America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Friday, July 9, 2021
TWO BRIBES SUCKING LAWYERS GAMING IT - JOE BIDEN AND HIS PARTNER IN CRIME, HUNTER - Biden conceals paper trail on Hunter Biden 'art' sales, calls it 'ethics'
The Biden administration has decided to conceal all paper trails to Hunter Biden's suspiciously high-priced "art" sales in an amazing claim to "ethics."
The question is when, not if, Hunter Biden's laptop will bring down Joe Biden's presidency
Thanks to a series of leaks from the hard drive of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop computer, we know there is more than enough evidence to appoint a special counsel, or at least convene a grand jury to investigate bribery, tax fraud, and probably several other categories of crime involving the Biden Crime Family. Three recent articles by highly respected reporters Miranda Devine (who has a book on the subject about to come out and whose work informs the other two writers), Byron York, and Emily Jashinsky present evidence typed in Hunter's own hand of the schemes whereby Hunter acted as the bagman collecting vast wealth from foreign interests by selling access to Joe when he was vice president and a potential candidate for the presidency.
All three accounts are worth reading, though there is considerable overlap. From Devine, here is an example of evidence that already ought to have led to a subpoena for financial records:
Hunter complained that he was forced to give half his salary to his father.
"I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years," Hunter wrote in a 2019 text message to his daughter, Naomi, that was found on his abandoned laptop.
"It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won't make you give me half your salary."
There's no direct evidence of such a wealth transfer on Hunter's laptop.
A mildly curious U.S. attorney ought to be able to get a grand jury to subpoena the financial records of the Biden clan on this basis. Or, in an alternate reality, a special counsel, appointed to reassure the public that their president is not beholden to foreign interests, ought to be digging through these and other financial records, such as (via Devine) that Hunter routinely paid at least some of his father's household expenses, including AT&T bills of around $190 a month.
We know from an e-mail on June 5, 2010, with the subject "JRB bills" to Hunter from Eric Schwerin, his business partner at Rosemont Seneca, that he was expected to foot hefty bills to Wilmington contractors for maintenance and upkeep of his father's palatial lakefront property. Joe's initials are JRB, for Joseph Robinette Biden.
The bills that June included $2,600 to contractor Earle Downing for a "stone retaining wall" at Joe's Wilmington estate, $1,475 to painter Ronald Peacock to paint the "back wall and columns" of the house, and $1,239 to builder Mike Christopher for repairs to the air conditioning at the cottage of Joe's late mother, Jean "Mom-Mom" Biden, which was on his property and which he would later rent to the Secret Service for $2,200 a month.
"This is from last summer I think and needs to be paid pretty soon," wrote Schwerin of Christopher's bill.
Another $475 "for shutters" was owed to RBI construction, of Bear, Del., about 15 minutes west of Wilmington.
Gifts to public officials that are not disclosed can and have led to criminal prosecution of both parties.
As Byron York reminds us:
For years, Joe Biden was known as the poorest man in the U.S. Senate. It was a label he himself welcomed, claiming it showed how ethically clean he was. "I entered as one of the poorest men in Congress, left as one of the poorest men in government, in Congress, and as vice president," Biden said during his presidential campaign in 2019. What Devine has discovered suggests that while Biden bragged about his lack of money — in other words, claiming to be free of the financial corruption common in politics — he was relying on his influence-peddling son to pay some of his bills.
York also mentions the photo Devine obtained of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim with both Bidens at the Vice President's Residence, putting the lie to Biden's claim he had no knowledge of Hunter's business dealings. Hunter gloated over the size of the business deals he expected with Slim and his associates. Recall that it was Slim's cash infusion that saved the New York Times when it was at a financial low point.
Hunter's complaint about his father taking a chunk of his earnings might sound familiar. It's basically exactly what we learned from Tony Bobulinski shortly before the 2020 election, even if the media chose not to treat that information credibly.
Here's more from Devine: "Further evidence that Joe expected to receive a slice of his son's income was provided by Tony Bobulinksi, Hunter's former business partner in a firm called Oneida, which was set up to enter a joint venture with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC. Bobulinski says that Joe was the "big guy" referred to in a 2017 e-mail who was to be allocated 10 percent equity in the firm: "10 [percent] held by H [Hunter] for the big guy."
CEFC is a recurring character in the Biden drama. When the FBI caught Patrick Ho, an executive with CEFC, bribing African officials with cash in Chad and Uganda, he made a call. It was to James Biden, whose brother had just departed the vice presidency and was exploring a bid for the Oval Office. Why on earth would a corrupt Chinese business executive make an emergency call to James Biden?
