Hunter Biden-Burisma Scandal Comes Back to Bite Joe Biden By Tyler O’Neil,
A House Republican officially filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on his second day in office. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — infamous for supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory on a blog before running for Congress — launched a Quixotic attempt to impeach Biden over the Hunter Biden-Burisma scandal.
“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the Presidency. His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama’s Vice President is lengthy and disturbing. President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies,” Greene said in a statement on Thursday after filing the articles.
“President Biden is even on tape admitting to a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government threatening to withhold $1,000,000,000 in foreign aid if they did not do his bidding. President Biden residing in the White House is a threat to national security and he must be immediately impeached,” the congresswoman insisted.
Greene’s impeachment effort is unlikely to gain any traction, but it does once again point out the notorious Burisma scandal.
While Biden served as former President Barack Obama’s point-man on Ukraine, his son Hunter took a lucrative job at the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, and the firm’s founder was already under investigation at the time. Joe Biden would later go on to brag about how he threatened to withdraw $1 billion in Ukraine aid to pressure then-Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was overseeing an investigation into Burisma. Biden’s defenders claim that the VP wanted Shokin gone because Shokin was insufficiently effective at rooting out corruption, but the investigation into Burisma was indeed dropped following Shokin’s ouster.
Officials in the Obama State Department worried about the probity of Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma while Joe Biden led the administration’s efforts against corruption in Ukraine.
Greene laid out the case against Biden in six bullet points:
- Joe Biden abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits—including financial compensation—from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.
- The evidence of widespread knowledge, corruption, and collusion on behalf of the Biden family with foreign nationals is clear and compelling.
- As Vice President, Joe Biden was the senior Obama Administration official overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Hence, any illegal activity involving corruption conducted by Hunter Biden within or in relation to Ukraine would fall under the purview of the Office of Vice President Biden and the Obama State Department’s anti-corruption efforts. In fact, many State Department officials within the Obama Administration repeatedly registered reservations about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a corrupt company. Thus, any instances of corruption on behalf of Hunter Biden via his role as a board member of the Ukrainian-operated Burisma energy firm were intentionally not investigated or covered up.
- In 2016, Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had an active and ongoing investigation into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. At the time, Hunter Biden continued to serve on Burisma’s board of directors. According to news reports, then Vice-President Biden “threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss [Shokin].” After that, Ukraine’s Parliament fired Shokin.
- During his father’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden built many business relationships with foreign nationals and received millions of dollars from foreign sources, seemingly in exchange for access to his father. The financial transactions which Hunter engaged in illustrates serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family.
- President Biden gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government. Through blatant nepotism, he enabled his son to influence foreign policy and financially benefit as a result of his role as Vice President. He supported his son engaging in collusion with Chinese Communist party-linked officials. He allowed his son to trade appointments with his father and other high-ranking administration officials in exchange for financial compensation. He permitted his son to take money from Russian oligarchs, including Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
Legacy media outlets repeatedly dismiss such concerns by citing a report from Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which admitted that it was “not clear” how much the Hunter Biden-Burisma connection impacted U.S. policy, but which nonetheless argued that the connection “cast a shadow” over the Obama State Department.
Hunter Biden Sent ‘Best Wishes From the Entire Biden Family’ to Chinese Energy Firm, Asked for $10M
After the election, Hunter Biden let slip that he was under investigation regarding his foreign business deals. A DOJ subpoena specifically mentioned the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, confirming that the investigation deals with Hunter Biden’s overseas deals.
While Greene focused her impeachment effort on Ukraine, potential involvement in Chinese business deals may be the worse scandal for Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden infamously raked in cash from lucrative business deals in China, just as Joe Biden went soft on the Chinese Communist Party’s aggression in the South China Sea. He helped a Chinese military contractor buy an American parts manufacturer. He invested in a company that the CCP eventually used to monitor and conrol the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. He helped China dominate the rare-earth minerals market. These and other deals enriched Hunter Biden arguably at America’s expense.
In 2017, Hunter Biden attempted to start a joint venture with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, which has close ties to the CCP. Tony Bobulinski, a business partner of Hunter’s, was slated to become the CEO of the joint venture, SinoHawk Holdings. Yet the deal fell through. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Bobulinski came forward about his ties to the Bidens, and he publicly stated that Joe Biden was personally involved in his son’s lucrative deals.
Big Tech and the legacy media buried the China scandal in the lead-up to the 2020 election. A post-election poll found that nearly half of Biden voters did not know about it, and many of those voters said that if they had known, they would not have voted for Joe Biden. According to the poll, this story would have led 9.4 percent of Biden voters to abandon the Democrat, flipping all six swing states to Trump.
Immediate impeachment is not the best way for Republicans to pressure Joe Biden on this issue. If anything, this effort will only make Republicans seem as desperate about Biden as Democrats were about Trump.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the last person who should lead an effort to hold Joe Biden’s feet to the fire regarding his son’s lucrative business deals. However, her Quixotic impeachment does raise serious concerns that the Biden administration cannot wish away.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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