The Problem Of Joe's Interregnum

Ovwer the past week or so, I've tried to tackle the problem that Joe frequently seems to be intoxicated during public appearances despite claims that he doesn't drink. His normal pattern of speech carries markers like slurring, hypercorrection, sudden slowing, stuttering, and stumbling over words that suggest this, but on other limited occasions, he's able to speak clearly without any of those impediments. As an Aristotelian, I'm interested in the cause.

I also keep seeing a problem with Joe's received narrative, and this covers the interregnum between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021, when Joe held no public office, yet indications keep popping up here and there that agencies of the Deep State continued to act as though he was still in some type of authority during this period. One of the clearest examples has been his apparent ability to have Secret Service agents act on his behalf, even though as a former vice president during his interregnum, neither he nor his family was entitled to Secret Service protection, which resumed only after he became a candidate for the 2020 election.

There are two well-known episodes dealing with the Secret Service, neither of which has ever been fully explained. The first took place in connection with Hunter's gun purchase in October 2018, in which he lied on the paperwork that he had never been addicted to narcotics. When his then-girlfriend Hallie threw the gun away in a dumpster, the Secret Service tried to cover up the incident:

The Secret Service emails began in October 2020 when an agent, whose name was redacted, shared a link to a colleague to an article from The Blaze about the gun incident in an email chain with other agents.

Another official, whose name is redacted, responded: “Oh dear…”

A specialist in the agency’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division then wrote to their colleagues: “It’s kind of odd that we were involved in the missing gun investigation when neither Hunter or Joe were even receiving USSS protection at the time? Hmmm.”

. . . Local police began investigating after Hallie went back for the pistol and found it missing. That’s when the Secret Service also rep

ortedly inserted itself into the fray, contacting the gun store where Hunter purchased the piece and asked for the sale paperwork. Politico’s sources included someone “briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact,” the Daily Mail reported.

According to the Daily Mail's own more extensive report,

In response to Politico's report in 2021, the Secret Service said: 'US Secret Service records confirm that the agency did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018, and that the Secret Service had no involvement in this alleged incident.'

Fitton told DailyMail.com he believed that the Secret Service may have intervened in the gun incident without creating official records.

In October 2018, Joe was no longer vice president, and he hadn't announced his candidacy for 2020, although there appears to have been some understanding among future appointees like Antony Blinken that he would run. It appears that this expectation may have been part of an unspoken policy of cooperation with his requests by the Secret Service. Another such episode took place earlier in 2018:

A former U.S. Secret Service agent went to check on Hunter Biden in 2018, when the future president’s son was holed up in a Los Angeles hotel room. The agent became alarmed about, and frustrated with, Hunter Biden, text messages obtained by the Washington Examiner  show.

“As your friend we need to resolve this in the immediate. Call the front desk now H or I will have to assume you are in danger and we will have to make them give us keys,” texted the former agent in the May 24, 2018 incident.

When Biden didn’t appear, the former agent tersely texted: “We’re at your door. Open it.”

Prior reports identified this "former US Secret Service agent" by name, but the story at the link was subsequently updated to say,

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been corrected to remove the name of a former Secret Service agent who was originally mistakenly identified as being involved in the reported incident.

That individual, who had left the Secret Service prior to May 24, 2018, never met nor assisted Hunter Biden in any capacity.

So who was it? We don't know. A Secret Service connection also emerged in the case of Hunter's abandoned rental car in Arizona in October 2016, while Joe was still vice presidnt, when a Secret Service business card was found in a bag of items Hunter left behind in the car.

In addition to local police, FBI and the U.S. Secret Service agents were roped into the case, as well. The FBI dispatched agents to the scene, according to the law enforcement documents, and the Secret Service communicated with the various law enforcement officials investigating and confirmed that Hunter Biden was not in harm’s way.

It's hard to avoid thinking that at minimum the Secret Service, but probably the FBI as well, continued this level of attentiveness to Joe after he left the vice presidency, possibly as a courtesy, but more likely, even as early as 2018, in anticipation that he would return to the White House. Who knew what? Who said what to whom? A more recent case raises the same questions:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation and prosecution of CEFC China Energy Co. boss and Biden family associate Patrick Ho displayed “irregularities,” including concealing known connections between the Chinese Communist Party-linked entity and the Bidens, and communication between Hunter Biden and the FBI agents involved in Ho’s case, according to a memo by the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project.

Ho, infamously referred to as “the fucking spy chief of China” by Hunter Biden, was arrested in November, 2017, and convicted in December, 2018, in the Southern District of New York and sentenced to 3 years in prison for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering. Ho’s first phone call upon his arrest was to Hunter Biden, who was allegedly providing legal services to him at the time.

Now, a memo by the Heritage Foundation obtained exclusively by Breitbart News alleges that since Ho’s conviction, “significant evidence has emerged identifying concerning irregularities with the DOJ investigation and prosecution,” including that “DOJ was aware of connections between the Biden family and CEFC at least as early as 2017 and that they acted to conceal this information from the public,” as well as “contacts between Hunter Biden and FBI agents related to Ho’s arrest,” and “a leak of investigatory information in the Ho case.”

Again, there's a pattern of the organs of state security, this time the FBI, providing services to the Bidens even after Joe had left the government, and, at least in the public mind, at 75 years old in 2017, he would be unlikely to return -- unless the organs of state security had reason to believe otherwise and wanted to continue in Joe's good graces. This question continues to bother me. A recent episode reported in Franklin Foer's new book is puzzling as well:

The White House called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was helping evacuate Afghan women amid the chaotic withdrawal, to scold her for calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office to ask for help, according to a newly released book.

. . . “Clinton called an aide to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, asking if she could board refugees on a military transport plane destined for Kyiv. Her efforts earned her a reprimand,” Foer wrote.

“‘What are you doing calling the Ukrainian government,’ Jake Sullivan asked her,” Foer wrote, referring to President Biden’s national security adviser.

“‘Well,’ she responded. ‘I wouldn’t have to call, if you guys would,'” Foer wrote.

Clinton then “assured” Sullivan she would coordinate with the Biden administration, though she had already made contact with other world leaders.

Hillary, both a former first lady and a former Secretary of State, appears to have been working on a purely humanitarian project, but her contacting Zelensky upset the White House. Let's keep in mind, this was during August 2021, prior to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019, while Joe was out of office. Ukraine simply wasn't a high profile issue at this point, Afghanistan was, yet Joe appears to have been extremely protective of Zelensky as part of his personal turf.

And this goes back to Trump's 2019 "perfect phone call" to Zelensky as well, which led to his first impeachment. What was so sensitive about Zelensky, a B-lister if ever there was one at the time, first in 2019 and then in 2021, that Joe or the Democrats should be so agitated about two other presidential-level figures contacting him without their approval? Joe seems awfully touchy about Ukraine, doesn't he?

This feeds my suspicion that Zelensky knew, and knows, something about Joe, and whatever it was or is, it extended, or extends, past his time as vice president. Just wondering. But I surmise there's a lot we don't know about Joe's interregnum.