Superficial pop media deflection when it comes to Joe Biden’s son being appointed to Burisma, Ukraine’s largest energy corporation, whether then-Vice President Biden had any influence in that or later cessation of corruption investigations into the corporation, and Donald Trump’s conversation about these troubling occurrences with the President of Ukraine shed a great deal more light than heat.
Heck, even using the term “light” is inappropriate.
Because, as a guy who previously reported on the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian President in 2014, the subsequent attempt by that US-backed insurgency to also grab Crimea to block Russian energy exports, and the subsequent appointment in late 2014 of Hunter Biden to the Burisma board, I’ve been trying to tell people for five years that certain things are very clear about Joe Biden. And now, thanks to excellent reporting by Alana Goodman, of The Washington Examiner, even more has come to light indicating that Mr. Biden’s questionable behavior as VP should have been predicted.
Goodman tells us about two cases of Biden as a high-level US Senator in which he appears to have used influence to help steer government policy in directions that would help firms for which his son, Hunter, worked.
The first was in February of 2007, while the thrilling and incredibly instructive Presidential Race was underway.
On Feb. 28, 2007, Biden contacted DHS to express that he was “concerned about the Department's proposed chemical security regulations authorized by Section 550 of DHS Appropriations Act of 2007,” according to the department’s log of its contacts with members of Congress.
You know, those “chemical security” regulations that don’t comport to any enumerated power in the US Constitution, to be handled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the only provisions for which are enumerated in the Bizarro World US Constitution, but which people accept because many Americans have a tendency to be ignorant of the Constitution and acquire normalcy bias for all kinds of thuggery? Yeah, those regulations.
But what, exactly, does this Section 550 do? Goodman explains:
Section 550, which was passed in 2006 as part of the DHS appropriations bill, requires high-risk chemical plants to submit site safety plans to DHS for approval, including security credentialing and training for employees.
It just so happens that eight weeks earlier, The Industrial Safety Training Council (ISTC) had hired good ol’ Hunter’s lobbying firm. And what does this ISTC do? It represents the business interests of – shocker – companies that provide safety training for people who own and work in chemical plants.
The Industrial Safety Training Council was seeking to expand the 'language in DHS legislation regarding security clearance and credentialing for chemical facility employees and employers' in January 2007, according to lobbying disclosure records.
And the ISTC paid Biden’s firm, Oldaker, Biden & Belair “a total of $200,000 between early 2007 and the end of 2008.”
So, to reiterate. What did smokin’ Joe Biden do in February of 2007?
On Feb. 28, 2007, Biden contacted DHS to express that he was “concerned about the Department's proposed chemical security regulations authorized by Section 550 of DHS Appropriations Act of 2007,” according to the department’s log of its contacts with members of Congress.
Which, in light of his son’s firm’s interests, looks kind of sketchy.
The second wonderful tale of seeming sketchiness came on January 31, 2007, when:
One of Hunter’s firm’s lobbying clients at the time, a coalition of state-level criminal justice advocates called SEARCH, was also lobbying the federal government for a broader fingerprint screening system at the time.
But, golly, Senator Joe just happened to have:
…sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Jan. 31, 2007 requesting a meeting with the Department of Justice to discuss expanding the federal fingerprint background check system.
This guy Biden’s timing is uncanny.
The same day as Biden’s letter, SEARCH adopted a resolution calling on Congress to consider ‘any effort to improve the quality, completeness and accessibility of criminal history records’ and expand the current system to ‘allow the return of all criminal history record information maintained by the States on the search subject through a single fingerprint check.’
But wait, there’s more! And your tax cash got to buy this awesome deal! No need to order now, the order was put through via government diktat more than ten years ago!
Goodman notes:
The group initially hired Oldaker, Biden & Belair in 2006 to lobby for federal funding for state-level criminal justice programs, paying the firm $114,000 over the next year. In early 2008, SEARCH was seeking funding ‘to assist states in development and use of information to accelerate automation of fingerprint authentication processes and criminal justice data which are compatible with the FBI’s’ system, according to lobbying records.
And what was the result of all the totally clean, above-board, 100 percent “constitutional” activity?
Biden introduced a bill called the “Child Protection Improvements Act” on March 13, 2008, which created a national fingerprint background check system for volunteer groups that worked with children. Oldaker, Biden & Belair promptly began lobbying for the bill on behalf of their client, SEARCH, according to lobbying records. SEARCH paid the firm $93,000 in 2008, records show.
I thought you might like to know.
This is Joe “not a hint of scandal” Biden, the guy whom you can easily find in photographs taken in Ukraine between 2014 and early 2015 (around the time then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland was recorded in a quaint little phone chat Geoffrey Pyatt, then US Ambassador to Ukraine, discussing whom to put into power in Ukraine) was posing in meetings with Oleh Yaroslavovych Tyahnybok, leader of the fascist Svoboda political party and a man plausibly accused of being a neoNazi.
Again, I thought you might like to know. You can tell your local branch of Antifa.
After all, they’re supposed to be opposed to fascism, right?
And, technically speaking, fascism is the nominal (in name only) ownership of business that answers to the dictates and “regulations” of politicians.
So, surely, Antifa would want to be appraised of any hint of “scandal” among their adored leftist political class…
Surely.