They Use Clausewitz's Words, But They Don't Read Him

Here's a data point for the Russo-Ukraine War: as of Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War's report on the Russian offensive contained the same boilerplate it's had for several weeks:

Russian forces continued to capture territory in central Mariupol and will likely capture the city in the coming days.

As of yesterday, the ISW began to back off:

Little information about what is occurring in Mariupol is available likely due to the loss/interdiction of communications from the city. Russian media reported fighting in the city on April 2.

But as of today, they're in full retreat:

Additionally, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol have outperformed ISW’s previous estimates and continue to hold the city.

Shouldn't people be asking questions about the "experts" who are guiding our military policy? A couple of weeks ago, the buzzword was "culminate". The Russian advance on Kyiv had "culminated", but none of the talking heads would draw any conclusions about that. It's a little bit like saying we're having weather today. Should I wear sunscreen or take an umbrella? Well, nobody's gonna commit, we'll just go so far as to call it weather. The best they could predict was that there would be "stalemate" around Kyiv, which was the next big buzzword. The ISW itself only gradually shifted from that assessment. As of even last Friday, April 1, their view was:

Russian forces around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine seek to conduct a retrograde action—the orderly withdrawal of combat forces—for refit and further redeployment to other axes of advance. Russian forces remaining on the forward trace of Russian lines are a covering force intended to screen the retrograde of most of the combat power previously deployed around Kyiv. Ukrainian forces retook substantial territory both northwest and east of Kyiv in the past 24 hours. Ukrainian forces likely advanced faster than Russian forces anticipated, but Russian forces successfully withdrew much of the damaged combat power remaining around Kyiv into Belarus.

But as of last Sunday, April 3,the ISW changed its tune, a day after even Wikipedia declared Ukraine the victor in the Battle of Kyiv as of 31 March:

Ukraine has won the Battle of Kyiv. Russian forces are completing their withdrawal, but not in good order. Ukrainian forces are continuing to clear Kyiv Oblast of isolated Russian troops left behind in the retreat, which some Ukrainian officials describe as “lost orcs.” Russian forces had attempted to conduct an orderly retreat from their positions around Kyiv with designated covering forces supported by artillery and mines to allow the main body to withdraw. The main body of Russian troops has withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro and is completing its withdrawal from the east bank, but the retrograde has been sufficiently disorderly that some Russian troops were left behind.

This is mild indeed. Photos and videos widely available on the web show Russian columns, in some cases comprising entire battalion tactical groups, in "highway of death" tableaux with burned and dismembered bodies strewn around their scorched and flattened vehicles. That's how "sufficiently disorderly" the "retrograde" was. But why did it take the ISW until April 3 to call the battle when days earlier I could have had better information from Wikipedia?

The Atlantic has been publishing some good pieces lately, like How the West Got Russia’s Military So, So Wrong

What we are seeing today in Ukraine is the result of a purportedly great military being punched in the mouth. The resilience of Ukrainian resistance is embarrassing for a Western think-tank and military community that had confidently predicted that the Russians would conquer Ukraine in a matter of days. For years, Western “experts” prattled on about the Russian military’s expensive, high-tech “modernization.”

. . . Western analysts took basic metrics (such as numbers and types of tanks and aircraft), imagined those measured forces executing Russian military doctrine, then concluded that the Ukrainians had no chance. . . . As The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen has argued, the systems that the West used to evaluate the Russian military have failed nearly as comprehensively as that military has.

The author notes,

[P]rognosticators paid too little attention to the basic motivations and morale of the soldiers who would be asked to use the Russian military’s allegedly excellent doctrine and equipment.

When the talking heads started throwing around buzzwords like "culminate", I did what my contrarian mentors in graduate school taught me to do -- I went and read Clausewitz, free for the browsing on the web. Just for starters, "culminate" didn't really mean for Clausewitz what the retired generals thought he meant. But let's go farther:

[T]he moral forces are amongst the most important subjects in war. They are the spirits which permeate the whole element of war, and which fasten themselves soonest and with the greatest affinity to the will which puts in motion and guides the whole mass of powers, unite with it as it were in one stream, because it is a moral force itself. Unfortunately they seek to escape from all book-knowledge, for they will neither be brought into numbers nor into classes, and want only to be seen and felt.

