Joe Biden (Hunter Biden) Impeachment Inquiry Report Made Public
291 Pages of Zilch. No Criminal Referral. Might as well have been blank pages.
After almost two years and tens of millions of dollars spent with dozens of witnesses, testimony, grandstanding, speeches, baseless accusations and inuendo, we have the Trump led, GOP report on the “Biden Crime Family”, but no smoking gun. No direct payments to Joe Biden and no actionable evidence of prosecutable wrongdoing.
Read the entire report here: REPORT OF THE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY OF JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A quote from the Executive Summary & Text
The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the Committees is egregious. President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift. In doing so, he abused his office and, by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office, has defrauded the United States to enrich his family. Not one of these transactions would have occurred, but for Joe Biden’s official position in the United States government. This pattern of conduct ensured his family—who provided no legitimate services—lived a lavish lifestyle. The evidence uncovered in the Committees’ impeachment inquiry reflects a family selling the “Biden brand” around the world with President Biden—the “big guy”—swooping in to seal the deal on speaker phones or in private dinners. It shows a concerted effort to conceal President Biden’s involvement in the family’s influence peddling scheme. One witness explained that when it comes to mentioning Vice President Joe Biden’s involvement, “Say it, forget it. Write it, regret it.”
As with many reports of this size and scope, it’s far easier to skip to the Conclusion which summarizes much of what is in the Executive Summary.
A quote from the Conclusion
Joe Biden has exhibited conduct and taken actions that the Founders sought to guard against in drafting the impeachment provisions in the Constitution: abuse of power, foreign entanglements, corruption, and obstruction of investigations into these matters. The Committees investigative work has revealed that the Biden family—with the full knowledge and cooperation of President Biden—has engaged in a global influence peddling racket from which they made millions of dollars. The Biden family’s influence peddling was vast and involved entities and individuals from some of America’s greatest adversaries, such as China and Russia. Clearly aware of the political risks associated with Joe Biden’s participation in this scheme, the Biden family and their business associates sought to conceal his involvement by funneling money through an extensive network of shell or third parties’ companies, using code names, and engaging in other obfuscatory tactics designed to maintain, as James Biden described, “plausible deniability.”
What did the Oversight Committee find in plain English? Did Joe Biden commit and crimes? Did he take a bribe or bribes? Did he financially benefit from his brother’s or son’s business ventures? Did he take official action or refrain from taking action as a result of his family’s businesses?
When Johnathan Turley testified at a Congressional hearing late last year, concerning the Impeachment Inquiry, he said the following: While the threshold for an Impeachment Inquiry has been met, he’d vote no for Impeachment, based on the evidence he’d seen.
The Committee found that both Joe Biden’s brother, James, and his son, Hunter, were involved in numerous businesses around the world tied to many foreign nations. They formed a portfolio of LLCs with millions of dollars changing hands for both known and unknown services with the appearance of peddling the family name to enrich themselves and others. Nowhere in the evidence, was any illegal transaction tied to Joe Biden.
There was no evidence of Joe taking a bribe. No evidence of Joe Biden being paid either directly or on the side for any service or as part of any deal. Nothing has been exposed to show any enriching of Joe Biden from his family’s dealings. There is also no evidence that Joe took or did not take action as a result of any of these dealings.
In fact, one of the key witnesses for the GOP, Alexander Smirnoff, was found to have been lying to the FBI and everyone else when he testified about the Biden family. He was actually working for Russian Intelligence.
The one area that the GOP sponsors of the Impeachment Inquiry continue to harp on was the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor while Joe was Vice President. The accusation was that Joe got him fired to keep him from investigating Burisma, where Hunter was working as a board member with no previous experience in this field.
In fact, the Ukrainian prosecutor was fired for being soft on corruption in keeping with the EU’s push for more transparency and action on the part of Ukraine as they sought membership in the European Union. His firing had nothing to do with the fact that Hunter Biden worked for them. In addition, whether he had relevant experience to work for Burisma, is irrelevant. They could hire whoever they wanted.
Would Burisma have hired Hunter Biden for it’s board had his last name been smith? Probably not. Did James Biden and Hunter secure millions of dollars for sketchy business ventures because their last name was Biden and that Joe was VP? Most likely, yes, but that is not illegal to trade on a famous family name. They were not the first to do so and not the last. While unseemly, and undoubtedly embarrassing to Joe, it’s not illegal. A company can hire a 18 year old high school student to sit and do nothing for a million a year if it wants to and it’s not illegal. So whether Hunter or his uncle James got paid for doing unknown services is much ado about nothing.
The committee also made note of numerous phone calls from Hunter to Joe while the former was having business meetings with his partners. This is all true and just plain smells bad, but Hunter called his dad on a daily basis. Having Joe on speaker gave the implicit appearance of approval for what Hunter was doing and increased his status in front of his sometimes shady business associates. Joe should have been more careful with these calls if they took place when he was in office. Some took place when he was a private citizen between 2017 and 2021.
In addition, Joe did have dinner with a few of Hunter’s associates, again, giving an appearance of approval to Hunter and his pals. Nothing illegal about any of this, but it just doesn’t look good. Again, Joe should have been more careful.
In the end, the Impeachment Inquiry died on the GOP vine with no criminal referrals, but only a boatload of bluster and inuendo of there being sufficient evidence of impeachable wrongdoing, but did Joe’s actions rise to High Crimes and Misdemeanors?
In a recent interview on Fox News with Bret Baier, Jamie Raskins and James Comer summed up the end of days for the Impeachment Inquiry.
If we want to play “Whataboutism” we could look into how Jared Kushner secured $2 Billion in financing for his business ventures from the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia.
But that is another story for another day.