"It's Raining Hunter Biden News"

The headline was a wweek ago in The Intelligencer, but so far, the rain just hasn't stopped. The most recent showers, though, haven't covered new developments -- instead, they've delved into details of the extended relationship among Hunter, his associates Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin, and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his wife, Evan Ryan. Much of this comes from a period around 2010 that's been documented all along on Hunter's laptop, and it turns out to be suggestive enough to lead one YouTuber to ask if Hunter was "creeping on" Blinken's wife, while another asked straight out if he was "shtooping" her (I have no opinion).

I have, though, been maintaining a detailed file of links and data points covering Hunter's career, and I've been noticing that his life before the events of 2015, which extend from his brother Beau's death to his separation and divorce from his first wife and his affairs with Beau's widow, Hallie, and her sister, is nowhere near as well-documented as the period after, even though a great deal is nevertheless available on the laptop.

But now all of a sudden, Antony Blinken enters the story in a pretty big way. Blinken, it turns out, is another longtime Biden retainer. According to Wikipedia,

He was a foreign policy advisor for Joe Biden's 2008 presidential campaign, before advising the Obama–Biden presidential transition.

From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the president and national security advisor to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm. Blinken returned to government first as a foreign policy advisor for Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, then as Biden's pick for secretary of state, a position the Senate confirmed him for on January 26, 2021.

The entry doesn't mention Blinken's position with the Penn Biden Center after the end of Biden's vice presidential term. But from the new record, we see that as of 2010, when Hunter first appears to have contacted him, Blinken was Biden's national security adviser. The most detailed account of their dealings during this period is in this Fox News piece:

It appears that Hunter first tried to connect with Blinken on June 16, 2010, when he asked Blinken's wife, current White House cabinet secretary Evan Ryan, for his non-government email address.

"Can I get Toni's non-govt email?" Hunter asked. "I want to send him something. Thanks."

Ryan, who worked at the White House at the time and later went to work at the State Department, according to her LinkedIn, then provided Blinken's personal email address to Hunter. She previously worked for Biden as his deputy campaign manager during his unsuccessful presidential run between 2007 and 2008.

So Blinken's wife, Evan Ryan, also had ties to Bidenworld. Her Wikipedia entry says she

worked in the Obama-Biden White House as assistant to the vice president and special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement from September 2013 to January 2017.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Ryan served as deputy campaign manager for then-Senator Biden's 2008 presidential campaign and also served on the Kerry 2004 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton's 2000 senatorial campaign. Ryan served in the Clinton White House, as deputy director of scheduling for First Lady Hillary Clinton and as special assistant to the first lady's chief of staff.

So she was an ambitious Democrat operative even prior to her marriage to Blinken in 2002, and it's hard not to conclude that the marriage was underaken in the context of both their political careers, especially since Blinken was an upper-crust "Episcopalian Jew", an Ivy League legacy from family wealth, while Ryan was middle-class and Catholic.

It appears that both jumped right into a fairly close business and personal rlationship with Hunter when the opportunity presented itself in 2010. The Fox News story continues,

In March 2010, Hunter Biden's longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, emailed Hunter about a couple White House events and said he "Talked to Evan," referring to Evan Ryan, about them and how many tickets the Office of the Vice President would be allotting for guests.

. . . A couple months later Hunter and Ryan exchanged emails about the Mexico State dinner guest list and she sent him the seating chart for his table.

. . . In August 2010, Ryan emailed Hunter asking if he was still in New York City, prompting Hunter to say he was at "office in TriBeCa" referring to the neighborhood in New York City and that he was taking the Acela train home that evening.

"Tony's headed this way, we are staying and having dinner w his parents. I'm so sorry I messed up w your vm, when Danielle told me she'd found a phone number for you I thought that was why you were calling," Ryan said. "We are back next week, are you guys around for dinner?" It is unclear if they met up for dinner when they returned to Washington, DC.

. . . Later that year in October, Ryan emailed Hunter and his business partner, Eric Schwerin, asking Hunter to call her when he lands, noting that she knew he was traveling.

. . . Later that month, White House visitor logs show Schwerin met with Ryan at the White House's Old Executive Office Building (OEOB).

. . . In a June 2011 email with the subject line "Party" Schwerin emails Hunter saying, "Put Evan Ryan down as a ‘yes’ for Thursday. I think Tony too." It is unclear what "party" the email was referring to.

. . . A month earlier, Schwerin emailed Hunter and Rosemont Seneca Partners assistant Anne Marie Person, asking her to "put lunch with Evan Ryan down on the schedule for Wednesday." It is unclear whether the lunch occurred or what was discussed if the lunch occurred.

. . . In July 2016, Joan Mayer, who says she was the vice president of Hunter’s now-defunct investment firm Rosemont Seneca Advisors from 2008 to 2017, emailed Schwerin and Hunter saying Ryan tried calling Hunter, but his phone went to voicemail.

By July 2016, of course, Hunter had a lot more than Even Ryan on his plate, what with Hallie, her sister Liz, the stripper Lunden Roberts, and whatever else. No wonder Evan went to voicemail. It's plain, though, that her husband Tony felt the relationship with Hunter was productive enough to meet with him at the State Department on July 22 to discuss matters related to Ukraine -- at that time, both Hunter and his associate Devon Archer served on the Burisma board. (Archer was sentenced to a year in federal prison for an unrelated fraud charge in 2022.)

What I take to the partial picture we see here is that the Blinkens, a remarkably ambitious couple, were in fact eager to ingratiate themselves with Hunter, although one would think that Antony in paricular, from a wealthy family of cosmopolitan art collectors and diplomats, would think that playing up to Hunter, a very sketchy guy with nothing like that background, would be beneath him. Instead, both he and his wife appear to have been eager to reassure Hunter that they were with the program.

It reinforces the impression that by 2020, Blinken was willing -- I would guess likely even eager -- to coordinate the letter from 51 intelligence authorities that planted the idea that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. I guess that in at least some people's minds, being Secretary of State is a big deal. My view, having spent a career at far lesser jobs, is that it's likely just a job, and on balance no more rewarding or satisfying than any other.

It looks to me, in fact, that Antony Blinken's spent a good part of his adult life kissing the Bidens' asses to get where he's gotten, when he might well have been much more productive and happier as just a rentier and philanthropist. I sense a deep insecurity there, on which the Bidens, especially Hunter, have been able to feed. And keep in mind that Hunter, for all the million-dollar kickbacks here and no-show board memberships there, was never rich -- when his first wife finally woke up and checked, she discovered they owed far more than they had, and it began to dawn on her that she'd been scammed. I'm starting to think the whole Biden family is just a big grift.

To write about Bidenworld, you need a little Henry James, a little F Scott Fitzgterald, and a lot of Jim Thompson. Why do we find Tony Blinken right in the middle of it?