Well, according to Jim, Ho was actually trying to contact his nephew Hunter. Here's how the New York Times reported on the exchange back in 2018: "In a brief interview, James Biden said he had been surprised by Mr. Ho's call. He said he believed it had been meant for Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son. James Biden said he had passed on his nephew's contact information."
"There is nothing else I have to say," James Biden told the Times. "I don't want to be dragged into this anymore."
Part of the point of paying Hunter Biden money to oversee business dealings outside his areas of expertise is so that you can make a call just like the one Ho made back in 2017.
So the new emails make it pretty clear that Hunter Biden's corrupt foreign influence peddling benefitted the current president of the United States[.]
It is far from clear how many copies of Hunter's hard drive are in the hands of others, and far from clear who is orchestrating the leaks. But what is absolutely clear is that Biden's presidency could be brought to its knees, possibly even ended, if the media gatekeepers at the New York Times and Washington Post decided to give the story enthusiastic coverage, bringing the rest of the agitprop along with them. They could agitate for the appointment of a special counsel, as was done with President Trump over the nonsense Russiagate fake scandal.
Or a U.S. attorney who convened a grand jury could issue subpoenas and eventually obtain indictments, setting the stage for impeachment.
We understand why none of this is happening — yet. Biden is serving his purpose, appointing officials and signing executive orders that advance the progressives' agenda. But the drip, drip, drip continues and accumulates.
Glenn Reynolds, AKA the Instapundit, offers a fascinating theory:
Hunter's laptop is being held for when they decide to get rid of Joe. The leaks are just to remind everyone it's out there. Well, everyone except for Joe. He won't remember for long anyway.
This makes perfect sense because Joe Biden already is damaged goods, his accelerating mental decline self-evident to all who do not wear ideological blinders. What is most intriguing is the calculus behind "when they decide to get rid of Joe." I strongly suspect that Kamala Harris is now recognized to be such a disaster, unelectable if she inherits the presidency after Joe resigns, is impeached, or leaves under the terms of the 25th Amendment, that she must be Agnewed before Joe leaves. Clayton Spann yesterday explored some of the types of maneuvers that might be executed to accomplish this, but there are many other approaches one could imagine.
Kamala Harris, for all her purported friction with Dr. Jill Biden, is Joe's insurance policy. If and when she leaves the vice presidency and is replaced by someone who could be elected in 2024, Joe's and Jill's days in the Oval Office are numbered.
All of this is uncomfortably banana republic territory: powerful, unseen forces pulling strings and deciding the fate of the nation's leadership by manipulating corrupt media and officialdom. That's where we are today.
They think we're stupid: Biden conceals paper trail on Hunter Biden 'art' sales, calls it 'ethics'
The Biden administration has decided to conceal all paper trails to Hunter Biden's suspiciously high-priced "art" sales in an amazing claim to "ethics."
White House officials have helped craft an agreement under which purchases of Hunter Biden’s artwork — which could be listed at prices as high as $500,000 — will be kept confidential from even the artist himself, in an attempt to avoid ethical issues that could arise as a presidential family member tries to sell a product with a highly subjective value.
Under an arrangement negotiated in recent months, a New York gallery owner is planning to set prices for the art and will withhold all records, including potential bidders and final buyers. The owner, Georges Bergès, has also agreed to reject any offer that he deems suspicious or that comes in over the asking price, according to people familiar with the agreement
Memo to the Post: That's "artist" not artist. Unless, of course, you'd like to modify it as "con" artist.
The whole thing is an amazingly bad load effort to fool the public into thinking that Hunter Biden's sudden interest in art is not a sophisticated money-laundering operation premised on the lack of transparency that exists in the world of art sales. Bad guys the world over are known to launder their ill-gotten cash through purchases of art, and then resell the art, making a clean paper trail for their nefarious doings and pocketing the cash. To say that political bribes, from gamey foreign actors, organized crime, or Washington lobbyists, can't be done through the same medium is nonsense.
The New York Post, in a pointed editorial, points out the problem with this "ethical" approach:
Yet the White House is pretending it can all be kept clean by having the dealer keep the buyers anonymous along with guarantees to reject any suspicious offers above the asking price.
But Hunter says he expects to pull up to half a million bucks apiece, which makes the asking price plenty suspicious. Even art aficionado Alex Acevedo, who says he’s “floored” by Biden’s self-taught skill, sees the proper price for this level of work as $25,000 to $100,000. But the most likely buyers won’t be paying for the art.