. . . Even if the theory of the art of war does no more in reality than that it calls these things to remembrance, shows the necessity of allowing to the moral forces their full value, and of always taking them into consideration, then it has in fact extended its borders over the region of immaterial forces, and by establishing that point of view, has condemned beforehand every one who would endeavour to justify himself before its judgment seat by the mere physical relations of forces.

The moral forces in Ukraine are making monkeys out of people like Gen Petraeus, whose predictions of stalemate have been as bad as his hairpiece. This man was head of the CIA? Just yesterday I saw him on YouTube, well after the revelations of executed civilian bodies left on the streets in Irpin and Bucha, asserting that the Russo-Ukraine war would end with a negotiated settlement.

I wouldn't count on it. On the other hand, Petraeus made a monkey of himself well before Ukraine's moral forces did.

You Saw It Here First!

On Thursday, I asked:

But someone also should be asking questions about 2018, and indeed, what services the Secret Service is now providing for Hunter, who has adopted a new, very low public profile, at Joe's behest. This man is an addict. Does Hunter now have permanent 24/7 minders? What do the minders do for him to keep him happy but out of trouble?

Apparently I'm not the only one to wonder about this. This morning, reports were making the rounds about just these questions:

Hunter Biden is renting a home in Malibu, California, for $20,000 per month — and the Secret Service is paying $30,000 per month to rent an adjacent home to provide him with 24/7 protection, according to a report Monday by ABC News.

The president’s son is living in the exclusive location and pursuing his art career, even as critics call for a special counsel to take over the investigation into his alleged influence-peddling, which is documented on his infamous laptop, now verified.

. . . The home in which Hunter Biden lives appears to be a secluded location, listed at one-tenth the value of neighboring homes, though other real estate sites put the value of the home above $3 million.

The Secret Service has been accused of covering up Hunter Biden’s allegedly wild lifestyle, as well as an allegedly unlawful gun purchase. During that purchase, Biden filled out a form declaring that he was not a drug user, during a time when he has admitted elsewhere that he was abusing drugs, thus violating the kind of law his father has vowed to enforce as a means of gun control.

I speculated at the time that Hunter, with a record of cocaine addiction and frequent visits from prostitutes, would likely need to be kept under conditions more restrictive than even ordinary house arrest. It's noteworthy that this rental follows a move from another in Venice Beach, probably at the recommendation of the Secret Service. I went to the web to get a satellite view of the property, listed at a link in the story as 20779 Big Rock Dr, Malibu, CA 90265:

It's on a cul de sac. I would imagine that the Secret Service rental is the larger house with the tile roof to its left, with a commanding view of the corner, the access road, and the driveway. I suppose I could drive by there today, and crewcut guys in Brooks Brothers casuals, sunglasses, and ear buds would be out shooing me away.

On one hand, the ordinary point of Secret Service protection would be to prevent attacks from crazies, Islamist assassins, and such against a member of the presidential family. But in Hunter's case, I'm sure there's a much wider range of undesirables that Hunter himself would seek out if he had the opportunity, drug dealers, pimps, hookers, old cronies, and such, among whom a good many would also be on the alert for ways they might blackmail Hunter and even get to the Big Guy himself.

Not to mention the potential for a high-profile DUI or even an accident where Hunter crashes into an innocent all-American family. I would bet that a key duty for the minders is to be sure the guy never, ever gets behind a wheel.

There's no mention in this morning's stories of whether his current wife, Melissa Cohen, ever pays a visit, nor the current whereabouts of the toddler Beau, which I've got to assume are not in that house. Another question is, if Hunter is held under such super-secure conditions, what sort of favors the agents have to do for him to keep him on cloud nine. I would assume there are at minimum doctors who can accommodate this with prescriptions written for names other than Hunter Biden. There have got to be at least several violations of federal law in these arrangements.

The story doesn't mention what sort of arrangements must also be in place for the Second Addict, Joe's daughter Ashley. I would assume they're equivalent.

Let's Talk Unanticipated Consequences

I was finishing up yesterday's post with a remark about unanticipated consequences of the Russo-Ukraine War, and the image above came to mind. It's a photo of the French army occupying the Ruhr district in Germany in 1923 as a result of German defaults on reparation payments after World War I. Ukraine President Zelensky has

called on Russians to learn the words ‘reparations’ and ‘contributions’. He stressed that Russia would reimburse Ukraine for everything that was destroyed during the war.

