Over here at Manhattan Contrarian, I have now had five posts detailing the lay-down case that Joe Biden committed the federal crime of bribery (18 U.S.C Section 201(b)) with respect to the conduct of himself and his son in Ukraine. Those five posts consist of the four-part series “The Bidens: ‘Stone Cold Crooked,’” sequels (2), (3) and (4) to same, plus Sunday’s post “Biden v. Trump: Which One Is The ‘Bribe’?”

Meanwhile, over in what we continue to call the mainstream media, there has developed a mantra that there is “no evidence” that Joe Biden acted to help his son collect a bribe in Ukraine. Just yesterday, Eric Felten over at RealClearInvestigations put together a nice roundup of these ridiculous statements, including:

• CBS News on November 9: “There is no evidence to support that claim.”

• From The Hill: “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind.”

• From Esquire on November 9: [There is] no evidence Joe Biden made any effort to protect his son’s interests as Vice President.”

• From the New York Times, September 22: “[N]o evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor’s dismissal.”

Felten has even more of these if you are interested.

What are we missing here? Actually, it’s what are they missing? What they are missing is a fundamental understanding of how motive or causation are proved in this world. This is something as to which we all have some instinctive understanding; but few ever think it through to articulate how it works. Fortunately, 40 years in the litigation business have given me plenty of time to think about this subject.

Here is the basic principle: A hypothesis as to motive or causation cannot be proved by evidence consistent with the hypothesis. Instead, motive or causation are proved by evidence inconsistent with the alternative hypothesis.

Let’s consider this proposition in a less politically-charged context that everyone instinctively understands. A has killed B. A defends by testifying that it was just an accident, and he had no intent to kill B (thus justifying a much reduced charge). That’s A’s position as to his motive. But should we believe him? The police come up with evidence that A had a grudge against B from work, and that A researched B’s movements on the internet, and that A bought a gun a few days before the event, and so forth. These things are inconsistent with the hypothesis that this was an accident. That’s how motive is proved.

Or consider how causation is proved in science. We all know this from the tests that drugs need to go through to get approved. A new painkiller is proposed for the market; but is it really more effective than a placebo? Hundreds of people take the new painkiller, and in every case, their pain eventually goes away. Does that prove that the drug caused the pain relief? Absolutely not; that’s just evidence consistent with the hypothesis we are trying to prove. What is needed to prove causation is evidence inconsistent with the alternative hypothesis. That comes when the drug goes up against a placebo in a test, and relieves pain at a better rate than the placebo. Effectiveness (causation) has now been established, not by evidence consistent with the hypothesis, but rather by evidence inconsistent with the alternative hypothesis (that a placebo would have been just as effective).

Now let’s apply this to the Biden/Ukraine situation. You will quickly see that the entire question of whether Biden is guilty of bribery comes down to his motive in demanding the firing of a prosecutor and threatening to withhold U.S. aid to get that to occur. That’s because, as discussed in Sunday’s post, the other two of the three elements of federal bribery (18 U.S.C. Section 201(b)) are definitively established as to the Bidens: The “thing of value” received is Hunter’s $3+ million from Burisma; and the “official act” is Joe’s threat to withhold aid leading to the firing of the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. (Please don’t think that the fact that the money went to Hunter rather than Joe is any defense. If you have any doubt, ask Dean Skelos, currently serving a four year term for a federal bribery conviction, where the money went entirely to his son Adam.) So all that’s left is the third element, namely whether the thing of value was “in return for” the official act. In other words, this is the question of motive.

Joe Biden says as to his motive, “I was just legitimately trying to get rid of the corrupt prosecutor; my son’s position had nothing to do with it.” OK, but should we believe him? We’re talking here about what’s going on in Joe’s head. How can we get any information on that other than what he says? The answer is that we must look to see whether there is evidence that is inconsistent with what he is saying and therefore supportive of the hypothesis of corrupt motive.

Unfortunately for Joe, there is indeed evidence that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that he acted for pure motives, and not to help his son. I have identified two pieces of such evidence in prior posts:

1. Biden failed to direct his son to resign from the Burisma board prior to threatening to withhold the aid and demanding the firing of the prosecutor. This was an extremely easy step that Biden could have taken to avoid any questions about his corrupt motive. Unfortunately, this step would have cost his son several million dollars. And thus Hunter remained on the Burisma through the aid withholding/firing process in late 2015/early 2016, and indeed for three more years thereafter. These facts are completely inconsistent with any theory that Biden was free of motivation to help his son.

2. The prosecutor was not fired at the time Biden made the threat to withhold U.S. aid a few hours before departing the country (December 9, 2015), but only over two months later (February 16, 2016), after the prosecutor had suddenly closed in on Burisma by getting a Ukrainian court to order seizure of the property of Burisma’s owner and chairman Mykolo Zlochevsky (February 4), and Biden had made a further call to the Ukrainian president (February 12). These facts cry out that the immediate motivation was to stop the prosecution of Burisma.

On Sunday’s post, commenter James Shuey notes that it would be interesting to get a transcript of Biden’s February 12 call with the Ukrainians. Yes, it would. But if you think about it, for these purposes, it almost doesn’t matter what Biden said. Suppose he demanded the immediate firing of Shokin. Coming right after Shokin’s seizure of Zlochevsky’s property, that would be damning. But suppose Biden doesn’t mention the subject of firing Shokin at all. That would only tell you that, at a time the Ukrainians understood that they must immediately get rid of Shokin for the benefit of Hunter, Biden did nothing to disabuse them of that idea. Damning again. Really the only thing that Biden could have said that would be exculpatory was, “I need you to fire Shokin, but kindly wait a few days until my son has resigned from the Burisma board.” Clearly, he did not say that.

Bottom line: those who say that there is “no evidence” that Biden got Shokin fired to help his son collect millions only show their own ignorance. Ignorance not necessarily of the facts, but of the whole nature of evidence and proof of questions of motivation and causation.