The mother of all black swan events may have just occurred with this crazy 2020 year of the Trump/Biden campaign. It won’t affect the outcome. Two weeks from the most polarizing and consequential election of the last hundred years, I doubt there’s a single undecided voter left in America. Many have already cast their ballots.
This close to the finish line, news is now filtered in terms of whether it hurts Trump or hurts Biden. If it hurts Trump, the media runs with it 24/7. If it hurts Biden, the media clamps a lid on it, and social media platforms suspend the account of anyone who links to the story.
In this case, the smoking-gun evidence of Hunter and Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine and China was broken by the New York Post, last week. I’m not going to link to it, as I don’t want my account suspended. The Twitter account of the New York Post has now been suspended, and Twitter’s refusing to reinstate it until the Post takes down the story. Talk about interfering in an election.
How reputable is the New York Post? It was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801, making it the nation’s oldest continuously-published daily newspaper. Its circulation is over a quarter million, ranking fourth in America after USAToday, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. It beats out the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe. It’s not exactly Buzzfeed.
Why do I mention Buzzfeed? Well, that online, entertainment-focused publication was used by the FBI to document the veracity of the Steele Dossier, the impetus for the Mueller Russia-Collusion investigation. We now know the Steele Dossier was actually fraudulent disinformation bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, in an effort to discredit her opponent. I won’t link to the relevant articles, as I don’t want my account suspended.
So, what do we learn about Hunter and Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine and China from the Post revelations?
Before we go there, let’s revisit the Trump impeachment. Why was he impeached? The charge was that he engaged in abuse of power by pressuring the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent, Joe Biden.
What was the defense to this charge? The defense was that there was disturbing evidence that Joe Biden had abused his power by threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine if Ukraine failed to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, the company on which Hunter Biden was a director and getting paid lavishly for doing nothing other than serving up access to his dad—who at the time was in charge of Ukraine policy under the Obama administration.
What was the evidence that Joe did this? Well, there’s the video tape (no, I won’t link to it) of Joe Biden bragging in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire the prosecutor, and boasting that Ukraine caved to the threat and fired the prosecutor.
In short, the impeachment was all about Trump trying to artificially manufacture dirt on Biden, and Trump’s defense was that the dirt was real and Trump was quite properly trying to get to the bottom of it.
Against this background, the Post article confirms that the dirt was real. Which means the entire impeachment saga was a scam. Well, we knew that. Anyway, the Trump impeachment is ancient history of interest only to…presidential historians, perhaps.
What’s not ancient history is that the Post article documents that Joe and Hunter Biden have allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to sell out the interests of the United States in return for money. This might actually explain how it is that Joe Biden, who lives the life of a multi-zillionaire judging by his mansions—and does so on a relatively modest government salary—has been able to afford all those mansions.
What are the Posts revelations based on? Well, here’s where the black swan event comes in. Apparently a year or two ago, drug-crazed Hunter Biden dropped off a computer hard drive for repair at a computer shop, and forgot about it. Despite calls from the shop, he never picked it up. Based on the service ticket Hunter signed, that ultimately gave ownership of the drive to the shop owner. The owner discovered amazingly-damaging emails on this drive, which allegedly document Hunter and Joe Biden’s corruption. He made four copies of the drive, and then turned the drive itself over to the FBI, roughly at the time the Trump impeachment began.
The FBI, under Christopher Wray ignored this evidence. That’s quite remarkable. This evidence was smoking-gun vindication of Trump’s impeachment defense: that Joe Biden was corrupt and that Trump was trying to get to the bottom of it. In a criminal trial, the prosecution has a positive obligation to turn over to the defense team any exculpatory evidence it possesses. Yet the FBI failed to turn over this evidence to the Trump defense team. Interesting.
The hard drive evidence finally made it into the hands of someone who took it seriously: Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney and former mayor of New York City. After vetting it, reviewing legal issues, etc., Giuliani turned it over to the NY Post, and they’re the ones who broke the story.
That “story” allegedly includes evidence that not only was Biden doing favors for countries that were paying big money to his son, but that some of this money was going into Biden’s own pocket.
That’s a felony. Actually two felonies. Hunter Biden was arguably operating as a “foreign agent” as the term is defined, and was doing so without being registered as such. This is what sent Paul Manafort to jail. And—if all these facts bear out—it means Joe himself was engaging in the federal crime of bribery (18 USC Section 201(b)).
Of course, the Bidens have denied all of this, correct?
They’ve denied that the hard disk belonged to Hunter in the first place. They’ve denied that the emails were to/from Hunter. They’ve denied the content of the emails, which provide the smoking gun evidence of felonies.
Actually, they haven’t denied any of it. And perhaps the reason they haven’t is that there are live witnesses who corroborate all of it. There’s the shop owner himself who amazingly hasn’t yet been suicided, and who can testify under oath that it was Hunter Biden who dropped off the hard disk.
And there’s apparently another witness, connected to the emails, who can confirm the emails themselves, and what they meant.
People go to prison for stuff like this. Paul Manafort sure did.
So what has Joe Biden said about these smoking gun, corroborated emails?
He’s issued the non-denial denial that the whole thing “is a smear,” and that as such he won’t respond to it.
A smear? I could be accused of “smearing” Bill Clinton by bringing up the Saga of the Blue Dress. But that doesn’t mean the Saga of the Blue Dress is not true. See the difference? Biden isn’t explicitly stating the hard disk wasn’t Hunters, that the emails weren’t Hunters, or that the content of the emails was incorrect.
He’s simply called it all “a smear.” Which doesn’t challenge the veracity of the…smear.
If it’s untrue, if it’s a fraud, why doesn’t he just say so? Certainly that’s what Trump said right from the beginning about Hillary Clinton’s fraudulent Steele Dossier, that was used to launch the two year Russia probe. Trump said from the beginning it was not true and a fraud. And we now know it was a fraud. Astonishingly, Biden hasn’t said the Post story was untrue, was a fraud, or that the underlying evidence was fabricated. He’s merely called it a smear.
Wow. That strongly suggests he knows it’s true, and can’t allow himself to explicitly lie about it on the record. So he calls it a smear.
If all this had come out three months ago, there might have been time for the story to catch up with Joe and disrupt his presidential bid. Two weeks out from an election? He can keep hiding behind the s-word, refuse to comment, and simply glide to the finish line.
It’s what any black swan would do.