Why is media bending over backward to defend Biden?
WASHINGTON » President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not “beautiful” or “perfect.” Far from it. Trump shouldn’t have asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden or to cooperate with his private attorney Rudolph Giuliani’s investigation of the former vice president’s son. It is a stretch to claim his conduct rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But it was highly inappropriate.
However, Trump’s malfeasance shouldn’t absolve Joe Biden and his son. Two things can be true at the same time: that Trump did something wrong, and that Joe and Hunter Biden did something wrong as well. Yet the media is bending over backward to absolve the Bidens.
Many in the media state as fact that Biden’s actions in encouraging the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin had nothing to do with his investigation of the natural gas company Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden as a board member. His firing was justified, they say, because the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund and other U.S. allies were demanding he be fired as well.
But here’s what’s incontestably true: Joe Biden had a conflict of interest. His son took a position with a Ukrainian natural gas company the very same month the elder Biden visited Kiev and urged Ukraine to increase its natural gas production. As Yoshiko Herrera, an expert in Russia and Eurasia policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, put it, “conflict-of-interest rules should have applied.”
Reuters reports that the investigation of Burisma “focused solely on activity that took place before Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, was hired to sit on its board.” Did it occur to anyone that maybe that is precisely why Burisma hired the American vice president’s son? According to The New York Times, Biden’s hiring “allowed Burisma to create the perception that it was backed by powerful Americans.” As Robert Weissman, president of the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, has said, “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Hunter’s foreign employers and partners were seeking to leverage Hunter’s relationship with Joe, either by seeking improper influence or to project access to him.” The revelation that Hunter Biden accepted a job with a Ukrainian company that was under investigation while his father was taking the lead in fighting corruption in Ukraine is damning, not exculpatory.
Biden knew about his son’s involvement with Burisma, because The New Yorker has reported that in December 2015 Obama energy czar Amos Hochstein “raised the matter with Biden.” We also know, via the Times, that “some State Department officials had expressed concern that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine could complicate his father’s diplomacy there.”
The Code of Federal Regulations (§2635.502) clearly states that when a federal official takes action he knows will affect “a relative with whom the employee has a close personal relationship” and “the circumstances would cause a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question his impartiality in the matter, the employee should not participate in the matter.”
Joe Biden shouldn’t have taken the lead on Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden was working for Burisma. And even if Shokin deserved to be fired, Biden shouldn’t have delivered the ultimatum.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings, in Ukraine and elsewhere, are crying out for investigation. That does not mean it was appropriate for Trump to raise them with the Ukrainian president. But the fact that Trump did so does not give the media carte blanche to make excuses for the Biden family.