One would think the impeachment of President Joe Biden would be a foregone conclusion, but, alas, GOP U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is still burbling about an “inquiry,” most recently saying that would be the “natural step forward.” No wonder the satirical Babylon Bee offered this headline over one of its trademark hit jobs: “McCarthy Says 783rd Impeachable Offense By Biden Will Be The Last Straw.”

For the illegal-alien invasion at the southwest border alone, Biden should have been impeached and thrown from office a year ago, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (see the article “Impeach Biden on His Immigration Policies” in our September 11, 2023 issue). Yet Traitor Joe’s aiding and abetting that invasion by refusing to faithfully execute immigration laws is just one of his high crimes and misdemeanors.

They began long before he cheated his way into the White House, most notably with bribery and influence-peddling with the help and on behalf of son Hunter. Biden lied when he said he knew nothing of his son’s businesses, as his letter to Hunter’s biz pal Devon Archer shows. Not that we didn’t know that. The idea that Biden and his son never discussed the latter’s business activities is preposterous — and not just because sons and fathers discuss the son’s business endeavors, their successes and failures. Archer told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that Joe Biden was on the horn with Hunter and his business cronies some 20 times. Biden even used multiple pseudonyms, as the committee learned, to conduct business with Hunter. Unhappily, as leftist legal luminary Alan Dershowitz wrote, although bribery and extortion are indeed high crimes and misdemeanors, whether Biden can be impeached now for something he did as vice president is an unresolved constitutional issue. 

The Biden Justice Department slow-walking a criminal probe of the drug-addled lad, the ensuing ridiculous plea deal on gun crime and income-tax evasion charges, and selling a White House political appointment would seem good enough. We’ll see whether House Republicans ever find the courage to stop poking holes in the air with their index fingers and instead use them to pull the trigger on impeachment.

Yet what might be more important than pining for impeachment is recognizing just how corrupt the Bidens are. If money is to be made, the Biden Mafia will find a way. They’re as shameless as a band of Gypsy grifters and pickpockets. Even passing off Hunter as the second coming of Jackson Pollack doesn’t embarrass them.

The petty corruption of handing a political appointment to someone who purchased Hunter’s “art” shows how deeply the Bidens are compromised. Unturned no stone will be in the search for loot. 

Hunter the Artist

Calling what Hunter Biden paints “art” is a hopeful way of putting it. But the crack-smoking, prostitute-loving, income-tax dodger’s meager talents aside, one has to wonder who would pay upwards of $1 million for his work.

Well, the Bidens found someone, and then repaid her with a political job.

 Business Insider learned that one buyer just happened to land an appointment to a semi-prestigious commission. Granted, the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad isn’t the U.S. Supreme Court or even the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. But still.

Though The New York Times reported that most of Hunter’s artistic efforts, featured at the Georges Bergès Gallery, would sell for prices “in the tens of thousands of dollars,” the gallery “debuted Hunter Biden’s paintings with asking prices as high as $500,000,” Insider reported. As well, “messaging” from the White House said Hunter wouldn’t know who bought his paintings, and suggested that Hunter’s buyers would be serious art collectors “who had nothing to do with the hurly-burly of politics.”

Yeah, right:

Hunter Biden did, in fact, learn the identity of two buyers, according to three people directly familiar with his own account of his art career. And one of those buyers is indeed someone who got a favor from the Biden White House. The timing of their purchase, however, is unknown.

That buyer … is Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Los Angeles real-estate investor and philanthropist. Hirsh Naftali is influential in California Democratic circles and a significant Democratic donor who has given $13,414 to the Biden campaign and $29,700 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year. In 2022, she hosted a fundraiser headlined by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Insider also obtained internal documents from Hunter Biden’s gallery showing that a single buyer purchased $875,000 worth of his art. The documents do not indicate the buyer’s identity, which is also unknown to Insider at this time.

In July 2022, eight months after Hunter Biden’s first art opening, Joe Biden announced Hirsh Naftali’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It is unclear whether Hirsh Naftali’s purchase of Hunter Biden’s artwork occurred before or after that appointment. Membership on the commission is an unpaid position often filled by campaign donors, family members, and political allies — the same crowd that often winds up with US ambassadorial appointments. Hirsh Naftali’s fundraising activities mark her as the kind of well-connected donor who often wins such appointments, regardless of any relationship they might have with the president’s family. But they do not address the possibility that Hunter Biden might have voiced his support for her appointment. 

