The third year of Joe Biden’s presidency has been brutal. And it’s about to get a lot worse, in a very personal sense.
At a time of deep polarization, Americans of all political stripes are united in rejecting Biden’s economic policies. Polls show that 70% of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and a majority rate the economy as poor.
His open borders policy is setting off security alarms at the FBI and causing serious financial problems in cities governed by fellow Democrats.
Beyond his political failures, the president’s physical and mental deterioration is so pronounced that most voters do not want him to seek a second term, including most of his own party.
Then there are the two regional wars that could lead to global conflicts. Even as he leads the West’s long and costly support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, Biden has been forced to help Israel destroy Hamas, a stance that divides his party and has led to a surprising rise in anti-Semitism in his country. .
The avalanche of crises is more than enough trouble for any 80-year-old president facing a grueling re-election campaign, one in which a New York Times poll showed him trailing Donald Trump in five of six battleground states.
And now comes the threat that affects us most: the president is likely to be impeached by Republicans for his role in his family’s corrupt influence-peddling schemes.
All of Biden’s chickens are coming home to roost, at the same time.
Comer’s investigation
Last week’s announcement by House Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky that he subpoenaed the president’s son, Hunter, and his brother, Jim Biden, and other family members, shows that the investigation has entered a new phase.
Although Comer made no secret from the beginning that he was targeting the president, the demand for testimony and documents from family members and former family associates puts a clear target on Biden’s back.
It is as if the preliminary stage is complete and the final act is about to unfold.
The precedent for the new subpoenas was the discovery of two checks written to Joe by brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Sara. One check was for $200,000, another for $40,000, and both contained the words “loan repayment” in the note space.
The transfers reached Joe just days after the family received large payments from clients passing through a complicated series of bank accounts obviously designed to conceal the source and ultimate recipients of the money.
One of the clients, a Chinese energy conglomerate, sent $5 million to a joint account controlled by Hunter Biden and a Chinese national. The money arrived days after Hunter said in a 2017 WhatsApp message to a company leader who was sitting next to his father and that the two would never forget that they had not sent the money, which Hunter said was owed for a previous work.
According to Comer, shortly after the $5 million arrived, $400,000 was transferred to an account owned by Hunter.
He then transferred $150,000 to another account controlled by Jim and Sara Biden.
He soon withdrew $50,000 in cash, deposited it into his and Jim’s personal checking accounts, and days later wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.
The amount, which represents 10% of Hunter’s $400,000, matches the percentage of the deal Hunter was said to have kept secret for the “big guy.”
Comer, who scoffs at the claim that both checks to Joe were loan payments, demanded that the White House submit documentation “that clarifies the nature of this payment and whether all applicable documentation and IRS filings were properly made.”
He got no response, but Comer made the most important point: Even if the payments were to cover loans, they would still prove the heart of the impeachment case: that the president directly benefited from his family’s plans to sell his “brand.”
So far, the investigation has found 20 shell companies, most of them created when Joe Biden was vice president.
It also identified $24 million that the family and its associates obtained over five years from foreign nationals in China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Kazakhstan.
Again, most of those payments were for work apparently performed during Joe’s vice presidency, even if he received some payments when he was a private citizen, starting in 2017.
Biden’s information on Beijing
As I have noted, Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom Biden will meet with on Wednesday, knows more than Americans about Joe’s loot from China and any quid pro quo.
Comer puts it this way: By accepting Chinese funds, “Joe Biden exposed himself to future blackmail and put US interests behind his own desire for money.”
The investigation is called a “preliminary impeachment inquiry,” giving it more power than a regular congressional subpoena to demand documents and testimony.
The next step would be a formal impeachment process, which typically leads to articles of impeachment and a full House vote.
Democrats on Comer’s panel, desperate to avoid that moment, have been almost comical in trying to defend the president. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland even insisted that the evidence shows that Joe “did not benefit from the businesses of his family members.”
That’s actually the opposite of what the evidence shows, but the effort shows how little Democrats have to work with as one Biden lie after another is destroyed.
Let us remember that, once, the president stated that he had never spoken with him about his son’s business. When photos and emails on Hunter’s laptop proved otherwise, the White House backtracked, saying the president “never had any business” with his son.
That’s ridiculous, as if Republicans need to strike a father-son partnership deal to make their case.
Hunter, who faces a federal weapons charge and two tax charges after an embarrassing five-year investigation that the Justice Department tried to quash, may have some success in delaying testimony and document production because of his pending trial.
It’s probably the closest thing Joe Biden will get to good news, but it won’t be enough to protect him from the truth.
