Sunday, October 20, 2019

Corruption

Did Hunter Biden accept a position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Bursima when he knew little to nothing of energy or Ukraine? Yes he did. Is it likely that Bursima expected to gain advantage from the fact that Hunter Biden's father was the Vice President of the United States who was also the point man in talks with Ukraine? Sure. Is that illegal? No.

While I hate to use the excuse "everyone does it" (Whataboutism), it is in fact true that everyone does "do it". While I do not believe that a comprehensive list exists of politicians' relatives who hold positions or seats on boards for which they possess no qualifications, my guess is that it would be quite an extensive list.  Whether the practice is ethical or not is a matter of debate and reasonable people might disagree, but what is inarguable is that it's perfectly legal.

The second part of the supposed corruption of the Bidens involves Vice President Biden pushing to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who some imagine was investigating Bursima and Hunter Biden. The prosecutor in question was pushed out because he wasn't investigating corruption and he wasn't investigating Bursima. The replacement prosecutor did investigate and found no wrongdoing.

The story that Trump and his sycophants are pushing now is that yes, we asked the Ukrainian president to investigate corruption, and yes, this included Joe and Hunter Biden, but only because we were concerned about Ukraine rooting out corruption. This story fails the bullshit test for many reasons.

  1. There is no indication that Trump or anyone in his administration cares about corruption in Ukraine or anywhere else
  2. The timing, right after Biden announced his candidacy for president and the polls that show him beating Trump, is pretty suspicious
  3. The literally dozens of instances of the Trump family benefiting financially from the presidency make the sudden concern with self-dealing and family influence a bit hypocritical
Once again, Trump's lies sound like the lies a toddler tells before he figures out what's plausible or believable and what's not

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