Based on comments to the Senate by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, President Trump had good reason to want to know what former VP Joe Biden was up to in Ukraine.
By S.T. Patrick
The impeachment trial may finally be over for the country, but watching former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) eviscerate the Biden family in the Senate impeachment hearings had to be cathartic to many Republicans who felt as if the mainstream media had tried to blame President Donald Trump for every imaginable global and domestic ill. Bondi served as special council to the president during the impeachment process.
On Jan. 27, Bondi addressed the Senate as to why Trump had a legal reason to investigate corruption by asking Ukraine to look into a seemingly clear conflict of interest regarding former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the Kyiv natural gas company Burisma.
Burisma was under investigation when Biden was vice president of the United States. In fact, Biden had asked that the prosecutor in the case be fired. Hunter was being paid very well for doing very little for Burisma. In short, this is the textbook example of buying political influence at a time when the U.S. was very concerned with Ukrainian corruption.
Hunter was not the only one with questionable entanglements. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz, was also being pad by Ukrainian interests for what also seems like mere political influence. If either Hunter or Heinz had any specific skill valuable to a billion-dollar Ukrainian company, the mainstream media has yet to find it.
The Obama administration was not completely oblivious to the profit being made by the families of its chief appointees. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and State Department official George Kent both raised concerns. Hunter didn’t leave Burisma until his father announced his candidacy for the presidency in April 2019. The former vice president was about to be heavily scrutinized in a long primary season. Team Biden obviously believed Hunter’s employment would be a problem in the campaign.
House Democrats tried to make the argument that Trump’s request to Ukraine was solely political, a sitting president concerned with a Democratic challenger. Bondi was present to show that the House, alone, had mentioned the Bidens and Burisma over 400 times. The question was a legitimate one.
“All we’re saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough,” Bondi said.
Biden has already seen one campaign go down in flames. His 1988 campaign ended almost as quickly as it began once it was discovered that he was plagiarizing his speeches, specifically from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden was also heavily exaggerating his background. Footage of Biden bragging about his career accomplishments on C-SPAN surfaced. He graduated in the top half of his class at law school, he said. In reality, he was 76th out of 85. The lead story of that campaign would be Gary Hart’s affair with Donna Rice, so the Biden gaffes remained secondary. But it was a pattern.
Social media has been ablaze with pictures and clips of what has become known as “Creepy Joe,” referring to the instinctively exaggerated touching Biden does when he comes close to young people. It may be nothing, but we live in “the year of Epstein,” so every public official is suspicious and on high alert.
There are a couple basic questions unanswered, hidden beneath the volume of the impeachment intensity. Can a president request information about an American from another country? Does the subject being a politician make the question more or less a legitimate question? If an American has sketchy ties to a major insecurity in a chaotic nation, does the president have the right to inquire as to the nature of that relationship? If there are potential illegalities in asking a question, are there legal guidelines that must be followed, or can the president just ask? There would seem to be some reciprocity of information that can be shared between nations. These are important questions that have not been explained to the public.
S.T. Patrick holds degrees in both journalism and social studies education. He spent 10 years as an educator and now hosts the “Midnight Writer News Show.” His email is [email protected]. He is also an occasional contributor to TBR history magazine and the current managing editor of Deep Truth Journal (DTJ), a new conspiracy-focused publication available from the AFP Online Store.
