(New York) No one doubts that Hunter Biden exploited his surname to conclude ethically “reprehensible” deals abroad.
No one has yet found the irrefutable proof, the famous “smoking gun”, establishing a link between Joe Biden and the “corruption” of his “worthless” son.
Nonetheless, the leaders of the House of Representatives responsible for the impeachment inquiry targeting the occupant of the White House seem convinced of the following story: in 2016, when he was vice-president, Joe Biden helped his son by facilitating the dismissal of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the energy company Burisma, of which Hunter Biden was a highly paid director.
However, the “truth” contradicts this “narrative”.
“In reality, Mr. Shokin was deeply rooted in Ukraine’s culture of corruption and, far from being a model of transparency, he was seen by many in the West – including some conservative Republican senators – as an obstacle to anti-corruption reforms. In fact, there is no evidence that Mr. Chokine participated in an investigation into Burisma or that Joe Biden’s role in his firing was in any way linked to Burisma. »
The man behind this paragraph, as well as the opinions and other words in quotation marks that precede it, is not a Joe Biden supporter. This is the Republican representative of Colorado, Ken Buck, a die-hard conservative, who expressed himself in this way in the Washington Post SATURDAY.
PHOTO BILL CLARK, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Ken Buck, Republican Representative from Colorado
At least four other of his Republican colleagues had publicly questioned the merits of opening an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did so. announcement last Tuesday. Not to mention the doubts expressed privately by other Republican representatives, including most of the 18 who were elected in 2022 in districts won by Joe Biden.
It is also because of these reluctances that Kevin McCarthy opened the investigation without asking the House to ratify it by a vote, which he had nevertheless promised on 1er last September. Nancy Pelosi’s successor wanted to protect her most vulnerable members by sparing them a vote on the subject.
Save your job
But Kevin McCarthy above all wanted to save his position by giving the green light to an impeachment investigation. At the head of a slim majority, he must deal with an extremist wing of which one of the most rebellious members, Florida representative Matt Gaetz, threatened to bring him down if he did not launch impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden.
By defusing this threat, McCarthy also hoped to give himself greater room to maneuver within his own camp in preparation for final negotiations on government financing. In the absence of an agreement by September 30, the federal state will experience another paralysis, a scenario that is increasingly likely.
PHOTO J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House of Representatives
That said, the Republicans’ march toward the “impeachment” of Joe Biden was irreversible. It began even before the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump were over.
“One day there will be a Democratic president and a Republican house, and I suspect they will remember that,” prophesied the 45e president in December 2019 during proceedings against him for pressuring Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into the Bidens.
Donald Trump finally has the investigation he has been asking for. But the Republicans’ current allegations are no more substantiated, for the moment, than his allegations were at the time.
Certainly, as Kevin McCarthy pointed out last Tuesday during a brief press conference, Joe Biden lied (knowingly or not) when claiming during a 2020 presidential debate that his son had not made money in China.
But did he also lie when he said in 2019 that he “never spoke” to Hunter Biden about his business dealings? Republicans demonstrated that Joe Biden met with his son’s business partners and that his son put him on speakerphone about 20 times while he spoke with associates.
“The illusion of access” to his father
A former business partner of Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, however, testified that these conversations were limited to pleasantries and that Joe Biden had never been involved in his son’s affairs. What Hunter Biden was selling his associates, according to Devon Archer, was “the illusion of access” to his father.
Kevin McCarthy also addressed an allegation that Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky paid a $5 million bribe each to Joe and Hunter Biden to get Ukraine’s attorney general fired. The allegation does not hold water not only for the reasons explained above, but also because Zlotchevsky himself ended up denying it.
“We know that bank records show that nearly $20 million was paid to members of the Biden family and associates through various shell companies,” the Speaker of the House said.
Kevin McCarthy did not specify that Hunter and his uncle James, the members of the Biden family in question, had received only a fraction of the sum mentioned and that the “shell companies” were only companies with limited liability, like Donald Trump has hundreds.
And he did not reveal how these payments were linked to illegal activities.
So far, the Republicans’ case against Joe Biden is reminiscent of this phrase used by Rudolph Giuliani regarding electoral fraud in Arizona: “We have a lot of theories, but we don’t have proof. »
This is not to say that evidence does not exist regarding Joe Biden. Or that Republicans won’t discover information along the way that is damaging to the president and has nothing to do with the original allegations.