Republicans Are Far From Ready To Give Up On Trump-- Or Trumpism-- Yet

 

We didn't do much coverage of the manufactured Hunter Biden scandal here, not even when we were pushing Bernie in the primaries. As disgusting as it has always been that Biden has so many sleazy lobbyists in his family and that DC functions like that, the whole "scandal" generally reeked of bullshit. On the other hand, we consistently warned that if Biden was handed the nomination, the general election would devolve into-- among other things-- a discussion of whose family is more repulsively corrupt... and that's a battle in which no one could ever top the Trumps.

Earlier today, London's Times published a piece by Manveen Rana about how a Kremlin-linked Ukrainian oligarch and Giuliani "associate," Dmytro Firtash, was involved in a Trump campaign conspiracy to manufacture "evidence" against the Bidens.

Assorted Dildoes by Chip Proser

According to Lev Parnas, one of Mr Giuliani’s associates, they had sought help in their quest for a scandal that would damage Joe Biden’s run for the presidency from Dmytro Firtash, a Kremlin-linked Ukrainian oligarch.

Mr Firtash, who has faced extradition to America since 2014, had cut a deal, Mr Parnas claimed, that would quash his extradition order in return for any evidence of scandal surrounding the Bidens. Mr Firtash, who was shown to have extended a $1 million loan to Mr Parnas during this period, has always denied any involvement in the smear campaign directed at the Bidens.

The allegations come from Hares Youssef, a Ukrainian businessman and close friend of Mr Firtash. An adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine, Mr Youssef said that he was asked to invent links between Hunter Biden and a business deal with one of his former associates that had gone wrong.

“The deal was to lie,” Mr Youssef claimed. “I had never even met him. But the hunting dogs were out for Hunter Biden.”

Mr Youssef, who was born in Syria and is a dual national, invested just under $3 million in mbloom, a tech start-up fund backed by Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner.

The details of mbloom’s investments were always obscure. Mr Youssef claimed that he believed his investment would be used to create a gold-backed virtual currency named Golden Hearts, a project he has long wanted to get off the ground. The managers of mbloom, however, used the fund to invest in their own start-ups.

Mr Youssef lost the bulk of his investment when the fund was shut down in 2016 after Mr Archer was accused of fraud in a separate and unrelated case.

Hunter, the youngest son of Mr Biden, now the president-elect, had previously been on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, with Mr Archer and had become involved in his investment firm, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, one of the main funders behind mbloom.

Hunter had ceased any association with the company before Mr Youssef made his investment in mbloom.

Yet last year, Mr Youssef briefly courted journalists with a story about Hunter’s links to the now-defunct mbloom fund and claims that he had promised businessmen access to his father in 2015, when Mr Biden was vice-president under Barack Obama. Mr Youssef had no evidence at the time to support his assertions and now he has admitted that it was all untrue.

...Youssef claimed a member of Mr Firtash’s team approached him, saying: “We can solve this relationship with America if you can help us.” He said that he was told his friend’s extradition order could be rescinded if he could find enough evidence against Hunter Biden.

He claimed that knowing that Mr Youssef had been involved with mbloom, the Firtash team asked him to create a story about Hunter Biden being linked to the doomed fund.

“But I told them Hunter Biden wasn’t linked to mbloom,” Mr Youssef insisted. “I said it was absolutely impossible because the documents I signed with this investment could appear anywhere and they would show Hunter Biden was not involved. It would break the story because it’s not true.”

...“Somebody from Firtash’s team asked me if I wanted to get my visa back and to be able to travel to the United States again,” Mr Youssef claimed. “They said if we solved the problem in the United States, we can solve the problem of your visa, you can even get immunity, if we can use your investment in mbloom in this Hunter Biden case.”

...Firtash, a billionaire who is closely linked to the Kremlin, made his fortune acting as a middleman for the Russian government’s gas interests in Ukraine.

The US Justice Department has alleged that Mr Firtash was also heavily involved with “Russian organised crime.”

...Firtash has been a frequent presence in the controversies surrounding Mr Trump. Paul Manafort, the Republican strategist who was Mr Trump’s campaign chairman during the last election before he was convicted of fraud, had also worked for Mr Firtash, who hired him to help with the campaign for Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president. Mr Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 and has since lived in Russia. He has links to President Putin.

Mr Firtash also hired two lawyers with links to Mr Trump to present his case to William Barr, the US attorney-general.

That process was halted when the Ukraine inquiry began and Mr Trump was impeached.

The attacks on Hunter Biden’s business dealings took centre stage in Mr Trump’s re-election campaign. However, Mr Youssef said that the election had no bearing on his decision to talk about his own experience of how evidence against Hunter was collected in Ukraine.

Instead it was a report published by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project this week that carried evidence from leaked bank records showing Mr Youssef’s investment in mbloom, he said.

Not having learned their lesson yet about involving themselves and their party in the Trump crime operation, Republican aspirants for the 2024 Republican nomination are backing Trump's election fraud lies. In his New York Magazine column this afternoon, Jonathan Chait noted that "watching the Republican Party absorb Trump’s ludicrous accusations has been depressingly instructive. It replicates the process by which Republicans accepted Trump in the first place. It also reflects, in miniature, the process by which the party has surrendered to kookery over several generations... The most revealing responses came from the pool of prospective 2024 presidential nominees. Hopefuls like Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, and Josh Hawley endorsed various groundless charges of mass voter fraud gloated by Trump. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem forcefully rejected the premise that Republican secretaries of State have testified to the legitimacy of their election processes. 'The media can project an election winner, but they don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true,' tweeted Marco Rubio. Lindsey Graham proclaimed, 'Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake,' and went so far as to suggest legislators in states won by Biden nullify the vote and appoint pro-Trump electors. 'This is a contested election,' Graham announced on Fox News, adding, 'President Trump should not concede.' 'Every time they close the doors and shut out the lights, they always find more Democratic votes,' declared Cruz-- even though the doors were in fact open to Republican observers and the lights in fact on."

Can Hunter Biden Be Both Right and Wrong, Both Innocent and Guilty? Yes He Can.

The story that started the latest round of madness

 by Thomas Neuburger

If you're confused by the welter of reports around the Hunter Biden-purloined (or forgotten) laptop story, don't be embarrassed. The reporting is not just confusing, but confusingly told. Even if we divide the story into its two major parts — what the Post printed; what Facebook and Twitter did about it — and analyze them separately, things don't become more clear. Large sections of each side's version of each side of the story overlap in confusing and unremarked-on ways. 

In brief, here's what happened as Matt Taibbi describes it:

The “blockbuster” had a controversial provenance. A computer repair shop in Delaware reportedly came to possess a laptop belonging to the younger Biden. According to the Post, it contained a treasure trove of Republican oppo, including videos of the younger Biden smoking crack and having sex, and emails from a Ukrainian businessman pleading with Hunter to use connections to help the corrupt energy firm Burisma escape a shakedown.

Later, the Burisma exec appeared to thank the younger Biden for an introduction to his father. The Post strongly suggested that these emails, in conjunction with the well-known tale of Joe Biden demanding the ouster of then-General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, represented a misuse of influence.