And nothing can stop the buyers from quietly letting their purchase be known — just display it at a DC cocktail party.
That's not the only way a lobbyist can make his purchase known. How many photos out there of Hunter and Joe and some skeezy foreign player meeting in official and unofficial settings. All a lobbyist has to do is tell Joe and Hunter that he bought the work so he can get the political favor he wants. Only the public will be kept in the dark with these new "ethics" rules.
Those who profit, are going to know. Yet the Biden administration thinks the public is going to buy this nonsense is, convinced that the public is stupid.
Biden Junior, recall, turned up as an "artist" about a year ago, claiming he had this great vocation to create art after a career of political wheeling-dealing. He claimed he was entirely self-taught, with zero art education, zero art skills, conveniently doing abstract rather than representational painting which is a good way to conceal a lack of talent and discipline. Yet somehow he would have us think his paintings are worth half a million bucks straight out the gate, literally "masterpieces," and he's this art sensation, despite the fact that other, more skilled, talented, and educated artists typically take in about $1,000 to $2,000 for their first paintings. The Daily Wire quotes art experts as saying he does hotel-wall level art at best.
All of this followed a previous career as a bagman for his powerful politician dad, (known as "the big guy," in his emails found on his abandoned laptop computer, one who'd take a 10% or perhaps 50% cut, depending on the email.) During the Obama/Biden administration, young Hunter the art prodigy followed his dad around on his travels wherever he went, effectively with his black bag extended, collecting millions of dollars from gamy suspect foreign entities from places like Ukraine, Romania, and China just by amazing coincidence. It was all his business prowess, you see, that he raked in so much cash, the Bidenites claimed.
Yet with all this supposed business talent, on top of all this artistic talent, when Joe was out of power, Hunter descended into the world of junkies as a crack-addicted loser wastrel son of a powerful pol out of power. As recently as three years ago, Hunter used his ill-gotten cash to make Chateau Marmont, a ritzy movie-star hotel, as his flophouse with "an ant trail" of drug dealers and sleazy hangers-on marching in and out, until he got thrown out for kicking out walls and stinking up the joint. Apparently, he got thrown out of a lot of them, as I wrote here.
Now we're supposed to believe he's this art prodigy who comes along only once in a century, with painting sold for $500,000 a pop.
But it's all ethical, you see, with the public now to be kept in the dark on the art-sales records, and Hunter shielded from the long arm of the law in some future administration by the fact that he "didn't know" who bought his paintings. Even the fact that the art dealer, a man with significant Chinese connections, is setting a ceiling on the price, rather than a floor, as normal art sales do, as part of this "ethics" deal is suspect. That whole detail suggests that art prodigy Hunter is putting out a price list of what to get in exchange for particular political favors. Don't be surprised if it is.
All this, as White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki declares the Biden administration the "most ethical" in history.
They've pegged the public for stupid on this and seem to be sure the money will keep rolling in and out.
REMEMBER THAT THESE TWO LAWYERS HAVE SPENT THEIR LIVES GAMING THE LAWS AND ANY NOTION OF ETHICS. THIS IS JUST BIDEN BULLSHIT
The Biden White House is attempting to address the ethical questions swirling around Hunter Biden’s newfound art venture, as officials reportedly craft an agreement ensuring that the buyers of the scandal-plagued son’s art, which is expected to sell for up to half a million dollars, will remain anonymous, even to Hunter himself.
White House Struggles With Hunter Biden Art Sales Ethics, Proposes Anonymous Buyers
The Biden White House is attempting to address the ethical questions swirling around Hunter Biden’s newfound art venture, as officials reportedly craft an agreement ensuring that the buyers of the scandal-plagued son’s art, which is expected to sell for up to half a million dollars, will remain anonymous, even to Hunter himself.
Hunter Biden is working with Soho art dealer Georges Bergès, who is expected to hold an exhibition in New York this fall and sell Hunter’s paintings anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000. The general lack of transparency, which is already a well-known reality in the art world, has triggered concerns, particularly for the Biden family, which has been accused of using the family name as leverage and engaging in pay-for-play schemes over the years.
In order to avoid these mounting ethical questions, the Biden White House is comprising an arrangement that would leave all buyers of Hunter’s art anonymous — even to the artist himself. According to the Washington Post, the plan will see Bergès determining the price points for the artwork and withholding “all records, including potential bidders and final buyers.”
