{"id":271571,"date":"2023-07-28T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T06:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=271571"},"modified":"2023-07-29T05:47:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T05:47:04","slug":"biden-family-scandals-are-so-much-bigger-than-hunters-hookers-and-burisma-bribery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=271571","title":{"rendered":"Biden Family Scandals Are So Much Bigger Than Hunter\u2019s Hookers And Burisma Bribery"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Margot Cleveland \u2013 The Federalist July 26, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>When the New York Post broke the news that documents recovered from Hunter Biden\u2019s abandoned laptop implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, the corporate media \u2014 to the extent they didn\u2019t frame the story as Russian disinformation \u2014 pretended the reporting solely concerned Hunter Biden\u2019s personal life.<\/p>\n<p>The scandal, however, was never about Hunter\u2019s sordid sex life and history of drug abuse. Rather, it concerned Joe Biden\u2019s abuse of power as vice president for financial gain. But now it reaches much further \u2014 including 10 distinct scandals.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Saturated in Scandal<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3>1. <strong>The Many (Uncharged) Crimes of Hunter Biden<\/strong><\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_215550\" style=\"width: 267px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Hunter-Biden5.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-215550\" class=\"wp-image-215550\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Hunter-Biden5.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"257\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Hunter-Biden5.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Hunter-Biden5-214x300.jpeg 214w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 257px) 100vw, 257px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-215550\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hunter Biden pictured with a Chinese hooker, part of a series of compromising photos of Hunter Biden set up by Chinese intelligence. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p>While the current scandals swirling around the laptop are unrelated to Hunter Biden\u2019s sex life or drug abuse, the president\u2019s son features in the first scandal: Evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed numerous crimes, including felonies.<\/p>\n<p>Evidence suggests Hunter Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/07\/23\/hunter-biden-almost-certainly-broke-foreign-lobbying-laws-experts\/\">acted<\/a> as an unregistered foreign agent for, at a minimum, Ukraine and China in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The confidential human source\u2019s (CHS) reporting suggests Hunter also accepted bribes from Burisma or alternatively helped <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/06\/15\/the-bidens-coerced-burisma-to-pay-10-million-in-bribes-says-credible-fbi-source\/\">extort<\/a> $10 million from the Ukrainian oil and gas company for himself and his father.<\/p>\n<p>IRS whistleblowers and federal prosecutors also believed the evidence supported multiple felony tax counts. Lying on a federal firearm application is a serious felony as well.<\/p>\n<p>The evidence that the president\u2019s son likely engaged in extensive criminal conduct for over a decade is a huge scandal, but it also bred a separate scandal: the DOJ and FBI\u2019s efforts to protect him, No. 7 below.<\/p>\n<h3>2. <strong>Joe Biden\u2019s Business Lie<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop also exposed the reality that Joe Biden lied to the American public, dating back to September 2019. During a campaign stop, the then-Democrat presidential candidate snapped at Fox News\u2019 Peter Doocy, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thehill\/status\/1175486006348460032\">claiming<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Joe Biden: &quot;I&#39;ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Here&#39;s what I know &#8212; I know Trump deserves to be investigated&#8230;  You should be looking at Trump. Trump&#39;s doing this because he knows I&#39;ll beat him like a drum.&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yrMdiaBli8\">https:\/\/t.co\/yrMdiaBli8<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yGhipRo1ew\">pic.twitter.com\/yGhipRo1ew<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; The Hill (@thehill) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thehill\/status\/1175486006348460032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 21, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>More than two years later, after The Washington Post and New York Times belatedly confirmed the authenticity of the emails recovered from Hunter Biden\u2019s abandoned laptop, Doocy asked then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether \u201cPresident Biden still <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/04\/05\/joe-biden-claims-he-and-son-hunter-biden-never-talked-foreign-business\/\">maintains<\/a> he never discussed overseas business deals with his son Hunter,\u201d to which Psaki replied, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Biden and his team stuck with that lie for two-plus years, his current press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is attempting to snuff out that scandal by reframing Biden\u2019s denial. \u201cI\u2019ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same: The president was never in business with his son,\u201d Jean-Pierre said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Moving the goalposts won\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2023\/07\/24\/kjp_response_to_hunter_questions_the_answer_remains_the_same_the_president_was_never_in_business_with_his_son.html\">erase<\/a> the lie.