For months, former Vice President Joe Biden has vehemently denied that any evidence exists that his son, Hunter, was involved in criminal activity or wrongdoing. These denials now look like dishonesty after the Biden-Harris transition team released a statement Wednesday acknowledging that Hunter is indeed under investigation by the Department of Justice for potential tax crimes.
“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter wrote in the statement.
This news, as Federalist Editor Mollie Hemingway pointed out, is not actually new and was reported before the election, but was purposefully suppressed by gatekeepers like Facebook, Twitter, and corporate media outlets who ignored the reporting on Hunter Biden’s affairs. In October, the New York Post and others reported Biden’s knowledge and potential involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings during his time as vice president. A few weeks later, investigative reporter James Rosen broke news that the FBI was investigating Hunter for money laundering.
As early as 2019, Biden began to deny that Hunter or anyone else in the Biden family ever did anything wrong, ignoring the concerns of some about Hunter’s affiliation with the Ukrainian energy company “Burisma.”
“Every single, solitary, serious investigation, including your network and others, have looked at this, have said there’s absolutely zero basis to the accusation that I had acted anyway inappropriately or that my son did,” Biden said at a presidential town hall in Iowa.
In an interview with Axios on HBO, Biden seemed appalled that a reporter even dared to ask him about his son’s foreign business and work.
“I mean, come on, this is — (laughs) — you guys are amazing,” Biden responded when the reporter asked him about Hunter’s business dealings.
“So you think everything that happened was kosher?” the reporter shot back.
“You know there’s not one single bit of evidence, not one little tiny bit that says anything done was wrong. You know that,” Biden continued.
In the same interview, Biden denied knowing anything about his son’s dealings except for the fact that Hunter was on the board of Burisma, a fact he said wasn’t disclosed until after it occurred.
Shortly before one of the Democratic presidential debates, Biden echoed these denials, instead choosing to shift the blame on President Donald Trump.
“Every major national, international, and local news operations looked into it and said it’s a lie. This is a president who’s flat-lying,” he said.
In February this year, when NBC’s Savannah Guthrie pressed Biden on whether it was appropriate for his son to take the Burisma board position, Biden lashed out, saying, “Well that’s not true. You’re saying things you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Joe Biden on why his son Hunter — who had no experience in Ukraine or in the energy sector — got an $80,000-per-month board seat with Burisma as father Biden was running US policy in Ukraine:
"Cause he's a very bright guy." pic.twitter.com/2jOFbZQsre
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 3, 2020
“No one has found anything wrong with his dealings with Ukraine,” Biden told Guthrie.
The claims continued for the rest of his campaign all the way through the election, where he repeated multiple times that “there’s not been one scintilla of evidence that my son ever interfered, that he ever asked me anything, that I ever got involved in anything.”
Instead of addressing the evidence and emails presented from a laptop belonging to Hunter, Biden’s only acknowledged the New York Post, which alleged the former VP was introduced to a senior adviser to Burisma through Hunter while Joe was the “public face” of the Obama administration’s policy towards Ukraine, was when he called it a “smear campaign,” and blamed the press for asking questions about it.
“I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask,” he said.
I asked Joe Biden: What is your response to the NYPost story about your son, sir?
He called it a “smear campaign” and then went after me. “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” pic.twitter.com/Eo6VD4TqxD
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) October 17, 2020
Biden and his team also latched onto a rumor started by Rep. Adam Schiff that Russia was somehow behind the release of the evidence.
“Giuliani, he is being used as a Russian pawn– he is being fed information that is not true,” Biden said from the presidential debate stage in October.
“We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said. “It’s simply not true.”