Using even Hunter’s preschool finger paintings to bring in cash in exchange for appointments suggests that the Bidens’ appetite for corruption is limitless.

Ukraine Bribery Scheme

That appetite led to an apparent $10 million bribe linked to the Biden-Burisma influence-peddling scheme in Ukraine. The operation involved Burisma using Hunter — who sat on the energy company’s board despite his notable lack of energy experience — to peddle influence with his father. When Ukraine’s top prosecutor began investigating the company for corruption, then-Vice President Biden ordered the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, to fire him, lest the United States withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.

That’s the genesis of July’s explosive bribery allegation.

GOP Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an FBI FD-1023 intelligence report based on information received from a confidential human source. Not surprisingly, the Democrats and their leftist mainstream-media information ministry immediately denounced the document as “unverified.” Technically, that’s true. But, although the document’s key allegation is indeed “unverified,” other parts of it aren’t.

The source described a meeting “to discuss Burisma’s interest in purchasing a US-based oil and gas business, for purposes of merging it with Burisma for purposes of conducting an IPO in the US.” Burisma would invest between $20 million and $30 million.

A key figure in the FBI report is one Vadym Pozharsky (called Pojarskii in the document), a company advisor: 

During the meeting, Pojarskii asked CHS whether CHS [confidential human source] was aware of Burisma’s Board of Directors. CHS replied “no”, and Pojarskii advised the board members included: 1) the former President or Prime Minister of Poland; and, 2) Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Pojarskii said Burisma hired the former President or Prime Minister of Poland to leverage his contacts in Europe for prospective oil and gas deals, and they hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems” (CHS was certain Pojarskii provided no further/specific details about what that meant).

CHS asked why they (Burisma) needed to get CHS’s assistance regarding the purchase/merger of a US-based company when Biden was on their board. Pojarskii replied that Hunter Biden was not smart, and they wanted to get additional counsel. The group then had a general conversation about whether the purchase/merger with a US company would be a good business decision.

Note that Pozharsky did not share Joe Biden’s opinion that Hunter is “the smartest guy I know.” Hunter’s cerebral prowess aside, the document also mentions Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s probe of Burisma and its founder and chief executive, Mykola Zlochevsky. That probe ended in March 2016, when then-Vice President Biden threatened to withhold the $1 billion if Shokin wasn’t fired.

The FBI source described a meeting in Vienna in 2016 that “took place around the time Joe Biden made a public statement about … Shokin being corrupt, and that he should be fired/removed from office,” the report says.

Because of Shokin’s Burisma probe, an initial public offering in the United States would be difficult, the source told Zlochevsky. But the Burisma chief “replied something to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry Hunter will take care of all of those Issues through his dad.’ CHS did not ask any further questions about what that specifically meant.”

When the source said Zlochevsky could resolve some of his legal problems in Ukraine by paying an attorney $50,000 to litigate, “Zlochevsky said he/Burisma would likely lose the trial because he could not show that Burisma was innocent.”

Then comes the bribery allegation:

Zlochevsky also laughed at CHS’s number of $50,000 (not because of the small amount, but because the number contained a “5”) and said that “it costs 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden.” CHS noted that at this time, it was unclear to CHS whether these alleged payments were already made.

CHS told Zlochevsky that any such payments to the Bidens would complicate matters, and Burisma should hire “some normal US oil and gas advisors” because the Bidens have no experience with that business sector. Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden “was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,” Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on the board) “so everything will be okay.” CHS inquired whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should retain Hunter Biden; Zlochevsky replied, “They both did.”

But that’s not all. The source told the FBI that the Bidens extorted money from Zlochevsky to get Shokin fired, which, again, ended the probe into Burisma.

During a phone call in late 2016 or early 2017, the source revealed, Zlochevsky said he was unhappy with the 2016 election result, and when he asked Zlochevsky about Burisma’s link to the Bidens, Zlochevsky said “he didn’t want to pay the Bidens” and was “pushed to pay” them. The source told Zlochevksy he had better have proof that the Bidens shook him down, to which Zlochevsky “replied he has many text messages and ‘recordings’ that show that he was coerced to make such payments.”

During a phone call in 2019, when the source told Zlochevsky he would have trouble explaining wire transfers to the Bidens, the Burisma chief said he didn’t pay the “Big Guy” directly:

The claim that Zlochevsky bribed Joe Biden to pressure Ukraine into firing Shokin, or that the Bidens extorted money from Zlochevsky, dovetails with what happened. 