<\/p>\n<h3>3. <strong>Joe Biden\u2019s Corruption<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The much more serious scandal, however, concerns extensive evidence of Joe Biden\u2019s widespread corruption. Bank and corporate records, suspicious activity reports, emails and text messages recovered from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, travel records, reporting from a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/06\/05\/highly-credible-source-reveals-scandal-bigger-than-biden-bribery-fbi-election-interference\/\">highly credible<\/a>\u201d CHS, and testimony and expected testimony from Hunter Biden\u2019s business partners indicate that Joe Biden, while vice president, exchanged political favors for payments to his family members \u2014 with a cut of the cash coming to the \u201cBig Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>People and\/or organizations from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and China, among others, all paid Biden-related business entities millions of dollars, with evidence indicating the now-president received a cut of the bribes. The evidence indicates that in exchange, the individuals received access to the then-vice president. In the case of Ukraine, Biden forced the firing of the prosecutor general who was investigating Burisma, the company where Hunter held a board seat and which allegedly paid Joe and Hunter Biden each $5 million in bribes.<\/p>\n<p>The evidence of Joe Biden\u2019s corruption is bad enough, but the scandal deepens when one considers the president has supplied Ukraine with cluster bombs and billions in American tax dollars.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Cover-Ups<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>While the first three scandals involve misconduct and likely criminality by Hunter and Joe Biden, there are at least twice as many distinct scandals that flow from cover-up efforts to protect the Bidens.<\/p>\n<h3>4. <strong>FBI\u2019s Interference in the 2020 Election<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>By December 2019, the FBI had authenticated the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. Yet, knowing the laptop was real and contained spectacularly damaging details implicating Joe Biden in corruption, the FBI spent the months leading up to the November 2020 election grooming tech giants to believe a \u201chack-and-leak operation\u201d was imminent. The FBI also pushed social media companies to change their terms of service to prohibit the posting of so-called hacked materials.<\/p>\n<p>These combined efforts prompted social media companies to censor the New York Post\u2019s Oct. 14, 2020 blockbuster\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad\/\">article<\/a>, \u201cSmoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad.\u201d After the story broke and after initially confirming its authenticity to Twitter, the FBI refused to comment on whether the material had been hacked or was Russian disinformation, leading to its continued widespread censorship.<\/p>\n<p>Not only did the FBI improperly protect Joe Biden and prompt the censorship of true political speech, it <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/12\/13\/twitter-files-overshadow-the-bigger-scandal-fbi-lied-to-tech-giants-to-interfere-in-election\/\">interfered<\/a> in the 2020 election and likely handed Biden the White House.<\/p>\n<h3>5. <strong>Intelligence Agencies\u2019 Interference in the 2020 Election<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/05\/11\/feds-started-a-dangerous-game-with-hunter-bidens-laptop-but-gop-lawmakers-can-finish-it\/\">Former<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/05\/09\/cia-solicited-signatures-for-hunter-biden-laptop-letter-congressional-testimony-shows\/\">current<\/a> members of intelligence agencies soon joined the FBI in interfering in the 2020 election. The House Intelligence and Weaponization Committees previously detailed evidence of that interference in their <a href=\"https:\/\/judiciary.house.gov\/sites\/evo-subsites\/republicans-judiciary.house.gov\/files\/evo-media-document\/2023-05-10_the_hunter_biden_statement_how_senior_intelligence_community_officials_and_the_biden_campaign_worked_to_mislead_american_voters-s%20\">report<\/a> titled, \u201cHow Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That report established that the infamous October 2020 letter, which was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and falsely framed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, was concocted by Biden-campaign officials, including now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign. Then-candidate Joe Biden would cite that letter in his final debate with Donald Trump to lie to the American people (again), telling the country the laptop was Russian disinformation.<\/p>\n<p>It is scandalous that scores of former intelligence officials would use their prior positions and reputations to deceive Americans in a way that likely affected the 2020 election. That any of those individuals retained security clearances adds to the scandal, as does the role of the Biden campaign and the involvement of at least one CIA employee in soliciting signatories for the statement.<\/p>\n<h3>6. <strong>Intel Agencies\u2019 Failure to Protect America Against Foreign Influence<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Not only did intelligence agencies interfere in the 2020 election, but in their efforts to protect Joe Biden, they likely also failed to provide necessary defensive briefings, putting Americans at risk.<\/p>\n<p>To protect our country, intelligence officials must have frank discussions with leaders (and candidates) about the risks of foreign malign influence. Given how hard the FBI and intelligence agencies tried to bury the news of the laptop, it seems likely they omitted any reference to the laptop and details contained on it in briefings to then-President Trump, then-candidate Biden, and the Biden campaign.<\/p>\n<p>To date, this scandal has been overlooked and merits further inquiry to determine whether the intelligence apparatus fulfilled its duty to the country or omitted inconvenient facts in briefings to protect Joe Biden. Of particular concern is whether intelligence agencies assessed and warned about the risk that the Russians had <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/08\/18\/exclusive-fbi-knew-of-hunter-bidens-missing-laptop-as-early-as-december-2019\/\">stolen<\/a> a second Hunter Biden laptop that contain materials the Biden son believed rendered him susceptible to blackmail.