A Tale Of Two Politicians: Dean Skelos And Joe Biden

Undoubtedly, you know who Joe Biden is. But maybe you have not heard of Dean Skelos, particularly if you are not from New York. Until May 2015, Skelos was the Republican Majority Leader of the New York State Senate. Yes, the Republicans held the majority in that legislative body, by very narrow margins, for many years, despite this being the bluest of blue states. Skelos more than anyone else was responsible for maintaining that majority. (In 2018 the Democrats re-took the majority of that body.)

Skelos and Biden have several things in common, but there are differences. Here’s something they have in common: both of them have relatives (sons or a brother) who seem to have scored surprising business successes in matters very closely related to their politician father’s or brother’s activities. In the case of Skelos, his son Adam got some consulting work with a storm water run-off consulting firm in Nassau County, and some other work as a salesman for a malpractice insurance company. In the case of Biden, his brother James became Executive Vice President of a home builder called Hill International, shortly before that company got a large contract to build homes in Iraq; his son Hunter got on the board of an investment advisory firm whose partners included Chinese entities, shortly after Joe had made a diplomatic trip to China; and his son Hunter also got on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at a time when his father was the point man for U.S. relations with Ukraine.

But as I said, there are differences. For example, Skelos was indicted for allegedly applying “pressure” to business entities in New York to employ his son. Here is a copy of the indictment. Biden, obviously, has not been indicted, and is currently leading in the polls to become the Democratic candidate for President in 2020.

Here’s another difference: the amounts of money involved as to Skelos’s son are a pittance compared to the amounts of money in which the Bidens deal. On the Skelos side, if you piece together the various amounts of money said in the indictment to have gone improperly to Skelos’s son Adam, the total appears to be between $200,000 and $300,000.

Over on the Biden side, the contract landed by Hill International in 2012 to build homes in Iraq — at a time when Joe Biden was Vice President and point man for U.S. relations with Iraq, and James Biden had recently become Executive Vice President of Hill, despite no previous experience in the home building industry — was $1.5 billion (with a “b”). Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma commencing in 2014 — again. at a time when father Joe was Vice President and point man for U.S. relations with that country — appears to have paid some $50,000 per month, or about $3 million in total. The situation with Hunter’s affairs in China is somewhat murkier. An author named Peter Shweizer has claimed that ten days after flying to China on Air Force Two with his father in 2013, “Hunter Biden’s firm scored a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China.” But the Washington Post reports on September 25 that Hunter Biden’s lawyer has disputed that account, and recently stated, according to the Post, that “Hunter Biden was on the board of the advisory firm that did not directly invest, but instead advised those who did.” The Post provides no details as to how much Hunter was paid for that advisory role.

Here’s a key issue on which I’ll let you decide whether the situations are the same or different: Was political influence being bought by the money transferred to the sons or brother of the politicians? In the Skelos case, Skelos’s version of the events was that his son was out of work, and he was just asking friends and associates (who happened to be campaign contributors and to have business interests impacted by state legislation) if they had any job available that would be appropriate for his son. The indictment paints a very different picture, referring repeatedly to “pressure” applied by Skelos to the potential employers. And then there’s this, from paragraph 22 of the indictment:

CEO believed that if [the Company] terminated ADAM SKELOS’s employment, then the CEO would lose access to DEAN SKELOS, and DEAN SKELOS could take adverse action on legislation important to [the Company].

The funny thing is, although many of the witnesses had been wired by the government in their dealings with Skelos, the indictment never once quotes words of Skelos that allegedly constitute the “pressure,” nor does the indictment state anything specific that Skelos said or did that gave the CEO the “belief” that if he did not continue to employ Adam there would be “adverse action.” Was it just a purely subjective understanding?

Over on the Biden side, we don’t have any indictment to guide us, but only the remarkable coincidence that in whatever country Joe Biden became the point person of U.S. diplomacy, one of his close relatives — at least twice his son Hunter, and once his brother James — showed up to cash in. Were China, Ukraine and Iraq buying useful political influence? Undoubtedly, Biden would deny it. But does anyone doubt that they thought they were? And did they have good reason to think that? For example, somehow during Biden’s running of U.S. diplomacy with China, the issue of China’s rampant theft of U.S. intellectual property stayed nicely in the background. Then there is the instance of Biden getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired just when he was planning an interview of Hunter. Coincidence?

Well, here’s something that is definitely a difference between the Skelos and Biden situations: Biden is the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for President. Skelos just began (in January 2019) serving a four year prison term.

Reporting on the Biden story yesterday, the Washington Post states, “No evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced.” Actually, Washington Post, circumstantial evidence is evidence. All that’s missing is someone to step up and say “I hired his son to get the political influence.”