“The owner, Georges Bergès, has also agreed to reject any offer that he deems suspicious or that comes in over the asking price, according to people familiar with the agreement,” the Post reported.
“This is an absurd solution,” Breitbart News senior contributor and Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer told Breitbart News.
“The only way to address these issues is with greater transparency–not less,” he continued. “Their proposed solution is greater secrecy, not transparency. And they are essentially saying ‘Trust Us.’ Joe and Hunter Biden’s track record on such matters gives us no reason to trust them.”
Former ethics officials for both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also appear to be cautioning the arrangement as a bad idea.
“The whole thing is a really bad idea,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer to Bush, said. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.”
As the Post noted, “some experts argued that the best protection against influence-seeking would be transparency, not secrecy.”
Walter Shaub, who served as the Office of Government Ethics director under former President Obama, previously said the art venture has a “shameful and grifty feeling to it” and hinted the White House’s plan is not sufficient.
“Because we don’t know who is paying for this art and we don’t know for sure that [Hunter Biden] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House,” Shaub, according to the Post. “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.”
New York gallery owner Marc Straus appeared to balk at the price points set for Hunter’s work, concluding that “nobody would ever start at these prices” for a novice, such as Hunter.
“There has to be a résumé that reasonably supports when you get that high,” Straus said. “To me, it’s pure ‘how good is it and what’s this artist’s potential, what’s the résumé?’ On that basis, it would be an entirely different price. But you give it a name like Hunter Biden, maybe they’ll get the price.”
“My take was [the paintings] weren’t bad at all,” he added, according to the Post. “But there’s a yawning gap between not bad and something fabulous.”
However, the White House has exuded nothing but confidence in this suspected arrangement.
“The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example,” deputy White House press secretary Anthony Bates said.
Bergès, who has some ties to China, did not directly comment on the arrangement, but a woman speaking to the Post on his behalf dismissed it as “nothing unusual.”
Notably, the art dealer’s website does not mention Hunter’s connection to the president, describing him as a “lawyer by trade who now devotes his life to the creative arts.”
But pay-for-play concerns still linger.
“Anybody who buys it would be guaranteed instant profit,” Alex Acevedo, owner of the Alexander Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, told the New York Post. “He’s the president’s son. Everybody would want a piece of that. The provenance is impeccable.”
If not for the Biden family name, Acevedo estimated Hunter’s art would range lower, from $25,000 to $100,000.
Shaub told Fox News last month that Bergès “should disclose the identity of the purchasers” to alleviate concerns of buyers attempting to “gain access to [the] government.” This is not a foreign concern for the Biden family, as Hunter engaged in several controversial international business dealings as his father served as vice president, triggering myriad ethics concerns. Hunter’s work on the Ukrainian oligarch-owned energy company Burisma, where he made tens-of-thousands of dollars per month despite a stunning lack of experience in the energy sector, stands as one of the primary examples of alleged “Biden Five” family corruption, as Breitbart News reported:
One of the most well-known examples of this centers around Hunter’s involvement on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oligarch-owned oil and gas company, which paid him tens of thousands of dollars per month despite his lack of experience in the energy sector or Ukraine in general. At the time, Hunter’s then-vice president father was the point-person negotiating U.S. policy with Ukraine. After leaving office, Joe Biden later bragged about how he threatened to withhold U.S. assistance to Ukraine unless Ukrainian officials fired a prosecutor who had launched a corruption investigation into the company that had hired Hunter.
Hunter also came under criticism for his lucrative business dealings with state-owned entities in China, as Breitbart News senior contributor and Secret Empires author Peter Schweizer has reported in detail.
“In China, [Hunter] travels with his father in December [2013] aboard Air Force Two. While his father is meeting with Chinese officials, Hunter Biden is doing we don’t know what. But the evidence becomes clear because ten days after they return to Washington, his small boutique investment firm, Rosemont Seneca, gets a $1 billion deal,” the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) president explained during a 2019 appearance with Sean Hannity.
That aside, money laundering has already been identified as an issue in the art world, as detailed by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report last year.
“Secrecy, anonymity, and a lack of regulation create an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions,” the committee determined.
“Given the intrinsic secrecy of the art industry, it is clear that change is needed in this multi-billion dollar industry,” it added.
Speaking to Artnet in June, Hunter explained that painting is “much more about kind of trying to bring forth what is, I think, the universal truth.”
When asked what his father, President Biden, thought of his art, Hunter told the outlet, “My dad loves everything that I do, and so I’ll leave it at that.”
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