Now It's Dr Jill?

In the UK Daily Mail,

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed yesterday bank records he obtained via subpoena showing money from Hunter's Chinese oil giant business partners was wired to the First Son, Joe Biden's brother Jim Biden, Joe's daughter-in-law Hallie Biden, and a fourth individual referred to only by their last name: Biden.

Comer says he is currently working on obtaining further bank documents to unmask the fourth family member who received $70,000 according to the senior lawmaker.

Among the potential recipients is First Lady Dr. Jill Biden – one of the few individuals close to Hunter who shares his last name.

I'm beginning to develop a theory on things Biden, and it isn't the obvious one. There's no question that the whole family is on the take for rinky-dink amounts -- we've learned most recently of payments to Rob Walker, one in 2017 for about $3 million and one in 2015 for about $180,000, both of which were subdivided into other payments, of which about a third went to Hunter Biden, who in turn apportioned them to various Bidens, himself, his uncle James, Hallie, and now potentially Dr Jill.

In a world of multibillion-dollar scams, this stuff is small potatoes. But I keep going back to the assessment by NBC News that I linked yesterday, "The documents and the analysis indicate that few of [Hunter]’s deals ever came to fruition and shed light on how fast he was spending his money." Hunter is an addict and an alcoholic, and he'd been getting by all his life as the son of a US senator, then as the vice president's son. He had zero personal deal-making mojo. This isn't Elon Musk or even Donald Trump. This isn't even Hillary Clinton.

What strikes me so far is the people he's made deals with -- Ukrainians, Romanians, and Chinese B-listers, or characters like James Gilliar. the former advertising salesman who claims to have been in the SAS and maybe MI6 or something. They all strike me as small-time con artists who are mostly conning each other. But Hunter's biggest mark, I'm starting to think, is his dad, Joe. Here's a 2022 story at the Daily Mail that gives a picture of where I think things are actually heading:

Joe Biden agreed to pay son Hunter's legal fees for his deal with a Chinese government-controlled company, emails reveal.

But Joe has pretty clearly been paying Hunter's legal fees all along, this is nothing unique. The story goes on,

Joe was able to pay the bills after earning millions of dollars through his and his wife's companies after he left office as vice president.

Some of the wave of cash came from their book deals and speaking engagements.

But the president's financial filings reveal that he declared almost $7million more income on his tax returns than he did on his government transparency reports, an analysis by DailyMail.com of the president's financial records shows.

Some of that difference can be accounted for with salaries earned by First Lady Jill Biden and other sums not required on his reports – but still leaves $5.2million earned by Joe's company and not listed on his transparency reports.

The 'missing millions' – combined with emails on Hunter's abandoned laptop suggesting Joe would have a 10% share in Hunter's blockbuster deal with the Chinese – raise a troubling question: did Joe Biden receive money from the foreign venture?

If Joe has been taking in millions, though, as best we can tell for now, it's dribbling in via sporadic five-figure payments doled out by Hunter from his various con artist partners, and possibly 10%-for-the-big-guy deals -- but remember that the 10% idea came from the same James Gilliar who's convinced some of the people some of the time that he's James Bond. And I'm with NBC News in thinking these sorts of deals just don't come through.

I'm beginning to think that if there's a five million discrepancy in Biden numbers, it's because any Biden numbers are pure fantasy.

But even if we grant that Joe's gotten rich at a rate of $35,000 here and $10,000 there, paid indirectly to Jill, James, Valerie, Caroline, Ashley, Hallie, and whomever else, that money is going out even faster to those same people to support their drug habits, shopping sprees, rehabs, vacation trips, fast cars, and lawyers. Don't forget the lawyers. The excerpts I've seen from Hunter's ex-wife Kathleen's tell-all suggest this is just Bidenworld:

She was shocked at the opulence of his lifestyle when [Hunter] took her home to his father’s former du Pont mansion in Greenville, Del.

Joe liked to describe himself as the “poorest man in Congress” and Hunter told Kathleen he came from a middle-class family. But she told him: “Hunt . . . a kid from a middle-class family does not have a ballroom.”

“The front door opened into a foyer with a marble floor and double staircase . . . He had a tuxedo hanging in his closet — a tuxedo he used fairly regularly.

. . . A financial adviser told them they could afford no more than $170,000 for their first house. A few weeks later they bought a 10,000-square-foot mansion with six marble fireplaces on the du Pont Winterthur estate, near his dad’s place, for $310,000.

Hunter “wasn’t nervous about the price . . . We could afford it, he told me.”

Elsewhere, she's quoted,

“It’s embarrassing to say that I ceded all financial control to my husband,” she said, adding, “I liked the nice things. And I didn’t want to think about the cost at which they were coming.”

I'm starting to think Joe simply has the same mindset, and if anything, he's worked himself into a situation where he's ceded financial control to Hunter in the same way that Kathleen did. He's paying out millions for lawyers who're doing him no favors. Where is that money coming from? It's not going to come from $10,000 here and $35,000 there, any more than Hunter was ever going to pay $37,000 a month alimony even out of a $50,000 a month Burisma salary.

For now, Joe is Hunter's biggest mark. But you can't con someoe who doesn't want to be conned.