As the impeachment trial of the President winds down, there
are still unresolved issues that need to be addressed about Hunter Biden’s
involvement in various business endeavors and why closer scrutiny wasn’t paid
to those activities.
We make character and integrity major issues when it comes
to selecting our elected leadership. This also plays an important role in the
selection, vetting, and legislative confirmation of political appointees. What
doesn’t draw as much scrutiny are relationships these individuals may have with
friends, family, or other associates. The younger Biden falls into the latter
category.
Ashley Madison was a website dedicated to helping
individuals conduct extra marital affairs. That’s right, there actually was a
website that encouraged and assisted you in cheating on your spouse or
significant other. Back in 2015, the site was hacked and the personal
information of its members was released into the wild, so to speak. One of the
names identified was that of a Robert Hunter Biden (he denies the account being
his, but there are multiple indicators that say otherwise). To make a long
story short, Hunter and his first wife, Kathleen, went their separate ways, but
not before she accused him of spending extravagantly on other women, including
those he had been having affairs with, engaging in illicit drug use, and an all
too frequent patronage of strip clubs.
In 2017, Hunter confirmed he had been dating Hallie Biden, the
widow of his late brother Beau. That in and of itself isn’t an issue since
neither of them were married at the time.
But there’s a wrinkle. Lunden Roberts is a former stripper who worked
and lived in the DC area from 2015 to 2018. Sometime during that timeframe
Hunter met Ms. Roberts while he was a customer at a local strip club where she
worked. The two became involved in a relationship while he was dating his
brother’s widow (hmmm, this sounds eerily familiar). Hallie and Hunter broke up
sometime in April of 2019. A month later he met and married Melissa Cohen, a
South African native. In August of 2018, Lunden Roberts gave birth to a child
she claimed was fathered by Hunter Biden. She sued for child support, both
future and in arrears. Hunter underwent a
paternity test which conclusively proved that he was the father of “Baby Doe”,
the name given to the child for legal purposes. The suit also includes
discovery into Hunter’s finances to see if he’s hiding anything from her. None
of this will ever see the light of day though, since the records of cases like
this are normally sealed (the petition to do so has already been filed).
There are no federal laws governing Hunter Biden’s behavior,
and no definitive link can be drawn between his activities and his father’s
position. That doesn’t mean that such behavior shouldn’t undergo some sort of
scrutiny. It has been shown by his conduct that young Mr. Biden is not, nor
will he ever be, a paragon of virtue. In an email to his Step-father’s Chief of
Staff and his Deputy at the State Department, Chris Hines stated he was
surprised that Hunter and Devon Archer were accepting seats on Burisma’s Board
of Directors, given the company’s history. He also made it patently clear that
he himself was going to steer clear of any involvement and was making sure that
their firm did so as well.
What has been expounded on so far, isn’t an attempt to
disparage or indict Hunter Biden. His actions will speak for themselves. What’s
at issue here is his moral turpitude and how that played out during his
father’s tenure as Vice President. Remember, Joe Biden was the point man on U.S.
policy dealing with both Ukraine and China. Places where Hunter got sweetheart
deals, either for himself (Burisma board membership) or for the firm he was a
partner in (Bohai Harvest RST). The Chinese have a name for people like Hunter
and his partners (Devon Archer and Chris Hines). They call them princelings.
With princelings, political influence takes a more indirect route, rewarding
those close to the principals, but not the principals themselves. To drive this
point home, JP Morgan recently had to pay a $264,000,000 fine to the SEC for
doing the same thing with the children of Chinese officials. This scheme,
formally known as the “Sons and Daughters” program, was apparently a violation
of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
So, the big question that needs to be asked, in light of all
that has transpired, is this: Can an individual, who seems to have no apparent
moral compass to guide his behavior, be trusted not to do the same thing
if his father becomes the 46th President of the United States? Given the
additional fact that he was a commissioned officer who was separated from the
Naval Reserve in 2013, after testing positive for cocaine use, I’d say that the
chances of a relapse are pretty doggoned good.