Something like this must inevitably occur if the world is to avoid a circumstance where Russia simply withdraws from Ukraine, rebuilds for some period of years, and tries the same thing again. The same applies to war crimes. The evidence of large-scale executions of civilians in the liberated Kyiv suburbs Bucha and Irpin is an indication that such massacres are probably even more widespread and will need full investigstion and prosecution.

The problem is enforcement. Ukraine already has a restraining order against Russia from the UN Court in the Hague:

Russia was ordered to halt its invasion of Ukraine by the United Nations’ top court Wednesday, in a preliminary decision that appeared to have largely symbolic significance.

Ukraine initiated the case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to contest President Vladimir Putin’s official explanation for entering the country as an effort to end a “genocide” of pro-Russian separatists.

Any further orders from the UN will either be vetoed by Russia or simply disregarded. Neither the US, the EU. NATO, nor Ukraine will be able to push enforcement measures through the UN like those enacted for Iraq in 1990-91. This was the same problem France encountered after Versailles, and the only way it could collect was with its own military intervention forcing renewed supranational negotiation whose result nevertheless "proved unworkable", even though its US author received the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't think a Versailles type solution involving reparations will work any better this time. On the other hand, war crimes trials like those of German and Japanese leaders after World War II were possible because the Allied victories were complete, their territories were occupied and under martial law, and the relevant authorities were able to lay their hands on the war criminals directly. After World War I, Germany was not directly occupied, and matters like collecting reparations were never satisfactory.

Reparations and war crimes tribunals will never be possible, and certainly never enforceable, in a negotiated settlement of the Russia-Ukraine War. Nor will any UN based settlement be effective as long as Russia remains on the Security Council with veto power. They'll simply establish conditions for renewed Russian aggression like the conditions after World War I.

However, I do see problems with gaming the end of the Russo-Ukraine War out this way. The biggest is overestimating Russia, which has been a characteristic of Western strategy throughout. To paraphrase a wise community organizer, never underestimate the ability of Russia to [mess] things up. This has been my guiding perspective as I've followed the war, but the extent of the Russian collapse around Kyiv surprised even me.

Mikhail Gorbachev is reported to have said the Chernobyl nuclear accident led to the collapse of the Soviet Union by bankrupting it. I suspect that an estimate I've heard of the Russians losing $10 billion so far in destroyed and abandoned military equipment from the war is wildly lowball. The impact of sanctions will likely be far lower than the impact of sacrificing immense national treasure in this great military potlatch, with the additional disaster of lost military credibility worldwide.

Even now, this has been enough to suggest the Japanese can challenge Russian possession of the Kuril Islands, and I definitely would not rule out the Poles challenging Russia in Kaliningrad.

I think an unavoidable outcome of the war will be an increase in Ukraine's prestige, an equivalent decline of Russian prestige even without potential war crime tribunals, the emergence of Zelensky as a European power player, and the decline of a three-poled theory of world politics with the further disintegration of the Russian state.

I'm still wondering what else this could lead to, but again, I would not underrate the effect of schism within Orthodoxy.

Overtaken By Events

The suddenness of the Russian collapse and retreat around Kyiv is just another illustration of how consistently Ukraine has outperformed the conventional wisdom throughout the war. Just a few days ago, reports that the Russians were digging trenches in the Chernobyl radioactive area were taken as a sign that they were going to stay there and use it as a base to reconstitute their forces, at minimum to keep Ukraine's army tied down around Kyiv while they shifted their efforts to Donbas.

All of a sudden, the reports instead were that as of Thursday. Russian troops had left the Chernobyl facility entirely, with other reports that the soldiers who had been digging trenches were being treated for radiation sickness. Although most discussions of the developments around Kyiv characterize them conservatively as an organized strategic withdrawal by the Russians to refocus their forces, the report from the BBC below stresses that the withdrawal was forced by Ukrainian attacks and, given the disposition of burned-out Russian tanks with the troops' ordinary effects hurriedly abandoned, it was clearly sudden and unplanned. (Warning: highly disturbing content)

I was always skeptical of prognosticators, including retired generals, who were claiming that the Russians would leave a force dug in around the western Kyiv suburbs to cover their retreat and keep the Ukrainians tied down there while they shifted to Donbas. Consider that a Russian force of size s was stalled in the Kyiv suburbs and resisting Ukrainian counterattacks. If the Russians intended to reduce this force by withdrawing and redeploying r quantity of troops, the amount of troops resisting Ukrainian counterattacks would be s minus r, when s itself was barely sufficient for the job.

