July 26, 2023
After the highly touted, shamelessly self-promoted Washington Post “investigative” Watergate journalism, thousands of aspiring young people sought to become, like the legendary Woodward and Bernstein, fearless speakers of truth to power, uncovering corruption and cover-up without fear or favor. But fifty years later, these supposed investigative journalists have become the corrupt actors whom they promised to expose. Have our vaunted good guys become dirty cops? It sure looks like it.
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While this evolution from clean to corrupt has been proceeding apace for fifty years, there is no better incarnation of this perverse role change than the recent journalism concerning ostensible Biden family corruption.
There is much room for legitimate, good-faith debate about the strength of evidence against Hunter Biden and, separately, his father Joe. But the debate is properly about the unseemly activities of Hunter and the practiced neglect of same, at the least, by his father. Whatever the strength of evidence, all of it is ugly, worrisome, problematic. There is no way to sugarcoat this: there is a noisome stench emanating from Bidenville that cries out for further investigation.
This tableau of potential Biden family corruption amounts to a test of the bona fides of modern “investigative” journalists. Will they investigate facts in a dispassionate way, or will they act as partisan publicity agents covering up wrongdoing, perhaps treason?
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What results has this test thus far returned?
To decide this question, let’s first recapitulate the evidence that seems to be uncontroverted, even if not publicized in detail by these supposed watchdogs.
In the throes of the “Maidan Revolution,” by late 2014, Ukraine had been turned upside-down. To tamp down endemic corruption, which portended the country’s demise, the United States took a firm anti-corruption stance, which it could enforce as the main player in granting foreign aid.
Vice President Joe Biden then volunteered to be the Obama administration point man for the troubled country. Before he flew to Ukraine, he had a multi-hour White House meeting with Devon Archer, his son’s partner in apparent influence-peddling.
As Hunter and Archer thereafter maneuvered to pitch potential Ukrainian clients, Hunter sent a lengthy memorandum one such client, the energy company Burisma, which sounded suspiciously, with jargon, as if it had come directly from a classified analysis of U.S. policy on oil and gas exploration in and around Ukraine.
Soon, Attorney General Eric Holder, along with U.K. officials, heralded the London seizure of $23 million in Burisma funds directed to Cyprus for the personal benefit of a Burisma owner and apparent embezzler, Mykola Zlochevsky. After British officials attached the funds, all that was needed was certification by a Ukraine prosecutor that the gain was ill-gotten, in which case the Court would return the money to Ukraine.
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But, oddly, no Ukraine official, to the British magistrate’s stated frustration, ever claimed the money, which was reluctantly forwarded to Cyprus, for the benefit of Hunter’s new client.
Another Hunter client, Igor Kolomoisky, carried out massive thefts with no apparent pushback. After $1.8 billion in foreign aid was sent to Kolomoisky’s large, prominent PrivatBank to help stabilize the Ukrainian banking system, PrivatBank immediately lent that money to shell companies through deposits to PrivatBank’s branch in Cyprus, secured by nonexistent contracts — monies never again seen. All in all, PrivatBank was looted for $5 billion under Joe Biden’s nose, all of which had to be reflated through foreign aid.
When President Trump later called on new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden corruption, this was not an empty, partisan request, notwithstanding the president’s awkward coloration of it. But Trump likely did not realize that President Zelensky’s major benefactor was Igor Kolomoisky, in hindsight rendering Trump’s initiative blackly comical, however appropriate. (Kolomoisky, in spite of looting his country’s major bank, and stealing foreign aid, did not flee the country until late 2016, as Vice President Biden was leaving office, to return only after Zelensky was elected.)
In early 2016, after prosecutor Viktor Shokin, spurred by U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, raided Zlochevsky’s home in an anti-Burisma investigation, Joe Biden famously had him fired — strong circumstantial evidence of the vice president’s corruption. A recently unearthed FD-1023 report of a credible informant confirms that Hunter Biden and his father were each promised five million dollars for getting Shokin fired. While the cover-up spin is that Shokin was a shakedown artist, in fact, after he was fired, the strong cases against Burisma were settled for a paltry $7 million.
Shifting to China, it is well established that (a) Hunter had a strong relationship with the globally corrupt Chinese energy arm CEFC, on record as a company that bribed foreign officials, and (b) was given ten-percent ownership in the lucrative multibillion-dollar Bohai Harvest Fund, which invested funds from the Bank of China.
When Hunter wrote an email threatening a CEFC official who was late in paying him, he warned that his father was sitting next to him. Whether Joe Biden was in fact sitting next to Hunter, the CEFC official was certainly under the impression that Joe was in on the deal, failing which his presence would be a meaningless threat.
Now, as specific evidence emerges fleshing out this obvious influence-peddling scheme, the only question is the degree to which Joe Biden willingly participated since, after all, Hunter’s clients were purchasing that participation. But in any case, aren’t these issues that investigative journalists should be tackling?
Let’s hark back to Watergate. Richard Nixon was forced out of office by powerful journalism — not because he was guilty of the underlying criminal burglary, but because he enabled and participated in the cover-up. His most palpable crime was importuning the CIA to call the FBI off, briefly, its “Mexican money trail” investigation — a minor cover-up, but criminal, nonetheless.