Soon after the story was published, we were hit with a stunner: two major tech platforms, Twitter and Facebook, took third-world style steps to limit the distribution of the story. Facebook announced that it was slowing the article’s spread on its news feed via a tweet from Andy Stone, a Facebook employee whose previous jobs included handling communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and for Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer [...].

That presents the two major pieces: the story in the Post, and the censorship of the story by two social media giants. Most non-right-wing writers, worried about appearing to attack Joe Biden in the run-up to the Most Important Election Ever (and who knows, maybe it is), have focused either on the censorship side of the story, or attributed the Post-published elements — the laptop and what it purports to contain — to Russian interference. (No one in the Biden camp has declared the released emails to be false, for what that's worth.)

But even focusing alone on the censorship side of the story produces confusion. Is what Facebook and Twitter did actual censorship, a traditionally bad thing in the liberal world? Or were they instead refusing to comply with "Russian interference in our election," something called an act of war not too long ago, thus giving their silence resistance-hero status? Even liberal opinion is divided on that one.

(Phil Ochs has a now-famous song about "liberals" in the 1960s. Listen again, but instead of his opening line — "I cried when they shot Medgar Evers" — substitute, "I cried when they published her emails.")

The Underlying Story

But let's look at the story itself, again through Matt Taibbi's eyes. (Part of this comes from the piece linked above and part comes from a longer, subscriber-only version of the same piece.)

As Taibbi points out, of those outlets that did cover the underlying story — the supposedly stolen laptop, the supposedly copied drive, the photos and emails it supposedly contained — mostly reported only on its electoral effect and not on the truth or falsity of its allegations. 

Even those who did report on the relations between the Bidens and Burisma did so in a binary, an on-off yes-or-no, way:

• Did Burisma use Hunter to "bribe" Joe Biden, the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine? Yes or no?

• Did Joe Biden try to get the Ukrainian investigator fired to help his son escape investigation? Yes or no?

The actual tale may be much more complex and interesting. Here's how Taibbi, who, we must remember, spent many years in Russia and "knows their ways," seems to have pieced it together. 

After a long description (well worth reading) of various machinations by Burisma's founder, a corrupt, former public official named Mykola Zlochevsky and a benefactor during the regime of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Taibbi writes this:

To recap: an oligarch [Zlochevsky] whose company’s wealth was tied to embezzlement and graft was booted from power via revolution in February, 2014, causing his company’s assets to come under fire, both in Ukraine and abroad. With Zlochevsky’s former protector Viktor Yanukovich having fled Ukraine back to Russia, Burisma scrambled to shore up a new power base. Within six weeks of the revolution, the firm brought big names onto its board, including former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, Biden, and Devon Archer, pal to Hunter and the college roommate of Christopher Heinz, stepson to John Kerry. They would later add former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black. [...]

Essentially, a mob enterprise gearing up to defend itself against international lawsuits and seizure orders hired as decorative cover an ex-president of Poland, the son of a sitting U.S. Vice President, and a close family friend and business partner of the son of the American Secretary of State — not exactly subtle, and far beyond nepotism.

The truth of these events, then, is more nuanced — less binary if not less damning — than the black-and-white lens we are offered to view them through:

The Burisma board deals were a protection scheme, funded with stolen money and designed to scare off commercial rivals and would-be regulators alike. Archer and Hunter Biden, even if they never did a minute of work for Burisma, were being paid to provide a criminal enterprise with the appearance of American protection. Similarly, if Joe Biden never actually intervened on behalf of Burisma, Hunter’s presence on Burisma’s board made it possible for anyone to argue that he was.

At best, Biden and Archer were put on Burisma's board to provide Zlochevsky and Burisma protection against their enemies in the new, unfriendly-to-Zlochevsky Ukrainian government. Whether Biden and Archer knew this or not — and how could they not know? what could this free money otherwise be for? — it corrupted them both to take those jobs. 

The Corruption That Shows the Corruption

For them to benefit from these gifts and yet be widely defended for taking them, is one more instance, as anyone with eyes must know, of institutional corruption at its core. Accepting these board positions goes "beyond nepotism," in Taibbi's phrase, to complicity with all the corruption abroad we supposedly abhor — and which we use as a reason to overthrow unfriendly governments. Yet this kind of corruption can never be prosecuted here, because our own corrupt institution — the present American state — has legalized and legitimized it. 

For example, here's Matt Yglesias, a Hunter Biden critic, making the Establishment case for Biden's relationship with Burisma: "The worst you can say about any of this, however, was that Hunter’s position on the board was a standing conflict of interest that should have been avoided. There’s no evidence that Joe did anything wrong, specifically."

That's not the worst you can say. Hunter Biden can be — and likely was — both innocent and guilty simultaneously. He didn't have to be "taking a bribe for Joe" or "just benefiting when he can" to be complicit in, and a beneficiary of, everything that's wrong with the stinking Ukrainian state. That's an overlap of ideas our modern media, and our Trump-obsessed, #BackToBrunch liberal minds, can't seem to fathom. 

I can't wait to see what happens after Biden takes the White House. No one will be going back to brunch.

  

GOP Senate Lemmings Headed For Cliff

 

There was a ton of info in the latest Change Research poll of new and infrequent voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that was released yesterday. "New and infrequent" but this year 84% of them say they are definitely voting. This is going to be the highest turnout election in our lifetimes and Trump is the motivating factor-- mostly antipathy towards him. Biden leads by 49-37% among these voters, who went for Hillary Clinton by 35-30%. Undecided voters are largely negative about both candidates, but they’re much more strongly negative about Trump than Biden. Biden leads among this cohort of voters in all 6 of these swing states-- 50-36% in Arizona, 52-37% in Florida, 58-31% in Michigan, 47-38% in North Carolina, 49-39% in Pennsylvania and 43-41% in Wisconsin. More factoids:

• Biden leads 44-16 among Gary Johnson voters
• Biden leads 42-17 among Jill Stein voters
• Biden leads 47-32 among those who did not vote in 2016
• A plurality of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe every single conspiracy theory and falsehood Change Research asked about, although more voters believe Trump is trying to suppress the vote, and that Russia is interfering, than that Democrats are trying to rig the election
• 5% of these voters would take a vaccine as soon as possible, even if it has not gone through standard safety procedures

And Republicans up and down the ballot are circling the drain with Trump. The latest poll in Arizona how's Mark Kelly ousting GOP incumbent Martha McSally by 10 points 52-42%. The latest poll in Maine has Sara Gideon beating GOP incumbent Susan Collins by 12 points 54-42%. The latest poll of Colorado voters shows them picking Hickenlooper over incumbent Cory Gardner by 10 points, 52-42%. Even in beet red South Carolina the latest polling shows Democratic lobbyist Jaime Harrison tied (48-48%) with Trump-whisperer Lindsey Graham!

Republican senators may know they're marching over the cliff but these lemmings are not breaking ranks with Trump. Eric Lutz wrote yesterday at Vanity Fair that Senate Republicans still seem dead set on doing Trump's dirty work. Especially Wisconsin sociopathic reactionary Ron Johnson, who has already announced his 2022 lame-duckiness.

I doubt there's a more blatant and preposterous hack in the Senate than Ron Johnson. Ginning up a fake investigation of Hunter Biden's moronic adventures in Ukraine, Johnson said, "I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection." He's been running around telling anyone who will listen that he has an October surprise to tarnish Biden coming out of his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee fishing expedition.

