Robert Delaney

On Balance | Hunter Biden investigation can be the start of a crackdown on White House influence peddling

Getting a clearer picture of the evidence against Hunter Biden will make it easier to compare his activities to those of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

If the US is starting to prosecute the sale of White House influence for financial gain, it’s a matter of time before they are all in the legal spotlight

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US President Joe Biden (left) and his son Hunter Biden arrive at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, on February 4. The US Justice Department has escalated its investigation into Hunter Biden, naming a special counsel amid allegations he engaged in illicit business deals overseas. Photo: AFP

Robert Delaney

Published: 1:00am, 15 Aug 2023Updated: 1:23am, 15 Aug 2023

Now that US Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the financial dealings of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, we should expect to see details of the younger Biden’s transactions with Chinese companies pulled back into the headlines.

Starting in 2017 and over the course of about 14 months, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy and its executives paid US$4.8 million to entities controlled by or somehow connected to Hunter Biden. These details, along with those relating to the president’s son’s membership on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while the senior Biden was vice-president, have been public for years.

In 2020, Senate Republicans produced an extensive report on them, which highlighted what they called “a vast web of corporate connections and financial transactions between and among the Biden family and Chinese nationals”.

These payments and every other detail of Biden’s life have also been picked over for more than five years by David Weiss, a federal prosecutor who was appointed by former president Donald Trump. Weiss was tapped by Garland to lead the renewed investigation, in the wake of the collapse last month of a plea deal with Hunter Biden.

Given how greatly Americans’ suspicion of China has grown in recent years and become a top cause for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, it seemed inevitable that his dealings in the country would turn into an explosive story. And yet they didn’t, and not because – as some Republicans insist – the US mainstream media is conspiring to protect the Biden family.

Influence peddling is as old as politics. If a Trump-appointed prosecutor was unable to find anything that violated laws in Hunter Biden’s foray into these age-old practices, the matter was never going to stay above the fold.