Any smaller number would be driven out. (I could figure this out even though they threw me out of ROTC. I'm not sure if the retired generals could do this.) It isn't even clear that the Russians actually intended to make this move, or if their announcements of strategic redeployment were simply a cover for the rout they knew was impending. The issue I see is that the consensus view up at least to yesterday was giving the Russians the benefit of the doubt when Ukraine had clearly won an actual battlefield victory in Kyiv.

Even the map below, posted early yesterday, is probably already out of date, given reports that the Russians have fully withdrawn from Chernobyl and appear to be retreating back to Belarus.

Russian forces around Kyiv are retreating en masse, leaving behind wrecked armour and possibly trapped pockets of troops as the Ukrainian army advances.

This map shows settlements confirmed recaptured today (blue) and yesterday (yellow).

The siege of Chernihiv is also lifted. pic.twitter.com/eINXgPpyJr

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) April 1, 2022

So what of the anticipated massive battle in Donbas? The Institute for the Study of War was partly right on March 31:

Russian efforts to redeploy damaged units from the Kyiv and Sumy axes to eastern Ukraine are unlikely to enable Russian forces to conduct major gains. Russia continued to withdraw elements of the 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies and 76 Air Assault Division from their positions northwest of Kyiv into Belarus for refit and likely further redeployment to eastern Ukraine. However, these units are likely heavily damaged and demoralized.

But a few sentences down, their analysis is already out of date:

Russian forces will likely attempt to retain their current front lines around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine and will continue to dig in on these fronts; ISW has not seen any indicators of Russian forces fully relinquishing captured territory. However, Ukrainian counterattacks are likely disrupting Russian efforts to redeploy and refit their forces and will continue in the coming days.

This estimate, even if pessimistic about Russian prospects for a Donbas push, nevertheless appears to have conjured Russian resources around Kyiv out of thin air. The photo at right, from the Oryx site and dated April 1, appears to be a more accurate indication of the situation on the ground (Click on the image for a larger view).

Estimates I've seen, with the caveat that they come from retired generals who seem to be reappearing on the networks, are that the Russians have already deployed about 75% of the forces they have available anywhere to Ukraine, including forces in the Far East. An enormous amount of those forces in the 75% have already been chewed up, and it looks as though some number of the 25% remaining will refuse to fight. Color me skeptical about a major Donbas offensive. A few days ago, the experts at ISW thought the Russians would remain dug in around Kyiv.

The Japanese seem to have a clearer view of developments.

🇯🇵The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan will now call the Kuril Islands a part of Japan occupied by the Russian Federation, Kyodo, the Japanese media informs.

— Svidomi (@Svidomi_En) March 31, 2022

There's going to be fallout from this war well beyond Ukraine. What, for instance, will be the long-term impact of schism within Orthodoxy and its consequent loss of prestige? Does Francis Fukuyama still think history is finished? My estimate is that the shooting will be over a lot sooner than the conventional wisdom expects, I think Ukraine will have a clear advantage, and the end of the war will have widespread unanticipated consequences.

The Orthodox Option? Er, Not So Fast!

When I wrote the old blog on subjects like "continuing" Anglicanism, I ran into contextual distractions, including a supposed Orthodox option for people dissatisfied with Episcopalianism, or indeed novus ordo Catholicism. The poster child for this option is Rod Dreher:

Raised a Methodist, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993, and subsequently wrote widely in the Catholic press. Covering the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, starting in 2001, led him to question his Catholicism, and on October 12, 2006, he announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. At the time, Dreher had argued that the scandal was not so much a "pedophile problem", but that the "sexual abuse of minors is facilitated by a secret, powerful network of gay priests", known as the "Lavender Mafia"

Various correspondents over the years have urged this option on me, but as far as I can tell, the option isn't popular, there are certainly accounts from people who feel burned by it, and my guess is that its attraction is mainly that it's esoteric, glitzy, and perhaps less demanding than Roman Catholicism, although like Dreher, its advocates at least endorse conservative values.