Following a vote Wednesday morning, Johnson will expand his panel’s Crossfire Hurricane probe. The committee authorized dozens of subpoenas to be issued to Obama era officials, including Bruce Ohr and Andrew McCabe-- two frequent Trump targets over their role in the Russia investigation that consumed the first two years of his presidency. But another vote, to issue subpoenas in the Burisma probe, was canceled after Mitt Romney slammed that inquiry as a “political exercise” aimed at taking down Biden.

“It’s not the legitimate role of government, for Congress or for taxpayer expense, to be used in an effort to damage political opponents,” Romney said. “I do believe it's very important that the committees of Congress, and ours in particular, not fall into an increasing pattern that we're seeing, which is using taxpayer dollars and the power of Congress to do political work. That's the role of campaigns.”

Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict during Trump’s impeachment trial earlier this year, had previously expressed concerns that Johnson’s Burisma probe was being driven by partisan politics rather than oversight. On Wednesday, he said recent remarks by the committee leader “have only confirmed that perspective.” He was likely referring to comments Johnson made earlier this week during a video conference with Republicans, in which he promised to release a report that would hurt Biden politically. “Stay tuned,” the Wisconsin Republican said, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “In about a week we’re going to learn a whole lot more of Vice President Biden’s unfitness for office.”

Of course, there’s been no evidence that Biden did anything wrong in Ukraine, and Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, has railed against Johnson for “knowingly advancing discredited claims that our own Intelligence Community has warned are part of a Russian attack on our democracy.” Nevertheless, Johnson has continued to promise a report by election day November 3.

With his sharp rebuke of the Burisma probe, Romney effectively got the vote to issue subpoenas in the Burisma probe scrapped. But the Utah Senator did vote in favor of dozens of subpoenas in the committee’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia inquiry, which the president and his allies have claimed was a “witch hunt” by deep state officials who sought to undermine Barack Obama’s successor. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, identified procedural missteps by federal law enforcement in the early days of the investigation, but found no evidence of political bias. Still, Attorney General William Barr and other Trump allies have been investigating their boss’s investigators, particularly since Biden, the vice president under Obama, became the Democratic nominee. Romney expressed support for a narrow inquiry by Johnson’s committee into the errors outlined by Horowitz, as long as it “does not fall in the realm of rank political undertaking.” But, in the hands of a loyalist like Johnson, whose stated mission is to damage Biden and help Trump, it’s hard to imagine such a probe being anything but that.

Yesterday afternoon, Johnson announced he has COVID-19 and is going into quarantine. Pray that the October surprise isn't the one he was plotting. Samantha Bee has a November surprise to discuss:

Unless He Pleads Insanity, Giuliani Is Going To Prison

Super Ethical, Always Legal by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal quoted Señor Trumpanzee admitting what people who watch Giuliani have long known: "He looks for corruption wherever he goes." Republicans have been claiming Giuliani has been helping Trump with foreign affairs. Giuliani, on the other hand, has claimed je was just tending to his own business. Yep-- looking for opportunities "for corruption wherever he goes." That's Rudy alright.

CNN reporter Erica Orden wrote yesterday that "Federal prosecutors in New York have subpoenaed the brother of one of the recently indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani, according to two people familiar with the matter, as they escalate their investigation in the campaign-finance case." Igor and Lev-- and presumably Giuliani-- are in deep doo-doo, of their own making. It was Igor's bro-- Steven-- who got subpenaed. According to CNN, "Investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents." That sounds serious. While Democratic presidential nominee hopeful/pipsqueak, Mayo Pete was saying how he'd appoint more judges like Kennedy and Souter, neutral right-of-center wishy washy "moderates," a strong justice-and-values-driven judge has been signing some search warrants that are probably not making Trump and Barr very happy.

Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.

Since the October 9 arrests, federal agents visited the New York home of Steven Fruman and served him with a subpoena from Manhattan federal prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said.

...It's not clear why prosecutors are interested in Steven Fruman, or what specifically agents sought from the safe. Steven Fruman is listed in US Security and Exchange Commission filings as the vice president of FD Import & Export, the same company his brother ran.

Igor Fruman also appeared to use the address of a property in Woodmere, New York, that belongs to his brother when making certain political donations, according to Federal Election Commission and other public records.

As they pursue an ongoing investigation into Igor Fruman, Parnas and their co-defendants, prosecutors are also investigating Giuliani's Ukranian business dealings... In recent days, Giuliani has been seeking a criminal-defense attorney, CNN has reported. He says he has not been contacted by the FBI or by New York federal prosecutors.

Bess Levin noted in Vanity Fair yesterday that Giuliani "is now being investigated by the DOJ’s criminal division, in addition to a probe by the Southern District of New York... That makes things awkward not only for Giuliani, in that he’d presumably like to stay out of prison, but also for numerous members of the government with whom he worked on his Ukraine scheme, as well as, of course, for the president. "He appears to be a subject, if not a target, of an active investigation. So to have him be a part of the legal team would be troublesome, to say the least," Greg Brower, who worked as the FBI’s top liaison to Congress until 2018, told Politico. "At best it’s a messy situation and more likely it’s just completely dysfunctional." According to reporter Darren Samuelsohn, Giuliani was notably absent from the White House this week when Trump’s other lawyers huddled with him for an impeachment strategy session.

Giuliani has also been notably absent from the TV circuit of late, which suggests a rare prudence for a man who has had no problem incriminating his presidential client on television before. In recent days the anti-ferret activist turned presidential attorney’s only public comment has been a tweet that read, “With all the Fake News let me make it clear that everything I did was to discover evidence to defend my client against false charges. Dems would be horrified by the attacks on me, if my client was a terrorist. But they don’t believe @realDonaldTrump has rights. Justice will prevail.” Per Politico, a “back channel effort has been underway for more than a week” to help Giuliani lawyer up, and potential charges include “everything from violating federal statutes dealing with bribery, foreign lobbying registration, and disclosure to making false statements to government officials.”

Giuliani and Hunter Biden weren't just looking to squeeze the Ukrainians. Eric Levitz reported that both crooks did legal work for the same slimeball Romanian real estate tycoon charged with corruption, Gabriel Popoviciu. "As of last month," reported Levitz, "none of the fallout from Rudy’s Kiev vacation was enough to quell his appetite for unearthing Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in the former Soviet bloc. 'We haven’t moved to Romania yet,' Giuliani told Fox News in September, referring to Hunter’s unspecified illicit activities in that nation. 'Wait ‘til we get to Romania.'"

As it happens, Hunter Biden did once enjoy an ethically questionable gig in Romania. In 2016, when his father was still vice-president, Hunter agreed to provide legal advice to Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real-estate tycoon who’d recently been convicted on charges of corruption, and was mounting an appeal. In 2014, Joe Biden had forcefully advocated for the Romanian government to crack down on graft within its borders. And there is no evidence that Popoviciu secured any favors from the White House as a result of hiring Hunter. But it is extremely plausible that he hired Biden’s son in the hope that doing so he might ingratiate himself to the Obama administration. If Popoviciu merely wanted the advice of any undistinguished young attorney, he presumably could have found one with a lower hourly rate-- and more familiarity with the finer points of Romanian law-- in his home country.

