President Joe Biden could be found guilty of accepting a bribe based on payments given to family members, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“There are cases in which payments made to family members can be treated as bribery of the principle if he is aware of it,” Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz told the DCNF in August. When the House Oversight Committee released its third bank records memo in August on payments Hunter Biden received from foreign sources, Republicans argued payments need not be made “directly to the president to show corruption” because “the law recognizes payments to family members to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe.”
The memo identified over $20 million in foreign payments to the Biden family and associates, including payments Hunter Biden received from Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev, while Joe Biden was vice president. In response, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said the memo “doesn’t show anything about President Biden.”
Former federal prosecutor and FBI consultant Joseph Moreno told the DCNF that federal law makes it a crime “for a public official to directly or indirectly receive something of value in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act.” “So in establishing whether there was a quid pro quo, prosecutors would have to prove that something was demanded or received by a public official (including the President) in exchange for some official act (i.e., approving foreign aid, putting pressure on a foreign official),” he explained. “This can be done via a direct payment or gift to a public official, or an indirect one through, say, a family member or business associate.”
A payment accepted through a family member could also be relevant in an impeachment trial, where the standard leading to removing a president is easier to meet and does not “require a statutory violation,” he said. “Impeachment by the House (Art. I, Section 2) and trial by the Senate is for when a President commits ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ which is not a term defined in the Constitution but has largely been considered to be whatever Congress deems to be,” he said. “So if Congress wants to impeach and try President Biden for benefitting from improper payments received through his son or other family members, it is free to do so.”
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Article URL : https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/28/hunter-joe-biden-bribe-legal-experts/