Michael Adkins
A Republican friend repeatedly asked me when I was going to write a column about Hunter Biden and his laptop. He teasingly said he would not consider me a serious journalist until I did so. My initial response was to ask, “Whoever considered me a serious journalist?” I thought it best to wait and see if anything came out of these allegations, but he keeps insisting, so here it goes.
I am not certain there is anything to the Biden allegations, in large part because of the sources pushing for it. First is Fox News and the Republican Party. Both made innumerable accusations against Hilary Clinton for over three decades. After several GOP-led investigations for such accusations as real estate fraud and murder, one of our former congressmen was really involved with the latter, the only thing they came up with was the extramarital affair of her husband. Even after GOP-led congressional hearings on Benghazi, the Republicans found nothing to hang their hats on, let alone charge her with wrongdoing. So, excuse me if I am not quick to rush to judgement with their latest allegations. I’d rather wait for evidence to be shown.
The other source pushing the Hunter Biden accusations is the Trump family. We all know the obvious reason they have for pushing it is to embarrass the current President. But I would add that there is another, perhaps more important reason for the Trump family’s insistence of wrong doing by the President’s son. That is to push media attention away from the financial shenanigans of the Trump family itself.
Without even going into the allegations of former president Donald J. Trump’s violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, there is a great deal of hypocrisy for this family’s insistence that Hunter Biden committed financial wrongdoings because he is the President’s son. A cartoon published in early April was the perfect illustration of such hypocrisy. It captured an image of Hunter Biden sitting on a small bag of money. Looking down upon him, and saying “How disgusting” were members of the Trump family resting atop many bags of money with several labeled for specific accusations. This was one of the best and clearest political messages I have ever seen in a political cartoon.
I told my teasing Republican friend that if I did write about Hunter Biden, I would undoubtedly have to make comparisons with the Trumps. If I were a Republican, I would be very wary of attacking Biden Hunter after the examples set by Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner. While there have been a number of them, I’d just like to center on his relationship with the infamous Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Immediately following the assassination and dismemberment of American journalist and Indiana State University alum, Jamal Kashoggi, Jared Kushner is reported by a witness to have advised his father-in-law to keep a low profile over the matter and just let it die down. Why, you might wonder would Mr. Kushner give such advice? At the risk of being cynical, may I suggest it was because of the billions of dollars, that is right, I said billions, that Mr. Kushner has received at the feet of the Crown Prince. Kushner’s newly formed investment group received the contract to manage Saudi funds despite Saudi financial authorities’ opposition because he was horribly inexperienced and such inexperience put such a large portion of Saudi assets at risk. They were overruled by the Crown Prince himself.
Hunter Biden is no shining example to follow. But Republicans and the Trumps should clean their dirty laundry before belaboring Biden’s alleged wrongdoings.