So, you can understand why a stickler for legal ethics like Rudy Giuliani would object to Hunter’s behavior. After all, Popoviciu ultimately lost his appeal, and was sentenced to seven years in prison for his kleptocratic land deal. To monetize one’s affiliation with the White House-- by providing legal assistance to such a crook-- goes against everything Giuliani stands for.

Which, to be clear, is nothing. Rudy Giuliani stands for nothing (he’s more the sitting type). As NBC News reports:

Popoviciu was convicted in 2016 but launched an appeal. He assembled a high profile legal team to fight the conviction, which included former FBI director Louis Freeh … Freeh continued working on behalf of Popoviciu [after his appeal failed]. Last year, he tapped Giuliani, his longtime friend, to assist in his Romanian work.

Giuliani’s hiring created what appears in hindsight a strange-bedfellows arrangement. Giuliani, who has been the loudest critic of Hunter Biden’s work in the Ukraine, was working on the same side as the younger Biden in Romania.

In August 2018, Giuliani wrote a letter to Romania’s president and prime minister criticizing the country’s recent efforts to rein in corruption as overly aggressive. Giuliani’s position contradicted the U.S. stance on anti-corruption efforts in Romania.

I’m starting to think that Team Trump’s avowed concerns with corruption in Eastern Europe may not be entirely on the level.

Although it just because public yesterday, a couple of weeks ago, Giuliani butt-dialed an NBC News reporter at 11:07 pm and the 3 minute long message went right to voicemail. It was late in New York, but it was early in [where the hell] and the reporter heard 3 minutes of Giuliani hacking it up with [who the hell?].

Disorganized Crime

"You know," Giuliani says at the start of the recording. "Charles would have a hard time with a fraud case 'cause he didn't do any due diligence."

It wasn't clear who Charles is, or who may have been implicated in a fraud. In fact, much of the message's first minute is difficult to comprehend, in part because the voice of the other man in the conversation is muffled and barely intelligible.

But then, Giuliani says something that's crystal clear.

"Let's get back to business."

He goes on.

"I gotta get you to get on Bahrain."

Giuliani is well-connected in the kingdom of Bahrain.

Last December, he visited the Persian Gulf nation and had a one-on-one meeting with King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa in the royal palace. "King receives high-level U.S. delegation," read the headline of the state-run Bahrain News Agency blurb about the visit.

Giuliani runs a security consulting company, but it's not clear why he would have a meeting with Bahrain's king. Was he acting in his capacity as a consultant? As Trump's lawyer? Or as an international fixer running a shadow foreign policy for the president?

In May, Giuliani told the Daily Beast his firm had signed a deal with Bahrain to advise its police force on counterterrorism measures. But the Bahrain News Agency account of the meeting suggested Giuliani was viewed more like an ambassador than a security consultant. "HM the King praised the longstanding Bahraini-U.S. relations, noting keenness of the two countries to constantly develop them," it said.

The voicemail yielded no details about the meeting. But Giuliani can be heard telling the man that he's "got to call Robert again tomorrow."

"Is Robert around?" Giuliani asks.

"He's in Turkey," the man responds.

Giuliani replies instantly. "The problem is we need some money."

The two men then go silent. Nine seconds pass. No word is spoken. Then Giuliani chimes in again.

"We need a few hundred thousand," he says.

It's unclear what the two men were talking about. But Giuliani is known to have worked with a Robert who has ties to Turkey.

His name is Robert Mangas, and he's a lawyer at the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, as well as a registered agent of the Turkish government.

Giuliani himself was employed by Greenberg Traurig until about May 2018.

Mangas provided an affidavit in the case of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish gold trader charged in the United States with laundering Iranian money in a scheme to evade American sanctions.

Giuliani was brought on to assist Zarrab in 2017. He traveled to Turkey with his former law partner Michael Mukasey and attempted to strike a deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to secure the release of their jailed client, alarming the federal prosecutor leading the case.

Giuliani and Mangas were both employed by Greenberg Traurig at the time. The firm and Mangas had registered with the Justice Department to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of Turkey, according to an affidavit from Mangas.

Mangas provided the affidavit at the request of a judge to explain whether there was any conflict in Giuliani representing Zarrab while still employed by a firm registered to lobby on behalf of Turkey.

Mangas, who did not return a request for comment, says in the court document that Giuliani was never involved in the representation of Turkey.

A Greenberg Traurig spokesperson said Mangas has not been to Turkey since 2013. He joined the firm in 2014, according to his affidavit.

"Mr. Mangas has not spoken to Mr. Giuliani since before he left Greenberg Traurig in May 2018," the spokesperson said.

Giuliani's conversation partner can be heard responding to the "few hundred thousand" comment. But it's possible to make out only the beginning of his answer, and even that is somewhat garbled.

"I'd say even if Bahrain could get, I'm not sure how good [unintelligible words] with his people," the man says.

"Yeah, okay," Giuliani says.

"You want options? I got options," the man says.

"Yeah, give me options," Giuliani replies.

Of Course Trump's Family Is More Disgusting-- But, Sorry, That Doesn't Excuse Biden's Family Corruption

I was happy to see a George Washington University Politics Poll Tuesday morning showing Biden cratering. The two progressives in the race are tremendously outpacing the 3 corporate Dems still in contention:

• Elizabeth Warren- 28%
• Bernie- 21%
• Status Quo Joe- 18%
• Mayo Pete- 5%
• Kamala- 5%

I'd like to think it's all about the platforms the various candidates are running on. Bernie and Elizabeth are, for example, vigorously backing Medicare-for-All. Biden, Buttigieg and Kamala all oppose it with foolish pretend-plans that would cripple it in birth. But I think it's not just policy. It's also the hit Biden has taken, particularly among independent voters, because of the swampy nature of his disgusting Trump-like family. The repulsive Biden family-- and not just Hunter-- have traded on Joe Biden's elected positions to bring millions of dollars into the family coffers.

Neither Biden nor Trump have anything to offer the American people and would just as soon fight an election over which one lies more, which one is less incapacitated by the onset of senility and which one has a less disgusting and corrupt family. Hunter Biden attempted-- and failed, of course-- to paint a pretty picture of his own legalistic corruption in a disastrous interview with ABC News’ Amy Robach.

“In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part. Is that I think that it was poor judgment because I don't believe now, when I look back on it-- I know that there was-- did nothing wrong at all," said Biden. However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is...a swamp in-- in-- in many ways? Yeah.”

"I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That's where I made the mistake," Hunter Biden told ABC News in an exclusive interview. "So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever."

"Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah," he said, again referring to fallout from his overseas business. "But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not."

Biden said, "I take-- full responsibility for that. Do I-- did I do anything improper? No, and not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever. I joined a board, I served honorably. I did-- I focused on corporate governance. I didn't have any discussions with my father before or after I joined the board as it related to it, other than that brief exchange that we had."

Even so, the 49-year-old has maintained a low profile in recent months as the president and his allies have targeted Hunter Biden for his professional endeavors in Ukraine and China.

...Hunter Biden reiterated that he never discussed his foreign business dealings with his father, and made it clear he has no interest in becoming a political football as congressional Democrats haul witnesses in for depositions as part of their impeachment proceedings.

