Biden’s family members have reaped millions. Stop trying to ignore it | Opinion

Let’s assume that, as President Biden’s fans insist, there’s no evidence of lawbreaking in the deals that had foreign companies paying more than $10 million to Biden family members during and after Biden’s years as vice president.

And no doubt, the House Oversight Committee led by Chairman James Comer, R-Kentucky, has its own preconceived narrative that Biden is on the take from all kinds of shady characters. An indictment of bribery or corruption would require proof that, at some point while in office, Biden acted or influenced a U.S. government policy decision to benefit one of those companies, and the House Oversight Committee, so far, does not have that proof.

Yet we’re still left with a motley collection of odd and unsavory figures sending a lot of money through a lot of companies to a lot of members of the Biden family, with little explanation why. Comer contends that bank records confirm more than $10 million in payments, run through at least 20 businesses, mostly limited liability companies, to the president’s son Hunter Biden; the president’s brother, James Biden; James’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; Hallie Biden (widow of Joe Biden’s son Beau, who died in 2015); Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter’s current wife, Melissa Cohen; and, as Comer noted, “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”

Just what goods or services did all those Biden family members provide to those companies?

Son scores a diamond

Why did Gabriel Popoviciu, a businessman convicted of bribery in Romania and relatedly investigated by British authorities pay as much as $1 million that ended up in Biden family accounts? Does anyone believe that Chinese energy tycoon Ye Jianming in 2017 gave Hunter Biden a 2.8-carat diamond, estimated to be worth up to $80,000, as a gift out of the pure goodness of his heart? Ye disappeared from public view in 2018 amid a Chinese corruption crackdown.

President Biden voluntarily releases his tax returns and other financial disclosure reports that are required by law. But members of elected officials’ families are not required to disclose anything, leaving an easy way for any deep-pocketed individual or institution to purchase a friendship with someone who has the politician’s ear.

Maybe it’s entirely coincidental that so many foreign entities just happened to give large amounts of money and gifts to Biden family members, and no one involved ever believed, promised, insinuated or suggested that Joe Biden would ever return the favor.

What the House Oversight Committee report reveals is a larger and more complicated version of Hunter Biden’s ludicrously remunerative “work” for Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian oil and natural gas company from 2014 to 2019. Hunter Biden had never worked in the oil or natural gas industry, and yet Burisma reportedly paid him up to $83,000 per month until his father left office, all without Hunter ever needing to travel to Ukraine. One Burisma official told Reuters in 2019 that Hunter Biden was a “ceremonial figure” at the company.

Why would Burisma so lucratively reward a ceremonial figure? What could Hunter Biden possibly offer the company beyond a connection to his father?

Confronted with the Comer committee’s report, Democrats scream, “What about Ivanka Trump’s trademarks in China, or Donald Trump and Jared Kushner profiting from Saudi investors?” And they’re right to object. We don’t elect leaders to the presidency — or the vice presidency — so that their relatives can cash in with foreign business executives. The sordid intermingling of personal financial interests with U.S. government policy is absolutely fair game in the 2024 presidential election.

A bad look

With great power comes great responsibility, and few jobs are more powerful than the presidency or vice presidency. That means presidents and vice presidents have a responsibility to make sure their relatives aren’t making new “friends” from overseas who just happen to want to give them lots of money. Even if an elected official never returns the favor, the U.S. government’s lecturing other countries about corruption looks laughable when presidential offspring seem to be shilling access like a guy on the corner selling fake Rolexes.

Most of Washington is used to elected officials finding a sweet, low-responsibility, well-paying job for some otherwise unemployable son or niece. In 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington went through the employment records of members of the House and determined that 82 members paid family members through their congressional offices, campaign committees or political action committees. (It came out to 42 Republicans and 40 Democrats; apparently Washington really did have more areas of bipartisan agreement back then.)

And in the grand scheme of things, giving your low-wattage relative a job answering phones in your congressional office is a small enough potential conflict that everyone can live with it.

The problem is the Biden family’s unspecified gigs with foreign companies appear never to have developed a limiting principle while he was vice president. Now, in the White House, variations on Biden’s reflexive “My son has done nothing wrong” response aren’t going to cut it this time. Comer promises more, and he’s taking direct aim at the not-all-that-plausible excuse that the president is entirely disconnected from the financial arrangements of his family members.

Comer, speaking with a Fox News radio program, noted that Biden’s media defenders act as though the revelations have nothing to do with Biden himself. “That is ridiculous,” Comer said. “Of course it has everything to do with Joe Biden.”

Jim Geraghty is National Review’s senior political correspondent.

The Washington Post