The New Neo

I’ve been doing some research on the history of Hunter Biden, and one of the things that has struck me is that for many years Joe Biden has dealt with questions about Hunter’s work by saying he and Hunter never talked about it – as if that was a course of action that protected against corruption.

I would encounter variations of this theme over and over in articles and interviews. See this, for example, from September of 2019, when the Democrats were gearing up to impeach Trump [emphasis mine]:

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said. “Here’s what I know. Trump should be investigated.”…

Hunter Biden, however, told the New Yorker in an interview for an article published in July that he discussed Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas producer, with his father in December 2015. At the time, Hunter Biden sat on Burisma‘s board of directors.

Around the time of the conversation, Biden was preparing for a trip to the Ukraine and the Obama administration special envoy had raised the issue with the Vice President, according to the article. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker he and his father spoke about Burisma just once.

“‘Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,” and I said, ‘I do,’ ” the younger Biden is quoted as saying in the article.

For a moment, and for the sake of argument, let’s forget the Hunter laptop and the emails. Let’s forget the evidence of corruption on Hunter’s part and the suggestions in the emails that Joe was on the take as well. Let’s just look at what’s being said there, which is that Joe Biden was heavily involved on behalf of the Obama administration in Ukrainian policy, and his son was on the board of a large Ukrainian energy company. Even the Obama administration (if you can believe the New Yorker) recognized the possible impropriety or at least the strong appearance of impropriety.

And yet, when Joe finally came round to talking to Hunter, all he said was (according to Hunter, that is), “I hope you know what you’re doing,” and Hunter said, “I do.”

Chew on that for a moment. What it’s saying is that, in a very sketchy and suspect situation rife with opportunities for conflicts of interest and corruption or the appearance thereof, Biden père decides to trust Biden fils. And the MSM seems to have no trouble with that scenario.

Let’s go to that New Yorker article on Hunter. Maybe this is just ex post facto ass-covering, but it seems that a number of people connected with Obama thought Hunter’s role wasn’t a good idea. And it also seems that the “Obama administration special envoy” who “raised the issue” with Biden – as quoted above – was actually the special envoy for energy. Here’s a fuller quote from the magazine:

Several former officials in the Obama Administration and at the State Department insisted that Hunter’s role at Burisma had no effect on his father’s policies in Ukraine, but said that, nevertheless, Hunter should not have taken the board seat. As the former senior White House aide put it, there was a perception that “Hunter was on the loose, potentially undermining his father’s message.” The same aide said that Hunter should have recognized that at least some of his foreign business partners were motivated to work with him because they wanted “to be able to say that they are affiliated with Biden.” A former business associate said, “The appearance of a conflict of interest is good enough, at this level of politics, to keep you from doing things like that.”

In December, 2015, as Joe Biden prepared to return to Ukraine, his aides braced for renewed scrutiny of Hunter’s relationship with Burisma. Amos Hochstein, the Obama Administration’s special envoy for energy policy, raised the matter with Biden, but did not go so far as to recommend that Hunter leave the board. As Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma with him just once: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’ ”

So Obama didn’t insist, Joe trusted Hunter, and the situation did not change.

We can speculate that this was because Joe was on the take and/or knew Hunter was. And that is probably the case. But even without that, this shows remarkably poor judgment on Joe Biden’s part, in two ways. And it should have been roundly and publicly criticized at the time.

The first way in which it shows poor judgment is that obvious one: the appearance of impropriety and the opportunities for corruption are strong. The second way, however, is that Joe should never have trusted someone with a history like Hunter’s. Never, about anything – except to trust him to inevitably eff up.

As that New Yorker article and many others make clear, Hunter Biden was a mess and had been a mess for most of his adult life. And by “a mess” I don’t just mean a run-of-the-mill bout of addiction or alcoholism. I mean a person heavily addicted to both drugs (primarily cocaine, at least as far as we know) and alcohol, so addicted that countless (and I mean I lost count) rehab programs were tried and all ultimately failed. His addictions included strippers and prostitutes, and spending tons of money on them. His father was aware of much of this, especially the multiple rehabs. And by the time of that supposed “I do” on Joe’s part in 2015, Hunter had recently lost a Naval job because just a short while after obtaining it he tested positive for cocaine in a urinalysis.

Not only that, but take a look at Hunter’s excuse for that positive test:

On May 7, 2013, [Hunter] was assigned to a Reserve unit at Naval Station Norfolk. He had hoped to work in naval intelligence, but was given a job in a public-affairs unit. In a small, private ceremony at the White House, Hunter was sworn in by his father. Later that month, the night before Hunter’s first weekend of Reserve duty, he stopped at a bar a few blocks from the White House. Outside, Hunter said, he bummed a cigarette from two men who told him that they were from South Africa. He felt “amped up” as he was driving down to Norfolk, and then “incredibly exhausted.” He told me that he called Beau and said, “I don’t know what’s going on.” Beau drove from Delaware to meet Hunter at a hotel near the naval station. “He got me shipshape and drove me into the base,” he said. On his first day, Hunter had a urine sample taken for testing.

A few months later, Hunter received a letter saying that his urinalysis had detected cocaine in his system. Under Navy rules, a positive drug test typically triggers a discharge. Hunter wrote a letter to the Navy Reserve, saying that he didn’t know how the drug had got into his system and suggesting that the cigarettes he’d smoked outside the bar might have been laced with cocaine. Hunter called Beau, who contacted Tom Gallagher, a former Navy lawyer who had worked with Beau at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. Gallagher agreed to represent Hunter pro bono, but it became clear that, given Hunter’s history with drugs, an appeals panel was unlikely to believe the story that he had ingested cocaine involuntarily, and that appealing the decision would require closed-door hearings and the testimony of witnesses, increasing the likelihood of leaks to the press. Hunter decided not to appeal. Navy records show that Hunter’s discharge took effect on February 18, 2014.

The Navy was “unlikely to believe the story.” And actually, any sentient being who knows anything about drug addiction should be “unlikely to believe the story” as well. And yet we are to accept that Joe found Hunter trustworthy enough to “know what you’re doing” in his Ukraine company.

On the face of it – even without the actual corruption of which we now have evidence – this indicates that Joe is either a knave or a fool or both.

It’s interesting that both Hunter and Joe Biden thought this story was good enough to tell the press, and had little to no fear that they would be criticized except in the tiny portion of the press that’s on the right. Just as Joe enabled Hunter, the press enables Joe. And now it’s reached epic proportions with the laptop coverup.