"I'll let Congress handle that," he said. "And I'll let you guys in the media handle that. And I'll let my dad's campaign handle that. And the only thing that I'm looking to handle is to make certain that I get up every day and do the next right thing. And that really is the way that I've been trying to live my life."

Despite his desire to stay out of the spotlight, ethics experts told ABC News that Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company called Burisma, while his father fronted U.S. foreign policy toward Kyiv, could present an ethical conundrum-- an allegation Hunter fervently disputed.

Biden spoke with conviction when asked about how much information he shared with his father and even whether he was qualified.

“[My father] read the press reports that I'd joined the board of Burisma which was a Ukrainian natural gas company. And there's been a lot of misinformation about me, not about my dad. Nobody buys Dad. But-- by this idea that I was unqualified to be on the board,” said Biden.

“I was vice chairman of the board of Amtrak for five years,” he continued. “I was the chairman of the board of the U.N. World Food Program. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in-- in the world.”

“I think that I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board-- if not more.”

Even so, on Sunday the Biden campaign released details of a proposed government ethics plan, which included a stipulation designed to "rein in executive branch financial conflicts of interest"-- an apparent response to allegations lodged against the Biden family. And while he cited being a lawyer at a prominent firm and his record serving on several boards as qualifications for the job, in his interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden acknowledged that his last name likely played a role in his Burisma board appointment.

"If your last name wasn't Biden," Robach asked, "do you think you would've been asked to be on the board of Burisma?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Probably not, in retrospect," he said. "But that's-- you know-- I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden."

“Because my dad was Vice President of the United States. There's literally nothing, as a young man or as a full grown adult that-- my father in some way hasn't had influence over. It does not serve either one of us,” Biden continued.

On the same day the Biden campaign rolled out their government ethics plan, a lawyer for Hunter Biden announced that his client would step down from the board of directors of a Chinese-backed private equity company by the end of this month-- and commit to halting all work with foreign entities if his father wins the White House in 2020.

"I'm taking it off the table, Amy," Hunter Biden said of his decision to step away from any foreign businesses. "I'm making that commitment. Let’s see if anybody else makes that commitment. But that's the commitment that I'm making." “Look, I'm a private citizen,” he said. "One thing that I don't have to do is sit here and open my kimono as it relates to how much money I make or make or did or didn't. But it's all been reported.”

In a press conference over the weekend, Joe Biden said the decision "represents the kind of man of integrity [Hunter] is."

Well, I'm afraid that Biden is right there... the whole thing shows exactly what kind of integrity Hunter and the Biden family have been brought up in. They're defending all this because they have no choice if Biden Sr. is going to claw his way into the nomination, which they see slipping from his grasp, a blow to a family that aspires to be billionaires, not just mere millionaires. Meanwhile, predictably, Señor Trumpanzee "took the opportunity to recast the decision as Hunter 'being forced to leave a Chinese Company.' ... 'The Biden family was PAID OFF, pure and simple!' Trump tweeted earlier this month, echoing an accusation raised by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The president and his allies have accused Hunter Biden of banking $1.5 billion from the joint investment firm, a figure Hunter Biden called 'crazy' and 'has no basis in fact in any way.' Reports at the time indicated Hunter Biden's firm sought to raise $1.5 billion from the deal-- not that either he or his firm pocketed $1.5 billion from the deal." This is exactly how Trump can win reelection-- fighting over the swamp, not policies that could help ordinary American family. It's why Biden is the candidate he talks about most-- and in so doing encourages Trump-hating Democrats to support him. Trump wouldn't stand a chance against Bernie or against Elizabeth Warren. He'd wipe the floor with Biden. This is his kind of battle:

"They feel like they have the license to go out and say whatever they want," Hunter Biden said. "It's insane to even -- it feels to me like living in some kind of, you know, "Alice in Wonderland," where you're up on the real world and then you fall down the rabbit hole, and, you know, the president's the Cheshire Cat asking you questions about crazy things that don't bear any resemblance to the reality of anything that has to do with me."

Despite Hunter Biden’s dismissal of the $1.5 billion figure attached to his investment in the firm, ethics experts have said his connection with the Chinese-based corporation again raises the potential for the appearance of a conflict of interest, particularly in light of the fact that Hunter Biden flew with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two in 2013-- around the time the deal was negotiated.

"I've traveled everywhere with my dad," Hunter said. "And I went [to China in 2013] because my daughter was on the trip too."

Hunter Biden’s lawyer said he has yet to receive a financial return on investment, adding that he only became a minority stakeholder in the company in October 2017-- after Joe Biden was no longer vice president. Prior to then, he served as an unpaid director.

Again, Hunter Biden insists he never spoke of his professional dealings with his father on the 13-hour flight. And while he insists he did not engage in any business during the visit, he told the New Yorker in July that he did meet with a business partner, Jonathan Li, and even organized Li to shake hands with his father.

Asked about that interaction, Hunter Biden said he could not remember it specifically, but said he "probably" introduced them, and in fact "hoped" he had-- adding that he had been friends with Li for 13 years.

"Whether I'm in New York, or whether I'm in Washington, D.C., or whether I'm on the campaign trail in Nevada, or whether I am in Iowa with him-- [and] a friend and a business associate is in the hotel, and my dad's staying there-- is it inappropriate for me to have coffee with him?" Biden asked rhetorically.

Robach pressed the matter, though, asking Hunter what he would say to those "who believe this is exactly why people hate Washington."

"I don't know what to tell you. I made a mistake in retrospect as it related to creating any perception that that was wrong," Hunter Biden said. "My dad has never made a decision about anything, I'm absolutely certain, taking into account anything other than what is best for the American people and what the people that elected him to do. I am 100% certain of that."

...The president is not the only Trump family member to target the Bidens. At a campaign rally, Eric Trump, the president’s son, led a chant of "lock him up," referring to Hunter Biden. In response, Hunter called the Trumps "irrelevant," adding that he does not spend time thinking about them.

“Unlike them, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them. I really don't. It's all noise. And what they do is they create just an enormous amount of noise. I have to then answer questions-- about accusations made by probably the most unethical group of people that we've ever seen in this republic," Biden said.

"They'll never understand the level for how much I love my dad and how much he loves me," he said, adding later, "They're out of a B movie. I mean, they really are." “I've been through some sh-- stuff in my life. I've been through some real, real stuff. This isn't real stuff. It isn't. It truly isn't. That part of it, that Barnum and Bailey-- you know, say anything, do anything you want, you know, I mean, like, you know, Donald Prince Humperdinck-- Trump Jr. is not somebody that I really care about,” said Biden.

Hunter Biden likened the president to a bully, and said, "I don't feed bullies." In another jab at Trump, Hunter Biden told Robach he takes "no pleasure in this as watching this death spiral of this administration-- this president and the people that surround him."

Coincidentally, the other side of this hideous equation was painted at GQ this week by Jay Willis in an essay-- How Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump Have Profited Off Their Dad's Presidency. Short version refers to the Godzilla vs Mother battle with the Bidens: "No one knows a “clear conflict of interest” when they see it better than the president's children."