In March 2016, again, Biden warned Poroshenko that the Obama administration would pull the $1 billion in loan guarantees if he didn’t pink-slip Shokin. Biden recounted what he told Poroshenko for the worthies at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018:

I said, “You’re not getting the billion.” I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.”

Well, son of a b***h, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

In other words, while the bribe itself might be “unverified,” other parts of the memorandum are verified and part of the public record, including the reason that Burisma hired Hunter Biden. It wasn’t because of his vast knowledge of the energy business. Rather, as Poland’s former president Aleksander Kwasniewski told the Associated Press, “being Biden is not bad. It’s a good name.”

Kwasniewski also claimed Hunter never mentioned his father, and Burisma’s directors didn’t ask for political favors. Maybe Kwasniewski didn’t hear Hunter mention dear old Dad, but the drug addict’s biz pals actually met Biden — when he was vice president.

On April 15, 2015, in the Garden Room at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C., the Biden boys met corrupt Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, now dead, and his wife, Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, as well as a Mexican ambassador. The Widow Baturina pumped $40 million into Hunter’s real-estate company, another of his many business ventures. The money was part of the company’s plan in 2012 to invest $69.7 million in 2.15 million square feet of office space in seven U.S. cities.

But another dinner attendee was also notable: Vadym Pozharsky. He thanked Hunter Biden for the powwow in one of the many incriminating emails found on Hunter’s notorious laptop. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” he wrote on April 17, 2015.

If Burisma didn’t need political favors from Hunter, it didn’t need to meet his father. But that’s exactly what happened. And if the bribery allegation in the FD-1023 is false, perhaps Democrats can explain why a confidential source would concoct such a story, particularly with such compelling detail.

But, again, Biden père was involved in the schemes when he was vice president. Any crimes he committed might not be impeachable.

Whistleblowers

Other offenses are or should be impeachable, not least the Justice Department’s stalling and interfering with the prosecution of Hunter on illegal gun and income-tax evasion charges. Hunter inked a plea deal with federal prosecutors that a federal judge in Delaware would not accept. The same judge then dismissed the income-tax charges, which prosecutors will refile, supposedly, in California and Washington, D.C.

Plea deal aside, two agents with the Internal Revenue Service told the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in July that the Justice Department interfered with the five-year probe into Hunter’s tax crimes.

IRS agent Gary Shapley, who worked on the Biden investigation until May, testified about two examples that merit continuing the wide-ranging probe into the Biden Mafia and its toxic influence on the equal application of the law.

The IRS had prepared a search warrant for a storage unit in which Hunter Biden kept documents. But a U.S. attorney “simply reached out to Hunter Biden’s defense counsel and told him about the storage unit, once again ruining our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed,” Shapley told the committee:

My special agent in charge at the time emailed that she would be informing the director of field operations and the deputy chief of IRS-CI [Criminal Investigation] of her, quote, “frustration with the United States Attorney’s Office not allowing us to go forward with a search warrant.” To this day, I have no way of knowing if the documents from that unit were among those ultimately provided to our team.

The IRS agents also wanted to question Hunter’s former business partner, Rob Walker, about the infamous email, dated May 13, 2017, that fingered Joe Biden as the “Big Guy” who would receive 10 percent of a deal Hunter supposedly inked with Chinese communists. Just before the 2020 election, former business pal Tony Bobulinski divulged the Biden-China connection and confirmed that the Big Guy was Joe Biden.

Protection money: An FBI intelligence report says the chieftain of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, paid the Biden Mafia $10 million to stop Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, from investigating Zlochevsky and his company. Shokin was fired at the behest of then-Vice President Joe Biden. (Wikipeda/Svetlana.pashko)

“Among other things, we wanted to question Walker about an email that said: ‘Ten held by H for the big guy,’” Shapley testified. “We had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.”

But, once again, a U.S. attorney “interjected” and put the kibosh on the inquiries:

She did not want to ask about the big guy and stated she did not want to ask questions about “dad.” When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning.

One wonders which candidate that prosecutor voted for in 2020. But anyway, the Justice Department also delayed an investigation into some crimes long enough for the statute of limitations on Hunter’s crimes to expire.

Which returns us to the FBI report’s allegation that Zlochevsky bribed the Bidens.

