] is ground zero for a central claim – one with no credible evidence – in a scandal that has engulfed the Trump administration in an impeachment inquiry: that former Vice President Joe Biden forced the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor in order to protect his son Hunter Biden, who served on Burisma's board.”
Preposterous.