But the Russo-Ukraine War is exposing serious divisions in the movemeent. Via the Jerusalem Post,

Until 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was officially part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, as noted by many surveys, a large majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians.

However, the relationship between Ukraine's and Russia's Orthodox churches changed in 2019 when Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the current ecumenical patriarch and essentially the head of the Orthodox Church, recognized the independence of the Ukraine Orthodox Church.

This does not mean the church is entirely independent and unconnected to Orthodoxy, as that is not how the church works. Rather, it would essentially be equal to the many other Orthodox churches.

The Orthodox Church functions as what is essentially a group of churches where the archbishops do not technically report to anyone higher – a type of church known as autocephaly. The ecumenical patriarch is considered "primus inter pares," meaning "first among equals," but he has no real authority over the other churches.

In other words, it's the Anglican model (although more correctly, the Anglicans follow the older Orthodox model). The ecumenical patriarch is somewhat like the Archbishop of Canterbury, although there have been many splinter groups of Anglicans who no longer are "in communion" with the Church of England and thus do not recognize whatever authority the Archbishop of Canterbury carries, which is nugatory, even among his own English bishops and priests. The story continues,

The problem lies in how the Russian Orthodox Church claims authority over Ukraine as a whole, and as such, they have been greatly opposed to the establishment and subsequent recognition of Ukraine's Orthodox Church.

The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Ukraine, has been vocal in his opposition to the Russian invasion, saying that "the spirit of the anti-Christ operates in the leader of Russia" and said that killing Russian invaders was not a sin.

By contrast, Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill has called for unity in the Orthodox church, but specifically "our united Orthodox Church represented in Ukraine by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by His Beatitude Onuphry," referring to the head of the Moscow Patriarchate-controlled Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

This is causing what is apparently a historic schism. According to Reuters,

Russian Patriarch Kirill's full-throated blessing for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church and unleashed an internal rebellion that experts say is unprecedented.

Kirill, 75, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, sees the war as a bulwark against a West he considers decadent, particularly over the acceptance of homosexuality.

He and Putin share a vision of the "Russkiy Mir", or "Russian World", linking spiritual unity and territorial expansion aimed at parts of the ex-Soviet Union, experts told Reuters.

. . . "Kirill has simply discredited the Church," said Rev. Taras Khomych, a senior lecturer in theology at Liverpool Hope University and member of Ukraine's Byzantine-rite Catholic Church. "More people want to speak out in Russia but are afraid," he told Reuters in telephone interview.

. . . Ukraine is of visceral significance to the Russian Orthodox Church because it is seen as the cradle of the Rus' civilisation, a medieval entity where in the 10th century Byzantine Orthodox missionaries converted the pagan Prince Volodymyr.

. . . Kirill, who claims Ukraine as an indivisible part of his spiritual jurisdiction, had already severed ties with Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch who acts as a first among equals in the Orthodox world and backs the autonomy of Ukraine's Orthodox Church.

"Some Churches are so angry with Kirill over his position on war that we are facing an upheaval in world Orthodoxy," Tamara Grdzelidze, professor of Religious Studies at Ilia State University in Georgia and a former Georgian ambassador to the Vatican, told Reuters.

Due to the creation of a new autocephalous Orthodox church in Ukraine, we're beginning to see individual dioceses and parishes moving from the Russian church to the new Ukrainian one, just like what we've seen for several decades among Anglicans. At the same time, we're seeing situations like the Russian church seceding from the world "church", which is turning out to be about as meaningful as one or another Anglican group seceding from the Anglican Communion. In other words, the Orthodox are turning to the same schism on which they founded themselves and starting to behave just like Protestants.

As to Rod Dreher's complaints about the "lavender mafia", it seems to me that in the decades since the pedophile scandal first broke, the US bishops in particular have brought that matter under control, with US cardinals being held accountable -- while the Russian Orthodox Church, which includes 100 million of 280 million Orthodox worldwide, now has serious problems over matters like blessing war crimes that go well beyond a lavender mafia.

Indeed, it's often recognized that the Russian Orthodox Church has existed at the sufferance of the Russian state since 1917, and since that time, its clergy has been fully penetrated by the organs of Russian state security.

