So Far, The Comer Committee Is Missing The Point

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee released a report on Biden family business dealings.

In total, Biden family members and business associates designed a web of over 20 companies, many of which were formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency, the committee revealed. In total, the Biden family, business associates, and companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies, the committee found.

The story doesn't have a whole lot of detail, but from what I can gather, the payments totaling $10 millian trickled in via shell corporations over a period between 2014 and 2017, and they were paid to nine Biden family members who were named in the report, as well as mostly unnamed family associates, who would have included figures like Robinson Walker, Devon Archer, and Eric Schwerin. If we divide $10 million by nine family members plus associates over a period of maybe three years, this comes to an average of well under a million bucks a year for each.

You and I might be more than satisfied with, say, half a million bucks a year, but let's keep in mind that all of these people have extravagant lifestyles, and several of those named, including Hunter; Beau's widow, Hallie; and Joe's niece Caroline; are addicts. Ten million bucks over a period of years simply will not sustain this group. Something's out of whack.

If they're living on payouts, there have to be sources for amounts far in excess of what we're seeing here. Many of them do in fact also have sinecures and no-show jobs with family-allied non-profits and such, but again, even if they're each making a couple hundred thousand a year at those, that won't pay their bills, and it doesn't explain where the money comes from to pay those non-job salaries. There's some sort of financial dark matter here that hasn't yet been explained.

The next problem is that Hunter is so far being portrayed as the kingpin of the family grift -- for example,, from the link above, Hunter managed payments from a Romanian businessman, Gabriel Popoviciu:

Hunter Biden began working for Popoviciu in the spring of 2015. According to Hunter Biden’s calendar, he met with Joe Biden three times from July 2015 to March 2016 about helping Popoviciu with a “conviction stemming from his purchase of a 550-acre parcel of government-owned land for a steep discount,” the New York Post reported.

But let's look at the context here. In May, 2015, just as Hunter started working for Popoviciu, his brother Beau died of brain cancer, which immediately precipitated Hunter's years-long cocaine bender that included his affair with Hallie and her sister, his divorce from Kathleen Buhle, weeks on end of debauchery in Hollywood luxury hotels, expensive cars, and trips to luxury rehab in centers around the country. From July 2015 to March 2016, Hunter would never have been in a position to handle money or manage anything like a business, even a shady one.

Let's recall as well that anything Hunter undertook from his college days at Georgetown onward to Yale Law and his brief stints as an investment banker were due entirely to the fact that he was the son of a US senator. His ex-wife Kathleen recounted in her memoir that he had been in and out of rehab and living far beyond their means even before Joe became vice president; for much of that time, she just wasn't paying attention. Other discussions of Hunter's time from the 2000s onward indicate that his business deals were seldom successful.

So just looking at the overall proportions involved in the family dealings, which appear to have been largely under Hunter's aegis, not enough was coming in to sustain their lifestyles or their drug habits, and of what was coming in, Hunter probably stole the lion's share. Something doesn't fit.

Let's look at another astute analysis, made following Wednesday's report from the Comer committee:

Normally, a sitting vice president might think about running for the top job as the boss hit the two-term limit. But Biden knew he could not oppose Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign to become the first female president.

So Biden — perhaps under some pressure from profligate relatives like Hunter — decided, finally, to cash out. He set up what D.C. insiders call a “government relations” business, profiting from his name and contacts.

In “government relations,” there does not need to be a specific quid pro quo. The clients are paying for the relationship, in the hope that it leads to other introductions and opportunities. It is not necessarily illegal.

. . . The calculus changed once Trump actually defeated Clinton. Suddenly, there was a path back to politics for Biden. That presented a huge windfall for the Biden family’s clients, though it contained new risks of exposure.

So Biden finds himself a victim of calculations he made when he thought his career was over, but even those calculations were out of kilter -- chief among them, he appears to have relied on Hunter to manage his affairs, especially during his last couple of years as vice president. But recall that as late as 2014, Joe had to try to wangle a sinecure for Hunter as a public affairs officer in the Navy, which lasted only until he failed his first drug test. Apparently whatever the Navy would pay Hunter was important, even though Hunter's debts at the time must have been exponential multiples of his Navy salary. This just doesn't fit.

Chairman Comer comes a little bit closer to the point as of this past Friday:

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) suggested Friday that former President Barack Obama knew of the Biden family’s foreign deals with adversaries of the United States.

. . . “He knew his son [Hunter Biden] was no good, and he knew this was nothing but a political liability not just for our country, not just for the democrat party, but for Obama’s legacy,” Comer added. “Because a lot of this happened during the Obama administration.”

Comer also believes Obama’s knowledge of the family’s business informed his opposition to Joe Biden’s 2020 candidacy.

Heck, I would imagine Obama heard about Hunter's failed drug test before Hunter himself did; indeed, I wouldn't rule out that Obama arranged for it in the first place. But the question isn't the Biden family's business dealings, which were clumsy and often unsuccessful. The real question is the Biden family debts, not the payments. Recall just this one data item:

{Hunter] Biden "has incurred substantial personal loans to which he is indebted and subject to repayment for attorneys’ fees he has incurred," said his attorney. The disclosure of personal loans follows reports this week that the president’s son is considering launching a legal defense fund to raise money to pay his lawyers, a plan that has reportedly sparked ethics concerns at the White House.

To whom does he owe this money? Is it directly, say, to Abbe Lowell, or is someone else paying Abbe Lowell who then holds the paper on the loan? We've also had hints, but little more than hints, that Joe has been paying for Hunter's living expenses for years -- even as far back as 2018, Joe was footing the bill for Huntrer's trips to rehab and his settlement with his ex-wife, as well as his overdue credit card balances. Hunter's living expenses, as well as payments on years of debt, must amount to far more than the $400,000 annual salary Joe earns.

Where is this money coming from? On one hand, people are being allowed to think the family's lifestyles are coming from Romanian or Chinese businessmen, but whatever they've paid now and then, as far as I can see, hasn't been remotely enough to cover the Biden family's lifestyles. What do they owe, and to whom do they owe it? I'll betcha Obama knows quite a bit, and I'm sure others do as well. It's just people like you and me who are in the dark.