There are many allegations now in the public square about the Biden family’s alleged conflicts of interest. In fact, the liberal-leaning press has been reporting on it for quite some time in stories often centered on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Undisputed is the fact that Hunter and other members of the Biden family have been involved in numerous complex, and sometimes controversial, multinational, multimillion-dollar deals involving Ukraine, Russia, China, Luxembourg, and the UK. Numerous observers have stated that they believe the Bidens’ main qualification to conduct such business is simply that they’re connected to a powerful political figure who has influence over policies and practices that can impact the businesses: Joe Biden.
Now, new documentation of the allegations has come with a flurry of 11th-hour releases and allegations by a former Biden family business partner, and a computer shop owner who got a look into Hunter Biden’s computer. Tony Bobulinski, a Democrat and business associate, claims he met with Joe Biden personally as Hunter and James sought to convince Bobulinski to lead a giant business venture with a communist Chinese energy company. He claims Joe Biden was to secretly receive 10 percent equity in the company, money allegedly to be laundered through Hunter.
And Bobulinski alleges the Biden’s lucrative entanglements with the Chinese have made Joe Biden hopelessly compromised by a foreign government.
Tangled up in the whole mess are even larger issues. There’s big tech censorship after Twitter censored a New York Post story on the topic. There’s media bias after some in the press announced a blackout on the story and refused to cover it. There’s ongoing mistrust in the FBI, when it was learned the agency has had the allegedly incendiary Hunter Biden computer material since last December, but not publicly acted on anything in it, and kept it secret from relevant congressional committees that asked about it.
Interestingly, the Justice Department and FBI—agencies that have proven rife with anti-Trump leaks—were able to keep uncharacteristically mum when it came to a scandal and allegations about a figure on the other side of the political spectrum.
During these final weeks of campaign 2020, reporters and debate moderators haven’t really challenged Joe Biden to answer to specifics about all of this. When confronted by Trump at a debate, Biden has said he never took a penny from a foreign government. He has also criticized those who suggest his family members have sought to trade on the Biden family name.
Still, there’s one nagging point that I haven’t seen considered. It’s the nature of the Biden family business ventures juxtaposed against Joe Biden’s position on oil and fossil fuels.
Biden has repeatedly taken strong positions against fossil fuels—oil, coal, and natural gas—and has made it clear he wants to “transition” away from them in the United States. But as he has advanced this position, his family members have been making money on deals that expand fossil fuel companies and ventures in foreign countries.
They inked a highly compensated gig with Burisma in Ukraine.
During Joe Biden’s first visit to the country in his new position, he spoke of how Ukraine could make the right decisions and become “energy independent”—less reliant on other countries and more secure from a national security standpoint. Energy independence in this context implied good things and heavy reliance on Ukrainian fossil fuel companies such as Burisma, where Hunter was hitched. There was no bigger oil and gas company in Ukraine than Burisma.
It may be true that Joe Biden has never intended to link his political policy positions to his family’s business ventures. But the fact that the relationships beg the comparison demonstrates some of the peril that comes with even the appearance of conflicts of interest.