So just what flavor of Orthodox is Rod Dreher? In this recent piece, he isn't entirely clear. He says,

All this should cause Catholics who favor integralism to think hard about the wisdom of closely uniting Church and State. When the Church becomes a de facto arm of the State, people will hold it responsible for State decisions.

All of a sudden he's giving Catholics advice? Gee, thanks! Isn't the point, though, that the Catholic Church isn't an arm of the US government, though it is in Russia, and due to the US First Amendment will never be such in the US? Maybe he and I will agree, say, that the Catholic Church isn't ready to appoint an Archbishop of Mars. We'll need to agree on more before I can take him seriously.

Is he maybe thinking of returning to the Church? Well, maybe, as long as it agrees not to be part of the US government, I guess, but so far, he also hasn't tried either Christian Science or LDS. I'd give him time for those.

It Looks Like, For Some Reason, The Word Has Gone Out

There's a lot of new opinion across the spectrum that something's changed. For instance, at CNN:

A top legal analyst at CNN said it is possible President Biden’s son Hunter Biden could be indicted by the U.S. government following an investigation into his foreign business dealings.

“This is a very real, very substantial investigation of potentially serious federal crimes,” Elie Honig said Wednesday morning on the network. “We are seeing federal prosecutors in Delaware do exactly what you would expect to see federal prosecutors do in this situation.”

Honig said it appears the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business overseas is “gaining steam.”

Another take on CNN's report suggests there are questions about an issue that caught my eye more than a week ago:

WATCH: Even CNN confirms that Hunter Biden is under investigation for “money transfers,” “business activities in China,” “Burisma,” and the "source" of the funds he used to pay his tax bills. pic.twitter.com/5EqrYJhnqE

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 30, 2022

As I asked back then, if Hunter is broke, how did he manage to pay a million-dollar tax bill? The CNN story continues,

There is a realistic chance this could result in federal charges,” Honig said. “Of course, then we’d be in unprecedented political territory — not legal territory but a situation of having potentially the Department of Justice prosecuting and trying to imprison the son of the president.”

But what isn't mentioned is the potential exposure, both legal and political, of the Biden family's commingled finances. It's been generally acknowledged that Hunter and Joe have paid each other's bills for one thing or another all along. Tax problems for Hunter are almost certainly tax problems for Joe, his brother, and other members of the family.

Another issue that nobody's mentioned is the question of Hunter's relationship with the Secret Service, which continued in the four-year interregnum between the end of Joe's term as vice president and his inauguration as president, when neither Joe nor Hunter had Secret Service protection. The Washington Examiner reported last year,

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.

. . . At the time of the hotel incident, Hunter Biden was living in Los Angeles. His father, current President Joe Biden, was the former vice president and neither he nor his son had Secret Service protection. At 6:37 p.m., the following text exchange occurred between Hunter and the former agent, invoking the code name “Celtic,” which was and remains Joe Biden’s Secret Service handle:

Former agent: "H- I’m in the lobby, come down. Thanks..."

Biden: "5 minutes."

Former agent: "Come on H this is linked to Celtic’s account. DC is calling me every 10. Let me up or come down. I can’t help if you don’t let me. H."

There was another, similar incident that year:

On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone.

Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO.

But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.

. . . the alleged involvement of the Secret Service remains a mystery. One law enforcement official said that at the time of the incident, individual Secret Service agents at the agency’s offices in Wilmington, Del., and Philadelphia kept an informal hand in maintaining the former vice president’s security. The person cited an instance in 2019 when the Wilmington office of the Secret Service called the Delaware State Police to arrange security for a public appearance by Biden.

The exact relationship between Joe, Hunter, and other members of the Biden family with the Secret Service, especially during years in which they were not protectees, is a question that needs investigation. Acccording to the Epoch Times,

The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) says it cannot locate years of records on communications regarding agents guarding Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden was a Secret Service protectee from Jan. 29, 2009, to July 8, 2014, and traveled extensively during that time, including to Russia, China, and India, a congressional investigation found.

As part of the probe, which is ongoing, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have sought records from the Secret Service in their roles as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Secret Service provided some 261 heavily redacted pages (pdf) concerning the travel but did not provide any records from 2010, 2011, or 2013.

