The investigation into the classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s former office and private residence might seem separate from the looming inquiry into his son’s dealings — but they are, in fact, one.
Some of Biden’s documents were stored in Biden’s garage, next to his prized Corvette. While the president protested last week that the garage was always locked, Hunter Biden drove the car during the relevant period.
That means Hunter Biden had access to the garage and the documents, which he had no security clearance to handle. We don’t know if he did so, but they could have been a financial boon for the cash-strapped playboy.
Recall that during the period in question, Hunter Biden was exploring business opportunities with the the CEFC China Energy Co., including the idea of creating a joint company of which Joe Biden was to own 10%.
Those facts emerged from the Hunter Biden laptop, and were corroborated by businessman Tony Bobulinski, who was to have served as CEO of the joint venture, until Hunter Biden absconded with $5 million from China.
The laptop also showed that Hunter Biden was renting expensive business office space in Washington, DC, and sharing it with a CEFC offshoot — and with other members of the Biden family, including Joe Biden himself.
That appears to be the reason for the nearly $50,000 in rent that Hunter Biden declared he was paying when he filled out a background check form, simultaneously claiming to be living at Joe Biden’s residence in Delaware.
When that form emerged, many speculated that the rent might have been the vehicle for Hunter Biden to share the proceeds of his foreign business deals with his father. That may not be so, but Hunter Biden had other ways.
The Chinese business deal that went awry was negotiated with Ye Jianming, who had close ties with China’s intelligence services and who apparently gave Hunter Biden expensive gifts, including a 3.16 carat diamond.
Hunter Biden also purported to represent Jianming as his attorney in the U.S. He also represented another CEFC executive, Patrick Ho, who was later convicted of corruption charges in federal court in New York.
We do not yet know what was in the classified documents that Joe Biden had no right to take with him when he left office in 2017. We also do not know if Hunter Biden shared them with his foreign business associates.
But we do know that Hunter Biden had access to at least some of these documents, and that those documents recovered in Joe Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center included intelligence briefings on foreign countries.
The Penn Biden Center is also part of the puzzle, as it raked in millions of donations from China, which may have indirectly funded Joe Biden’s extravagant earnings of $900,000 for what was essentially a no-show job.
The donations could have been altruistic, aimed at furthering the academic goals of Biden’s think tank, whatever they were. Alternatively, they could have been a form of bribery, or a method of laundering money.
And so the classified documents lie at the center of the Biden family’s foreign dealings. The problem is not just that Biden broke the law on classified documents — which he admits, though he claims it was inadvertent.
The problem is the potential for bribery. This is not just a “misdemeanor” that all presidents might commit, as some argue.
This could be bribery — an independent basis for impeachment. Congress should treat it as such.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.