The circumstances of the Burisma payments to Hunter Biden for no apparent reason together with his father's strange boasting in public about using U.S. foreign aid money to force the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor smelled to high heaven. But the lack of direct evidence linking the two parts of this picture, together with the disinterest of the major media, made it easy enough for the senior Mr. Biden to deny any knowledge of his son's activities and to claim, without any particular details, that the matter had been investigated and debunked.
The story excited much interest in conservative circles and the keen interest of the President but up to now has played little part in the fury of arguments in the election campaign. In fact, the impeachment of the President by the Democrats was based largely on his requesting the help of the newly elected Ukrainian president in investigating the matter. Neither the accusers nor the defenders seemed to pay much attention to the issue of whether the President's inquiries were appropriate considering the potential seriousness of the charges. During the presidential debate Mr. Trump tried to resurrect the issue, over the objections of the moderator, and was roundly criticized, by many liberals in particular, for stooping so low as to attack his contender's family.
There now appears new evidence that the suspicions were true, and that Mr. Biden's actions while he was Vice President were even more corrupt than previously suspected. A treasure trove of Hunter Biden's emails have surfaced which, if true, indicate that Mr. Biden was providing access to himself to foreign entities, including Ukraine, Russia and China, and was adjusting U.S. policy in exchange for large money payments to his son and possibly directly to himself.
Thus far the major news media have tried to ignore the story and the social media have actively suppressed discussion of it. However, these allegations come not from a supermarket tabloid or an inconsequential conservative website but from major news sources which have the resources to investigate and reputations at serious risk if they get it wrong. They have been cautious about making claims about the veracity of these allegations and very transparent about their sources, but Mr. Tucker Carlson last night claimed that there is now incontrovertible evidence that the emails in question are truly those of Hunter Biden and accurately document his activities.
How important is all of this? Well let's put it this way. Although I am a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, had evidence been uncovered that he indeed had an arrangement with Mr. Putin to provide election help in exchange for money payment or favorable U.S. policy, I would have had no alternative than to accept the Democrat's calls for impeachment or resignation.
The event is reminiscent of the situation of Richard Nixon whose deception was uncovered and pursued by two tenacious Washington Post reporters. The position of Mr. Nixon, who had won the election of 1972 in a landslide victory, was slowly but surely eroded by the steady accumulation of evidence to the point where he lost the support of the public and thereby his political supporters and was forced to resign. Mr. Nixon's offense was arguably much less serious than that of which Mr. Biden is accused.
What happens next? It's hard to imagine that if the allegations are proved to be true that Mr. Biden could remain viable as either a candidate or an elected President. But a significant number of individuals have already voted, and others will soon follow suit. With the final election day only two weeks away the Democrats and their media allies may try to put off discussion as long as possible in the hopes that the findings will influence a small enough portion of the electorate that Mr. Biden will be elected. After that, if the story lives on and intensifies, he can be sacrificed but the Executive branch will now be in Democrat hands which seems clearly to be their real interest rather than any particular devotion to their candidate.
Can they pull it off? We'll see. News travels dramatically faster in our digital age than it did in the 1970's. Even the attempt of the Silicon Valley social media to suppress the new findings seemed to serve only to bring them more to the public's attention. It took the news media several months to bring down Mr. Nixon, but it will surely be an item on tomorrow's Sunday news shows. Furthermore, somewhere very soon the major media will find it untenable not to take up the matter and Mr. Biden is going to have to be asked for an explanation. Surely the matter will come up in the second Presidential debate, assuming there is one, if not from the moderator, at least by Mr. Trump. His supporters are hopeful that his frustration with the forces allied against him, including perhaps the moderator, will not stimulate intemperate remarks but that he will be calm and factual and allow Mr. Biden to cook his own goose.
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