Biden Used His Influence To Help Son in US Too, Not Just Europe

You don’t even have to go abroad to find allegations Joe Biden used his influence to get Hunter Biden jobs he shouldn’t have had. A trip to the exotic swamp in Washington, D.C. could have yielded the same results.

According to a report in the Washington Examiner last week, when the Democratic presidential candidate was a senator from Delaware, he allegedly contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice regarding issues that his son’s firm was also lobbying on.

The report, from the Examiner’s Alana Goodman, didn’t exactly receive much play during a busy news week. However, it provided a unique insight into how, as Goodman described it, Biden “helped Hunter’s work with strategic and highly specific interventions that could have benefited his son to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.”

In the first instance, in January of 2007, Biden contacted then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seeking a meeting with the DOJ regarding the fingerprint identification system used by the federal government.

“I write to request your assistance in implementing an expanded background check system for our nation’s volunteer organizations,” Biden said in the letter.

“If we can work together to expand the number of volunteer organizations that have access to fast, accurate, and inexpensive fingerprint background checks, we will make significant and important strides in our ongoing effort to protect kids across our country.”

Biden had requested “to convene a small meeting with key representatives” from relevant agencies.

Lo and behold, one of Hunter Biden’s firm’s clients was SEARCH, a group that also had the same aims.

On the exact same day Biden’s letter was sent, SEARCH adopted Resolution 7-44, which “urges Congress to consider that any effort to improve the quality, completeness and accessibility of criminal history records” and to revamp the current system in order to “allow the return of all criminal history record information maintained by the States on the search subject through a single fingerprint check.” 

Oldaker, Biden & Belair — Hunter Biden’s firm — had been paid $114,000 by SEARCH in 2006 and $93,000 in 2008. Also in 2008, Biden introduced the “Child Protection Improvements Act.” According to Goodman, this would have “created a national fingerprint background check system for volunteer groups that worked with children.” The firm lobbied for the bill.

In addition, Biden contacted DHS on Feb. 28, 2007, regarding Section 550 of the department’s appropriations bill.

In his correspondence with DHS, as preserved in DHS’ log of contacts with Congress members, Biden said that he was “concerned about the Department’s proposed chemical security regulations authorized by Section 550 of DHS Appropriations Act of 2007.”

That, according to Goodman, “requires high-risk chemical plants to submit site safety plans to DHS for approval, including security credentialing and training for employees.”

Just weeks earlier, Hunter Biden’s lobbying firm had been hired by the Industrial Safety Training Council to lobby DHS on Section 550. They had wanted more “language in DHS legislation regarding security clearance and credentialing for chemical facility employees and employers.” 

“While Hunter Biden did not register as an individual lobbyist for the trade association, he was one of three senior partners in his firm at the time. The Industrial Safety Training Council paid Oldaker, Biden & Belair a total of $200,000 between early 2007 and the end of 2008,” Goodman wrote.

So, no, you don’t need to go to Ukraine or Romania to find some sketchy activity in Hunter Biden’s past which bears an odd connection to his father’s time in office. All you have to do is just go to the swamp and see what happened back during Biden’s time in Congress.

Was there a coincidence here? Tom Anderson of the National Legal and Policy Center doesn’t think so.

“It’s implausible Sen. Biden did not know his son’s firm was lobbying on this arcane issue,” Anderson, director of the NPLC’s Government Accountability Institute, told the Examiner, saying that Biden should have stayed out of any issue his son’s firm was lobbying on.

“Sometimes appearances are exactly what they are,” he added.

“This is a recurring problem we’ve seen on the Hill, where family members are enriched because of their relationship with a member.”

This is also a recurring problem for Joe and Hunter Biden. We’re admonished over and over again that there’s nothing to see here, that we’re engaging in baseless speculation, that we’re smearing poor ol’ Hunter.

We’re not supposed to look at Joe Biden’s conflicts of interest — the fact that he shouldn’t have been involved in sending letters to federal agencies on issues his son was involved in, the fact that he shouldn’t have been pressuring the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor who had at any time been involved in investigating a company where his son was a board member.

Hunter Biden’s first job out of law school, it’s worth noting, was with MBNA, the Delaware-based banking giant which was eventually acquired by Bank of America. An old nickname for Joe Biden, thanks to the fact that his interests in the Senate always seemed, um, unusually aligned with those of the company, was the “Senator from MBNA.”

You do the math. Twenty-some years on, little seems to have changed for Hunter Biden. That’s a big problem for his father.