Did the U.S. president take bribes through his son?
The Biden family corruption scandal is gaining momentum. By the way, it is not the first and it does not seem to be the last. If you want to divert attention from the scandals around you, create a smokescreen of even more high-profile cases that would divert attention from you. The U.S. president now seems to be following a similar pattern, but on a global scale, engaging the world in a proxy war with Russia and China, distracting Americans from the corruption scandals related to him and his family. He especially benefited from this after he announced that he was running for president in 2024. Who will remember his family's affairs if he looks like a defender of democracy fighting the "global evil" represented by Russia and China?
But let's go in order. The FBI recently obtained audio recordings of an executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, calling Biden a "boss" involved in bribery. The Washington Times presents this as new evidence of Biden's involvement in corruption schemes in Ukraine.
It has been revealed that there is a secret FBI memo which says that one of Burisma's top managers gave Biden a $5 million bribe when he was still vice president in 2016. Amusingly, under the nickname "boss," Joe Biden is known not only to Ukrainians, but also to the Chinese. A former partner of the Biden clan back in 2020 described a payment scheme for a deal with a Chinese energy company in which 10% was paid to Biden, passing under the same code name – "boss." Well, big boss, big interest.
According to Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who is familiar with this FBI memo, it reports that the Burisma top manager has audio recordings of conversations with Biden, which are 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden, and two more audio recordings of phone calls between the Burisma executive and Joe Biden, who was then vice president. In addition, the memo includes extensive quotes from these audio recordings.
Why was the Burisma man secretly keeping records? It is quite obvious that in this snake pit, people taking and giving bribes, peddling their position, no one trusted anyone and was collecting compromising material for subsequent pressure on his "business" partner.
"These records were allegedly kept as a sort of 'safety net' for a foreign national in case he got into trouble. The FBI document also indicates that Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma's hiring of Hunter Biden when he was vice president," said Republican Senator Grassley.
That is, the Ukrainian businessman was collecting compromising material on Biden just in case. Naturally, Biden said that all this was a dirty slander to tarnish his good name as the "father of American democracy."
But the FBI report sparked a new wave of court inquiries about bank accounts belonging to people connected to Biden.
Investigators of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are now trying to determine the extent of Biden's involvement in illegal schemes. The Oversight Committee is to review additional FBI memos related to Burisma's bribery allegations.
The investigation involves six U.S. banks through which the money was distributed and 20 shell companies that Republicans believe were used to hide business schemes.
An FBI informant in a memo about bribery at Burisma said that executives at the energy company paid five million dollars in 2015 and 2016 to enlist Biden's help in opposing Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma.
According to sources, Joe Biden's son received $5 million from Burisma, on whose board he served, even though his salary was $1 million.
The nickname "boss" has also surfaced repeatedly in previous investigations of Biden family corruption. The computer that Hunter left in the repair shop had emails containing messages from Biden's partner, telling him how profits from the 2017 deal with the Chinese energy company CEFC would be distributed.
In 2017, Hunter received an email from his partner James Gilliar about their dealings with the Chinese energy company CEFC China Energy, from which it was clear that Hunter and his partners were getting 20% of the company being created with the Chinese, that Hunter's uncle James Biden was getting 10%, and that another 10% went to "big boss", as they called Joe Biden. In 2019, all of this came to light when emails from Hunter's computer became public and a scandal ensued. But in December 2020, after Joe Biden became president of the United States, his son declared himself completely exonerated.
Republican James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is convinced that the Biden family and their partners, pocketed up to $20 million in profits from agreements made with China, Ukraine and other countries during Biden's second term as vice president and up to his nomination for head of state in 2020.
But it was Hunter who declared that he was not guilty of anything. But is it true? The Daily Mail writes that the U.S. Department of Justice has withheld 400 pages of important documents about Joe's son and brother's dealings with China and Ukraine. At the same time, the newspaper refers to Colorado attorney Kevin Evans, who sued the U.S. Department of Justice after the department failed to comply with his request to provide documents about Hunter's business dealings. It is interesting how utterly unwilling to comply with Evans' legal request, the Department of Justice responds that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any documents corresponding to his request.
But even after this "diplomatic" response, will Hunter be able to get away with it? The National Archives and Records Administration is preparing to publish hundreds of Obama-era White House internal documents containing information about Hunter's relationship with the long-suffering Ukrainian gas company. Hopefully, then we will find out more about the commercial activities of the Biden family.
But besides the suspicious stories with the Chinese and Ukrainians, there is another very curious scheme. In 2012, when Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter got involved in a $40 million commercial deal with Yelena Baturina, the widow of former mayor Yuri Luzhkov and then the richest woman in Russia. Also impressive is the $3.5 million commission that, as The Daily Mail reported, Baturina paid Hunter Biden's Rosemont Realty agency for access to the U.S. business market. Hunter's real estate fund then raised an investment of $69.7 million, which was spent on 2.15 million square feet of office space. His firm invested $15 million in the fund, but where she got that large amount is still unknown.
However, suspicious schemes are not a surprise – the Biden family is constantly accompanied by scandals, and to all tastes. For example, when buying a gun, Hunter declared that he had never tried drugs, and then it turned out that this was not true. Or else he was renting a house from his own father in a strange way.
A high-profile scandal has erupted over a house in Wilmington owned by father Biden. But his son Hunter, after his divorce, designated the house as his official address of residence. And he paid his father Joe $49,910 a month for rent. In 11 months, it totaled $550,000. Journalists investigated and found that the most expensive rent in the most prestigious homes in Wilmington, Delaware costs no more than $6,000 a month. And experts estimated Joe Biden's house itself at just $2 million. And how does that turn out? Renting a $2 million home cost a quarter of its value in six months. It looks like a clear attempt to launder and legalize the money that Biden Jr. received from corruption schemes. Or it could be seen as an attempt to move the money under the more secure "wing" of his dad. Meanwhile, another surprising fact has come to light. As the New York Post reported, from the emails on Hunter's laptop it appeared that Hunter was making all the utility payments for the house in Wilmington, as well as the payments for repairs himself. So he paid 50,000 a month in rent and also paid all the bills himself? That is true "son love," a selfless attempt to help an elderly father.
And here is the latest news concerning Biden's son. According to CCN, he pleaded guilty as part of a deal with prosecutors on three charges. They are two episodes of 2017-2018 tax violations and a gun purchase when he lied about not using drugs in order to buy it. The Department of Justice has entered into a pretrial agreement with Biden Jr. under which he will not be prosecuted. At the same time, Hunter himself commits to not using drugs for 2 years and not owning a gun. Of course, such conditions are easier to fulfill than the requirement not to participate in corrupt deals.
Let's see how the situation with them will develop further. Will the Republicans be able to spin the bribery case, as it is a powerful compromising material in the hands of Joe's opponents.
The U.S. presidential elections will be held next year, and I am sure that many more corrupt affairs of the Biden family will be uncovered. But everything will be done to get them off the hook. And what is it, some pathetic tens of millions of dollars that the father and son are accused of stealing, when billions of dollars are spent on military aid to Ukraine?