Biden Family Values

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, October 01, 2023

 

President Biden is a family man, in more ways than one.

 

Joe Biden the Big Guy is, in anthropological terms, the Big Man of the Biden clan, lending to his family a sense of protection and plenty of patronage.

 

The family, rather than any one individual, is the best prism through which to look at the whole tawdry enterprise. The Biden “brand” was the business, and the Bidens, as such, were beneficiaries.

 

Foreign entities sent $24 million sloshing around Biden accounts, including almost two dozen shell companies, between 2014 and 2019.

 

A big Wall Street Journal report expands on how Joe Biden’s power and influence were routinely invoked by his family members seeking new business, not just in the most notorious foreign deals. Joe Biden’s brother, James, often used it as a crutch when pulling in new business.

 

The promises of the Biden name creating riches — and providing legal protection — were so direct that some of the other parties to these deals thought that the assurances created actionable claims when business magic did not ensue.

 

“At times,” the Journal writes, “business partners were ultimately disappointed when the Biden name failed to unlock access or markets, leaving a trail of legal proceedings and paperwork outlining the grievances of miffed former business associates.”

 

The profits to the Bidens, who made money even if their promises didn’t pan out, were dispersed widely. Representative James Comer has established that nine Biden family members received payments from foreign deals, including a grandchild.

 

It is telling, and really in some ways all you need to know, that payments from the Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu went, as the New York Post has noted, “to accounts identified only by the name ‘Biden.’” The same was true of a payment from CEFC China Energy.

 

How is it possible that, at least as Joe Biden maintained in his initial denials, he knew nothing about all of these dealings involving his family?

 

It’d be one thing not to know had family members been estranged from one another, but the Bidens, by all accounts, are tight; James Biden and Hunter Biden, for example, call themselves best friends.

 

And it’s not as if Joe Biden’s drug-addicted son was off on his own, making wild deals that no one else in the family was involved in or approved of. He was in league with Joe’s non-drug-addicted brother.

 

You could also understand, in theory, a natural human reflex to try to look away from the Hunter Biden train wreck and know as little as possible. But why look away from Jimmy?

 

Indeed, there’s been much focus on Hunter, with his lurid lifestyle and treasure trove of a laptop. But James Biden shouldn’t be forgotten. He was right there, and reportedly his consulting firm got 20 transfers from CEFC totaling nearly $1.4 million. 

 

That Joe Biden knew none of this was such a preposterous notion it’s a wonder he ever dared to try to get away with it, but a compliant press enabled him for a long time. Now, the standard has shifted from “Did he know?” to “Did he directly benefit?”

 

Let’s assume that we learn nothing else; the answer is still, “Yes, of course, he benefited.”

 

Most fathers and grandfathers, when they contemplate something happening to them, worry whether their families “will be taken care of.” The various foreign patrons and business partners of Hunter and James contributed to achieving this important end for Joe, and without anyone needing to bother to do much work.

 

Look at it another way. Would the ordinary father want the widow of his dear deceased son to be more financially comfortable or less? Well, Hallie Biden got cuts from the Popoviciu and CEFC bounties.

 

Or, alternatively, would the ordinary father worry about how his ne’er-do-well son could make ends meet? (One of the first questions you’d assume any concerned father would ask is, How is he going to make a living?)

 

Well, all this and more was covered by the family influence-peddling business.

 

Imagine if someone came to you (and you had no ethics) and said, “I can’t pay you off because that’d create all sorts of problems, but I can shower your family with money.” Would you say, “Nah — no thanks”?

 

Finally, outside of any potential direct transfers of money to Joe Biden, there’s the sheer psychological benefit most people would feel about being the Big Guy who is the means for the rest of the family to make easy money.

 

We have other indications of how mixed together this all was. As we just learned, wires to Hunter Biden of more than a quarter-million dollars of Chinese money listed his father’s home as the beneficiary address.

 

Hunter complained at one point of having had to support the family financially for years.

 

On the other hand, when Hunter had flat run out of money in late 2018 and needed help making various payments and wanted to move in with his dad, James Biden reassured him: “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you [sic] father alone !!”

 

Everyone was in it together. It was a family business, just like the neighborhood sandwich shop — or the mob-connected cement business.