Setting aside the alternative facts underlying the Trump kids’ criticisms, however, their decision to wade into this controversy is notable for a different reason: During their father’s tenure as president, Don Jr. and Eric have repeatedly managed to cash in on their newfound positions of political privilege in their business dealings. So, too, have their sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom hold senior positions in the administration and whose companies and investment portfolios netted them anywhere between $29 million and $135 million last year, per their financial disclosure forms. Here are some of the highlights of when the family's business intertwining with government affairs constituted the “appearance of impropriety” and “conflict of interest.”

The real estate sales

Days before his inauguration in 2016, Donald Trump announced that he had given “complete and total” control of the Trump Organization to Don Jr. and Eric. In doing so, he dismissed critics who called on him to place his assets in a blind trust, arguing that transferring control to immediate family was sufficient to address any conflict-of-interest concerns. “No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office,” he promised.

Since then, Forbes says, the brothers have sold off more than $100 million worth of Trump Organization real estate. That figure includes a $33 million sale of the company’s stake in a federally subsidized housing complex-- a transaction Secretary of House & Urban Development Ben Carson had to approve-- and a $3.2 million sale of land in the Dominican Republic last year, which Forbes called “the clearest violation of their father’s pledge to do no new foreign deals while in office.” Taxpayers cover the security costs of each business trip the pair makes-- in the first two months of 2017 alone that included $97,830 for a trip to Uruguay, $53,155.25 for a trip to Vancouver, and $16,738.36 for a trip to Dubai, according to NBC News.

In February 2017, the Trump Organization unloaded a $15.8 million Trump Park Avenue penthouse-- a home formerly occupied by Jared and Ivanka-- to Angela Chen, who runs a consulting firm with ties to Chinese government officials and (allegedly) Chinese military intelligence, says Mother Jones. A Forbes analysis found that this price was 13 percent more than that paid for a comparable unit a year earlier, and that it sold at a time when the building’s other units, on average, were selling for 25 percent less.

The disappearing anti-nepotism laws

When news of Jared and Ivanka’s White House employment broke, observers noted the hirings appeared to be clear violations of federal anti-nepotism laws. Kushner, the heir to a mid-Atlantic real estate empire, had no experience that would qualify him for the many tasks to which his father-in-law would assign him: solving the opioid crisis, handling Middle East peace negotiations, modernizing the federal government, and reforming America’s criminal justice system.

On Inauguration Day, however, the Department of Justice released an opinion concluding that the statute does not apply to White House staff, allowing Kushner’s employment to go forward. When intelligence officials held up his application for a top-secret security clearance-- a delay due in part, the New York Times reported, to concerns about Kushner’s foreign business interests-- his place in the administration, theoretically, was in jeopardy. His father-in-law stepped in, though, overruling the officials and ordering then-chief of staff John Kelly to issue Kushner a clearance anyway. Ivanka's résumé was similarly thin for someone taking on a senior West Wing position—a fashion designer, Trump Organization executive, and sometimes-judge on The Apprentice. She also experienced delays in her attempts to obtain a security clearance, and she was also the beneficiary of some timely presidential intervention: According to CNN, Trump pressured both Kelly and then White House counsel Don McGahn to make decisions on Ivanka's clearance "so it did not appear as if he was tainting the process to favor his family." When Kelly and McGahn refused, Trump went ahead and approved his daughter's clearance himself.

Weeks before the CNN story broke, Ivanka told ABC News that she and her husband had "absolutely not" received special treatment from her father during the approval process. "The president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance. Zero," she said.

The intellectual property in China

Both Jared and Ivanka, who took a “formal leave of absence” from her eponymous fashion label to serve in her father’s White House, have taken full advantage of the benefits of their new jobs. In April, on the same day she and Kushner sat next to Chinese president Xi Jinping at a White House state dinner, the Chinese government gave its conditional approval for three trademarks granting Ivanka what the AP called “monopoly rights” to sell Ivanka-branded jewelry, bags, and spa services. China approved two more rounds of trademarks in May and June, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog.

In mid-2018, Ivanka shuttered her clothing brand altogether, citing a desire to focus on her work in Washington. However, she has since continued to seek potentially lucrative trademarks in China, leaving open the possibility that she could return to the brand after her time in public service concludes. (“As the daughter of the U.S. President, Ivanka Trump has an initial advantage of publicity,” Chinese designer Yang Mei explained to TIME in 2017.) Last fall, in the midst of her father’s trade war with China and his efforts to strike a new trade agreement between the two global superpowers, she won initial approval for 16 trademarks, and added five more to her portfolio earlier this year.

The free advertising

While the company was still active, Ivanka wasn’t shy about using the spotlight that comes with being the president’s daughter to goose sales of Ivanka-branded apparel and accessories. Journalists received a press release promoting a gold bracelet—starting at $8,800 and up to $10,800-- that she wore during a 60 Minutes interview in November 2016. A few months later, Ivanka Trump’s entire line received an enthusiastic on-air endorsement from Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, who called the clothing “wonderful” and urged Fox & Friends viewers to “go buy it today.” The White House said it “counseled” Conway in response.

After Ivanka wrapped a speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention where her father officially became the party’s presidential nominee, she tweeted a link inviting followers to “shop Ivanka’s look”: a pink Ivanka-branded dress that retailed for $138. It sold out within hours.

The miraculous Kushner bailout

For years, 666 Fifth Avenue was the most vexing line-item on the Kushner real estate ledger-- a Midtown skyscraper purchased for $1.8 billion, most of which the family borrowed, right before the 2008 recession. A mammoth mortgage of about $1.4 billion was due in February of this year, leading to speculation throughout Jared’s time in the West Wing about how, exactly, the Kushner family would come up with the cash. Multiple foreign governments seized on this uncertainty, privately discussing ways to take advantage of his business entanglements and financial difficulties when dealing with the United States, the Washington Post reported.

In April 2017, a real estate firm tied to the Kushner family made a direct appeal to the government of Qatar to invest in the troubled building, The Intercept reported. A month later, when a coalition of Persian Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates organized a blockade of Qatar, Kushner was among its most vocal U.S. supporters. According to NBC News, some Qatari officials believed the White House’s position was retaliation for their government’s decision not to make a deal with Kushner’s family. In the months that followed, Kushner developed a close working relationship with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman-- close enough that bin Salman allegedly told confidants that the president’s son-in-law was “in his pocket.”

Fortunately, help for the Kushner family’s financial woes subsequently arrived in the form of Brookfield Asset Management, which acquired a 99-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue for about $1 billion in April 2018. This miraculous timing allowed the Kushners to pay off its existing mortgage and buy out its partner in the venture, Vornado Realty Trust. The buyer was a semi-familiar face in this drama: One of Brookfield Asset Management’s largest investors is the government of Qatar. Both Brookfield and Qatar claimed that Qatar had no advance warning that its money would be bailing out the president’s son-in-law.

The real estate investments

In June, The Guardian reported that Cadre, a real estate investment company owned in part by Kushner, has taken in some $90 million in offshore funding via an ominously-described “opaque offshore vehicle” in the Cayman Islands since he joined the White House. Some of the money, The Guardian says, came from other tax shelters; some of it came from unidentified sources in-- you guessed it-- Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, as my colleague Luke Darby noted at the time, although Kushner has purportedly recused himself from decisions affecting real estate policy, Ivanka has done no such thing. The president’s daughter was instrumental in the effort to include in the 2017 tax reform bill an “Opportunity Zones” program, which extends lucrative tax breaks to rich people who invest capital in designated less-developed areas. According to the AP, Cadre is raising funds from investors to build Opportunity Zone projects, and the Kushner family already owns at least 13 properties in opportunity zones that could qualify for special tax treatment.