After Grassley released the FD-1023, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) tied the allegations to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s former retainer, and claimed that Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, ordered a probe of the allegations. The FBI turned up nothing, Raskin claimed, and shut down the investigation. 

Not so, Barr told The Federalist. “It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” he said. The FD-1023 was sent to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, which withheld it from Shapley.

As The Federalistreported, Shapley’s International Tax and Financial Crimes group was the ideal team to investigate the FD-1023’s allegations. The investigators were “12 elite agents who were selected based on their experience and performance in the area of complex high-dollar international tax investigations.”

Maybe that’s why he never saw the documents.

In a supplementary affidavit to this testimony, which referred to Barr’s interview with The Federalist, Shapley wrote that information about the bribery scheme “was received through the Pittsburgh [U.S. Attorney’s Office] and was determined it was not likely to have been disinformation.” Barr said the information “was provided to the ongoing investigation in Delaware to follow up on and to check out,” the affidavit continued.

Then Shapley tossed this Molotov cocktail:

Neither I nor the line IRS-CI agents acting under my supervision, nor the FBI agents working with IRS-CI, were ever provided the CHS information that Attorney General Barr recently referenced was sent to Delaware to have it “checked out.” Prosecutors never provided such information to IRS-CI. As such, neither IRS-CI nor the FBI agents working with them were provided the opportunity to conduct a proper investigation into the allegations presented by this CHS.

The validity of the bribery accusations aside, Devon Archer’s devastating testimony before the Oversight Committee proved that Joe Biden was quite familiar with Hunter’s business deals. Gallingly, Democrats claimed that the testimony proves Biden didn’t lie about it, and indeed, never knew what was up with the globe-trotting boy.

What Archer Confessed

That isn’t the case, of course. Archer told the committee that Burisma added Boy Biden to its board for good reason: “the brand”:

The value that Hunter Biden brought to it was having — you know, there was ... the brand, that was a large part of the value. I don’t think it was the sole value, but I do think that was a key component of the value. 

Of course it was the brand. No businessman in his right mind would hire a sex and cocaine addict with zero experience in business, particularly one who was “not smart,” as Pozharsky described the “smartest guy” Joe Biden knows, and not even as smart as Zlochevsky’s pooch.

Archer told the committee that Burisma would have gone belly up if the Biden “brand” weren’t attached to it. “I think that’s why ... it was able to survive for as long as it did,” he testified: 

He believed that Hunter Biden being on the board and the Biden brand contributed to Burisma’s longevity. People would have been intimidated to mess with Burisma legally because of the Biden brand.

Archer also confirmed that Zlochevsky and Pozharsky strong-armed Hunter to “get help” with prosecutor Shokin. The three “called D.C.” to discuss it, which means Hunter might have trespassed the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Most notably, though, “Devon Archer testified that Hunter Biden put then-Vice President Joe Biden on the speakerphone during business meetings over 20 times” to sell “the brand.”

As well, Biden shared coffee with Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, an investment subsidiary of the communist-controlled Bank of China. “Then-Vice President Biden even wrote a letter of recommendation for college for Li’s daughter.”

Hunter called his old man “my guy,” Archer testified. And he confirmed that Ice Cream Joe had dinner at Cafe Milano with Hunter and the Widow Baturina, who just happened to skirt sanctions the Biden Regime had slapped on Russian oligarchs.

“My guy.” “Big guy.” Both guys are Joe Biden.

As to Biden Senior’s claim that he knew nothing of his son’s amazingly profitable planetary business empire, well, we knew that was a lie before Archer revealed the letter he received on vice-presidential stationery. Still, the letter, which bears Joe Biden’s signature, is the dog that didn’t bark. Until now.

“I apologize for not getting a chance to talk to you at the luncheon yesterday,” Biden wrote:

I was having trouble getting away from hosting [then-Chinese President Hu Jintao]. 

I hope to get a chance to see you again soon with Hunter. I hope you enjoyed the lunch. Thanks for coming.

And “PS,” Biden wrote, “Happy you guys are together.”

Archer told Tucker Carlson that Biden was thanking him for helping Hunter make money. 

“He was thanking me and thanking Hunter, I think, at the end of the day for bringing this idea of this government-regulatory-strategic-advisory business into the private equity world,” Archer said. “And I think he was excited for the prospects for Hunter and he was just thanking [me], and I think it was a nice gesture.”

