By Andrew C. McCarthy. Media: National Review.
Hunter Biden is so strapped, the best he could do in Ireland a few days back was to sleep on a cot in the bedroom of his father — the president of the United States.
The younger Biden appeared in an Arkansas court this morning, accompanied by a phalanx of lawyers that somebody must be paying for, in order to plead penury in seeking a reduction of his child-support payments for four-year-old daughter Navy Joan. She is the child he fathered out of wedlock with exotic dancer Lunden Roberts, while he was romantically involved with his late brother’s widow (but after his marriage broke up).
Biden’s paternity of Navy Joan was established by DNA testing, which he tried to evade and to which he was forced to submit. His family, including President Non Compos Mentis and Dr. Jill, have not acknowledged the child’s Biden-dom. In fact, Hunter has opposed allowing his daughter to take the name Biden.
I observed this morning that it boggles the mind that the Bidens have not settled this case given the goo-gobs of money they have reaped from cashing in on Joe Biden’s political influence with operatives of foreign governments — for the most part regimes that are deeply corrupt and hostile to the United States. From Communist China alone Hunter and his family took in ten-digit “compensation” though their only apparent “labor” was being related to the guy who was steering Obama administration China policy while planning a run for the White House.
As the Washington Free Beacon reports, the president’s son was represented this morning by prominent Washington litigator Abbe Lowell, who is also representing him in connection with the Justice Department’s ongoing (and seemingly endless) criminal investigation which, besides presumably focusing on the Biden-family business of monetizing Joe’s political clout, has reportedly homed in on Hunter’s tax evasion and false statement (disclaiming his illegal drug use) on a federal form that Hunter executed in order to obtain a gun that he later lost.
By Lowell’s telling, the Spartan-like Hunter had to rough it with the president’s entourage on their four-day vacation to Ireland a few days back. Lowell was quick to insist the ne’er-do-well Hunter has been on Air Force One just the one time . . . unmentioned, evidently, were the jaunts on Air Force Two, while Joe Biden was vice president, by which Hunter traveled the world to strike lucrative foreign deals.
Hunter, his lawyers say, has no salary and has even seen his prize Porsche repossessed (oh dear!). He has borrowed a great deal of money from his generous Hollywood lawyer friend, Kevin Morris, much of which has reportedly gone to paying millions in back taxes — Hunter obviously hoping that this will help his lawyers persuade the Biden Justice Department not to charge Biden’s son with tax evasion.
Roberts, the child’s mother, has pressed for details about mysterious sales generated by prodigy Hunter’s paintings. Alas, Lowell explained, the artist known for his scrupulousness is scrupulously following an arrangement with the New York gallery in which he is not told the identities of the purchasers or the prices paid for his oeuvre. Have to be careful, you see, about accepting large sums of money after providing dubious value to people who might otherwise be seen as currying favor with his powerful father — no Biden would ever want to be in such a position. Or at least, one imagines, that’s what Kevin Morris has advised him.
Having been toyed with enough, Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer told Biden fils and his estranged paramour that they must attend all future court proceedings in person. Of more immediate consequence, Biden has been ordered to disclose the financial records that have been requested by May 12.
That could be interesting. At the last hearing, one of Hunter’s lawyers, Brent Langdon, asked Judge Meyer to preclude an expert witness whom Roberts plans to call about financial evidence gleaned from Hunter’s infamous laptop. As we’ve previously noted, Team Biden has been incoherently sly about the laptop, simultaneously claiming that (a) it might not be his but (b) his privacy has been unlawfully invaded by the publication of its contents.
Not surprisingly, then, Langdon slipped into passive-voice mode, telling the judge, “There has never been an acknowledgement” from his client that the laptop is his.
“Well,” Judge Meyer replied, “let’s clear that issue up right now. Is it your client’s laptop or not?”
As we approach three years since the laptop’s emergence, Biden’s lawyer stammered, “I am not in a position to even begin to answer that question.” Eventually, flummoxed counsel settled on, “It’s not my client’s laptop as far as I know. He’s never accepted that that’s his laptop.”
Hmmm . . . May 12 ought to be a hoot.
Hunter claims he needs relief from the $20K per month he says he’s been paying for the child Roberts says he’s never seen — $750K in all. That’s real money — gotta to be close to what he’s paying at least some of his lawyers, and nearly one-seventh of the $6 mil that Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks paid the Bidens in just one year between 2017 and 2018 — though that CEFC deal is not believed to be the most lucrative one with Xi Jinping’s cronies. That distinction goes to Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company.
Meantime, no further news on the now five-year Justice Department probe that we’re supposed to see as an investigation into what Hunter gingerly calls “my tax affairs,” but that should be better understood as an inquiry into Biden-family influence-peddling, and that has been dormant, according a whistleblowing IRS supervisory investigator, because of political interference. Who’d have thought?