But someone also should be asking questions about 2018, and indeed, what services the Secret Service is now providing for Hunter, who has adopted a new, very low public profile, at Joe's behest. This man is an addict. Does Hunter now have permanent 24/7 minders? What do the minders do for him to keep him happy but out of trouble?

Hunter Biden Is Married? This is New.

Yesterday morning I opened my phone to find a headline in the UK Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Living her best life! Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen, 35, flaunts her toned body on Ipanema Beach in Rio as her husband faces grand jury probe into his murky finances thousands of miles away. I've got to think Hunter's second marriage is one of the under-reported events of our time.

Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen was spotted going for a swim on a beach in Brazil while her husband is thousands of miles away facing a grand jury probe into his murky finances and business deals.

. . . The mother-of-one appeared to enjoy the waves solo in her yellow top and navy blue-patterned bottoms, but several Secret Service agents were nearby at all times, costing US taxpayers thousands.

South African-born Melissa is in town for the Orphaned Starfish Foundation's benefit for the LGBTQ+ community, orphans, indigenous children and victims of trafficking and abuse. She is the guest of honor at Thursday night's event.

So I went looking for more and came up with some interesting context. In brief,

In 2018, a stripper named Lunden Roberts gave birth to a child out of wedlock and named Hunter the father in a paternity suit. The baby was conceived while he was still dating [Beau's widow] Hallie. Hunter initially denied the claim, but a DNA test proved otherwise. In January 2020, he agreed to pay Roberts an undisclosed amount of monthly child support.

In 2019, shortly after breaking up with Hallie, Biden began dating Melissa Cohen. To date, they are still an item. [cough, cough.]

Melissa Cohen is a South African activist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She moved to the US at 21 after earning an interior design degree from Greenside Design Center College of Design in South Africa.

She was previously married to an American entrepreneur Jason Landver between 2012 and 2014. In March, she gave birth to a son with Hunter. The child is reportedly named after his deceased uncle, Beau.

Hunter and Cohen’s relationship moved at warp speed. A few days after their first date, he had the word “shalom” tattooed on his left bicep to match her ink. A few days after that, he proposed. They were married within 24 hours [in May, 2019].

Cohen apparently comes with her own bizarre baggage. According to the Daily Mail, the 33-year-old, who is adopted, claims she spent the first few years of her life being raised by African tribeswomen. The self-described “jungle girl” says her native tongue is Xhosa, a tribal dialect. Friends believe “she may have embellished some aspects of her background in order to raise money for her various conservation projects.”

Sources also revealed unsavory details about her former marriage to Landver. “She decided she wanted to stay in America so she gave him an ultimatum,” said an insider. “She said we need to get married to get my visa or she would have to leave. It was very manipulative.”

Despite living a lavish lifestyle on Landver’s dime, the two ultimately called it quits. She accepted a $50,000 payment, kept her two-and-a-half carat ring, and even had her ex-husband finance a one-month trip to Europe “to ease the pain of their split.”

It's worth noting that Hunter's May 2019 marriage to Cohen came at the end of the extended binge that culminated in his dropping the now-famous laptop off for repair just a month earlier, that April. Hunter's relationship with his late brother Beau's widow Hallie ended in that same period, while the best information I've been able to find is that Hunter's employment as a Burisma board member ended about April or May 2019 as well, corresponding roughly to Zelensky's election as President of Ukraine on April 21, 2019 on an anti-corruption platform.

At the same time, Hunter's dad, Joe, appears to have been starting to set his presidential campaign in motion and may have wanted Hunter to tone thngs down.

Hunter had been financially squeeezed since Joe left the vice presidency. According to the New York Post,

From May 2014, Burisma Holdings Ltd. was paying Hunter $83,333 a month to sit on its board, invoices on his abandoned laptop show.

But in an email on March 19, 2017, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter to sign a new director’s agreement and informed him “the only thing that was amended is the compensation rate.”

. . . After the email, the amount listed on Hunter’s monthly Burisma invoices was reduced to $41,500, effective from May 2017.