Spilling the beans: Devon Archer said Burisma Holdings added Hunter Biden to its board because he represented the Biden “brand.” (AP Images)

Other Bribes

Archer’s testimony fits with what we know from the committee’s release of bank records early this year. The Biden Mafia collected millions — more than $10 million — from foreign nationals and companies. They shoveled money into Biden-linked bank accounts like they were stoking the boilers on the Old 97 before it derailed on the Stillhouse Trestle and crashed into a ravine.

When Biden was vice president, the committee reported, Biden family members and business cronies created a complex web of shell companies to receive millions from foreign interests.

“Bank records show the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies,” the committee reported:

The Committee has identified payments to Biden family members from foreign companies while Joe Biden served as Vice President and after he left public office.…

Despite creating many companies after Vice President Biden took office, the Biden family used business associates’ companies to receive millions of dollars from foreign companies.…

After foreign companies sent money to business associates’ companies, the Biden family received incremental payments over time to different bank accounts. These complicated financial transactions appear to conceal the source of the funds and reduce the conspicuousness of the total amounts made into the Biden bank accounts. [Emphasis in original.]

Chinese nationals and companies with links to China’s intelligence apparatus set up a company to pay the Bidens, the records showed. Even Romania sent money to Biden, Inc.

After Godfather Joe met with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on September 28, 2015, a company called Bladon Enterprises — owned by Gabriel Popoviciu, “the subject of a criminal probe and prosecution for corruption in Romania” — sent money to a Biden cutout called Robinson Walker:

From November 2015 to May 2017, Bladon Enterprises paid Robinson Walker, LLC over $3 million.

Biden family accounts received approximately $1.038 million from the Robinson Walker, LLC account after Bladon Enterprises deposits. Sixteen of the seventeen payments from Bladon Enterprises to Robinson Walker, LLC were made while Joe Biden was Vice President.

But that money wasn’t all that Robinson Walker delivered. “Family members and their companies received over $2 million in payments through this account,” records showed.

And Robinson Walker, again, is just one of 20 limited liability companies to which the Biden Crime Family is linked. Some of the others, set up between June 2009 and September 2015, are these:

• Rosemont Seneca Partners;

• Rosemont Seneca Principal Investments;

• Rosemont Realty;

•Rosemont Seneca Global Risk Services;

• Seneca Technology Partners;

• Rosemont Seneca Thornton;

• Rosemont Seneca Advisors; and,

• Rosemont Seneca Bohai.

Others abound, but the corruption is clear.

The family’s corruption is so thorough that even the Biden women are involved. One recipient of money from Hunter’s global ATM was Hunter’s sister-in-law, Hallie, who became Hunter’s concubine after brother Beau died. She collected $25,000 from Robinson Walker, records show, after it received $3 million from China’s State Energy Limited.

What the Bidens were doing is clear. Joe Biden used his drug-addled son to weave a complex web of global business enterprises that would collect bribe or extortion money from foreign nationals, then distribute it to Biden associates and family members. 

Another of whistleblower Shapley’s revelations vis-à-vis the IRS probe into Hunter shows just how out-of-control the corruption was — or is. 

Hunter used his father to strong-arm a Chinese businessman named Henry Zhao. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter wrote in a WhatsApp message:

Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.

Hunter was at the Biden estate in Delaware when he threatened Zhao. Don Giuseppe Biden denies any such thing, of course. 

But supposing it’s true, Dershowitz says even that extortion attempt might not be impeachable. “The allegation that a former vice president and current president may have been complicit in an arguable extortion plot is a serious one that requires further investigation,” the Harvard professor emeritus wrote:

In the unlikely event that it were confirmed, it would raise a profound, difficult and unresolved question of constitutional interpretation: namely whether a president can be impeached and removed for a high crime committed before he assumed the presidency.

Extortion or attempted extortion is a high crime akin to bribery and thus — if proved — would be a constitutional ground for impeachment if it had been committed by a sitting president during his presidency. But what if it had been committed earlier?

Dershowitz cited the case of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned from office because of a bribery scheme during his tenure as governor of Maryland. He was never impeached, so whether an official can be impeached for crimes committed before he took office has not been tested.

Just to send a message, Republicans should impeach Biden, chances of conviction in the U.S. Senate regardless. But even if McCarthy and the GOP’s Keystone Cops don’t impeach Biden, Americans at least know their president might be the most corrupt politician since Boss Tweed, who robbed the taxpayers of New York.

Unlike Tweed, however, not one of the Bidens will likely see the inside of a jail cell.