After posting the first installment of this series last night, I had a few more inspirations that I thought deserved an additional post.

I’ll start with this Washington Post defense of Biden’s conduct with respect to Ukraine, that appeared September 27. It’s an unsigned editorial, headline “The Ukraine facts are clear. But does truth still matter?” As to the Bidens and Ukraine, here is the key quote:

Mr. Trump has thrown up a smokescreen of denials, insults — and blatant lies. Over and over, he and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, have repeated the easily disproved claim that Mr. Biden sought to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son. Senior Ukrainian officials, including one of Mr. Giuliani’s own sources, have publicly stated that the story is false; multiple media investigations have definitively debunked it.

Recall that the issue we are examining here is whether Joe Biden had the corrupt motive of benefiting his son Hunter when he used the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees to force the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The Post says that the allegation of Biden’s corruption is “easily disproved” because “senior Ukrainian officials” (unnamed) have “publicly stated that the story is false.”

And what is it that these “senior Ukrainian officials” have stated is false? Certainly not that Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing by the threat to withhold U.S. aid; and certainly not that Hunter Biden got the $600,000/yr directorship at Burisma within 30 days after Joe Biden became the “point person” for U.S. policy to that country; and certainly not that after Shokin was fired the investigation of Burisma was disrupted and Hunter Biden continued to receive his director fees there for several more years.

So what about the accusations is supposedly “false.” It’s that, even though the firing of Shokin may incidentally have benefitted Hunter, Joe’s motives were pure! Shokin was a bad prosecutor, maybe even corrupt himself. Joe was right to want him fired. Therefore he was just doing the right thing. Accusations debunked!

Here’s the problem: No number of “senior Ukrainian officials” has any better ability to peer into Joe Biden’s brain to discern his true motives than you have. Indeed, such Ukrainian officials are highly likely to have their own prejudices in this matter, maybe even to have been under investigation themselves by Mr. Shokin. The Washington Post is suggesting that you absolutely must take these officials’ word in this matter, despite powerful objective evidence to the contrary. Why should you?

And there is a very good reason why you should not take their word. Assume that, while Hunter was on the Burisma board and Shokin was investigating Burisma, definitive information came to Joe Biden indicating that Shokin was a corrupt prosecutor and needed to be removed for the good of Ukraine. Assume that the entire State Department and the entire European Union were united in the view that Shokin was corrupt and needed to be removed.

In that case, there’s a right way to do this. First, Joe Biden needs to tell Hunter that he must resign from the Burisma board today if not sooner; and Hunter must in fact resign. Second, Joe Biden needs to get the next highest ranking available official of the U.S. government (in this case, perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry; but if Kerry was conflicted by his own step-son’s involvement with Burisma, then somebody else — maybe Secretary of Defense) to do the dirty work of telling the Ukrainians that they’re not getting their aid until Shokin is fired.

If Joe Biden had followed this protocol, he would mostly have obviated any allegation of corruption, at least relating to the Shokin firing. (There could still be a question of what else Hunter was getting the $600K/yr for.) But Biden didn’t do this. As a result, Hunter got about $2 million more than he would have gotten if Joe had followed these obvious steps.

Once you realize that there was a simple set of steps for Joe Biden to follow to accomplish the same goal of getting Shokin fired and also avoid accusations of corruption, but he chose not to do so and thereby got his son an extra couple of million bucks, then you understand that the Washington Post is just blowing smoke. Their question “Does truth still matter?” needs to be turned right back around on them.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t think Joe Biden is going to last much longer in this presidential contest. Next up: Elizabeth Warren. Warren says that her claiming of “Native American” racial status had nothing to do with her getting hired by Harvard Law School. Honest or corrupt? It’s another question of motivation! What objective facts can we look to to infer what the motives — Warren’s and those of the people at Harvard who hired her — might be? It appears that all of Warren’s Harvard Law faculty colleagues — every single one of whom will vote for her over Trump if those are the choices — assert that the claim of Native American status had nothing to do with her getting hired at Harvard. Just like with those “Ukrainian officials” and Biden! Do you credit these people with some special insights into Warren’s brain?

But then there’s the objective fact that Harvard hires its faculty almost exclusively from the top handful of law schools. Go to its page on faculty biographies and you will see how true this is. In fact, the majority have at least one degree from either Harvard or Yale or both. Of all the faculty at Harvard Law, the one with the degree from the lowest-ranked law school is none other than Warren. (Her law degree is from Rutgers-Newark.) But the idea that Harvard’s main reason for hiring her may have been her claim of Native American race — that’s been “debunked.”