In recent weeks still more evidence of the Biden family’s international influence peddling scheme has emerged, pointing to the corruption and compromise of the President of the United States. In testimony before the House Oversight Committee, and in an interview with Tucker Carlson, Hunter Biden’s former longtime business partner, Devon Archer revealed that Hunter Biden was selling the Biden brand so called to his foreign business partners from China and Russia, Ukraine and beyond, and Joe Biden was the leader of that brand. But the idea Joe Biden had no knowledge of his son’s business efforts as he is forever claimed was quote, categorically false. He was aware of Hunter’s business, he met with Hunter’s business partners. 

Archer testified that he witnessed Hunter put Joe on speakerphone before foreign business partners or prospective ones some 20 times and abuse of soft power and archers words are also added more fuel to the fire of a quid pro Joe in Ukraine. Then in response to Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s probing of Burisma, the energy company that put Hunter Biden on its board despite his total lack of knowledge about that industry and paid him handsomely that Joe leveraged US foreign aid to get Shokin fired and take the heat off. 

Archer recounts an episode in early 2015 when Burisma executives came to Hunter asking for the relief of pressure from the prosecutor, and then in response, Hunter’s first call was to his father. Burisma would have died much earlier Archer claims quote, “If it didn’t have the Biden brand attached to it.” Archer also talks about Joe meeting with Hunter’s business partner in his China linked private equity venture, Jonathan Li. Joe would later write a college letter of recommendation for Li’s daughter. 

Archer also discussed Joe Biden’s appearance at Washington dinners in 2014 and 2015 with Hunter Biden and the likes of the billionaire wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Yelena Baturina, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev, and a close associate the former prime minister and Intel chief of Kazakhstan, Karim Massimov, who would later be sentenced to 18 years in prison on treason charges, and Vadym Pozharskyi of Burisma, some of whom were Hunter’s business partners. 

The House Oversight Committee has now shed more light on this point, producing bank records detailing some of their dealings. They show that Batarina transferred three and a half million dollars to Hunter Biden linked entities in February 2014. While the Biden administration sanctioned many Russian billionaires in connection with the Ukrainian war, Batarina was not sanctioned. After Batarina sent the money to Hunter she dined at swanky Cafe Milano with Hunter and Joe. Months later in April, around the time of that same meal with Hunter and Joe Biden, Rakishev an attendee, wired $142,300 to a Hunter Biden account. A payment was made from that account the following day for a sports car for Hunter Biden in the same amount. 

According to the committee quote, Archer and Biden then arranged for Burisma executives to visit Kazakhstan in June 2014 to evaluate a three way deal among Burisma, a Chinese state owned company and the government of Kazakhstan. The committee details the way the funds from other transactions including from Burisma were parceled out through a web of entities inexplicably, unless you’re trying to hide the source of the funds via shell companies. The committee claims the Biden family is a vehicle to receive bribery payments and that President Biden’s defenders report a weak defense by asserting the committee must show payments directly to the president to show corruption. This is a hollow claim. The law recognizes payments to family members to corruptly influence to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe. And this is to say nothing of the alleged $5 million bribe directly to Joe Biden that we’ve learned of. 

At this point, it should be more than clear that the Biden family influence peddled with Joe as Vice President to the tune of millions of dollars. Money’s taken from adversaries and corruption tied figures that they’ve rendered no services for. The Biden family has strained to cover it up through their seeming laundering of the business, so called, through complex shell companies vying obfuscating and smearing those scrutinizing them that at least Hunter Biden committed crime as with and around the family’s ill gotten gains, that the FBI and DOJ seem to have covered much of this up, and that Joe Biden lied about his knowledge of and involvement in his family’s dealings. Dealings enabled solely because of his office, by the monetization of his power. 

The questions at this point are how extensive Joe’s knowledge was, how beyond the apparent Burisma case it directly influenced US policy, and whether and to what extent Joe personally profited. The public should demand a fulsome investigation, likely in the form of an impeachment inquiry, giving Congress maximum oversight power. This is alleged public corruption of the highest order. A damage assessment needs to be done and precautions need to be taken to insulate us from compromise going forward. 

Congress may well need to put new laws on the books with real teeth, to punish the acts at play here and deter such misconduct. The investigation itself, if done properly, could help deter such behavior. That inquiry should pursue every last record of all Biden family dealings with foreign powers, extensively review all relevant policies with which Joe Biden was and has been involved concerning those powers, and any nexus of those policies to the individuals and business interests tied to the Biden family business. It should include interviews with every last implicated person, including present administration officials, and it must adduce whether and to what extent funds or other benefits flowed from the Biden family to the President.