<\/p>\n<h3>7. <strong>DOJ and FBI\u2019s Handling of Biden Investigation<\/strong>s<\/h3>\n<p>When it comes to how the DOJ and FBI handled investigations into Biden family corruption, the evidence of potential misconduct is overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>Broadly, this scandal includes conflicts of interest between Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys \u2014 including the Pennsylvania U.S. attorney handling an investigation into the Jim Biden-connected company <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/03\/22\/biden-nominated-a-lawyer-for-pennsylvania-u-s-attorney-who-has-a-big-conflict-of-interest\/\">Americorp<\/a>, and the California and D.C. U.S. attorneys who reportedly refused to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden. Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland\u2019s conflict of interest proves scandalous given the numerous efforts by the DOJ and FBI headquarters to interfere in the investigations.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond conflicts of interest, the IRS whistleblowers and another whistleblower who\u2019s provided information to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have revealed numerous instances of DOJ and FBI procedural violations, the burying of evidence such as the FD-1023, the false labeling of derogatory evidence as disinformation, and limits on the investigative steps agents could take. Consequently, the DOJ charged Hunter Biden only with misdemeanors and one firearm felony that could be dropped, and to date it appears no investigation has occurred into Joe Biden or his brother, Jim Biden, on allegations of bribery and money laundering.<\/p>\n<p>While Democrats counter the growing evidence of corruption by <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/07\/25\/here-are-all-the-people-who-have-corroborated-biden-family-corruption\/\">wrongly claiming it has not been corroborated<\/a>, that fact does not vindicate the Bidens: It implicates the DOJ and FBI in a separate scandal.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Cover-Ups of the Cover-Ups<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3>8. <strong>DOJ and FBI\u2019s Cover-Up of Failure to Investigate Bidens<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Once whistleblowers began exposing the Biden administration\u2019s interference in the family\u2019s pay-to-play investigation, the DOJ and FBI began to cover-up the cover-up. We saw this most clearly when Garland professed that there was no political interference in U.S. Attorney David Weiss\u2019s investigation into Hunter Biden. Garland stressed that, as a Trump holdover, Americans could trust Weiss\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n<p>Garland\u2019s testimony cannot be squared with the extensive interference coming from FBI headquarters and the limitations the DOJ placed on investigative techniques. When Grassley pushed on the point, Garland maintained that Weiss had ultimate charging authority. According to an IRS whistleblower, however, Weiss said otherwise, claiming he wasn\u2019t the ultimate decision-maker.<\/p>\n<p>Here, the cover-up of the cover-up began in earnest, with Garland and Weiss writing a series of letters and making public statements that attempted to obscure the ultimate question of whether Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden and whether DOJ or FBI headquarters interfered in the investigation. This scandal has yet to be unraveled.\u00a0But on Monday, the DOJ sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/07\/25\/doj-prepares-to-throw-david-weiss-under-the-bus\/\">offering up Weiss to testify<\/a> \u2014 indicating Biden\u2019s Justice Department might be preparing to throw Weiss under the bus.<\/p>\n<h3>9. <strong>Democrats Lying to Protect Joe Biden\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Many Democrats are also wrapped up in lying to protect Joe Biden. Some of these lies predate the election when they spun the laptop as Russian disinformation. But more recently, we saw Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin lying to the American public about the FD-1023 form. Had former Attorney General William Barr not gone on the record to correct Raskin\u2019s falsehood, the public would have been none the wiser.<\/p>\n<p>Seeking to protect Joe Biden from damning bribery claims, Raskin falsely claimed that Trump appointees Barr and U.S. Attorney Scott Brady had reviewed the CHS\u2019s reporting contained in a June 2020 FD-1023 form and closed out the investigation. Raskin also portrayed the CHS\u2019s reporting as connected to Rudy Giuliani.<\/p>\n<p>But as The Federalist first reported, Barr unequivocally said that Raskin\u2019s claim was \u201cnot true.\u201d The investigation into the FD-1023 \u201cwasn\u2019t closed down.\u201d \u201cOn the contrary,\u201d Barr <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/06\/07\/exclusive-bill-barr-confirms-rep-jamie-raskin-lied-about-biden-family-corruption-investigation\/\">stressed<\/a>, \u201cit was sent to Delaware for further investigation.\u201d Likewise, Barr explained the CHS\u2019s reporting was unrelated to Giuliani.<\/p>\n<h3>10. <strong>Press Acting as Biden-Run Media<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>When the Post broke the laptop story, the legacy media either silenced it or framed it as Russian disinformation. Even two years later, after belatedly authenticating the material recovered from Hunter Biden\u2019s computer, the corporate media refused to cover the implications \u2014 that the emails, documents, and texts indicated Joe Biden was involved in a massive corruption scandal. The corrupt press still refuses to cover the news fairly, opting instead to brand the evidence as a conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n<p>The media\u2019s refusal to seek and report the truth proves the most dire of all the scandals because without a free press checking government corruption, the corruption will only grow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/07\/26\/biden-family-scandals-are-so-much-bigger-than-hunters-hookers-and-burisma-bribery\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The scandal was never about Hunter\u2019s sordid sex life and drug abuse. It was about Joe Biden\u2019s abuse of power \u2014 and all those covering it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=271571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271573,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271571\/revisions\/271573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=271571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=271571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=271571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}