"The fact that my predecessor had a son who was paid $50,000 a month to
be on a Ukrainian board, at the time that vice president Biden was
leading the Obama Administration’s efforts in Ukraine, I think is worth
looking into." - VP @mike_pence
theintercept | The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career
shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been
trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication —
and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of
Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden. Democrats have been
loath to give any credibility to the wild rantings of Trump or his
bagman Rudy Giuliani, leaving them to sidestep the question of Hunter
Biden’s ethics or decision-making, and how much responsibility Joe Biden
deserves. Republicans, though, have no such qualms, and have made clear
that smearing the Bidens as corrupt will be central to Trump’s
reelection campaign. The Trump approach is utterly without shame or
irony, with attacks even coming from failson Eric Trump.
Biden has been taking political hits over of the intersection of his
family’s financial dealings and his own political career for some four
decades. Yet he has done nothing publicly to inoculate himself from the
charge that his career is corruptly enriching his family, and now that
is a serious liability. By contrast, one of his opponents in the
presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went so far as to
refuse to endorse his son Levi Sanders when he ran for Congress, saying
that he does not believe in political dynasties. In defending the
Biden’s nepotistic relationship, Democrats would be forced to argue
that, to be fair, such soft corruption is common among the families of
senior-level politicians. But that’s a risky general-election argument
in a political moment when voters are no longer willing to accept
business-as-usual. For now, Biden’s opponents in the presidential
campaign appear to all hope that somebody else will make the argument,
while congressional Democrats don’t want to do anything to undermine
their impeachment probe. And so Biden skates.
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