Beltway Bidenspawn-Ship Has Its Privileges

Michelle Malkin

by Michelle Malkin: I wrote the book on the Obama administration's "Culture of Corruption" 10 years ago, including a thick and sordid chapter on the Beltway swamp creatures of the Biden family. See-no-evil liberals scoffed at my catalogue of back-scratching, shady Delaware deals and Wall Street funny money: What nepotism? What ethical lapses? What corruption?

Now, Hunter Biden himself, the youngest son of former Vice President and Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, finally admitted this week what Daddy's pooh-poohing pals have long (publicly) denied:

"I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden," Hunter confessed on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday.
Well, knock me over with a feather and plaster-cast my shocked face.

On cue, the Dems' favorite "GOP strategist," swamp lobbyist wife and anti-Trump loudmouth Ana Navarro Cardenas, cooed over Hunter's "self-awareness" and "humility." But even as the theatrically humbled Hunter admitted his privilege (staged the morning before Biden the Senior faced off for the fourth high-stakes Democratic presidential debate), he insisted he was as "qualified" as "anybody else" for his $50k-a-month gig at Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.

After all, Hunter puffed: "I was vice chairman of the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the U.N. World Food Program. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world."

Hold up, Sonny Boy. Reciting a litany of your unqualified domestic appointments to bolster the qualifications of your foreign gigs lacks -- what's the word? -- self-awareness. "GMA" hostess Amy Robach, who had promised a "no holds barred" grilling, whiffed on fully informing viewers about Hunter's lifelong biography of conflicts of interest and cashing in.
The Burisma "mistake" is a feature, not a bug, in the bubble-protected life and times of Delaware's dirty Democrat dynasty. I repeat:

--Hunter's first job, acquired after Joe Biden won his 1996 Senate reelection bid in Delaware, was with MBNA. The credit card conglomerate and top campaign finance donor forked over nearly $63,000 in bundled primary and general contributions from its employees to then-Sen. Biden -- who secured his custom-built, multimillion-dollar house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood with the help of a leading MBNA corporate executive. Average Joe went on to carry legislative water for MBNA in the Senate for years.

--Hunter quickly ascended to senior vice president at MBNA by early 1998 and then scored a plum position in the Clinton administration's Commerce Department, specializing in "electronic commerce" before returning to MBNA three years later as a high-priced "consultant." While he collected those "consulting" (translation: nepotistic access-trading) fees, Hunter became a "founding partner" in the lobbying firm of Oldaker, Biden and Belair in 2002.

--William Oldaker was Papa Biden's former fundraiser, campaign treasurer and general counsel -- a Beltway barnacle whose Democratic machine days dated back to Teddy Kennedy's 1980 presidential bid. Under Oldaker's mentorship, Hunter lobbied for drug companies, universities and other deep-pocketed clients to the tune of nearly $4 million billed to the company by 2007. Then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama personally requested and secured cozy taxpayer-subsidized earmarks for several of Hunter's clients.

--Hunter also was a top official at Paradigm Global Advisors, a hedge fund holding company founded with Joe Biden's brother, James, and marketed by convicted finance fraudster Allen Stanford. As Paradigm chairman, Hunter oversaw half a billion dollars of client money invested in hedge funds while remaining a lobbyist at Oldaker, Biden and Belair. The ill-fated venture went bust amid nasty fraud lawsuits.

--The Biden Bro received a $500,000 loan from the family's longtime donor, "friend" and Ukrainian-American businessman John Hynansky, which helped bail Uncle James Biden out of debt he racked up while renovating a massive, south Florida beachfront estate. Hynansky was also entangled in a messy Delaware real estate deal with Biden pal and convicted campaign finance and tax fraudster Chris Tigani, who spent two years in prison for laundering political donations through straw donors to Biden's presidential campaign committee.

--Hunter then snagged a seat on the board of directors of taxpayer-subsidized, stimulus-inflated Amtrak, where he pretended not to be a lobbyist, but rather an "effective advocate" for the government railroad system serving the 1-percenters' D.C.-NYC corridor.

And all of this was before Qualified-As-Anybody-Else Hunter snagged his lucrative foreign gigs in Ukraine and China (not to mention the humiliating interlude when he was booted from the Navy Reserve in 2014 for cocaine use while "working" as a public affairs officer -- a cushy, part-time job he secured only after finagling waivers for his age and a previous drug offense). The law license Hunter is so proud of earning was conveniently protected from review and revocation.

Bidenspawn-ship has its privileges -- lavishly underwritten by "Average Joe's" half century-long career on the public teat.
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Michelle Malkin is mother, wife, blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, and author. She shares many of her articles and thoughts at MichelleMalkin.com and Rasmussen Reports.

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