A Shameless Defense

Chutzpah, thy name is Biden — or, more precisely, the Biden family’s defenders. The latest is Hunter Biden’s complaint that pressure from Republicans may push him off the drugs-and-booze wagon, with the first son grandiosely telling Axios that “the future of democracy” could be at stake if he begins abusing again.

Yeesh.

Sorry: Addiction is irrelevant to what’s undeniably established in the public record: Hunter and his uncle Jim brought in millions by convincing foreign actors that they could influence Joe’s official actions as vice president. And Joe played along, meetingand getting on the phone with their clients.

Yet now the Biden family’s defenders say it’s all Russian disinformation, because the (Biden) Justice Department charges that Alexander Smirnov lied to the FBI in 2020 about $5 million Burisma bribes to Hunter and Joe.

Somehow, this supposed to completely discredit House investigators who paid heed to the bribe allegation. Ex-CIA Director John Brennan insists: “The fact that [Rep. James] Comer and [Rep. Jim] Jordan and others willingly accept these things, and they don’t care whether it’s true or not as long as it’s salacious, as long as it’s something they can use . . . This is something that the Russians recognize is ready for their exploitation.”

Brennan, mind you, spent years breathlessly peddling the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which was based entirely on disinformation from the thoroughly discredited Steele dossier. When it comes to eagerly accepting “salacious” info “as long as it’s something they can use,” that beats the Republicans investigating Hunter and Joe.

Heck, this isn’t even the first round of crying “Russia” to protect the Bidens. Brennan joins others of the 51 “intel experts” who in 2020 baselessly claimed The Post’s reporting off Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and now cite Smirnov as proof their disinfo campaign then was valid.

No: Smirnov’s claims had nothing to do with the evidence on the laptop — a damning goldmine of emails on Hunter’s sleazy business dealings. Nor does it change the fact that Veep Joe pushed for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin after he began looking into Hunter-paying Burisma.

All the flimsy excuses shouldn’t stop House investigators from getting to the bottom of Hunter’s dirty dealing and his dad’s role in it.