Seven years have passed since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign, so Slate readers have likely figured out their own methods of avoiding, deflecting, or gently participating in Trump-related political “discussions” with their families at the holidays.
The Hunter Biden situation, though, presents a new challenge, simply because of the sheer breadth and complexity of the naughty behavior (Santa Claus reference!) that the president’s black-sheep son has been accused of being involved in (or has thoroughly been proven to be involved in). Below, a guide to addressing and understanding conservative relatives’ Hunter-related concerns.
I’ve really been tuning this out—what’s the gist of the Hunter Biden chatter?
OK, so, there are a few things going on. To take a step back, in 2019, the Trump campaign and prominent conservative figures began arguing that Joe Biden, while he was vice president under Obama, offered Ukraine $1 billion in aid in a quid pro quo deal—or, alternately, that Biden had pressured the country to remove its top prosecutor from office—in order to protect the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma from domestic investigation.
The reason, conservatives claimed, was that the vice president’s son, Hunter, was on Burisma’s board, and that the vice president wanted to protect his son’s interests.
Now, three things are true: Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, starting in 2014 and until 2019. As vice president, Biden had pushed Ukraine to remove its top prosecutor in 2015. And he had used the $1 billion in aid as leverage to help get that done. But that’s because the prosecutor was widely seen as corrupt by the international community. (Other Western leaders had also called for the prosecutor’s ouster before Biden got involved, and Biden was, according to the Washington Post, “carrying out a policy developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.”)
Furthermore, one of the reasons the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was seen as corrupt was in part because he had failed to investigate allegations of embezzlement and other wrongdoing at Burisma.
It’s fair to say (to Uncle Bob, or whoever else needs to hear it) that claims that Joe Biden protected Burisma to safeguard his son’s interests are politically motivated, and constitute misinformation. If the vice president had been trying to shield his son (or enrich his son), in this particular circumstance, he chose the exact wrong way to do it.
Hmm, OK. But my Aunt Maria is saying something about … the New York Post?
Yes, but before we get there: In 2020, before the presidential election that year, a 64-page document purporting to be the work of an “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations began circulating on the internet. That document claimed that Hunter Biden had business deals with China’s Communist Party—or companies closely associated with the party—that supported China’s intelligence and business interests over those of the U.S. Newt Gingrich and other public figures promoted the report. But that document was a fake. Its named author and purported firm do not really exist. Still, Hunter Biden has had some business interests in China, and there are legitimate arguments to be made that those dealings could have created the appearance of a conflict of interest for the elder Biden. More on that later.
R&I-Rawr
Mariam
Article URL : https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/hunter-biden-twitter-nypost-ukraine-china-conspiracy-theories.html