Saturday, April 29, 2023

I've Got The Same Question

In this morning's news:

Hunter Biden is livin’ large while pretending to be a poor starving artist to avoid child support. At least, that’s what the mother of his out-of-wedlock child claimed in a briefing filed in an Independence County, Arkansas court Thursday.

The story quotes Lunden Roberts's attorney Clinton Lancaster:

“What Mr. Biden has paid, or received as a contribution, for paying these elite attorneys has a definitive and quantifiable value that goes directly to his income for child support purposes,” wrote Lancaster, arguing that attorney-client privilege did not bar the payment information from discovery.

. . . If Mr. Biden can afford a Washington DC, Hollywood, Chicago biglaw, and the best domestic relations attorney on the Texas side of the Texarkana border, he surely must have income for child support purposes."

This is a question I've been asking about both Hunter and his father all along, although i'm also skeptical that any money is actually there -- I haven't been the only person to note that Hunter's various foreign deals have been mostly small potatoes, many never worked out, and his expenses for drugs, ladies, rehab, luxury hotels, cars, travel, and everything else far outweighed whatever he was bringing in. And if only ten percent was going to the big guy, then so much the less was available to Joe, who nevertheless, based on the evidence we have, was already picking up Hunter's shortfall.

In other words, something doesn't add up, not just for Hunter, but for the whole family. Even if we grant that baksheesh was coming in, being laundered, and then distributed to nine or 12 Bidens, these people are all living extravagantly, and several are addicts with expensive habits who are in and out of rehab. Even if we try to add what they're all earning from sinecures and no-show jobs at non-profits, and total that up with whatever income investigators can estimate for all the family payoffs, this simply won't sustain their collective lifestyles.

My surmise here is borne out by another story in this morning's news: Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Controls Entity with 10% Stake in Chinese State-Backed Investment Fund:

Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, controls an entity with a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, a Chinese state-backed investment fund founded just days after Hunter and President Joe Biden visited China in 2013, a source confirmed Friday to Breitbart News.

After pressure increased on Hunter Biden to divest from BHR Partners due to a conflict of interest upon Joe Biden assuming the White House, Hunter Biden’s lawyer told the New York Times in the fall of 2021 that his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly in either BHR or Skaneateles.”

Skaneateles LLC, the entity which owns ten percent of BHR Partners, according to Chinese public records from Baidu, was controlled by Hunter as the sole governor until its dissolution in September 2021, a Washington, DC, registration indicated.

But new documents obtained by Breitbart News, first revealed by nonprofit Marco Polo, show the control of Skaneateles LLC is being held by Kevin Morris, Hunter’s top attorney, who also paid Hunter’s IRS debts.

. . . The document shows Skaneateles LLC holds a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, equivalent to $3 million.

Three million? A middle-class house in much of Hollywood, where Kevin Morris lives, can be $3 million. This is small potatoes, certainly for Kevin Morris. Remember he was said to have been footing the bill for Hunter's Malibu rental to the tune of $20,000 a month and apparently paying for his lawyers and many of his other expenses as well. This is not to say that at minimum the statements he gave as to Hunter's interest in BHR Partners were untrue, but if nothing else, it bears out the observation that some have made that Hunter's business activities never brought in anything like what he needed to support his or his family's lifestyle.

What's the payoff for Kevin Morris? If it's whatever he can skim from a $3 million investment -- or anything in that range -- it simply dioesbn't justify what he's been sinking into the Hunter Biden black hole for some years now. Even a conventional set of assumptions that assumes ordinary avarice doesn't explain things here.

I think there's a problem here. The amounts of money we've seen so far in this whole case are pretty piddling as far as bribes go. Right offhand, I'd say the Pelosis have done much better just on graft. Either (a) the money just isn't there, and Hunter has been running a con; or (b) the money is there, but so far, we haven't seen where it is, or (c) the payoffs are being made in a way we don't yet understand, or (d) there's a whole other balance sheet that we're just not aware of.

This is my current puzzle. It's not too far from the questions Lunden Roberts's attorneys are asking, except that I doubt if Ms Roberts or her attorneys will ever see much money from any Biden no matter what the court does in her case.