Wow.
I say this generically. It is NOT directed at any individual here or elsewhere.
If Hunter and Joe Biden were really so corrupt, do you think that Trump would have needed to threaten to withhold $300,000,000 of US taxpayer money (military aid to prevent further Russian aggression – something that turned out to be pretty important, don’t you think?) if Ukraine wouldn’t fabricate incriminating evidence against the Bidens?
And do you think that Trump would tell Zelenskyy to work with Rudy Giuliani instead of Trump’s consigliere, Bill Barr, then Attorney General?
And do you think that a good faith Trump would ask for ANY critical information from a country that HE (Trump) swore was corrupt to its core?
In the last six or seven years, the media has been rife with stories that – to understand them – require even a cursory familiarity with science and/or law.
And Trump supporters are just utterly falling flat. While they have no end of passion, what they don’t have is knowledge – like any knowledge.
Which makes it tragically easy for the GOP demagogues to lie to them and manipulate them, day after day after day.
Dunning and Kruger … for the WIN!
[bolding mine]
This one … just astounds me. And – like every other baseless talking point – you hear it endlessly.
“BHR Partners (Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd.) is a private investment fund founded in 2013 by Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd., which is controlled by Bank of China Limited along with a partnership with Hunter Biden, and whose focus is on mergers and acquisitions, and investment in, and reforms, of state-owned enterprise.”
Ever hear of banking? Venture capital? Mergers & Acquisitions? Financial Services? Investment? Money IS the “product.”
So, yeah. Hunter Biden DID make money from the Chinese, as did Trump, his family, and Jared Kushner.
What else you got?
If wishes were horses then common sense tells us beggars would ride.
I still don’t get it.
Ok - for the sake of argument, the laptop shows “millions of dollars of payments” (presumably to Hunter) and “at least 10 companies with no product to sell”.
And???
For one thing, Hunter making millions of dollars is not inherently corrupt. Is it because he’s the son of a top US politician? Probably. But that makes it no different than the business dealings of George W Bush in the 80s and 90s (hell, the entire Bush clan - including the officeholder - were involved in international business deals), or any number of activities by donald’s kids. It might be distasteful nepotism, but it’s not notable.
And there are legions of companies with “no product to sell”. I mean, consulting is an entire industry. And holding companies do exist, and for legitimate reasons.
It seems to me that the only way this leads to “something is wrong” is if you can tie it to some problematic actions taken by some identifiable people.
And you can’t. The closest anybody has gotten is the nonsense claim that Joe forced a prosecutor out because he was investigating Hunter’s company. But as @Ann_Hedonia has painstakingly pointed out, this is a bullshit claim.
So, if there is something wrong, what is it? What has Hunter done that leads to “and that’s why this happened”?
LLCs, Trusts, and “layering” are daily occurrences among those with money to lose/protect. They are designed to aid in tax avoidance/minimization and asset defense.
I think we’d be fairly safe in assuming that Trump has no end of similar financial instruments, including Trusts set up for the benefit of each of his kids and grandkids.
And – yeah: to amplify @Ann_Hedonia about Shokin – my ‘canned’ statement is:
“Biden traveled to Kyiv as vice president and warned Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees until Ukraine removed its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, who was widely viewed as corrupt. At the time, the international community and anti-corruption advocates in Ukraine were also calling for Shokin to be removed from office for his failure to aggressively prosecute corruption.”
So, Biden carried out the US’s policy vis-a-vis Ukraine and Shokin, and did so with the unreserved support of the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. He also did this without needing to extort Ukraine by threatening to withhold US taxpayer money allocated for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression OR inserting Rudy Giuliani into the mix.
One more ‘canned’ screed:
Anybody remember “All The President’s Men --” the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein breaking the Watergate story? For much of the earlier part of the reporters’ fact-finding, the Washington Post’s executive editor, Ben Bradlee, refused to run the story, frequently telling Woodward and Bernstein, “You don’t have it.”
They didn’t have the story nailed down and properly corroborated. They “didn’t have it.”
Hey, GOP? You don’t have it. Allegations, accusations, insinuations, intimations, and innuendo are NOT evidence of crimes, and – so far – that’s all you have.
