More Questions About Hunter, Lawyers, And Money

In yesterday's news,

Hunter Biden has filed a countersuit against John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer repair shop owner who turned a laptop belonging to the president's son over to authorities and members of the press.

The lawsuit claims that Isaac illicitly distributed Hunter Biden's personal data and accuses him of six counts of invasion of privacy.

I'm scratching my head. What on earth is the point of suing John Paul Mac Isaac, a bit player in the whole Hunter saga, whose role was simply to pass on the contents of Hunter's laptop after Hunter abandoned it in his shop without paying the bill? That toothpaste is out of the tube. Whatever might be said, there are numerous complete copies of the laptop's contents, as well as an enormous number of e-mails, receipts, and embarrassing photos all over the internet. Suing John Paul Mac Isaac won't make a single one of them go away.

As I'm fond of asking, what problem is Hunter trying to solve? Hunter could hire a hit man and make the guy go away as effectively as Jimmy Hoffa, and it would have zero effect on Hunter's legal situation, which is probably close to dire -- or maybe it would be close to dire except he's Joe's son, and no matter what happens, Joe will likely pardon him. But suing Mr Mac Isaac costs money, which will be paid to lawyers like Abbe Lowell, whose photo is at the top of this post.

As I try to think this through as a strategy for conservation of wealth, given that circumstance, I would spend as little as I could on Hunter's criminal exposure, as well as incidentals like whether he might be able to extract damages from Mr Mac Isaac. This assumes that Hunter and Joe have generally the same legal interests, while at this point, Joe is footing Hunter's bills, legal and otherwise. I would also assume that Joe, or Joe's attorneys, are coordinating Hunter's legal strategy.

But as far as I can see, whatever Hunter's lawyers cost -- and I've estimated that it's in the high six or low seven figures per month -- he's getting little value from them. And it sounds as though the adult who was on Hunter's original legal team, Joshua Levy, as I noted two weeks ago, has left it over disagreements with Abbe Lowell.

Levy was reportedly discontented with Lowell’s legal strategies and feared that his tactics could flop. In February, Lowell was a part of the effort to send Rudy Giuliani, Tony Bobulinski, and 12 others “litigation hold” letters to preserve “Laptop from Hell” records, a move seen by some critics as a public relations tactic to change the troubling narrative for the Biden family.

This sounds like the same strategy as the one behind suing Mr Mac Isaac, a public relations tactic to change the narrative, but let's face it, the narrative isn't going to change. But it sounds like someone has convinced Hunter and/or Joe that that can happen, and some millions of Biden money will be shoveled into that futile effort.

This brings me to another question, the Biden family fortune, and whether it actually exists. The estimates we've been seeing -- and they're just wild ballpark guesses right now -- are that Hunter brought in some tens of millions during his peak years with Rosemont Seneca, Burisma, and similar deals between about 2009 and 2017, but he was spending just as wildly. For instance, this 2022 story in the UK Daily Mail covers just his alimony payments to his ex-wife, Kathleen:

People Magazine reported that 'Buhle says she does not receive alimony from Hunter and that there was no windfall divorce settlement.'

But in a January 2019 email to Hunter's lawyer, she wrote: 'Is there an update on my alimony?'

Buhle was concerned at the time because she had allegedly not received scheduled spousal support payments from her ex.

A letter from her lawyer to Hunter's a week later shows that the couple's divorce settlement included an agreement for Hunter to pay Buhle at least $37,000 per month.

'The MSA [Marital Settlement Agreement] provides that, beginning 04/01/2017, and continuing thereafter RHB shall pay to KBB $37,000 per month as Base Spousal Support,' Sullivan wrote to Mancinelli.

Sullivan claimed that Hunter had failed to make the payments, hand over financial information or 'failed to reasonably cooperate' with Buhle when the IRS slapped a lien for Hunter's unpaid taxes on an Indiana lake house property she got in the divorce.

According to my calculator, $37,000 times 12 months is $444,000 per year, close to half a mil. But that's just alimony, a single line item. This NBC News story from last year summarizes the current consensus on Hunter's overall income vs spending:

From 2013 through 2018 Hunter Biden and his company brought in about $11 million via his roles as an attorney and a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, according to an NBC News analysis of a copy of Biden’s hard drive and iCloud account and documents released by Republicans on two Senate committees.

. . . The documents and the analysis indicate that few of Biden’s deals ever came to fruition and shed light on how fast he was spending his money. Expenditures compiled on his hard drive show he spent more than $200,000 per month from October 2017 through February 2018 on luxury hotel rooms, Porsche payments, dental work and cash withdrawals.

$200,000 per month, according to my calculator, is $2.4 million per year (NBC News is circumspect over how much of this went to crack and hookers). But 2017 is when Hunter's fortunes really started to go south, since Burisma cut his director's fee that May, and Ye Jianming, his main China contact, disappeared in January 2018. According to the NBC News link,

Biden made $5.8 million, more than half his total earnings from 2013 to 2018, from two deals with Chinese business interests.

Biden’s most lucrative business relationship was acting as a consultant in a project with a company that belongs to a once-powerful Chinese businessman who is now thought to be detained in his homeland.

According to business records referred to in the Senate report, Hudson West III, a venture funded by the Chinese oil and natural gas company CEFC and its chairman, Ye Jianming, paid $4,790,375.25 to Owasco P.C. over about one year.

But adding line items like alimony, wild partying, rehab, payments to Hallie and her sister, Elizabeth Secundy, with whom he was having an affair at the same time, plus child support for his natural daughter with the stripper Lunden Roberts, it seems as though Hunter's expenses even during his peak years pretty much canceled out his earnings. But now, with his income much reduced and living under effective house arrest in his Malibu compound, he's got that rent, another child, an expensive new wife, and maybe a million dollars a month in lawyer fees.

I can only think Joe is picking up all these bills, plus he's now apparently supporting Hallie, her kids, and her lifestyle. 10% for the big guy isn't going to cover this, either. We're back to Stein's Law, that which cannot continue must stop.