An extended summary of Hunter's autobiography in the Forward gives further detail on how his relationship with Melissa Cohen developed:

Just after getting the boot from the Petit Ermitage, a swanky Los Angeles hotel, and while sitting on the rooftop pool figuring out where to go next, a drunk and high Hunter struck up a conversation with a group of hipsters, who all seemed to think that he needed to meet one of their friends: Melissa Cohen. Late that night he texted her, asking to meet up for drinks. She countered with an offer to meet for coffee the next morning — but didn’t show up until dinnertime.

Hunter describes his first glimpse of Melissa, who arrived with “oversized sunglasses pushed atop her honey-blond hair,” as a “bell-ringer.” Within a few minutes, he told her she had the same blue eyes as Beau, his brother. Then, he announced he was in love with her. An hour later, he confessed to his drug addiction.

Melissa, in his recollection, was unfazed. “Not anymore,” she said. “You’re finished with that.”

“Beautiful Things” details a slew of rehab programs that never quite worked. Instead, it took Melissa’s care to catapult Hunter into his current sobriety. A day after meeting him, she disposed of all his drugs. She confiscated his car keys, wallet, computer, and phone, deleting all contacts except immediate family members. When drug dealers knocked on the door, she “turned to steel” and dispatched them unceremoniously.

After a difficult period of withdrawal — Hunter doesn’t specify how long this lasted, but credits Melissa with putting up with “my whining and crying and scheming” — he slept for three days. On the fourth day, Hunter popped the question “like a trial balloon, light and breezy: ‘We should get married!’” That night, the two visited destination tattoo parlor Shamrock Social Club, where Hunter got the tattoo the Schmooze can’t stop talking about: The word “Shalom,” inked on his left bicep, which matched one of Melissa’s preexisting tats.

“Shalom” tattoos tend to usher in major life decisions, and the next morning Hunter and Melissa decided to get hitched — that day. Wedding preparations were slapdash: Hunter located a “marriage shop” and paid its owner to hurry to Melissa’s apartment in rush-hour traffic. Yet, he said, there was no sense of haste: “The decision never felt rash or harebrained or reckless. It felt urgent. I felt like I’d been given a reprieve.”

The story glosses over the fact that this all occurred -- first date through rehab struggle to marriage -- within ten days. I bet that rehab really worked, huh? As far as I can tell, Cohen herself had few or no financial resources, and whatever she got in her divorce settlement we must assume had long since been spent. She seeems to have cast an effective spell on the desperate Hunter, but I would assume that any other potential suitor with the means to support her lifestyle would likely have seen her as an aging gold-digger. Given her own sketchy background, he was the best she could manage. It's probably no coincidence that she got pregnant around the time they first met.

Curious about their utlimate living arrangements, I found this story, also in the New York Post, dated last July:

Hunter Biden has a new Malibu rental with an art studio, according to reports.

The 51-year-old, who detailed his battle with cocaine and alcohol addictions in his book “Beautiful Things,” moved into the pad with his wife, South African model and filmmaker Melissa Cohen, and their 1-year-old son, Beau Jr., he told Artnet earlier this month.

The rental was listed for $20,000 a month in April, and the listing was removed on May 10, two months ago, signaling that a rental agreement had been reached (though TMZ reported that the rental began four months ago when the property was first listed).

. . . The 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was purchased in 2019 for $3.34 million. The house has an open floor plan, solid oak floors, French doors and 180-degree ocean views, according to Realtor.com.

. . . Hunter recently left a $5.4 million Venice Beach house — which was guarded by the Secret Service — that cost an estimated $25,000 per month and which he found after living in Hollywood Hills, The Post reported. The new rental is also guarded by the Secret Service, TMZ has reported.

So Hunter's current home is 20% less expensive, presumably allowing for his diminished prospects as an investor and board member, but not all that less. I've got to assume Melissa, currently jet-setting in Brazil, isn't there all that often, and I also suspect young toddler Beau must be looked after elsewhere, as it would not be prudent to leave him in the care of his cokehead father.

We know someone just paid a million-dollar tax bill for Hunter as the prospect of his indictment looms. I've got to think the cost of maintaining Melissa's lifestyle, including charitable donations that make her a guest of honor, is not inconsequential, and you know she doesn't fly coach. Not to mention nannies and minders for little Beau. The one bright spot is the Secret Service pays for the limos. The cost of minders for Hunter himself is presumably out of the Secret Service budget as well. Do the agents run out for his drugs? How do they vet the hookers?

Asking for a friend.