Keep investigating. That’s your job. But stop overselling the above to your base in exchange for their continued loyalty and check-writing. It’s patently dishonest and bad for Democracy.
[As if any of you care…]
You’re asking for proof from the crowd that has no use for it. For them, it’s quite sufficient to state “something something laptop” and Hunter’s guilt is proven. The Republican congresscritters know there is nothing there but they also know that their base will believe any word salad that includes “Biden” and “crime” so they do the performance art hearings and regurgitate nonsensical talking points just to keep their base in a perpetual state of outrage.
It’s always the Birther Conspiracy redux.
Moderating:
This is a formal warning for failing to heed prior moderator instructions. Making baseless claims and failing to bring any citation or evidence for them is tantamount to trolling.
You are also not to any longer participate in this thread.
I just wanted to add that if they really believed there is something to any of this, they should release the entire contents of the laptop to legitimate news outlets like The NY Times and Washington Post.
The only news outlet that has access to this information is the NY Post, and they only publish cherry-picked snippets that support their fantasy.
Take the infamous e-mail where one of Hunter’s associates proposes giving 10% to the Big Guy. That e-mail has been published ad nauseum, but you know what we’ve never seen?
The response to that e-mail, and the discussions that led to NOT giving 10% to the Big Guy….because the deal was finalized a few days later without a mystery party getting a 10% share.
I believe those e-mails exist, and that they contain information that would indicate that the Big Guy is not Joe Biden. And that’s why we’ve never seen them.
And (this is in case HBDC is still reading), there is nothing suspicious about companies that don’t sell a product, because people also sell, you know, services.
Let’s say you and couple of friends decide you are capable of finding investors for a company looking to raise money, and your fee for doing so is 10% of the money raised. This is called investment banking, and it’s a legitimate business.
So, when you get these commissions, whose name does your client put on the checks? Who pays for your expenses? How are the profits divided and who holds the money until they are divided? The standard business solution to this is for the partners to form a legal corporation to handle this business deal. It’s a signal that the deal and business are legitimate, not the opposite.
The Biden conspiracists often point to Biden getting the Ukranian prosecutor fired to shield Hunter from investigation. No, the entire EU wanted the guy out because he was known to be corrupt. If anything, the possibility of Hunter being investigated in Ukraine went up due to the new prosecutor. Not to mention, how influential is an American vice president in the internal political affairs of other nations? When’s the last time a foreign government fired a key official due to pressure from Pence or Harris?
IIRC, because even FOX refused to touch it.
So not credible enough evidence for Fox News. Considering what has been credible enough for them that is a complete exoneration of Hunter Biden right there.
Congress has heard that Biden was on speakerphone about 20 times with Hunter, according to a witness. No evidence that he actually knew who was there or participated in the business dealings. I feel like Biden had to know his son was using his name to some extent to get ahead (that’s just logical as others have said) but it’s a big jump IMHO to being involved in criminal activity. I wonder why they identified Archer as a “a former Abercrombie & Fitch model.” That’s an odd detail.
Maybe that was a condition. “I’ll only testify if you mention that I used to be a model.”
It’d be better to identify him as “convicted fraudster.” As in, “Congress invites convicted fraudster to badmouth Biden, and he tells them a story about how Biden’s coked-up son put an unwitting Biden on speakerphone in order to make himself look important.”
If that’s what they think a high crime and misdemeanor is, hoo boy.
No, I think they were really hoping he’d have something and were extremely disappointed.
They’ll try to spin it anyway, but I’m sure they really hoped for something actionable.
Forget “spinning” it, they’re just straight-up lying about what he said.
Mr Goldman said Archer had “repeated over and over and over again that President Biden never discussed any business dealings or interests with Hunter or anyone else”.
But House Oversight Committee chair James Comer argued Archer’s testimony “confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings”.
They brought this guy in to testify, just so they could then turn around and flat-out lie about what he said. There was never any chance of this hearing producing any useful information out of the Republicans.
Adds spice. Like with America’s Frontline Doctors founder Simone Gold’s “security guard” and boyfriend John Strand, who’s commonly described as an “international underwear model” (both were convicted in the January 6th Capitol riot).