Shall we talk about double standards? People scoff at “whataboutery,” yet sometimes an iniquity towards one side becomes so absurd it’s sillier not to talk about it. And when it comes to American politics, the Democrats, and the indictment of President Donald J Trump, right-wing Americans have a point. This is a “weaponization” of the justice system and the unfairness of it reeks.
Two weeks ago, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee revealed that the Biden family had, through an associate, received more than $1 million from a Chinese energy company. The documents show that, from 2015 to 2017, Joe Biden’s brother Jim, his son Hunter, and his deceased son’s widow Hallie received significant funds — as did another, mysteriously unnamed “Biden.”
What’s shocking is how glibly and successfully Biden has shrugged off the China money allegations
Could that last figure have been the then-Vice President, Joe? There is no evidence that it was. Then again, this case is very fishy indeed. According to its memo, the House Committee is trying to ascertain why State Energy, HK Limited, the Chinese company “waited less than two months after Vice President Biden left office” to wire $3 million to a Mr. John Robinson Walker, who then distributed various large sums out to the Bidens. And why was Hallie Biden, a school counselor who had an affair with Hunter, her late husband’s brother, paid $25,000?
Now Team Biden insists that there’s nothing to see here: it’s all a cruel Republican smear campaign. And yes, it’s indisputably true that the Republicans pursuing this case are politically motivated. It’s also obvious that, when it comes to suspicious financial transactions involving foreign money, the Trump family has more questions to answer: the New York Times has just published an intriguing report about the hundreds of millions Qatar and other entities have shoveled towards a company belonging to the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
What’s shocking, however, is how glibly and successfully Biden, the White House, and the pro-Democratic media establishment in America have shrugged off the China money allegations, even as Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump is indicted in Manhattan, in what any fair-minded observer can see is a flagrantly politicized case.
The fact that the Biden family had murky financial ties to a rival superpower is a matter of national security concern — we have had several years of rolling news coverage on most major networks about Trump’s connections to Russia, which turned out to be a damp squib. Yet almost nobody is talking about the Biden-China connection. We’re talking instead about the criminal “hush money” fraud charges now filed against Trump over his alleged affair with a porn star. The first criminal indictment of an American president, a man who happens to be the strong favorite to be the Republican nominee in the presidential election of 2024, represents a major historic moment. It’s also a legal nonsense and everybody knows it. The New York justice department has been trying to “get Trump” for almost eight years, on whatever charge they could find. They’ve just never got this far before.
Perhaps the various Trump and Biden allegations will end up being the way America avoids a repeat of Biden vs Trump in 2024. American voters will look at both families and think it’s time to move on. That seems unlikely, though, unless the House Committee proves beyond doubt that Biden himself took Chinese money in connection with his work as vice president. Even if it did, don’t expect most news networks to treat the story with anything like the manic seriousness they have deployed following even the smallest details of manifold Trump investigations the years. When a Democratic president is accused, it’s not the same deal.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
