by Julie Kelly
It looks as though Joe Biden is about to bumble and babble and bluster his way to a third failed run for president. Even before President Trump took aim at Hunter Biden for his shady financial ties to the Ukraine while his father was vice president, Biden was struggling with basic facts and weird stories about confronting a disobedient black teen with a chain in the 1960s.
Now it looks like Biden might be forced to answer serious questions about how his children capitalized on the former vice president’s international political connections and how Biden himself ran interference when his family’s grift was jeopardized.
According to news reports based on a “whistleblower” complaint, President Trump requested over the summer that Ukraine investigate an energy company that appointed Hunter Biden to its board in 2014, shortly after President Obama named Joe Biden as his emissary to the country.
While details about the younger Biden’s windfall are unclear, The Hill’s John Solomon reported in April that Biden’s company was paid a six-figure sum each month for more than a year. When Ukrainian officials began to probe possible corruption at the company, the vice president pressured the country to halt the investigation and fire the lead prosecutor, even threatening to withhold U.S. aid. (A fact he later bragged about.)
Ukranian officials concurred: That move not only spared Hunter Biden, who continued to serve on the gas company’s board until earlier this year, but quashed another political scandal for the Democrats in advance of an election year.
“The Biden family appeared to have escaped the potential for an embarrassing inquiry overseas in the final days of the Obama administration and during an election in which Democrat Hillary Clinton was running for president,” Solomon wrote.
So . . . election interference.
But as is the media’s reflex, they immediately repackaged the scandal to make it look like President Trump did something wrong. Accusations that the president pressured a foreign government to “interfere” in the upcoming election became the latest fuel for the Perpetual Impeachment Machine on both the Left and the NeverTrump Right. (Bill Kristol has posted more than 60 tweets about Ukraine and how this incident will for sure be the end of Trump.)
What Did Biden Know About the Steele Dossier?
But Biden thus far has escaped any inquiry about his role in legitimate election interference: The Trump-Russia collusion hoax, manufactured by the Obama Administration with the help of foreign agencies, diplomats and operatives.
Had any “whistleblower” been brave enough at the time, the American public would have learned back in 2016 about the vast network of international actors aiding the Obama White House’s scheme to infiltrate and sabotage Trump’s presidential campaign.
The public would have questioned why U.S. FBI agents were meeting with a foreign political operative in London to gather alleged Kremlin-sourced dirt about Trump and his campaign advisers. Perhaps a journalist or two would have wondered why that same operative—a former British intelligence officer—then met with top American news organizations to pitch stories about probable campaign “collusion” right before the presidential election.
As an Obama confidante, a member of the president’s National Security Council, and a surrogate for the Hillary Clinton campaign, Biden could not have been unaware of the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the aforementioned British intelligence officer turned paid political flack working on behalf of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Steele’s dossier contained outlandish allegations about improper behavior by Trump, and suspicious activity between Trump aides and Putin cronies.
Many of the claims detailed in the dossier were attributed to Kremlin insiders, including “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer.” Steele also referred to a “senior Russian financial official” and Russian businessmen.
That sketchy dossier, wholly produced and sourced by foreign agents and entities, provided the pretext to investigate the Trump campaign, which was initiated by Obama’s FBI under James Comey in 2016. Unlike current allegations of attempted election interference based on a politically motivated investigation, under Obama, one Trump volunteer was the target of government surveillance for a year.
A Founding Member of the Hate-Trump Club
Further, accusations made by Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador to the U.K., about another Trump campaign aide bolstered the phony case against Team Trump. (Downer also is tied to the Clinton Foundation and reportedly sought out George Papadopoulos in London in spring 2016.) An alleged drunken chat between Downer and Papadopoulos was so alarming to the diplomat that he alerted the FBI about the context of the conversation—two months later.
In fact, several foreign agencies were involved in the plan to infiltrate and impair the Trump campaign beginning in late 2015. “Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians,” the Guardian reported in April 2017. “This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information.”
The recipient of that information collected from foreign governments? Former CIA Director John Brennan. In the summer and fall of 2016, the Obama White House, according to an in-depth 2018 report by the Washington Post, held meetings in the Situation Room ostensibly to assess Russian election interference threats. Initially, those meetings included officials who could have just as easily been founders of the Trump Hate Club: Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Comey and Brennan.
Then, more participants were added: “Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others,” the Post confirmed. The small group received unknown intelligence material that they could not share. The meetings were so secretive that the Situation Room’s video feed was cut off, something that hadn’t been done since the pre-planning of the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011.
Brennan even met with a top British official just a few months before Election Day. “In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow,” reported Jeff Carlson of The Market’s Work. “Brennan would use the British and EU intelligence to launch an inter-agency investigation.”
It’s doubtful that this cloak-and-dagger routine had little to do with Russian social media memes and everything to do with executing the plan to fatally damage the Trump campaign and, if that didn’t succeed, finalize the “insurance policy” if he won.
All thanks to foreign assistance. And all known to Joe Biden.
Real Abuses of Power
Biden also participated in the controversial January 5, 2017 briefing with Obama, Comey, Clapper, and Rice. During the meeting, Comey and Clapper informed the departing president that they would notify the incoming president about the most inflammatory claim in the dossier: That the Russians had a tape recording of Trump peeing on prostitutes in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton in 2013. Even after the 2016 election was over, the Obama folks still were peddling foreign material in an attempt to undo its results by thwarting the Trump presidency.
Campaigning in Iowa a few days ago, Biden accused Trump of “violating every basic norm of a president” and insisted that the president should be investigated. “He is using every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me,” Biden told reporters. “He abuses power everywhere he can.”
The unprecedented investigation into an American presidential campaign at either the behest or approval of Barack Obama and with the help of numerous foreign entities is the most norm-breaking act in modern political history. Since the abuses related both to the Trump probe and all post-election activities under Biden’s boss are under investigation, reporters have plenty of more questions to ask Joe Biden.
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Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. After college graduation, she served as a policy and communications consultant for several Republican candidates and elected officials in suburban Chicago. She also volunteered for her local GOP organization. After staying home for more than 10 years to raise her two daughters, Julie began teaching cooking classes out of her home. She then started writing about food policy, agriculture, and biotechnology, as well as climate change and other scientific issues. She graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1990 with a degree in communications and minor degrees in political science and journalism. Julie lives in suburban Chicago with her husband, two daughters, and (unfortunately) three dogs.
Photo “Joe Biden” by Joe Biden.
