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The Hunter Biden Saga Continues – WSJ

By Thomas A. Smith

House Republicans just took two big steps toward impeaching President Biden.

The first came on Saturday, when Speaker Mike Johnson said he has the votes to approve a impeachment inquiry into the president, which would make official then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy s declaration of one back in September. The second came Monday, when Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer made public a subpoenaed bank record showing that Joe Biden received in 2018 at least three direct monthly payments of $1,380 from Hunter Biden s firm, Owasco PC. This comes on the heels of last week s news that a bank investigator raised red flags in June 2018 about what Oversight says was money from China that ultimately funded the $40,000 check to Joe Biden from his sister-in-law.

Ever since the public learned of Hunter Biden s influence peddling abroad, his father s defenders have insisted there s no there there. In 2019, when Joe Biden was running for his party s nomination for president, he put it this way during a campaign stop in South Carolina:

There will be an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government. There wasn t any hint of scandal at all when we were there, and I will impose the same kind of strict, strict rules. That s why I never talk with my son or my brother or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period.

Mr. Biden was equally categorical during the 2020 debates with Donald Trump. He dismissed Hunter s laptop as Russian disinformation, citing a statement by 51 intelligence experts ginned up by then-campaign aide and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In the two debates, when Mr. Trump brought up Hunter s sleazy overseas business dealings, Mr. Biden responded that it wasn t true, or that Mr. Trump s assertion had been discredited.

At one point Mr. Trump brought up payments from China. Mr. Biden said, My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. But in federal court in July, Hunter Biden himself refuted his father s claim. He admitted to Judge Maryellen Noreika that he received $664,000 from CEFC, a Chinese company with connections to the Communist Party.

via www.wsj.com

William McGurn.