The golf course deals

Last month, in the midst of Trump’s Ukraine scandal and mere hours after Fox News host Jesse Watters asserted that the president’s sons “stopped doing international business deals” when he became president, one of the president's sons hopped on Twitter to celebrate a new international business deal at a Trump golf course in Scotland.

The agreement will allow the Trumps to build 550 new homes in the area, along with a second 18-hole course in the same development. It is a fortunate break for the Trump-owned resort, which finished its seventh straight year in the red in 2018, according to The Independent.

The stakes in Trump hotels

Just down the road from the White House is the Trump International Hotel, located in D.C.’s Old Post Office building leased in 2013 to one of Donald Trump’s holding companies for development as a luxury hotel. It is a federally-owned building on the National Register of Historic Places, which means the president is, in a manner of speaking, now acting as his own landlord on the lease. The property has become notorious for attracting members of Congress, lobbyists, Cabinet officials, interest groups, foreign heads of state, and anyone else looking to curry the president’s favor. In July, the Washington Post reported that an Iraqi sheikh, a few months after writing to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security advisor John Bolton to suggest a tougher position on Iran, spent 26 nights on an eighth-floor suite.

Each of the three eldest Trump kids, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, owns a 7.425-percent interest in the holding company that leases the building. Because Ivanka Trump fills out an annual financial disclosure as a White House employee, we know a bit more about how the that stake is paying off these days: Her most recent filing listed almost $4 million in annual revenue from the hotel.

The hotels that almost were

In summer 2017, the Trump boys were working on developing two new hotel chains: Scion, a line of four-star properties, and American Idea, a line of patriotically-decorated, moderately-priced properties in heartland markets. The New York Times reported that they came up with the idea on the campaign trail with their father, where they relished the opportunity to attend each rally but “were less enamored of the budget-friendly hotels along the way.”

Along with a pair of former campaign donors-turned-business-partners, the Trump Organization struck a deal after the election to open the first Scion hotel in Cleveland, Mississippi. Earlier this year, though, it pulled out of the agreement and shelved its expansion plan indefinitely. “We live in a climate where everything will be used against us, whether by the fake news or by Democrats who are only interested in presidential harassment,” Eric explained at the time. “We already have the greatest properties in the world and if we have to slow down our growth for the time being, we are happy to do it.”

The billion-dollar sales pitch

In February 2018, Don Jr. traveled to India in an effort to sell more than $1 billion worth of luxury residential units built there by the Trump Organization and its partners. According to the New York Times, advertisements heralding Don Jr.’s visit read: “Trump has arrived. Have you?” Rajiv Bansa, a salesman at one of the properties, predicted that the younger Trump would have little trouble moving the inventory on his whirlwind tour of the region. “Everyone in India knows who the U.S. president is,” he told The Times. “It’s a status symbol. This is a big brand, the president of the United States’ name will be on it.”

When The Times asked the White House if Don Jr.’s sales visit presented “even an appearance of a conflict of interest,” the White House declined to comment.

We deserve an election campaign about policies, not about this garbage. Vote for anyone you want to be the Democratic Party nominee-- except Joe Biden. Forget-- if you must-- that Status Quo Joe has an abysmal decades long record of serving corporate power and the military-industrial complex-- and for playing footsie with unreconstructed racists. Like Trump, Biden has nothing to offer the American people but his own neuroses and a vile family. It doesn't matter which family is worse, neither should be anywhere near the White House.

Ryan Knows-- Ryan Grim, That Is: Joe Biden’s Family Has Been Trading On Biden's Name For Decades-- And Democrats NEED To Acknowledge That... Now

Grim's right, of course. And if you're a regular DWT reader, you've known about it for years-- and this isn't just about Hunter Biden. That brother of his-- is he in prison yet?-- is even worse? Grim wrote that "The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication-- and sometimes the explicit argument-- that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden. Democrats have been loath to give any credibility to the wild rantings of Trump or his bagman Rudy Giuliani, leaving them to sidestep the question of Hunter Biden’s ethics or decision-making, and how much responsibility Joe Biden deserves. Republicans, though, have no such qualms, and have made clear that smearing the Bidens as corrupt will be central to Trump’s reelection campaign. The Trump approach is utterly without shame or irony, with attacks even coming from failson Eric Trump."

Biden has been taking political hits over of the intersection of his family’s financial dealings and his own political career for some four decades. Yet he has done nothing publicly to inoculate himself from the charge that his career is corruptly enriching his family, and now that is a serious liability. By contrast, one of his opponents in the presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT) went so far as to refuse to endorse his son Levi Sanders when he ran for Congress, saying that he does not believe in political dynasties. In defending the Biden’s nepotistic relationship, Democrats would be forced to argue that, to be fair, such soft corruption is common among the families of senior-level politicians. But that’s a risky general-election argument in a political moment when voters are no longer willing to accept business-as-usual. For now, Biden’s opponents in the presidential campaign appear to all hope that somebody else will make the argument, while congressional Democrats don’t want to do anything to undermine their impeachment probe. And so Biden skates.

...In 2006, Beau Biden, who died of cancer in 2015, was roped into an investment meeting led by James and Hunter Biden, at the firm Paradigm Global Advisors. The family was considering acquiring the firm, and James Biden told executives there he’d have no problem bringing in people looking for an in with Joe Biden, who was a U.S. senator at the time. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden,” James Biden told officials with the firm, according to a Politico Magazine investigation.

Beau Biden turned red in the face, telling his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.” Hunter and James Biden denied the account to Politico, but the magazine stood by it, citing multiple sources with similar recollections. “We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” a Paradigm executive recalls James Biden saying.

In 2014, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, Chris Heinz, gave Hunter a similar warning. The pair were partners in an investment firm, Rosemont Seneca, when Hunter Biden and a third partner, Devon Archer, were invited to join the board of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings.

Heinz, through a spokesperson, told the Washington Post that he strongly objected to Hunter Biden and Archer taking the board seats. “Mr. Heinz strongly warned Mr. Archer that working with Burisma was unacceptable. Mr. Archer stated that he and Hunter Biden intended to pursue the opportunity as individuals, not as part of the firm,” the Post reported. “The lack of judgment in this matter was a major catalyst for Mr. Heinz ending his business relationships with Mr. Archer and Mr. Biden.”

Obama administration officials, too, were concerned. Amos Hochstein, the special envoy for energy policy, raised the question with Biden, the New Yorker reported.

In April 2014, Hunter went ahead and accepted the invitation to join the board, along with a fee of at least $50,000 per month.

Beau Biden and Chris Heinz both recognized what was plainly before their eyes: Cashing in on the Biden family name was wrong. Now, Democratic voters are faced with the same quandary. They can see the corruption in front of their eyes, and they have to decide whether that’s the argument they want to have with Trump in 2020-- or whether they want to nominate someone else who will allow the party to make the corruption argument cleanly.

