Miranda Devine

Miranda Devine

Politics

Throwing Hunter Biden under the bus won’t be enough to clear Joe

Hunter Biden won’t like the interview his father’s chief of staff Ron Klain did with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

Asked about the Delaware investigation into the president’s son’s business affairs, Klain threw Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden under the bus.

“The president is confident that his family did the right thing. But, again, I want to just be really clear, these are actions by Hunter and his brother. They’re private matters. They don’t involve the president. And they certainly are something that no one at the White House is involved in.”

This is the party line, parroted by the Washington Post and CNN in their belated coverage of the story last week.

Sure, they say, it looks bad for Hunter, but, gosh, Joe Biden had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, this line of defense does not sustain scrutiny.

Judging by morsels trickling out of the ongoing investigation into Hunter, the scope has widened to include questions involving the president.

Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain said “no one at the White House is involved” in the grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden. WireImage

‘Big Guy’

Witnesses testifying before the Delaware grand jury are believed to have been asked if they know who is the “Big Guy” referred to in coded fashion in emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop and in WhatsApp messages his former business partner Tony Bobulinski handed to the FBI in October 2020.

Bobulinski asserts that the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

The identity of the “Big Guy” is relevant because he was to be allocated 10% equity in a joint venture Hunter and partners were cooking up with Chinese company CEFC, according to an email on the laptop.

Ron Klain threw Hunter and Jim Biden under the bus during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. ABC
An image from Hunter’s laptop showing him and his dad, Joe Biden, aboard a military aircraft.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing,” Bobulinski wrote in a letter to The Post in October 2020. “I’ve seen VP Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”

There is evidence on the laptop that Joe Biden profited from Hunter’s overseas business dealings, indicating mingled finances, shared bank accounts and household bills Hunter was expected to pay for his father.

Hunter complained about having to give “half” his salary to his father and “pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.”

But even if Klain and media pals want to dismiss evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme — including meetings with Hunter’s foreign partners — that doesn’t clear the president.

There is no country in the world where millions of dollars paid to a top official’s son for doing nothing would not be regarded as corruption.

“Large payments to the children of powerful government officials by those with interests potentially affected by those officials’ actions are universally understood to be corrupt efforts to influence the officials,” Manhattan litigation lawyer Francis Menton writes in the Manhattan Contrarian blog.

“In cases involving people other than the Bidens, whether the official/parent ‘personally benefited’ from the payments or ‘knew details’ of the transactions are considered completely irrelevant.”

Klain will have to find a better response.