“My son has done nothing wrong”

Americans of my generation were introduced to political scandal through the cesspool of President Richard M. Nixon and Watergate. I was in junior high school (yes, they called it that back in ancient times) and I was big into current affairs, trying to understand my world. I had worked as a seventh grade volunteer for the 1972 Nixon reelection campaign, wearing my “NIXON: Now More Than Ever” button and passing out campaign fliers in front of the Montgomery Ward department store.

Watergate was crushing. I was a disillusioned kid reading about “unindicted co-conspirators” and “obstruction of justice.” I read enough of Nixon’s Oval Office secret recordings to know all I needed to know about his venality: The president used bad language and swore like a sailor (not that I had personally heard a sailor swear).

Watergate was not the beginning of scandal in politics or in the Oval Office. Just recall the names of Nixon’s two predecessors in office, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy shared a mistress with a Mafia boss after a tryst with a Nazi spy, and his father openly boasted about buying votes in the 1960 election. Johnson managed to grow ridiculously rich while making a government salary.

Now, we have former President Donald Trump indicted on multiple criminal charges while the incumbent, President Joe Biden, is presented as a return to normalcy and a respite from scandals. Except he is not.

The Democratic message, constantly trumpeted by “mainstream” media, is that there is really nothing to the scandals surrounding Hunter Biden, the president’s son. But here we are, years after the initial accusations were leveled, and the stench just grows.

Most of the evidence is undeniable. Hunter Biden, a man of absolutely no known talent in international business, made millions of dollars as a partner in businesses that were—we are told this is a mere coincidence—closely related to the interests of U.S. foreign policy. During the most crucial years, his father was vice president of the United States. In the smelliest part of the controversy, Vice President Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine at the same time his son, who has no known expertise or credibility in such affairs, suddenly appears and makes a fortune with questionable deals made with questionable associates, some of which may have been counter to the interests of the United States.

Democrats and media types constantly point out that Hunter Biden has been investigated under the leadership of the U.S. attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, who was nominated to that office by President Trump. Well, Weiss appears to have bungled the investigation and came back with misdemeanor charges of failure to pay federal taxes and lying on a gun license application. A federal judge publicly rejected the plea arrangement the prosecution had agreed to, dismissing it as unprecedented and probably unconstitutional.

Add to that humiliation the fact that opposing lawyers basically got into a catfight at the public hearing. Hunter Biden’s lawyers claimed that the deal assured them of no further prosecution or legal exposure. Weiss’s team denied that was the case. Meanwhile, it was revealed that Weiss had been inclined to let the entire matter go without criminal charges until a pair of IRS “whistleblowers” went public with claims that their investigation of Hunter Biden had been stymied and politically manipulated.

Then came congressional testimony by Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner. In hours of testimony, Archer revealed that their “business” was selling the Biden name as “the brand.” Just to state the obvious:, there is no “brand” in the multimillion-dollar international business known as Hunter Biden. The brand is “Biden,” and the brand was access to Joe Biden, which meant access to the power of the U.S. government. Remember that Joe Biden was at that time the Obama administration’s “point person” on Ukraine as his son and his associates suddenly arrive to do business in Ukraine. It stinks badly and Archer’s testimony made the odor clear.

At just the right moment in making a deal, Hunter Biden would suddenly get a call from dear old Dad. As Archer admitted, when Hunter Biden turned on the speakerphone, “There was [a] brand being delivered.”

The Biden White House kept insisting that Joe Biden had nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s business. After Archer’s testimony, the story shifted to the claim that Joe Biden was never “in” Hunter Biden’s business affairs. Whatever the evasion, Joe Biden’s phone calls, even if the talk was only about the weather, were a business involvement. One thing is for certain, any financial involvement with Ukrainian interests by Hunter Biden was flat wrong. Even more certain, Joe Biden knew that his son had nothing to sell in Ukraine or China or anywhere else but his last name.

We can admire Joe Biden’s love and commitment for his son, stressed through repeated scandals and disgrace: drug addiction, sex scandals, a denial of paternity, the list goes on. But President Biden has gone way past fatherly fidelity. He had Hunter Biden at a White House event in the presence of the attorney general as a plea agreement was at stake. That rattled even top Democrats. “My son has done nothing wrong,” the president has insisted. That is patent nonsense, and the scandal does not end with the son.