Hunter told the New Yorker he and his dad had a tacit understanding that they would never talk business. The Biden campaign claimed to the magazine that the two never spoke about his work in Ukraine, though Hunter says they did talk about it. “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do,’” Hunter told the New Yorker. (The Biden campaign declined to comment for this story.)

In trading on his father’s name and power to advance his career, Hunter Biden was following in the footsteps of James Biden, Joe’s younger brother. It began small. In 1973, one year after Joe Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29, James Biden opened the nightclub Seasons Change with what Politico, referencing contemporaneous local reporting in Delaware, called “unusually generous bank loans.” When James ran into trouble, Joe, as a senator, later complained that the bank shouldn’t have loaned James the money. “What I’d like to know,” Biden told the News Journal in 1977, “is how the guy in charge of loans let it get this far.” The paper investigated, and sources at the bank said that the loan was made because James was Joe’s brother.

James, in the ’90s, founded Lion Hall Group, which lobbied for Mississippi trial lawyers involved in tobacco litigation. According to Curtis Wilkie’s book The Fall of the House of Zeus, the trial lawyers wanted James Biden’s help pushing Joe Biden on tobacco legislation.

That same decade, in 1996, Hunter Biden got in the game. Fresh out of law school, with thousands of options before him, he chose to go work for MBNA, then a dominant issuer of credit cards, while also serving as Biden’s deputy campaign manager. MBNA was one of the most powerful corporations in Delaware, a state with no shortage of major companies thanks to its lax tax and regulatory approach, and has since been absorbed by Bank of America. Biden in the 1990s was known half-jokingly as the senator from MBNA, though he didn’t find it funny. “I’m not the senator from MBNA,” he said in 1999.

He was, however, MBNA’s greatest champion in the Senate. Throughout the 1990s, bankruptcies were on the rise, and MBNA began pushing hard to reform the law to make it harder for people to discharge debt. The controversy brought Elizabeth Warren into politics; a well-known bankruptcy law professor, she was appointed to a commission to review the law, which began her decadeslong clash with Biden.

In 2001, Hunter Biden transitioned full-time to a federal lobbyist, though he stayed on the payroll of MBNA as a consultant until 2005, when President George W. Bush signed Biden’s Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act into law. It was a savage piece of legislation, and Joe Biden even worked to block an amendment that would have offered bankruptcy protection to people with medical debt. The bill also blocked people from discharging private student loan debt under bankruptcy. Total student loan debt was under $400 billion in 2005; it surged in the wake of the law’s passage and is now over $1.5 trillion.

Hunter Biden’s transparent cashing-in on his name was becoming a political liability for his father, so Joe Biden pushed him to find non-lobbying work, Anthony Lotito, a New York financial adviser, said in a complaint he filed in a New York state court. (James and Hunter, in a separate filing, denied that Joe Biden had made the call to Lotito, their prospective partner in the Paradigm purchase.)

That Joe Biden saw Hunter’s work as politically damaging enough to him in 2005 demonstrates that he was entirely aware of the appearance it gave of corruption. His solution was to help Hunter and James into their positions at Paradigm Global Advisors. It was there that James told company officials that clients looking to “invest in Joe Biden” would come knocking, as Politico Magazine reported.

In 2007, James Biden teamed up again with some of the tobacco lawyers from the previous decade, planning to launch a lobbying firm that Hunter would also be involved in. Again, the affair became a political problem for Biden, thanks to a sordid moment in which James Biden’s two prospective partners were caught on an FBI wiretap saying, “We really need to push on the Senate bill,” and “We’re going to meet with the Bidens around noon,” apparently in reference to legislation to compensate black farmers for discrimination. The firm never came to fruition because one of the Bidens’ potential partners was arrested.

That year, Biden launched his second failed presidential bid, but he wound up on the ticket with Barack Obama, serving the next eight years as vice president. Hunter’s relationship with MBNA became a political problem again. A 2008 New York Times story, headlined, “Obama Aides Defend Bank’s Pay to Biden Son,” reads like deja vu: ”Obama aides said he had never lobbied for MBNA and that there was nothing improper about the payments,” which were reported to be $100,000 per year. News that the University of Delaware had paid Biden’s firm millions, and gotten many millions more in earmarks, also caused the vice presidential nominee trouble.

In the meantime, Paradigm Global Advisors fared poorly and shut down in 2010. James quickly found new work, joining a construction firm in November 2010. In June 2011, while Joe Biden was overseeing Iraq policy, the firm won a $1.5 billion contract building homes in Iraq.

The company’s founder, Irvin Richter, told Fox Business Network that having James on board helped. “Listen, his name helps him get in the door, but it doesn’t help him get business,” he said. “People who have important names tend to get in the door easier but it doesn’t mean success. If he had the name Obama, he would get in the door easier.”

Hunter, meanwhile, went into business with Heinz, forming the firm Rosemont Seneca, along with partners Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin. In 2012, Archer and Hunter Biden connected with Jonathan Li, who ran a Chinese private equity fund, Bohai Capital, and began talks about working together. They did a large real estate deal together in 2013 and began setting up a joint fund. In late 2013, Hunter Biden traveled with his father on official business to China, where he introduced the vice president to his partner, Li.

The new firm, Bohai Harvest RST, as The Intercept reported earlier this year, would go on to invest in facial-recognition technology used to surveil China’s Muslim population as part of its ongoing cultural genocide operation. The firm, according to the Wall Street Journal, planned to raise $1.5 billion in capital. Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani have since contorted that reality into the notion that China simply handed Hunter Biden $1.5 billion. “I wonder where the hell that money is, man, because I’ve got to pay tuitions,” Biden has since responded. “God bless me!”

And then there’s Ukraine. In February 2014, Hunter Biden, less than a year after enlisting in the Navy, was discharged for testing positive for cocaine. But a new opportunity was about to present itself: That same month, protesters in Maidan Square overthrew the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, sparked by the government’s unwillingness to sign an association agreement with the European Union.

The new government leaned heavily toward the West and away from Russia, and a jockeying for wealth and power shook the ruling class. Remnants of the old regime became targets, and one of those was Burisma Holdings, owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, an oligarch and former government official tied to Yanukovych. Regulators in London had seized more than $20 million in cash from the firm amid claims by rivals that it had compiled its assets illegally. Zlochevsky needed Western bona fides, and he needed them fast, so Hunter Biden was brought on board.

The New Yorker article details Hunter Biden’s struggles with drugs and alcohol, which included run-ins with the law and stints in rehab. One particularly out-of-control bender, which involved a crack pipe found in a rental car, took place while Biden was making $50,000 a month serving on the board of Burisma. In 2014, he was gracing the front page of the company’s website, according to web archives.

My problem with all this-- aside from how repulsive the Biden family has always been-- is that I want to see an election based on issues that are important for the future of our country: the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, Education-for-All, Housing-for-All, Justice-for-All, etc. And not a campaign based on who lies more, who's more senile and who has a more disgusting, crooked family. I'm sure Trump is worse in every single case, but that doesn't make Biden worth voting for, at least not for me. Conservative Democrat Dianne Feinstein is impressed. She was the very first senator to endorse Biden but decided to reendorce him-- in case anyone forgot she is one of the worst Democrats in Congress. More people say they a Feinstein endorsement would make them vote against Biden than for him.