Showing stronger culpability, the emerging evidence from credible whistleblowers verifies that the Biden administration, through its Justice Department, fixed the prosecution of Hunter, refusing indictments both in D.C. and Los Angeles, allowing statutes of limitation to expire, and refusing proper investigative steps recommended by IRS agents.
Given all the above, there is plenty of grist for the mill of our vaunted investigative journalists — you know, those same sleuths who breathlessly seized on every morsel suggesting that Donald Trump may have spoken to people with Russian accents.
A few examples of the accumulated evidence should suffice. In addition to two credible, experienced whistleblowing IRS agents, and the FD-1023 informant’s report, Gal Luft, an American-Israeli think-tank director, in 2019 in Brussels had personally provided DOJ lawyers and FBI agents with specific facts detailing corruption by China of both Bidens.
In 2022, to both forestall and impeach Luft’s testimony, Biden’s Department of Justice issued a sealed indictment of Luft as an unregistered foreign agent violating FARA.
When the Luft indictment was recently unsealed, not coincidentally as Luft came forward with an incriminating video, did our watchdog media scream “cover-up” and “witness intimidation”? Not exactly.
Former White House spokesman Jen Psaki wondered aloud to Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin whether Republican James Comer had been “co-opted by a foreign agent.” Unsurprisingly, Raskin eagerly agreed.
The Democrat-leaning Raw Story article, “Theater of the absurd’: Raskin compares GOP’s Hunter Biden quest to ‘Inspector Clouseau” by Brandon Gage, went farther. Rather than viewing the Luft indictment as proof of a Biden retaliatory cover-up, its pundit saw that the indictment “damaged the credibility” of the case against Biden.
To Arthur Delaney of the HuffPost, the indictment of Luft for FARA violations demonstrated how weak any FARA claimwould have been against Hunter Biden. The reasoning? Unlike Luft, Hunter did virtually nothing for his pay! How can we say he’s a foreign agent if he got his money without providing any apparent services? Thus, according to investigator Delaney, there is a large “hole” in the case against Hunter Biden. We are not making this up.
Now that it is to some degree probable that the Bidens were bribed to fire Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin, wouldn’t our watchdog media perk up and at least begin an investigation? Well, no. Rather, ace investigators for the New York Times Adam Entous and Michael S. Schmidt summarized the growing evidence in a way that would make a criminal defense lawyer blush:
Despite their years of efforts-including Mr. Trump’s attempts to muscle Ukraine into helping him sully the Bidens, an escapade that led to his first impeachment-Republicans have yet to demonstrate that the senior Mr. Biden was involved in his son’s business deals or took any action to benefit him or his foreign partners.
Here is the take on the specific report of a credible informant that both Bidens were bribed to fire Shokin, as seen by Delaney and the HuffPost:
Republicans have dubiously claimed that the Burisma connection prompted then–Vice President to push for the ouster of Ukraine’s prosecutor in 2016 in order to protect thecompany.
What is not noted by the Times or the HuffPost is the evidence that such a claim would be “dubiously” made or that the Shokin firing did not benefit Hunter’s business partners.
How does the New York Times, per Glenn Thrush, depict Luft’s explosive video testimony?
In a video published by the New York Post last week, Mr. Luft claimed — without offeringevidence — that he had informed the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials of wrongdoing by the Biden family, prompting what he cast as his persecution.
When Mr. Thrush notes that Mr. Luft does so “without offering evidence,” it may shock him to learn that when a witness offers his own observations of an event, this is what lawyers and judges call “evidence.” Indeed, Luft was offering eyewitness testimony, which constitutes strong direct evidence.
This deception is not an isolated misstatement. Riddled throughout reports of the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, and other outlets is the frequent assertion that there is “no evidence” of corruption against either Biden. Kara Scannell of CNN Politics gives the typical conclusion: “But there’s no evidence Joe Biden abused his office to enrich his family.”
But here is just one piece of evidence for these journalists to chew on. On his laptop from hell, Hunter self-pityingly confides to his daughter that she need not share her income with her father as Hunter himself must. To be sure, Hunter may at the time have been under the influence of some substance. But nonetheless, this is direct evidence against Joe Biden — an admission by a co-conspirator properly in evidence against his co-conspirator father.
Common sense tells us that corrupt actors do not pay millions for influence without proof of delivery of the influence sought. The millions going to Joe’s relatives through a middleman cutout, Rob Walker, laundered through numerous shell companies, is itself evidence of corruption.
What conclusions can be drawn about the state of modern, major media investigative journalists? We can safely conclude that these “journalists” see their role as at a minimum aiders and abettors of corrupt partisan cover-ups. But going farther, they seemingly vie, like slippery criminal defense counsel, to create false cover stories behind which corrupt politicians can hide and defraud the public.
So, if some wish to assess the lasting impact of Watergate journalism, they should consult our allegedly most trusted news sources, such as the New York Times. But not for the investigations they do, but for those they choose not to do. And in doing so, please keep in mind the dominant trope of Watergate: it’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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